Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [297]
‘For Gabriel wished the downfall of the Grand Master,’ said Nicolas agreeably. ‘While giving him such magnanimous support, he was gently, gently undermining the foundations. The Calabrians who objected so unhappily to leaving Birgu—he could do nothing to soothe them, this golden-tongued priest. He left them in worse case than before, and stressed merely the Grand Master’s cruelty by insisting that Tripoli was defenceless. But it was carefully done. Sir Graham had no wish to lead, you see, if the Order was heading for defeat and disaster. On the contrary, he wished the credit for appearing to hold it together.’
They had reached the hills above Yarrow, and the long cleft of the Craig Hill where on a misty October day, four years before, twenty men and a flock of sheep dressed in helmets had put Lord Grey and his English to flight. Now the river, brown and merry, wound through the meadows still green in the autumn sunlight, and Nicolas de Nicolay, with an exclamation of pleasure at the sight, put his arms on the rough wood of a sheep-stank and stood, Jerott at his side, gazing while he talked.
‘But he did not forget, Sir Graham, that the services of Lymond might prove more valuable still. He took steps to remove his competition: all that might hold the other man, or interfere with his plans. He has told me about, and you may remember, a note from Mistress O’Dwyer, carefully delivered, which Gabriel had so innocently opened. You yourself were instrumental, I believe, in preventing him, at Gabriel’s request, from crossing to Gozo where he might either have lost his life to the Turks or rescued the woman and become saddled with her forthwith. It was through Gabriel, it offends me to think, and not myself solely, that Mr Crawford was brought safely from the hospital in Birgu where the Grand Master had hidden him, I am sure with the worst possible designs. Mr Crawford was not to be a victim of Juan de Homedès. He was to be a bright little tool in the brazen fingers of Gabriel.’
‘So Oonagh appeared to die,’ said Jerott. Throughout, his face pale, he had offered neither question nor comment on de Nicolay’s crisp and kindly discourse.
‘So she was persuaded that in the interests of Lymond himself, she must appear to die; or having conveniently disappeared, she must continue to let him think her dead. You and I both know how Lymond rescued her at Tripoli. They nearly lost them both. He swims marvellously well, and they had not expected it. But who could possibly have known of that attempt at escape? Only two people: Gabriel and the pirate Thompson. But Thompson was not likely to be the traitor. His life was in Lymond’s hands; he owed his own escape from the Turk’s galleys solely to Lymond. Therefore it was Gabriel who decided that Lymond was to return to Scotland alone, was to prepare this great army for him, and having trained it, to become either Graham Malett’s disciple, or his victim. You know the rest.’
For a long time, Jerott Blyth did not speak. Then at length, his voice husky, he said, ‘You say Lymond watched him.… How could he? How could he guess, more than any of us could, what Gabriel was?’
Compassionately, the little man watched him. ‘It is hard, that? He has no fervour, no intuition, and yet he smells something wrong, something too perfect, something that makes one ask, “If this man is all he seems, why have all the prizes of the world not fallen at his feet? Why is he not the lodestar of all the Order, Spanish or none? Why is Juan de Homedès not abased, ashamed, before him?