Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [307]
For a long moment, Sir Graham Malett sustained that direct gaze. Then he turned away, and finding d’Oisel near him, addressed him quietly. ‘The young man is losing his mind. I have known it for some time. I have spoken to the Queen Dowager about this tragic contingency; and she has been kind enough to trust my discretion. Allow me to carry him with me now. I myself will stand surety for his behaviour, and with Holy Church’s help, will give him the nursing he needs.’
‘M. d’Oisel.…’ Jerott Blyth, his hand on his sword, moved forward into his self-appointed place again, at Gabriel’s side. ‘Witnesses present just now can substantiate all Mr Crawford has to say, and will swear also as to his sanity. In fairness, Sir Graham should allow him to speak.’
‘I am only concerned,’ said Malett wearily, ‘with sparing the emotions of all those whom our friend has so peremptorily involved. Of course I have no objection. I should like, however, to show just how much weight you may place on this accusation by stating my own discoveries about Mr Crawford.’
‘Sisters, I knew him far away by the redness of his heart under his silver skin. State your discoveries,’ said Lymond. ‘And like a crone on a creepie-stool, I shall sit here and marvel.’ And dropping lightly to the steps he waited, hugging his knees.
Perhaps because of Jerott Blyth, Gabriel began his indictment, in a rich, deep voice that carried to every corner of the great church, with Lymond’s actions in Malta. With a detachment shaken only now and then, when his hands clenched and the white cross on his breast rose and fell with his breathing, Graham Malett told again the story of the Turkish attack, only picking out the constant of Lymond’s treachery.
‘The Order should vanish from the face of the earth.… Do you remember saying that?’ asked Gabriel of Lymond where he sat, his hands lightly clasped at his knees. ‘You came to Malta straight from the French King, with orders to that effect. From the start, the Turks were your allies.… Do you recall, Jerott, his attempt to join the Turkish attack at Gozo? Who do you suppose arranged the seduction of that foolish man de Césel, Gozo’s Governor, by Francis’s own former mistress? Who did his best, at Mdina, to escape over the wall to the Turks to warn them to ignore the false message coming from Sicily … and would have done so, too, had I not been privileged to stop him. How did Nicholas Upton die? How was Francis on such close and friendly terms with a well-known pirate?
‘At Birgu he would have liked to have overloaded us with useless mouths; on the eve of the sailing for Tripoli he hid in the hospital rather than leave. And once in Tripoli, don’t you remember how he bribed the Calabrian soldiers to let him out of imprisonment—the Calabrians, with whom he was so friendly, and who finally tried to blow up the castle and desert the Order by sea? Don’t you remember the mysterious spy who informed the Turks to fire on the St Brabe bulwark, not the St James? … Who paid him, do you suppose? Who, do you remember, tried to get the French knights in the garrison again and again to rise against the Marshal and the Spanish knights and to hold Tripoli by themselves alone? How long, do you suppose, would they have troubled to hold out? Who found it so simple, when he wished, to escape the city with his band of freed slaves and reach the Turkish camp unharmed? Who escaped to the Turks again, leaving his mistress to drown?
‘I wanted no sovereignty!’ cried Gabriel, his deep voice rising in his distress. ‘Before the battle on Malta, as anyone will tell you, I was asked to lead, and I refused. I took my oath to obey only one master on earth, and to that I hold. But this … this animal in spangles, this bright, malicious harlot … this furious and fatuous young man, would take a great Order, and now attempts to take a great nation and with his puny, ill-informed fingers, crumble it into rubble on which he may strut.…’ He raised his voice against a sudden