Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [308]
‘Please do,’ said Lymond politely, his eyes suddenly bright. ‘And forgive the clamour outside. Half the French troops, it appears, have gone off hunting Kerrs and we have been joined by a large part of our friends from St Mary’s. Also by my family from Midculter. And also by Madame Donati.’
‘Evangelista?’ said Malett slowly. ‘Crazed by the death of my sister? What kind of witnesses are these? In any case, we have no need of them. We all know how Will Scott came to die. And now his father, killed because he knew too much. What was in George Paris’s papers, I wonder? Evidence that as a friend of Thompson you were also a traitor with Paris, so that at Falkland you even told Cormac O’Connor that the Queen Dowager was aware of Paris’s misdemeanours, to prevent him telling her the truth? The sapphire you have been wearing—strangely missing today—was given you by Thompson—why? A hard-headed corsair gives nothing for nothing.’
Before Lymond could speak Jerott, ill-advisedly, had answered that one. ‘He bought a woman from him. I was there.’
Malett looked round, disgust on his face. ‘For a jewel of that price! And why, then, is it hidden today?’
‘It isna hidden.’ Plain, uncompromising, it was the voice of Janet Beaton, her strong-boned face queer and puffy with weeping but her step firm and her chin high as she came down the nave, her sister hesitant behind. At Gabriel’s side she halted, and looking up to the altar steps she said in a changed voice, ‘I hae come from my slaughtered husband, Francis Crawford, with something to give you. This I took from his hand: it was his son’s ring and I mean you to have it. This’—and in the steady glow of the candles she held up a sapphire, the fire in it burning through and through—‘this was not on his fist when he left Branxholm. Is it yours?’
‘Yes,’ said Lymond; and nothing more. But Jerott, with sudden illumination, remembered stumbling over that silent, kneeling figure in the Luckenbooths, and seeing Lymond, rising, replace Buccleuch’s thick, blood-streaked hand at his side with long, gentle fingers that hid what they had done.
But whatever Lymond’s reason had been, he had no intention, clearly, of giving it; and no need. Janet’s gesture, fresh from her husband’s bier, was enough. And when she turned from Lymond’s still face to the fair, concerned features of Gabriel, her whole manner commanded, although her eyes were wet and her nose swollen and red. ‘I heard from Robert,’ said Janet Beaton contemptuously, ‘how you filled the Dowager’s ears with bonny tales of Lymond’s deficiencies, for all ye defended him so nobly in public. No doubt ye did the same at St Mary’s. No doubt they’ve all heard how Will Scott died because Francis Crawford was whoring at Dumbarton and drunk at Liddesdale and for all their work, they had to go into action ill-managed, ill-trained and ill-led.’
She spun round, her voice hoarse, and addressed not only Graham Malett but the rapt faces in the recesses of the wide church behind her. ‘Shall I tell you,’ she said, ‘how and why Will Scott died? And shall I tell you how and why Buccleuch died like a dog in the gutter today?’
And so the story of the Hot Trodd was told, and was supported, voice to voice, where they sat, by those who had evidence of its truth. And after that, Janet turned to Lymond and, cool-voiced, he described the events of that day and how, deliberately, the Kerrs had been sent to murder Buccleuch. Wat Scott knew nothing—and Lord Provost Hamilton, rising stiffly, confirmed it—of any crime committed by Kerrs which would be revealed by Paris’s papers. The Kerrs had been dispatched into Edinburgh in the hope that they would do murder; and on their exit, word had been sent to d’Oisel that Buccleuch was dead, though in fact he was not dead, and no one except the Kerrs actually involved knew he was stabbed.
‘You knew George Paris was a double agent,’ said Lymond, his calmly modulated voice breaking in again.