Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [315]
Graham Malett pulled himself up to his elbow. Round his neck, the furrow left by the cord showed plain among the swollen, purple flesh; beneath torn cloak and torn shirt the blood coursed steadily over the marked skin; but blotched, bruised and grazed, short of breath, hoarse of voice, the fine, fresh skin suffused and the short, guinea-gold hair dark with sweat and dust, he looked magnificent still: a fallen angel; an avenging god. ‘Did you think, peasant, that the woman O’Dwyer really died?’ said Gabriel with thick contempt. ‘She lived on to give birth to a child. But understood, of course, that Francis Crawford’s proud destiny should not be disturbed by the knowledge.…’
‘It is true,’ said Nicolas de Nicolay’s voice, uncommonly sober, from behind d’Oisel’s shoulder. Lymond did not look round.
‘It is true,’ Gabriel agreed, smiling. ‘I have two letters here, from Dragut, which will prove it.’ Reaching under his cloak, slowly because of the dagger, he found and threw down two dog-eared packets, their superscription written in Arabic. ‘You will read them with close interest, I am sure. From them, you will learn that I have purchased the child who has been reared with his mother under Dragut’s roof by my request. By now, also at my request, the woman O’Dwyer and her infant will have been removed from the palace to a place of greater security.…
‘Are you interested?’ said Graham Malett, lazily, his blue eyes sustaining the locked stare above him. ‘You should be. Because the child isn’t Cormac O’Connor’s. You will see, when you read. It is a boy, five months old, branded with Dragut’s mark, I am told, and given the name of Khaireddin. He is your son.
‘But no doubt,’ added Graham Malett softly, and made himself a little more comfortable as he lay, ‘you have got several such, unheeded equally. If so, your remedy is under your hand. Kill me, and the woman and child will both be quietly disposed of. Let me go, and you may find them yourself.’
Lymond drew back, controlled still by his schooled, fighter’s instincts. His face showed nothing. His hand, steadied now on one upraised knee, held the knife as before, perfectly still. But Sybilla, who knew him best, thought she saw his heart stop.
Oonagh O’Dwyer had not died through his agency. She could imagine what that meant to him. But what did it mean to know that he had left that proud woman behind to bear his child as a common possession of the Armenian sea-thief Dragut Rais; and that the child itself, the first and only son of his blood, instead of blossoming in that careful, careless affection which he had given already, so endearingly, to Kevin, had been bought like an animal, and branded like an animal, and was now being bartered, like some dirty, unconsidered coin, for Gabriel’s life?
She saw Francis begin, automatically, to breathe again. Above the dishevelment, the blood, the useless arm, the cold threat of the knife, his face was still, and old beyond its years. Yet for all his forced maturity and all his arts, Francis Crawford did not possess Gabriel’s true, impermeable mask, to speak, and smile and pray for him. The shock, the half-believing agony of mind showed now as he stared, shaken by the quiet force of his breathing, his brow lined, at Gabriel’s smiling, satisfied eyes.
The bell was stopping. Within the church, the silence had the quality of a forest at night. Whisperings, shufflings, jostlings, rustled through the herb-laden air, warmed by many bodies, and by the tapers, hissing and glittering in their diminishing clusters before every quiet shrine. Behind the two men, on the high altar, the massive silver-gilt plate glistened under the candelabra, and the crimson velvet, stirred by the draught from the open doors, nudged