Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [43]
‘Call in the knights from the provinces,’ said Gabriel. ‘M. de Villegagnon had no need to suggest that. It is obvious.’
‘And fortify Malta.’ The French voice, its accent dulled with long years on the island, was Jean de la Valette’s, Parisot to his friends; his grizzled face impatient, his shattered leg stuck incontinently at an angle below his parted black robes. ‘We need mercenaries, cannon, bulwarks … a better fort at St Elmo, and one at L’Isla to cross fire with St Angelo across Galley Creek. If we work fast, there is time to do something.’
‘But no men, Chevalier; and no money.’ The dry voice of de Homedès was tinged with triumph. ‘Yo lo siento. As with you, the fate of this island keeps me sleepless at nights. Last year, as you know, the crops in Sicily failed. The Order was forced instead to pay for imports from France, from even further afield. We are not rich, We had no reserves. We had to pawn our plate to send even our last emissary to England. The Treasury, Brethren, is empty. We cannot raise or pay mercenaries; we cannot finance even the summons of our knights from their commanderies. By increasing our tax on these properties we might later gather a little reserve for this purpose; but that cannot help us now.’
‘And will the Grand Master say,’ said de Villegagnon, the veins throbbing in his thick neck and all his lawyer’s caution melting slowly in the stifling candour of courteous authority, ‘how the rest of the Treasury money has been spent?’
The protest which ran round the room, he ought to have recognized, was not wholly disagreement and not wholly shock. It was, however, an expression of rightful alarm that, against all the rules of their devotion and their way of life, de Villegagnon should have spoken openly to the Grand Master thus. Through it all Gabriel’s easy bass-baritone spoke. ‘There are channels for accounting which are none of your business, Brother Nicholas, as they are none of mine, but which all the Order’s officials are familiar with to the point of nausea. In any case, don’t let your distress lead you into side issues. We are all sleepless, with prayers as well as with sailing. We can only align and disperse solutions until we reach the right one.’
‘I need no protector, Brother Graham.’ The Grand Master’s face under the black hat was thinly fleshed with his anger, but his voice was unchanged. The black patch, unvarying, was bent on de Villegagnon. ‘And I find you too ready to make M. de Villegagnon’s apologies. To have mistaken the King of France’s intentions as he has done implies a naïveté beyond understanding, or a knavery beyond any apology. The Constable’s message, I am sure,’ added de Homedès, who had played this game, monotonously, many times before, ‘arose from the warmest wishes for our well-being. But the Constable is not France. The King is France, and with him the de Guise family, one of whose spies you have brought here, M. de Villegagnon, into this citadel!’
It was neatly done: so neatly that, without hesitation, thirty-five pairs of eyes, old, young, mature with long prayer, seamed with years of sailing on bright water, lucid