Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [56]
Gabriel took the news to the Grand Master. De Homedès, early in bed, found it easy to disbelieve him. After explanation, corroboration, delay, His Eminence at length had himself dressed and moved through his garden, past his menagerie and down to the rail overlooking the quay and the rocky ledge on which the great capstan stood for unwinding the chain. In the falling dark, the two boats far below could hardly be seen, except as two shadows barring the yellow columns of L’Isla’s mirrored lights.
The ragged anthems had stopped. Instead, monotonously across the water, came the thin voice of a spokesman appealing, in the name of the Governor of Gozo who had sent them, for the Grand Master’s permission to land.
‘Take the chain up?’ said the Grand Master testily. ‘What non-sense is this? These are women and children.’
‘They have come all the way from Gozo,’ said Gabriel, sharpness audible even in that unshaken voice. ‘If as you say the Turks have gone.…’
‘Then they have no right to encumber us here. And if the Turks have not gone, as you are so fond of reiterating,’ said Juan de Homedès with devastating precision, ‘then what are these but useless mouths obstructing the garrison?’
‘And if Gozo is attacked, and not Malta?’ asked Gabriel bluntly.
The Grand Master turned away, his velvet cloak pressed peevishly against his thin flesh, the eight-pointed cross glimmering in the scented dark. ‘Exactly my point, Brother,’ he said. ‘How do you suppose these poor men of Gozo will fight if we withdraw the very thing they want most to save? Send these people back.’
This last, delivered to the knight standing ready, lantern in hand, to signal for duty at the capstan, produced absolute silence. Even from the two crowded boats, now quite invisible in the dark, arose no whimper, no cry. The Grand Master raised his voice, impatient of their slow understanding, and repeated irritably what he had said. ‘Hail them, sir! And tell them they are to go back to Gozo.’
‘And if they refuse?’
Black patch and cold eye, turning together, expressed the Grand Master’s unqualified disapproval. ‘Then sink them,’ he said.
*
‘That for the Order!’ shouted Jerott Blyth, hurling the ripped shreds of his robe of St John to the floor; and the circle of French knights about him, stirring, murmured and looked at one another, and at Gabriel.
‘You are making it awkward for the Pilier, Jerott,’ said Sir Graham sharply. He had just brought them news of last night’s pilgrimage from Gozo and its outcome; and throughout the Auberge of France the knights, stunned, had come to hear.
De Villegagnon spoke, almost as sharply returning Gabriel’s rebuke. ‘None of us is shamed by M. Blyth’s words. He is right. The Grand Master is insane. Let him go on, and we shall be the butt of Osmanli and Christian alike. For God’s sake, Gabriel, take command for him. There isn’t a man who would not willingly follow you. Damn humility! Damn modesty! Lead us, Graham!’ And answering him, before Gabriel could speak, was a firm, an angry, a masculine rumble of assent: the deep voice of war, and not the ritual litany of the Order’s daily utterance.
‘May I ask,’ said someone peaceably, ‘why Sir Graham did not bring us this news last night?’
Calm within the clamour about him, Gabriel met Francis Crawford’s neutral blue stare over the heads swirling between them, and smiled. ‘Do you really think,’ he said to that detached presence, ‘that I would allow old women and young children to make that journey to Gozo without respite?’
‘No,’ said Lymond after some thought, and Jerott, sensing flippancy, pushed his way exasperated out of the crowded circle and gripped a windowsill, the light white on his face. ‘What did you do?’ asked de Villegagnon, his thick brows drawn.
‘Put them in the sail