Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [59]
‘Then St Andrew and St John both guard you,’ said Gabriel quietly, and let him go.
*
In Boghall Castle, Biggar, Scotland, Joleta Malett, who had been on edge all day, apologized for inattention to Lady Fleming for the third time and added, in extenuation, ‘I feel there’s something wrong. I don’t know what. When I felt like this, it used to be Graham who was in danger.’
And Tom Erskine, Scots Privy Councillor and Ambassador, whose news from France was recent and specific, said, ‘A professional soldier, monk or not, is always in danger. Try to forget. He has not become what he is by being vulnerable or stupid.’ And thought uneasily that the same thing applied to Francis Crawford, who had also chosen to defend Malta on grounds known only to himself, which might procure him no dispensation in heaven at all.
*
The temperature was in the nineties; the sky removed a man’s breath from the lip of the lung with its invisible heat. The northerly wind which had blown the fleet of the Faithful from Sicily had gone, and below the brassy blue arc of July the arid sandstone rocks, the crumbling houses, the stony terraces vibrated like blows on the nerves of the sight.
In their riveted armour, with the long, quilted leather jacks to protect from bruising beneath, the knights riding from Birgu round Grand Harbour were assaulted like an enemy by an element more formidable still: the single, burning sun which took from every chance encounter with salade, knee-plate or harness, with shield-buckle and sword, its penalty of blistered flesh. Fair skins blazed; sweat, crusting thick with salt in straining eyes made worse the suffocating blindness brought on by heat and pressure, by the nervous stress, never lost, never admitted, of the hour before the attack.
This, through all the four hundred years of her history, was the Order’s penance, willingly undergone, below suns hotter than Malta’s. This was how they fought; this was how they suffered; this, when they rode out to face the fanatical scimitars, was the other enemy they must overthrow. By Lymond’s side Nick Upton, vast as a staved barrel, whom neither tiltyard nor rowing bench could diminish, said in his direct English voice, ‘You’ll find us none so monkish on the field of battle.’
‘I have nothing against monks,’ said Lymond, his gaze scanning the rocks and dry cactus ahead; his senses attuned to noise far away from their galloping horses.
The bulbous, kindly face, fretted by the tongues of the Venetian helmet, turned again, jerking to the horse’s gait. ‘Are ye a Protestant?’ inquired Upton in a mild shout.
Diverted, Lymond this time looked round. ‘Because I haven’t clamoured to become a novitiate?’
The Turcopilier gave no direct answer. Instead he said, ‘Gabriel thinks a lot of you.’
‘I thought I talked too much for his comfort,’ said Lymond. ‘But I hear he has a ravishing sister. I must mend my ways.’
A surprisingly sweet smile crossed the Turcopilier’s face. ‘Nothing on earth can surprise or defeat Gabriel,’ he said. ‘As you will find out. But he would gladly welcome you—we all should—to our Church.’
Ahead, minute in the shining air, was a sparkle of sunshine on jewels and drawn steel. ‘O England, thou garden of delights,’ said Lymond, lyrically intent. ‘Set aside these thoughts of religion, and let us go and chase Turks.’
*
The Janissaries screamed: that was true. Not when they were hit; not when the two-handed sword slit through the puffed silk of the turban, nor when the fire-hoops of wood rubbed with brandy touched the light robes of muslin and silk and flared orange in the white sunlight—robe, sash, beard, eyebrows and turban a white cypress of flame. Then they called on Allâh, rapt in ecstasy, and died fixed on certain Paradise and an