Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [61]
They had only begun this work when Nick Upton, visible only as shining red skin between steel and steel of his helmet, gave a violent gasp and let all his plated bulk slither sideways, so that his horse stumbled and stopped. His hand quick on the bridle, Lymond twisted Upton’s beast round and supported the man, pinning his own horse hard; feeling the steel burn his hands through Upton’s fine scarlet surcoat with its dusty white cross. Then, as fighting broke out suddenly on their left flank and someone called him, he consigned the great burden, deftly, to other arms, and drew Upton’s men onwards without him. There was no balm he could offer Upton but rest while the fighting continued. And the Turcopilier’s company followed him, their swords bloody, their horses lathered with sweat, and beat the invader to the edge of the sea.
They came back, when it was over, to the same spot: weary, jubilant but with time now for concern. They had unbuckled Nicholas Upton’s armour and he lay still on the ground, great belly upwards, eyes shut, his face puffed and glazed by the sun; his frame shaken by shuddering sighs. Francis Crawford knelt, holding his pulse for a moment; then rising without comment, gave all the necessary instructions. The Turcopilier did not waken when four men heaved his inert body into the sling, nor did his stertorous breathing change on the slow ride back to Birgu. To the knights who rode out from the arched gateway to greet him; to all those who pressed at their sides as they rode up the steep crowned streets of the town, Lymond made the same answer. ‘Sir Nicholas has no wound. He is a fat man over-exerting himself under a tropical sun while carrying a hundred pounds of plate armour. Blame the sun. Blame the armour. Blame your own numbskull habits. Blame the courage of a man with a heart a good deal bigger than his body ever became. But don’t blame the Turks. The Order of the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta killed this one.’
In fact, Sir Nicholas Upton of England died later that evening, in his white-curtained bed in the hospital, his face turned to the doors of the Chapel of the Most Holy Saint. A moment later the French physician, laying down the silver cup engraved with the arms of de Homedès, rose and went quietly out, while the Prior continued in a low voice to recite the offices, and de Villegagnon, Blyth and the two knights closest to him in his years on Malta knelt beside the Turcopilier and prayed.
The ludicrous death of the fat knight was the only loss that day. Lymond had brought back his company of three hundred and more without greater loss than scars and arrow-pricks; and Gimeran, in ambush across the water among the rocks of Mount Sciberras, had surprised the Turkish Admiral’s galley itself sailing close in to reconnoitre, and had fired on it, causing the crew to drop oars in disorder and eventually to retreat. Sinan Pasha, furious, had ordered a landing on Mount Sciberras to engage the small party of knights, but having done what damage they could, prudently Gimeran’s men had withdrawn, and re-embarking on their skiffs, had crossed safely back to Birgu.
Since when St Angelo, inspired by the Grand Master, had rung with the Spanish knight’s praises. Jerott Blyth, who saw both homecomings and watched Lymond turn away, his men dispersed, after Upton’s sagging stretcher had been borne through the pomegranate-wreathed door of the hospital, overtook him on the way back to Gabriel’s. ‘Well?’
Crawford of Lymond, Comte de Sevigny, who had respected Nicholas Upton, met this studied nonchalance blankly. ‘For all I know, excellent. Hercules, as you observe, brûla son corps, pour se rendre immortel. For the rest, you could scarcely claim yet they were blooded. But they lost a prime lot of weight.’
*
Very soon after that a skiff, unseen, put off from the Turkish flagship at anchor in Marsamuscetto Bay; and presently, their jewels