Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [65]
Halting at de Villegagnon’s side, the Grand Cross bowed his golden head; and as if rebuked, de Villegagnon’s bearded chin dropped, too, on his chest, and one by one, those of all that remained of the rest.
‘Almighty God,’ Graham Malett prayed, his palms tight on the mare’s makeshift reins, his soft, deep voice reaching only the little band of whom he had made himself one. ‘Preserve these your children who go with no thought of self to succour the weak in their hour of desperate need. We pray for this Order, that what we do may diminish none of its glory, and what we leave undone may be forgiven it and us. Guide us, and when we have gone, guide those that remain, who do what they do, O Lord, from most piteous love of Thee and Thy Son. Into Thy hands we commend our spirits: under Thy foot we lay, joyfully, our mortal flesh.’
The soft, fivefold ‘Amen’ lay like a presence in the air as they stirred, scattered and mounted. No Moslem watcher from Mount Sciberras saw the seven dark heads swimming the canal, nor the seven wraiths skirting the shore, the hot, salty air thrown back in the nostrils from the high walls of Birgu; nor did any stop them as they threaded through the dark night to the plain where Mdina’s high citadel lay.
For to no seasoned Turkish captain, not even to Dragut himself, did it occur that any man, unless he came with an army, would desire to enter Mdina now.
IV
The Rape of Galatian
(Mdina and Gozo, July 1551)
SOMEWHERE on that arrogant ride to Mdina, as he listened to Ottoman voices at prayer, crouched, his mare’s nostril’s closed in his hand, or sprang from tussock to tussock of dusty grass so that not even the click of unshod hooves would offend the listening night, Jerott Blyth pondered on why they had come.
In the old capital where St Paul had walked, the chief city of Malta, shrine of her ancient laws and offices, they were to lay down their lives fighting the Turk. This, as knights of the Religion, was their duty. His three colleagues from the French Langue were there for that reason alone, he believed. He, who had joined the Order because a girl died, had come, he knew, for reasons that had little to do with the Turk. He thought of the Grand Master who, listening to his sorely honest account of his purpose in joining the Order, had said, ‘Followers of Christ come to Him for strange reasons, my son. We do not choose the man who is already whole. We choose the man who knows his soul may be made pure in the service of God, and who will strive to this end.…’ And that same Grand Master had allowed six of these seven men to ride to Mdina tonight in the hope that they would die, and in the knowledge that if Mdina fell, the shout of treachery might safely be raised.
Gabriel.… Why had Gabriel come? At the last moment he had stepped forward, laying his hand on the Frenchman chosen, and had said, ‘No, Brother. You will live to make a better sacrifice than this.’ And bare of armour as Lymond rashly was, without his beautiful Milanese cuirass or the famous helmet with its white plume, Gabriel had left St Angelo to join de Villegagnon with the rest in the ditch. Gabriel, who had buttressed the aged Grand Master with his own strength, was going to throw away his life at Mdina when the Grand Master, as he must have known, would have used force if need be to stop him. Why?
Why? It was then that Jerott’s eye fell on Francis Crawford, who had a knack for leading, and who, Jerott thought, from a spoiled child’s relish for gambling, had appointed himself, unasked, to the tiny squadron; and illumination struck him at last. Was it for Lymond’s sake, for Lymond and the Religion, that Gabriel had come to Mdina?
On that same foolish journey, Lymond kept his own counsel. The skills learned on rock and on marshland in Scotland