Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [75]
The Turks had hardly gone from Mdina when Lymond had disappeared too. ‘Where is he now?’ Gabriel had said harshly, and Jerott Blyth had replied with exaggerated unconcern, ‘Retrieving the Irish amie, I should suppose,’ and then retreated into silence before Gabriel’s visible dismay.
His skin paler, ‘Of course.…’ had said Graham Malett, going on rapidly. ‘Tell Nicholas I’ve gone. It’s hopeless. Francis must know it. No one can be saved from Gozo now. He must be stopped.’
‘Not by you, sir!’ It sounded firm; in fact a kind of horrified disbelief sharpened Jerott Blyth’s voice. ‘Are we nursemaids! He knows his own mind. Why should we stop him? Nothing here draws him or requires him now.’
‘But I do, Jerott,’ Gabriel had quietly replied. And had added, ‘I will not add criminal waste to wanton wilfulness. He must be stopped.’
‘Then I will stop him,’ Jerott had said, and white with anger, had set off.
Tracking over the used grey grass and the knotted pink and chrome sandstone where Lymond on foot had struck out from Mdina, sighting him miraculously at length when all his energy had gone and pushing out, somehow, the extra effort needed to match, to excel, to overtake that cracking pace, he had come, parched and stumbling, to this northernmost shore. Here, green through the blistering haze, was Comino; and there, across the blue straits, the long ridge of Gozo itself.
In all the crazy, sun-beaten journey they had met no one. All north Malta had fled to the west, or was in hiding. Scrambling over the great stony ridges and down into the valleys hatched with terracing, Jerott passed their empty pueblos, square box-houses blending into the hillside, with their melon-patches bright green about them. Here some hens scratched. There, frightening him with the dull clank of its bell, a goat watched him, ears drooping, from the twisted branch of a tree. He passed white waxy stephanotis, its scent staining the air, and pink Fiori de Pasqua among the olives and carobs; and the prickly pears, yellow-green, beige, Indian red on their angular stalks, masked him from the man he was following, though not from the sun.
Then he was here at Marfa, on the grey grass and the tired grey sand above the northernmost beach, where the pitted yellow-grey sandstone ran out under the water like petrified sponges, water-moiled and ribboned with weed. There was one boat only in the harbour of Marfa, and by the time Jerott came, plunging downhill into sight, the one boat was launched and Lymond, the sun blazing on his unprotected head, was thigh-deep, ready to heave himself in.
Then Jerott, easing his powerful shoulders under the soaked shirt, had bent to scoop up a rock, weighed it for an instant, poised and threw it. He aimed for the back of the other man’s head and did not greatly care how hard it struck. A moment later Lymond slid to his knees, his hands tracking down the skiff’s sides, and Jerott, splashing through the shallows, had heaved him on to the hot, salty thyme. The boat, when he turned back to sink it, had already drifted far out of reach. Chest heaving, flesh viscous with sweat, Jerott Blyth flung himself beside his briskly felled victim and waited while the sea sucked on the sandstone and the crickets shrilled, high and pulsating; the only stirring of life on all that bare strand.
Then Lymond opened his eyes and rolled over, assessing Blyth’s presence, and the far-off boat, and the aching wound in his scalp. He said, ‘Gabriel sent you?’ and as Jerott assented he added, icy rage in his voice, ‘What a pity Sir Graham could not be present himself.’
‘A great pity,’ agreed Jerott grimly. ‘He may see a soul worth redeeming where I may see only trash.’
Lymond sat up, his back rigid, perspiration in great tears on his lashes and jaw. ‘And my God, you’re revelling in it all, aren’t you, out of sheer, schoolboy spleen. And how bloody offended you would be if I asked you how you’d feel if Elizabeth were there, and I’d stopped you reaching her. Even whores have souls,