Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [79]
‘How else was I to stop him?’ Jerott had snapped. It was he, not Gabriel, who had worn himself out on that uncomfortable race.
‘You might have killed him,’ said Gabriel sharply, and turning his back strode away; from which Jerott received the comfort of knowing that logic was on his side, and Gabriel merely giving unusual outlet to his own anxiety. They set out, with Lymond still under care in the hospital behind them, and the people of Mdina ran at their stirrups and kissed their feet. Later, Jerott heard that Francis Crawford had been brought from Mdina by the Grand Master’s orders and installed in the big hospital at Birgu, but he was not allowed any visitors, and even Gabriel was turned from the door. De Villegagnon, on Malett’s advice, did not try. Nicolas de Nicolay, however, not only tried but succeeded.
The entire hospital was worried about Nicolas de Nicolay. In his first hour in the knights’ ward he received visits from the Infirmarian, the Prior, the duty physician, the assistant duty physician, the surgeon, the barber-surgeon and two barberotti. No one knew what was wrong with him. With two hundred other sick, wounded and dying to care for, the hospital was conscious of other calls on its conscience, but could not wrest its nervous attention from the celebrated patient who, if harm befell him, would do the Order’s reputation more harm than Dragut’s galleys.
Nicolas, disregarding freely all d’Aramon’s strictures about moderation, plunged into display like a mountebank. He screamed. He rolled about in evident agony. He clutched his stomach, his throat, flung hash at the curtains and upset soup on the novices. He wouldn’t take his medicine and shrieked for de Seurre, who came to see him at regular intervals, by every conceivable route, but without discovering a trace of the missing Lymond.
After half a day of it, de Seurre brought news. ‘You’d better give up the farce and recover,’ he said, sitting impatiently holding the geographer’s limp hand. ‘We are going to Tripoli. The Ambassador has agreed to intercede with the Turk.’
Nicolas de Nicolay’s brown eyes snapped. ‘But the scraping-down of the boats, surely, isn’t finished? And they will require time to water and provision.’ Galleys, weed-coated, were having much-needed attention.
‘D’Aramon will go in the Order’s own light brigantine. The galliot remains. When the two galleys are ready, we follow.’
Nicolas de Nicolay sank back on his pillow and let out a mechanical yelp as an orderly passed. ‘Then there’s no immediate haste.’
The Chevalier de Seurre said irritably, ‘You have the Ambassador’s permission to abandon the search. It is not of importance.’ It was not a business he relished. Of course, something was irregular; you could smell it, as d’Aramon had done. He appreciated the tact with which d’Aramon had refused to make this inquiry behind his back: as one of his party, it would have been intolerable. But he was afraid of what he was going to find.
And he had a shrewd idea, too, that the little, elderly geographer suspected it. For Nicolas de Nicolay said firmly, ‘Turn my back on a new chart? Never!’ and fell asleep. Or for all practical purposes became quite unresponsive. At length, as the siesta hour had begun, de Seurre went away out of patience. The hospital, relieved of its jumping nerve, settled down to sleep and routine, as long as its difficult patient’s slumber would permit; and Nicolas de Nicolay, breathing heavily, waited bubbling for the hour when the quiet ward would be vacant of monks, and when a man in search of natural relief might find himself by mistake in several strange places.
When the moment came he rose, stuffed his pillow into his bed, and lifting the black cloak from beside the sleeping knight in the next bed, shrugged into it and shuffled off in the semi-dark of the veiled windows. Then, as was his business, he began to explore.
The mortuary of the hospital of the Knights