Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [92]
‘Lymond won’t leave you.’ Rising, Graham Malett’s face was filled with compassion.
‘Ah, you are clever, are you not?’ she said slowly, and the mermaid’s eyes searched his. ‘You’d make a monk of him? You’ll never do that.’
‘No. I only wish to see him live to choose,’ said Gabriel quietly. His eyes, steady on hers, held for a long moment; then after hesitating, he raised both hands and rested them lightly on her two thin shoulders. ‘Sin must be paid for, and better in this world than the next. Do you wish to save him?’
For a moment, a bleak smile crossed the pale face. ‘I have no fear that he will suffer in any way except in his conscience, but it would offend me to be a burden on that,’ she said. ‘Is it a seraglio you will arrange for me? I doubt he will feel called upon to release me from that as well.’
‘Have you no fear of the Turk?’ he asked, and she smiled again at the searching blue eyes. ‘I fear very little,’ she said; and it rang true.
‘I shall do all I can for you,’ said Sir Graham. ‘As for Lymond … He may reach you here, but I shall see he does not rescue you. And afterwards.…’
‘Yes?’ she said. Behind her Galatian, whom he had come to see, was stirring. She felt very tired, as if she had travelled far, and calm, as if the worst of her burdens were being supported for her.
Graham Malett’s arms dropped. Gently he took both her hands in his and held them for an instant as in prayer, his clear eyes searching her face.
‘If I tell him you are dead, he will believe me,’ he said. ‘But only if you give me leave.’
Her eyes did not leave his. ‘I am dead,’ she said. ‘Mary Mother, I have been dead these long months.’
VII
But Allâh Disposes
(Tripoli, August 1551)
TO the people of Tripoli, the coming of d’Aramon’s ships was a promise of rescue. Far over the bay, they saw the skiff row ashore and return. They saw the French Ambassador and his train leave their brigantine for the vital meeting with Sinan Pasha.
They did not return. Nor did the Turkish sappers and cannoneers working among the rocks in the lee of the castle slacken their labours. The hulks were heaved into position above the seashore; trenches were opened and cannon mounted in a triple battery of twelve pieces each, pointing straight at the castle walls. Out at sea, a heavily armed Ottoman boat could be seen visiting each of the French boats in turn; immediately afterwards, the standing rigging of each of the three slithered down.
Just before that, Jerott Blyth, clinging with aching arms to the underside of a Turkish galleass, observed the release of the pirate Thompson. He did not help.
Jerott Blyth had done his duty before in uncongenial company and as a Knight of the Order he realized that the corsair had done the Order a great service and was suffering for it. But by now he knew that he not only disliked Lymond, he was afraid of him: afraid of what his loose tongue might do to the Order and, more important he sometimes thought even than that, might do to Gabriel. So he allowed Francis Crawford to board this Turkish galleass on his own.
Granted that, together, Lymond and Thompson knew the workings of a Mediterranean cruising ship inside out, it was still quite a feat to release a man chained by the ankle with fifty others in the hold of a strange ship at night. The knifing of the right man for his clothes, the axe for the shackles, the small, whistled signals that located Thompson: that was Lymond’s share. But how, at the right time, was Thompson inspired to go berserk, biting and kicking fellow-captives and guards, shouting and profaning in hideous Arabic until removed kicking under special guard to a prison-storeroom on his own?
There, soon, he had Lymond’s knife, slid through a grating, and his next visitor was his last. His fetters split, his clothes covered by the guard’s turban and robe, he joined Lymond in the dark passageways and together, unseen, they slipped silently into the dark water where Jerott waited.
Topped by a streaming bundle of white, Thompson’s bearded face surfaced beside him, split by a glittering