Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [93]
‘And how,’ he inquired sarcastically, ‘were you proposing to break into a fortress of the Knights of St John without being shot?’
‘Christ, you’ve a tongue in your heid,’ said the man Thompson in equally muted register round the blade of his knife. ‘And what’ve you come for? Tae hud wir jeckets, maybe?’
‘You are addressing,’ said Lymond, ‘a Knight of the Order who is about to arrange dry board and bed for you. Be quiet. He’s only here out of pique as it is.’
‘I thought it wasna for my bonny blue een,’ said the pirate philosophically. ‘Damn me if I do any more dirty jobs for that lot. Ye get nae thanks for it in this world, and I’ll be surprised if they havena blackened my character in the next. There’s a brigantine out there with a queer look tae it?’
Jerott saw Lymond’s head turn, and raised his own head a fraction to look. It was very dark in the bay, away from the rocking lanterns of Sinan’s fleet. Against the black water between the swimmers and the dim walls of Tripoli only patches of deeper black showed where, here and there, the empty ships of the Tripolitanians lay at anchor where neither the owners dared venture to claim them, nor the Turks to sail them off under the long, wide-angled guns of the castle. Dimly, as his eyes got used to the dark, Jerott saw that one of them was indeed a brigantine and that, impossibly, there was a movement of some kind on the seaward board of the ship. Presently it ceased, and from its flanks a smaller shape slipped away.
‘A skiff,’ said Lymond, ‘Making for the Châtelet, and high in the water. They’ve been loading, not unloading.’
‘Could they fire from her on the shore guns?’ Instinct and training had instantly driven all but this problem from Jerott’s mind.
‘They’d be blown out of the water before they’d done enough damage to matter.’
‘Well,’ said Thompson easily. ‘If they’re planning to up sail and escape through the whole Turkish fleet, they’re mad.’
‘Or men who know nothing of war and are frantic with fear,’ said Lymond. ‘Look at the Châtelet. No one is covering their return. Whatever they are doing, it must be without the Governor’s sanction. Is there a Seagate on this side?’
‘Yes,’ said Jerott. They had been in the water a long time. With all the warmth of summer in it, he was not cold, but he felt the strength seeping from his muscles in the cunning way of the sea. He said, ‘There’s a military serving brother called des Roches in charge. I know him. We’ll have to hope the guard holds his hand until I get close enough to explain.’
‘You will,’ said Lymond comfortably. ‘They’ve got the gate open, awaiting the skiff. I think you’ll find both the guard and M. des Roches are quite safely missing as well. All we have to do is walk in.’
And so it turned out. After a momentary confusion at the gate, where they entered unchallenged and then created hysteria by inquiring politely in Jerott’s impeccable Spanish for the Commander, des Roches hurried to them with a genuine welcome and bore them to his rooms for towels, clothing and food. When their story was told, Jerott asked about his garrison.
‘I have none,’ said des Roches. As a serving brother, a man with no claims to nobility, attached to the Order with no other profession than war, he was straightforward to deal with: a tough, well-trained Frenchman with high colour and a frizzled chestnut beard. ‘I have a litter of shepherds sent over from Malta by the Order, none of whom has ever seen an arquebus before, let alone a cannon.’
‘The Calabrians,’ said Jerott, and Thompson and Lymond, he saw with irritation, exchanged solemn nods.
‘The Calabrians. The captain does his best, but we’ve wasted most of our shot and I’ve stopped the