Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [97]
On the way back Jerott said, ‘It doesn’t take eight men to hatch and rear a handful of hens.’
‘They feel safer there,’ said Lymond. ‘It insulates their fear from the rest. And it gives them a meeting-place.’
‘For rebellion,’ said Jerott.
‘Of course. There are two ringleaders in there; the rest are just boys. There may be some other dare-devils left in the Châtelet too—I don’t know. As a matter of principle, I prefer to guess at any given time where my conspirators are.’
‘They seem to trust you,’ said Jerott carefully.
‘They don’t trust you, at any rate,’ said Lymond. ‘Defence work finished?’
Jerott said curtly, ‘I’m going to suggest to de Vallier that half the knights should come in and rest. The older ones are exhausted with lack of sleep. They won’t be much good against a fresh attack otherwise. The labour teams are already working and resting turn about.’
He was shouting, because of the gunfire. Inside the castle, the noise muffled by the thick walls, Jerott sneezed; shivered as the shadows enclosed his sodden body, and said, ‘Thank God they’re firing at the St James, anyway. We can hold on for a bit at least.’
‘We,’ said Lymond in the same deceptively mild voice, ‘can hold on indefinitely.… Why has the rumour been put about that this is an indefensible city?’
‘Dear Heaven,’ said Jerott piously. ‘You’ve just spent thirty-six hours propping up the St Brabe wall.… The mortar’s mouldered from the magnificent walls with sheer age, and our Most Christian Emperor Charles has done nothing whatever for years to restore it. We have.…’
‘You have stores for weeks, endless underground water, wells, fountains; thirty-six pieces of artillery in excellent working order, lance-grenades, pots-au-feu, a complete arsenal of gunpowder; and ditches, terraces and walls that may not be every pioneer’s dream, but except for the St Brabe, could stand against anything the Turks have so far. Added to that, you have some of the best cannoneers in the world. Why wasn’t the St Brabe mended and the defences put in order before we came?’ said Lymond abruptly.
A first-class professional all right. The question was not one Jerott intended to answer. Lymond answered himself.
‘Excuse one: because de Vallier expected big reinforcements from Malta and Sicily to fight the Turks off. Excuse two: because he thought d’Aramon would persuade the Turks to go away. Excuse three: because he couldn’t get his Spanish knights to do what he wanted anyway, because the Spanish knights want to surrender rather than be blown to bits and then tortured to death by the Turks. So far Allâh, aided by Fustern and Guenara, would appear to have a slight superiority over God, even when aided by Gabriel.’
‘Blaspheme if you must,’ said Blyth wearily. ‘You’ll get your wages all right. You’ll survive.’
‘I’m not going to die of laughing at any rate,’ said Lymond, and Blyth nearly lost his temper again. Until, surprisingly, he remembered Oonagh O’Dwyer.
Jerott Blyth himself was a thoroughly competent commander. The list he put before de Vallier of the work done and still to be done, the assessment of man power and stamina, the list of the weak to be rested and the strong to be conserved, was the result of long training, high skill, and a love of his work that lessened, he knew, the love he should pour upon his Maker.
He thought de Vallier distracted. No more than any of them had the old man slept these last days, and the strain had begun long before that. A man who had seen long service in his time, and whose honest, plodding piety had put him at last among the contenders for Grand Mastership, Gaspard de Vallier found his triple duty—devotion to God, to the advancing techniques of war and to the frightening web of intrigue his great Order had become—increasingly hard to encompass. Now, hardly looking at Jerott; the wet, loosened skin of his face folded deeply round cheekbone and chin, he gave automatic assent to all the dark knight proposed, and only moved