The Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett Read Free Book Online

Heat and light, silently refreshed, enveloped them both. Lymond, sinking back in his place, was smiling. He said, ‘If you look, you may find Crusading consciences here, but not among the families that count. The Douglases and the Kerrs and the rest favour England because their land is near the Border and open to English attack, or else because under English rule they might have a chance of second-hand power.’
    ‘And the Crawfords?’ asked the Frenchman.
    There was a second’s pause. ‘My brother, like Tom Erskine there, and the Scotts, happens to believe that until she has a strong Crown of her own, this nation will recover as well under French supervision as any other. We are too weak in manpower to be independent, even if our ruling families could combine and agree. And we are too poor to employ mercenary soldiers. France, after all, who can pay, puts the finest engineers and fortification experts, the best soldiers andseamen’—Lymond bowed gravely to the seated Chevalier—‘at our disposal for nothing, along with the money to pay them.’
    ‘And you?’ asked de Villegagnon at last. ‘If the Turk offered to protect Scotland on the same or better terms, would you accept them?’
    The other man looked up, amused. ‘We have accepted them, have we not?’ And as de Villegagnon, caught unawares, was momentarily silent, for the secret alliance between France and the Commander of the Faithful was not yet common knowledge, Lymond went on murmuring. ‘Tell me: as Knights of St John who are also honoured servants of the kingdom of France—do you and Leone Strozzi, for example, fail to find this alliance between France and Turkey troublesome? Or do you have all the comforts you need at Fontainebleau?’
    The ensuing silence was abrupt. Then the Chevalier de Villegagnon, always in an undertone, gave a laugh. ‘A hit. My answer is that the Franco-Turkish alliance is a paper one, to preserve France from the threat of the Emperor Charles V. The Knights of Malta are international. Whatever their allegiance by birth, their first duty is to Malta and the Bishop of Rome. We have all taken the same vows, soldiers and priests, of chastity, poverty and obedience, and have dedicated ourselves to the victory of the Christian world over the infidel.’
    ‘To fight with a pure mind for the supreme and true King,’ quoted Lymond. It was impossible to tell what he thought.
    ‘If I made you leader today of fifteen hundred mercenaries, for whom or for what would you fight?’ asked the Chevalier de Villegagnon suddenly. He was ready to wait for his answer. He only became slowly aware that the man in the chair was shaking with silent laughter.
    ‘Not another! By the Blessed Gerard, father of the poor and the pilgrims, not another!’ said Francis Crawford on a shattered breath. ‘Is Europe desperate for second-hand captains, direct from the fripperers, that every courier seems bent on seducing me with a new-matched set of ethics? … If I had fifteen hundred soldiers, and tried to use them either for or against the Queen Mother, there would be civil war in Scotland in a week, and no Scots left to talk of it in another.’
    ‘Then you must needs use them elsewhere,’ said the Chevalier blandly. ‘You are not a fledgeling. Where does your manhood suggest?’
    ‘My manhood suggests,’ said Lymond thoughtfully, ‘that I should like to meet Sir Graham Reid Malett’s sister Joleta, but not necessarily with fifteen hundred mercenary soldiers at my back.’
    For a long moment, the knight stared at the Scotsman. In the end, slowly he rose, pulled off his creased shirt and stood dangling it,rosy-lit with the fire. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, my good sir. What you require in this life is a meeting with Gabriel and his sister.’ And strolling off, he rolled himself in a cloak, settled into a corner, and in five minutes was asleep.
*
    The house was quite still and the fire had gone out when Dandy Kerr of the Hirsell and twenty men