The Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett Read Free Book Online Page A

hammered down the steep cobbles of Jedburgh and erupted into the lower room of Will Scott’s cousin’s house, to avenge the exposure to fatality if not shame of Nell of Cessford on the hill above Crailing.
    They jumped off their horses as the town watch came running, broke the door and strode among the recumbent bodies, slashing and stabbing for some time before they noticed that these were merely bran sacks. Attempting then to run upstairs, they met sweet as a kiss with a torrent of Scotts, sword in hand, coming down. In the midst of them, yelling as loud as the rest, were Sir William Scott, Francis Crawford, Thomas Erskine and the Chevalier de Villegagnon.
    The rout was spectacular, all the way uphill past the Abbey and out on to the glades and moors and little hills that rolled between Jedburgh and Cessford. At the ford across Oxnam Water, with the trees thick with summer life on either high bank, the remaining Kerrs turned at bay, and in the ensuing water battle, with peach-coloured mud up to the hocks, the horses splashed and drenched the mounted and the fallen, birds called and roe-deer fled, and swords rose and fell merrily until Dandy Kerr and his men, disengaging finally, shot off to Cessford Castle with the larger part of his company intact, which was more than could be said of his stock.
    Lymond, grabbing Will Scott’s arm in a hurry, prevented pursuit. ‘Dammit, remember. We’re supposed to be the injured party. I told you Peter Cranston would warn us to avoid an offence to the Almighty in spilling blood on a prostitute’s grave.’
    ‘The small gentleman with the wounded shoulder?’ asked M. de Villegagnon sympathetically.
    Tom Erskine answered, breathless with laughter. ‘Francis asked him to stand watch this evening on the Cessford road, and he’s very anxious to save Francis from sin.’
    ‘A risk which does not unduly trouble M. Crawford himself,’ said the Chevalier pointedly. ‘He regards boredom, I observe, as the One and Mighty Enemy of his soul. And will succeed in conquering it, I am sure—if he survives the experience.’

III

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    ( Flaw Valleys, May 1551 )
    A LMOST two years had passed, and peace had been declared between England and Scotland, before the Chevalier de Villegagnon met a Crawford again.
    For part of this period, Francis Crawford of Lymond had been living in France, repelling boredom with considerable success among those serving the child Queen Mary of Scotland at the French Court. He was there while the Queen Dowager of Scotland came to visit her daughter; and he was still there when his brother Richard, Lord Culter, came to serve the child Queen in his turn, and thankfully, in due course, left the French Court once more for home.
    Boats for Scotland, in these days of brisk piracy, of offended Flemings and outraged English and well-armed Spaniards, were not frequent or cheap. At Dieppe, Lord Culter, a quiet but effective traveller, made a number of calls, and then sat back and played backgammon until word reached him, one day at his inn, that a French galley was leaving for Scotland that night.
    In half an hour, Richard had established that, as a royal ship of the King of France’s fleet, the galley would take no paid passengers; that the master was not averse to money; that the decision to accommodate one of the Scottish Queen Dowager’s Councillors rested with a certain royal official now lodging with the Governor at Dieppe Castle; and that this officer’s name was Nicholas Durand, Chevalier de Villegagnon. In an hour, neatly turned out in brown cloth and gold satin, Lord Culter presented himself at the castle of Dieppe.
    The reunion was a civilized one. M. de Villegagnon, whose vows of poverty were elastic, wore a triangular jacket frilled at neck and cuff, to which were appended vast sleeves layered like cabbages. Richard, entering the private parlour set aside for the Chevalier by his host, became aware of a level of grandeur which had been present, but not