The Game of Kings (76 page)

Tom was so busy watching Palmer that he missed Scott’s move to open his purse. When they brought a small table and put it between the two men, Erskine was surprised. He was more surprised to see Palmer gaze on it as a mother elephant on the prize of some interminable gestation.

On the table lay a small pack of playing cards. “Hold me hand,” said Tommy Palmer. “If you’d offered me the throne of China and Helen of Troy thrown in, I’d still choose the tarots. You’ll not miss them?”

“Not at all. Glad to leave them,” said Scott politely. And to Erskine’s astonishment he added, “I’ll start you off with a game, if you like,” and sat down to hearty expressions of Palmer’s glee. Erskine tapped the boy on the arm. “The time, Scott. We ought to be going.”

The carroty head turned vaguely. “There’s time for one game, surely. You go on if you want to. I’ll follow.” He was already shuffling the cards. Tom eyed him sharply; and then, twitching up a chair, sat astride it, watching the play.

He had seen these tarots several times in Scott’s possession since he had come to Edinburgh. They were gruesome, Gothic, and graced with a kind of lithless malevolence all their own. The four suits were commonplace enough: the artist had reserved his fantastic brushes for the figured cards. The Bateleur, the Empress, the Pope, l’Amoureux and le Pendu, Death and Fortitude, the Traitor, the Last Judgment itself, all shared a grotesque camaraderie of the paintpot.

He admired the set. He enjoyed tarocco himself, but he was uneasily aware that there was not, in fact, time for a game. He said again, “Listen, Scott;” but the cards were already dealt and Will was hesitating over his discard. Erskine gave up, and resigned himself to waiting.

Scott played not one, but two games. He lost them both, but so narrowly that it was not until the last trick of the outplay that Palmer’s evident brain and experience gave him the day. Both games were played in an atmosphere of jocular excitement, and Erskine gathered that to have opposed Palmer at all was something unusual; and to have run him so close something unique.

At the end of the second game, Palmer leaned back with a kind of anguished roar. “Damn it, I don’t know when I’ve had two better games. Why the pest must you go? I can’t settle: you can’t settle: it isn’t fair to the game.”

Scott got up and stretched himself, grinning. “You’ve got troubles enough. You don’t want to risk being beaten by me.”

“Beaten!” It was a chorus. Someone said, “Hey, my boy. You’re speaking of the best card player in England.”

“I still say beaten,” said Scott.

There was an unholy light in Thomas Palmer’s eye. “Is that a challenge?”

“Not particularly,” said Scott. “Sine lucro friget ludus is a family motto. Not much point in playing for love.”

“Hell, we can do better than that,” said Palmer. Their packs were stuffed into an armory let into the panelling: he tossed out parcels until he came to the one he wanted. Then he had another look and, bringing out a second roll, flung them both at Scott’s feet.

“A change of good clothes there, and some money and a silver cup and a good pair of boots. And there’s more still in the other: it’s another man’s stuff that belongs to me now. Will that do for a start?”

Scott drew out his own heavy purse and tossed it once in the air. “I’m sure it will; but we’re a gey practical nation. Will you open them both so that we can see?”

Palmer, unoffended, glinted the butter-tooth in his direction, and slit open the packs with Will’s knife. In his own the contents were exactly as he had said. The other roll was less well-kept: the clothes were soiled and there was no money at all. Scott bent and turned over a long, narrow rectangle of folded papers, sealed with red wax. “What’s this? Deeds of ownership?”

Palmer, shuffling the tarots, glanced at it and shrugged. “Sam didn’t own a rabbit, poor devil. Perhaps a letter to his lady friend.”

Scott turned it over. There was an inscription on the other side, and he held it so that Erskine also could read. The neat writing said,
Haddington, June, 1548. Statement
. And underneath in a different
writing, presumably Wilford’s:
Samuel Harvey. Put with things for P
.

That was as far as they got before it was whipped from Scott’s fingers.

“Interested?” asked Palmer in the same good-tempered voice. “I thought there was something fishy in the air. Perhaps I’d better keep this.”

For a moment, Erskine thought that Scott would attack the big man. Instead he turned and, opening his purse, upended it on the table by the cards. The crowns rolled and clanked among the little nightmarish drawings and rose in a winking, lunar pile. “I could easily get it by calling the guard,” said Will. “But I’ll buy it from you instead.”

Palmer grinned. “I don’t want to sell.”

The freckles marched cinnamonlike over Scott’s pale face. “Name your price.”

Sir Thomas Palmer got up, the folded papers still in his hands. At the fireplace he turned, and still surveying them both quite pleasantly, broke the seal. “Perhaps I should see first what all the fuss is about. After all, he was my cousin, you know.”

They waited as the pages flicked over. He went through them all, folded the papers and handed them with an inaudible remark to the Englishman, Frank, who was nearest. Then he returned to the table. “You want these papers?”

“Yes,” said Scott shortly. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

“Jesus. Whose life? A Scotsman’s?”

“… Yes.”

Palmer grinned more widely. “That’s all right: I’m not the vindictive sort. Sine lucro friget ludus, eh? You want this, you say. Then play me for it.”

“I’m offering you any price you ask,” said Scott.

“I don’t want money.”

“Then I’ll give you what you do want. Your freedom. Your immediate release, Sir Thomas, in exchange for these papers.”

Palmer sat down with a thump, still grinning. “I like Edinburgh. I like the Castle. I like the company. I can get my freedom any time, for a little cash, and a damned bore it is, with Willie Grey in both ears and the Protector under my hat. Give me the man who can stretch me at tarocco and you can keep Berwick and every bumbling Northerner in it.”

Scott sat down himself rather suddenly. “For God’s sake, I’ll play
cards with you all night, if that’s all you want. I’ll play every day for a month without the sniff of a win. But not to gamble on this kind of stake. What do you take me for?”

The big man was shuffling the cards. “A member of a practical nation. I don’t want bad play and a sure win: I get enough of it. I don’t want a game that’s a duty or an imposition or a debt or any other damned, dreary penance. I don’t like it and the tarots don’t like it. Look at them!” With a flip of his thick fingers he sent the cards reeling across the polished wood, convulsed, mouthing and snarling. “Nobody’s going to fob them off with paltry wagers of three louis a game. They want flesh, do the tarots.”

Scott and Erskine were standing shoulder to shoulder. “Get the guard,” said the boy without turning his head. “Quickly. Christian Stewart was killed for these papers.”

Erskine didn’t go for the guard: he took action. The dive he made for the fireplace was nearly quick enough, but not quite. By the time his outstretched hand had reached the man Frank, the papers were already curling in the smoke a foot above the little fire.

“Call the guard—or try that again—and Frank’ll throw the whole thing in the fire,” said Palmer agreeably. He settled comfortably in his chair. “God! I was bored. Come along, laddie. I’ve plenty of time. I’ll play you tarocco, my boy, for all the money and every stitch each of us possesses in this room, and these papers go into the rest on my side last of all.”

There was a short silence. Then Scott said, “Let me see the papers.”

“No.”

The boy bit his lip, staring at Palmer’s cheerful face. “It might take all night.”

The tooth winked and wagged. “It might take a good deal longer. Are you in a hurry?”—and continued to wink as Scott argued. At the end of it he picked up the cards and started to ruffle them through his big hands. “It’s no concern of mine what you want them for. I’ve told you the conditions.” He looked up. “Why’re you worrying? You might win the lot in an hour.”

Scott sat down. In silence he untied and pulled off his jerkin and in silence he pushed up his shirt sleeves and laid his hands flat on the table. “Very well,” he said flatly. “For God’s sake let’s start.”

*  *  *

The hour of recess had, inevitably, nearly doubled before the Committee was harried together again; and even so, the interrogation had been under way for some time when Tom Erskine finally slid into his seat, passing on the way a face he knew: Mylne, the Queen’s surgeon. But Lymond seemed perfectly composed in his chair: the abuses to his body were perhaps visible, but not those to his intellect, which showed fresh and sinewy still under the sharp and thickening barbs from Lauder. The Lord Advocate was beginning to concentrate his attack: the darts glanced in the silence and were returned, with unfailing felicity.

Erskine said in Lord Culter’s ear, “What’s happening?” and Richard replied without taking his eyes from the high table. “He’s got Orkney on the raw, the fool. The nearer the Committee gets to Eloise, the harder he’s hitting them. They don’t like it, and it isn’t doing him any good.… Where’ve you been?”

Erskine said uninformatively, “At the Castle,” and glanced at the top table. Buccleuch’s face was turned toward him and the black circle of the mouth shaped the words “Where’s Will?”

Having no desire to answer that either, Tom stabbed a finger several times in the air due west, and as Sir Wat continued to look expressively at him, mouthed the word “Later” and turned overtly to the centre of the floor.

“You arrived in London,” the Queen’s Counsel was saying, “along with a thousand others taken prisoner in 1542 after the battle of Solway Moss. At that time, as we all know, the late Henry VIII of England had declared war on our King his nephew and was attempting to prove his title to Scotland by force. Unlike others of your own rank you were immediately given preferential treatment in being lodged in a private English house.”

“After three days in the Tower. Not very preferential.”

Lauder looked at his notes. “We have that point quite clear. All but yourself were noblemen of the first rank, and all those with whom you say you had contact are now unfortunately bearing witness in higher courts than these. The Earl of Glencairn died last year; Lord Maxwell two years ago; Lord Fleming and Mr. Robert Erskine at Pinkiecleugh.”

“The nation’s subsequent failures in the field,” said Lymond gently, “are my misfortune, not my fault. Sir George has already told you that I stayed at his brother’s London house under no special concession.”

The Bishop of Orkney cleared his throat. “And why, Mr. Crawford, did you not then return to Scotland ten days later as did the great majority of such boarded prisoners? Were your scruples such that even tongue in cheek you could not bring yourself to sign the necessary oath of allegiance to King Henry, as your compatriots did? Men of honour, it seems to me, must be prepared like them to sell that honour for their country’s good. Why did you not sign?”

“I wasn’t asked,” said Lymond, and a fleeting regret slipped through the pleasant voice. “Only prelates and barons were thought to have sufficient tongue and sufficient cheek.”

Richard swore. It was Lord Herries who saved the situation with a brusque and bass inquiry. “Since he’s a younger son, there would be little point, surely, in asking Mr. Crawford to sign a bond to serve the King in Scotland?”

The Bishop said, breathing heavily, “I disagree. He was, in sort, his brother’s heir. If he were innocent he would have contrived, surely, to return on some pretext.”

“The thing reeks of ineptitude, doesn’t it?” said Lymond. “If I were a spy, it was shockingly careless of the English to capture me in the first place. And if I were a spy, my first thought would have been to return to Scotland as fast as I could. According to the Bishop, my treason lay in not promising to work secretly in Scotland against the Queen. If that’s treason then let’s make an end. I admit it.”

Lauder was undisturbed. “You made King Henry no promise to serve him?”

“No.”

“You had in the past performed no service for him?”

“I had not.”

The Lord Advocate looked mildly regretful. “And the presentation to Francis Crawford, Scottish gentleman, of the manor of Gardington, Bucks, was an elaborate ruse to make us believe you had done these things? King Henry must have thought you very important to us, Mr. Crawford. You did, I suppose, receive the deeds of this lordship and manor?”

“Yes. I did.”

“And can you suggest why, if it was not in gratitude for favours received?”

“Europe’s most Christian Bachelor and I had nothing in common,” said Lymond. “He had a fancy to control my tongue. And also to restrain his niece.”

“Ah, yes. The Lady Margaret Douglas, now the Countess of Lennox. Are we to take it that, seduced by your charms, the lady asked for Gardington as her dot?” George Douglas, he saw, was watching the prisoner like a predator.

“Not precisely. She is, shall we say, a person of violent but practical enthusiasms. She has already been imprisoned twice for endangering the succession, and one of her lovers, as you may recall, died in the Tower from a surfeit of Scottish heart and English briar. No. At a guess, she wanted … a new stimulus and a new experiment. And encouraged her uncle to leash me permanently by telling him what I had found out; and even perhaps some things I hadn’t.”

Methven’s silly voice cut through the tactful silence. “And what had you found out?”

The Master’s gaze neither looked at nor avoided Sir George. “Something of his immediate plans, which later became common knowledge. I had access to rooms which should normally have been closed to me, and found them out by chance.”

“Bedrooms?” inquired the Queen’s Counsel.

The veiled eyes lifted. “Not every legal document is framed in a bedroom, my lord.” The Justice-Clerk laughed aloud.

“Well,” said Henry Lauder. “You have an estate and a beautiful lady in prospect, and her wicked uncle allows you to enjoy neither. The gift of the estate has already made your fellow Scots suspicious; your return to Scotland is finally made impossible by spreading the news among your countrymen that you were responsible not only for the disaster of Solway Moss, but for a long career of previous spying and intrigue.… Why trouble with all this fearsome plotting, Mr. Crawford? If King Henry didn’t like you, weren’t there simpler and more obvious means of getting rid of you?”