The Game of Kings (22 page)

For the arrow which struck Richard came from a great distance and had to fly over many heads to an almost invisible mark. Unlike the first two, it was not faultless. It had dropped, losing power, and had torn its way across cheek and ear to bury itself beside the collarbone. And so, again charmed, again flouted by tragedy, Lord Culter was able, studying the exhibits on the table, to hold a post-mortem on a parrot.

“An English bow: that’ll be part of the booty from Annan, I expect. And three arrows from the same source, fully barbed … very naughty, in a perch contest. And a glove.”

He picked it up and sniffed at it. It was a right-hand glove in white buckskin, its newness betrayed by the absence of rubbing on the first three fingers.

“Discreetly perfumed,” observed Lord Culter, turning it over. “Beautifully stitched, and some jewellers’ work on the back, to boot. A nice toy, if you can afford it—and since friend Lymond presumably paid for it with my money, he can. God!” he said. “I’d give my chance of heaven, nearly, to match against him, perch or clout.”

Tom Erskine observed critically, “Wind behind him, of course; and he had a bit of elevation too, hadn’t he, Dandy?”

Sir Andrew nodded. “He shot from behind one of the dressing tents, just where the ground rose to the wood. I was just too late getting there. Found the stuff where he dropped it.…” He groaned. “We all underrated him. I worked out that he couldn’t possibly shoot from among the crowd. It didn’t cross my mind that a first-class marksman might just do it from the ground behind.”

“Well, you gave us a shaking-up all right, Culter,” said Buccleuch. “Thought you were away with the papingo, my lad!”

The Dowager, who had been, for her, unusually silent, remarked at once, “Well, it wasn’t very reassuring, I admit, coming back fo find Richard laid out all bloody in one bed and Mariotta fainting in the next, but then Wapenshaws are notorious, aren’t they? Did anyone remember to ask who got the prize?”

Tom said, “Well I suppose, strictly speaking, they ought to give it to Lymond, but I should put it past even his impudence to claim it.”

“I don’t know.” Mariotta’s voice was detached. “He seems able to do almost anything he wants.”

Agnes, her eyes fixed on Culter, heaved a sigh. “I thought I was going to
die.”

“Well, you behaved very sensibly, darling,” said the Dowager. “And now we shall enjoy the gypsies all the more.”

“Gypsies!”

“Yes, of course. From the fair: had you forgotten? And here they are,” said Sybilla.

It was a triumphant example, in the outcome, of her own brand of humane genius. Under the spell of the entertainment, even Mariotta’s taut nerves slackened, and colour came back into her face. Christian Stewart, listening gravely to Erskine’s commentary, sat with her hand on Agnes’s shoulder, thus regulating (but not eliminating) her interruptions, aided by a tactful Sir Andrew. Culter himself lay quietly, his eyes heavy, under the watchful gaze of the Dowager, who was having a long and intermittent discussion at the same time with the leading gypsy.

Toward the end of the performance, and during a phase which involved something noisy with a tambourine and much stamping, she caught Buccleuch’s rather distracted eye, and slipped out of the room, followed by Sir Wat.

Sybilla shut the door on the noise.

“Dod!” Sir Wat, breathing the cold air on the deserted landing, wiped his forehead. “Clever rascals, Sybilla, but not just my meat, y’know.”

“I thought you stood it very well,” commented the Dowager. “And really it’s a great comfort to have you, for I mustn’t bother Richard, and Sir Andrew and Tom are dear boys but a little occupied; and they have their own troubles anyway.”

Sir Wat looked apprehensive, not without reason.

“About the bloodhounds,” said Sybilla.

“Bloodhound yourself,” said Buccleuch, jerked, in his alarm, out of even the nominal form of courtesy he usually practised. “How did you know—”

“Oh, I know Richard,” said Sybilla. “I always could interpret these silences, you know, more easily than half an hour of his brother’s chatter. He was performing very prettily in there, and I’m sure all the girls felt better for it, but I didn’t. What did he ask you to do?”

Buccleuch shrugged, and gave up. “Track down Lymond, of
course. There’s the glove, and—you’re right—I still have the dogs at Branxholm.” He looked down at her, an unaccustomed diffidence struggling among the appalling burst-whinbush whiskers.

“He’s been made a fool of—twice, you know,” he said. “Feels like a sulky fat goose in a barrel, being shot at by gutter boys. Can’t stomach it—won’t stand for it. Wouldn’t try to stop him, either.”

“I shall,” said Sybilla.

“Why? Discredits you all—sorry, m’dear—as it is. The boy’s no good to himself or anyone else till it’s settled.”

“Yes,” said the Dowager. “But I shall settle it, not Richard. Anyway, aren’t you supposed to be ill? You
are
a fool, Wat,” she added, with a kind of affectionate resignation. “You know perfectly well word’ll reach England inside forty-eight hours that you’re playing games at Stirling when you’re supposed to be too ill to go and speak nicely to old Grey at Norham.”

Sir Wat accepted the stricture with surprising meekness. “Well, as to that—” He scowled at the landing arras. “That’s what makes it unco knotty, if you want the truth, to do what Richard asked.”

“Which was?”

“Well, to let go everything else and hoe up the country till we find Lymond. We could do it—but—”

“—But in Richard’s present mood, in bringing Lymond to face his deserts, he’s also liable to bring Will Scott to face his,” said the Dowager concisely.

Buccleuch wriggled. His face got red, then the spaces under his hair; finally he burst into speech which lost no violence through being compressed into undertones.

“Dod, Sybilla: if you want to know, I’m in the hell of a jawboxy mess. Seymour’s Lord High Suleyman the Magnificent Grey at Norham’s been sending me polite notes ever since Will snipped his nose for him at Hume, asking when I’m coming to parley and assure them of help. It’s damned awkward. They know it was Will—how, I can’t understand, for at my last taste of him he was too blasted whaup-nosed to claim his own mother. But there it is, and if I refuse to help, they’ll burn me to the ground on the next raid. I’ve put it around that I’m ill, but short of following it up that I’m dead, I don’t know what to do next.”

The broad, capable Scott hands, with their spatulate fingers and white scar seams, gripped the balustrade and blanched, as he leaned his uneasy weight on them. “I’ll have to disown Will publicly, and
hope they’ll believe I had nothing to do with Hume. I doubt they won’t, though; it looks too damned neat, right to the cartload of cutty sarks on my land at Melrose.”

He stared disconsolately at Lady Culter. “And here’s the joke. I’m not a praying man, Sybilla, but I’ve had these baw-heids at the chapel on their knees ever since he went, hoping that Will’d see he’d been a damned stupid fool, and come back. Now, if he does, I’m made to look an accomplice to the fiasco at Hume, and Grey’ll see I suffer accordingly. Whereas if he doesn’t, and I’m forced to disown him to Grey—and if word of it gets to the Queen—and if he’s captured with Lymond—”

“He’ll get the same treatment as Lymond. But not if I catch him,” said Sybilla.

Buccleuch eyed her. “Then, by God, I wouldn’t care to be in Lymond’s shoes.”

“How my sons turn out is rather my affair,” said the Dowager coolly. “And involves rather less risk, on the whole, to Richard. If you’ll co-operate.”

“By not co-operating?” Sir Wat gave a relieved bark. “It’ll give Culter a poor opinion of me, but I don’t mind. No. My dogs’ll be sick; and I’ll be sicker than the lot put together. Listen—someone’s coming.” He broke off hurriedly as light and warmth streamed in on them.

“And so,” said Sybilla placidly, “I had a long talk with him—Johnnie Bullo, his name is; a real gypsy king—and he tells me he knows how to make it.”

“Make what, Lady Culter?” It was Christian who had opened the parlour door on sounds of imminent departure from within. “The gypsies are just going.”

“Make the Philosopher’s Stone, dear,” said the Dowager, driving haphazard but triumphant into her subject. “You know, the thing that turns tin into gold, and makes frisky old gentlemen senex bis puer, and mends broken legs and all sorts of practical things.”

“It’s what we need at Branxholm,” said Sir Wat gloomily. “Janet broke another vase last week.”

For some reason this tickled both Sybilla and Christian. The Dowager was the first to recover.

“Just you wait,” she said. “I have it all from Bullo, and it all sounds remarkably well authenticated, considering. Anyway, he’s coming again to Midculter to explain it to me.”

“Good God!” said Buccleuch, to whom the Dowager was the source and fount of all astonishments. “You don’t mean you believe all that rubbish! I’ve enough of it at home with Janet; and the Lee penny never out the house.”

“All what rubbish?” said Sybilla. “You see, you don’t know yourself what you’re talking about, and neither shall I,” she added as an afterthought, “until Master Bullo has been and explained it again.”

“Well, I don’t know what you want the Philosopher’s Stone for,” said Christian. “It seems to me that as a family you’re quite indecently rich already.”

“Oh, you never know,” said the Dowager mysteriously. “Healing charms—elixirs of life—love potions—”

“What I came to ask,” said Christian, her face rather red, “was whether we might all go to the Fair—Agnes, Mariotta and myself, I mean. The trouble is—”

“The trouble is, Master Bullo won’t read our fortunes here: he hasn’t got his crystal, he says, and he won’t go and bring it back.” Agnes, squeezing through the door, provided the explanations, fortissimo. “But he says we can call at his tent, and Tom’ll go with us—”

The Dowager spoke quietly. “What about Richard?”

“It’s all right.” Christian was quick in defence of the absent Mariotta. “As a matter of fact, he’s asleep, and …” And it won’t do him any harm to be spared a performance of wifely reproach, her hesitation added.

The Dowager made no objection. So the gypsies left, and a little later, wrapped in heavy cloaks and hoods, the three girls walked out with Tom Erskine, and an unobtrusive following of Erskine’s men. Sir Andrew and Buccleuch left. In the snug parlour the big fire hissed and murmured in the silence, glimmering on mother and son. Sitting beside Richard’s quiet couch, Sybilla put on her spectacles and threaded a needle. Then she put it down and sat quite still for a long time, staring owlishly into space.

And it was into space that at last she spoke. “Oh, my darling!” said Sybilla. “I do hope I’ve done the best thing.”

*  *  *

“Are you all right?” asked Tom Erskine. And again, later on, “What’s wrong? Are you feeling all right?”

“Of course. It’s the cold,” said Christian rather snappishly, and
relaxing her grip on his arm, tried furiously to still the uncalled-for and humiliating frisson set up by her nerves.

It was not the cold, as she well knew. It was the crowded strain of the day; the blaring darkness; the devils’ orchestra of uncouth music; the coarse chatter, the catcalls and the mindless, ganting laughter. The Fair had become by night a bloated Saturnalia, sodden, sottish and leering of voice. She was buffeted by blundering bodies and twitched by grasping hands. Smells assailed her: beer smells, food smells and leather smells; the stink of human bodies and once, as two struggling shapes crashed into her, the reek of blood, forcing on the mind the warm fire and the reeking arrows of an hour before—Culter’s voice: “If that’s what a life of depravity does for your archery”; Mariotta’s: “He seems able to do almost anything he wants”; the Dowager, bandaging with cool hands, refusing to panic.…

“Buy a rare pippin!” said a voice in her ear. “A fine rosy pippin for a fine rosy lass—”

“A chain of gold for that bonny dress, now! Five crowns and a kiss for yourself, my bonny may!”

“Hatpins, sweeting: a thousand and a half for sixteen pence—”

“A puppet for your sister!”

“Mackerel!”

“Hot pies!”—And grease brushing her cheek as the pastry was thrust upward. The shaking became uncontrollable.

“Tell your fortune, lassies!” in the sly, garlic-laden voice.

It was some kind of a booth. First Agnes went in; then Mariotta; and they were both quite remarkably reticent when they came out. Tom, waiting with Christian, was bored. “It sounds poor stuff to me. Let’s go home.”

Agnes objected. “Christian hasn’t been yet.”

“Fortune, lady?” said Bullo’s voice again, at Christian’s elbow. “One other lady?”

“I’ll come with you—”

“Oh, no you won’t.” Christian eluded Tom deftly. “If I’m going to have the secrets of my boudoir revealed, you’re staying outside. Master Bullo will take me.”

Silently, the gypsy caught her sleeve, and they moved forward. Something brushed her hood, and from the deadening of noise, she guessed the tent flap had closed behind her. Underfoot, the street cobbles were spread with fabric; the darkness was stuffy and cold, smelling vaguely of cheap incense. She walked a few paces, and then
was aware of a new aperture. The grip on her elbow disappeared; Bullo’s soft steps could be heard receding; then these in turn were cut off. This time, there was absolute silence.

Her face forced into lines of composure, her betraying hands tight-held behind her back, Christian stood quite still and waited in the cold and the dark.

Mothlike in its lightness and rapid insistency, the so-familiar voice spoke. “This, of course, is the chamber of devils, who sit in hexagon babbling like herring gulls about the ruin of charity and the disorderly rupture of souls.… The aforesaid malignants have provided a chair, a little to your left: that’s it. Before you lie four feet of carpet; then a box upon which I am rudely—but I hope reassuringly—seated. Nothing else is worth noting except a bundle of effects belonging to Johnnie Bullo—you’ll have discovered his name. He was, of course, my friend of the cave. A long time ago. Is that better?” he asked. “I wonder what frightened you?”

Astonishing that a voice should carry such power to soothe and disarm. She said, seated, clasping her hands, “It’s been a bad sort of day—I’m sorry—and the Fair on top was a little too much.”