The Game of Kings (52 page)

“If you mean,” said Mariotta, red-faced, “that I should copy Janet, I hardly think—”

“I don’t mean anything of the sort. I’m only doing a little dissecting work on adjacent marriages; you can draw your own conclusions. Look at the Maxwells, for instance.”

“Agnes?”

“If you like. While thinking she was choosing, she was being chosen. While electing this man as hero of one of her appalling romances, she was marrying a hardheaded intelligent person who will be clever enough—and kind enough—to preserve the fantasy, or at least let her down pretty lightly.”

“And Richard?”

The Dowager put a wandering hand to her white hair. “Richard. I can’t tell you the path to take there. You’ll have to find it for yourself. But I can tell you two things about him. One is that the most serious thing in his life is his country. The other is this. The only thing that could kill Richard is a lack of stability.”

Mariotta’s face darkened. “You mean inconstancy.”

“I mean,” said Sybilla gently, “the folly of allowing oneself to be attracted always by superficial glitter. I mean a craving for change and excitement—even the nasty excitement of waiting to be found out about those jewels.”

Mariotta was silent. Then, unexpectedly, a tear appeared and made its way down one cheek. “But,” said Mariotta miserably, “how can I change now?”

Sybilla rose and with an odd compound of a sigh and a smile, sat down in her own carved chair. “Time will do it for you, my infant, and much too quickly. Your tragedy was that the man you became involved with was the very person who created the flaw in Richard’s maturing. And if that was anyone’s fault, it was probably mine.… How prosy we are; drunk with the dear indulgences of synthesis and self-pity and criticizing other people’s love affairs. Do you feel better or worse?”

“Better,” said Mariotta; and crossing to sit on the arm of the Dowager’s chair, bent to kiss one flawless cheek.

Tom Erskine was with them when, much later, Christian arrived from Threave. She was aching and dirty, with more than weariness in her eyes. Sybilla, watching the blind face, seated her quickly, and the girl wasted no time. Turning the fine eyes on the Dowager, she said simply, “They have Francis.”

The reaction was curious. “Who?” demanded Erskine. And “
Who?”
said Sybilla in a tone so different that the blind girl gave a quick, rueful smile. Sybilla possessed herself of one of Christian’s hands.
“So,” she said. “We are coming into the open. Tell us.” And she did so.

At the end, the Dowager spoke. “Richard knows nothing of this? Good. Tom—you’re not to tell him, either. The longer we can keep them apart … I wonder …”

“Stop wondering,” said the girl. “It’s my turn now.”

“Go on,” said Sybilla gently.

“I made a mess of things at Threave,” said Christian bluntly. “There was some pretty dangerous horseplay going on, and by the time it was stopped they knew I wasn’t quite—disinterested. After that I was guarded; Sym as well. But the point is this. He had great hopes, apparently, of an encounter with a man called Samuel Harvey: he was on his way to meet him at Wark when he was taken—I got that much out of Buccleuch’s idiot son. Well, he’s missed that meeting now. But maybe another could be arranged—for us. At any rate, George Douglas is mixed up in the business somehow, and I’m going to see him. If persuasion or threats can do anything, I’m going to make him help.”

“Help? Help who?” demanded Tom Erskine, bemused.

There was a moment’s silence. “My younger son,” said Sybilla quietly. “We are a tenacious family, and you have a very kindhearted fiancée. Helping Lymond has been rather a concern of ours—am I right, Christian?—for some months now.”

Christian opened her hands in mock despair. “How did you guess?”

“Nobody ever,” said the Dowager sorrowfully, “credits me with normal thought processes. When a mysterious man creates a royal scandal on the banks of the Lake of Menteith with the keenest ears in Scotland strolling utterly oblivious—by her own account—in the locality, I begin to wonder. I also wonder when a delicately reared child sends a court into fits with a riddle which I invented myself. And when Andrew Hunter and Richard both mention a name I have heard you repeat, and the name is connected with Lymond …”

“And then you probably noticed the gypsy.”

“I noticed, certainly, that the gypsies who put in such a timely appearance before I lost all my silver were the same ones you were so anxious to speak to in Stirling—yes.”

“Was that why you kept Johnnie Bullo beside you?”

“To begin with. I’m disappointed in Johnnie,” said the Dowager with some severity. She opened a workbag, took out her embroidery,
and put the horn-rimmed spectacles on her nose. “Johnnie turned out to be rather much of an individualist. It would serve him right if someone taught him a lesson.”

“Bullo … ?” said Mariotta. “But that’s the man who … I don’t understand,” she said despairingly.

“We’re congratulating each other on how clever we’ve been,” said Sybilla. “Quite without reason. For there is the dear man in prison at Threave, and here we are, doing very little about it.”

“You’ve been helping Lymond?”
said Mariotta, and stood up.

Sybilla looked up. She put down her needle, drew off her spectacles and gave Mariotta all her attention. “I’m sorry, my dear,” she said. “Sit down. We’re rushing a little ahead of you in our worries, that’s all. You see, my son Lymond is not quite the drunken renegade of the legend.”

“He didn’t entice me to Crawfordmuir?” said Mariotta. “He didn’t kill my baby? Insult me? Try to burn you out? Corrupt Will—kill Richard—take advantage of Christian? A moment ago you yourself called him superficial and glittering.”

Gently, the Dowager replied. “I told you what attracted you to him. I didn’t say there was no more to discover. He’s caused no intentional harm to me or to you: you can’t, I think, seriously accuse him of destroying your child; and I think he had his reasons for what happened afterward. He has a great deal, naturally, still to account for, but—”

“Don’t let’s be misled,” said Tom Erskine suddenly. “You want to think the best of him, of course. But his aim all along has been to obliterate Richard. I can’t presume to tell anyone to choose between their own children, but it seems to me that the danger to other people is something to take into account. Christian, I didn’t know you even met this fellow.”

For a moment, the girl was silent. Then she said, “I met him in September, but it would hardly have been fair to ask you, or anyone else, Tom, to share that particular secret.”

Erskine said with a sudden anger, “But you might have been killed!”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But I don’t think so. In any case, I’m safe now, amn’t I? And the truth can do none of us any harm. Sybilla, I’m calling at Boghall, and then going straight on to Dalkeith. I’ll let you know what happens. Tom …”

He said heavily, “You’re determined to go on with your championship of this—this—”

“Outlaw? I want to finish what I’ve started, Tom. Is that a bad thing? If I’m right, then I’ll have prevented an injustice. If I’m wrong, then the popular point of view—and yours—is vindicated. In any case, you are the man I am contracted to marry. You don’t suppose I have forgotten that?”

He had no words to meet that kind of attack.

Afterward, when Christian had gone, he came back and sat for a long time, sunk in thought, before the Dowager’s parlour fire. Eventually he looked up, drawing Sybilla’s kindly eye. “She isn’t the sort of person to be easily deluded.”

“No.”

“Or stupidly bedazzled.”

“No.”

“And yet, beyond rhyme and reason … why?” demanded Tom of the air.

“Because she thinks one of her lame ducks is about to turn into a swan,” said Sybilla. Her lenses flashed in the glare like scarlet lamps.

Searching, questioning, his eyes moved from Sybilla to her daughter-in-law. “The man’s a saint?”

“No,” said Sybilla. “Not a saint. An artist in the vivesection of the soul. But only because he has known the knife now for five years.”

“It’s damned nice of him,” said Erskine, “to make sure we all suffer too.”

“I told you he wasn’t a saint,” said the Dowager. “And there’s a limit to everyone’s endurance. I only hope—” Unexpectedly, she halted.

“What?” said Mariotta.

“That if he’s going to break under it, he doesn’t break too soon. He’s probably the only person in the world now who can restore Richard to any sort of terms with his own future. If not indeed,” said Sybilla, taking off her spectacles, “the only person who can send him back to you.”

*  *  *

On Sunday, the third of June, the day after this discussion, Francis Crawford of Lymond was sitting on the crumbling wall of a sheep
fank on the Scottish side of the River Tweed, throwing pebbles idly into the reaming waters.

It was a restful, a delicious scene. Plump clouds like amoretti hung in a blue sky; shining rooks cawed from among shining leaves and an otter with a half-eaten fish shivered the bog orchis with his shoulder as he passed. Lymond watched him go, and tossed another pebble into the water.

Across the river, the green edge of England lurched upward into an uneven ridge and plunged behind into the hollow where lay the village of Wark. On top of the ridge, toe to toe with its own deliquescent outline, reared the English Border fortress of Wark, on whose tower walk stood Gideon Somerville, both hands shading his eyes.

“There, sir,” said the soldier beside him.

“I see.” Gideon scrutinized the seated figure, far across the water. The bent head was unmistakable. “He hasn’t tried to cross the river?” There was a ford of sorts at that point.

“No, sir. But the river’s a bit high.”

“I see that. All right. Send a boat across for him and bring him to my room.”

Downstairs, waiting at his desk, it seemed to Gideon a long time before the door opened. Someone said, “The Master of Culter, sir,” and shut it again, and Gideon looked up.

It was the familiar, elegant presence, but quieter, less dynamic than he remembered. Lymond came only a few paces into the room; not far enough to catch the dying light from the windows, and Gideon saw only the pale gleam of his head, with indistinguishable, two-dimensional features, as if face and hands had blown like flock to their appointed places in the shadows. Lymond’s voice was pleasant, unchanged. “Armageddon,” he said.

“Hardly,” answered Gideon dryly. “You got my message?”

“Admirably delivered. Yes. Mr. Harvey came?”

“And went. We waited for you all day yesterday.”

“Then,” said Lymond dispassionately, “I’m too late.”

Gideon was annoyed. He said brusquely, “Mr. Harvey was in charge of a convoy urgently wanted at Haddington. I could hardly keep him indefinitely to suit your convenience. Our arrangement was quite clear.”

“I know. My fault. I was detained,” said Lymond. “The little squirrel, full of business. It was good of you to make the appointment at all.”

“I set some store by keeping my word. The matter was not, it seems, of very great moment to you after all.”

There was a pause. Then Lymond, rather helplessly, began to laugh. “Strike on, strike on, Glasgèrion. Prophète de malheur, babillarde …” And as once before, was betrayed by the uncertain, wanton luxuriance of voice. “You’re drunk,” said Gideon, disgusted to the soul, and slammed back his chair.

“Drunk?”
The voice was alight with self-mockery. “O my God … Of Paradise ne can I not speak properly, for I am not there.… Damnably, damnably sober, Mr. Somerville,” said the Master unsteadily.

Gideon crossed the room in three steps. Faultlessly erect, his clothing a bloody pulp, his eyes brilliant, Lymond spoke quietly. “—But sicker than Rudel. Don’t be alarmed. It’s merely the effects of insufficient transport over damnable country in inclement weather. I was locked up in Threave until yesterday morning.”

Gideon said incredulously, “You came here on foot?”

“Most of the way. Running like a dog. And aquatics, too: hence the mess. I was sorry to give your boatman the trouble of fetching me, but nothing short of Buccleuch’s bloodhounds would make me swim any more.”

“I’m damned sorry.” Gideon was uncomfortably shocked.

“It might have been worse. But it would be a courtesy,” said Lymond with care, “if I could make myself presentable before we talk.”

In ten minutes of Gideon at his most practical, the prisoner of Threave found himself, unresisting, in bed at Wark.

*  *  *

At his own request, Lymond came back to the study at nightfall, clean, bandaged, freshly dressed and anointed, as he pointed out, with delicate things of sweet smell. He seemed, if not exactly full of energy, at least perfectly composed.

“I warned you about Scott,” said Gideon, who had opened by demanding an explanation of the Master’s delay.

“It was my own fault for being so intent on the unfortunate Harvey. As to that—”

“You say,” said Gideon, interrupting calmly, “that you have disbanded your men?”

“Cryand with many a piteous peep—by God, they hated it. Yes.”

“And are now therefore entirely at my disposal?”

“The Scot, the Frencheman, the Pope and heresie, overcommed by Trothe have had a fall. Again yes.”

“I wish to God,” said Gideon with mild exasperation, “that you’d talk—just once—in prose like other people.”

“All right,” said Lymond, and quoted with malice. “And as for Scottishe men and Englishe men be not enemyes by nature but by custome; not by our good wyll, but by theyre own follye: whiche shoulde take more honour in being coupled to Englande than we shulde take profite in being joyned to Scotlande … One God, one faythe, one compasse of the see, one lande and countrie, one tungue in speakynge, one maner and trade in lyvynge, lyke courage and stomake in war, lyke quicknesse of witte to learning, hath made Englande and Scotlande bothe one.”

“Do you believe that?” asked Gideon.

The blue eyes were level. “What do you want to find out? Whether I profess the ‘damnable opinions of the great heretic Luther’?”

“You quoted Ascham. I wondered why.”

“I also quoted the late King James the Fifth. I echo like a mynah, that’s why. Sticking to birds: if I were a wren, I shouldn’t want a crocodile’s egg in my nest.”