The Game of Kings (74 page)

Licensed by the moment’s suspended excitement, Lymond stirred, and moving back a little, sat down in the chair provided for him. Lord Culter, watching, leaned back suddenly in his own seat and the Lord Advocate, who missed nothing, ran his eye quickly over the remaining charges and caught Argyll’s attention.

The Chief Justice thumped on the table. “Quiet, gentlemen! We have a great deal to get through.… Mr. Crawford, your explanations so far have been plausible if not entirely, as you will admit, supported by tangible proof. We now wish to examine your relationship with Lord Grey de Wilton, the Lord Lieutenant of the English army in the north. On the occasion of Lord Grey’s invasion of Scotland on the twenty-first of April last, you were the author of a message, purporting to come from a member of your
band, which had the result of bringing the Laird of Buccleuch and Lord Culter, with their respective forces, in dangerous proximity to the English army?”

“It brought them, as I thought, within easy reach of Lord Grey himself,” said Lymond briefly. “The approach of Lord Grey’s troops at the same time was unfortunate and unforeseen.”

“You claim,” said the Lord Advocate, “that this was done purely to enable your brother, with whom you were not on good terms, and Sir Walter Scott, whose son you had corrupted—”

“Hud your tongue, ye sacco, socco, ferrum, dwellum, legalizing cricket—”

“—whose son you had enticed from the family hearth, purely to enable these two men to make an advantageous capture?”

“Not at all. I had a transaction of my own to complete. I was hoping to do so under cover of the ensuing melee.”

“A transaction with Lord Grey?”

“So far as his abhorrence of me would admit. I wished to meet a member of the English force, for private reasons. I had induced Lord Grey to arrange the meeting by promising him Will Scott.”

“Thus Sir Walter, Lord Culter and Mr. Scott were all invited into this commodious trap by you at the instance of Lord Grey?” asked Lauder. “In that case you certainly hoped to bring them within easy reach of the Lord Lieutenant.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw their lordships shuffling. He paid no attention, but kept his voice as unvarying as the panel’s. The man was an actor all right. But so was Henry Lauder.

Crawford of Lymond said, “Mr. Scott was invited in such a fashion that he could not possibly arrive in time to be in danger. The message to Sir Walter and my brother was sent without Lord Grey’s knowledge.” Someone at the table shifted, and Lauder turned instantly. “Yes, Sir Wat?”

Buccleuch hesitated, looking across the hall at his son. “That’s likely to be right,” he said at length. “At least, they ran like the hammers when they saw us coming.”

“And you followed, I gather, into the jaws of half the English army?”

Buccleuch said shrewdly, “What’s your argument? D’you think that after the showing-up he got at Hume Castle, Grey would stand by and allow the man to invite half the Scottish army to Heriot? I’m damned sure Grey didn’t know Culter and I were coming.”

The Lord Advocate stretched his legs. “Are you, Sir Wat? To my mind, all the signs point to an astonishing trust by Lord Grey in the Master of Culter. He made an appointment with him, we are told, without the support of more than a few armed men in a particularly deserted spot in the middle of enemy country. I fail to understand your reference to Hume Castle.”

The Earl Marischal stirred. “Wat means the attack on Hume led by a Spaniard last October,” he said. “They captured most of a supply train and wrecked half the fortifications. Mr. Crawford claims to have organized it.”

“Oh? Dear me, I see this is another point on which Mr. Scott is anxious to speak,” said Lauder. The redheaded boy, angrily on his feet, began, “I can vouch …” and was smiled down by the Queen’s Advocate.

“Later, Mr. Scott. It makes very little difference to the argument, you know. Lord Grey’s animosity, on Mr. Crawford’s own showing, was mainly directed against yourself and not against the Master of Culter. We have already proved that the Lord Lieutenant trusted him sufficiently—or was certain enough of his loyalty—to allow him prior information of Lord Grey’s own movements.”

Scott was still on his feet. He said angrily, drowning Tom Erskine’s voice, “Grey didn’t even keep his part of the bargain. He didn’t even bring up the man the Master expected to meet.”

“Then there was a bargain,” said Lauder placidly. “Mr. Erskine?”

Tom said quietly, “I can vouch for Lord Grey’s feelings toward the Master of Culter as demonstrated at Hexham. There was no question of his being on any but the worst terms with both Wharton and Grey.”

Lauder looked unimpressed. “We have already proved, surely, that this is a man who sells himself to the highest bidder. If Lord Grey indeed failed to pay him in whatever coin had been agreed for his betrayal at Heriot, it was inevitable, surely, that such a man should bite the hand which failed to feed him. It does not alter the fact that the message inviting Sir Wat and Lord Culter to Heriot was sent off before his encounter with Lord Grey, and therefore before he could have known that Lord Grey was not keeping his side of the bargain.

“And remember,” the Lord Advocate added agreeably, “that at that time both Lord Culter and Sir Walter were publicly committed to seize Mr. Crawford. You are being asked to believe that Crawford
would first antagonize Lord Grey by failing to produce the person of Will Scott, and then risk immediate capture by his brother and Buccleuch. It does not seem very reasonable to me; and I note that Mr. Crawford himself has very little to say.”

“I’m sorry,” said Lymond. Passionless devil, thought Lauder. He isn’t sorry. But then, neither am I. I’m trying to hang him, and he’s trying to save his strength so that there won’t have to be an adjournment before he’s ready for it.…

Lymond said, “I was carried away by the strange charm of your reasoning. The unhappy Lord Lieutenant seems to be credited with a fearful grudge against the Buccleuch family. I thought perhaps you had found a dark plot to seize his wife and junior attachments as well.”

The Queen’s Advocate replied without looking up. “But we have been assured that Mr. Scott could not possibly have arrived in time to come to any harm. If he will forgive me, he was presumably merely the bait for his father.”

“Non minime ex parte, Mr. Lauder. The boy would have been ten times simpler and ten times safer to capture as well as being a much more telling weapon. If we may separate the facts from the faculae we seem to have this.

“One, both before (at Hume) as I think I can prove, and after (at Hexham) as Mr. Erskine has proved, Lord Grey and I were enemies. Two, by failing to keep his part of the bargain at Heriot, Lord Grey had clearly no plans for collaborating with me in the future. Three, some of your prisoners, whose names I shall give you, will tell you that the English army had no orders to support Lord Grey in his supposed ambush, and that the dispatch of a troop was an afterthought due to their suspicions of me.

“Four, as Sir Wat has already stated, the men left by Lord Grey made no effort to capture him or my brother, but fled before them. Five, far from being caught between two fires, I had hoped my promised interview would enable me to reinstate myself with my brother and his friends, in which case I had nothing to fear from them. And lastly, Sir George Douglas, who was detained by Lord Grey during one of his embassies to England at that time, was present at Heriot, and if he will do so, can vouch for the fact that the only bait in the trap was myself.”

Henry Lauder pushed a hand through his sparse hair. Open your mouth too far and someone will fill it with rubbish. He wondered
briefly what hold the man had on Sir George to risk citing him as a witness, and cynically applauded the tactics. Everyone knew Douglas played on both sides. By preserving his fictitious character Lymond had made it easy for him to co-operate.

He did. After the briefest silence Sir George leaned back in his chair, ruby flashing, and said, “That is quite true. Mr. Crawford was actually tied up as a prisoner all the time he was with Lord Grey. Bowes, who led the ambush, appeared to be genuinely startled by Buccleuch’s appearance and might well have been captured but for the arrival of other troops.” He paused and added mildly, “I can also confirm the attack on Hume. Mr. Crawford is a fluent Spanish speaker and was identified by Lord Grey in my presence as the leader of the raid.”

It was too risky to take him up on it. The Advocate to the Crown swallowed defeat gracefully. He bore no grudges: the exercise of his wits against a quick and able man was the finest excitement he knew. He said, “Well, Mr. Crawford: we must concede that you seem to have an answer for everything. It will be a pleasure to see what you make of the more serious charges on the list which of course we have still to deal with. In the meantime, I should like to hear about the matter of the Earl of Lennox.”

This time the accusation was simple. In 1544, prior to the Earl’s defection to England, the Master of Culter had been on the friendliest terms with him, had stayed with him at Dumbarton and thus shared, it was alleged, in his treason. What had Mr. Crawford to say?

Time, precious and profligate, was wasting before their eyes.

The heat, girdered with tension, crept like wadding into the interstices of the brain and muffled the starving air. Lymond was sitting up and forward a little, elbows on the arms of his chair, with his hands clasped and his head bent. Richard, familiar with the small signs of fatigue, wondered how he managed to keep it out of his voice. He saw that Lauder was watching his brother narrowly.

In the clear, unemphatic voice he had used throughout, the Master said, “In 1542 I became a prisoner in France, and from then until 1544 was employed on travaux forcés in the French galleys. In March, 1543, I rowed in the ship which took the Earl of Lennox from France to Scotland, and was seen there by him. In September of that year I was also on the galley which conveyed gold and arms from France for the Queen Dowager. I escaped and applied for protection to Lennox, who I had reason to believe was preparing to defect from
his Scottish friends and would therefore receive me. As you know, he sold his loyalty to Henry of England in return for marriage with Margaret Douglas, and left Scotland for England in May of the following year, having appropriated for himself the gold delivered to his keeping from France.

“Between those dates I stayed with him as secretary and general amanuensis, leaving rather suddenly with a good deal of information and a good part of the gold. I returned some of it by devious ways to Edinburgh; the rest I used as best I could in the Queen’s interests. I also established and armed my own force until by our services elsewhere in Europe we became more than self-supporting.… I am conscious, of course, that there is no proof of these events, except that I can in some cases give you the dates on which part of the French money was returned.”

It was audacious, all right. The eyes of the room, like sucking fish, were flatly attached to him, building up eager pressures which slopped over as soon as he halted.

Buccleuch gave a yelp. “Lennox’s money! Dod, he’s never been known by man to pook a penny before now. I’d like to have seen the colour of him when he found out.”

The Lord Advocate said, projecting his voice, “This troop you mention is of course the subject of a civil crime action also raised against you on the grounds of robbery and extortion—”

“Protection,” corrected the Master. “In these lawless times we private forces must help the State to ward its citizens where we can.”

Lauder said dryly, “The forces in question seem to have mixed opinions on the subject; but that is by the way. Your motives throughout in your dealings with Lord Lennox were again, we are to take it, completely altruistic throughout?”

There was a faint smile in the experienced eyes. “Only to a human and limited extent. If I hadn’t cultivated Lord Lennox’s company I should be rowing up and down the Irish Sea yet, instead of being presently charmed by your society.”

“I see,” said Henry Lauder. “And by the same token: when you presented Lord Grey with a secret of some national importance about our shipping, you were merely ingratiating yourself with his lordship?”

Because all his attention was on Lymond, he missed George Douglas’s faint movement. He had brought out, underhand, one of the vital issues, and his opponent was fully aware of it. Come along, my boy! said Mr. Lauder happily to himself. Fight me!

He did. This was not a matter of doubtful history, four years old; but a question of treason freshly committed and subject to minute examination. The Hexham episode was eviscerated.

“… The dispatch was being taken to Lord Grey by a courier called Acheson. I knew nothing of it until it was shown me on the way to Hexham.”

“Mr. Erskine? You can corroborate that?—Come along. Did Mr. Crawford know nothing of the dispatch?”

“He …”

“Will you speak up?”

“He denied it at first, but when we showed it to him—”

“Showed it to him? Where had you found it?”

“In his packroll.”

“And did he continue to protest his ignorance even then? … Well?”

“No.”

“He admitted it?”

“I think it’s unlikely he knew about it. He prevented the message from being delivered at great personal risk.”

“Ah, yes,” said Henry Lauder. “Ah, yes,” and stretched himself like a long, disjointed cat. “We’ve all heard a great deal about the dramatic scenes at Hexham. How our friend escaped from his brother’s thrashing; how he rejoined his ally Mr. Acheson and had the misfortune to be spurned by the English friends he was trying hard to conciliate. So, using a woman as his shield—it has a familiar ring, hasn’t it?—he chose the discreeter part; a positive act which would bring him at last under the cloak of the Scottish side at least. He shot the courier in full view of Mr. Erskine and relied on Mr. Erskine’s notoriously kind heart to extract him from the muddle. Unfortunately, he himself was attacked in the process—undoubtedly not part of the plan.”

Erskine said forcibly, “He knew when he made the shot that he hadn’t a chance.”

“He knew that if he didn’t shoot, he hadn’t got a chance either,” said the Queen’s Advocate placidly.