Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [356]
‘What then?’ said Richard.
‘If I knew, I would tell you,’ Lymond said. ‘There will be no recruiting for St Mary’s. I should like to think there need never be. I stopped Graham Malett from leading a power crusade in the name of religion. It would be the ultimate irony to be forced into doing the same thing myself. Hoddim and Guthrie and Blyth and the rest are in Scotland because they are men of great experience, with counsel to give and the ability to answer force with force, if it does become necessary. We don’t know yet what your fellow-Commissioners are going to say or do. If word of the donations leaks out, if accusations of poison are made openly, then trouble may start before anyone is ready for it.’
‘They know what is at stake,’ Richard said. With pained perplexity, he stared at the downbent head, propped on one hand, of his brother. ‘You were taken to Russia, expecting little. Perhaps you will find a purpose here.’
‘Oh, Christ, Richard,’ Lymond said. ‘You don’t need to remind me what country I belong to.’
Richard drew a deep breath, his eyes suddenly open. ‘Then——’
‘Then I am making a gift to her of the men I have trained,’ his brother said. He had removed his hand from his head and, looking up, met Richard’s eyes with tired resignation. ‘I have been told to live in Scotland, and I shall do it, but I doubt if it will be to Scotland’s benefit. There are handicaps, I have found, more crippling than blindness. Even the part of me that did not come back from Dourlans would hardly have made you a whole man.… But one would like to spare Sybilla the realization of it.’
And Richard was silent, for the truth Jerott had seen touched him, too, for a moment before he thrust it aside. He said, instead, ‘Once, I returned, by mistake, a present you gave me.’
As when he had come in, fresh from the wind, surprise and pleasure roused, for an instant, all the colour in his brother’s face. Francis Crawford said, ‘I have kept it, in case one day you might want it. If you do … It makes worthwhile this part, at least, of the journey.’
*
That evening, as he promised, he handed his command to the master, who was good enough to comment, gruffly, on the speed he had made. Then, as was usual during this convalescence, Lymond went below and drifted quite early into the deep, empty sleep of physical weariness.
He was not awake, therefore, when the vessel tacked, in the night, into the roads outside Berwick where two small English ships were hovering, waiting to take her.
The noise of the boarding broke Richard’s sleep, and presently that of his brother. But by that time the Réal was firmly under escort, and sailing into the mouth of the Tweed in captivity.
There, neither the master nor the crew of the Réal was invited to come ashore. Only the Earl of Culter and his brother with their servants and their belongings were transferred briskly without explanation from the riverside to the brooding heights of Berwick castle.
The room to which Richard found himself taken, with Lymond following, was that of the Lieutenant-Governor of the castle; but Lord Wharton, it seemed, was either asleep or absent that evening. The officer who turned and greeted them, shaved, accoutred and quite impeccably groomed, was Austin Grey, Marquis of Allendale.
Richard spoke to him. Without even glancing at him, Austin Grey said, ‘Our two countries are still at war. Any objections you may have will be noted. You will not find your stay here unpleasant, Lord Culter.’
He was looking at Francis. Then, turning, Richard saw that his brother was white as a pargeted board. He remembered then, with abrupt nausea, the disastrous encounter in Paris with Allendale, after Lymond had broken his word and escaped from the wedding with Philippa. In Francis, there was so much that was admirable; and the flaws were so great. Yet one forgot them.
Austin Grey had not forgotten. His brown, austere face, its nostrils a little distended, told that; and his open stare of hatred and loathing,