Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [361]
In rebellion he made his preparations; and in rebellion composed himself, as the Shamans do, to reduce the shivering husk of the body to one spark of life, conserving what it has; feeling cold and hunger and thirst no more than a plant does, laid in its sap on an icefield.
It was all he could do; and would extend his life, he supposed, by a day or so. For what came after that, his only regret lay in the Lennoxes’ triumph. And that death should come without grace, instead of the way he had planned in the Authie, in the open air among men, in a moment of verve and of freedom.
What ties the fool to his body? somebody said.
A promise.
I shall send gems of lapis lazuli: I shall make her fields into vineyards, and the field of her love into orchards.
Philippa.
*
He did not want to be roused when Wharton’s men broke into the room, and even when they laid him before the warm fire, from which the Countess of Lennox had been removed, crying indignantly, an hour earlier, he tried to avoid them. Then he came to himself, and remembered.
What ties the fool to his body?
A promise.
*
Before he left, Lord Wharton came to see him. ‘You think you can ride? I’ll send my men part of the way with you; then you’ll have no more trouble. Your mother is with the Somervilles at Flaw Valleys. So is Lord Culter. I do not want him, in these difficult times, to appear further south. They’re waiting there for you.’
He had changed less than anyone else: this small, elderly, hardbitten man who had crossed his path first eleven years before, in the English war, in Annan. Thomas, first Baron Wharton, knew the north and its problems better than any man, even William Grey of Wilton. But he took Grey’s advice on political matters. And Grey, even from far off on the Loire, had advised him.
One knew this was likely. One hoped that Richard, ransomed or somehow released, would get hold of Wharton and force him to take a hand in the affair. What was surprising was that it had all happened so easily. ‘Who will mourn you?’ Margaret Lennox had said. ‘Not France. Not the English Council.’ Yet when he had wakened fully, it was to find Margaret gone, with all her servants, and in their place the doctors and servants of Thomas Wharton, Governor of Berwick and Warden of all the Marches.
So now he said, ‘I have to thank you, sir, for my life. How did it come about?’
The scarred, uncompromising soldier’s face stared at him. ‘You had a key. Did you not recollect? Your brother did.’ And when Lymond shook his head, Thomas Wharton pulled forward the pocket of his cloak and drew from it something he threw on the table.
It was a glove: a gauntlet of padded silk embroidered over and over with colours and fine gold, and in the centre, where the wrist would lie, an elaborate initial, enclosed in a cartouche.
‘You collect them, I believe,’ said Thomas Wharton. ‘It was in your baggage. Lord Culter brought it to me.’
‘Then——’ Lymond said.
‘Mary Tudor is dead. Her sister Elizabeth is Queen of England. The house of Lennox has fallen,’ said Lord Wharton abruptly. ‘And Francis Crawford of Lymond, who has Elizabeth’s guerdon, as he once had that of a child, is not a man who can be held prisoner with impunity by anyone, far less a Catholic with a claim to the thrones of England and Scotland. Lady Lennox has gone back to Settrington, and you are free.’
‘The term is relative,’ Lymond said. He looked up into the weatherbeaten face. ‘You love your country?’
‘I have served it a long time,’ Wharton said. He waited, curious.
‘Then,’ said Lymond, ‘you will remember the autumn of ’42, when the eldest son of every Scottish nobleman worth the name was in London, compounding for his freedom, promising Henry of England to further his church, his son’s marriage to Mary, his claims to the overlordship of my country. Is it not going to happen again?’
‘Because there is a Protestant monarch?’ Wharton said. ‘Perhaps. Is it a bad thing? Then, your noblemen bargained, as they fought, out of self-interest or devilment. Now they do it from conviction. If you met