Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [143]
In the painted hall at Midculter when Jerott joined them now were the third Baron, his wife Mariotta, and Sir William, heir to Wat Scott of Buccleuch. Richard, talking amicably while he waited for his brother, was aware that Mariotta, stitching furiously behind him, was listening to every foot on the stairs in a concealed froth of emotion. She had never been impervious to Lymond’s doubtful attractions and would enjoy, he knew, having her feelings exercised once more, like puppies at gambol. Their marriage now was deep and firm enough to stand it.
Will Scott, also, was listening, his face flushed under his flaming red hair. Since his Kerr-infested marriage three years since to Grizel he had become the father of three and a man not to offend on the Borders. More and more as old Buccleuch, his father, grew wheezier, he had taken on himself the active duties of wardenship along the thief-ridden wasted frontier with England, dispensing international justice with one hand and with the other attempting to control the bloody bickering on his own side of the Border.
In the three years four Kerrs had been injured, and three farms burned down belonging to friends of the Scotts. He didn’t always tell his father when it happened, because the old man’s face turned mottled blue over his doublet, and unless Will got in first, he would send a runner round all the estates, and the threshing would stop while grousing, reluctant men straggled back for their pikes and swords and mail shirts, taking a long time about it, waiting for Buccleuch the Younger to come up, furious on his sweating horse, and tell them curtly to get back to the fields.
As the French grip on the Queen Mother and therefore on Scotland became tighter; as the danger grew that Arran, the Scottish Governor, would retaliate by siding with England, there blossomed among Will Scott’s simple convictions the warning spoken again and again in the past by Francis Crawford.
If they thought their sovereignty worth keeping, the handful of lords who divided Scotland between them must unite. And unite before religious division caught and struck them apart for ever. For Lymond a year ago had maintained that, so far, the quarrel between the old and the new religion in Scotland was nothing but useful ammunition for men who disliked and distrusted each other for other reasons entirely. The danger was that the thing, so lightly seeded, might take needless, schismatic root of its own.
All that, Lymond had said a year ago. Since then he had fought alongside Joleta’s brother, clever, courageous and devoted adherent of the Old Religion for whom Luther and Mohammed were infidels both. And if Gabriel hadn’t converted Francis Crawford, thought Will Scott gloomily, running a large hand through his blazing hair, the bloody girl certainly would.
These three diverse people however in Sybilla’s fine hall greeted Jerott Blyth warmly enough, and made him welcome while Sybilla installed him in one of her vast fireside chairs. There was no sign of Lymond. While they chatted, Blyth inspected Lymond’s family. They were presentable, he thought, and intelligent; and they knew their world, he would grant them that. Whatever subject they opened, and they had a range like a cadger’s, Jerott was given a full share. They might almost, he would admit, have been meeting in France. Then the door opened and Joleta came in, followed by her duenna.
She was fascinatingly pale, the flood of rose-gold hair and wide aquamarine eyes the only colour about her. She was dressed all in white.
Jerott shot out of his seat. Richard, following more slowly, said placidly, ‘You’ve had a shock. Shouldn’t you stay in bed for a while?’
‘No,’ said Joleta flatly. She was not, as Sybilla had discovered, a person slow to make up her mind. ‘To faint was