Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [216]
‘A sensitive mercenary would be a contradiction in terms, don’t you think?’ said Guthrie. ‘If he does nothing else, he makes us aware of our own weaknesses at least. I know I’m an argumentative old bastard who tends to hold up the action by talk. As now. Shouldn’t you all be at your posts?’
He was right. They scattered, grinning; and Jerott, completing the circuit back to the dais, saw that Wharton and Drumlanrig were in their chairs with all their officials, and that Lymond, as before, was on horseback close behind. He also saw, now that he searched for it, Richard Crawford’s family banner on the far side of the Stank and, finally, Lord Culter’s grave, well-built person, exchanging words with all his near neighbours and not troubling to glance once in the direction of his younger brother.
It must be true, then. They had quarrelled. But over what? Ever since Will’s death, Buccleuch had boiled with anger over Lymond. He would be ready to invent any libel. But why had Adam Blacklock been so anxious to intervene? And Lady Buccleuch? Jerott made up his mind to have a word with Blacklock, at least, before the day was over.
But, of course, the day wasn’t over yet.
Jerott wondered, if it came to bloodshed, what the Wardens expected of St Mary’s, and what each secretly hoped. Sir James Douglas, who knew a great deal about Francis Crawford, had been guardedly friendly. Lord Wharton, who had been tricked too often in the past to feel anything but pure dislike for Lymond, had been brought in the last few months, through exhaustive and contemptuous inquiry, to a grudging respect for his ability. They could converse, as they had talked all the way to Hadden, on matters concerning the conduct of armies. On personal subjects, and on everything to do with the recent war between their two countries, Lymond was tactfully and Wharton stubbornly silent.
Jerott noted further that Lord Wharton was one of the very few people totally humourless on whom Lymond refrained from exercising his wit. From which he deduced that, professional that he was, Lymond equally respected the little Cumberland man’s grip of his job. On the whole, he thought that the Wardens would enjoy seeing St Mary’s in action, for all their reservations about its commander.
The afternoon wore on. Now the more serious cases were coming before the tribunal: cases of wholesale theft and bloodshed; cases involving whole families, mainly of broken men such as the Turn-bulls had been, who scraped an illegal living in the boggy wastes of land which neither country cared to claim. There was a good deal of raucous shouting, some sound cursing and one or two drunken struggles, as well as a volleying orchestration of comment and insult from the watching crowd, but no mass movements had started, either for or against the defenders or pursuivants, and the feuding families, coldly oblivious each of the other’s presence, kept to themselves.
Down by the river, the sport was well under way: wrestling, shooting, fighting with sword and cudgel. The booths were gradually emptying of their wares as the huckstering and peddling came to a hoarse conclusion and men turned to spend their money on the acrobats, the jugglers, the fortune-tellers, and on, of course, the jolly, well-built, sunburnt women who swaggered back-slapping through the crowds and gave as good as they got when the fresh hogsheads were rolled out dripping from the carts, and the well-worn quips undulated about their impervious ears.
In mid-afternoon Gabriel, whose splendour on horseback no restraint on his part could