Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [249]
He lifted his hand and stepped back: a big man, beautifully made, with the autumn sun copper-gold on his hair. ‘But don’t tell her that, will you?’ he said, smiling. ‘I don’t want to be teased all the rest of my life.’
*
Long before Jerott Blyth reached Midculter castle on that bright-bronzed September day, Lymond’s midday assignation at Boghall was over, and Francis Crawford had made the first moves towards turning the sharpened axe which he himself had fashioned of St Mary’s inwards upon itself.
Sybilla was there, as he had known she would be, riding the familiar three miles from Midculter to Lady Jenny Fleming’s big castle in its marsh, her son Richard silent at her side. Five years ago, in the great hall at Boghall with its tall windows, Lady Jenny’s husband had held his last meeting before going to die fighting the English at Pinkie. From its roof, Richard had seen the smoke rise over the rolling bog when Lymond, with fire and sword, had made his first return to his mother’s home.
Now, Lady Jenny, excited and a trifle apprehensive, ushering Sybilla up the wide stone stairs, was a widow, and the mother of the French King’s son. Now her daughter Margaret, widowed first at Pinkie, had lost her second and dearest husband with the death nine months before of Tom Erskine, here in her mother’s home. And in the great room upstairs, its strewn floor roused to sweetness by the booted feet of Lymond’s guests, the coloured light fell on faces strange to these douce walls. Thompson was there, sea-robber, trader, navigator; sought by every harbour in the Irish Sea and the Baltic, and up and down the Middle Seas to boot; his black-bearded chin in the air, his arms folded across his salt-crusted chest. At his side, in a crackling haze of legal inquiry, sat Fergie Hoddim of the Laigh, who had not been on the ill-fated training voyage of the Magdalena, but clearly wished he had been.
Beyond, listening with gnome-like ardour to Janet Beaton, Lady of Buccleuch, was Nicolas de Nicolay, Sieur d’Arfeville et de Bel Air, cosmographer to the King of France; and next to him Alec Guthrie, humanist and philosopher, speaking to nobody; his big-featured fleshy face with the prematurely grey hair sunk on his chest, his thumbs in his belt. Margaret Erskine had already made her quiet way to his side, and sat down. Sybilla, after a moment’s hesitation, took the vacant seat to the left of the chair and next to the lounging bulk of the corsair, who sat up with a half-salute and grinned as she settled her small, trim person at his side. Richard, she noticed, had found a place at the foot of the table, between de Nicolay and Fergie Hoddim; and Lady Jenny, her introductions made with the help of a tall, thin young man with a faint limp, described to her as Adam Blacklock, sat herself beside Richard Crawford at the far end. The vacant seat, to the right of the chair, was taken, with a little hesitation, by the man Blacklock as the door opened and quickly and quietly Lymond came in and paused. At his back, Archie Abernethy and the Moor Salablanca, closed and stood by the door.
Lymond’s face told them nothing, nor did his voice when he spoke; although he had, to more than one experienced eye, the look of a man who has ridden far and fast. ‘You are all here. I’m glad,’ he said. ‘Lady Jenny, this is your home. The place at the head of the table is yours, if you wish it.’ He waited just as long as courtesy required for her flattered refusal, and then took his place, his feet hardly stirring the rushes, in the black carved chair Lord Malcolm had used.
In absolute silence, he laid his hands on the table and for the first time looked down the long vista of polished oak. Ten faces: ten expressions, varying through