Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [302]
Wat Scott ran into them just there, after leaving George Paris under guard in the Tolbooth, and crossing round the graveyard at the back of St Giles, which he rounded at Our Lady’s Steps on his way to walk down to his lodging.
He was alone. Cessford and Hume saw him first as a stocky dark shadow trudging past the pale grey bulk of the church; then, as they came closer, the feeble light from the Virgin’s statue in its niche above the church’s north-east doorway showed the familiar, broad-bearded Warden, his brimmed bonnet flat on his head, his wide, short gown swinging as he strode, spurs clinking, over the causeway.
He saw their faces quite clearly as they threw themselves on him, John Hume in the lead; and given a second longer, could have raised that stentorian voice in a bellow that might have saved his life. But Hume’s thick hand cramped over his bearded mouth, and Hume’s and Cessford’s combined weight heeled the old man like some recalcitrant cargo to the ground, kicking and stumbling, spinning among the booths and into the High Street and back among the booths again. Then John Hume drew his sword.
Buccleuch was a strong old man. But his son’s death had told on the fabric of his body as well as the vigour of his mind. He rolled on the ground, kicked, half-throttled, voiceless, and probably saw the glint of Coldenknowes’s blade and the sudden movement as Kerr of Cessford, seized with caution, fell back, and Hume, his voice furious, called low-voiced, ‘Strike, traitor! Ane stroke for your father’s sake!’
With one violent movement, Wat Scott of Buccleuch got to his knees just as the sword came at him, and grasping the other man’s thighs with his knotted hands, tried to hold John Hume off.
It was too late. As Cessford hesitated, Coldenknowes swore, and thrusting Buccleuch off with his left hand, drove the sword clean through Buccleuch’s body. It was a cruel wound: mortal, but lacking the mercy of an instant death. For a moment he floundered, there at their feet, among the stinking rubbish of the Luckenbooth trash; and then with a grunt he lay still, his blood ebbing fast with his life.
Bending, his sword sheathed, John Hume fumbled for and found one stout booted leg, cursing as the spur slit his palm. Then, heaving with both hands, he slung Wat Scott’s inert body behind the broken-hinged door of a booth, with the reek of decayed food and animals thick in the darkness. ‘Lie there, with my malison,’ he said softly. ‘For I had liefer gang by thy grave nor thy door.’ And with Cessford silent behind him, he made his way swiftly and quietly out of the Style, and down Conn’s Close to the Cowgate, where the horses were ready.
Half an hour later, tired of awaiting Buccleuch, Robert Kerr left his house next to the Tron and with three men, Kirkton, Ainslie and Pakok, who was a man of Hume’s household, began to quarter the High Street looking for him. At the same time a boy, well bribed in advance, left the Cowgate Port on the heels of Cessford and Hume and riding round to the south-east came across the night encampment, just outside the walls, of the French Lieutenant-General, M. d’Oisel with his French troops, escorting the whole company of St Mary’s. The message he brought to the pavilion where the Seigneur d’Oisel and Sir Graham Malett were sitting at supper, was that Buccleuch had been murdered. Five minutes later, Sir Graham at his own request by his side, d’Oisel was riding fast through St Mary’s Port and up to the High Street, half his band of French light horse at his tail.
Lymond missed them by perhaps five minutes, because he took the direct route to the West Bow, to bring him quickly into the Lawn-market where