Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [10]
For a moment, nothing was to be seen, and Buccleuch became jocular. “Smoke! Never worry, man. My chimneys were in mourning for a month before my first wife and the cook got the hang of the ovens …”
The wind patted their faces, and turned. A great column, black as the onset of night, rose from the west and hung wavering on the horizon.
With an undreamed-of turn of speed Lord Culter reached the stairs with Buccleuch after him, yelling bills and bows for the castle to hear. Left alone, Christian Stewart herself found the stairs and descended, with debate in the unseeing eyes.
* * *
When the door opened, the women in the Hall at Midculter were not surprised. They expected to be fed; and Lady Buccleuch, for whom pregnancy spelled food, had already taken strategic foothold by the windows, where the cold dishes were ready laid. Sybilla, standing by the hearth, was in the middle of a long, grave story provoking much mirth. As the door opened she said happily, “Now we can eat. Janet will be so pleased.” The blue eyes smiled at her daughter-in-law, ceased to smile, and then simply rested, thought suspended, on the still-open door.
Lucent and delicate, Drama entered, mincing like a cat. Leaning on the door, Lymond shut it and without looking turned and took out the key with one hand. In the other a naked sword point, descending, was poised among the slit lavender stems. At his side, Mariotta stood perfectly still.
After the first moment, every trace of expression left the Dowager’s face; her white hair shone like salt. Moved by her stillness, the sound of the key, the blaze of the sword, the first heads turned. A murmur grew and expired. Dumbness, flowing among them uncovered like a crocus in the snow the lost reprise of a hornpipe, pursuing its scratchy but dogged course in the musicians’ gallery. Then that also died.
Back to the door, the newcomer spoke indolently, slurring his words. “Good evening, ladies. The gentlemen now entering behind you are all fully armed. I am Francis Crawford of Lymond and I want your lives or your jewels—the latter for preference; both if necessary.”
Through the rustle of shock came the first cries of horror: from these rose a storm of exclamatory fright and abuse, and from that an orchestration of outraged feminine frenzy that tortured the very harp strings in the gallery. Someone, losing her head, plucked at the small, stately figure. “Sybilla! It’s Lymond!” And fell back, frozen, before the Dowager’s stony face.
The room was lined with armed men. Some, working efficiently, stripped each woman of money and jewellery; others searched and denuded the room, and with cocked weapons encouraged resistance with a leer. There was none.
On them all rested Lymond’s peaceful blue gaze, quite at random. But long ago instinct told Mariotta he was fully aware of one thing. Bent urgently on exposing some frail nerve, she spoke. “Why not look at her? Your drama wants dialogue.”
He turned on her the vague survey. “Oak of linen and pole of jewels, I’ve decided on pantomime.”
“What a shame, now. I was all ready for buskins, and it’s nothing but socks.”
“Mime doesn’t always mean comedy, my dear; far from it.”
An approaching voice, of the self-same timbre, answered him. “Farce, then,” said the Dowager composedly. “My son is not very complicated, Mariotta, although the artifice glitters. He’s afraid—”
“Afraid!” Blue eyes, dead of feeling, looked into blue. “Afraid of what? Damned by the church and condemned by the law: what possible capacity for fear can heart and head still find? Oimè el cor, oimè la testa … After five years of villainy, I promise you, I have the refinement of a cow-cabbage.”
“—Afraid I might puncture the cocoon of Attic detachment. What we see is acting, isn’t it, Francis?”
“Is it?” he said derisively. “You won’t get your diamonds back, I fear, when the curtain comes down. And the name, please, is Lymond: a new medal: choose