Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [11]
“Chattering ape!” Lady Buccleuch took a hand in the game, full of rage and pity for Sybilla and hatred for the black-bearded ruffian who had just seized her emeralds. “What’s poor Richard ever done to you except get himself born first?”
The blue eyes were speculative. “Ill-calculated,” he agreed. “But not necessarily final.”
Strophe and counterstrophe reached their epode. The Master was out of her reach, but not the grinning thief at her side. “Final as far as I’m concerned, ye petty-souled slug, ye!” shrieked Dame Janet with ear-cracking clarity, and seized and hurled a cold pudding into Blackbeard’s face. As the big man, cursing, scraped at blancmange with both hands, Janet filched his own dagger and made for him.
But not fast enough. Lymond, watching from the door, had no mind to lose one of his men. Good humour and indolence tittered into the shadows, and as Dame Janet began her lunge, Lymond drew back his own arm and threw.
In the silence of the room Janet screamed, once; and her right arm dropped to her side, the knife slipping from big, relaxed fingers. Then slowly and disjointedly, Buccleuch’s wife fell, and Lymond’s dagger, thrown with accuracy across the width of the room, glittered in her gown, stained and sticky with blood.
“Afraid?” said the yellow-haired man and laughed. “Forgive me, I should have warned you: I have a tendency to be bloody-minded. Bruslez, noyez, pendez, ompallez, descouppez, fricassez, crucifiez, bouillez, carbonnadez ces méchantes femmes. Matthew! When you have digested your windfall will you kindly report progress below? Now”—as Blackbeard, red with shame, disappeared through the screen door—“come along, ladies. Leave your female Telemachus alone for a moment; she’s not dead.”
He surveyed them pleasantly. “Epilogue,” he said. “We have heard sweet-voiced Calliope busily shrinking me like a sea worm and calling me play actor. And the lady of Buccleuch taking heart there-from to give us a roaring, a howling, a whistling, a mummying and a juggling, with sorry results. And Mariotta, trying to wring shame from the unshamable.”
He turned his head, and the girl’s heart jumped. “Qu’es casado, el Rey Ricardo. Weel, weel, sister, what shall we do with you, Mariotta?” He watched her thoughtfully, and then looked beyond her and smiled. “Observe,” he said. “Their eyes lit like corpse candles. I beg, under the circumstances, to be original.… Yes?”
Blackbeard had reappeared. “All finished, sir; and the horses are ready.”
“All right. Get them out.” The men began to leave, and the reports came in: “All doors barred, sir. Valuables loaded, sir.”
With careful and porcelain tread, Crawford of Lymond walked to the screen, and the women fell back before him. At the door he turned. “We’ve had a deal of bad poetry, haven’t we? Suggesting the climax to this thrilling and literary spectacle. The Olla Podrida, my sweet-hearts, will now be set on the fire. I regret Richard isn’t with you. No matter. God hath a thousand handēs to chastise and I have two—how can Richard escape us both?”
He scanned them all, and they gave him back contempt for reflective stare. “I don’t suppose,” he said regretfully, “we shall meet again. Goodbye.”
The door shut behind them all, and locked. The women stared at it, mesmerized, and observed across it the wavering shadow of an uncanny cloud. Behind the chamfered windows the sun was obscured by drifting wreaths of grey smoke, and the silence filled with the crackling of flames. The youngest surviving Crawford, in leaving, had deftly set fire to the castle.
* * *
The bonfires stacked against its walls