Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [114]
Richard looked at her quickly, then studied the floor. “I knew you might be worried. As I said, I expected to be back quite soon.”
“We were very worried. You don’t think,” said Mariotta carefully, “that it might even have been helpful to talk it over beforehand?”
“Oh?” said Richard. “Who with?”
Lady Culter got up and stalked to the door. “The Great Chan of China,” said she with awful and unaccustomed sarcasm, and swept out.
At that precise moment, the Dowager Queen sent for him. So he had after all to cross to the Hall in his travel-stained dress, and had a brief interview with Mary of Guise, magnificent on her dais with laughter and French wit for canopy. She had some shrewd questions to ask; then she abandoned business and introduced him to her compatriots and chaffed him on his pretty wife. Richard who, when clean, was a presentable as well as a solid person, responded adequately and at length was allowed to go. He got as far as the first door, and was arrested by a vigilant figure which whisked him out of sight around the standpost.
“Stay there while I speak to you. If Wat sees you, he’ll burst,” said Lady Buccleuch. “What’s come over you? You’ll be a fat old bigot like Buccleuch if you keep on at this rate. Never mind. Here’s the point—Wat’s made a rendezvous with the boy.”
For a moment, she thought the man looked at her as if she was talking Hebrew; then his face changed and he sat down, a trifle heavily. “By God, has he? How did he get in touch? Will Lymond be there?”
“Will sent a message—they met at that cattle raid affair, I think. I don’t know if Lymond is involved—officially, I don’t know anything: Sybilla is the one in Wat’s confidence at the moment. But I got a wee glisk a the note when it came, and it said—”
“Wait a bit.” Richard rubbed two fingers and a thumb over his brow, transferring to it a long smear of harness dye. “Before you say any more. Buccleuch and I had words recently. We’re not on good terms, and we’ve got different opinions about how this business of Lymond should be treated. You know all that. The last thing Buccleuch wants is to have this piece of information in my hands.”
“What Buccleuch wants and what he gets,” said Dame Janet serenely, “don’t always coincide in my experience. Don’t be a fool, man. You may whinny at the method, but you can’t deny we’ve got motive and provocation enough to defend it to the Pope, if need be. With or without Lymond, Will’s engaged to meet Buccleuch in the beech wood at the foot of the Crumhaugh—the hill between Branxholm and Slitrig Water—at dusk on the first Sunday in February.” She rose laboriously. “There you are. Do what you like about it.”
Richard looked past her into the Hall. A new dance had begun and the Queen—the youngest Queen, aged five—was leading it, cheeks like fruit below a fiercely combed and shining head, one arm erect as a flag in her partner’s grasp. The lines of long, slow sleeves marched and swayed with the music; coloured limbs were pleached and latticed in pattern. The music, piping, thudding, nasal, escorted the murmur of voices. Somewhere in one of the ranks Mariotta was dancing, and behind her, Agnes Herries with the Master of Maxwell.
Richard looked down at his own muddy clothes and rubbed his face again. “Yes.” He added abruptly, “You understand, I’m not interested in Will. I want to take my brother.”
“Do that, and the boy will come back of his own accord,” said Janet. “Look, there’s Wat hunting for me. Goodbye. If you’ve a grain of sense you’ll go straight home to bed.”
“Good night—and thank you. I’ll take care Buccleuch doesn’t hear where my information came from,” said Culter.
“Och, I’ll tell him myself,” said Dame Janet. “Just so soon as it’s all over. He’ll be all the better of a good row after mincing away with Kincurd and his morals. Wicked Wat of Buccleuch! Saints preserve