Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [121]
His son’s mouth twitched. “I haven’t, cross my heart. But don’t flatter yourself that I’m suffering so that I can read you a homily on crime. I’m with Lymond because I like it.”
Buccleuch’s face expressed disbelief and disapproval. “Dammit, I believe George Douglas was right. You’re planning a coup. Don’t deny it! You’re going to embroil Lymond as deep as he can get, and then lead the Queen’s men to him. Is that it?”
Scott didn’t trouble to deny it. He said, “That, I am quite sure, is what George Douglas would do,” in a voice of energetic scorn, and added after a contemptuous interval, “I’m staying with the Master. Why not? We’re a well-regulated, efficient society. We’ve got health and companionship and excitement and money, a common aim and a common justice. We are our own masters, afraid of nobody but the one man, and he’s worth fearing. Show me its like, and I’ll join you.”
“I can show you its like,” said Buccleuch. “In the jungle. What you’re living by is four-footed law, and what you’re living off is the blood and marrow of the rest of us. You’ve money, you say. Money from where? From spying and stealing and so-called protection—the money of folk who’re poor because they’ve had the stupidity to fight two wars for their country. That’s where your ideal community comes from—from corruption and treachery. And by God, it takes a thick hide to snuffle and drool after your own dirty pleasures while bairns starve in Teviotdale for want of meal. Dod, you’ll fairly have a stitch in your side watching Branxholm burn the same way Midculter did.”
“I’d nothing to do with that.” The words were nearly cold enough to belie the passionate resentment in Scott’s eyes.
Buccleuch was shouting. “You’re doing a hell of a lot to stop it. Dod, I’d better warn the wife. We’re to live alfresco this winter, if I don’t get my throat slit the way Culter got his shoulder and Janet her arm.”
The same frigid voice said, “If the English intend to burn you, how do you possibly imagine I can stop it?”
“You can stop bleating your name to Grey of Wilton for a start!” bawled Buccleuch. “So that every rotten device you practise on him doesn’t get traced home to me! If you’d done that a bit earlier, there’d be some folk at Newark who’d be much obliged to you.”
“Oh, God!” said Scott, and let go. “A minute ago I was being overfriendly with the English: you’re not very consistent, are you? And if you’re supposed to be luring me back to the herd, I must say you’re making a damned bad job of it. If you really want to convince, you should at least get your facts straight. And argue them with some sort of logic. And keep your head while you’re doing it. In the first place, I wasn’t responsible for Grey discovering my identity. In the second place, Lymond is doing no more, openly, than half Scotland is doing underhand. In the third place, he is considerably less popular with the English than you are yourself. In the fourth place, you would fare a damned sight worse under the attention of my colleagues if a person like Lymond weren’t there to control them; and lastly, I prefer company where inflated prejudice and intellectual tedium get the place they deserve—among the granddads and dummies and the drink-fuddled half-wits in a fifth-rate common alehouse.”
A diatribe worthy, Scott felt, of its inspiring genius. The response was the kind he often felt like making to Lymond, and had once made. Buccleuch’s knotted fist came out like a joiner’s mallet and drove at his son’s head.
With a beautiful, cool-breathing ease, Scott slipped under it, closed his own fist, and released a blow which sent Buccleuch travelling like a cannon ball across the clearing and down with a skid into the beech leaves.
There was a moment’s stupefied silence. Buccleuch lay, temporarily winded and making repulsive noises, and his son stood looking at him, with the excitement shrinking out of his face.
It was a standing joke that Sir Wat was incapable of reasoned argument. There was no victory and less virtue in first provoking him to violence and then hitting a man twice