Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [122]
Wat’s scarred, knotted hand shuffled tenderly over his jaw, and his small bright eyes turned to his son. “By God!” He sat up fully, and resting an elbow on his knee, moved his lower mandible gently from side to side. “Where the hell did you learn that?” demanded Buccleuch.
Scott gave a half-laugh and releasing him, sat back on his heels.
“Lymond.”
“Well, he’s taught you one thing worth knowing. But there was no need to practise it on me.” He got to his feet with the help of one hand on Will’s shoulder and stood for a moment, holding the boy in front of him. “He’s taught you quite a few things, hasn’t he? A fairly cavalier way with opposition, for one thing.”
“I notice,” said his son, and grinned, “that you weren’t exactly relying on rhetoric yourself. But I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Just to knock the head off me,” said Sir Wat, raising his hand to feel his jaw again. Scott, disappearing for a moment, returned with his handkerchief folded into a soaking pad, which he proffered Buccleuch. “Was it true about Newark?” he said.
Applying his back to a root, Sir Wat nodded. “They didn’t get into the house, but they burned the village and nearly stripped me of beasts, Will. Grey’s doing.” He shot a keen glance at his son’s face. The boy had seated himself on a broken trunk and was studying his hands.
“So they have the better of you both ways,” said Scott thoughtfully. “Grey for my misdeeds, and the Dowager if you dissociate yourself with them.”
“That’s how it fell out.” Buccleuch, watching him quietly, held the pad to his bleeding face. “It’s been fairly damnable all round—no less for you, of course. You’re no match for a clever sycophant like yon. Whatever his purpose, he’s managed to stick my neck in a cang; and he looks like making a fine scapegoat out of you, if you let him.”
The boy was silent. Then he said, “I’m supposed to be beyond redemption, am I?”
Like a sea urchin calling in its needles, Buccleuch’s whiskers withdrew. “There would be some explaining to do. But damn it, I count for something yet in this country. If we went back quietly now, just the two of us, I’d see no one harms you. And you can have the satisfaction of fighting in the open, by the side of your family. You can surely see the way it is. In my position some kind of double-dealing can’t be avoided, and I won’t pretend my hands are clear of it yet. But no one can tell me I’m not a Scotsman as well as a Scott, and the one as much as the other. So what d’you say?”
Sitting against a tree, one hand clapped to his face and an expression of limpid encouragement on the rosso-antico face, Buccleuch was more persuasive even than he knew. His son got to his feet without grace. “I’ve sworn to follow Lymond.”
“He’s excommunicated. You know that?”
“Yes. But—”
“You have not only the power but the duty to break any pledge to him. D’you know why the Church expelled him?”
Scott had heard so many possible reasons that he kept quiet.
“Five years ago, when you were in France, his spying came suddenly to light. Before that, he was taken on trust, the same as Culter, and nobody thought of suspecting where the leakage was coming from. It came to light because a dispatch of his was found—a dispatch referring to other reports he had already made, and enclosing information that led Wharton to find and put an end to us at Solway Moss. But by the time it was found Lymond had already got himself to London, and was sitting safe with King Harry heaping land and money on him.”
“I know that.” Scott shifted uncomfortably.
“Yes. But did you also know this? In its last page that report described the locality of a damned great gunpowder dump of ours; a store that had been left in or near a convent. Described it fine: Dod, it was graphic enough to put a chorus to. It was so bloody ingenious that a raiding party was sent from Carlisle which