Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [13]
On the same day, quite near Annan, a man rode a broad-faced pony into a farmyard and stopped, a pike at his chest. Sitting still, he hissed through his teeth, brown eyes judicial over inquisitive nose. “Colin, Colin! You’re not doing yourself justice! It’s as smart, ye ken, to let Lymond’s friends in as his unfriends out.” And as the pikeman answered him with a bleat—“Johnnie Bullo! I didna ken ye, man!”—the rider clicked his teeth and the pony moved on.
It carried him gently through a rubble arch and up a long alley to a yard crowded with men. Saddlebags, rugs, weapons, tenting and food sacks lay piled against the house wall; and the reek of a boiling pot over an open fire fought weakly with the odours of sweat, leather and horse dung. Johnnie Bullo entered the yard through a gate, and dismounting, addressed the air.
“Turkey in?”
A man passing with a bonnetful of eggs jerked his head across the open yard and grinned, showing two sets of bereaved gums. “Over yonder, Johnnie.”
Turkey Mat, professional soldier and veteran of Mohacs, Rhodes and Belgrade, sat against an upturned barrel, hauling off his boots and bellowing orders. Forty and liverish, he had done nothing for his looks by growing a curled black beard in the Assyrian style. The men in the yard admired Turkey.
Johnnie Bullo approached gently. “Man, you’ve a fire there you could lead the Children of Israel with.”
Turkey Mat was emptying river sand from one boot. “Hey, Johnnie! No harm in a lowe with the farm bodies at home.” And as Bullo wordlessly turned to survey the planks nailed over doors and windows: “That’s the farmer, not us. He’s got six lassies and says he pays us for protection, no’ for stud fees.… We’re moving on tomorrow anyway; and I hope to God it’s to the Tower: my stomach’s declared war on my elbow. Have you brought the dose?”
The gypsy brooded. “What d’you suppose? I’ve had it a fortnight. It’s begun to grow whiskers like your own. What you want is a cross between an apothecary and a bloodhound.”
Flinging down the other boot, Turkey swore. “There’s been a war! Do they no’ tell you anything in these parts?”
Johnnie grinned, dropping to the ground beside him. “I thought you went east?”
“So we did. I never saw so many weel-kent faces all in the one place; the most of them chowed off and in no state to give the sort of snash you get from half of them when they’re upright. It was better,” said Matthew, “than a front seat at the Widdy-Hill the day after the Assizes.”
“And profitable?”
“Oh, aye.” A smile winked in Turkey Mat’s beard. “There was Arran, biting his nails to the elbows at Musselburgh, wanting men and food and powder and intelligence (and wanting the last more than most); and Protector Somerset coming north hung over with booty and Wee gifts from the Lothian lairds, with a trail of tumble-down castles behind him … man, the moneybags were fleeing here and yon like cockroaches on a biscuit. Mind, that was last week,” he added with belated caution, watching Bullo bounce a small leather bag in one hand.
“Twelve crowns,” said Johnnie agreeably.
“Twelve crowns! Twelve crowns for a teazle o’ Tay sand and chopped henbane and a week’s rakings from the doocote! It’s robbery!”
Nevertheless the transaction was completed, the gypsy derisive. “What’s money to Lymond’s men? I hear Governor Arran’s thinking of calling him in to finance the next expedition.” He waited a moment, then added lightly, “And I hear you got yourselves a new prize up-by into the bargain?”
Turkey registered surprise. “Not us. We fell in with an English messenger with a dispatch from the Protector to his