Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [141]
“If they’d accept me, I’d do it.” Scott’s hair flamed above his excited, light eyes; he stood by the door, tall, wide-shouldered and pale. “As it is, I’d be glad if you’d treat me from now on as one of the rest. I’ll keep faith with you as far as I’m able. But I want no part in your mudraking personal habits and your dealings with women.” And, maddened by the sheer, lax boredom in Lymond’s face, Scott burst out. “What wanton notoriety is left for you to dabble in? What devilry inspires you to gut the nerves of every man and woman trying to befriend you … ?”
“For God’s sake!” The exclamation was so quick and so savage that Scott froze. “For God’s sake!” said Lymond. “Isn’t one bitch with a rage for dramatics enough for one day? Spare me your mimicking morals and spring-tailed sensibilities for tonight, at least! What do you know of any of the women you presume to defend? You look, and puke, and scuttle away like a duck that’s laid an egg in a geyser.… Do you consider yourself better equipped in all your purity to lead this troop than I am?”
All fear had left Scott. “Yes, I do,” he said quietly. “But as I have said, they would follow no one but you.”
“Unless, perhaps, I instructed them to look to you as their leader?”
Scott’s face was set. “I’m no hanger-on waiting for a madman’s shoes.”
“I am as sane now as I shall ever be,” said Lymond grimly. “I’m offering you a chance to take command now, if you want it. Complete control. Of the men, and all the destinies of my female friends. Will you take it?”
This was—wasn’t it—what he had prayed for; what he had dreamed about and, more recently, what he had longed for to sting Lymond into shame. But—
“What,” he asked hoarsely, “do I have to do? Fight you for it?”
“‘I am thi master: willt thou fight?’ No. I am too much your master there, my sweet one. There’s another way.” He held out his mug.
“Drink with me. I have some hours’ start of you which is, shall we say, a just handicap. Match me cup by cup for as long as the beer lasts; and it’ll last longer, I promise you, than either of us. The man insensible first is the loser: the man with the staying power to open that door thereafter, walk down the stairs and show himself to Matthew has control of us all in future.”
Scott, making no move to take the beer, eyed the other with something like fright in his eyes. “God, but … to wager so much on a drinking bout!”
“Don’t you want the chance?”
“Why, yes—but—At least make the contest a real one!”
“Don’t you want the chance?” said Lymond again.
“Yes!”
“Then take it. It’s the only one you’ll get. The first qualification for leading a band of hard-drinking cutthroats is the faculty of drinking harder and cutting deeper than any of them. You needn’t be squeamish,” he added contemptuously. “I’m not too drunk to know what I’m doing, and I shall abide by the result. I have an excellent reason as a rule for everything I do, except perhaps recruiting redheaded predicants from the more notoriously pigheaded of our families.”
“And if I win,” said Scott, “—if I win, can I do what I wish about Lady Lennox and Lady Culter?”
“You can set up a seraglio with them if you want to,” said Lymond. “Agreed?”
“Agreed,” said Will Scott, and raised the first cup to his mouth.
* * *
High on the hilltops, among the wet scrub by the burn, a blackbird was singing. The notes, round as syrup, melted into the raw air of dawn and coaxed the cold, reddened sun to its day.
In the new tower, thick walls enclosed a warm, snoring darkness: men and dogs rustling together like the carved and stubby images of Asiatic deities in the straw of the common room. Then, far up the twisting staircase, a door opened above.
Matthew, supine on a straw paliasse, hands folded on his belly, snorted, belched and turned laboriously on one side, where he continued to snore. But now he faced the dark square at the foot of the stairs.
Silence. Then, distantly, the same door shut; there was a pause; then footsteps fell, descending with infinite care.
They came nearer. Matthew lay still: lay and snored while a dark figure appeared