Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [153]
… Professing [it ran] that they and their friends should set forth the godly marriage and peace between His Majesty our Sovereign Lord of England and the Queen’s Grace of Scotland, and for their untruth and perjury against such most godly marriage and peace, and not regarding their faith, being therefore themselves and their blood the occasioners, this their death is thus appointed.…
Buccleuch’s sharp eyes surveyed them. “There in front of you is the price of the marriage we witnessed today. And no less the price of the marriage we avoided when we turned back after Durisdeer. We’re all paying for the same thing—these men here, and the fellows who fell at Pinkie and Ancrum and Annan and Hawick; and you with your brother and me with my son as well. We’re seeing times,” said Buccleuch, “that crack the very marrowbone of tragedy, and compared with it, neither your trouble nor mine counts as much as two tallow dips in the circles of Hell.”
Richard’s eyes were on the table, and he said nothing. Buccleuch waited; then with a scream of wood scraped his chair back and shoved himself to his feet.
“All right. If that’s all, let’s get back,” he grunted, and led the way from the room.
Coming back, the first person Richard saw was his mother.
Alone, waiting for him outside the ballroom, she met the visible hardening of his face with a frontal attack of her own.
“I know: I’m Mère-Sotte, and you’ll use all I say to make outrageous theories with. Fortunately it doesn’t matter. Mariotta isn’t with your brother any more. She escaped—Will Scott helped her—she’s now in the convent at Culter, very frightened and rather ill. Lymond has not been kind. He got her by sheer chance—she was caught by the English running away from you and they offered her to him. He hasn’t been kind, as I say, but he did no harm to her or the child. You ought to know that, I think.”
Richard heard her, leaning against the door: an uncomfortable shadow of Lymond at Midculter. “A noteworthy salvage effort. I applaud your resolution in sacrificing Lymond in order to patch up my marriage. But it’s a little too late for repentance—anybody’s repentance. When we catch Lymond, we’ll perhaps get at the truth.”
Blue eyes met grey. “When … ? Will it be soon?”
“Very soon. And this time, there’s no fear of escape.”
“And what,” said the Dowager flatly, “shall I tell Mariotta?”
“There’s no message,” said Richard. “I don’t want her back. You could, of course, congratulate her on the birth of her son.”
“You don’t want her back,” repeated the Dowager, a rare anger lighting her face. “Did you think she would come? Your wife, my dear, has no wish to set eyes on you again.”
IV
Concerted Attack
There is no thynge so stronge and ferme
but that somtyme a feble thinge
casteth down and overthrowe hit. How
well that the lyon be the strongest
beste … Yet somtyme a lityll birde
eteth hym.
1. The Four Knights’ Game
THE duet between Lord Grey and the Privy Council in London went on intermittently for a fortnight, during which Gideon Somerville had himself rowed up and down the river, landing at familiar green steps and unearthing old friends. Playing cards with Palmer, Grey’s new engineering adviser and an erstwhile ally, Gideon sat cheerfully blinded by gold-wire dentistry and absorbed the latest rumours.
London had French fever again. After the sad fiasco of February, nobody was looking forward to reopening the Scottish campaign. It was known that the child Queen was recovering from an illness: it was said that there was no public move yet to marry her into France, and that the Scots Governor was fighting overt tooth and subterranean nail to keep her for his own son.
Palmer, with a glitter of ox bone, thought it unlikely that Denmark would risk offending Spain by sending ships to help Scotland, and that France’s promise of further aid was a myth to distract attention from Boulogne.
Gideon listened to it all, and passed on to Lord Grey as much as he thought fit. Two days before their final orders came through, Gideon went with Palmer