Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [161]
Somerville stirred. “If you don’t want Harvey’s life, what do you want him for?”
“For his ethological small talk,” said Lymond. “You must decide on the data you have.”
“I have decided,” said Gideon unexpectedly. “I’m not going to do what you want, I tell you frankly, for no better reason than that you want it.”
“I was afraid of that.” Lymond’s voice was surprisingly mild. “You may set fire to churches and cribble empires through your bloody fingers, but the one irretrievable mistake is to misjudge a fellow being.”
“Or force a child to judge its parents.”
“Oh, quite. Nemesis has wakened up again. My hoofs, it appears, weigh more than your halo. It’s a most damnably one-sided balance, but that’s not your fault. Put on your sword and go and get your gear; Matthew’ll put you on the Redesdale road.”
The sword drooped in Gideon’s amazed hand. “I haven’t given you any undertakings.”
“I know. You haven’t given me anything except rather incoherent arguments, and I already have a fruitful source of those under my roof.”
Gideon was still at a loss. “I warn you, Flaw Valleys will be totally impregnable from the time I get back.”
“You can have ten bowmen to a brick for all I care,” said Lymond with sudden exasperation. He strode to the door and shouted. “Matthew!”
Gideon moved as quickly. Standing at the other man’s shoulder, he said, “Why do you want Samuel Harvey? Is the reason so squalid?”
Matthew came. “The horse for Mr. Somerville,” Lymond said, and turned back into the room, leaving Gideon by the door. “Not squalid, my friend: ludicrous.”
“In my scale of values,” said Gideon, “a matter of dignity is always on the trivial side of the reckoning.”
“I can’t help that,” said Lymond. “Pride is a congenital disease in my family, and I’m damned if I’ll put five years’ hard labour into the trivial side of anything. This is on the other scale, along with the hoofs and the haloes.”
Madness took possession of Somerville. He said brusquely, “If I arrange a meeting, it will be in my own time, at a spot chosen by me and surrounded by my men. The interview will take place in my presence, and you will arrive unarmed. If you attempt to injure Mr. Harvey, or threaten him, or in any way molest him, I shall reserve the right to hand you immediately to Lord Grey. Do you agree to these conditions?”
A trace of colour had risen under the thin skin. “Of course,” said Lymond evenly. “Without reserve. But there is one risk you ought to consider: that Lord Grey might discover I had visited you. I don’t think Harvey will want to tell him; but if need be you may hold me until you know that you can safely let me go. I’m going to disband my men first, in any case.”
Gideon said curiously, “You set great store by this meeting, surely, if you’re going to abandon your livelihood for it. I doubt if I could face the situation so calmly.”
“I pay my price,” said Lymond, and smiled suddenly. “But if I’m going to hear from you, I shall stay sober.”
In less than an hour, Gideon was on his way home, wondering if, like Evagrius, he would receive the receipt for these pious outgoings in his coffin.
* * *
It was a soft spring that year, with spotted eggs where the winter cattle walked, spindle-legged; with fawn in wood and cub in hole and white lambs under the whin. With the sun came green shoots and flat water and a fresh courage erumpent which depressed Lord Grey into a welter of gloom at Haddington.
He had marched there from Cockburnspath and found a wind egg which had to become a monolithic fortress. In the shallow bowl of the Tyne, overlooked on both sides, he was threatened hourly by the nearness of Edinburgh, of Arran’s three thousand five hundred, and by five thousand Frenchmen, delicately scenting the infested terrain.
On the other hand, once done, he had a classic tourniquet on the Lothians, on the routes north and south and on the crop-growing farmlands. He took all the rest of April and May to it, and had his men boring like gimlets and building like corals to render him his defensible fortress.
By