Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [167]
It came to his hand like a child. He balanced it a moment in the dark, cherishing it; and then with a grim and godly triumph, drove it up to the hilt into Lymond’s hard body.
The blow delivered, energy, initiative and even normal sensation left Scott. Lying flaccid on the dark stones he was aware of noise and vibration; aware dimly that the roof was shaking and men’s voices, shouting, were calling his name. There was a crash, and plaster and stone rattled about him, sifting lax into eyes and hair. He laid a hand over his face.
Matthew was shouting, and now he knew. Of course. Stoneshot first, then Greek fire. He ought to get up and stop them; after a moment he did get up. In the dark, there was no movement beside him.
Painfully blundering, he found the stairway and began climbing just as Matthew, working obstinately in the darkness from wall to wall, found and fell on his knees beside Lymond.
Covered with dust and mould, with blood on his hands from the sharp stones, Scott waited in the open air with the rest while Sir Andrew Hunter and a few others went down with lights. He had resented the sardonic cheer they gave when he appeared.
Presently, Sir Andrew also returned to the daylight. Collected as always, he walked over to Scott and took from the boy’s hand the bridle of Lymond’s riderless horse. “Wake up! It’s a fine June day now.”
Scott changed colour. “Can we go?”
“When your friend has mounted,” said Sir Andrew calmly. “What did you think you had done to him? He has a bad shoulder, that’s all.” And Scott, the colour driven out of his face, looked where he nodded.
In the centre of Hunter’s men, Lymond was waiting equably, handkerchief to shoulder, while they prepared to truss and mount first Turkey, then himself. He was as dirty as Scott, the stained white shirt gaping between broken points and his face white with shock and masked with stone dust. But there had been, clearly, no lethal, no maiming wound.
Sir Andrew Hunter’s gaze was critical. “The fabulous Lymond, trapped like a rat in a cellar.”
“Like cats to catmint. Everyone finds you so irresistible, Dandy: are you surprised?” Lymond had heard him.
He was unhelpful, but they put him firmly on horseback, and in a moment they were moving, with the Master riding between Hunter and Scott, and Turkey well back in the cavalcade.
The rain had gone, leaving a haze of sunshine. Heartsease quailed under their hoofs and honeysuckle dispensed bees and a yearning of scent; the elms passed like weeping seneschals. Behind them, dwindling into a green silence, lay the convent, denying its fractured bones to a tranquil grave; ravished and inviolate; wearing the nimbus of its injuries like a coronal.
But neither Francis Crawford nor the boy Will Scott looked back.
* * *
Twenty miles from Threave, Lymond’s silence became intolerable to Hunter as well as to Scott, already pierced between the shoulder blades by Matthew’s gaze. Then Sir Andrew said something at last which aroused the man between them. Lymond looked at him suddenly, and the flexible mouth curled. “Other than apologizing for not being Asmodeus, what can I do?”
Scott’s classical knowledge fell short of the reference, but he saw Hunter change from red to white. Lymond went on. “Do you usually bolt your rats with other people’s terriers?”
“Your young friend came to me of his own free will.”
“Initium sapientiae,” said Lymond absently, “est timor Domini. You may look in vain for the sapientia, but the timor, I promise you, will be very much in evidence.”
“I don’t think he’ll have much to fear. There’s another saying. Wha sits maist high shall find the seat maist slidder.”
There was a spark in Lymond’s eyes. “Or—Like to die mends not the kirk yard: how does that one suit you? And how is Mariotta?”
Sir Andrew answered repressively. “Lady Culter is alive. No thanks to your monstrous efforts.”
“Sadder, but also subtler. The intellect and its cultivation, as someone once said,