Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [174]
“I had no quarrel with them.”
Continuing to stare at him, the Master gave a hoot of derisive laughter and sat back, nursing his injured arm. “My only success, and I was too damned preoccupied to watch it coming to the boil. Who locked you up here? Oh, your father, of course.”
And, stretching like a cat, Lymond lay down. Mysteriously, the chill of animal danger had gone; mysteriously, there was an unwilling amusement about his mouth. “I have licked you like the cow Audhumbla from the salt of your atrocious upbringing, and am watching the outcome with a fearful joy.… Your father, as you no doubt realize, will have to argue himself into fits to get you accepted at Court again: you should tell him that the dispatches which you copied for me so resentfully in your own inimitable hand will do precisely that for you, mentioned in the right quarters. They are all in Arran’s possession. They got there, by the way, through a very wily gentleman called Patey Liddell, who should not be involved. He would in any case be deaf to questions—you’ve no idea how deaf.”
There was a startled silence. Scott said, “Is that true?” And, quickly: “It’s a trick of some sort.”
“It’s blackmail. I want something in return.”
“What?”
“Undo some of the feckless damage you did today,” said Lymond, and held his eyes. “Pull the girl clear. Drive it home to every gossiping fool that whatever Christian says, she didn’t know what she was doing when she gave me refuge. Conjure up Shamanism and the Black Mass if you like. Anything. But get it about that she was not responsible for her actions. Understand?”
“I should do it in any case. It won’t help you,” said Scott.
“Nothing ever does. That’s why I help myself so frequently.”
There was another pause. “Those letters,” said the boy. “Much good they’ll do me when they find out we’ve been selling copies to England as well. In my writing.”
“In that case it’s lucky for you that we haven’t.”
“Haven’t traded with England? For God’s sake, I copied them myself!”
“And for God’s sake, I tore them up.”
“What!” Scott was halfway across to the other trestle when Lymond snapped at him. “Go back and lie down. I don’t want your coddled features singing Kassidas over me. What the hell does it matter? You’ve done your job.”
Scott walked back. He sat on the edge of the boards and repeated: “You tore them up. If you tore them up, why did we trouble to capture them?”
“For sixty avid reasons. Mercenaries are exceedingly mercenary, you know. And suspicious. Also, curiosity on my part.”
“But you tore them up. Why?”
“Because I’m on your side, you damned fool,” said Lymond.
The cellar was very quiet. The Master’s face, closed, offered nothing to Scott’s strained scrutiny. After a moment the boy collected his own limbs and stretched back slowly on the bed. “That would be your story in Edinburgh, of course,” he said eventually. “Can you prove it?”
There was a brief pause. “From here?” asked Lymond sardonically. “No, Mr. Scott. I have no proof now, nor am I likely to have.”
Out of the dark and disastrous muddle, a fragment of pattern asserted itself. Scott swallowed. “Harvey? Harvey had something to do with it?”
“I rather think so. Perhaps not. In any case, it’s too late now, isn’t it? Look at the stars.” Lymond’s eyes were on the high windows. “I offered them to you once before, on a celebrated occasion. Forth quenching go the starris, one by one; and now is left but Lucifer alone … And what can Lucifer do, with a bolt and a bar and over a hundred horseless miles between him and his illusions?—It’s a sad world, and the candle is going; so unless like Al-Mokanna you can cause moons to issue from our well, we are destined to sorry together in the dark. Good night. You’re a damned nuisance and a public danger, but so is your father. It’s a thrawnness in the vitals of the body politic which will either kill it or save it yet.”
The voice was resigned, but not unfriendly. The light from the candle, a weak conspirator, searched the face of Scott’s celebrated prisoner, touching for a moment