Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [178]
“He didn’t entice me to Crawfordmuir?” said Mariotta. “He didn’t kill my baby? Insult me? Try to burn you out? Corrupt Will—kill Richard—take advantage of Christian? A moment ago you yourself called him superficial and glittering.”
Gently, the Dowager replied. “I told you what attracted you to him. I didn’t say there was no more to discover. He’s caused no intentional harm to me or to you: you can’t, I think, seriously accuse him of destroying your child; and I think he had his reasons for what happened afterward. He has a great deal, naturally, still to account for, but—”
“Don’t let’s be misled,” said Tom Erskine suddenly. “You want to think the best of him, of course. But his aim all along has been to obliterate Richard. I can’t presume to tell anyone to choose between their own children, but it seems to me that the danger to other people is something to take into account. Christian, I didn’t know you even met this fellow.”
For a moment, the girl was silent. Then she said, “I met him in September, but it would hardly have been fair to ask you, or anyone else, Tom, to share that particular secret.”
Erskine said with a sudden anger, “But you might have been killed!”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But I don’t think so. In any case, I’m safe now, amn’t I? And the truth can do none of us any harm. Sybilla, I’m calling at Boghall, and then going straight on to Dalkeith. I’ll let you know what happens. Tom …”
He said heavily, “You’re determined to go on with your championship of this—this—”
“Outlaw? I want to finish what I’ve started, Tom. Is that a bad thing? If I’m right, then I’ll have prevented an injustice. If I’m wrong, then the popular point of view—and yours—is vindicated. In any case, you are the man I am contracted to marry. You don’t suppose I have forgotten that?”
He had no words to meet that kind of attack.
Afterward, when Christian had gone, he came back and sat for a long time, sunk in thought, before the Dowager’s parlour fire. Eventually he looked up, drawing Sybilla’s kindly eye. “She isn’t the sort of person to be easily deluded.”
“No.”
“Or stupidly bedazzled.”
“No.”
“And yet, beyond rhyme and reason … why?” demanded Tom of the air.
“Because she thinks one of her lame ducks is about to turn into a swan,” said Sybilla. Her lenses flashed in the glare like scarlet lamps.
Searching, questioning, his eyes moved from Sybilla to her daughter-in-law. “The man’s a saint?”
“No,” said Sybilla. “Not a saint. An artist in the vivesection of the soul. But only because he has known the knife now for five years.”
“It’s damned nice of him,” said Erskine, “to make sure we all suffer too.”
“I told you he wasn’t a saint,” said the Dowager. “And there’s a limit to everyone’s endurance. I only hope—” Unexpectedly, she halted.
“What?” said Mariotta.
“That if he’s going to break under it, he doesn’t break too soon. He’s probably the only person in the world now who can restore Richard to any sort of terms with his own future. If not indeed,” said Sybilla, taking off her spectacles, “the only person who can send him back to you.”
* * *
On Sunday, the third of June, the day after this discussion, Francis Crawford of Lymond was sitting on the crumbling wall of a sheep fank on the Scottish side of the River Tweed, throwing pebbles idly into the reaming waters.
It was a restful, a delicious scene. Plump clouds like amoretti hung in a blue sky; shining rooks cawed from among shining leaves and an otter with a half-eaten fish shivered the bog orchis with his shoulder as he passed. Lymond watched him go, and tossed another pebble into the water.
Across the river, the green edge of England lurched upward into an uneven ridge and plunged behind into the hollow where lay the village of Wark. On top of the ridge, toe to toe with its own deliquescent outline, reared the English Border fortress of Wark, on whose tower walk stood Gideon Somerville,