Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [194]
Lymond heard him without interruption. Sir George, who was enjoying a malicious sense of power, ended. “Perhaps a life imprisonment in England is the best thing that could happen to her.… I assume you have no romantic urge to offer yourself at Holyrood so that they can send you in her place.”
Lymond’s face was quite blank. “If it suits me, I shall approach the Court, however uneasy it makes you.”
“And make a killer of your brother and a life prisoner of your benefactress? Not a very economical programme,” said Douglas blandly. “Suppose we are practical. Are you going to surrender to Lord Grey?”
“Why? Do you want the privilege of sending me?”
For once in his life, Sir George was completely frank. “Yes. I do. I need Grey’s favour, and I have the perfect arrangement ready. A messenger of mine leaves at dawn for Berwick with letters from me to my niece and nephew. I can arrange it so that his safe-conduct allows for one accompanying soldier-at-arms.” He knew the type, knew the gesture would be irresistible; and was disconcerted to find in Lymond’s gaze the mocking reflection of his thought.
“The war horse’s answer to death by old age and pink-eye. How can I refuse?” said Lymond.
Sir George got up with some deliberation. “You’ll go? You’ll go to Berwick tomorrow with my man and exchange yourself for this girl?”
“Do-to the book; quench the candle; ring the bell. Of course I shall go. Why else was I born?” said Lymond with bitter finality.
2. The Tragic Moves
Next morning Lymond, swordless, left Edinburgh’s Bristo Port with a courier carrying Sir George’s letters and Sir George’s safe-conduct.
The day was breathless with promise; the cobbles shining like milk glass in the quiet; the gables asleep in blanket rolls of mist. In the streets there was no sign of the grumbling, scraped-up army of men who were preparing to face battle in the warm summer weather.
As the first sun fed on the early haze there was a stirring in the houses. Smoke rose from new fires, and a man with water plodded along the High Street alongside a creaking cart, leaving a trail of splashes like silver shillings on the cobbles. Then he leaped to his horse as a small company in Erskine colours plunged past him and drew rein outside Lord Culter’s door. Tom Erskine, in its lead, dismounted and hammered on the knocker until it opened.
He was inside for less than ten minutes. Richard, half out of his tumbled bed, listened to the beginning of the story, and jumped for his clothes.
The Palace had found a spy, cleverly concealed: a man who had heard not only the Council in session but all the subsequent orders for the Queen’s escape to France. They had uncovered him, and chased him, and lost him; then captured him finally after rousing half the town in the middle of the night.
Erskine rattled on, pacing the room. “The hell of it is, he’d already passed on what he heard. They know that. They’re still trying to get him to say whom he told.”
“And if the information has left Edinburgh?” Standing up, Richard stamped himself into his boots, fastening the buckle of his sword belt.
“It’s our job to trace it. Quickly …” And followed by Lord Culter, Erskine made for the door.
At the Castle, their methods of persuasion were not subtle. By the time Tom Erskine and Culter got there, the spy had confessed. All the plans discussed the previous night had been committed to paper and had been sent to Lord Grey that morning by a special messenger—by a messenger who happened to be going to England under safe-conduct with letters from Sir George Douglas.
“Douglas!” said Culter at this point, and got a nervously irritable glance from the Governor, grey and sleepless in wrinkled day clothes.
“Purely fortuitous, so I’m told. Well see. Meantime, Erskine—Culter—it’s your job to catch that man. He’s an hour at least ahead of you. By the Bristo Port. You know what it means if these papers get to Grey.”
“They won’t,” said Tom Erskine briefly.
* * *
Adam Acheson, driving his neat, fast mare as quickly as he dared along the Berwick road with