Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [201]
“Erskine made her burn them.… Is that your hand? It’s colder than mine. I told you not to worry.”
Christian blinked suddenly and roused herself. “My mind’s wandering. Listen: I have something for you. It’s sewn in my saddlecloth. Mr. Somerville will show you. Hurry!” Her face, framed in the strewn hair, was as matronly as a nurse commanding a treat for a child.
For the first time, Lymond’s eyes met Kate’s. He rose slowly and walked to the door. Kate heard her husband speak in the corridor, and then both men’s footsteps receding. After no more than a few minutes, Lymond returned.
This time, his eyes never left the girl in the bed. Sitting beside her, he raised her hand and put under it a crumpled fold of small papers bloodstained—as Kate saw—in one corner.
Christian’s face was alight. “You’ve read them? They’re all there?”
“I’ve read them. But how … ?” Lymond was saying in a kind of lunatic daze. “How the devil—how the devil could you do it? To have it in black and white at the eleventh hour … Did you threaten him? Cut off his ears and souse them in vinegar? Propose to confine him in a locked room with Lord Grey for six months?”
The girl gave the ghost of a laugh. “It was on his conscience. He dictated the whole story and signed it. The priest was there too—that’s the second signature. Is it what you’d hoped?”
There was the fraction of a pause. Then Lymond picked up Christian’s hand and carried it to his lips, holding it afterward folded in both his own. “More than I ever dreamed of,” he said—and like the serpent she had once called him, snarled voicelessly into Kate’s eyes as she looked up, horror-struck, from what the girl’s lifted hand had left revealed.
For the sheets of creased paper which Christian had brought with such pains from Haddington, which Margaret had found not worth her attention, and which Lymond had at last received, were quite blank.
Kate gave nothing away. Christian, it appeared, wanted her company. Since she couldn’t go, she was forced to sit and watch, listening to the murmur of their voices. They were talking of things and people Kate knew nothing about, but she knew contentment when she saw it, and didn’t interrupt even when the girl’s voice began to lapse and the air to falter at last in her lungs.
Christian did what was necessary herself, turning her head painfully toward Kate. “I was never much good at waiting,” she said. “It’s a sign of immaturity, or something. I wonder if maybe music would be soothing? If someone would play … Not you,” she added quickly, as Kate rose. “If you don’t mind. It’s comforting to have you sitting so close.”
“Of course I’ll stay,” said Kate, her mind racing. “Would you like Mr. Crawford to play for you? The music room is only through a door by your bed.”
She had, obviously, guessed right. The smile this time was one of relief. “He still has to finish a song he played for me once. Do you remember?”
“The unfortunate frog. Of course,” said Lymond, straightening. Kate met his eyes and nodded: she thought he looked almost at the end of his endurance, but he could be relied on to make no mistakes. He bent quickly and taking both Christian’s hands, kissed her on the brow. “The frog was a pretty poor creature. This time you shall have music to sound in a high tower—”
“—So merrily that it was a joy for to hear, and no man should see the craft thereof.… You give me such pleasure,” said Christian.
A moment later the music began, and Kate shrank beneath the onslaught of its message: the fury of hope and joy that towered in the notes, outburning the sunlight and outpouring the volumes of the sea. All that was bold and noble and happy in created sound burst from the metempirical quills, and it was a blasphemy not to rejoice.
Christian died in its midst, purposeful and successful; the last struggle unseen by anyone but Kate, and laying no bridle on the living. Kate drew the bright curtains around the bed.
Jouissance vous donneray
Mon amy, et vous méneray
Là où prétend Votre espérance
Vivante ne