Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [203]
“Later, Richard. You can have all the sport you want. Erskine—”
Tom Erskine said, “Come on, Richard. We’ve got him: there’s no point in wasting time.”
Lord Culter ignored him. He was wandering around the room, touching things and still smiling. Kate moving quickly before him shut the door to her bedroom and returned to Lymond’s side. “There has been—”
“Be quiet,” said Richard pleasantly. “And you, little brother. How would five years of this sort of thing appeal to you, Tom? Where’s the bed, I wonder? Behind the door they’re not looking at? With another wench in it, maybe?”
He had an unlooked-for agility. He reached the bedroom door a second before Lymond and got it open. The Master’s hard shoulder crashed into him and he hurtled back with the shuddering wood, but already half-braced and with a purchase on his brother’s arm which brought Lymond stumbling with him. Then there was a rush to help, and the Master went down under six others.
They pulled him to his feet as Richard, rising, was confronted by the young woman who had first shut the door. “Get out of this room and listen to me, you uncivilized lout!” said Kate.
Richard struck her to her knees with the hardened flat of his hand, the first blow he had ever aimed at a woman, and wrenched back the yellow silk curtains.
Over their tawdrinesses grieved the benign detachment of death.
At Richard’s blanched rigidity, Lymond fell silent, unstruggling, by the door; Kate rose and found her way obstinately to a chair, one hand to her face; and Tom Erskine, struck by the silence, moved from the doorway. Lymond’s long fingers shot out and halted him.
“There’s bad news. We tried to tell you. It’s Christian.” Erskine broke from his grasp without a sound.
Presently, Lord Culter moved from the bedside, leaving Tom where he knelt. Back in the music room where his men waited, silent and uneasy, he picked out one with a glance. “Send for the man—Somerville, is it? I want him here.” Then he turned to his brother, his face as hard as the bones of the earth. “I’d neither foul a cage by capturing you nor offend justice by taking you to Court. Covet the sunshine: you are dying.”
“No!” exclaimed Kate Somerville from the doorway. She had dropped her hand from her bruised face. “No, you’re wrong. The girl met with her accident while travelling in English company to Hexham. When Mr. Crawford arrived she was already dying. He did all he could for her.”
“Concluding with jigs and hornpipes over her deathbed. I know. My God, we heard him!”
“What my wife says is true.” Gideon had arrived in the doorway.
Richard didn’t turn his head. “Exposing her to public obloquy at Threave—that’s another fact. Cheating her about his identity. Making this blind girl an accomplice traitor, an accomplice murderer, adulterer …”
Lymond’s voice cut sharply across. “We’ve all had as much as we can stand, Culter. You know perfectly well you can’t kill me here unless I resist capture: it needs one busybody to pipe up in Parliament and you’ll be arrested yourself. Let the fools argue it out in Edinburgh: I’ll go quietly. Come along. Half the English army’s at Hexham. I don’t want to meet Grey, even if you do. And for God’s sake get Erskine out of that room for a start.”
Lord Culter paid not the slightest attention. He was issuing quiet, concise orders to his men, and to Somerville, who listened tight-lipped. When he had quite finished, he turned back to Lymond.
“I don’t murder anybody. I’m offering you a proper trial—trial by combat. Observing all the rules. You may even think you have a chance of killing me. If you do, you are free, of course.”
Gideon’s eyes met his wife’s. He said quietly, “Take him to Edinburgh as he asks. He’s quite right—Grey and Wharton are at Hexham. If anyone calls, you haven’t a chance. And,” added Gideon with some bluntness, “you haven’t seen his swordplay.”
A heretical insolence had found its way back to Lymond. “Why worry, children? I’m not going to fight.”
“I thought we’d have that,” said Richard calmly. Somerville, after hesitating, left, pushed by two soldiers. “You’d prefer