Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [214]
The Earl of Lennox, bored and more than a little put out by a cool reception from his wife, fiddled with the inventories and bills lying in front of him, and crossed his long legs under the table in such a way that neither Grey nor Margaret could sit in comfort.
Lord Grey, missing Gideon and worried as well as annoyed by this tale of Margaret Douglas’s, was unfolding a long and complicated saga of his Treasurer’s shortcomings and Lady Lennox, who was pale, was sitting upright in an uncomfortable chair and frowning abstractedly at the floor.
Then Mr. Myles came in and whispered; an officer from the gate came in and made a statement; and the guard helped to carry in and deposit the recumbent and unconscious form of Mr. Acheson on a convenient tomb, while two other pleased-looking stalwarts filed in and closed the door. Between them was Lymond. At the unlikeliest moment, the fish had swallowed the hook.
He wore no jacket and no boots; he was dishevelled, as might be expected, and looked tired and disreputable. He also looked, thought Lord Grey with a pang of fury, roughly as humble as Shishman, Emperor of the Slavs: Brahma finding pest in the henhouse might have worn such a look. “Did you do that?” snapped the Lord Lieutenant, and jerked a finger toward Acheson’s prostrate body.
Lymond turned his head. “Gushing Hippocrenes at every joint. No. Strictly speaking, the blame belongs to a strawberry roan. The gentleman carries two letters for the Lennoxes, and I have come with him in answer to your ultimatum. If you are wondering, Margaret, whether I know that the ultimatum is void and why; I do. Mr. Acheson was rash enough to tell me just inside the gates.”
A severe and brilliant triumph illuminated Meg Douglas’s face. She didn’t ask how Acheson knew. “Your little redheaded friend was unintelligent but persevering. She forgot there are rules in war as well as in love.… Kill him, Matthew.”
“In your experience they are the same rules, aren’t they? Slay those who are great in heart, for they are blind. Matthew can’t in decency kill me, Margaret, until Lord Grey has spoken, and by then I shall have said a great deal myself.”
“Will you? I doubt it. By God,” said Lord Grey, “there isn’t a man here, I should think, who wouldn’t be happy to slit—”
“I should certainly like—as a major sufferer—to lay claim to the body,” said Lord Wharton. “What happened at Annan is very freshly in my mind, and so is the disruption of my courier service and your several and inventive actions when under my command.”
“As I observed,” said Lord Grey impatiently, “this miserable man is evilly disposed to us all. I have not forgotten Hume and Heriot nor has Lennox, I imagine, dismissed the events at Dumbarton. We are not, I suppose, going to terminate this remarkable history by squabbling over the manner of his death. No. We are pressed for time. This is war, and this man is of the rubbish thrust to the surface by war. Let the guards take him to the market place and hang him for a treacherous Scot.”
Four voices broke upon his ears with exclamatory advice; and were in turn defeated by the single, carrying voice of the prisoner.
“One at a time,” said Lymond. “Remember your English unity, for God’s sake, or we are all lost. Think hard; don’t let the principle escape you. What are you? A great and godly nation speaking with the voices of corporate right: one brain, one heart; a thousand members drawing life from each. A nation of loving lambs dutiful to the bellwether: chickens of the world-egg following the hen-figure gladly into the eye of the cannon. Unity, solidarity and brotherhood. Brotherhood! My God.”
Grey shut the ledger before him with a snap. “At least this is a nation, with a religion, a head, a status, a policy. Not a damned Noah’s Ark: a chicken here, a lamb there, a family of wolves in the next field. I suppose you are proud of your French Queen, playing dice with Scots knucklebones for the greater glory of her native land? Of Arran, the fool, bending like a springal toward the weightiest pocket? Of your Douglases and your—”
“Lennoxes?