Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [215]
“I think,” said the Earl of Lennox, white with emotion, “that my wife and I have heard enough insults. And I can dispense with a dissertation about our national characteristics. Knock him down! Hang him!”
Lymond turned suddenly. “‘Our’ characteristics? Whose? Whose are yours? Brought up in France; feted in Scotland; would-be bridegroom of Mary of Guise; would-be ruler; would-be conspirator; full of terrestrial appetites and an eagerness to feed your kindred flesh to all the feared and threatening raptors at your heels …
“What are you? A citizen of Europe or of the life of the shore: a thief, a renegade, a liar and a coward, as you have named me? But I can give you one name you can’t give me: cuckold, Lord Lennox!”
The Earl had risen slowly to his feet. As Lymond flung the word at him Lennox’s voice rang out, high-pitched as a bird’s. “My God, you stopped me once, Wharton, but not this time Not again! Clear the way—move aside—”
His path to Lymond was unexpectedly blocked. “Who the devil are you?” said Lennox hysterically. “Get out of my way!”
Henry, Lord Wharton’s son, shut the door behind him and blinked at the white and angry face. His gaze, mildly surprised, sought his father at the table and then, roving, fell on the Master of Culter. “Him!”
Ignoring Lennox totally, Henry Wharton flung his arms in a wide gesture of exultation, divesting himself with a twist of bow, quiver, helmet and pack. They fell on the table with a crash. “Lymond! You’ve got him?”
Repressively, Lymond himself answered. “I dislike being discussed as if I were a disease. Nobody ‘got’ me,” he said. “And where have you been, my billy: to the devil and back to have your beard combed?”
Before Grey’s astonished gaze, the scene of a moment before began to repeat itself. They had to hold the young man, struggling, away from the Master. Grey shoved him into his father’s grasp and said sharply, “You control him. What’s so inflammatory about … ?”
Wharton answered curtly. “Made a fool of himself at Durisdeer in February. Milked like a cow tree.”
“How?”
Lymond, irrepressible, answered. “It was a wonderful beard he had, a magnificent pelt. He was bearded like a Dammar pine, of the fashion of prophets and pards, one hair sitting here, another there.… But was it fitting? Was it well-considered? I asked myself: peach or nectarine, clingstone or freestone, bald or—forgive me—downy … which?”
“What,” said Lord Grey impatiently, “did he do to Henry?”
“Shaved and cropped him with his own knife,” replied Lord Wharton shortly, and the angry faces around the table, with the furious exception of Harry’s, broke into ill-repressed smiles.
“A picture,” observed Lymond. “It isn’t considered proper to shout in church. Besides, Lord Lennox is talking.”
He had courage, or a singular rashness. Tom Erskine, his hands gripping the tapestry, wondered also, jaw set, if Lymond had observed what he himself had just seen: the smallest stirring in the inert body of the messenger Acheson, lying stunned on the marble face of a tomb.
It forced Erskine himself to a decision. With infinite care he edged along the narrow passage behind the tapestry, reached the spiral stair, and slipping down it, stepped out on the wide, stone-flagged balcony which overhung the south transept where Lymond stood. Bending low, Erskine crossed the flags and lying still beneath the stone balustrade, raised his head cautiously and peered below.
From his low and castellated rampart he caught a glimpse of a yellow head. He raised himself higher. At the same moment Lymond stepped back two paces before Lennox, who was shouting abuse: this brought him halfway along the table with his right side to the balcony and the catafalque with Acheson on his left.
He was, then, keeping the messenger under his eye. A moment later the Master turned his head to speak