Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [221]
He explored it thoroughly, and it was later than it should have been when he returned.
Lymond watched him pack with bright eyes. “Hullo! Are we setting up house elsewhere? Far away?”
“A short ride. I’ll strap you to Bryony.”
There was a pause. Then, detached, the Master observed, “Richard. You can’t seriously picture me pursuing a healthy career as a sieve. Time isn’t on your side either. Stop toying with the prey and let’s get this thing over with. Say what you have to say to me.”
“We didn’t,” observed Richard, “take long to get to the wriggling.”
“No. I’m only trying to find a knee-high viewpoint that’ll interest you. Before one of us bores the other to death I have to talk to you about Mariotta.”
Lord Culter straightened, the two packs under his arms. “Not to me.
“To you, here and now. After which you can make your own conversation in whatever damned draughty hole you’ve picked for yourself, and put your own bloody feet over your bottom like the Romans when it rains. Mariotta—”
“You’re not dying,” said Richard. “Keep your pitiful confessions for someone else.”
“Whose guts are they?” demanded Lymond, offended. His hair was dark with sweat and his fingers cramped, resisting the oncoming tides. “I’m going to tell you what happened, brother mine. You’ll have to execute me, leave me, or listen to me.”
“Or remove your tongue.”
“Happy are the cicadas’ fives. Go ahead. But then you’ll never know the truth.”
“I know all I need to know.”
“What do you know? How to match, but not how to marry. How to choose, but not how to husband. Grand Amour should be received royally, Richard, as a harsh and noble art. You idiot.… You nearly lost her. But not to me.”
The sword was in Culter’s hand. The thoughtful eyes of his brother and even the shadowed walls of the dovecote disappeared. With the last rags of self-possession, Richard drove himself out of the door.
And bathe my son in morning milk, said the doves. And other voices, too, hammered in his ears. Here, reeking and blubbering over the green fields, were the resurrected deaths he had died because of Lymond. “You haven’t packed the ladies off to Stirling, have you?”—An arrow, tearing ignominiously into one’s shoulder, before a shouting crowd—a drunken glover and a frozen ride—the prison at Dumbarton and the walk across the ballroom floor—the failure at Heriot; the trickery with Scott; and monstrously, Mariotta, Mariotta, Mariotta, blazing with jewels.
“Believe, if you like, that the child is Lymond’s.” … “He is with Mariotta now.” … “It would have been a boy.”
The grass at his feet, the blue sky, the short purple shadows of the trees, came into focus again. He unbuckled his dagger, and laying it together with his sword within the doorway, walked back and seated himself on the edge of the stone table. “Go on. We have five minutes to spare. Discourse on the seductive arts. I want to quote you to Mariotta.”
“I,” said Lymond plaintively, “am the octogenarian who planted. In my marrows are my monument; and your wife, thank God, is no marrow of mine. I was gallant at Midculter, God save me, through being most damnably drunk: but never again.”
“You didn’t approach her, or she you?”
“My dear ass, I ran like a corncrake. You can ask leading questions till you’re cross-eyed as Strabo: that’s what happened. Unfortunately, becoming tired of home life, she ran too; and got herself taken by the Englisn. I had her redeemed, like a fool, and my poor morons brought her to me when she fell ill on the road instead of running like hell when at least she’d have arrived at Midculter unsullied, if dead.”
Richard said quietly, “I hope she thanked you for the trinkets, since she had the chance.”
“She did. It was a little embarrassing,” said Lymond. “Because I didn’t send them.”
“Oh. You haven’t any idea who did, I suppose? Buccleuch, for example?”
He bent suddenly to enclose Lymond’s wrist, his eyes intent, as the Master’s weakened voice said, “I don’t see why I should