Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [232]
“What happened?” asked Richard quickly.
“I was shown the door. By our honoured father. He tried to enforce the suggestion with a whip.”
There was a short silence. Then Culter said, “He must have told nobody. I wouldn’t touch you: you know that. Until the—the Midculter affair.”
“I know, you damned fool,” said Lymond mildly. “That’s why I had to attack Midculter.”
Lord Culter sat up. After a moment he pushed a hand through his fiat brown hair and said bluntly, “What about the setting fire to the castle … ?”
“Green boughs. Good God, Richard: I’ve mastered the art of making timber burn better than that by this time.”
“And the silver?”
This time there was a little pause. Then Lymond said, “You’re going to be annoyed about that. She didn’t tell you, I expect, because she knows what a filthy bad actor you are. Mother got it all back the next day.”
Richard’s stare was embarrassingly concentrated. “And Janet Beaton?”
“Oh. That,” said Lymond bitterly. “That was because I had to drink the whole bloody night through to get enough courage to visit the castle at all. One more skirl and one of my pets was going to slit the lady’s larynx for her. So I did something first. Unfortunately, I was too damned drunk to do it properly. That and the passage with Mariotta: the kind of lunatic blunders that always blemish the high romantic in grim reality.… Come, my friend, my brother most enteere; for thee I offered my blood in sacrifice; and all that. Except that it was Janet Beaton’s blood.”
Richard said mildly, “It wasn’t anyone else’s blood at Hexham,” and saw his brother redden again. “The climax to a series of sordid private fights. Don’t get excited. Erskine got the idea he was carrying out the Third Crusade, but all he carried out was me, the lord be thankit. God, I’ve whined for ten minutes. Bury me at Leibethra, where the nightingale sings.”
As Lymond grew stronger, his brother forced the pace of their discussions and once, out of an obscure train of thought, said, “Francis. Did you ever tell Will Scott how old you actually are?”
Lymond looked blank. “No. Should I?” and Richard grinned.
“Probably not. You appear to be immeasurable in his view, like God and the Devil.”
“A year with Will Scott would make a dayfly feel like Enoch,” said the Master. “Whose side is he on now?”
“Yours, by all accounts,” said Richard dryly. “Buccleuch got him accepted back at Court and Will has taken to advertising your peculiar talents from the four walls in a voice like a Gadwall duck.”
“Don’t be deceived,” said Lymond with equal dryness. “That’s only remorse because he bit me and I didn’t bite back. He’ll settle in time into a decent, douce Buccleuch.”
If Richard thought it unlikely, after a year of Lymond’s company, he said nothing; and was not to know that his brother was watching him. A moment later the Master said equably, “Nobody’s going to hold you to a promise that needs this amount of nursing, Richard. I don’t want my life at the price of anyone’s outraged instincts. It has a rudimentary value in that you were moved to preserve it, but don’t let’s labour the point.”
He was not, clearly, interested in a superficial reassurance; also, his reading was correct. If he produced facts a yard a day like a guinea-worm, Richard didn’t want them. He had promised to free Lymond, and he had no desire to regret it. He said at length, “My instincts are very accommodating.”
“All right, but remember, although you’ve bought the rights of fuel, feal and divot, I shan’t be lying here like an upset sheep forever.”
Richard said, “You think I’ll discard in the perpendicular what I favour in the prone?”
“Not if you talk like that: you’ll want an audience at any price.”
Culter laughed, and it was the end of that particular discussion.
But although Richard forgot it, Lymond apparently did not. Next day he put his theory to the test, dispassionately and with the kind of calculated resolution that still startled his brother. Richard knew nothing until he came back from