Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [244]
“Out of pity?” said Mariotta. “My dear fool, why am I fighting you and denying you and hurting you except that I am so afraid of you, and of myself; because I love you far too well for peace and gentle harmonies.…
“It’s all right. My dear, it’s all right. I am here: I love you: I will not leave you. None shall take it from us now.”
He had dropped head and shoulders to the bed, one hand gripping the silk and the other holding her outstretched hand as if it were his hope of eternity. Mariotta brought her other arm to encircle his shoulders and comforted him.
* * *
Roused very early next morning by Tibet, in tears, Sybilla received her son in her room.
She had risen and put on a vast brocade bedgown. With its stiff silk puckered about her, she sat in her high chair like Demeter about to breakfast on Pelops, her face in shadow from the paling windows. Richard bent over and kissed her.
She surveyed him, silently absorbing the pleasing, tranquil assurance of him and the woollen robe he wore. Her own mouth relaxed, and she touched his cheek as he dropped to a stool at her feet and hugged his knees. “You’ve made your peace. What odd children I have! I’m so glad,” she said.
“Could I have leave to stay, do you think?” asked Richard. “What you’ve done about the steadings I hate to think. Salted all the sheep and given away the pigs and allowed the salmon to be poached … I didn’t kill him.”
“I know. You wouldn’t have kissed me, would you?” said Sybilla coolly.
Richard flushed. “He’s—Francis is in Edinburgh. Tom would tell you, he was badly hurt in England. Then he was taken—gave himself up—as we were coming north. I’d planned to get a ship for him and help him to leave.”
Some of the natural colour had returned to Sybilla’s fine skin. She drew a finger down his cheek and said, “That was remarkably well done, no matter what came of it. You won’t regret it, either. What will they do?”
“The warrant is out for letters relaxing him from the horn. That lets them bring him to trial before Parliament. In two weeks’ time, probably.” His eyes searched her face. “There isn’t much hope, you know. But to be honest, I don’t think he greatly cares.”
For the the first time, he saw a spark of fear in her eyes. “Why? Because of Christian?”
“A number of things, I think …” He waited, and then said, “Will you go and see him? Soon?”
“No. I should only weaken him now,” said Sybilla curtly. “And in any case, I have a little travelling to do, and I must be back in good time.”
“Travelling?” Never in this world would he understand her.
“Yes, my darling,” said Sybilla. “And someone, as Buccleuch would say, is going to loathe my guts before I’ve finished with them.”
IV
Baring
Wherefore the nobles and the peples ben sette in their proper places.…
They that ben sette on the other syde kepe the Quene.
And thus kepe they alle the strength and fermete
of the royaume.
1. Remiss
THAT year, as in other years, death was not man’s ultimate terror and chief source of his disquiet. Death was cheap and quick, indiscriminating and often friendly. You could die in a day, from the pest. You could die in a second in the innocent hub of a brawl. Children in thousands never came to life, or lived only hours. You could die in battle, and you could die at the minor instance of the law, for cheating and stealing and concealing disease. Death was better, often, than pain, mutilation and deformity; than starvation in banishment; than the intangible evils of sorcery and enchantment. People died suddenly, from week to week and month to month, and their disappearance had to be accepted. Death was cheap and quick.
In time of siege and foreign occupation, the doom and death of a traitor might go unnoticed. But many in Edinburgh lost fathers or brothers at Solway Moss, and had heard Carrick Pursuivant at the Cross six years before charging and warning the traitor to appear.
Twice they had summoned the absent Lymond to the diet of his libel, and twice the record book had noted, The aforesaid being summoned did not appear. For