Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [247]
“Mother!” said Hunter’s voice, half aloud behind her.
There was the briefest pause, and then her quick brain, suddenly showing her his mind, made her twist around. His sword was already half lifted, light stuttering from the blade.
She said rapidly, “I may look simple, but I’m not precisely moonstruck yet. If I don’t come back, you won’t even have a chance to hang, my friend.”
He continued to come. The sword, still half raised, was aimed almost casually at her heart, and his face was quite detached, like a dreamer’s. She drew one quick breath and stood still, her hands open at her sides, her head a little tilted and her lips parted. He walked until he was so close to her that he had to meet her eyes; had to make the small decision that would force the point onward.
Something of the message of the steady blue eyes must have penetrated; something of her unexpected stillness surprised him into a moment’s pause; and Sybilla said quietly in that instant, “I have your charter chest at Midculter.”
She thought she had misjudged it. The sword point wavered and approached and his eyes remained flatly purposeful. Then they came alive again, startled and disbelieving; the sword dropped and he said —and had difficulty in saying—“That isn’t true. I keep my chest in the strongroom of this house. No one—”
“Your mother keeps her recipes there: remember? And I have a very talented Romany on my side, Sir Andrew.… You’ve had dealings with the English, haven’t you, for a very long time? Your visits to the Ostrich put you in no danger—you were already well known in Carlisle. How else did you know Jonathan Crouch was George Douglas’s prisoner? Why did Sir George trouble with you unless he had a fairly good idea you were in the same sweet trade as himself?”
She turned, and walking past where he stood frozen in mid-room, she paused by the window, looking out on the ochre and viridian and sage green of the dusty summer treetops.
“Such a mean, thieving little trade: a dealing in secrets; in hissings and winkings and the selling of men’s bodies, back and forth. And even then, they didn’t pay you well enough. Maybe they realized that you weren’t greatly intimate at Court; that you only touched the edge of what they could already get from Glencairn and Douglas and Brunton and Ormiston and Cockburn and the rest.… So you turned your eyes on my family. Wealth; a pretty heiress; a family feud—who’d be surprised if it had fatal results? And the widow, in due time, would naturally turn to the gentle family friend. Or at the very worst, Francis was worth a thousand crowns to Wharton.…”
He said, “You needn’t elaborate. I know what I’ve done. You’ve told, then. The papers in that chest—”
“Not yet,” said Sybilla, and turned to meet his white face. “The chest will be opened if I don’t come back.”
Tremors were beginning to shake him. He sat again, abruptly, at the table, his eyes fixed on her like stones. “What are you going to do?” Seeing the expression on her face he gave a sort of laugh and bit his lip, stilling the shaking. “What do you suppose my wonderful brother would have done now?”
He was too helplessly self-centred, too rotten, for her to pity him now. She said sharply, “Your mother has a lot to answer for, but if you had the heart of a rabbit, you would have made a man’s life for yourself and let her make the best of it.”
He had some pride left. He said, making no excuses, “Mother knows nothing of this. It will kill her. What—what are you going to do?”
The cool blue eyes rested on his trembling hands. The Dowager said slowly, “Your mother is a sick old woman, and an unhappy one. I don’t envy you the life you’ve led with her, but she need never have become the sort of person she is now.
“Never mind that. She’s going to suffer, but not as much as she might have done. I should like to see you hanged. Because of you, I nearly lost every child I have left: I did lose my grandchild. But that would be an insult to all the magnificent, vicious criminals we already have living freely among us.
“You are not