Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [248]
She walked to the desk and drawing a paper in front of him, laid a pen beside it. “I want one thing,” she said. “And that is a statement exonerating Francis from the things you have done.” And as he hesitated, she said sharply, “Come along! Beside the other things you have done, what do these matter?”
He looked at her with dull eyes, and then, bending, took up the pen and wrote. She read it, sealed it, and put it away. “Yes. It won’t save him, as you may guess … but it will perhaps undo a little of the damage. And now you’d better leave. I’m going to talk to your mother, and then leave for my home. The chest will be opened and its contents published within two days. By then,” said Sybilla, “you should be out of this land.”
He raised his head vaguely, only half understanding. “I may go?”
“Yes. And I wish you well of it,” she said, her eyes hard as sapphires.
She waited until she heard the sound of his horse on the cobbles, and then rising quietly, climbed the stair to his mother’s room.
The terrier had died in the spring, overcome with fat and lack of air.
Since then, Dame Catherine had had no distractions: her son had hardly been at home, and even her books and her paintings and precious pieces of ivory and jade had begun to pall. Longing for company, she welcomed it by releasing the barbs of months of lonely self-torture. Sybilla, sitting quietly by the taffeta-spread bedside, near the heaped-up delicate pillows, listened to Catherine Hunter’s spiced invective against her son, her servants, her surroundings, her illness and finally, as the icy flood reached its spring heights, against her Maker.
The Dowager’s voice cut lightly through the flow. “Why don’t you get them to carry you downstairs?”
The black eyes sneered. “That would be delightful,” said the old woman. “Unfortunately, I am part paralysed, you know.”
“I don’t wonder,” said Sybilla pleasantly. “And if you never try to help yourself you’ll be wholly paralysed soon, and you will enjoy that. I’ve brought you a litter. Two of my men are coming up in half an hour to lift you down.”
A tiny spark of alarm showed in the black eyes, but the grey, crumpled face remained contemptuous. “Money has given you a fine, arrogant manner, Sybilla, but I should prefer you to keep it for Midculter. I hear your son has left his wife.”
“He hasn’t, but you won’t change the subject by being rude,” said the Dowager. “There’s warm fire and a comfortable couch in the hall. You’ll like it very much.”
“Sybilla. I am neither a child nor an imbecile. I dislike being humoured and I particularly dislike being managed. Because of my disability I am unable to leave this room. You can hardly expect me to undermine for your benefit the little health I have left me.”
The Dowager said coolly, “There’s no need to be frightened. Your surgeon has given me full permission.”
The black eyes snapped. “The child is dead, I hear.”
“Yes.”
“Did your younger boy kill it, or did she get rid of it herself?”
“Neither. Don’t be silly, Catherine. You don’t really want me to go.”
“I didn’t say I did. Don’t be too clever, Sybilla.”
The Dowager said, “The child was nobody’s fault, if you really want to know. Mariotta and Richard are together and very happy. Francis is in ward in Edinburgh. He is to appear before Parliament in a week, and we hope very much he will be acquitted.”
The little figure on the pillows looked pityingly at Sybilla. “Acquitted! My dear woman, even the Culters haven’t quite enough money for that.”
“Then we shall have to use our beaux yeux,” said Sybilla placidly. “Perhaps if I made appropriate advances to all Her Majesty’s lords of the Session … Or do you think I should hardly get through them all in a week?”
The quality of the black stare was changing. There was a tiny silence, and then Lady Hunter said in her cutting voice,