Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [25]
Lymond’s voice was absent. “Well, he’s certainly paying me. Once our friend Bannister reaches Annan, the road north is going to be a little crowded, what’s more.”
Culter moved involuntarily. “Is the Protector then in Stirling?”
“Yes, of course,” said Lymond readily. “Take care: you asked me a question; it’s the thin edge of the wedge. What’s so interesting about the Protector being in Stirling? … Oh, Richard!” he said with an air of sudden discovery. “You haven’t packed the ladies off to Stirling for safety, have you?”
Lord Culter, guarding his eyes, was speaking mechanically. “You should be delighted.”
“Well, it opens up a number of interesting possibilities, doesn’t it?” said Lymond. “I wonder if the Protector insists on merchetis, and his princely free access to the bedchamber, or anything novel like that. I used to know a number of women who would be all the better for a fate plus mal que morte. Which brings me rather to the point: Changeons propos, c’est trop chanté d’amours.…” And he laid a gentle hand on his sword.
With an uneasy twist of relief, Scott recognized the climax, and drew a fortifying breath. At the same instant, Lymond said suddenly, “Richard, my child, have you by any chance more brains than I gave you credit for?”
The words were hardly out when the rumour of noise, the furtive boot on the heather and the laboured breath resolved themselves into a torrent of crumbling sound as Erskine’s incoming Scottish force flooded the wood.
In the last flare of the torches, Scott saw Lord Culter, his face alight, snatch a bow and raise it. Passion lent to the silent tongue the drama once derided by his brother. “Your turn now, Lymond! And by God, before I let you take over my shield and my bed, I’ll give you one night to remember the head of your family by!”
And as he swung his horse frantically and went crashing and bumping outward through the confusion, Scott also heard Lymond’s reply.
“All right: a challenge, Richard! I’ll meet you at the Popinjay in the next Stirling Wapenshaw, and we’ll try then who’s Master!”
He laughed, and the excitement in the laugh was the last thing Scott remembered.
II
Blindfold Play
And hit is not fittynge ne convenable thynge
for a woman to goo to bataylle for the
fragilitie and feblenes of her. And therefore
holdeth she not the waye in her draught as the
Knyghtes doon.
IN THE long grass by the water’s edge a man lay half buried, with small life moving past his head and a tarnishing damp spread into his clothing. Behind him, four miles of bog rolled and steamed in the morning sun. Ahead, the turgid waters of the moat sucked and plopped in a leisurely way against the grazing meadows and scrub which lay behind Boghall Castle. The sun moved.
At the castle, from which Richard, Lord Culter, had once watched the smoke of his mother’s burning house, the watch changed with weary abuse on both sides. “If one more old body,” said Hugh the Warden to his junior, “asks me to send a horseman to Pinkie to inquire after her great-nephew Jacob, I’ll skin her alive. Old quarry-faced Wharton on the road north, and ten men and twenty-two women to hold this castle and look after all of Biggar …”
But breakfast and a pint of beer must have modified his temper, because he was patient with the next anxious inquirer. “Don’t fret. The boys’ll be back all right.”
He was reminded as he spoke that some were already back: the barber-surgeon with his knives and ointments had already made the double journey twice between the castle and the thatched houses of Biggar. Hugh thought of that: he thought of his master, the dead Lord Fleming; he swore loudly and shot up to the watchtower, there to gaze earnestly and hopefully at the unstirring south.
“Oh, God! Let them come!” said he, addressing the hills. “Oh, God! Let them come, and me and Dod Young’ll make collops of them!”
The morning dragged on. At noon Simon Bogle, bodyguard, got his lady’s permission to fish for