Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [255]
“I’m sorry,” said Lymond. Passionless devil, thought Lauder. He isn’t sorry. But then, neither am I. I’m trying to hang him, and he’s trying to save his strength so that there won’t have to be an adjournment before he’s ready for it.…
Lymond said, “I was carried away by the strange charm of your reasoning. The unhappy Lord Lieutenant seems to be credited with a fearful grudge against the Buccleuch family. I thought perhaps you had found a dark plot to seize his wife and junior attachments as well.”
The Queen’s Advocate replied without looking up. “But we have been assured that Mr. Scott could not possibly have arrived in time to come to any harm. If he will forgive me, he was presumably merely the bait for his father.”
“Non minime ex parte, Mr. Lauder. The boy would have been ten times simpler and ten times safer to capture as well as being a much more telling weapon. If we may separate the facts from the faculae we seem to have this.
“One, both before (at Hume) as I think I can prove, and after (at Hexham) as Mr. Erskine has proved, Lord Grey and I were enemies. Two, by failing to keep his part of the bargain at Heriot, Lord Grey had clearly no plans for collaborating with me in the future. Three, some of your prisoners, whose names I shall give you, will tell you that the English army had no orders to support Lord Grey in his supposed ambush, and that the dispatch of a troop was an afterthought due to their suspicions of me.
“Four, as Sir Wat has already stated, the men left by Lord Grey made no effort to capture him or my brother, but fled before them. Five, far from being caught between two fires, I had hoped my promised interview would enable me to reinstate myself with my brother and his friends, in which case I had nothing to fear from them. And lastly, Sir George Douglas, who was detained by Lord Grey during one of his embassies to England at that time, was present at Heriot, and if he will do so, can vouch for the fact that the only bait in the trap was myself.”
Henry Lauder pushed a hand through his sparse hair. Open your mouth too far and someone will fill it with rubbish. He wondered briefly what hold the man had on Sir George to risk citing him as a witness, and cynically applauded the tactics. Everyone knew Douglas played on both sides. By preserving his fictitious character Lymond had made it easy for him to co-operate.
He did. After the briefest silence Sir George leaned back in his chair, ruby flashing, and said, “That is quite true. Mr. Crawford was actually tied up as a prisoner all the time he was with Lord Grey. Bowes, who led the ambush, appeared to be genuinely startled by Buccleuch’s appearance and might well have been captured but for the arrival of other troops.” He paused and added mildly, “I can also confirm the attack on Hume. Mr. Crawford is a fluent Spanish speaker and was identified by Lord Grey in my presence as the leader of the raid.”
It was too risky to take him up on it. The Advocate to the Crown swallowed defeat gracefully. He bore no grudges: the exercise of his wits against a quick and able man was the finest excitement he knew. He said, “Well, Mr. Crawford: we must concede that you seem to have an answer for everything. It will be a pleasure to see what you make of the more serious charges on the list which of course we have still to deal with. In the meantime, I should like to hear about the matter of the Earl of Lennox.”
This time the accusation was simple. In 1544, prior to the Earl’s defection to England, the Master of Culter had been on the friendliest terms with him, had stayed with him at Dumbarton and thus shared, it was alleged, in his treason. What had Mr. Crawford to say?
Time, precious and profligate, was wasting before their eyes.
The heat, girdered with tension, crept like wadding into