Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [27]
It was a cultured voice, with no inflection which would have seemed out of place at any point north of the Tyne. Like the jewelled aiglettes it announced consequence, character and money. Considering it, she spoke reassuringly. “Better not move. There’s a bump on your head like the Old Man of Storr.” And to save him time and breath she added, “I’m Christian Stewart of Boghall. My lad over there picked you up off the moor.”
There was a long pause; then he spoke, clearly with his head turned toward her. “Bog—Bog … ?”
“Boghall. Yes. You were thoroughly cold and damp, and here’s Sym with some broth for you.”
Unexpectedly, underneath shock and weakness there was the accent of laughter. “Think of the Cauldron of Hell,” remarked their prisoner, “and you have my inside arrangements. But I’ll try. Like the spider, I’ll try. That lightlie comes will lightlie ga … steady … That’s it. I can feed myself—or can I? I’m so sorry. The counterpane is not improved by spilt broth.”
He ate, and much intrigued, Christian waited. At the end, he spoke again. “I was not, I hope, wearing a nightshirt when discovered?”
An artless gentleman. Christian followed the lead. “Your clothes are drying, sir. Your weapons were impounded when we found you were English.”
“English! Lucifer, Lord of Hell!” (Here was passion.) “Do I look like an Englishman?”
“I,” said Christian with wicked simplicity, “am blind. How should I know?”
Used rarely and with reluctance this was, she had found, the infallible test. Braced, she waited: for remorse, embarrassment, dismay, pity, forced sympathy, naked fear.
“Oh, are you? I’m sorry. You hide it extremely well. Then what,” he asked anxiously, “made your friends think I was English?”
Exquisitely done, my young man, thought Christian. She said aloud, “Well, to begin with, you were wearing an English cloak. We’ve disposed of that for your own sake. Feeling in Boghall about the English has been running gallows high since Lord Fleming was killed. You’re safe in this room with Sym and myself, but I shouldn’t advise you to attract the attention of anyone else in the castle.”
“I see. Or I shall meet my fate. Without pitie, hanged to be, and waver with the wind. My beard, if I had one—Lord, I nearly have—is full young yet to make a purfle of it, even to replace the one I’ve stained. And why, Mistress Stewart, should you and your henchman trouble to defend me from death and horrible maims?”
“What a suspicious mind you have.” Blandly, Christian matched metre with metre. “Why do you think? For gold, for gude; for wage or yet for wed?”
“I think no such thing: you malign me, I assure you. Every coherent sentiment escaped from the louvre at the back of my head long ago, and I am swimming in a sea of foolishness. I’ve already forgotten what we’re discussing.”
Simon Bogle, a single-minded person, had not. “Lady Christian and I,” he said dourly, “were wondering what your name and style might be?”
In a feverish silence, the young man stirred restlessly. “Lady Christian. Damnation. She has a title and I don’t know it. She lives in a bog; and of this also I am ignorant. Q.E.D. I cannot be Scots. Therefore why your excessive kindness … Oh God! Of course. Ransom.”
“And natural virtue. For gold and for gude, in fact.” Christian, visited by an unworthy satisfaction, was magnanimous. “But as part owner of the property, I think we should defer speech until you’re more rested. You’ve had a sore knock there.”
“Several sore knocks,” he said, and fell silent, rousing himself only as she felt for and took away pillows. “Don’t you want my name?” And dreamily, “This officer, but doubt, is callit Deid.…”
“No.” Aware of Sym’s silent resistance, she spoke firmly. “No, never mind. Not just now,” feeling exhaustion and faintness overwhelm him. Even so, he managed a gruesome chuckle.
“O lady: nor later. Deceit deceiveth and shall be deceived. It’s no good and I can’t prove it’s no good: I shall be as much use to you as the Nibelunglied. For I can recall nothing … nothing … not the remotest