Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [275]
“Your young catachumen played tarocco all night with Palmer to get possession of it,” said the Lord Advocate’s most sumptuous voice. He had found a chair and was lying back in it, grinning benevolently at the ceiling. “By God, I wish you’d take me in hand for six months in that troop of yours. Anyone who can beat Buskin’s brother—”
“Not my doing: we imported a trainer for that,” said Lymond gravely, his skin faltering between red and white, his eyes brilliant. “I don’t think we could teach you much, Mr. Lauder.”
The legal gaze, leaving the rafters, swooped down to the pillows. “Who stole your letter, Mr. Crawford? That damned Douglas woman, I take it.” He paused. “You were very gentle with our friends today.”
Lymond’s thoughts were clearly a thousand—a hundred—miles away. “Our friends … ?”
Wiser than Scott, Henry Lauder ignored the boy’s scowl and talked on. “The Douglases. The Earl of Angus undertook, I believe, to set the crown of Scotland on Henry VIII’s head by midsummer of that year. There was also talk of a secret bond signed by both Sir George and his brother in London, promising all their help to make Scotland Henry’s. The King wouldn’t want that noised abroad at the time.”
“No.” Lymond’s hands still lay on the folded pages of the confession. He lifted the packet, a speculative, balancing finger at each end, and said, “Nothing about the Douglases is news any more. The unpleasant truth is that, being a long-sighted family, they will attach themselves to the winning side, and not necessarily to the side that pays them most.
“When Douglas goes to Berwick as spokesman for the Scottish court, when he comes to Edinburgh sworn to promote the English marriage, both the Protector and Arran know very well he is putting his own words to the song he was taught. Perhaps even words which appear to be his own are sometimes not. These are stormy petrels: they show where the heavy seas are coming from and are to that extent useful. Their transactions shelter under sham diplomacy and they can truly be influenced in one way only, by personal shame. The side which succumbs to the temptation to strip the Douglases naked will lose them, and the considerable power of their men with them. Grey knew that: that is why he handled Sir George so tenderly in spite of the Protector and Wharton.”
Scott said defensively, “My father also got permission to negotiate with the English. To protect his own interests.”
The Lord Advocate smiled involuntarily. “Buccleuch has been driven to doing a lot of queer things to protect his own interests, but no one would ever confuse him with the Douglases. Mr. Crawford is right. The undiscriminating vulture is not our real danger: open scandal would simply drive him into profitless exile again, and would be of no possible advantage to us. Neither should we fear our sturdy patriots who, like your father, are busy with their loyalties in queer and crooked ways. Our danger lies with the men who want to take this country by trunk and limb and wreak it into such a shape that it will fit them and their children for hose and jerkin in their old age.”
“Some of them are sincere,” said Lymond.
“I know: and such men will wreck us yet. Preserve us above all from the honest clod and the ambitious fanatic.”
“There doesn’t seem to be a bewilderment of types left to choose from.”
“The Culters, for example?”
Scott caught up Lauder with angry eyes. “This ill-starred family with a wastrel son?”
The lawyer smiled. “My business is with words, my boy; and the best ones grow like mushrooms on a good bedding-down of law. Your friend used some fairly choice expressions himself.… I admire your gift for commanding loyalty in spite of your tongue, Mr. Crawford. What will you do now?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” said Lymond; and it was clear that he had used the breathing