Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [29]
“—Therefore?”
“Therefore when I say, as I do, that I have no wish to appear to your friends before my memory comes back, you have no means whatever of proving the honesty of my reasons—”
“Which in fact are … ?”
“Funk,” he said promptly. “Sheer terror of the dark. I don’t like standing outside the door of a crowded room any more than you do, waiting to be pounced on from inside.”
Christian said, “A priest would tell you this was pride and self-conceit.”
“If anyone so described it to you, I hope you impeached him for a pompous liar.”
“My dear man, would you have me excommunicate? It’s a process of hardening one goes through. You would find me hard to shock.”
“And to deceive?”
She smiled, and threw his own quotation back at him. “Deceit deceiveth and shall be deceived. You have an incorruptible voice and a lawyer’s tongue. One thing I commend in you: you refused to add to the sins of the poets. A false pedigree is always worse than none at all.”
“Avoiding your traps, O virtuous lady, O mixt and subtle Christian. But, as you see, I am honest and good, and not ane word could lie.”
She laughed. “I deduce that you’ve lived on Hymettus on honey and larks’ tongues.”
“And can, I suppose, die in a bog as well as anywhere,” he said dryly.
No one likes to appear cheap. Betrayed into archness, Christian caught her temper and said evenly, “I can’t, of course, answer for what will happen to you if I leave before your memory comes back. But meanwhile, until it does, you may have grace to stay anonymous, if you wish.”
She rose, adding briskly, “And meantime, there are many would envy you. Make the most of your freedom, my friend—you’ve more of it than any of us.”
“True. Only lunatics have more. I’m ungrateful to find it intolerable; and more than intolerable, of course, not to know the extent of the burden I’m putting on you.”
Christian had reached the door. She turned, and said ironically, “No burden at all. You haven’t forgotten?
“Ho, ho: say you so;
Money shall make my mare to go.”
She shut the door, smiling, and left him to think it over.
This was Thursday, the 15th of September. Tom Erskine had gone south on Monday: he might very well be back for her any day now.
In the meantime, the demands on her time and her resources were continuous. All the lands of Biggar and Kilbucho, Hartree and Thankerton were in the care of the castle. In the absence of all the able men who had followed Lord Fleming to Pinkie and who had not yet returned—who might never return—the families on these lands must be succoured: given advice, news and medical help as they needed it; and plans made for their reception if the invaders broke through.
For the news from the east was pitiful. The army, ill-assorted and suspicious of itself, had crowned tactical blunder with panic: breaking up on the field, it had given way and had been hunted into extinction. While, forty miles to the north, the Court had found temporary refuge at Stirling, the English Protector, moving victorious toward Edinburgh, had put his horse into empty Leith, camped outside, and embarked on leisurely discussions about its fortification while English ships, sailing unchecked up the east coast, took and garrisoned the island of St. Colme’s Inch, strategic gem in the midst of the Forth estuary north of Edinburgh.
And at any moment, they might hear of the approach from the southwest of Lord Wharton and the Earl of Lennox, and their English soldiers.
The day at Boghall wore on. The strain was bearing on them all: Christian began to feel herself drained of comfort and vitality. In midafternoon, she made time to visit the deserted wing, aware of increasing irritation with the situation. Baulked meantime of his hopes of ransom, Sym might well have tired, she thought, of acting nurse-maid-cum-jailer, and think there would be less danger and more fun if he brought Hugh into the affair. In accepting four years of Sym’s unshakable loyalty, she had discovered his weaknesses. Thinking thus, she