Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [4]
His hair soft as a nestling’s, his eyes graceless with malice, Lymond was watching him in a silver mirror. Before Erskine could call, Buccleuch and Mungo Tennant had piled in beside him and Lymond had taken two steps to the far door, there to linger, hand on latch and the blade of his sword held twinkling at breast level as they jumped, weaponless, to face him, and then fell back.
“As my lady of Suffolk saith,” said Lymond gently, “God is a marvellous man.” Eyes of cornflower blue rested thoughtfully on Sir Wat. “I had fallen behind with the gossip.… Nouvelle amour, nouvelle affection; nouvelles fleurs parmi l’herbe nouvelle. Tell Richard his bride has yet to meet her brother-in-law, her Sea-Catte, her Sea-Scorpion, beautiful in the breeding season. What a pity you didn’t wear your swords.”
Rage mottled Buccleuch’s face. “Ye murdering cur.… You’ll end this night—”
“I know. Flensed, basted and flayed, and off to hang on a six-shilling gibbet—keep your distance—but not tonight The city is not full great, but it hath good baths within him. And tonight the frogs and mice fight, eh, Mungo?”
“Man’s mad,” said Buccleuch positively. He had managed to pick up a firedog.
“Mungo doesn’t think so,” said Lymond. “His mind is on fleshly lusts and his treasure.” And certainly, the jennet fur at his neck warped with sweat, Mungo Tennant was gaping at the intruder.
Lymond smiled back. “Be careful,” he said. “Pits are yawning publicly at your feet. O mea celia, vale, you know …” And suddenly, it came to Mungo what he was threatening.
“Don’t linger, I pray you, cuckoo, while you run away,” said the sage. Mungo Tennant said nothing. He rushed toward Lymond, collided with Tom Erskine on the way, and falling, sat on the candle. There was a moment’s indescribable hubbub while the three men and the firedog blundered cursing into each other in the dark; then they got to the far door and wrenched it open. The corridor as far as the stairhead was quite empty, and the light feet running downward were already some distance away. They hurled themselves after him.
They were three floors above the ground, and the staircase was spiral. The spilth of Buccleuch’s bellow rattled the pewter in the kitchens; Tom Erskine shouted and Mungo piped like a hen-whistle. The servants on their pallets heard and started up; tallows flared and a patter of bare feet began on the rushes below.
Mungo’s sow heard it too. Drunk as a bishop, she hurtled stairward as the first of the servants arrived. Great blanket ears flapping and rump arched like a Druid at sunrise, she hurled herself at them as Lymond and his pursuers fled down. She bounced once off the newel post, scrabbled once on the flags, trotters smoking, then shot Mungo Tennant backward, squealing thickly in a liberated passion of ham-handed adoration. Mungo sat down, Buccleuch fell on top of him and Tom Erskine swooped headfirst over them both, landing on the pack of unkempt heads jamming the stair foot like stooks at a threshing. Winnowing through them, utterly unremarked in the uproar, was Lymond.
Screaming, squealing and grunting, the impacted cluster swayed on the stairs, torn and surging like rack where the pig unseen hooked the bare feet from under them. Buccleuch was the first to get free, grey whiskers overhanging the swarm like a Chinese kite at a carnival. “Lymond!” he shrieked. “Where’s he got to?”
They scoured the house in the end without a trace of him, although they found Mungo’s steward mute and bound in the pighouse. “Damn it!” said Buccleuch furiously. “The windows were barred and the door lockit—he must be here. Where’s your cellar?”
Mungo’s face was spotty under the pig-spit. “I’ve looked there. It’s empty.”
“Well, let’s look again,” snapped Buccleuch, and was there before Tennant could stop him. “What’s that?”
It was, undoubtedly, a trap door. In bitterest