Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [42]
“Right away!” Sir Andrew got up with rather touching enthusiasm. “I’ll give you a bill for the money now, if I can find paper and ink. Excuse me, sir: and believe me, I’m most grateful.” He betook himself off, shuffling over the rushes a little in his borrowed shoes.
The silence lengthened. Then Sir George Douglas said, “Why so silent, Lord Culter? Don’t you approve of such transactions?”
Culter opened his eyes, and the faintest smile crossed his lips. “Sir, when two friends discuss money, the third friend should invariably be asleep.”
Sir George laughed, and rising, clapped him on a brocade shoulder. “Poppyhead! Get to bed, man!”
* * *
Lady Herries, arranged in antique pose at the breakfast table, laid a large and languid hand on her chest. “Do you think,” said Agnes, gazing hopefully at her troubadour, “do you think I ought to ride your horse today again?”
Lord Culter, who had just finished stuffing himself with baked crane and sack, said robustly, “Not if you want to get to Stirling this week. You’ll be perfectly all right in your own saddle. Anyway, don’t you want to be in time to see the papingo?”
Lady Herries dropped a slice of bread, instantly lost to the dogs, and in ringing tones unsoftened by immersion, demanded data. “Is it a real parrot?”
“Quite real,” said Sir Andrew solemnly. He put down his tankard. “Bright blue and yellow, with a beak like Buccleuch’s.”
She said with vigour, “My faith, I should like a papingo. I wonder how you feed them. What a waste to kill it! I suppose they’ll hang it on a high pole?”
“They will. And my Lord Culter and a number of other gentlemen will shoot at it. And there’ll be wrestling, and throwing, and tilting at the ring, and running, and prizes given; and then a fair all afternoon and half the night …”
Agnes snapped him up. “A fair!”
Remembering something, Hunter looked across her head. “By the way, Richard: I hope you won’t be fool enough to … that is, your womenfolk are pretty anxious about Lymond.” He broke off, daunted by Culter’s continued silence. “Oh, well. None of my business. She’ll tell you herself.”
Culter stirred and raised his eyes. They fell on Agnes, looking at him with rather a silly expression. He smiled at her. “Child, relations are the devil. Think yourself lucky yours don’t bother you. Will you come and see me shoot at this wretched bird?”
This was self-sacrifice with a vengeance. Sir Andrew threw his lordship a commiserating grin, and felt it stiffen on his lips at the look in the other man’s eyes. Hot water under cold ice, then, he thought. He wasn’t surprised.
* * *
“And there they go, poor dears,” said Sir George. He watched the two parties ride down the long, wet avenue and then leave the Drumlanrig policies—Hunter to the northwest; Culter and the girl for the Dalveen road.
The Earl of Angus, who hadn’t bothered to get up, grunted from the fire. “Pity the river wasn’t a lot higher. That whelp Culter’s done a lot of harm in the south.”
“Don’t be crude.” Sir George admonished his brother, moving away from the window. “All the same, I wish that damn fellow Lymond would get on with it. Can’t we induce him to be a little more persevering?”
Sir James said, “We can’t contact him: you know that. No one can.
“Well, one man could,” pointed out Angus. “That brat Will Scott apparently met him in broad daylight, as plain as a fishwife on Friday.”
“Proving only that Lymond wanted to be met,” said Sir George. “I wish to God the man would stick to one side. What I couldn’t do with his intelligence system! The Protector told me—he lifted all of Wharton’s campaign gold at Annan, and left your precious son-in-law Lennox black in the face.”
He looked curiously at his brother. “What went on between Lymond and Lennox anyway? If Margaret was involved, you’d do well to hush it up.”
The Earl of Angus brushed this aside. “No one’s going to clap Margaret Douglas in the Tower these days—cousin of Edward of England; a daughter of an ex-Queen of Scotland; the wife of the Earl of Lennox, with a claim to the throne every bit as good as Arran?”
“But not