Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [51]
Lord Grey for the first time looked really disturbed. “Not the beer?”
Dudley said, “There’s not a barrel left. Nor any ordnance to speak of, apart from what blew up. And what’s more, no money.”
“What!” The two men stared at one another. This affair was serious. Water was scarce and unsafe: men had to have ale; and the horses needed hard feed to enable them to foray and keep open their communications. The need for arms and food was equally pressing.
Grey was silent for a long time, and then he got up and, walking over to the prone man, stirred him with one foot. This time, the voice was a general’s voice, and the lisp was not even remotely funny. “Where ith the retht of the train, and where are the men who thet out with it?”
The exhilaration had worn off; extreme mortification was biting at the edges of his courage. But he fought hard to keep his eyes calmly on Grey, and if the effort was visible to the soldier’s practised eye, Scott didn’t know it. He said dreamily, “Far, far away! And farther every hour!”
Dudley said sharply, “Ah, then you had others with you who didn’t come to Hume?”
They would be halfway home by now, and surprised that he hadn’t joined them. Then they would find the carts had never been driven to Melrose. And tomorrow, wait in vain for himself and his party. And then, somehow, Lymond would find out: against orders, he had got into Hume … but hadn’t the brains or the guts to get out. Scott braced himself.
“Naturally,” he said. “I hope they keep some beer for me.”
This time he had no trouble in meeting their eyes. After a moment Grey swung to the desk and began writing. “Two men to Berwick for replathementth, two to Roxthburgh, to look out for thignth of ambuth, and dithcover the latht point the train got to.” He finished writing and handed both papers to Dudley. “Right away.”
Then he stood up and came over again to Scott.
“I am thorry you’ve thet thuch a thmall prithe on your life. I cannot afford to feed you and your men with what food we have left. Tomorrow you can ekthpect to meet a thpy’th death. We have a prietht. If you Want your relativeth to know, you had better give him your true name.”
Scott said, “My men are mercenaries. If you pay them, they will fight for you as well as your Germans and Spanish do.”
“Pay them?” said Grey. “With what, prithee?”
Scott was silent, in the bitter awareness that his exercise in self-expression had murdered ten men. Grey addressed the pikemen.
“Lock him up. But away from hith men … they might take advantage of him.”
In the revolting hole they took him to, he had only one comfort. He hadn’t said who he was. If they knew he was heir to Buccleuch, he thought cynically, they wouldn’t let him so much as catch cold. They’d take him to Berwick and use him as a tool to make his father do as they wanted.
For all his airy words to Lymond, he didn’t think for a moment his father would stand by in public and watch him murdered. No. He’d do what the English asked him to do—again. And this time, ironically, he would be the cause of it. If he told them who he was.
He thought, lying bruised on the cold flags: This time tomorrow I shall be out of the whole damned mess. It didn’t help very much.
* * *
Nor did the news that Grey’s small search party had found and brought back the two remaining carts and the original English members of the supply train, found tied up and frozen where he had left them, just off the causeway.
They arrived, packed shivering among the crates, and jumped down from the wagons, shirt-tails flying, to cheer after cheer. There wasn’t a man among them with a pair of hose, breeches or a jerkin on him: their teeth chattered and their feet were blue. Even the masons repairing the explosion breech dropped tools and poured over to watch as the unlucky travellers hopped into the castle. Comment was rife and on well-marked lines.
When the last of the men had gone indoors, Dudley examined the two carts and set a strong guard on them before reporting in high spirits to Grey.
“We’ve got some