Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [60]
It was the most expensive-looking jewel Mr. Crouch had ever seen in his life. He looked, suffused with pleasurable excitement, at Sir Andrew. Hunter, his expression at once eager, deprecating and defensive, watched his mother.
“H for Henri, D for Diane de Poitiers!” cried Mr. Crouch. “My dear sir, seldom if ever have I seen such an exquisite piece. A tour de force. A veritable masterpiece. I am surprised,” said Mr. Crouch, taking thought, “I must own, that the French King’s—er—lady should have allowed it out of her hands. A piece of—”
For the second time he was interrupted by his hostess. She raised her black eyes from the gift to her son, and the expression in them deepened at the expectancy in his face. She threw the covering back across the jewel.
“A remarkable piece of vulgarity,” she said. “I fear, Andrew, that a stronger woman might have been able to do more than I to educate your taste a little. It is a great grief to me that I cannot help you more. However, there is no need for you to waste your purchase. I am sure there is some good burgess’s daughter whom you have a kindness for, who would be perfectly satisfied with it. I believe,” she continued without a pause, “that I saw some new arrivals cross the courtyard a few moments ago. I don’t wish to appear to remind you continually, Andrew; but as master here you really must not appear discourteous. I am sure Mr. Crouch will excuse you.”
Mr. Crouch hastily did. Sir Andrew, with an apology, left the room, and Lady Hunter tossed the rejected gift on to her bedside table. Mr. Crouch ventured a remark.
“That’ll likely have cost Sir Andrew a small fortune, now,” he said. “Nor it won’t be easy to resell, I wager.”
The crippled woman directed her unwinking stare at him. He wriggled. “The price of aesthetic education, Mr. Crouch,” she said, “is never small.”
Mr. Crouch (for once) did not feel competent to answer.
Belowstairs, even among the crowded majolica ware, the air was freer, and the need to welcome visitors a blessed distraction. Sir Andrew knew and liked Sym Penango, Sir George Douglas’s secretary: he made him welcome and received his message over a cup of wine, while his men were accommodated in the buttery.
An inquiry about Mr. Crouch? Oh. Did Sir George say from whom?
But Penango had no further information, and supposed Sir George had none either. Presently he excused himself: he and his men were expected at Douglas. In due course the stragglers were collected, wiping mouths on padded sleeves, and the troop rode off into the dusk.
Sir Andrew went thoughtfully upstairs, stopping to relight a torch which had gone out on the landing. Inside his mother’s room it was becoming dark. In the failing light from the windows he could see her, upright in bed, her head turned toward him.
Something struck him vaguely as odd, then he placed it: the miraculous silence. Crouch wasn’t talking.
A closer look showed the prohibition to be quite involuntary. Mr. Crouch was sitting on the floor beside his chair, tied and gagged.
As Sir Andrew took this in, the door behind him banged, locked, and a knee like the hammer of God took him, hard, in the kidneys and hurled him to the floor. His chin hit the blue tiles like a pharmacist’s pestle; he tried, swimmily, to roll over and found himself pinned by a relentless matrix of bones. He heaved, unsuccessfully, felt his assailant groping for purchase to wrench back his arms, resisted, and finally did manage to roll over.
For a moment, the two men breathed the same sweating air. Hunter saw a pitiless mouth, two intent eyes behind a black mask, and a head covered with some sort of woollen cap. The mouth twisted; so did the deadly trained body, and pain leapt from a lock on his knee. Black-mask gave a sudden, triumphant laugh. “The Common Thick-knee,