Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [68]
The Dowager was enchanted. “So good of them. Have you any money, Tom dear? I seem to have spent all I had with me.”
It took their concerted efforts, hindered considerably by the leaking ox feet, to get at Tom’s pouch and extract from it the necessary number of angels. “Now, straight home,” said the Dowager, a suspicion of tiredness making itself heard in her voice at last; and they made for the end of the Square, arm in arm, and started down Bow Street.
Dandy Hunter met them at the bottom. They saw him from some distance away, boring weevil-like through the thickening crowd, and waving.
“Just as well he’s as flat as a turbot,” said Tom Erskine judicially, watching him. “That’s twice he’s breenged through his betters today.”
But by that time they were close enough to see his face.
“Something’s happened,” said the Dowager in a voice notable for its unsurprised grimness, and led the way quickly toward him, clutching all her parcels as if these, at all costs, she would preserve.
* * *
Owing simply to Lord Culter’s presence, the October Papingo Shoot moved through its stately preliminaries to the beating of a fierce expectancy. Mortal challenge was not only piquant but eerie when the challenger was also wanted for treason.
Tension brought the automatic reaction. Ten thousand heads, capped, hooded, bonneted and bare, bobbed and jerked as the betting surged from point to point, fed by rumour: he isn’t among the competitors; they’ve got guards all around the field; Culter’s shooting twentieth.
The odds rose.
“The brother’s game-shy, man: a shirker. Never finished a contest in his life.” The odds rose higher.
Andrew Hunter, standing between Richard’s wife and Lady Herries, cursed Tom Erskine continuously under his breath. Mariotta would not go home. Staring in a hypnotized way at the side view which was all she could see of her husband, she seemed unaware, he was thankful to note, of what else was going on around her.
Agnes Herries, however, was both aware and equipped with opinions on the subject, which palled only as the drawing of lots came to an end. Listening with half an ear, Hunter noticed she was now complaining of the viewpoint she had been given. This, since he could do nothing to improve it, he ignored.
“It strikes me,” said Lady Herries, reminded suddenly of a sore subject, “that a Ward of the Crown might as well be a by-blow for all the difference it makes. A girl Ward, that is. Who wants to marry John Hamilton? Not me. I’ve never seen the man, even.”
A more unsuitable place in which to air her opinions about her contracted fiancé could hardly be found. With the speed of a watchful mother, Sir Andrew said, “Look: there’s Buccleuch.”
He failed, as better men had done before him. “Yes. But if I’d been a boy,” pursued Lady Herries, intent on her theme, “I’d never have been contracted to John Hamilton.”
This penetrated even Mariotta’s preoccupation. She turned, diverted against her will. “Well, that’s true enough.”
“What I mean is,” said the Ward of the Crown, frowning, “that people have no business to settle other people’s future for them when they’re five years old. It’s a typical man’s scheme,” said Agnes ruthlessly. “It’s not for our own good; it’s no use saying it is. It’s to add to their rotten lands, or because they need to carry on the family name, or because it’ll bring them enough money or tenants or rights of lineage to stop a war, or start a war, or carry out their own uninteresting masculine affairs.”
There was a short, respectful silence. “Well,” said Mariotta soothingly, “I wasn’t contracted when I was five.”
“Yes,” said Lady Herries with devastating frankness. “That’s just what I mean. Trust a man to take advantage. Brood mares and—”
Whether her own undeniably single-track brain or Sir Andrew called a halt first, it would be hard to say; but in the net result the Baroness shut her mouth rather suddenly and Hunter