Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [71]
The silence was absolute; the stillness profound. But for the ruffling of the trees and the gentle singing of the perch stays, a man might have thought himself deaf. He nocked, raising his arm with the poetic, compact motion of the master bowman; the thin, echoing official voice called “Fast!;” he drew, held lovingly, and loosed.
His arrow leapt; but another was already airborne. Slender, deadly, red as hot steel in the sun, a shaft came hissing from the farthest suburbs of the crowd. There was never an instant’s doubt of its destination. It drove into the crossbar, slicing off the crude ties with a razor barb, freeing the papingo in the instant that Culter’s arrow flew toward it.
From the audience, a sea of upturned faces, rose a breathy gasp. Weak and stiff from its bonds, the bird jerked grotesquely, fell, wavered, flapped; and with a sudden strong upbeat, recovered itself.
As if over its corporate soul the crowd, mesmerized, yearned over the bright wings. At its back Andrew Hunter, his face set in anger, had already reached the higher ground, racing; thrusting; running free like a madman.
They hardly noticed him. For as the parrot, gaining height, swooped wildly away from the field, a second arrow breathed by and feathered into its mark. The papingo, transfixed in its blundering flight, stopped, tilted, and dropped like a stricken star to the ground. A yellow feather, wanton and unseemly, danced its way after.
Then, on the wave of a roaring uprush, the crowd was moved to action: too late, for the third arrow was already launched.
It arched in the air, a gleaming parabola, the feathers susurrant with curses, and found this time its designed, human mark.
Culter, standing white, taut and watchful at the base of the perch, flung out an arm blindly, held himself a moment upright against the pole, then slowly folded against it and thence to the ground.
2. Check and Cross Check
That evening, bright in the dusk, a great fire glowed in the parlour at Bogle House, bestowing light, warmth and comfort on its occupants. It flickered on the faces about it: the Dowager, Mariotta, Buccleuch, Hunter, Agnes Herries, Christian and Tom Erskine. It glittered on the table beside it, on which lay three arrows, two of them dark with blood, a longbow and a leather embroidered shooting glove. It flared, lastly, on the calm face of Lord Culter, lying stiffly bandaged on a long settle before it.
For the arrow which struck Richard came from a great distance and had to fly over many heads to an almost invisible mark. Unlike the first two, it was not faultless. It had dropped, losing power, and had torn its way across cheek and ear to bury itself beside the collarbone. And so, again charmed, again flouted by tragedy, Lord Culter was able, studying the exhibits on the table, to hold a post-mortem on a parrot.
“An English bow: that’ll be part of the booty from Annan, I expect. And three arrows from the same source, fully barbed … very naughty, in a perch contest. And a glove.”
He picked it up and sniffed at it. It was a right-hand glove in white buckskin, its newness betrayed by the absence of rubbing on the first three fingers.
“Discreetly perfumed,” observed Lord Culter, turning it over. “Beautifully stitched, and some jewellers’ work on the back, to boot. A nice toy, if you can afford it—and since friend Lymond presumably paid for it with my money, he can. God!” he said. “I’d give my chance of heaven, nearly, to match against him, perch or clout.”
Tom Erskine observed critically, “Wind behind him, of course; and he had a bit of elevation too, hadn’t he, Dandy?”
Sir Andrew nodded. “He shot from behind one of the dressing tents, just where the ground rose to the wood. I was just too late getting there. Found the stuff where he dropped it.…” He groaned. “We all underrated him. I worked out that he couldn’t possibly shoot from among the crowd. It didn’t cross my mind that a first-class marksman