Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [77]
“… The sands are running out? Well, if they are, it’s only from one end of a great silly pot to the other. Someone’ll come and stand us on our heads, and the sand’ll run back again—same sand—same span of time, all the grains saying excitedly to one another: Hullo! It’s you again! Met you in ’47 in a fortuneteller’s booth in Stirling!”
“I’m not sure,” said Christian carefully, “but I think that’s cheap theology.”
“Well it’s a poor apologue, I agree,” he said, “and a sorry kind of note to leave on. All right. Cancel the sand.
“Li jalou
Enviou
de cor rous
morra
et li dous
savourous
amourous
m’aura …
“No, dammit,” he said, dissatisfied. “Too fleshly a note altogether
“Goodbye!” she said, feeling behind her for the curtain.
“My measures are all mad. They prick, they prance, as princes that were woud … Goodbye,” he said, part-returning from sunny contemplation among the iambics. “There’s Johnnie coming now: he’ll see you out.” He clasped her hand briefly. “I may not see you for a while, but perhaps I shall write.”
“Write!”
“Yes. It’s all right. I mean that—I haven’t forgotten: wait and see,” he said rapidly. “Till then!”
There came a firm grasp on her elbow from behind, and Bullo led her to the outer tent. For half a dozen paces she could still hear his voice, soulfully declaiming, half to himself, she thought:
“And evermore the Cukkow, as he fley
He seyde Farewell, Farewell, papinjay!”
Johnnie Bullo, his eyes speculative, watched the party go from the doorway of the tent. Then he returned inside, lit another candle, and opened the inner flap.
The man inside, deftly booting one supple limb, looked up.
“Have they gone?” said Lymond. “Thank you, Johnnie. Your performance with the first two filled me with respect. For chastely phrased double-entendres you have no master.” He adjusted his straps. “Three well-endowed kitties.”
“Well, two of them were well enough,” admitted the gypsy. “The wee one had a face like a pound of candles on a hot day.”
“The devil she has.” Lymond put one spurred foot on the floor and reached for the second boot. “The wee one, as you call her, has a face informed with beauty, wisdom and wit. In other words, my Johnnie, she’s thirteen, free and stinking rich.”
“Oh. Then you’ve had a good day of it, I suppose.”
“Then you suppose wrong,” said Lymond shortly. “I’ve had a damned carking afternoon. A Moslem would blame my Ifrit, a Buddhist explain the papingo was really my own great-grandmother, and a Christian, no doubt, call it the vengeance of the Lord. As a plain, inoffensive heathen, I call it bloody annoying.”
He stood up. “Where’s my cloak? Oh, there. I’m off, Johnnie. A small memento on the table.”
Bullo saw him to the doorway. “You’re off south tonight?”
“I am. There’s a gentleman I have to meet on the Carlisle road on Friday.” The Master glanced once, with calculation, around the tent; and then brushed past the gypsy. Without further leave-taking, he had gone.
“And not to the gentleman’s profit, either,” said Johnnie to himself with a grin, watching the nondescript figure merge into the dark crowd. The grin became wider, became a laugh, became a convulsion of secret mirth.
Johnnie Bullo, hugging himself, went back into the tent.
Part Two
THE PLAY FOR
GIDEON SOMERVILLE
CHAPTER I: Smothered Mate
II: Discovered Check
III: French Defence
I
Smothered Mate
The sixthe pawne … resembleth the Taverners, hostelers and sellars of vitaylle … Many paryls and adventures may happen on the wayes and passages to hem that ben herberowed within their Innes.
1. Removal of a Blocking Knight
LORD CULTER, gently examining the tapestries in the big hall at Branxholm, was talking in a soft and savourless voice which his host found peculiarly uncomfortable.
Branxholm, great throne of the Buccleuchs, lay twelve miles from the English border. The present house, less than twenty years old, was built from the crusts of the Branxholms which had already been