Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [78]
Babies bounced and abounded in the Scott household: babies with mouths round and adhesive as lampreys; babies like Pandean pipes, of diminishing size and resonant voice; babies rendering torture and catalysis among the animate, the inanimate and the comatose. The Buccleuchs themselves were totally immune. While their younglings fought, and nurses and tutors swooped and called like starlings, Sir Wat and Dame Janet pursued their own highly individual courses, and talked to each other about whatever came into their heads.
Today, a morose and pallid Friday in November, the subject was Lymond. In a childless oasis at one end of the big hall Sir Wat glowered uneasily in his big chair, feet in furred boots stuck out before him in the rushes, a woollen nightshirt peeping through the folds of his ample damask nightgown, and a variety of dogs heaped panting about his legs. Dame Janet, her gown napped with tufts and trails of wool, was spinning and swearing indiscriminately when the thread broke and when her husband roused her temper.
From the wall behind them both, his eyes still on the battered hangings, Lord Culter said, “I’ve already gathered you have no intention of helping me. I wondered if, perhaps, you meant actively to hinder me instead?”
Sir Wat irritably shoved from one knee a heavy jowl which confidingly and automatically replaced itself, chumbling. “Man, have I to go yap, yap all day with the same tale? I’ve told you. I’m sick.”
Dame Janet gave a bark of laughter. “Sick to the tune of two flounders, a pike, a cod, a quart of claret and a quince pie. Hah! You’ll do yourself a hurt, Wat; forcing the nourishment down at all costs, and you a sick man.”
Buccleuch snapped, justifiably riled, “It’s the English I’m supposed to be ailing for—or am I to live on sops in wine in case Grey of Wilton’s sitting up the kitchen lum? I’ve told you all till I’m tired. Grey wants me. I’ll have to promise something. I’ve asked the Queen and Arran to let me give the Protector some sort of lip service: until I have proper permission I’m ill, and I stay ill. Dod, Culter: have you seen what Seymour and his wee friends from the Lothians did to Cranston Riddell in September? And the Wharton brats and the Langholm garrison popping in and out like hen harriers—three weeks ago they were raiding Kirkcudbright and Lamington. It’ll be Branxholm next, and you’ll wish you’d listened to me when you’re frying like eggs on the saddle roof.”
Lord Culter left the tapestry. He strolled to the fire, turned, and looked down on Buccleuch. “Then stay at home and give me your men and your dogs.”
There was a harried silence. Then Buccleuch said bitterly, “The implication being that I enjoy sitting here on my behind while there’s danger in the wind. Were you at the last Council meeting? Arran’s off to lay siege to the English garrison on the Tay, the Ambassadors are off to ask men and money from Denmark and France. And meantime it’s all the clack that a sort of unofficial hint has gone from Paris to London promising neutrality if the English’ll get out of Boulogne. A fine lookout, isn’t it? And winter here, and no excess of food, and precious few ships getting through the blockade, and half the able men shot to the devil at Pinkie. Be damned to your brother!” said Buccleuch heatedly. “I’ve got my own worries.”
Culter watched him quietly, one hand pattering on the chimney piece. “I’m sure you have. I thought perhaps you might consider me less dangerous to Will than Lymond will be. Or to be less parochial—that you might agree that obstruction of royal messengers and leakage of state information ought to be stopped by responsible people.”
“Responsible! That’s nearly a bad word to a Buccleuch,” said Dame Janet, pouncing as she spoke on a snatch of down. She missed it: it became incandescent and whisked up the chimney. “And there’s Will’s immortal