Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [80]
Lady Buccleuch, walking with her guest to the yard, was in no carefree mood either. “Wat has a tongue on him like an anteater, and he doesn’t much care what he does with it. Damn it, I like Will. He’s as much to me as any child of my own.”
“Buccleuch understands that, of course,” said Richard. “All he’s concerned with is protecting the boy, after his fashion. But the brutal fact is that there is no protection. I tell you, Lymond has taken three months to kill all the years of my childhood. He’ll destroy Will Scott in a week.”
Not the statement but the expression of it moved her. She valued him sufficiently not to show it, but said flatly instead, “You don’t need to convince me. I’ll go further and say I’d stop at nothing—nothing at all—to part Will from the Master.”
Richard was silent. Lady Buccleuch waited, then trapped an arm, and with it, his eyes. “God—if your conscience is as tender as that, I’ll say it. I know what’s good for Buccleuch. One of these days he’s going to catch up with Will, and when he does, he’ll take good care that you don’t get to hear of it. But there’s nothing to stop me from telling you—Wait, now! Wait and hear me. Lymond dead means Will captured and facing his deserts. Buccleuch’s afraid of just that thing; but surely nothing could make it clearer to England that Will has been acting without sanction? And no one, surely, on the Scottish side is going to hurt Buccleuch’s oldest son—the more so since his venture at Hume. That’s common sense; and being so, I haven’t the slightest compunction in going behind Wat’s silly back. Do you agree with me?”
There was another pause. Finally Richard said, “I do, of course. But—I’m sorry—I can’t see myself entering into a kind of conspiracy against Wat. Not when his own views are quite clear. Persuade Buccleuch of all you’ve just said, Janet, and then I’ll be glad to get all the help I can from both of you.” He mounted, and eyed her from the saddle. “Janet Beaton: go in and manage your man. Then I’ll discuss it with you.”
Lady Buccleuch’s face split into its disarming grin. “Och, I’ve finished discussing it,” she said. And smacking the rump of his horse, she waved him goodbye.
2. Irregular Partie Between Two Masters
Three days later, the land was choked with fog, consuming the sight from the eye and the air from the nostrils of Scot and Englishman alike. In the two estuary forts the militia were hagridden in the white gloom by the creak of marauding rowlocks; Hume and Roxburgh went red-eyed to bed, and the Borderers lay sleepless at night with their swords and dirks warm about them. The Peel used by Lymond’s men was likewise lost and cradled in fog. In the ruinous hall of it, the heir to Branxholm was playing cards with every mark of professional ease and skill.
“Play the eight,” advised Mr. Crouch intelligently. “Then Matthew can put down his ten.”
Turkey Mat, flinging down his cards, dragged a horny palm over his bald head and breathed like a sailing skiff, lee rail under. “Fancy, now: I had the queerest notion there that you were out of this game.”
Mr. Crouch was unperturbed. “I am. You told me yourself to keep off, or you’d play the next with my chitterlings.”
Turkey, grunting, unbuckled a leather purse at his belt, reversed it, then let it fall with an eloquent flop on the table. “And you needna skin your nose looking for the reason,” said he. “It’s the ones with the smooth pansy faces that turn out to be the know-alls at cards. Three months’ wages off me in as many minutes, and my very breath pledged before it comes out between my teeth. Englishmen? Sharks! And the cooing voice on them like a bishop piping for his red bunnet.”
“Your mistake.” Will Scott, sprawled elegantly over a chair, had in two months found a certain style, and was enlarging on it. “Next time look at its teeth before you fleece it.”
“You can talk.” Turkey eyed the pile of money in front of