Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [89]
A chorus of assent bore them two steps up; a flash of the sword drove them three down again. “Such nice, fine, miniken fingering,” said Lymond. “You should skip like Alexander. Where are your ears? The best piper in Scotland: eight warblers between the bars, and eleven if you give him whisky between the second and third variation. Sleep! Whoever slept at the Ostrich between midnight and five in the morning? You’re a trashy, glum company for men of music. Are you awake yet? Then bring the blood out of your feet and up to your fingers. My companion and I will give you a match.”
“Oh, God!” said Molly. “I knew it! I knew it! Stop it, you mad poet, will you?”
“A match?” repeated Green-fustian, out of continuing cries of rage and distress. “Give us the piper, that’s all we ask. Or the pipes. But unhabble the one from the other, for God’s sake. Blood! There’s not a drop of mine moved from one vein to the next since that belly-prophet of a Scotchman corked his mouth with the chanter.”
“All right,” said Lymond. “We have the piper, and you have the women; and here’s the proposal. If you’ve a wrestler among you able to throw Matthew here or myself, he gets free access to Tammas and the pipes. If we throw one of you, we earn the kitty that’s with you. Shoulders once to the floor mean a throw, and no bodily harm to come to the piper. How’s that for a wager?”
The man in green fustian, who appeared to be spokesman for the crowd, grinned and looked around. “I’m for it: fair enough. What about it, dormice? Are you ready to fight for your rights, or d’you like being miscalled by a towheaded daisy with a private banshee?”
There was a roar of response. Scott, watching through the vague fumes of alcohol, saw that the faces were mostly good-humoured: the fancy had fired loose imaginations and the guests, now fully awake, appeared ready for anything. The man in green turned back; above the variations to Spaidsearachd Cloinn Mhic Rath he shouted, “It’s a match. You and your friend to wrestle any of us, turn about for a single fall. If either of you is thrown, the winner gets to silence the piper. If any of us is thrown, we give up any lass we have with us. We’ll play it on the floor, and I’ll stand guarantee for all of us down here.”
Lymond waved assent. The party flowed back down and into the common room in tumult and laughter and a filling of tankards, while a centre space was cleared for the fighters. Lymond held the hilt of his sword to Scott. “Your job is to guard the stairs for the winner.”
Scott eyed the blade. “Up here?”
“Up here. God, I thought you were musical?” Scott closed his eyes and took the sword. Tammas, reaching the third wall, turned and paced steadily back, and Will shuddered and leaned to look over the balustrade.
The transformation was memorable. Lit like a stage, with a tester of candlelight, the improvised wrestling ground was ringed by the audience, hotly vociferous, the girls squealing in flattered excitement. In the centre, white shirts rebuffing the light, Lymond and the tall spokesman stalked each other, arms hanging, on soft stockinged feet. Green-fustian leapt; the two figures hurtled, rolled, separated, joined and clasped. There was a gasping cry, a crash, and Lymond, laughing, stood over a prone figure.
The throw was agreed a fair one. Sally, giggling, wiped her leman’s scratched face, saw him escorted off, shaking his head, and ran upstairs to hang over the gallery with Will. Beside them Tammas, turning smartly, took a deep breath and started, with a nice appreciation, on Cath fuathasach, Pheairt.
Mat took on a stout blacksmith with thews like tubers and threw him in five minutes. Joan came upstairs.
Lymond threw for the fun of it a young clerk and a Dutch pioneer, neither of which had a girl to give up, and retired for Mat who, in conquering a shoemaker from Chester with an agile wrist, inadvertently broke his arm and,