Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [9]
“It’s about Lymond,” said Sir Wat grimly, and let fly.
As Mungo Tennant had listened, so Christian Stewart heard the argument in silence, but with a concern and understanding which Mungo Tennant applied to nothing.
Buccleuch ended roaring. “Man, you might as well be in league with Lymond as let others think you are, and the army that fights on suspicion is a whacked army. Look at what’s happening! Five years ago your brother Lymond was found to have been selling his own country for years: he’s been kicked from land to land committing every crime on the calendar and now he’s back here, God forgive him, with filthier habits and a nastier mind than he set out with.
“All right. Meanwhile, what’s left of a national entity struggles on. Half a million folk. And three million English are trying their damndest for the overlordship of Scotland with the hairy natives like you and me kicked out, and the land parcelled out to the Dacres and the Howards and the Seymours and the Musgraves. And in between the raids every landowner between Berwick and Fife is courting England like a pregnant scullery-maid. God knows, I don’t blame them. I’ve taken English money myself to protect my house and my tenants. You promise food and horses and nonresistance and when they invade, you do or don’t lick their boots according to the thickness of your walls and the kind of conscience you have.”
He got up suddenly from his seat on the parapet, and began to pace. “Then we’ve got the Douglases, the beauties, and others like them. They’re the folk who’re accepted as go-betweens with the English in London; who’ve got a kistful of gold, a family tree back to an acorn, and too many men-at-arms to need to tolerate a rough word.
“They get respect from both sides, and money comes pouring into the purse because each faction thinks it’s bought the man’s ultimate loyalty. But Sir George Douglas’s loyalty is to his own house and the devil, and if the devil doesn’t see the Douglases up there at the top of the dynastic dungheap, then to the Pope with the devil. Are ye with me?” asked Buccleuch.
“Yes, I’m with you,” said Lord Culter. “Go on.”
“Right. We’ve all those, and we’ve the rest, like yourself, who carry the throne on their backs from generation to generation—maybe just because you’ve so much at stake in Scotland that there’s no other game worth the risk; still you do it.… We think the Protector’s going to invade. We hope to put an army in the field to stop him at Edinburgh. It won’t be a very good army because it’ll have one eye on the Lothian lairds and one eye on the Douglases. And by God, Richard Crawford,” ended Buccleuch with a growl that lifted the pigeons off the turrets, “if they’ve got to watch you too, there’ll be a wheen of skelly-eyed Scotsmen at the Golden Gates in the next few weeks.”
There was silence, as wily choleric eye stared into bright grey. Then Christian said sharply, “Richard! I smell smoke!”
He had gone in a moment, running across the slats and up, higher, to the battlements. Buccleuch, caught mopping his face, gaped at the girl and at Richard’s vanishing figure. Christian spoke fast. “He came up here because he thought he saw smoke coming from Culter direction.” In a moment, Buccleuch was with Richard on the highest rampart.
The August sun mobilized against them the last furious heat of midafternoon, beating from the crowded roofs and turrets, the grained corbelling and cherry-caulked flanks. To the east lay the roofs of the barony town of Biggar, smoking in the socket of Bizzyberry Hill, and the Edinburgh road. On the south, the horizon was jumbled with hills; footstools before the greater furniture of the English Border. To the north and northwest the roads for Ayrshire and for Stirling girdled the crag of Tinto.
To the west, springing from the base of the castle, the bog rolled, jellied