Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [96]
“In this weather? No, darling. Father doesn’t like wearing his tarry shirt unless he has to.”
“Play backgammon?”
“Father disapproves of gambling with people who play better than he does.”
“Make us a new song?”
“Now that,” said Kate, “is a harmless, genteel and civilized occupation for an unemployed gentleman. Certainly, he might make us a song.”
Gideon Somerville laid down Wharton’s notice and gazed at his wife and daughter. “I may be old and unemployed, but I am not yet reduced to being administered totally from above, like a worthy but derelict sundial. Not yet. I am not going to compose a song for you. Or if I am, the idea will strike me of its own accord.”
“Today,” said his wife, “Father is in a tetchy mood. Give him food, listen to what he has to say, but ask no questions, even intelligent ones.” And she grinned at her husband.
Kate Somerville in her twenties was a neat brown creature with melting brown eyes and the temperament of a mature and witty old lady. All her life, and not least by Gideon, Kate had heard herself summed up as “sensible;” and no one, not even Gideon, guessed how she disliked it. An unusual blind spot, for Somerville was of all things perceptive: in his wife’s present smile he saw at once the reflection of his own uneasiness, and got tragically to his feet.
“All right. I know my place. To the music room!” he observed, and had the satisfaction of seeing his wife and daughter laugh and make with one accord for the door. Soon Lord Wharton’s summons and the importunities of the Lord Lieutenant alike had vanished from his head, and as the winter rain fell on Flaw Valleys and its gardens and yards, on the stout, skeletal barrier trees and the Tyne, distantly hissing, and on the brown, patched hills and moors beyond, the Somervilles wrote and read and made music like bells in a campanile, and ignored the summons to Lord Wharton’s attack.
But no English family within striking distance of the Scots Border ever sold its ears completely to pleasure. Kate, listening to the concert from her adjoining bedroom, heard voices outside, and against the sound of Gideon’s voice warbling happily (“Sir, what say ye? Sing on, let us see”) she distinguished one of his men below, calling. (“Now will it be, This or another day?”) She nodded encouragingly, shut the window, and returning to the next room, interrupted Gideon ruthlessly.
“Come on, Chanticleer. There’s a crisis in the farmyard.”
He followed her down.
An agitated crowd of men broke the news. “It’s the horses, sir! Someone’s got into the stables and taken the lot. There’s not a beast in sight, sir!”
Gideon questioned them sharply. They had seen no one. The groom in charge had been felled from behind and could tell nothing. They had heard the drumming of hoofs and had run after, to see a pack of scared horses sweeping down on the gatehouse. There, the guards had rashly run out and had been engulfed; in spite of them the gates were opened and the herd disappeared down the road.
“And what about—” began Gideon, and stopped. “You—and you—and you!” he said sharply. “Shouldn’t you be elsewhere?”
As he spoke, a tumbling figure appeared, calling. Kate, standing quietly in the background, clicked her tongue. “I thought so. Your sly old nags have been decoys for your cattle, Gideon. Someone’s emptied the byres while all our sleuthhounds were sniffing after hoofprints.”
She was right. Someone had not only emptied the byres, but stripped the farm of its livestock. Every sheep, every cow, every heifer on Flaw Valleys had gone.
The men of the household were seldom berated, but not because Gideon Somerville was incapable of straight talking when he felt like it. They listened, and then ran like hares under his voice to beg and borrow every horse his neighbours could muster and to collect food and weapons for the long chase that might be ahead.
Gideon turned to his wife. “I’m sorry, lass. Employment for the unemployed gentleman after all.”
“Oh, well. Everyone else has suave, cosmopolitan sheep: why not us? The Millers at Hepple have a ewe that