Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [333]
The sky beyond the river had paled by the time Tobie returned to the tent where Moriz and John were waiting. This time, not only their own men but others were clustered on the churned mud, watching also. Tobie had pulled off his cap, so that his fine hair flew about his round, naked head, and his eyes glinted in their cavities. He spoke loudly enough to be heard by them all.
‘You will all hear in a moment. We have word from England. Gloucester is here not just to take Berwick, but to kill the King and put the Duke of Albany on the throne. This army is too small to stop him. The King is being advised to disband and get back to Edinburgh.’
John said, ‘He refused yesterday.’
Tobie said, ‘It is life or death for him now. If he refuses, he will be overruled. A delegation is going to tell him so.’
‘Led by what brave man?’ asked Father Moriz. But, of course, he knew. Whatever great lords were there—Seton and Lyle, Hepburn and Lord Grey—the volunteer was going to be the same energetic Earl of Angus whose ill-advised raids into England had virtually started the war, and whose present wealth was largely due to the English exile of that other Douglas whose lands he now held. Archibald Douglas, fifth Earl of Angus, had proclaimed that he, and he alone, would bell the cat.
‘Bell the cat?’ had repeated Father Moriz, in a puzzled German way. It was a reference to a fable, he learned. For the sake of the common good, a mouse might brave a cat for such a purpose. So Angus would brave the King, and reverse the fatal advance.
Father Moriz nodded, with every appearance of attention. As they spoke, he could hear single voices, and then others speaking out across the dark meadow, followed by a sporadic rustle of movement. The host was being told. And it was not only the King whom Angus was about to have to bell.
Tobie said, ‘I must go.’
WHEN A KING went to war, the appearance of the royal pavilions was a matter of pride to the master workmen who created and cared for them, from the masts and gilded vanes and turned tops to the ornaments on the canvas and the banners that flew overall. Lit at night, the housing of the Dukes of Burgundy had seemed strange and magnificent as a city in fairyland. The strong pavilions of the King of Scotland—the hall and the kitchen, the bedchamber and the closet—were not of that order, but were seemly within, floored with timber and lined with silk, shimmering in the candlelight, with the King’s campaign bed hung with embroidered cloths against draughts, and his coffers placed to hand, with a table for dining, and fine, two-thread towels on the hat-stand, and a handbasin and jug of chased silver.
When, on a night such as this, he could not sleep, his pages would read to him or sing, or his gentlemen would amuse him with dice or with cards. Tonight, he had Master Roger himself playing softly on the lute, sometimes well-known fragments, sometimes a new work of his own. And to sing he had Johnnie Ramsay, one of Will Roger’s prize performers, who was not strictly a page, but the sprightly (probable) nephew of one of the wealthy Napiers, who happened to be married to one of Nanse and Thomas Preston’s relations. It occurred to the King, listening,