Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [73]
Alexander (Eck) Scougal did. By-blow of an East Lothian family, he was built like a Tartar, squat and thick in the leg, with powerful shoulders and a stallion’s mane of black and white hair over a jutting nose that no Tartar would own. In the old days, Nicholas had bought nowhere else. Now, he had been through all the fields, looking at foals, and was sitting chewing a blade, watching Eck, on foot, put a whole-coloured two-year-old through its paces. It had pricked ears and a lofty trot of the kind that screamed breeding.
‘That would do you,’ Eck said, running easily after the horse to the left, whip in right hand, reins in the other. ‘It depends how long you’re going to be here.’ He receded. ‘Wa-a-alk on.’
‘I don’t know. What about the others?’ Nicholas called. ‘Would you sell off some mares?’
‘They’d cost ye,’ cried Eck. At the end of the field (Ha-a-alt) he changed hands, tried some commands, and came back at a different gait, cracking his whip to keep the pace even. He approached.
‘Then I’d need time,’ Nicholas called. ‘Unless you’d take something other than money?’ His voice, like the horse, lost momentum. He turned.
‘Knollys likes money,’ Eck remarked, turning too. He brought the horse to a halt, and stood looking.
‘Well, Uncle,’ said Henry. ‘And I thought you had no interest in horses?’ He had entered the gate and was leaning against it, with the ineffable grace—the blue, languorous gaze; the long limbs—that made the rest of mankind look like bison. He had left his jacket behind, and the spring sunshine lit his lawn shirt and unbuttoned pourpoint and the svelte line of thigh, knee and calf, where hose met the close-fitting edge of fine leather.
Nicholas allowed himself a long, baffled sigh. He said, ‘Horses? No. A waste of money. I told you.’
‘Really?’ said Henry. ‘Well, if you say so, of course. Then why are you here?’
Scougal opened his mouth, but Nicholas answered before him. ‘To get a horse for myself, as it happens.’
‘Like that one?’ Henry said with compassion. ‘Uncle, you’d fall off.’
‘Probably. Not like that one,’ Nicholas said. ‘Eck is training that one for himself. You should get him to show you some time what he does with it. Did you finish the hides?’
‘Yes. So where is your horse, Uncle?’ said Henry.
‘I didn’t see one that I liked. So we can go.’
‘Can’t I see the horses, Uncle?’ said Henry.
‘Why? You don’t know anything about breeding horses,’ said Nicholas. ‘Eck, I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time. We’ll see ourselves out.’
There were two more calls; one of them to the coal mines at Tranent, which provided fuel for the salt-pans on the coast, and for the Castle. On the seventeen miles back to Edinburgh and their final engagement, Henry tried to exclude from his awareness the voice of de Fleury, taking each of the day’s meetings in turn and summarising its course, his conclusions, and the action it ought to engender. Occasionally, the voice suspended itself, and Henry became aware that he was expected to comment, or answer. He amused himself at first with effusive apology, and then increasingly moved on to the facetious. Finally he drew up his horse saying, ‘Do you mind, Uncle? My head bursts with over-excitement. I really think I ought to make my way back alone and lie down.’
‘I do agree,’ Nicholas said. ‘Indeed, why not lie down here?’
There followed a few crowded moments, at the end of which Henry’s horse had galloped riderless into the distance, the Bastard had ridden on, and Henry himself was lying dazed in the road, with labourers pensively gathering to view him.
Since no horses came by, he walked back.
NICHOLAS CALLED, AS appointed, at the great double Berecrofts house in the Canongate of Edinburgh with, instead of the liveried escort