Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [119]
Margaret Erskine arrived white-faced half an hour later. The floor had begun to dry by then, in islanded patches in front of the big lively fire. She moved through the room like someone running a race, checking neither at the stench nor the gross usage exposed all about her. There was only the firelight to see by, since someone had put out the candles: the room was filled by shadows, running back from the great hearth. The atmosphere of the place stirred chokingly like some deadly tide, to the disordered rhythm of the fire. It was clammily hot.
During wars lasting as long as she could remember, through two young marriages and all the familiar and malodorous all-night sessions of the peer and the bonnet-laird, she knew with precision what to expect, and with resignation what to do about it.
But this was going to be different. Thady Boy had been travelling about since O’LiamRoe left him. That much was obvious by the overturned chairs, the avalanche of bedclothes, the rucked tapestry all pressed into service to keep him erect.
This persevering activity had now ended. It was quiet—too quiet. Flouting her fears, she hoped stoutly that he could at least recognize her, and somehow manage to move. She could not lift him alone.
In all this, she had forgotten that Lymond simply might not have heard her. In fact, he was standing, held up by two chairs, in the shadows beyond the fireplace, most of his sodden clothing thrown off, and his dripping, tangled head turned to the wall. The long fingers of one hand, cramped fast on the wood, were clearly picked out by the fire, and she could hear the thick force of his breathing.
Then he must have sensed she was there. The tortured nerves of his stomach, raw to the point where a thought, a perfume, can be cathartic, revolted as he swung round. He doubled up, closing his arms over his head, but before that, she had caught a glimpse of his dilated eyes, and the queer surprise on his face. He had, she realized, expected to endure it alone.
She pushed the chairs away and gripped him like a nurse, with a practical and impersonal firmness. Then, when it was over, she said in her sensible voice, ‘You know you’ve been made to drink poison. You must walk, my dear.’
The pupils of his eyes were vast and black; in a bright light he would be virtually blind. On her arm his weight was unconsciously relaxed. He said serenely, ‘I don’t need to walk any more.’
‘Oh, yes, you do,’ said Margaret Erskine sharply, and taking a double grip of the reeking shirt, forced him to move. He was full of nightshade, his brain drugged with it. While he could, he had done a good deal himself to get it out of his system. It was her task somehow to keep him roused sufficiently to finish the job.
She bore his full weight during that first turn of the room. Then, blearily, he began to relieve her of the burden, to take a leaden step of his own accord and then, stumbling from wall to wall, with her help to keep moving. She did not look at his face; and afterwards was glad, when she saw his nail marks bloody on his own palms. He had been nearer proper awareness than she had believed.
At the time, he seemed frighteningly distant; and then, when the stupefaction wore off, exhausted by the unending nausea to a point far beyond speech. Presently, in this blind state he came to a halt and, steadying him, she looked and saw what the belladonna and his own extravagance together had done to Francis Crawford. And she also saw that she could not afford the luxury of tears, for now he had reached the end of his resources. Whether any poison remained or not, she had to let him rest.
She brought him to the hearth, where she had made a rough bed; and he lay breathing fast, racked by dwindling spasms. His eyes, in their chasms of bone, were sealed shut. When, thus immobile, he spoke, her heart lurched with the shock. ‘Mignonne,’ said Lymond placidly, ‘Je vous donne ma mort pour vos étrennes.’
Even in this extremity, damn him, the quotation hurt. ‘I don’t want your death for my dowry,’ said Margaret. ‘Give your rewards