Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [44]
The athletic small figure jumped to its feet. ‘Christ, man, there’s nothing more I want tae hear. He was going anyway: what better way would he want it?… I formed my ain opinion of Crawford of Lymond, I’ll say to your face, yon time I served with you; and Turkey formed the same. It was the only time in our two lives we ever agreed about anything.… There was a scar or two ye had then that ye carry now, and I was nine-tenths sure of ye. Sure enough to give a hint that there was a friend handy at least …
‘… Fegs,’ said Erchie Abernethy in a vexed voice. ‘Fegs, I’m right buffle-heidit—sit down—I’m that pleased tae see ye I forgot the state you’d be in. I’d a chancy half hour with yon big bull in there, I’m telling you. A nicer, kinder-hearted big bairn of a beastie you’d be hard pushed tae find. Heathens! Foreigners! I’ll have the law on them, so I will …’
Hopping, chattering, his arms full of cloths, he came to rest at last. ‘Sit down, man. It’ll pass off. I’ll ease it for you in a minute. Man or beast, the treatment’s the same. But I’m ettlin’ tae know,’ said Erchie Abernethy, tenderly lifting the ruined cloth off Francis Crawford’s shoulders, ‘I’m fairly bursting tae ken how ye guessed I spoke Scots?’
Lymond looked up. Superficial pain, withstood or ignored for quite a long time, had made his eyes heavy, but they were brimming with laughter. ‘Well, God,’ he said. ‘In the water, you were roaring your head off at a bloody bull elephant called Hughie.’
Skilfully doctored and done up in balm and bandages, Lymond slept on Archie Abernethy’s pallet like the dead and woke up fresh, collected, and in command of a stream of cool, sarcastic invective.
The Keeper was impervious.
‘Ye needed it. It was part of the treatment. Ye ken the tale of the lassie and her pastille of virgin Cretan bhang—’
‘Whereof if an elephant smelt a dirham’s weight, he would sleep from year to year. Quite,’ said Lymond. ‘But I am not Ali Nur al-Din and you, save the mark, are not Miriam the Girdle-Girl. I can stand twitching my tail like Hughie any damned day of the week. Meanwhile, my time is short.’
The Keeper had unbuttoned his brocade coat, displaying a wonderful silk shirt and breech hose beneath. Sitting hands on knees, he studied his fellow Scot with a cracked black-stumped grin. ‘I heard you were with the Irish prince, him that’s soft in the heid,’ he said. ‘And under guard these last three days forbye. How would you be so sore short of sleep, I wonder? Picking locks, maybe, of a night?’
Sitting on the low pallet, Lymond picked up Abernaci’s dress scimitar and made a cut at the air. ‘No need. The guard was Robin Stewart.’
The walnut face filled with a malicious joy. ‘Och, yon speldron. King Harry’s prize Archer, all sense and no wits. He’d let a mouse out of a mousehole if it put on drawers and a mask. Anything by-ordinary, and Robin Stewart’s fair flummoxed: you can dodge him blindfold, I suppose. They let him in to Michel Hérisson’s, ye know, and lay wagers on what he’ll do next.’
‘Do you go there often?’
Archie Abernethy rose. He caught the scimitar deftly in midair by its handle and hung it on the stand with the rest. ‘I enjoy the carving. And whiles I like to hear Scots spoken—a lot of exiles, and English too, go there.’
‘I noticed as much. The English Resident calls it a hotbed of intrigue.’
‘Och, it’s a cheery crowd of irreligious rascals. They don’t care. You’ve been making night calls on Sir James Mason then? And you the guests of the King of France?’
‘The estranged guests. We antagonized our host so much that one of Mason’s men was bold enough to approach me next day. Our English friends are interested, of course, in attracting O’LiamRoe’s alienated affections. O’LiamRoe hasn’t given it a thought. But I have been discussing it on his behalf. I wanted to find out, and quickly, whether it was myself or O’LiamRoe someone is trying to kill.’
The Keeper’s dark eyes were entranced. ‘Why