The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [290]
‘A contract,’ said Lymond, ‘must be honoured. I want to watch him too. I think we should all go in there and watch him. But you must have a boy somewhere who could go for the ale?’
There was a boy. He pocketed the money Lymond gave him and ran off, while the gate swung open and the pikes and hatchets moved back, to make way for the lady and escort the gentleman into the house. The first that Leonard Bailey knew of the arrival of his great-nephew was the tramp of many thick boots on the stairs, and the crowding into his study of half the yeomen of Buckinghamshire, bearing with them the insolent girl who had been there before, and a man whose name he had no need to ask: a man with a beautiful doublet under his long, rainsoaked cloak, and fair hair and lashes as long as a cow’s.
‘The Semple by-blow!’ said Leonard Bailey.
If Lymond was still suffering any disability whatever, only the practised eye of Philippa Somerville could detect it. He looked carefully at the elderly, powerful man rising from his desk by the window: at the frayed cap and big jowls and short, open gown, creased where he had been sitting. ‘Yes,’ he said regretfully. ‘Whichever way you look at it, your poor sister had extremely bad taste. Good evening, uncle.’
‘This is the man,’ said Leonard Bailey, and looked round grinning at all the interested faces. ‘You see? The insolence? This is the cunning rogue who would trick me.’
‘I am known for it,’ said Lymond repressively. ‘I steal linen off hedges.’ The sapphire on his right hand, Philippa calculated, must be worth at least four hundred gold pieces. The pikemen breathed heavily, their gaze switching from one man to the other. Lymond said, ‘You did invite us to come? Uncle?’
‘I told the girl to tell you to come,’ Bailey said, ‘She gets no welcome from me. And neither do you. You came—I can tell!—to prove me wrong, or pay me to keep my mouth shut. You’ll do neither.’
‘Heaven forbid,’ Lymond said blandly, ‘that I should provoke hard feelings between nations on your account. An envoy from the Tsar of All Russia and one of the Queen’s Majesty’s ladies in waiting, here to murder an Englishman! Think of the uproar!’
‘Here,’ said the smith’s lad, exchanging the role of audience unexpectedly for that of chorus. ‘You’re not a Rus, you’re not?’
Lymond surveyed him. ‘I’m not a Rus, I’m not,’ he agreed, ‘I’m Crawford of Lymond, a leader of mercenaries, and I work for the Grand Prince in Moscow. And if it weren’t that I’ve no mind to take you away from your sweethearts, there are some likely lads among you there who would do well in Russia. They roof their houses with gold.’
The eyes of the pikemen became large as pipe-hoops. ‘That be damned for a tale,’ said his great-uncle quickly. ‘That wasn’t what I heard.’
‘When were you last in Russia?’ Lymond said. His hand emerged from his cloak and in a single smooth gesture, he opened and upended his purse over his great-uncle’s desk. Gold pieces, new minted and shining, trilled from it like the song of a blackbird and created, in seconds, a hillock. ‘Be the nest roofed or lined, what does it matter? But I came to talk about family business. And for that, we nephews like our moment of privacy.’
‘No!’ said Master Bailey loudly. ‘No, you’ll not get these lads to leave me. They’re good English lads, and they’re here to protect me and mine.’
‘From Mistress Philippa?’ Lymond said hopefully.
‘From you and your mercenaries, you contrary churl!’
‘But I have no mercenaries with me,’ Lymond said. ‘They must have told you about that. And I gave these gentlemen here my sword and my knife when they asked for them. I am harmless, and innocent, I promise you, of reprobious inventions. Besides, I have already explained. I have my position to think of. I couldn’t possibly kill you.’
‘Could you not?’ Bailey said. ‘I can see what you’re at. Humiliate me; steal my books; throttle me, for all I know, and then claim exemption as the Tsar’s favourite. Ah, no. I’ll not ask these lads to leave me.’