The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [292]
‘I have it,’ said Bailey. On his big-lobed nose and his cheeks, rather pale, the veins stood out like cracklure on china. ‘But not in this room. And I’ll not leave it either, with those light fingers near. No. Dorcas will fetch it.… I take it I can ring my hand bell for Dorcas?’
‘Provided only Dorcas comes,’ Lymond said.
The old man set his jaw. Then, seizing his desk bell, he rang it. And a moment later, the door opened to reveal the thin, aproned form of the housekeeper. She was flushed.
‘Master Leonard: did you send for that ale?’
‘I sent for it, ma’am,’ Lymond said. ‘And I hope you will share it, with my compliments. Your master has a message for you.’
‘Which he is capable of giving with his own tongue,’ Bailey said angrily. ‘Dorcas, you recall the papers I told you of? Get them.’
‘And while she has gone,’ said Lymond, as the door closed behind the housekeeper, ‘you will answer my question. How much of a pension do you accept from my mother?’ And as the big man drew breath, he added calmly, ‘I can, obviously, confirm what you tell me. It would save time therefore to give me the truth.’
Leonard Bailey had recovered his confidence. ‘A peppery young man!’ he observed. ‘A very assured young gentleman, accustomed to the obedience of louts and ruffians in the field, and ruffling it at foreign courts, in great favour and pomp. Dorcas will tell you of the recipe she has for such as you. Take a peacock, break his neck and cut his throat and flay him, skin and feathers together.
‘I am not sure, Master Nobody, if I care to do business with you, or answer your questions, or jump to your bidding. I have had an arrangement with pretty Mistress Sybilla—chaste Mistress Sybilla—spotless Mistress Sybilla—for thirty years now, as you say. It is a trifling matter of a few coins. Had Honoria lived, she would have cost your family as much in a week. But she died giving birth to poor Gavin who was not, of course, and never could be the equal of your glorious, impeccable mother Sybilla. It seems but right that the family should pay for the mourning rites.
‘It has been a long mourning, poor Honoria. And now the first Baron has gone, and his son Gavin has gone, and none is left to remember her but Sybilla and one of her sons. If we do business,’ said Leonard Bailey, the saliva winking at the corners of his strong lips, ‘I trust you will be generous. Or I shall have to try if the other son thinks Honoria deserves better remembrance.’
‘How much?’ Lymond said. He had made no effort to interrupt. But his eyes, all the time Bailey was talking had been wandering, Philippa noticed, along the bookshelves, marking the thick rolls, the leather and velvet bound volumes of his great-uncle’s remarkable library.
‘I receive a pension,’ said Leonard Bailey, ‘of three hundred pounds per annum.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Lymond.
‘Nevertheless, it is true. Does it seem so much for an old man to live on?’ said Bailey. ‘But if you wish, I can show you papers. Her last payment’—and he pulled open a drawer of his desk—‘is there. Signed by the noble and virtuous lady herself.’
From where she sat, Philippa could not see the paper, but she watched Lymond read it. Three hundred pounds a year—six times what the Queen’s Latin secretary earned to keep himself and his wife at court, including his prize money. And spent on nothing, so far as she could see, but this miserly gathering of books. She could not believe he ever opened them. They lay undisturbed, as they had lain when she came to Gardington last: an insurance: a treasure safe from most robbers, for what country labourer would know the value of these six perfect volumes of the works of St Augustine? She wondered, thinking rapidly of the libraries she knew—Sidney’s, Ascham’s, Pole’s, that of John Dee—what this collection was worth, and put it, at its lowest, at three thousand marks. Then Lymond laid the paper down carefully on the desk and turned, as the door opened and the woman Dorcas came in, with a locked metal box in her hands.
‘Ah!’ said Leonard Bailey. ‘Put it there. What is