The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [294]
‘Yes,’ Lymond said. His face, Philippa saw, marked the stress more by its altering planes than by any dramatic displacement of colour. She knew her own face was pale and her stomach tired and painful within her. She walked back and sat down, while Lymond laid the two papers again on the desk and remained, surveying his relative.
‘Now,’ said Lymond, ‘you will listen to me. From this moment, the payment from my mother will cease and I shall order a similar sum paid to you monthly, from my bankers in London. I shall leave with them such an amount that, whatever happens to me, there should be a pension secure for your lifetime. I shall also leave instructions that the day this information becomes public, from whatever source, the pension will cease. Is that understood?’
‘But——’ said Leonard Bailey.
‘Is that understood?’ said Lymond again, and this time, Bailey said, ‘Yes.’
‘I am glad. You will now take paper and pen and write a letter to my mother at Midculter telling her that your health is failing and that you intend to go overseas. You will thank her for all the financial support she has given you hitherto, and say that you now have enough to serve the remaining years of your life, and do not wish to have this matter more on your conscience. She may take it upon your honour … your honour, great-uncle Bailey … that her secret will remain quite safe with you. You will sign it, and I shall see that it reaches her.’
The letter seemed to take a long time. Outside, the rain beat, noisy as straw on the window panes and the vice candlestick, newly lit, threw its light on the littered desk and the worn, damp-smelling books as they waited. It was late: too late to make much of their journey back to London. They would have to stay, as Lymond thought, at the Chicken. No … not at the Chicken, Philippa suddenly recalled. For that inn harboured the underpaid ostler who had sent Bailey word of their coming. Mr Crawford would not want to return there. Well, there were other inns.
She looked at him, standing by the desk watching Bailey painfully writing his letter. He had not touched the old man, or even threatened him, except to protect Sybilla from his foul tongue. She wondered what part Bailey had played in his past, when outlawed and sought by both England and Scotland Lymond had come eventually to stand trial in Edinburgh, on the evidence which Bailey must have helped manufacture. It took a self-denial approaching to Calvinism not to take revenge for that kind of malevolence, because a man was old, and alone, and a kinsman.… No. Not even a kinsman. If all this were to be believed, Leonard Bailey was no kin at all.
The rest of it, of course, was all done for Sybilla. Sybilla who, having broken her marriage vows, had been too proud to tell this son whom she had drawn so close, but had left him to find out, like this. Who must know, or suspect, why he turned his back on her, but still had done nothing to put matters right. Because, one was bound to suppose, she dared not face the one question he was certain of right to ask her: the name which the paper left blank.
And then the letter was finished, and laboriously signed and dusted, and the direction written, and Lymond, putting it away, had removed also the glittering pile of gold coins, followed by Bailey’s covetous eyes, and had slung on his cloak. She rose as well, and Bailey, behind his desk, stood also, and backed a little into the corner, his veined eyes wary, the linen damp with sweat round his neck. Lymond stood perfectly still, and looked at him.
‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘in all my life what reason I have had before to take a man’s life. The house you were brought up in was a Crawford house. The money which fed and sheltered and educated you was Crawford money. You reached man’s estate and still you stayed there, in this circle you found so despicable: stayed until the child born there to your sister was man enough to marry in turn; and only left when at last it was made clear your