The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [295]
‘Do you not?’ said Leonard Bailey. ‘You do not remember my sister’s husband. Or did he dandle you on his knee? He never did as much for me, a child of eight, when my sister died.’
‘But that was not his offence,’ Lymond said. ‘His offence was his charity. It takes a great man to accept alms, and be grateful, and honour the giver with love and honest achievements. It has been done. But you did not even accept the gift of your manhood and then turn your back on the Crawfords. You devoted the rest of your life to injuring them.’
‘You move me to pity,’ his great-uncle said. ‘Show me again your purse, and the ring on your finger. I see how I have ruined you. I see how your mother sits, bereft in the poorhouse. Look, sir, about you! Is this Midculter?’
‘No,’ Lymond said. ‘It is the tomb of a scavenger. The last station in a journey which should have been stopped long before, had you fallen among any but upright people, and men of good faith. They are not my kin, but I shall not disgrace them. Live your life, if you think it worth living. Spend my money, since you do not despise it. I shall only make one stipulation and since, unlike you, I am a man of my word, it will do you no injury. I wish, before I go, to see these papers burnt.’
‘What?’ said Bailey. He strode forward, snatching them up from the table and held them, protectively, behind his shabby gown. Lymond, the desk tinder box in his hands, was already occupied in lighting a spill. Bailey reached for the handbell. ‘Ho! Billy——!’ and then halted abruptly.
The flame in Lymond’s hands, nursed, ran along the middle bookshelves, causing a little charring on the nearest calf bindings. A wisp of smoke, coiling, lifted. ‘Or I turn your books into ashes. Don’t call,’ Lymond said.
Bailey’s hand, shaking, put down the bell. He swore. ‘This lying family! Upright, you said! And now——’
‘But you will get your pension,’ Lymond said. The flame in his hands, rising, touched the books just above. He shifted his grip on the spill. ‘For, after all, you could still start a scandal, a rumour; and the originals, you claim, still exist. In any case, as I say, I keep my word. Your money will come. But it would be sad if, instead, you were to lose all your books.’
The smell of singed calf filled the room. A vermilion light flickered. A roll had taken fire.
Bailey cried out. ‘There! There, God damn you! There, son of a harlot, begot in the brake! There is your birthright!’ And he flung the documents over.
Lymond’s hand, disregarding the heat, closed upon the bookroll, and extinguished the small flame. And then, picking up the two papers, he reduced them to ashes.
Then he said, ‘Come, Philippa,’ and, moving forward, she let him take her downstairs.
There was hardly a man capable of climbing up to see if Master Bailey was in his room, alive and unharmed by his visitor, but Lymond waited until Dorcas, with Billy stumbling beside her, had clattered up to the study, and when they came down, he threw the man another gold piece and, collecting his sword and his dagger, left the house with not a few of them following him, and asking his interest for them in Russia, where the rooftops were all made of gold. He answered them smiling, and rewarded the lad with the horses, and lifted Philippa up, and then swung into the saddle himself. His hands, gripping Philippa, sent a rapid, vibrating pulse into her arm; but he appeared otherwise perfectly collected, and spurred off with exemplary vigour.
She followed him as best she could, for he rode very fast and the way was now almost dark. He passed the Chicken, as she had expected, and it was only an increase in the downpour and a realization, she supposed, that he could not expect her, as he would himself, to endure the hazards of a rough road in the dark that made him rein in at the next inn they came to, and, dismounting, find that there were two rooms to be had for the night.
Then he came back with a groom, who