To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [85]
‘Because they want to win the wager,’ Kathi said. ‘I gather we are having a game of Florentine football on the parapet, six a side instead of twenty-seven. I thought it was your idea.’
It had been, earlier in the evening. The curtain wall of Edinburgh Castle was four hundred feet long and twenty-four feet in height, with a sheer drop of another thirty-odd feet on the outside. The top was wide enough to take culverin, or three people running abreast, and the inner side was lined with interesting roof-tops. It made an irresistible playing field for two teams. Two teams, all of them men. He said so.
The girl said, ‘If Meg is going, I have to go, don’t I? I don’t mind. Willie will come. We need three more to make up a side. Can’t you go and get them? Or it’ll spoil all the fun.’
He suddenly saw that it would. By the time he found Crackbene and brought him back, two other applicants had appeared. One was Robin of Berecrofts, who had apparently escorted Jodi and his nurse from the Canongate. The other was Martin of the Vatachino, stripped like the rest to his unbuttoned shirt. The pelt on his chest was as orange as sheep-dip.
Behind the broker, Kathi was conveying helpless apology. He could see her eyes gleaming. Martin said, ‘I offered to give you a hand. I’ve not a bad head for heights. Otherwise you would have lost your wager, wouldn’t you?’
He was grinning. Without losing face, there was no chance of refusing him. Nicholas said, ‘Who have the other side got?’ Straw fell on to his shoulders and hair: the ball was being retrieved. People were running up and exclaiming: household officers and servants of the Court, clerks and servants of the chapel, soldiers of the garrison. There were three hundred people quartered within the walls of Edinburgh Castle. He saw two trumpeters he knew, gesturing at Willie Roger.
A lot of torches had arrived, illuminating the uneven ground, and the houses that clustered against and under the wall, and the ramp and the two ranges of ladder-like steps fitted between them. Black against the sky, the tall rectangle of the royal palace called David’s Tower rose at one end, all its windows now lit, while far at the other end rose the round tower known as the Constable’s, guarding the staircase to the inner citadel. But the top of the wall running between was quite dark, except where its crenellations blocked out the stars, and the forms of young men running along it. He could just make out the King, along with Sandy and John, and Meg scrambling and screeching beside them. Three princes of the blood and one princess. Someone would stop them.
Kathi said, ‘They’ve called up Jamie Liddell and someone called Wodman. Who’s he?’
‘A Scottish Archer,’ Nicholas said. ‘In the employment of Jordan de Ribérac. He left the Guard after he’d killed a man, says Astorre. I like your skirts up like that. It reminds me of Sinai. The Queen isn’t playing?’
‘The King wouldn’t let her,’ Kathi said. ‘She’s to stand down here and admire him.’
‘Or catch him,’ said Mick Crackbene mildly. It was wonderful, Nicholas thought, to be about to enjoy oneself surrounded by sour faces like Willie’s and Mick’s. At least Robin appeared excited and happy while Kathi stood translated in the usual way, with the intense concentration of a pup at a rathole. His rival merchant Martin was smiling. He was probably quite happy, too.
There was no reason not to be. If he climbed quickly, it would be too late to stop it. He climbed quickly.
The high officers of the kingdom were informed and brought out quite fast, but there were not so many of them in the Castle that evening. Of the two whom the King had leaned on from boyhood, only Will Sinclair of Caithness, once Orkney, was using his rooms in the citadel. And of the very few with some hold over de Fleury, none was there but Lord Hamilton, taking wine with the Abbot of Holyrood.
Their lordships knew better than to countermand the whim of a monarch. These aberrations occurred with young men. Long rides and strenuous