To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [92]
Certainly, James had no idea how to handle his own youngest brother, and seemed as impervious to the isolation of Albany as to the loneliness and revulsion of the Queen. Yet around James were family men, if he would take their advice. Nicholas had seen Sinclair below, and James Hamilton. Hamilton would not be displeased if the King suffered an accident. Oh Doge, as a flower shall you fall.
It was not so hard after all. Nicholas was moving up quite methodically when he saw something move at the edge of the tower, a yard away from his hold. A hand appeared, grasping the edge, and there followed the knee and face of Robin of Berecrofts. There was only one storey to climb. ‘Kathi sent you,’ Nicholas said. ‘Jeu de Robin and Katherine. Infants are guiltless when they have not been instructed by the sane.’
Robin’s hair and shirt were both flying loose, but he looked surprisingly comfortable. He said, ‘No. She’s gone to let the dogs out. Stay where you are; let the King get to the top, and then come down as you like. No one will notice.’
‘Well, I beg your pardon,’ said Nicholas, climbing again. ‘I should notice. I’m going to win. ’Zione!’
Robin said, ‘What about Jordan?’
‘What?’ said Nicholas, gazing upwards. The top of the tower was dark, beyond the reach of the torchlight. He began to edge round, to the face that was better lit. Too late he remembered why it was better lit. He began to laugh, then realised that James was within kicking distance again and started to clamber.
Robin shouted, ‘If you fall, what happens to Jordan?’
‘You look after him,’ Nicholas said. ‘You and the parrot.’ His fingers slid, coated with white, and he began to laugh again. They had been lime-washing and harling this side before the weather broke down. He crawled further up and over the painted side, encouraging James to climb faster and follow. Half of the King’s hair was now white, and his cheek, and his arms. The surface to which they both clung was covered, like Turkish sweetmeat, with soft red and white marks from their fingertips. It was slippery.
Nicholas said irritably, ‘Robin, go back. Your grandfather will evict me.’
He wondered what the Queen would do if the King fell. She must be watching with horror. The Scots, the sconciatori, the spoilers, who were about to make her a widow and send her back to her furious father. Questo gioco è uno sconcio. Now, perhaps, she would perceive the advantages, if not the joys of insemination.
Jodi.
Warm water.
Never mind. There are solutions to everything.
Blasts of music could now be distinguished amid the continuous roar from below: Willie’s friends had brought out their instruments. A yapping sound added itself to the compound, followed by an impassioned and sonorous baying. Nicholas leaned his sticky hair into the wall and took breath, deeply amused. Every muscle complained. His gaze, moving from the glare and noise and emotion below, rested on the darkness beneath the outer wall of the Castle, and the silent glimmering mass of the town plunging beyond, with the black pool of the Nor’ Loch below it. And far beyond that, over dark country ridges and the faint lights of towers and townships, was the broad grey span of the estuary and the black hills of Fife brooding behind. The estuary where his ships would pass, very soon.
He had paused for a moment too long; he was cold, and his concentration was lapsing. He had just realised it when a vicious blow, utterly unexpected, took him on the shoulder and side, and shook him free. The King.
Nicholas started to fall. He saw James’s face, red and white like the wall, the mouth beginning to open. The King shouted. Slithering, clawing, Nicholas saw that the King was sliding as well, that the violence of his blow had dislodged James’s own grip on the glistening wall. A shriek rose from below. Nicholas’s hands, raking down, found a crack: a moment’s purchase long enough to see, black on white, a past foothold and two marks for his hands. He chanced releasing his grip and, stepping