The Game of Kings (17 page)

Blood from the smashed mouth welled and poured.

“We have a proverb, Señor Huile,” said Don Luis sweetly.
“Aunque manso tu sabuesso, no le muerdas en el beco.”

Scott moved bleeding lips. “Hay un otro, Señor Luis.
Ruin señor cria ruin servidor.”

The malicious glitter increased. “The señor speaks Spanish? That should be cured. It is a tongue for gentlemen.”

Dudley, already on his feet, reached the Spaniard. “Remember, Mr. Scott’s a valuable hostage, Don Luis. Seat yourself, and we’ll thrash the matter out.”

Mr. Scott!
A sensation like the pounding of a die stamp was beginning to operate behind the boy’s eyes. He parried their questions: Had his father, they asked, sent him to capture Don Luis and the supply train? How had he known the train would be there? What would his father pay to recover him?

He was jolted by a Spanish exclamation. “Dios!” said Don Luis in vexation. “I believe the young man faints. He is a person debil, the Scot, in spite of many words. Ay! he goes!”

For Scott, after a moment’s helpless indecision, took the path thus offered. He swayed; he fell.

Woodward stooped over him. “He’s off all right. Better take him back to his cell.”

Don Luis rose. He smoothed a curl, reassured himself of his diamond, and took control of the situation. “But no. It does not value the trouble. You have done all you wish with him now?”

Dudley shrugged and looked at Grey. “More or less.”

“Then,” said Don Luis, “I would prefer much to return the night to Berwick. I shall take him and his friends, and thus there is no need to waste the food. The hostage affair can also begin en seguida,
and the questioning gooder organized, no?” He regarded them vivaciously.

Lord Grey became aware that he was dead tired and another hour of the brilliant señor would undoubtedly drive him crazy. He said with a sort of upheaval of a sigh, “Well, theñor; if you and your men feel fit to go back, then it would be a great benefit to be rid of the men right away.”

Don Luis bowed. “Bueno. If you will then write me an order for Berwick …”

“Of courthe.” Grey turned to the desk.

Don Luis watched him for a moment, and then murmured delicately to Dudley, “I fear to beg also the horses from you. The ours were taken and loosed by Señor Scott, and the his will be needed for him and his men.”

Dudley looked doubtful. “Oh. Can’t you manage without? We’re short of hacks just now.”

Don Luis spread his hands. “How manage without? We shall send more from Berwick, and meantime there are lesser mouths to feed.”

That at least was true. Dudley gave in, and had a word with the Master of Horse, who left the room.

Don Luis bowed.

Woodward bowed.

Myles bowed.

Grey bowed.

Dudley spoke to someone at the door, and two of Don Luis’ men, in brave new jerkins, came in smiling and hauled off the inert figure of Scott.

Clamour from the courtyard told of Scott’s men being tied to their own horses; of new horses being brought for the Spaniard’s troop.

“I depart,” said Don Luis magnificently. “For the hospitality, for the food, for the beer, for the horses, for the clothing, a million embracings. My dear lord; my dear sir; my dear gentlemen.”

Everybody bowed again.

“Adiós!” said Don Luis, and left the room.

*  *  *

Long after the last rider had passed the portcullis, when all at last was still and Lord Grey was preparing for bed, Dudley came, yawning, to share a last cup of wine with him.

“That damned Don!” They laughed a little, thinking of the tar and feathers. Dudley stretched.

At that moment, the wagon with the culverins blew up.

It was much later when they thought of checking the second wagon. The beer barrels were intact, but contained only brackish water, and one of them a slip of paper, which read pontifically,
No es todo oro lo que reluce
.

“All is not gold that glisters,” translated Mr. Myles, coming into his own at last.

For a long time they digested the implications in silence. Then Dudley said, rather dazedly, “They were
all
impostors.… Don Luis. Who was he?”

Grey stared thoughtfully at the smoking wreck of the opposite wall. “I don’t know. But I propothe to dithcuth thith night’th work thoon with William Thcott of Kincurd.”

They retired, but not, it is certain, to sleep.

*  *  *

The long string of horsemen was far away from Hume, driving westward, when the moon came up. The need for hard riding made talking impossible for the first ten miles, though a knife, tossed silver from horse to horse, let Scott and his ten men cut their lashings. Far ahead of the others, Lymond rode in tawny velvet. He had taken off the black wig, but Scott glimpsed his hair, paler than ever above the dyed skin: the nearest view he had had of him since accepting that vicious blow on the face.

He was beaten to the knees, and knew it.

Riding knee to knee with the Cleg, one of the ten whom his own recklessness had nearly killed, he had muttered some sort of apology.

The Cleg had received it with no more than his usual vacant good humour.

“Marry, man, that’s just the way it goes,” he’d said. “The Maister gave us our choice—twa-three hours in jail with you, he said, or ride bare-arsed with him an’ get a new set o’ clothes for it; and mindin’ I catch cold easy, I chose to come wi’ you. Not but what,” he said warmly, “I never saw a loon put up wi’ all what you put up wi’, for a scatterbrain scheme like yon. They must have fair bashed the brains out o’ ye.”

Scott covered a burning eye with one hand. “You mean Lymond
told you I’d be asking for volunteers to go to Hume with me?” It was, of course, impossible. He had only decided yesterday to contradict Lymond’s own express orders not to go to the castle.

The Cleg said, “Ay, like I told you. He gave us all our choice, an’ told us forbye you’d maybe not let on the plan to us, as you’d likely take a fair bashing.” He smiled cheerfully. “I ken you dinna think we’d keep our mouths shut, but ye’ll admit we did ye proud the day.”

“You did indeed,” said Scott, and turned his head away from the ungrudging admiration in the Cleg’s eyes.

At ten miles, they overtook Mat with the pack horses, Lymond’s own bunch of riding hacks, their clothes, and the remaining cart: the genuine English prisoners were already, Scott gathered, on their way, bound, to Melrose—the job ostensibly given to himself.

In the short breathing space before they set off again, Scott dismounted and, moving stiffly, walked forward to where Turkey and the Master were having a brief conversation.

“S’wounds,” said Mat. He eyed Scott’s face. “It looks to me as if someone has sat on our William.”

The Master turned, passementerie glittering. He might have changed sex, so complete was the change from the haughty, choleric Don.

“Barbarossa! We are covered with admiration. An actor manqué, my dear, to convince them so thoroughly that you expected to perish directly. You have had,” he said inquiringly, “a little accident to the mouth?”

Busy as they were, the men around them were not deaf: the nearest, taking the remark at its face value, grinned sympathetically at Scott. It was obvious they had all known of the double plan—except him. Obvious, too, that they assumed to a man that he knew as well.

So there it was. First, corporal punishment, carefully applied. Next, spiritual chastisement—and not the obvious, open ridicule. Not with Lymond. Instead, the dreadful humiliation of accepting his own reputation, intact, from the chastising hand. That, and the corollary that Lymond found him so inconsiderable that he could cheerfully add to his stature.

What now? Reject the heroic role Lymond had prepared for him? He could explain that the Master had goaded him into a private attempt to take Grey: had made an opportunity for him to do it; had foreseen that he would bungle it; and had in fact based his entire plan on that certainty … and on the genuineness of the apprehension that he, Scott, would betray inside Hume. He could easily say all that,
and earn himself the biggest guffaw since Cuckoo-spit hooked his own ears at the salmon.

Young Scott heaved a long sigh, and meeting the sardonic blue eye, said flatly, “Not an actor, an apprentice … but I hope to learn. And one day to be able to play without the gift of a pawn.”

The glittering eyes appraised him. “Certainly. But next time take care, or you may be receiving the Bishop, with appropriate rites. Any questions?”

One puzzle still nagged. “How,” asked Scott, “did you know that the leader of the supplies would be Spanish?”

The Master raised weary eyebrows. “He wasn’t.”

That was all the conversation he ever had on the subject; and soon they were safely back at their tower. Drinking went on for two days after the barrels were broached; and Will Scott made a point of surfacing into sobriety as little as possible.

Amid the brawling, dancing, chorusing and squabbling, he was aware of Lymond, totally and grossly drunk, with the tawny velvet creased and stained with beer and food. He appeared to be in amatory mood, and was singing long Spanish love songs to his own accompaniment on the guitar.

A
S NEWS will, news of the hoax at Hume got out. By breakfast time on the second day, a kind of collective snigger, moving downwind from the castle to Edinburgh and points west, betrayed the progress of the story: the discovery of the entire English troop bound and frozen outside Melrose Abbey swelled the snigger to a belly laugh.

Sir George Douglas, breakfasting in his castle of Dalkeith seven miles south of Edinburgh, got word of it with his quails and became unusually thoughtful.

Thoughtfully, he allowed himself to be dressed and barbered, his beard trimmed, his lounging robe slipped over discreet Swiss shirt. Thoughtfully, he opened the tower door which led out of his bedchamber and climbed twenty steps to his private study, where a dishevelled-looking person was waiting. He shut the door. “Forgive
the delay. I cannot always receive the Lord Protector’s messages as freely as I should wish.”

The rain was driving against the exposed tower window: the man’s outer clothes were sodden. He pushed back his hood, revealing a close cap fitting from eyebrows to ears, and said courteously, “I am sure his Grace would be unhappy to think otherwise, Sir George.”

This was a trifle near the mark for a messenger, but Douglas had his mind on other things. He said briefly, “I must confess, as matters now stand between myself, Lord Grey and the Protector, I had not expected to hear from London yet.”

“How providential,” said the hatted one comfortably, “that you didn’t on that account have me stopped at the gate. So fickle are statesmen. Today the palace, tomorrow the oubliette and the elegiac distich.”

This time, Sir George turned his full attention on the stranger. “If you have a dispatch, sir, I should be glad to see it.”

“In a way I have,” said the other cheerfully. “Je suis oiseau: voyez mes ailes. And then again, in a way I haven’t. Je suis souris; vivent les rats. Wnat I have is worth hearing, though. Shall I read it to you?” And he pulled from his coat a creased bundle of papers. “Here we are. Rather long, but I’ll spare you the clay and disinter the lotus. For example—” And picking out a page, he read quickly aloud.

“‘Sir George Douglas, the laird of Ormiston, and two of the Humes have been here, Douglas coming as a Borderer to serve the King.… I reminded him of his benefits from the late King, and threatened him if he revolted again, I should pursue him and his friends to the death. He answered he would advance the marriage, and promised to draw his brother and the rest clean from the Governor … and to do his utmost to put the Queen in our hands, if requited in England for his lands—which I have guaranteed with my own lands. I have resolved to prove him, and if he does not keep his promise, the very next day Coldingham shall down, and himself smart for it.… ’

“Postscript—Oh,” said the stranger disingenuously, turning over the last page. “I remember. I left the postscript with my friends, although that was rather interesting too. What do you make of it all?”

What Sir George thought was soon forthcoming. With undisturbed calm, he drew his gown about him, and seating himself negligently near the door, remarked, “I should guess this to be a somewhat naïve effort at blackmail. I assume that unless I pay you a large sum of
money, and release you unharmed, your friends will send the original to the Scottish court.”

“Well, at least you seem to know what it’s all about,” said the reader, refolding the papers. “The extract is, of course, copied from a dispatch from Lord Grey to the Protector, and I am sure you are about to take the wind from my sails by telling me that the Queen Dowager knows all about it.”

If alarmed by this perspicacity, Sir George gave no sign. “She does, of course.”

“Quite. But even if I believed that—which I don’t—I still think you might be interested in seeing that postscript. It does exist, you know. So does the copy. I’m King of the Fidlers and swear ’tis a truth. You can have them all for a nominal price.”

“And the nominal price?”

“You have an English prisoner called Jonathan Crouch,” remarked the blackmailer, affably, and was interrupted by Sir George himself, showing the first signs of animation.

“Dear me!” he said. “You seem to be a remarkably subterranean young man. I took such a prisoner, yes; although it is not generally known.”

“Let me see him and you may have the report.”

There was a short pause. The offer was nicely put. No one, however reinforced by his sovereign’s complicity, could be expected to resist the lure of a postscript devoted to his own affairs in an English dispatch. That the postscript existed he felt sure: the fellow was too damnably pat with the rest. Ergo, by falling in with the suggestion, he was admitting to no more than natural curiosity: a subtle and far from fortuitous point.