The Game of Kings (36 page)

“Will. We’ve had words in the past, and I don’t mind saying you were damned disrespectful. And wrong, forbye. But you won’t get any righter by burying your carcass to the neb and over in Lymond’s muck heap. As far as I’m concerned you can stop making an exhibition of yourself and come on back home. Unless you’re so damned keen you’ve begun to reform the bastard yourself.”

His son’s mouth twitched. “I haven’t, cross my heart. But don’t flatter yourself that I’m suffering so that I can read you a homily on crime. I’m with Lymond because I like it.”

Buccleuch’s face expressed disbelief and disapproval. “Dammit, I believe George Douglas was right. You’re planning a coup. Don’t deny it! You’re going to embroil Lymond as deep as he can get, and then lead the Queen’s men to him. Is that it?”

Scott didn’t trouble to deny it. He said, “That, I am quite sure, is what George Douglas would do,” in a voice of energetic scorn, and added after a contemptuous interval, “I’m staying with the Master. Why not? We’re a well-regulated, efficient society. We’ve got health and companionship and excitement and money, a common aim and a common justice. We are our own masters, afraid of nobody but the one man, and he’s worth fearing. Show me its like, and I’ll join you.”

“I can show you its like,” said Buccleuch. “In the jungle. What you’re living by is four-footed law, and what you’re living off is the blood and marrow of the rest of us. You’ve money, you say. Money from where? From spying and stealing and so-called protection—the money of folk who’re poor because they’ve had the stupidity to fight
two wars for their country. That’s where your ideal community comes from—from corruption and treachery. And by God, it takes a thick hide to snuffle and drool after your own dirty pleasures while bairns starve in Teviotdale for want of meal. Dod, you’ll fairly have a stitch in your side watching Branxholm burn the same way Midculter did.”

“I’d nothing to do with that.” The words were nearly cold enough to belie the passionate resentment in Scott’s eyes.

Buccleuch was shouting. “You’re doing a hell of a lot to stop it. Dod, I’d better warn the wife. We’re to live alfresco this winter, if I don’t get my throat slit the way Culter got his shoulder and Janet her arm.”

The same frigid voice said, “If the English intend to burn you, how do you possibly imagine I can stop it?”

“You can stop bleating your name to Grey of Wilton for a start!” bawled Buccleuch. “So that every rotten device you practise on him doesn’t get traced home to me! If you’d done that a bit earlier, there’d be some folk at Newark who’d be much obliged to you.”

“Oh, God!” said Scott, and let go. “A minute ago I was being overfriendly with the English: you’re not very consistent, are you? And if you’re supposed to be luring me back to the herd, I must say you’re making a damned bad job of it. If you really want to convince, you should at least get your facts straight. And argue them with some sort of logic. And keep your head while you’re doing it. In the first place, I wasn’t responsible for Grey discovering my identity. In the second place, Lymond is doing no more, openly, than half Scotland is doing underhand. In the third place, he is considerably less popular with the English than you are yourself. In the fourth place, you would fare a damned sight worse under the attention of my colleagues if a person like Lymond weren’t there to control them; and lastly, I prefer company where inflated prejudice and intellectual tedium get the place they deserve—among the granddads and dummies and the drink-fuddled half-wits in a fifth-rate common alehouse.”

A diatribe worthy, Scott felt, of its inspiring genius. The response was the kind he often felt like making to Lymond, and had once made. Buccleuch’s knotted fist came out like a joiner’s mallet and drove at his son’s head.

With a beautiful, cool-breathing ease, Scott slipped under it, closed his own fist, and released a blow which sent Buccleuch travelling like a cannon ball across the clearing and down with a skid into the beech leaves.

There was a moment’s stupefied silence. Buccleuch lay, temporarily winded and making repulsive noises, and his son stood looking at him, with the excitement shrinking out of his face.

It was a standing joke that Sir Wat was incapable of reasoned argument. There was no victory and less virtue in first provoking him to violence and then hitting a man twice his own age. He could imagine what Lymond would say. Scott stood for perhaps two seconds, then took the clearing in two strides and dropping on one knee, heaved his father to a sitting position, one arm around his great shoulder. “Father—”

Wat’s scarred, knotted hand shuffled tenderly over his jaw, and his small bright eyes turned to his son. “By God!” He sat up fully, and resting an elbow on his knee, moved his lower mandible gently from side to side. “Where the hell did you learn that?” demanded Buccleuch.

Scott gave a half-laugh and releasing him, sat back on his heels.

“Lymond.”

“Well, he’s taught you one thing worth knowing. But there was no need to practise it on me.” He got to his feet with the help of one hand on Will’s shoulder and stood for a moment, holding the boy in front of him. “He’s taught you quite a few things, hasn’t he? A fairly cavalier way with opposition, for one thing.”

“I notice,” said his son, and grinned, “that you weren’t exactly relying on rhetoric yourself. But I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Just to knock the head off me,” said Sir Wat, raising his hand to feel his jaw again. Scott, disappearing for a moment, returned with his handkerchief folded into a soaking pad, which he proffered Buccleuch. “Was it true about Newark?” he said.

Applying his back to a root, Sir Wat nodded. “They didn’t get into the house, but they burned the village and nearly stripped me of beasts, Will. Grey’s doing.” He shot a keen glance at his son’s face. The boy had seated himself on a broken trunk and was studying his hands.

“So they have the better of you both ways,” said Scott thoughtfully. “Grey for my misdeeds, and the Dowager if you dissociate yourself with them.”

“That’s how it fell out.” Buccleuch, watching him quietly, held the pad to his bleeding face. “It’s been fairly damnable all round—no less for you, of course. You’re no match for a clever sycophant like yon. Whatever his purpose, he’s managed to stick my neck in a
cang; and he looks like making a fine scapegoat out of you, if you let him.”

The boy was silent. Then he said, “I’m supposed to be beyond redemption, am I?”

Like a sea urchin calling in its needles, Buccleuch’s whiskers withdrew. “There would be some explaining to do. But damn it, I count for something yet in this country. If we went back quietly now, just the two of us, I’d see no one harms you. And you can have the satisfaction of fighting in the open, by the side of your family. You can surely see the way it is. In my position some kind of double-dealing can’t be avoided, and I won’t pretend my hands are clear of it yet. But no one can tell me I’m not a Scotsman as well as a Scott, and the one as much as the other. So what d’you say?”

Sitting against a tree, one hand clapped to his face and an expression of limpid encouragement on the rosso-antico face, Buccleuch was more persuasive even than he knew. His son got to his feet without grace. “I’ve sworn to follow Lymond.”

“He’s excommunicated. You know that?”

“Yes. But—”

“You have not only the power but the duty to break any pledge to him. D’you know why the Church expelled him?”

Scott had heard so many possible reasons that he kept quiet.

“Five years ago, when you were in France, his spying came suddenly to light. Before that, he was taken on trust, the same as Culter, and nobody thought of suspecting where the leakage was coming from. It came to light because a dispatch of his was found—a dispatch referring to other reports he had already made, and enclosing information that led Wharton to find and put an end to us at Solway Moss. But by the time it was found Lymond had already got himself to London, and was sitting safe with King Harry heaping land and money on him.”

“I know that.” Scott shifted uncomfortably.

“Yes. But did you also know this? In its last page that report described the locality of a damned great gunpowder dump of ours; a store that had been left in or near a convent. Described it fine: Dod, it was graphic enough to put a chorus to. It was so bloody ingenious that a raiding party was sent from Carlisle which blew up the nunnery, killing every last woman in it.”

“But Lymond—” began Scott.

“Lymond planned it. God, I saw the letter and the signature, and
every stroke of the pen was as much his as that damned doll’s hair. Ask Sybilla. Ask Culter. Ask anyone. Even his own mother didn’t pretend it was a forgery—it wasn’t.”

The colour had run out beneath Scott’s fair, unpigmented skin. His father said aggressively, “You didn’t know that? Or the other thing about it?”

“What?” said Scott. “What other thing?”

But Buccleuch had scrambled to his feet, the pad dropped from his grip, his face changed. Scott turned.

With a rustle and a squirm, Johnnie Bullo emerged from the juniper and trotted across the clearing, an agile silhouette which made Sir Wat, unrecognizing, put a quick hand on his sword.

But Will spoke first, all his anxieties turned to acid on his tongue. “What are you doing here! Spying for Lymond?”

“No.” Johnnie Bullo, keeping a tree between himself and Buccleuch, was unperturbed, though breathing faster than usual. “Just a call from a friend. I thought you’d like to know you’re in a small trap. The wood’s encircled by armed men.”

Buccleuch overheard, as he was meant to, and the hand on his sword moved with a rattle and a hiss. Scott said instantly, “Lymond!”

“No, no. Lymond’s busy. It’s Scottish troops: fine fellows on big horses with dirks all over them like hobnails. Friends of your pa, here, no doubt.”

Scott’s breath whistled between his teeth. “Hardly friends of my father. After all, we undertook to keep this meeting secret, didn’t we? And as good, honest churchmen our word is inviolate.”

“I did keep it quiet.” Suddenly alive to his danger, Buccleuch rushed to reassure. “There wasn’t a soul … Who are they? Hey, you!” roared Wat to the shadowy figure of Johnnie. “Who are these men?”

“Don’t you know?” asked Scott. “What a pity you couldn’t tell them things were going surprisingly well and their services wouldn’t be needed. They could have disappeared quietly and I should never have known.”

Buccleuch was choking with frustration. “Don’t be a fool, man. They’re there by no wish of mine. I didn’t—I haven’t—Listen, will you?” as the young man turned away.

“I rather think I’ve listened enough, don’t you?” said Scott over his shoulder. “‘Come back quietly, just the two of us’! By God, I admire that for a piece of chicanery!”

“Will!” Buccleuch, regardless of a possible audience, fairly roared in his anguish. “What’s happened I don’t know, but believe me, I’d cheerfully flay them alive, whoever they are. You must believe me! They’re not mine … I don’t know how they got there. Dammit!” he bellowed. “They must be Lymond’s.”

“They’re not.” The gypsy’s brown eyes, dancing with enjoyment, rested on Scott. “Well. They’re waiting for you. Are you going with them or with me?”

“Is there a choice?” snarled the boy. “We’re both trapped, aren’t we?”

Bullo snickered. “You are. I’m not. I have a pony just outside. If I mount and draw them off to the left, can you ride for the gap?”

“I can,” said Scott grimly. He strode to Buccleuch’s horse and threw the reins to Bullo. “There’s another decoy for you. Send the brute ahead. He’ll split them still more.”

The gypsy caught the bridle and began to move, his smile flashing. “So you’re for Lymond after all.”

Scott’s grim face as he flung himself on his horse was reply enough. Buccleuch caught the bridle. “Will! Man, you’re that bedazzled your thick head’s nothing but heliotrope. Listen. These are not my men! I’ll swear to it on anything you like! Wait for just a moment—give me a chance to identify them—if they’re Queen’s troops I’ll send them about their business!”

“No doubt. And their business will be Will Scott.” The boy whipped the reins free. “No thank you. I’ve had enough of decency. I’m too weak in the stomach for it.”

“Will—” It was too late. A distant thudding and a burst of noise told that the gypsy had drawn the pursuit after him; with a rustle and a whirl of cold air Scott cantered across the clearing without looking round and put his horse fast through the thickest part of the wood.

Sir Wat, horseless and breathing heavily, stood still. He heard the uproar a moment later when his son was spotted; he heard the shouting as the riders following the two decoys were recalled. He heard the chase recede around the base of the hill and falter, and finally, the sounds of riders returning, disconcerted. He drew his sword and walked steadily to the nearest group. The trees thinned, the voices became louder and he saw the colour of the livery: blue and silver.

Wat Scott of Buccleuch shot his sword home in the scabbard with a noise like a pistol and stalked forward. The horsemen wheeling at the sound faltered. “Buccleuch!”

“Aye, Buccleuch,” said that person. “Did ye find what ye were looking for?”

They fidgetted. “No, Sir Wat.”

“Have you a horse you can give me, then?” They had. It was brought forward eagerly and Buccleuch mounted, his eyes sweeping the wood. “Where’s your master?”

The nearest man stammered. “He’ll be back, sir. We was to meet here if …”

“I am here,” said an unemotional voice; and Buccleuch turned. Lord Culter, armed, with a long scratch across one cheek from his scrambling chase after Scott, was sitting still on his horse at the edge of the trees.

Amid deathly silence, Buccleuch rode over to him. Within touching distance he halted and, leaning across, gripped Culter’s reins close to the bit, so that the other could not move. “So I see. You’re having a bonny revenge for the cattle raid?”

Culter shook his head. “I only want Lymond.”

“You only want Lymond,” repeated Buccleuch, and flung the reins from him so that Culter’s horse jumped and reared, neighing. “You only want Lymond, and you’re ready to sacrifice everyone and everything for it. Your mother—your wife—the folk who used to be friends. How many friends have you got now? Tell me that.”