The Game of Kings (4 page)

“Culter?” said Fleming, overhearing. “I thought he had left?”

“Not yet,” said Christian unemotionally, and followed slowly as
Buccleuch, losing no time, took the stairs for all his fifty-odd years like a sheared ram.

Richard, third Baron Culter and Sybilla’s older son, was not only upstairs; he was on the roof. On the main parapet the sun slapped at the face off turrets and battlements, and far below, the castle rose from the bog like a lighthouse on its circling strands of barmkin, park and moat. The great dusty apron of the courtyard, the outbuildings and stables, the bakehouse, the brewery, the barns, byres and domestic offices seethed with foreshortened life. Buccleuch walked forward and the girl followed, sure-footed, the red hair lifted about her shoulders with the wind.

Lord Culter watched them come. There was about him none of the mad abandon of the bridegroom. A sober, thickset figure with brown hair and reliable grey eyes, Richard Crawford in his thirties was a man of wealth and tried power. He waited, his face stony, and before Buccleuch opened his mouth, he spoke. “If it’s about Lymond, don’t trouble, Buccleuch.”

“It’s about Lymond,” said Sir Wat grimly, and let fly.

As Mungo Tennant had listened, so Christian Stewart heard the argument in silence, but with a concern and understanding which Mungo Tennant applied to nothing.

Buccleuch ended roaring. “Man, you might as well be in league with Lymond as let others think you are, and the army that fights on suspicion is a whacked army. Look at what’s happening! Five years ago your brother Lymond was found to have been selling his own country for years: he’s been kicked from land to land committing every crime on the calendar and now he’s back here, God forgive him, with filthier habits and a nastier mind than he set out with.

“All right. Meanwhile, what’s left of a national entity struggles on. Half a million folk. And three million English are trying their damndest for the overlordship of Scotland with the hairy natives like you and me kicked out, and the land parcelled out to the Dacres and the Howards and the Seymours and the Musgraves. And in between the raids every landowner between Berwick and Fife is courting England like a pregnant scullery-maid. God knows, I don’t blame them. I’ve taken English money myself to protect my house and my tenants. You promise food and horses and nonresistance and when they invade, you do or don’t lick their boots according to the thickness of your walls and the kind of conscience you have.”

He got up suddenly from his seat on the parapet, and began to
pace. “Then we’ve got the Douglases, the beauties, and others like them. They’re the folk who’re accepted as go-betweens with the English in London; who’ve got a kistful of gold, a family tree back to an acorn, and too many men-at-arms to need to tolerate a rough word.

“They get respect from both sides, and money comes pouring into the purse because each faction thinks it’s bought the man’s ultimate loyalty. But Sir George Douglas’s loyalty is to his own house and the devil, and if the devil doesn’t see the Douglases up there at the top of the dynastic dungheap, then to the Pope with the devil. Are ye with me?” asked Buccleuch.

“Yes, I’m with you,” said Lord Culter. “Go on.”

“Right. We’ve all those, and we’ve the rest, like yourself, who carry the throne on their backs from generation to generation—maybe just because you’ve so much at stake in Scotland that there’s no other game worth the risk; still you do it.… We think the Protector’s going to invade. We hope to put an army in the field to stop him at Edinburgh. It won’t be a very good army because it’ll have one eye on the Lothian lairds and one eye on the Douglases. And by God, Richard Crawford,” ended Buccleuch with a growl that lifted the pigeons off the turrets, “if they’ve got to watch you too, there’ll be a wheen of skelly-eyed Scotsmen at the Golden Gates in the next few weeks.”

There was silence, as wily choleric eye stared into bright grey. Then Christian said sharply, “Richard! I smell smoke!”

He had gone in a moment, running across the slats and up, higher, to the battlements. Buccleuch, caught mopping his face, gaped at the girl and at Richard’s vanishing figure. Christian spoke fast. “He came up here because he thought he saw smoke coming from Culter direction.” In a moment, Buccleuch was with Richard on the highest rampart.

The August sun mobilized against them the last furious heat of midafternoon, beating from the crowded roofs and turrets, the grained corbelling and cherry-caulked flanks. To the east lay the roofs of the barony town of Biggar, smoking in the socket of Bizzyberry Hill, and the Edinburgh road. On the south, the horizon was jumbled with hills; footstools before the greater furniture of the English Border. To the north and northwest the roads for Ayrshire and for Stirling girdled the crag of Tinto.

To the west, springing from the base of the castle, the bog rolled, jellied green and shimmering between an avenue of hills, to dip three
miles distantly into the bed of the Culter burn, where stood the village and the castle of Midculter.

For a moment, nothing was to be seen, and Buccleuch became jocular. “Smoke! Never worry, man. My chimneys were in mourning for a month before my first wife and the cook got the hang of the ovens …”

The wind patted their faces, and turned. A great column, black as the onset of night, rose from the west and hung wavering on the horizon.

With an undreamed-of turn of speed Lord Culter reached the stairs with Buccleuch after him, yelling bills and bows for the castle to hear. Left alone, Christian Stewart herself found the stairs and descended, with debate in the unseeing eyes.

*  *  *

When the door opened, the women in the Hall at Midculter were not surprised. They expected to be fed; and Lady Buccleuch, for whom pregnancy spelled food, had already taken strategic foothold by the windows, where the cold dishes were ready laid. Sybilla, standing by the hearth, was in the middle of a long, grave story provoking much mirth. As the door opened she said happily, “Now we can eat. Janet will be so pleased.” The blue eyes smiled at her daughter-in-law, ceased to smile, and then simply rested, thought suspended, on the still-open door.

Lucent and delicate, Drama entered, mincing like a cat. Leaning on the door, Lymond shut it and without looking turned and took out the key with one hand. In the other a naked sword point, descending, was poised among the slit lavender stems. At his side, Mariotta stood perfectly still.

After the first moment, every trace of expression left the Dowager’s face; her white hair shone like salt. Moved by her stillness, the sound of the key, the blaze of the sword, the first heads turned. A murmur grew and expired. Dumbness, flowing among them uncovered like a crocus in the snow the lost reprise of a hornpipe, pursuing its scratchy but dogged course in the musicians’ gallery. Then that also died.

Back to the door, the newcomer spoke indolently, slurring his words. “Good evening, ladies. The gentlemen now entering behind
you are all fully armed. I am Francis Crawford of Lymond and I want your lives or your jewels—the latter for preference; both if necessary.”

Through the rustle of shock came the first cries of horror: from these rose a storm of exclamatory fright and abuse, and from that an orchestration of outraged feminine frenzy that tortured the very harp strings in the gallery. Someone, losing her head, plucked at the small, stately figure. “Sybilla! It’s Lymond!” And fell back, frozen, before the Dowager’s stony face.

The room was lined with armed men. Some, working efficiently, stripped each woman of money and jewellery; others searched and denuded the room, and with cocked weapons encouraged resistance with a leer. There was none.

On them all rested Lymond’s peaceful blue gaze, quite at random. But long ago instinct told Mariotta he was fully aware of one thing. Bent urgently on exposing some frail nerve, she spoke. “Why not look at her? Your drama wants dialogue.”

He turned on her the vague survey. “Oak of linen and pole of jewels, I’ve decided on pantomime.”

“What a shame, now. I was all ready for buskins, and it’s nothing but socks.”

“Mime doesn’t always mean comedy, my dear; far from it.”

An approaching voice, of the self-same timbre, answered him. “Farce, then,” said the Dowager composedly. “My son is not very complicated, Mariotta, although the artifice glitters. He’s afraid—”

“Afraid!” Blue eyes, dead of feeling, looked into blue. “Afraid of what? Damned by the church and condemned by the law: what possible capacity for fear can heart and head still find? Oimè el cor, oimè la testa … After five years of villainy, I promise you, I have the refinement of a cow-cabbage.”

“—Afraid I might puncture the cocoon of Attic detachment. What we see is acting, isn’t it, Francis?”

“Is it?” he said derisively. “You won’t get your diamonds back, I fear, when the curtain comes down. And the name, please, is Lymond: a new medal: choose the trussell or the pile. My present face is the provident, forbearing one.” The smiling eyes turned on her were empty. “De los álamos vengo, madre. From the stews and alleyways of Europe with a taste for play acting—yes—and killing and treason and crimes, they say, nameless and enticingly erotic.
Haven’t I been worth five years’ excellent gossip to you? Are you not all waiting agog to see me seize my sister-in-law by the hair? When I think of it, damn it, I’m a public benefactor.”

“Chattering ape!” Lady Buccleuch took a hand in the game, full of rage and pity for Sybilla and hatred for the black-bearded ruffian who had just seized her emeralds. “What’s poor Richard ever done to you except get himself born first?”

The blue eyes were speculative. “Ill-calculated,” he agreed. “But not necessarily final.”

Strophe and counterstrophe reached their epode. The Master was out of her reach, but not the grinning thief at her side. “Final as far as I’m concerned, ye petty-souled slug, ye!” shrieked Dame Janet with ear-cracking clarity, and seized and hurled a cold pudding into Blackbeard’s face. As the big man, cursing, scraped at blancmange with both hands, Janet filched his own dagger and made for him.

But not fast enough. Lymond, watching from the door, had no mind to lose one of his men. Good humour and indolence tittered into the shadows, and as Dame Janet began her lunge, Lymond drew back his own arm and threw.

In the silence of the room Janet screamed, once; and her right arm dropped to her side, the knife slipping from big, relaxed fingers. Then slowly and disjointedly, Buccleuch’s wife fell, and Lymond’s dagger, thrown with accuracy across the width of the room, glittered in her gown, stained and sticky with blood.

“Afraid?” said the yellow-haired man and laughed. “Forgive me, I should have warned you: I have a tendency to be bloody-minded. Bruslez, noyez, pendez, ompallez, descouppez, fricassez, crucifiez, bouillez, carbonnadez ces méchantes femmes. Matthew! When you have digested your windfall will you kindly report progress below? Now”—as Blackbeard, red with shame, disappeared through the screen door—“come along, ladies. Leave your female Telemachus alone for a moment; she’s not dead.”

He surveyed them pleasantly. “Epilogue,” he said. “We have heard sweet-voiced Calliope busily shrinking me like a sea worm and calling me play actor. And the lady of Buccleuch taking heart there-from to give us a roaring, a howling, a whistling, a mummying and a juggling, with sorry results. And Mariotta, trying to wring shame from the unshamable.”

He turned his head, and the girl’s heart jumped. “Qu’es casado, el
Rey Ricardo. Weel, weel, sister, what shall we do with you, Mariotta?” He watched her thoughtfully, and then looked beyond her and smiled. “Observe,” he said. “Their eyes lit like corpse candles. I beg, under the circumstances, to be original.… Yes?”

Blackbeard had reappeared. “All finished, sir; and the horses are ready.”

“All right. Get them out.” The men began to leave, and the reports came in: “All doors barred, sir. Valuables loaded, sir.”

With careful and porcelain tread, Crawford of Lymond walked to the screen, and the women fell back before him. At the door he turned. “We’ve had a deal of bad poetry, haven’t we? Suggesting the climax to this thrilling and literary spectacle. The Olla Podrida, my sweet-hearts, will now be set on the fire. I regret Richard isn’t with you. No matter. God hath a thousand handēs to chastise and I have two—how can Richard escape us both?”

He scanned them all, and they gave him back contempt for reflective stare. “I don’t suppose,” he said regretfully, “we shall meet again. Goodbye.”

The door shut behind them all, and locked. The women stared at it, mesmerized, and observed across it the wavering shadow of an uncanny cloud. Behind the chamfered windows the sun was obscured by drifting wreaths of grey smoke, and the silence filled with the crackling of flames. The youngest surviving Crawford, in leaving, had deftly set fire to the castle.

*  *  *

The bonfires stacked against its walls were blazing merrily when the party from Boghall shot down the incline toward the castle. Behind Richard came every able-bodied man from Lord Fleming’s garrison. They tore away the faggots and, using hatchets, broke through the main door and again through the door of the Hall.

Richard, gripping his wife, looked over her head at his mother. “Who did it? What happened?”

But Mariotta answered. She shut her eyes; the darkness showed her a cool blue gaze, and she opened them again. “It was your brother. He must be insane.”

“Not insane, dear.” Sybilla, speaking gently, contradicted. “Not insane. But magnificently drunk, I fear.”

He listened to what they had to tell him; he dropped beside Janet
as she lay nursing her shoulder wound and spoke to her, and came back with an unseeing face to his mother’s side through the babble of relief and hysteria. Through white lips he said, “I appear to have made a fool of myself. But not again, in that way, I promise you.”

Buccleuch’s hand was on his arm. “By God, when we come back …”

“Back?” said the Dowager.

Sir Wat’s beard folded; a sign of concern. He said flatly, “You’ve not heard the news?”

“What
news?”

Without looking at Mariotta, Richard answered for him. “We heard at Boghall. It’s open war, and sooner than we thought. The English have collected an army and are on their way north. We are all summoned instantly to the Governor to fight …