The Game of Kings (41 page)

“I have a better idea,” said Lymond, and finished lacing his shirt with both hands, his eyes resting on her. “Suppose we have an accident with you. Her death will naturally follow.”

“But then your brother would be free to remarry.”

“True.” He had crossed the room to a writing table, and was inscribing a long message on the back of the letter she had given him. Her voice sharpened a little, and she moved toward him. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t look up, but continued to write quickly and fluently. “I prefer to be my own butcher.”

He finished, opened the door, and called Turkey Mat. When the big man appeared, red with the climb and with open curiosity in his eyes, Lymond gave him the letter. “This is a message to the Earl of Lennox offering to exchange his wife for the young Lady Culter,
whom he holds prisoner. He was known to have her at Annan, but he may be in Carlisle by now. This gives a time and place for the exchange, and also asks for a safe-conduct for our escort. I want someone to deliver it now, and a reply brought back as soon as possible. Can you arrange that?”

“Easily enough.” Mat opened his mouth to say something else, caught the Master’s eye and thought better of it. He clattered down the stairs while Lymond stayed by the door, holding it open for Lady Lennox to pass through. “Let me speed you to your slumbers,” he said sardonically. “It has been a fascinating evening.”

Triumph glowed in her face. “You concede me my victory?”

“Out, alas! Now goeth away my prisoners and all my prey. If you mean do I agree that you’ve saved your offspring at the expense of Lady Culter’s, the answer is yes.”

For a moment the black eyes lingered. “You would have been wiser to come with me.”

“I prefer to be unwise and safe.”

Margaret moved slowly to the door. “And Lady Culter? Are you reserving for her one of those filled positions you were speaking of?”

“What—Mariotta too, do you think?” asked Lymond. “Good God, is there no peace? Is there no privacy, even in my present squalid estate? Shall I send you each an eye on a thorny stick like St. Triduana to preserve my chastity?”

Standing close beside him, her face was as hard as his. “How you hate women! They succumb too easily. They give you no contest for power. They don’t understand the ironies and the obscure literary jokes. You make love with your nerve ends and all the time the brain under that yellow hair is scheming, planning, preparing, analyzing.… Worn machinery may rattle on for a time, my dear; but there comes a day when the axle chafes and grinds, the rod breaks and the engine is nothing but scobs and lumber fit for the madhouse.… Go on driving yourself. Drive your men. Conceive more and subtler ways of getting the better of a sniggering world. Take out the spigot of your spleen and let it choke your masters. But when you’re brought to infest my door with your begging, expect nothing; for I should sooner pity Apollyon himself.”

“For our next meeting I must put my own phrases to fatten,” said Lymond. “In the meantime—good night.”

There was a flame in the black eyes. “That hurt, did it? Is it possible? Krishna among the milkmaids gored by a cow?”

He warned, impassively. “Make an end, Margaret. My patience can outlast your dignity.”

The reminder brought her to herself. The wildness faded from her eyes; the full lips twisted in a grimacing smile. “By all means, let us remember our manners. It would be rude not to take leave of our audience as well.”

The smile broadened, and before Lymond could move, she turned on her heel and crossed the room. Scott, caught half rising from the floor, blinked in the rush of light as the intervening door was flung open and the Countess of Lennox confronted him, bright contempt on her face.

“What! Only one!” she said. “How rash of you, Francis!” And, to the boy: “I hope your cramps won’t trouble you. Your master is too verbose.”

Wretchedly angry and embarrassed, Scott could find nothing to say, and saw that she knew it and was laughing at him. She held out the cloak on her arm—“The stairs are so draughty”—and waited while he clumsily put it around her. Then without thanking him she turned and swept back to the staircase where impassively Lymond waited. He, too, let her pass; and spoke when she was already on the steps. “Go up and lock her in.”

Scott carried out the order soberly and quickly. He would not have crossed the Master then for all the breeding gold in the nurseries of these dark hills.

*  *  *

Later, it was different. Later, his sensibilities muffled with beer, Will Scott wandered upstairs and tried to get into his room. The outer door to Lymond’s through which he had to pass was locked. He tried the handle twice before he realized this; and ran downstairs. Matthew grinned when he saw him, and hiccoughed lightly. “No entry?”

Scott shook his head. “God: he’s been in there for hours.… He hasn’t come down?”

“Always excepting he’s raxed himself scaling the window, no.”

“Well, I’m damned if I’m going to sleep on the floor because his lordship has gone to bed with the door locked. I’m going up to wake him.”

Matthew continued placidly to hammer nails into his boots, a process that seemed to disturb his neighbours’ sleep not at all.

“I shouldna bother, if I were you. You can have my bed down here.”

Scott stared. “Dammit, why should I take your bed? I’ve got one of my own. What’s up with him now?”

Bang. Mat took another nail from his strong teeth and set it in the big sole. “Nothing that three days of concentration won’t cure. He likely couldna come down if he wanted to.”

Scott, leaning over, whipped the remaining nails from between the broken teeth. “Why can’t he come down?”

A hairy elbow was wagged.

“For three days?”

“It’s the usual.”

“And what,” said Scott, outraged, “if the Queen’s troops come looking for the Countess of Lennox? Good God, we’re sitting on explosive, and he knows it better than anyone. Doesn’t anyone stop him when this happens?”

“There’s no right reason,” said Turkey, investing in another crop of nails, “why no one should. We just prefer not to, that’s all. There’s nothing to stop you, if you’re keen.”

“I’m not keen. But I don’t see why he should be allowed to drown his inadequacies at the cost of our safety. Why,” said Scott, who had drunk quite a bit himself, “are you scared to go up?”

Matthew looked at him indulgently. “Scared? Not the least bit of it. We just like to give a man leave to enjoy himself … God: are ye going?” For Scott had risen and was making for the stair.

Matthew’s beard split and all the nails fell out of his mouth.

“Jesus, you’re the brave fellow,” he said. “Here, laddie: take a lend o’ my hammer.”

*  *  *

Through the door, Lymond’s voice was perfectly clear and composed. “Who is it?”

“Will Scott.” He stopped banging. “I want to come in!”

“Well, you can’t come in,” said the voice pleasantly. “The door’s locked.”

“I know that.” Scott, already irritated, began to get angry. “Let me in!”

There was a silence. “Why?” said the Master.

“I want to speak to you.”

“You are speaking to me.”

“I want to go to bed.”

“Go to bed downstairs.”

“I want to go to bed in my own—” Scott, finding the ring of this a little undignified, revised it. “Open the door. Or”—with a rush of spirits to the head—“or I’ll open it for you with a hatchet.”

This worked. There were no footsteps, but the key suddenly turned and the door opened on a drawn sword. Lymond, slender and gently dishevelled, regarded his lieutenant with a reflective blue stare.

Scott was suddenly very prudent indeed. Lymond sober was someone distinctly to be reckoned with: Lymond sodden was a child of danger. “I wanted to speak to you,” said the boy. “But not over a sword.”

“Through it, then.” The silk shirt was crumpled and sweat-stained, the hair tawdry, but the point of the sword was unwavering.

More than a little hampered by his public downstairs, Scott prevaricated. “I came to suggest that you had some food. There’s a lot to plan for. Your brother might already have traced the Countess … and there’s Lady Culter to be looked after when she comes.”

The sword gave a small, evil flash. “Don’t fuss, my sackless father-lasher: everything is being taken care of. I don’t want a meal. I prefer you to sleep below tonight. I don’t wish to continue this conversation. Good night.”

Unfortunately, a Buccleuch was incapable of leaving well alone. Scott said truculently, “You can drink yourself into a jelly any other time. This is an emergency.”

Above the blade were merciless eyes. “Emergency? But what emergency could be outwith your ineffable talents? Or Matthew’s?”

This exposed the root of the trouble. Scott said sharply, “You know they’ll obey no one but you when there are women about. You can’t mean to expose Lady Culter to that rabble downstairs!”

“Why not?” asked the obliging, slurred voice. “I’ve every confidence in the rabble downstairs. None of them, for example, has so far tried to teach me my job.”

Restraint was impossible. “It might be a good thing if they had,” said Scott, and flung himself to one side as the steel drove at his throat. He hit the doorpost, ducked, and with a speed and accuracy that Lymond himself had taught him, pulled the Master’s doublet from a doorside chair and with muffled hand snatched and twisted the attacking blade.

The sword fell instantly to the floor. Scott slammed the door and
picked it up, but slowly; for it came to him that the Master was a good deal less drunk and a good deal more dangerous than he had thought. Lymond, watching him, said, “Look after it. If you let me touch it a second time, I shall kill.… You’re admirably pretty emerging from your pupa robe a chevalier des dames; but I’ve a dislike of interference amounting to morbidity.… And I fight only with women.”

Scott, with his next remark cut from under his feet, floundered. Then he said baldly, “What are you going to do with your sister-in-law?”

“Sit on my sacrum and sneer at her,” said Lymond. He walked to the window and turned, supporting himself on the sill. “All right. Strangle your inchoate chivalry and take yourself off. I’m being indecently reasonable, but my control doesn’t last long in this state.”

It was too much.

Already weakened, the seel over Scott’s eyes jerked and broke through, and he stared at the other man with the eyes of an enemy. The blue eyes narrowed in response: Lymond was no fool. “Well?” he said, and this time his voice had no slur.

For answer, Will Scott raised one arm and sent the Master’s sword spinning from him across the floor. “Take it,” he said. “And befuddle yourself under the table if you want to. It’s no affair of mine.”

“Ah,” said Lymond. “You’re going downstairs to assume command?”

“If they’d accept me, I’d do it.” Scott’s hair flamed above his excited, light eyes; he stood by the door, tall, wide-shouldered and pale. “As it is, I’d be glad if you’d treat me from now on as one of the rest. I’ll keep faith with you as far as I’m able. But I want no part in your mudraking personal habits and your dealings with women.” And, maddened by the sheer, lax boredom in Lymond’s face, Scott burst out. “What wanton notoriety is left for you to dabble in? What devilry inspires you to gut the nerves of every man and woman trying to befriend you … ?”

“For God’s sake!” The exclamation was so quick and so savage that Scott froze. “For God’s sake!” said Lymond. “Isn’t one bitch with a rage for dramatics enough for one day? Spare me your mimicking morals and spring-tailed sensibilities for tonight, at least! What do you know of any of the women you presume to defend? You look, and puke, and scuttle away like a duck that’s laid an
egg in a geyser.… Do you consider yourself better equipped in all your purity to lead this troop than I am?”

All fear had left Scott. “Yes, I do,” he said quietly. “But as I have said, they would follow no one but you.”

“Unless, perhaps, I instructed them to look to you as their leader?”

Scott’s face was set. “I’m no hanger-on waiting for a madman’s shoes.”

“I am as sane now as I shall ever be,” said Lymond grimly. “I’m offering you a chance to take command now, if you want it. Complete control. Of the men, and all the destinies of my female friends. Will you take it?”

This was—wasn’t it—what he had prayed for; what he had dreamed about and, more recently, what he had longed for to sting Lymond into shame. But—

“What,” he asked hoarsely, “do I have to do? Fight you for it?”

“‘I am thi master: willt thou fight?’ No. I am too much your master there, my sweet one. There’s another way.” He held out his mug.

“Drink with me. I have some hours’ start of you which is, shall we say, a just handicap. Match me cup by cup for as long as the beer lasts; and it’ll last longer, I promise you, than either of us. The man insensible first is the loser: the man with the staying power to open that door thereafter, walk down the stairs and show himself to Matthew has control of us all in future.”

Scott, making no move to take the beer, eyed the other with something like fright in his eyes. “God, but … to wager so much on a drinking bout!”

“Don’t you want the chance?”

“Why, yes—but—At least make the contest a real one!”

“Don’t you want the chance?” said Lymond again.

“Yes!”

“Then take it. It’s the only one you’ll get. The first qualification for leading a band of hard-drinking cutthroats is the faculty of drinking harder and cutting deeper than any of them. You needn’t be squeamish,” he added contemptuously. “I’m not too drunk to know what I’m doing, and I shall abide by the result. I have an excellent reason as a rule for everything I do, except perhaps recruiting redheaded predicants from the more notoriously pigheaded of our families.”

“And if I win,” said Scott, “—if I win, can I do what I wish about Lady Lennox and Lady Culter?”

“You can set up a seraglio with them if you want to,” said Lymond. “Agreed?”

“Agreed,” said Will Scott, and raised the first cup to his mouth.

*  *  *

High on the hilltops, among the wet scrub by the burn, a blackbird was singing. The notes, round as syrup, melted into the raw air of dawn and coaxed the cold, reddened sun to its day.