The Game of Kings (45 page)

Dandy of all people knew how to handle such a situation. Ignoring the interested, the friendly, the speculative glances thrown at them; ignoring Culter’s own impassive, bleak face he spoke naturally of the wedding, and of the news that Lord Grey had gone to London and was expected to stay until the end of March—“a respite till Easter, at least.” Then he said, “Richard: tell me. Are you sick of Buccleuch and his outrages? Or could you stomach a rapprochement if I arranged it?”

Culter stared at him with acid humour. “The millennium has come. Is this a Scott wanting to apologize?”

Hunter answered bluntly. “I’ve had a message from Will Scott. Lymond’s selling him to the English through George Douglas. The boy has discovered how it’s to be done, and wants our help. Will you join us?”

The look on Lord Culter’s face was answer enough.

In a private room, Scott of Buccleuch was waiting for them. Richard moved forward.

“You’re getting to be a damned slippery acquaintance, Wat. Are you on the doormat this time because you need me or because you want to be?”

Buccleuch hesitated; then chin and cheeks parted and he produced a rumbling chuckle. “Things have changed. If you’re for taking Lymond, so am I.”

“So I hear.” A shadow of a smile crossed Richard’s face. “I suppose if Will hadn’t written to Andrew, I’d still be in jail.”

Sir Wat blew out his cheeks. “Some of you laddies talk as if I were Michael Scott the wizard and not just an old, done man. Sit down, sit down!” he added irritably. “You’ll solve nothing planted there like a couple of bauchly tenors at a glee.”

Hunter laughed and sat down, and after a moment Richard did likewise. It was an odd sort of olive branch, but all he was likely to get. Then Sir Andrew pushed over to him the letter from Will.

The difficulties were clear enough. Scott had not given away Lymond’s headquarters, presumably not to implicate the rest of the band. What was known was that Lymond proposed to ride east to
secure from Sir George Douglas and Lord Grey the price of his bargain—a man called Harvey; and that having got Harvey, Lymond intended to send for Scott on some pretext and deliver him on the spot to Lord Grey.

What the boy proposed was that on receiving this summons from Lymond he should send word of it instantly to Buccleuch, who could then ride with all his men to the appointed rendezvous with the fair certainty of taking not only Lymond but Douglas and Lord Grey as well.

The three men sat for a long time drawing up plans. “And afterward, I suppose,” said Culter finally, leaning back, “the boy will find his own way home to you?”

“Aye. That’s the idea,” said Buccleuch. He fumbled for a moment in his purse. “You heard what happened to the poor devils that Maxwell and the rest left as hostages in Carlisle? Wharton came straight back from Durisdeer and executed half of them. Here!”

He produced a paper and flung it on the table in front of Culter. “That’s what the black-gutted murderer had put out on the day they all died.”

Buccleuch’s sharp eyes surveyed them. “There in front of you is the price of the marriage we witnessed today. And no less the price of the marriage we avoided when we turned back after Durisdeer. We’re all paying for the same thing—these men here, and the fellows who fell at Pinkie and Ancrum and Annan and Hawick; and you with your brother and me with my son as well. We’re seeing times,” said Buccleuch, “that crack the very marrowbone of tragedy, and compared with it, neither your trouble nor mine counts as much as two tallow dips in the circles of Hell.”

Richard’s eyes were on the table, and he said nothing. Buccleuch waited; then with a scream of wood scraped his chair back and shoved himself to his feet.

“All right. If that’s all, let’s get back,” he grunted, and led the way from the room.

Coming back, the first person Richard saw was his mother.

Alone, waiting for him outside the ballroom, she met the visible hardening of his face with a frontal attack of her own.

“I know: I’m Mère-Sotte, and you’ll use all I say to make outrageous theories with. Fortunately it doesn’t matter. Mariotta isn’t with your brother any more. She escaped—Will Scott helped her—she’s now in the convent at Culter, very frightened and rather ill. Lymond has not been kind. He got her by sheer chance—she was caught by the English running away from you and they offered her to him. He hasn’t been kind, as I say, but he did no harm to her or the child. You ought to know that, I think.”

Richard heard her, leaning against the door: an uncomfortable shadow of Lymond at Midculter. “A noteworthy salvage effort. I applaud your resolution in sacrificing Lymond in order to patch up my marriage. But it’s a little too late for repentance—anybody’s repentance. When we catch Lymond, we’ll perhaps get at the truth.”

Blue eyes met grey. “When … ? Will it be soon?”

“Very soon. And this time, there’s no fear of escape.”

“And what,” said the Dowager flatly, “shall I tell Mariotta?”

“There’s no message,” said Richard. “I don’t want her back. You could, of course, congratulate her on the birth of her son.”

“You
don’t want her back,” repeated the Dowager, a rare anger lighting her face. “Did you think she would come? Your wife, my dear, has no wish to set eyes on you again.”

T
HE
duet between Lord Grey and the Privy Council in London went on intermittently for a fortnight, during which Gideon Somerville had himself rowed up and down the river, landing at familiar green steps and unearthing old friends. Playing cards with Palmer, Grey’s new engineering adviser and an erstwhile ally, Gideon sat cheerfully blinded by gold-wire dentistry and absorbed the latest rumours.

London had French fever again. After the sad fiasco of February, nobody was looking forward to reopening the Scottish campaign. It was known that the child Queen was recovering from an illness: it was said that there was no public move yet to marry her into France, and that the Scots Governor was fighting overt tooth and subterranean nail to keep her for his own son.

Palmer, with a glitter of ox bone, thought it unlikely that Denmark would risk offending Spain by sending ships to help Scotland, and
that France’s promise of further aid was a myth to distract attention from Boulogne.

Gideon listened to it all, and passed on to Lord Grey as much as he thought fit. Two days before their final orders came through, Gideon went with Palmer to the Tower to complain about a bad consignment of arms and, returning, met the Countess of Lennox who knew Palmer well, and remembered Gideon from Warkworth and remoter days when they were both in the suite of the Princess Mary.

Knowing of her shattering failure to persuade her father to support the English at Durisdeer, and of the curious episode which had lost them a hostage when she found herself trapped by unnamed Scottish outlaws, Gideon was surprised when she mentioned George Douglas herself.

He observed with some restraint that he and Grey were to meet Sir George when they got back north. Douglas had promised them a hostage, a boy Lord Grey had wanted for a long time. Buccleuch’s heir, in fact.

Margaret Lennox said, “My father told me that Buccleuch’s son was working with … a band of broken men on the Borders.”

“That’s right,” said Gideon. “It’s not a very savoury story. Apparently it’s his own leader who’s selling him out. Not but what, having met the gentleman, I should be surprised at his selling his mother for cat’s meat.”

She was avid for a description of the man; for more details. “And what is he selling the boy for? Money?”

There was a pause made hideous for Somerville by a sudden recollection. Tom Palmer, listening with mild interest at the lady’s other side, was a cousin of Samuel Harvey, whose life was to be exchanged for Scott’s. He cleared his throat. “As a matter of fact, the thing is a little delicate at the moment. Not quite settled.”

She smiled understanding. “I suppose your Lord Grey wants the boy Scott because of what happened at Hume? I’d have thought to see him much more anxious to find the Spaniard who double-tricked him.”

“I expect he was anxious enough,” said Gideon, sorry for Grey’s sake that the story seemed to have reached the metropolis. “Only he never found out who the man was. And of course his value as a hostage wasn’t as great as Will Scott’s.”

“Fair hair,” she said aloud to herself. “And blue eyes, perhaps?”

“Who?” said Gideon. “Not the Spaniard. The man Scott eventually joined had.”

“Of course he had. I know him. Or I knew him once, in Scotland. Blond, blue-eyed, rapacious and polyglot.”

There was a startled pause. “He might speak Spanish?”

“He does speak Spanish.”

And there were always black wigs.… “That means,” said Gideon thoughtfully, “that our Spaniard and Scott’s leader may be one and the—Perhaps,” he said, “you should mention this to Lord Grey or the Protector.”

“Oh, I shall,” said Margaret Lennox. “Tonight.”

*  *  *

Two days later, the Protector made his mind known.

Lord Grey was to return to Scotland, and not merely to enthuse from the poop. He was to march into Scotland on the 21st of April to meet his loyal Scots at Cockburnspath, and go from there to Haddington, tidemark of his former advance. There, he was to fortify and garrison the town to make of it a fortress, a warehouse, a steppingstone and a threat to the whole of Scotland.

Gideon with him, the Lord Lieutenant left London. With him also went the memory of certain acid quips of the Protector’s, and a vindictive wrath against a glib and Spanish outlaw who was huckstering with the might of the English crown.

*  *  *

When the convent on the estate of Lymond was blown up by the English on information received from its former landlord, the remaining nuns found shelter in a larger nunnery near Midculter. In this convent Mariotta had now been resting in collected misery for six weeks, visited regularly by Sybilla.

The Dowager, taking Lady Buccleuch with her for the first time, was subjected to some pointed questioning en route.

“What I can’t understand,” said Janet, “is how Will suddenly discovered his finer instincts and whisked her away from friend Lymond. I thought he was dedicated with the rest to murder and nasty-minded rituals at the full moon.”

“He was sorry for himself, I think,” said Sybilla wisely. “And
that breeds so much fellow feeling. Anyway, he talked with her just after Lymond had been abominable, and they wept metaphorically all down their shirts and shifts, and he promised to get her away secretly next day, and did.”

“And
how
extraordinary,” said Janet for the sixth time, “that they should meet you like that.”

“Yes, wasn’t it?” said Sybilla.

“And be able to hand Mariotta over to your care.”

“Yes.”

“And go back without being suspected so that he could help his father to trap Lymond.”

“Yes. Here we are,” said Sybilla cheerfully, and entered the convent. Where the first person they saw was Will Scott, talking to Mariotta.

It was hard to know who was most taken aback: Will himself, his stepmother or Sybilla. Janet, the first to find her tongue, said, “God Almighty!” and showed all her teeth in an enormous grin. “Look what we’ve got! Orpheus wriggling rump first out of Hades with his chivalry ashine like a ten-thread twill.”

What Scott mumbled was hardly heard, because Sybilla said quickly, “I think perhaps he’s waiting to see me: he knows I come on Mondays. Will you excuse us a moment?”

Unhappily, Will was flustered, as well as being unaccustomed to the Dowager’s little ways. He said, “It isn’t private, Lady Culter—just a letter I wanted you to pass to Andrew Hunter for me.” And he thrust a paper into Sybilla’s unresisting hand.

“Andrew?”
said Janet, gazing fondly at her stepson. “What’s the point, Will? He’s already left with the rest.” He looked puzzled, and she repeated. “You know. Left with Wat and Culter when they got your message.”

“My message?”

“Your second message telling them where Lymond and Lord Grey were going to be.” She gave an apologetic glance at the Dowager. “I didn’t tell you, Sybilla. But Will’s message came through just before we left. Wat and the others should be well on their way to the east coast by now.”

Sybilla sat down abruptly beside Mariotta. Scott said, “But I haven’t sent any messages!”

“Eh!”

“No! This is the first I’ve ever sent anyone since I joined Lymond
except—except about Crumhaugh, of course. This is just to ask Sir Andrew to keep his promise to stand by me if—in case—when I leave the Master.”

This time it was Janet who sat down. “You haven’t sent Dandy any messages before?”

“No.”

“Nor any more to Buccleuch?”

“No.”

“Then who,” said Janet, with a tremor in her strong voice, “wrote in your name to all of us today telling us to go immediately to the old manor garden at Heriot where Lymond, Sir George Douglas and Lord Grey of Wilton could be had for the taking?”

There was an appalled silence.

“Lymond,” said Mariotta, and laughed hysterically.

*  *  *

Mariotta was quite right. Having galvanized both his brother and Buccleuch into five weeks of expectant planning, Lymond arrived at Cockburnspath with Johnnie Bullo in attendance two days before Lord Grey was due to make his next march into Scotland. Under cover of his safe conduct, he and Johnnie were taken direct to Sir George Douglas.

The advance army waiting at the ravine for Lord Grey was under canvas, and Sir George shared a tent with the commander, Sir Robert Bowes, Warden of the East and Middle Marches. He was however alone when Lymond was ushered in, the gypsy waiting outside.