The Game of Kings (46 page)

Sir George greeted him, his face a dim, shadowless beige under the sunlit canvas. He was about to lose the most promising ally of years, and he hated the prospect. He said without preamble, “I’ve just come from Lord Grey. You ought to understand that I’ve kept my part of the bargain: I obtained his lordship’s promise to produce this man Harvey for you. But—”

“Ah!” said Lymond, airy and stylish in dark blue. “There’s a but. Like Glaucus, we have a but, but no honey in it. Lord Grey has changed his mind?”

“The Protector changed it for him. Harvey is still in London; he isn’t coming north.”

“—And?”

Douglas said curtly, “And Sir Robert Bowes has orders to see that you send for the boy Scott regardless. You’ll be paid in money, not in kind.”

“And if I don’t?” asked Lymond.

“Your life is not in danger. Only your good health.”

Sir George’s angry glance met Lymond’s sardonic one, and there was an uncomfortable silence. At length the Master stirred. “So. Not the honey barrel, but the tilly-seeds of torture, so that I disgorge the secrets of my bed and board.”

Douglas was flushed. “All that is wanted is a message in your writing which will bring the boy here. Your gypsy friend can take it … but you will not, of course, be allowed to tell him the conditions under which it is being sent.”

“I see. You expect this to give you, personally, some security?” said Lymond suddenly.

Douglas’s voice was sharp. “If there were any alternative, be sure I should take it—” And broke off as the Commander came in.

Sir Robert Bowes straightened, nodded, and surveyed the Master at leisure from fustic head to silver spurs. He smiled. “Is this the fellow?”

“—But even a gib-cat has claws,” said Lymond, returning the smile and answering the thought. “Where is Samuel Harvey?”

“In London,” said Bowes comfortably. “Are you going to send this message to Scott for us?”

Lymond surveyed him with mild distaste. “Why should I?”

“Thumbscrews,” said Bowes picturesquely. “The iron glove—hot lead—pincers—knives. And the whip.”

The Master’s eyes were hilarious. “What, all in your baggage? There’s the English army for you. My God, do you have to whip them from behind as well?”

But it was bravado. He told them almost immediately all they wanted to know, and inscribed a letter to Will Scott with which Bullo uncomplainingly set off.

Arriving with the rest of the army on Monday, Lord Grey was charmed with the news. “This afternoon, at the pond belonging to that old house at Heriot,” said Bowes. “He’d already made a verbal arrangement with the boy, to be confirmed with his letter, and we thought it best not to change it.”

“Splendid. Good work. Thought all he had to do was collect Harvey, send the message and leave, hey? That’ll show him!” said
the Lord Lieutenant. And on learning that a party, including Lymond and Sir George Douglas, had already left for the fateful appointment with Will Scott, Lord Grey collected Gideon and trotted off on the same path to enjoy the denouement.

Sir George Douglas was extremely uncomfortable.

To begin with, his elegant length was curled frondwise round the base of a holly tree whose bulk was a perfect screen, and whose eavesdrip was agony. And secondly, thus fixed and transfixed, he was being pricked, railed at, attacked and generally sacrificed to the playful god Momus.

The patch of ground at Heriot chosen by Lymond for the vigil for Will Scott had once been the kitchen garden of a large, fortified house, long since burned and bombarded and reduced to a masons’ boutique.

Among the twisted remains of medlar and apple trees, kale and gooseberries, thyme, catmint and pennyroyal, bramble, blaeberry and camomile and a bower of nettles, a select squad of Bowes’ own men lay in approximate concealment, watching the moors to the west. In the open, beside the green mud of an ancient fishpond, sat Lymond, on a block of hewn stone, with his ankles and wrists inconspicuously lashed to each other and to the block.

Although tethered like a billy goat, he had no impediment to speech. Thus suited Lymond, happily aware that for an hour or two he had never been safer. Despite almost tearful threats from Bowes, he sat amber-headed in the April sunlight, melting as the tears of the Heliades, and tore them to shreds. After a while he got quite carried away himself.

“—The other extremity, I see, is harder to conceal, the merry merry holly. It might, of course, help to stand up: why not stand up? No? Well, yours are the marybones: I am perfectly comfortable and capable of reciting verse until the thyme withers and the pennyroyal is debased. Give me death, but not dumbness. Let Parrot, I pray you, have lyberte to prate. And a captive audience; an attentive
audience—an increasing audience. Your noble commander, no less, and—who else? Art thou Heywood, with the mad, merry wit? Good lord, no. It’s Flaw Valleys, in person.”

Lord Grey of Wilton, stalking into the clearing with a fine scorn of concealment and Gideon at his heels, had his eyes fixed on its soliloquizing centre.

The hair was different, the skin was different, the clothes were different, but the voice with its rapidity, with its lowering excess of mental agility, were the same. “The Spaniard; we were right; it’s the same man. You’ve got him!” pealed Lord Grey, and came to a halt.

Lymond looked over his shoulder and back. “Spaniard? Behold,” he quoted sadly, “my countenance and my colour. It’s only Sweet Cicely awaiting the bees, and blushing in young modesty like a seraphim; two wings over the eyes and the other four pinned with some damnably hard knots: God save Flamens and keep all the knotless from high winds and short memories.”

Paying not the slightest heed, Lord Grey pursued his idea. “The Spaniard who stole my horses and supplies at Hume Castle. Deny if you can that you’re the fellow.”

A delighted smile spread over Lymond’s attentive face, and then faded in consternation. “You want your tawny velvet, and I gave it away.”

“You insolent blackguard!”

“Muy illustrissimo y excellentissimo señor,” responded Lymond politely. “How did you find out, I wonder?”

Lord Grey said frigidly, “You made two obvious mistakes. One was to show yourself to Somerville here, and the other was parading your miserable polyglot talents before the Countess of Lennox.”

“Ah!” said Lymond; and a moment later continued. “Manerly Margery, Mylk, and Ale. Por vos suis en prison mis; Por vos, amie! I wondered at the Protector’s sudden tenderness for poor Mr. Harvey.”

“And you may as well know,” said Lord Grey, high colour in his cheeks, “that you’ll have plenty of time to reflect on the folly of your tricks. Plenty of time. I mean to have you hanged—”

“—Higher than Haman and the ramparts of Hume—”

“—And burned—”

“—More successfully than Polycarp. And ripped, salted and stuffed
with myrrh and cassia and set up painted to remind all low people, all boasters and braggers and bargainers, that villainy is mortal. And what about Douglas? Does he suffer the same if Will Scott doesn’t appear? He’s present, as a matter of fact, though you might not think it—somewhere.” He looked wildly around. “But where? My joy, cry peip! where ever thou be!”

Lord Grey also looked around. Part at least of Sir George must have been visible because the Lord Lieutenant said irritably, “Get up, man: are you broody? No need for that yet. The boy will be hours yet by all accounts.”

A derisive groan broke from the bound man. “Nay, not so. I am too brittle; I may not endure.…”

“Hold your tongue!”

The prisoner smiled and settled himself as luxuriously as he could against the cold stone while Lord Grey and Douglas conferred.

Gideon, watching the relaxed profile with its veiled eyes and lightly contemptuous mouth, was gifted by remembered anger with an extra insight.

The man was coiled like a spring, waiting. Waiting for what? With the whole might of the English army lying behind them at Cockburnspath, Gideon couldn’t imagine. But this was no broken Colossus, waiting to be whisked off for old metal: it was a clever man, and an expert actor.

Gideon left Grey’s side and strolled unobtrusively over to the pond, where Lymond greeted him without expression. “Any friend of Meg Douglas has my respect.”

Gideon looked down, hands clasped loosely behind his back. “As it ha-happens, I don’t greatly care for her. What are you waiting for?”

The impudent mouth widened. “Rescue,” said Lymond. “Why not?”

Somerville gave him back the same smile. “Not while I’m here.”

“You probably won’t be. Lord Grey is leaving.”

Looking round, Gideon saw that this was true. Satisfied at having identified Lymond and unready to abase himself behind prickly evergreens, the Lord Lieutenant was preparing to go back to camp.

Gideon crossed to him quickly, and in a brief exchange, got permission to stay behind, having pleaded in vain for more men to stay with him. On a billow of diminishing comments, Lord Grey
disappeared. Gideon manfully selected a gorse bush which happened to be the nearest cover to Lymond, and the little clearing settled down to comparative silence.

*  *  *

Since Johnnie Bullo took the summons to Branxholm instead of to Will Scott; since he delivered it verbally through a dear friend who was unknown to Buccleuch; and since he represented it as coming from Scott and not from Lymond, Sir Wat and Lord Culter set out forthwith with all their men to Heriot under the natural impression that they were about to lay Lymond and his allies by the heels in the act of bargaining over Buccleuch’s son.

Johnnie had been generous with his information, both about the site and its hazards. As they rode, Sir Wat and Richard laid their plans, which were simple: by riding north around the bluff on which the house ruins stood, Lord Culter would silently infiltrate behind the Englishmen; Buccleuch with his men would appear in full panoply along the wide, exposed moors to the west and south, and dash the would-be ambush back into Richard’s arms.

The prospect was intoxicating. In a state of near euphoria the Scotts and the Crawfords drove at the hills lying between Branxholm and Heriot and the hills vanished, as small fish into the gape of a whale. Then the blue and silver wheeled and passed to the northeast, while Buccleuch slackened his pace, and prepared to time his attack.

They appeared to Gideon, to Bowes and to Douglas as a sparkling comber on the horizon, which unrolled as they watched, and crystallized into helmet, steel plate, spearhead and sword. Scots, and in superior numbers, armed, on horseback, and making straight for them with instructed assurance.

The kitchen garden disintegrated. The holly and laurels ran for their horses, but the gorse bush alone lingered. As Bowes’ men pushed past him and curses flew and horses stamped and shuffled, Gideon ducked and ran across to Lymond. He had an impression of a bright eye and some breathless laughter; then he slashed the cord at the Master’s feet and flung him up at sword point before him in the saddle of his own horse. With the ground vibrating under his feet with oncoming hoofs, he set the gelding, doubly laden, galloping after Bowes and the other men.

Richard saw them coming from beyond the small hill, and sent
his men streeling like floats on a salmon net over the coastal road. The approaching horses veered, racing parallel with the Scottish horse in a rhythm of flashing forearms and outflung, muscular necks, and the heather clods thudded like meteorites.

They engaged as they galloped. Richard, his grey eyes half-closed, his riding faultless and his right arm invincible, defended himself and scanned every face. He saw the Douglas colours and ignored them; he saw a heavily built rider, presumably Bowes, try to rally the men, lost him, and was involved in a thumping clash of steel and horseflesh and labouring bodies, through which he got a glimpse of a yellow head.

He was going through the battling parties indiscriminately, like a flame through wax, when the thunder of horses about him checked as if the gates of the atmosphere had shut in their faces.

Lord Grey had thought twice about Gideon’s warning, and had detailed a company of horse to watch the situation at Heriot. Straight from Cockburnspath, red crosses glittering, fresh and rosy as apples, the new horsemen fell joyfully on Culter’s men and on the Scotts sweeping up to their rear; surprised them, engaged them and devastated them until, broken and bitterly enraged they turned, outnumbered, and fled back over the moors.

Gideon Somerville, caught in the middle of the early fighting, hacked grimly with one hand and controlled his horse and his prisoner with the other. He had almost cleared a road for himself when he was taken by surprise in the rear. He experienced a shattering blow on the back of his head; realized with surprise and fury that he was falling, and knew nothing more.

*  *  *

Mr. Somerville opened his eyes to a circle of queasily ambulating trees, shut them again, and tried to move. He found this impossible because his hands and ankles were tied. He opened his eyes again quickly and looked.

It was a small wood. Two battered horses were grazing quietly under the trees, and Crawford of Lymond was sitting placidly quite near, with his hands clasped about his knees.

“Oh!” said Gideon.

“Quite,” said Lymond cheerfully. “Your horse was killed, so I rolled you like Sisyphus’s stone to the nearest shelter. Everyone was
much too busy high up to notice what was happening in the long grass. You had it wrong, you know. It was to be an evisceration party, not a rescue.”

His cords? wondered Gideon vaguely. Cut them on his, Gideon’s, sword, probably: it was missing. Damn. Aloud, he said, “I suppose we have young Scott to thank for all this. I might have done more to warn Lord Grey, except that I found it hard to believe you would put yourself within reach of your own countrymen.”

“Don’t blame Scott. I sent for Buccleuch and Lord Culter,” said Lymond. “Which is only just, since Lord Grey didn’t bring my Mr. Harvey. In other words, we have all been energetically cheating. Although I should have sent the message in any case.”