The Game of Kings (72 page)

He said quietly, “Go on. And the fourth occasion?”

For the first time, Sybilla lost a little of her self-command. She said,
“Do you know, if you had succeeded then, I think you would have had to answer for it yourself to those same gypsy gentlemen and not to me today. He was on his way to Mariotta when they attacked him … but you knew that, of course. It must have seemed quite fool-proof at last: Romanies can only be controlled by their King. Unluckily for you, their King at the moment is controlled by me. He learned of your commission and stopped it just in time. Richard isn’t dead, Sir Andrew; and I have three men who will swear to having been paid by you to assassinate him.”

Hunter’s manner didn’t alter: only his eyes, meeting hers, were curiously bright and impersonal. He said carefully, “You are evidently bribing whoever you can to save your son. Forgive me, but if you take this any further I shall have to take steps legally to protect myself.”

This time Sybilla herself got up, moving away from the table with a rustle of petticoats. She said over her shoulder, “I haven’t taken it any further—yet. But don’t be misled. The fact that I am here doesn’t mean there is the least uncertainty; the least hope for you. There isn’t any. The only doubt is in my own mind and is because of your mother.”

“Mother!” said Hunter’s voice, half aloud behind her.

There was the briefest pause, and then her quick brain, suddenly showing her his mind, made her twist around. His sword was already half lifted, light stuttering from the blade.

She said rapidly, “I may look simple, but I’m not precisely moonstruck yet. If I don’t come back, you won’t even have a chance to hang, my friend.”

He continued to come. The sword, still half raised, was aimed almost casually at her heart, and his face was quite detached, like a dreamer’s. She drew one quick breath and stood still, her hands open at her sides, her head a little tilted and her lips parted. He walked until he was so close to her that he had to meet her eyes; had to make the small decision that would force the point onward.

Something of the message of the steady blue eyes must have penetrated; something of her unexpected stillness surprised him into a moment’s pause; and Sybilla said quietly in that instant, “I have your charter chest at Midculter.”

She thought she had misjudged it. The sword point wavered and approached and his eyes remained flatly purposeful. Then they came alive again, startled and disbelieving; the sword dropped and he said
—and had difficulty in saying—“That isn’t true. I keep my chest in the strongroom of this house. No one—”

“Your mother keeps her recipes there: remember? And I have a very talented Romany on my side, Sir Andrew.… You’ve had dealings with the English, haven’t you, for a very long time? Your visits to the Ostrich put you in no danger—you were already well known in Carlisle. How else did you know Jonathan Crouch was George Douglas’s prisoner? Why did Sir George trouble with you unless he had a fairly good idea you were in the same sweet trade as himself?”

She turned, and walking past where he stood frozen in mid-room, she paused by the window, looking out on the ochre and viridian and sage green of the dusty summer treetops.

“Such a mean, thieving little trade: a dealing in secrets; in hissings and winkings and the selling of men’s bodies, back and forth. And even then, they didn’t pay you well enough. Maybe they realized that you weren’t greatly intimate at Court; that you only touched the edge of what they could already get from Glencairn and Douglas and Brunton and Ormiston and Cockburn and the rest.… So you turned your eyes on my family. Wealth; a pretty heiress; a family feud—who’d be surprised if it had fatal results? And the widow, in due time, would naturally turn to the gentle family friend. Or at the very worst, Francis was worth a thousand crowns to Wharton.…”

He said, “You needn’t elaborate. I know what I’ve done. You’ve told, then. The papers in that chest—”

“Not yet,” said Sybilla, and turned to meet his white face. “The chest will be opened if I don’t come back.”

Tremors were beginning to shake him. He sat again, abruptly, at the table, his eyes fixed on her like stones. “What are you going to do?” Seeing the expression on her face he gave a sort of laugh and bit his lip, stilling the shaking. “What do you suppose my wonderful brother would have done now?”

He was too helplessly self-centred, too rotten, for her to pity him now. She said sharply, “Your mother has a lot to answer for, but if you had the heart of a rabbit, you would have made a man’s life for yourself and let her make the best of it.”

He had some pride left. He said, making no excuses, “Mother knows nothing of this. It will kill her. What—what are you going to do?”

The cool blue eyes rested on his trembling hands. The Dowager
said slowly, “Your mother is a sick old woman, and an unhappy one. I don’t envy you the life you’ve led with her, but she need never have become the sort of person she is now.

“Never mind that. She’s going to suffer, but not as much as she might have done. I should like to see you hanged. Because of you, I nearly lost every child I have left: I did lose my grandchild. But that would be an insult to all the magnificent, vicious criminals we already have living freely among us.

“You are not of that kind. You did what you did at second and third hand, as you could, and sweetened over with a glaze of hysterical necessity. Once the need is removed, you won’t kill again. A reason for living may be hard to find, too: but that is your problem.”

She walked to the desk and drawing a paper in front of him, laid a pen beside it. “I want one thing,” she said. “And that is a statement exonerating Francis from the things you have done.” And as he hesitated, she said sharply, “Come along! Beside the other things you have done, what do these matter?”

He looked at her with dull eyes, and then, bending, took up the pen and wrote. She read it, sealed it, and put it away. “Yes. It won’t save him, as you may guess … but it will perhaps undo a little of the damage. And now you’d better leave. I’m going to talk to your mother, and then leave for my home. The chest will be opened and its contents published within two days. By then,” said Sybilla, “you should be out of this land.”

He raised his head vaguely, only half understanding. “I may go?”

“Yes. And I wish you well of it,” she said, her eyes hard as sapphires.

She waited until she heard the sound of his horse on the cobbles, and then rising quietly, climbed the stair to his mother’s room.

The terrier had died in the spring, overcome with fat and lack of air.

Since then, Dame Catherine had had no distractions: her son had hardly been at home, and even her books and her paintings and precious pieces of ivory and jade had begun to pall. Longing for company, she welcomed it by releasing the barbs of months of lonely self-torture. Sybilla, sitting quietly by the taffeta-spread bedside, near the heaped-up delicate pillows, listened to Catherine Hunter’s spiced invective against her son, her servants, her surroundings, her illness and finally, as the icy flood reached its spring heights, against her Maker.

The Dowager’s voice cut lightly through the flow. “Why don’t you get them to carry you downstairs?”

The black eyes sneered. “That would be delightful,” said the old woman. “Unfortunately, I am part paralysed, you know.”

“I don’t wonder,” said Sybilla pleasantly. “And if you never try to help yourself you’ll be wholly paralysed soon, and you
will
enjoy that. I’ve brought you a litter. Two of my men are coming up in half an hour to lift you down.”

A tiny spark of alarm showed in the black eyes, but the grey, crumpled face remained contemptuous. “Money has given you a fine, arrogant manner, Sybilla, but I should prefer you to keep it for Midculter. I hear your son has left his wife.”

“He hasn’t, but you won’t change the subject by being rude,” said the Dowager. “There’s warm fire and a comfortable couch in the hall. You’ll like it very much.”

“Sybilla. I am neither a child nor an imbecile. I dislike being humoured and I particularly dislike being managed. Because of my disability I am unable to leave this room. You can hardly expect me to undermine for your benefit the little health I have left me.”

The Dowager said coolly, “There’s no need to be frightened. Your surgeon has given me full permission.”

The black eyes snapped. “The child is dead, I hear.”

“Yes.”

“Did your younger boy kill it, or did she get rid of it herself?”

“Neither. Don’t be silly, Catherine. You don’t really want me to go.”

“I didn’t say I did. Don’t be too clever, Sybilla.”

The Dowager said, “The child was nobody’s fault, if you really want to know. Mariotta and Richard are together and very happy. Francis is in ward in Edinburgh. He is to appear before Parliament in a week, and we hope very much he will be acquitted.”

The little figure on the pillows looked pityingly at Sybilla. “Acquitted! My dear woman, even the Culters haven’t quite enough money for that.”

“Then we shall have to use our beaux yeux,” said Sybilla placidly. “Perhaps if I made appropriate advances to all Her Majesty’s lords of the Session … Or do you think I should hardly get through them all in a week?”

The quality of the black stare was changing. There was a tiny
silence, and then Lady Hunter said in her cutting voice, “This is a little overdetermined, even for you, Sybilla. Something is wrong, I take it. Nobody visits me unless something is wrong.”

The Dowager didn’t prevaricate. “A little. It concerns Dandy.”

The thin lips compressed themselves. “Of course. What stupidity has he committed now?”

Sybilla said, “Any—stupidity he has committed, he did for your sake. You’ve been a very hard mistress to serve, Catherine.”

“The boy needs hardness,” said the old woman. Her breathing had quickened. “Toughness. Other people run estates and make a success of them—get on at Court—become popular—bring home heiresses. My other son—”

“Dandy did his best for you,” said the Dowager. “That’s what I have to tell you. He felt he could never succeed in—orthodox—ways, so he tried some which were outside the law. Too far outside.”

“He’s in trouble?”

“Serious trouble. If he’s caught.”

“You came to warn him. Is that it?”

“Yes,” said Sybilla. “That’s it.”

There was a long pause. Then, with an effort, the invalid pulled herself up in bed and spoke in her normal voice. “Well!” she snapped. “I suppose he’d better get out of the country. Tell him to come here and I’ll give him money. And he’d better not show his face here again until it’s safe.” She did not ask what he had done.

Sybilla stretched out her two fine hands and took the small, limp, puffed one in them. “He has money. He has gone,” she said. “There was no time to see you. He sent you his love.”

The small hand lay inert in hers; the black eyes were without visible emotion. “Inept!” said Dame Catherine. “Disorganized, as usual. Good riddance. Now perhaps I can get a good paid factor to make the place profitable.”

Sybilla released her hand and rose. “I’m sure you will. You’ll enjoy arranging it. Now, here’s the litter and your maid to help them move you. Slowly and carefully … and you’ll do very well.”

Lady Hunter made no protest at all as, wrapping her in her own soft blankets, they transferred her gently from bed to litter, and laid pillows beneath her head. With a manservant carrying each end the invalid moved for the first time in years across the blue tiles of her bedroom and toward the open door. As they carried her, the sun
caught the shimmering cap, the jewels and the bright black eyes and flashed for a moment, before the door closed behind her, on the tears lying silently in the bitter troughs and seams of her face.

*  *  *

At Midculter, Mariotta and Richard heard the story in silence. As Sybilla ended, her son drew a long breath and said, “The charter chest. Is it really here?”

“Yes,” said the Dowager. There were circles under her eyes and her back, although she held it straight, was tired and aching. “Johnnie Bullo got it for me. It has all the papers on Sir Andrew’s transactions with Carlisle.”

Richard’s eyes met hers. “What are you going to do with them?”

“That is for you and Mariotta to decide. You are the person most injured by him. It’s only fair you should take what redress you can.”

“I don’t want revenge,” said Richard shortly. “I only want to forget about it.”

“You don’t want to publish them?”

“No. Only the paper that affects Francis.”

“Mariotta?”

The girl’s eyes were fixed on Richard. “Oh, no. No. It’s as much my fault as his.”

“Rubbish, child,” said Sybilla. “But I’m glad, all the same. He’s not worth it. Well keep them as surety for his good conduct abroad, and I hope we never hear of him again.”

Richard suddenly dropped beside his mother and tilted her chin. “I don’t think you’ve told us everything. You had no right to attempt a thing like that on your own.”

“Attempt!” said Sybilla indignantly. “It was a tour de force!”

They smiled at one another, and then the Dowager’s expression changed. “Only five days!” exclaimed his mother. “How could I be hard on her?”

*  *  *

Only five days. Will Scott, sitting bleakly in his father’s empty lodging, could think of nothing more to do. How could he rescue Lymond, even if he were well? Even if he were rescued, how could he force him again into this death within life?

Four days. Sybilla, Mariotta and Richard moved their household to Edinburgh, and a surprising number of their friends came visiting, with an echo of Lady Hunter’s tart “good riddance” on their lips.

Three days, and the Lord Justice General issued an order and let loose a thunderbolt. On the instructions of the Crown, he desired the prisoner, if his state permitted, to appear for questioning before a Judicial Committee of Parliament on the day before his trial.

Regardless of the tenor of their previous meeting, the boy Scott burst in on Lord Culter with the news. The brisk red hair was wild.

“It isn’t legal!” said Scott. “They can’t have an Assize without a jury, and it isn’t a meeting of the Estates. They can’t condemn him without a technical court: they can’t!”