The Ringed Castle (83 page)

‘That,’ said Lymond with some acerbity, ‘is what I am trying to do. Take my horse, you!’ And dismounting, he threw him the reins and a gold piece together. Philippa, biting her lip, waited for him and was swung down in her turn. The gate was crowded with faces.

‘Well?’
said Lymond.

The spokesman, who had tried the gold in his teeth and then made it vanish, in one miraculous movement, said, jerked a trifle by the big horse’s reins, ‘Are you Mr Crawford of Lymond?’

‘I am Mr Bailey’s great-nephew,’ said Lymond coolly. ‘And you, I suppose, are my cousins?’

There was a chorus of jeers from the gate. The faces were grinning.

‘I had hardly expected such a welcome,’ said Lymond. ‘And on such a wet day. Have you been waiting for long?’

‘Long enough,’ said the spokesman, who had handed the two
horses to someone else who was holding them, for nothing. ‘You took your time at the
Chicken
.’

‘And the rain, I expect, has been making you thirsty?’ Lymond said.

The spokesman, one of the smith’s big helpers, shifted his feet. ‘Ah well, yes. But the old man, he’s paid us to watch him.’

‘A contract,’ said Lymond, ‘must be honoured. I want to watch him too. I think we should all go in there and watch him. But you must have a boy somewhere who could go for the ale?’

There was a boy. He pocketed the money Lymond gave him and ran off, while the gate swung open and the pikes and hatchets moved back, to make way for the lady and escort the gentleman into the house. The first that Leonard Bailey knew of the arrival of his great-nephew was the tramp of many thick boots on the stairs, and the crowding into his study of half the yeomen of Buckinghamshire, bearing with them the insolent girl who had been there before, and a man whose name he had no need to ask: a man with a beautiful doublet under his long, rainsoaked cloak, and fair hair and lashes as long as a cow’s.

‘The Semple by-blow!’ said Leonard Bailey.

If Lymond was still suffering any disability whatever, only the practised eye of Philippa Somerville could detect it. He looked carefully at the elderly, powerful man rising from his desk by the window: at the frayed cap and big jowls and short, open gown, creased where he had been sitting. ‘Yes,’ he said regretfully. ‘Whichever way you look at it, your poor sister had extremely bad taste. Good evening, uncle.’

‘This is the man,’ said Leonard Bailey, and looked round grinning at all the interested faces. ‘You see? The insolence? This is the cunning rogue who would trick me.’

‘I am known for it,’ said Lymond repressively. ‘I steal linen off hedges.’ The sapphire on his right hand, Philippa calculated, must be worth at least four hundred gold pieces. The pikemen breathed heavily, their gaze switching from one man to the other. Lymond said, ‘You did invite us to come? Uncle?’

‘I told the girl to tell you to come,’ Bailey said, ‘She gets no welcome from me. And neither do you. You came—I can tell!—to prove me wrong, or pay me to keep my mouth shut. You’ll do neither.’

‘Heaven forbid,’ Lymond said blandly, ‘that I should provoke hard feelings between nations on your account. An envoy from the Tsar of All Russia and one of the Queen’s Majesty’s ladies in waiting, here to murder an Englishman! Think of the uproar!’

‘Here,’ said the smith’s lad, exchanging the role of audience unexpectedly for that of chorus. ‘You’re not a Rus, you’re not?’

Lymond surveyed him. ‘I’m not a Rus, I’m not,’ he agreed, ‘I’m Crawford of Lymond, a leader of mercenaries, and I work for the
Grand Prince in Moscow. And if it weren’t that I’ve no mind to take you away from your sweethearts, there are some likely lads among you there who would do well in Russia. They roof their houses with gold.’

The eyes of the pikemen became large as pipe-hoops. ‘That be damned for a tale,’ said his great-uncle quickly. ‘That wasn’t what I heard.’

‘When were you last in Russia?’ Lymond said. His hand emerged from his cloak and in a single smooth gesture, he opened and upended his purse over his great-uncle’s desk. Gold pieces, new minted and shining, trilled from it like the song of a blackbird and created, in seconds, a hillock. ‘Be the nest roofed or lined, what does it matter? But I came to talk about family business. And for that, we nephews like our moment of privacy.’

‘No!’ said Master Bailey loudly. ‘No, you’ll not get these lads to leave me. They’re good English lads, and they’re here to protect me and mine.’

‘From Mistress Philippa?’ Lymond said hopefully.

‘From you and your mercenaries, you contrary churl!’

‘But I have no mercenaries with me,’ Lymond said. ‘They must have told you about that. And I gave these gentlemen here my sword and my knife when they asked for them. I am harmless, and innocent, I promise you, of reprobious inventions. Besides, I have already explained. I have my position to think of. I couldn’t possibly kill you.’

‘Could you not?’ Bailey said. ‘I can see what you’re at. Humiliate me; steal my books; throttle me, for all I know, and then claim exemption as the Tsar’s favourite. Ah, no. I’ll not ask these lads to leave me.’

‘What a pity,’ said Lymond. Moving circumspectly, he walked round the back of the desk and stood, looking through the closed panes at the garden. ‘I had hoped you would allow them to pass downstairs at least. The ale has arrived.’

And so it had, in a large keg rumbling erratically up the winding, flagged path, propelled by the boy, along with one or two helpers. ‘I am sure,’ said Lymond to the smith’s lad, ‘that your master would release you to continue your guard duties below. Consider me, if you will, as your prisoner. I shall not expect to walk out of that door until you have all assured yourselves that your master is alive and well. Assuming that he is alive and well, that is, to start with. Are you alive, sir?’ he said, turning with interest to Master Bailey. ‘We seem to have heard remarkably little of you in Scotland. But your manor, if I may say so, is very fine. I find that gratifying. They nearly gave it to me.’

Behind his back, an apologetic exodus was going on. With one eye
on the detestable face of his great-nephew, ‘Stop!’ said Leonard Bailey. ‘I haven’t said——Youve been bribed!’

‘Just a barrel of ale, sir?’ said the smith’s man, who suddenly seemed to be the only one left ‘And as he says, sir. He can’t get away with it, sir: no matter what he may do.’

‘Who nearly gave what to you?’ Philippa said, against the noise of Master Bailey’s cane ill-temperedly thwacking his desk.

‘Gardington was made over to me once, by the Crown. It’s one of their standard good-conduct prizes for espionage.’

Philippa said, rather blankly, ‘I thought you were spying at that time for Scotland.’

‘Well, I wasn’t spying for England,’ Lymond said. ‘But there was a small campaign afoot to make everyone think I was. A long time ago. But it makes it all the more interesting to find that when I no longer qualified, my great-uncle was presented with Gardington. What loyal service brought this reward, Uncle?’

Leonard Bailey laughed. He glared round the empty room and flung his cane to the floor, and sitting back in his chair gave vent to a bark of fleering, furious laughter. ‘I nearly sent you to the headsman,’ he said.

‘I thought so,’ said Lymond. His manner, perfectly courteous, was such that Philippa, biting her lip, found she preferred not to watch him. With the same exquisite manners he lifted over a chair, and placed her in it. Then he closed the door, and seated himself, on the other side of the desk from his great-uncle.

‘Now,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘Before we talk, there is a small matter I wish to bring to your notice. In a moment, you are going to explain to me what you know of my birth. Since there seems little goodwill between us, I am sure that the explanation, whatever it is, will be one painful to me and my family. I merely wish to warn you that if in the course of it you speak slightingly or with the least disrespect of my mother, I shall indeed throttle you, and tell the men below that you died in a fit.

‘Further’—as Bailey, his face suffused, lifted himself to his feet—‘if you call back your men, you will see not a crown for your pains.’

Bailey stopped, his hand on the window.

‘Sit down,’ Lymond said. ‘And tell me how much my mother has been paying you. For how long? For thirty years?’

‘What?’ said Philippa; and Lymond, impatient, turned round and looked at her.

‘But of course. Or why else have both he and the Lennoxes foregone the chance to make all this public? He hates and despises the Crawfords. But he has been living off them—haven’t you, dearest great-uncle?—all his life.’

‘It was the woman who sinned——’

‘Uncle!’ Lymond said gently.

‘Who made the mistake, and the woman who paid the price. She could afford it.’

‘But since she is not so young now, and not so well, it seemed a good time to insure your income with the next generation.’ And as Philippa stifled an exclamation Lymond said, his blue eyes still on Bailey, ‘That is why he asked you to bring me. You thought it a matter of old grudges and hatred. It is, of course. But it is also a very English matter of trade. You promised me proof,’ Lymond said to the other man.

‘I have it,’ said Bailey. On his big-lobed nose and his cheeks, rather pale, the veins stood out like cracklure on china. ‘But not in this room. And I’ll not leave it either, with those light fingers near. No. Dorcas will fetch it.… I take it I can ring my hand bell for Dorcas?’

‘Provided only Dorcas comes,’ Lymond said.

The old man set his jaw. Then, seizing his desk bell, he rang it. And a moment later, the door opened to reveal the thin, aproned form of the housekeeper. She was flushed.

‘Master Leonard: did you send for that ale?’

‘I sent for it, ma’am,’ Lymond said. ‘And I hope you will share it, with my compliments. Your master has a message for you.’

‘Which he is capable of giving with his own tongue,’ Bailey said angrily. ‘Dorcas, you recall the papers I told you of? Get them.’

‘And while she has gone,’ said Lymond, as the door closed behind the housekeeper, ‘you will answer my question. How much of a pension do you accept from my mother?’ And as the big man drew breath, he added calmly, ‘I can, obviously, confirm what you tell me. It would save time therefore to give me the truth.’

Leonard Bailey had recovered his confidence. ‘A peppery young man!’ he observed. ‘A very assured young gentleman, accustomed to the obedience of louts and ruffians in the field, and ruffling it at foreign courts, in great favour and pomp. Dorcas will tell you of the recipe she has for such as you. Take a peacock, break his neck and cut his throat and flay him, skin and feathers together.

‘I am not sure, Master Nobody, if I care to do business with you, or answer your questions, or jump to your bidding. I have had an arrangement with pretty Mistress Sybilla—chaste Mistress Sybilla—spotless Mistress Sybilla—for thirty years now, as you say. It is a trifling matter of a few coins. Had Honoria lived, she would have cost your family as much in a week. But she died giving birth to poor Gavin who was not, of course, and never could be the equal of your glorious, impeccable mother Sybilla. It seems but right that the family should pay for the mourning rites.

‘It has been a long mourning, poor Honoria. And now the first Baron has gone, and his son Gavin has gone, and none is left to
remember her but Sybilla and one of her sons. If we do business,’ said Leonard Bailey, the saliva winking at the corners of his strong lips, ‘I trust you will be generous. Or I shall have to try if the other son thinks Honoria deserves better remembrance.’

‘How much?’ Lymond said. He had made no effort to interrupt. But his eyes, all the time Bailey was talking had been wandering, Philippa noticed, along the bookshelves, marking the thick rolls, the leather and velvet bound volumes of his great-uncle’s remarkable library.

‘I receive a pension,’ said Leonard Bailey, ‘of three hundred pounds per annum.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Lymond.

‘Nevertheless, it is true. Does it seem so much for an old man to live on?’ said Bailey. ‘But if you wish, I can show you papers. Her last payment’—and he pulled open a drawer of his desk—‘is there. Signed by the noble and virtuous lady herself.’

From where she sat, Philippa could not see the paper, but she watched Lymond read it. Three hundred pounds a year—six times what the Queen’s Latin secretary earned to keep himself and his wife at court, including his prize money. And spent on nothing, so far as she could see, but this miserly gathering of books. She could not believe he ever opened them. They lay undisturbed, as they had lain when she came to Gardington last: an insurance: a treasure safe from most robbers, for what country labourer would know the value of these six perfect volumes of the works of St Augustine? She wondered, thinking rapidly of the libraries she knew—Sidney’s, Ascham’s, Pole’s, that of John Dee—what this collection was worth, and put it, at its lowest, at three thousand marks. Then Lymond laid the paper down carefully on the desk and turned, as the door opened and the woman Dorcas came in, with a locked metal box in her hands.

‘Ah!’ said Leonard Bailey. ‘Put it there. What is it, Dorcas?’

The housekeeper’s lidless, angry eyes stared at the two unwanted visitors and then at the flushed face of her master. ‘Your friends below,’ she said, ‘are already crapulous. Am I meant to sit in the same kitchen with the scum?’

It reminded Bailey of his fears. ‘The devils!’ he said, starting up. ‘Will they take my fees and leave me here to be killed?’

‘If you guard your tongue,’ said Lymond pleasantly, ‘you have nothing to fear. The papers, please.’ And Leonard Bailey, after glancing round them all again, drew a key from his drawer and, unlocking the box, took from it the only two papers it contained, and held them fast in his powerful hands.

‘These are copies,’ he said. ‘These are signed by the Semple woman—by your dear lady mother—but they are copies. You will
get nothing by stealing them. But they will prove to you that what I told the girl here is true. There, dear Master Nobody, is what you came for. There is your certificate of bastardy.’ And he threw them on the table before Francis Crawford.