The Game of Kings (11 page)

Pause. “I don’t see the connection,” said Sym.

“Oh, don’t be a fool!” said Christian irritably. “There isn’t any.”

“F
IREARMS!” said Wat Scott of Buccleuch with a powerful disgust. “Firearms! I could do more harm with a good spit through a peashooter…”

Tom Erskine located the voice without enthusiasm.

He had had a frustrating week. Stirling was his home: his father was Keeper of the castle, and in the romantic and ingenuous soul which lurked behind his round exterior, the Master of Erskine loved above all things to see between his horse’s ears the Rock of Stirling, a homely Lorelei in the green meadow of the Forth.

It had taken all Friday to bring Christian Stewart and her women to Stirling. He had left them at Bogle House, which the Culter family and the Flemings shared, and had found his town like one with the plague at the door. Court, government, the tougher shreds of army command, had all recoiled on the place, and the streets were a nightmare of horsemen and wagons. More than that: inside the packed
lands lived an invisible disease of fright and nerves ten times worse than the newsless, suffering strain of the country because, like proud flesh, it increased on itself. Arran the Governor, awaiting the final, destined disaster of Somerset’s attack, saw Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin in lapidary capitals before him and was sick with nerves. The town followed his lead.

At least, Tom found, they had taken thought for the Queen. For a week, the baby had been in hiding with her mother, and Mariotta and Lady Culter, now taking the place of the new-widowed Jenny Fleming, had gone to be at their side. Later, he heard that Christian had been commanded to join them.

He could not even be her escort. He was held fast in Stirling by affairs, and by the necessities of war. On Monday night they heard that Leith was on fire and Holyrood Abbey overthrown; later, that the English Protector had struck camp and was on the move, while an English fleet was sailing farther north. No question now, of being sent to join the Queen, and Christian. Erskine stayed, and lightheaded with the despair of high crisis, the town awaited fresh news.

In the evening, it came. The English army was marching—not west, toward them, but south.

It was news that would be repeated, word for word, as long as they lived. On Monday, it was confirmed. The Protector, at Lauder, was still moving toward England. On Tuesday and Wednesday, fresh reports: the English fleet had simply fortified Broughty Castle on Tayside, and appeared to be waiting only for a wind to leave again. Thursday and today, Hume Castle had fallen to the enemy and had been garrisoned; the English army were now at Roxburgh, and apart from these outposts and the cut and dead wrack left by the storm, the pounding seas had withdrawn and the tide had flowed south.

Impossible to understand why Somerset had failed to press his brilliant advantage. The tired captains in Stirling could only surmise. The cautious pointed to the four English garrisons: two seabound on the open east coast, two within reach of the Border; but jubilation, like a truant, crept up on the town and its army.

Tom Erskine, at last free to escape, was impatient alike of wild opinions and delay, and irritated beyond reason to find Buccleuch in the company on his first visit to Stirling since Pinkie. Particularly when the company, sleek and splendid, was George Douglas, whose elder brother, the Earl of Angus, was head of the House of Douglas in Scotland and father to Lord Lennox’s wife.

He walked forward nevertheless and was seized. “Here, Erskine: you’ve used ’em. Hackbuts, boy! Damned dangerous things!” Fighting had left Wat Scott of Buccleuch unaltered: bonnet crammed with Buccleuch bees, he looked as he had done when, standing with Lord Culter on the Boghall battlements, he had watched smoke rise from the castle where his wife Janet lay with a knife in her shoulder.

And that was a theme painfully close to Erskine’s mind—and Sir George’s too, it appeared, for interrupting Buccleuch blandly he observed, “Hullo, Erskine. Come to tell us about poor Will?” And so Tom had to embark, perforce, on his errand.

“I’ve seen your boy, Buccleuch. He’s in good health.” That, at least, was true.

Circumscribed by lowered eyebrows and raised beard, Buccleuch’s face did not change.
“Poor
Will?”

Sighing, Erskine discarded finesse. “He’s with Crawford of Lymond.”

The thickets of grey curls tightened. “Lymond!” bawled Buccleuch. “As a prisoner? A hostage?”

Tom shook his head. He told the tale quickly: of the English messenger, of Lymond’s attack on his brother; of his own arrival which saved Lord Culter. At the end there was a short silence; and though Buccleuch’s eyebrows were lowered, there was a pleased spark in his glare. He cleared his throat.

“The fact is, the boy came back from France with a skinful of damned, moony ideas, and I could make nothing of him—nothing at all. So he stamped out, consigning us all to the nethermost hole and the wee deils with the pitchforks. In fact”—he paused, as memory struck him—“he said he’d probably be there before us. Which explains … God, Will!” growled Buccleuch, with a kind of numbed exasperation. “You’d have a damned nerve to choose Lymond to go to hell with.”

“Oh, come.” Sir George’s eyes hadn’t left Buccleuch’s face. “I think we’re all underestimating him. Be patient, and your Will might surprise you one day.”

Buccleuch returned the stare. “If you’re a decent body by nature, you don’t sell your captain, even if he’s captain of nothing but carrion.”

“But surely Will knows what Lymond is?” Tom’s voice told of anxiety as well as puzzlement.

“Will is no innocent,” said Buccleuch flatly. “He’s a cocky young
fool with a head too big for his bonnet, but he’s not daft, and he’s not twisted. If Lymond took him on, he knew what he was doing. Will won’t betray him. He’ll rub his own nose in the midden, to make a point of principle to his soft-heided relations, but his great new code of honour’ll keep the stink from his nose while he does it. That boy,” snarled Sir Wat, “thinks with his nether tripes—Let’s have some claret, for God’s sake.”

*  *  *

It was evening before Erskine had leave to go.

He took no escort because he knew none was permitted; but turned alone out of the gates of Stirling and rode into the sunset, which flared and died as he went.

It grew dark. Around him, the trees closed in and then fell behind: beyond them were the moors, with the hills of Menteith on his right. In a light wind, grasses hissed like spray. The path became better: he saw cottage lights and smelled wood smoke. Then he was stopped.

That was the first guard. There were two more, past the hamlet of Port, the chapel, the barns, the Law Tree. The last of the beeches moved past him: he gave his name and password and was recognized yet again; and then drew rein.

Black and unrippled at his feet spread the Lake of Menteith, one and a half miles across, island home of his brother’s priory; island seat of the Earls of Menteith. Barring its texture lay like ribbons the thousand lights from the two islands in its centre, and music fled across the water: organ notes from the Priory of Inchmahome, where monks sang at Compline and children slept; a consort playing a galliard from Inchtalla, where the Scottish court took its leisure in hiding.

A ferry, already signalled by its prow lantern, arrived, chuckling; and he got in.

*  *  *

“My dear man,” said Sybilla next day, placidly stitching before Earl John’s big fire. “Admit you’ve never had to live with eight children on an island, and every one with the instincts of a full-grown lemming.”

The Dowager, who had her own way of reducing tension, sat next to Tom Erskine, her aristocratic nose decorated by a pair of horn-rimmed
spectacles hung around her neck on a thin gold chain, the inevitable embroidery on her lap. Christian Stewart was out, and Sybilla was free, which meant that she commandeered both Erskine and Sir Andrew Hunter, newly in with dispatches, to help her entertain Mariotta.

For the attack on Midculter had tumbled Richard’s wife into a cold bath of nerves which the upheaval of the last three weeks had not helped at all. The theft of their silver had hardly touched the ledger pages of Richard’s wealth: what made her flesh shiver was the thought of Lymond, and the cool, impertinent grip of the mind he had used; in five indifferent minutes pioneering where Richard’s diffident courtesy had never taken him. On her husband, too, the incident had borne grossly. She realized as much during the two sleepless, congested days before he left to join the army in the east. Since then, the only news of or from Richard had been that brought by Erskine—news received without comment by the Dowager, who continued to arrange her affairs without further reference to the uncomfortable and icy springs of satire and denunciation. Mariotta turned to Sir Andrew Hunter.

He had been watching her. A distant neighbour, a near-contemporary, a gentle and distinguished landowner and courtier, Andrew Hunter was well known to the Culters, and Mariotta had learned to like him, and to enjoy his kindness, his willing attentions, and an articulate turn of speech which made her now and then sick for home. Now, on a sudden impulse, she addressed him. “Tell me, Dandy, what do men talk about? Richard, for example?”

He was taken aback, but he answered her. “What does Richard discuss with other men? Horses, of course. And pigs. And the state of the barley, and the new cocks, and the hawking, and what the Estates are up to, and the wrestlers, and any new shiploads he’s expecting, and the rates of exchange, and taxes, and poaching, and pistols, and the price of roofing, and his deerhound litter, and Milanese armour, and the lambing.… Richard’s interests,” said Sir Andrew, with a hint of defensiveness in the soft voice, “are pretty wide.”

“But never dull. I wonder,” said Mariotta, her eyes expressionless, “what Lymond makes of light conversation?”

Hunter sat up. “Lymond’s conversation doesn’t give me a moment’s alarm. It’s his actions that hurt. Richard’s bent on this challenge at the Wapenshaw and, my God! if he goes, it’ll be suicide.”

Mariotta’s eyes opened. “But the challenge wasn’t serious! Lymond at Stirling’d be under instant arrest. And besides, Richard’s the finest shot in—”

She broke off. Hunter was right. What use was all that with an arrow in the back? “God has a thousand handes to chastise,” had said Lymond, and at Annan he had nearly succeeded. Mariotta opened her mouth, but Sybilla, stabbing industriously with her needle, spoke first. “Did you hear any word of Will Scott in town, Tom?” And added, composedly, “We know he’s with my son. Sir Andrew brought back news from Annan of his meeting with Richard.”

Saved from plunging a second time into the same diplomatic whirlpool, Erskine sat back, relieved. “There’s nothing new. Saw Buccleuch, as a matter of fact, yesterday and broke the news to him. And that fool George Douglas hovering by while I told him.”

“Where? At Stirling?” Hunter was interested. “I thought Sir George was with his brother.”

Erskine shrugged. “He’s off to Drumlanrig by now, anyway, thank God: can’t thole the man.” His mind was not on George Douglas, but on Christian, and her odd behavior last night. He had gone to the Priory first, with his report, and had been worried because the Queen Dowager kept him late, and Christian might have gone to bed. But when the ferry took him over to Inchtalla, she was waiting in the hall, pulling him by the arm before the usher led him away. “Tom—in case we have no other chance—the name I asked about? Jonathan Crouch?”

He had told her what she wanted to know, breaking off because the Dowager materialized, carrying her embroidery and standing on his toe because she had forgotten to take off her spectacles. After that, Christian had done no more than thank him firmly for his help and indicate the matter was closed. He was slightly nettled. Despite the noble disclaimers he remembered making she might, he thought, have let him into the secret.…

The next day, the autumn trumpets gave tongue, the sun shone like copper, and a flaming row was taking place in the Priory cloisters. To the north the hills of Ben Dearg reared empurpled, and soft airs shuddered on the blue water. On Inchmahome, Discord beat against the ancient pillars, where five adults and a child sat or stood about the green cloisters.

The Queen Dowager of Scotland was in a state of Gallic rage. “Will
someone kindly inform me how this escapade has arrived?” Thus Mary of Guise, seated bolt upright in a carved chair.

Croaking reply from a middle-aged nurse, white as her tortured apron. “Oh, Madame; that I dinna ken, the puir wee lassie …” and she broke off, shooting a basilisk glance at a younger maid, completely overcome, who was being patted by Mariotta.

The Dowager Lady Culter, who was also seated, wisely said nothing, partly out of diplomacy and partly from sheer respect for her vocal chords: a very small child with tousled red hair standing before her continued to hammer on her knee in a detached sort of way, screaming gibberish at the top of her voice.

“Hurble-purple, hurble-purple, hurble-purple!” chanted the child.

“On the rivage, in broad daylight! Murder! Kidnap!”

“She’d cuddle a milk jug, the jaud!”

“Boo-hoo—hic—hoo!”

“Elspet! You’ll be ill! Be quiet, now!”

“Hurble-purple, hurble-purple, hurble-purple!” said the child with ascending power.

Lady Culter winced slightly, and drawing her knee away, put out a kindly but restraining arm. She spoke briskly. “I doubt there’s no need to hunt for villains, Ma’am; the lass was scatterbrained, and Mistress Kemp as bad, to let her go off alone with the child. But there was no worse intention that I can see. Just an escapade.”

“Escapade!”

Sybilla, after a daunting glance at the hysterical Elspet, returned to her task.

“Yes. The foolish girl had a tryst with one Perkin at Portend Farm, and the child wanted to visit the pleasance. There was a skiff unattended, and off they went to the shore, where Elspet apparently left Mary playing while she went up to the farm—”