The Game of Kings (14 page)

Angus and Sir James looked gloomy. “And what then?” asked his brother.

“Oh, well.” Sir George kicked a log into place in the fire. “The Queen Dowager here, of course, will try to get some money and troops out of France. Meantime, the Protector can’t do much: bad roads, difficult supply lines, winter weather and all that. He’ll probably hang out until spring, and then fling in his full strength before the French come, using all these garrisons as jumping-off points.”

He looked consideringly at the Earl. “If I were you, Archie, I should wait until the really bad weather, and then suggest that your precious Lennox comes north with a raiding party. They’ll never do it, but it’ll assure the English of your good will. And then come the spring, why not ask them to send Margaret too? A joint command … that would stiffen Lennox’s back for him!”

Sir James, in painful doubt as to whether this was meant to be
humorous or not, said feebly, “And who’ll command from Berwick, I wonder?”

“Who d’you think?” said Sir George. He laughed. “Old Grey of Wilton, recovered from swallowing a billhook, and talking, I’m told, like a featherbed with a leak in it. Do you know Lord Grey, Archie?”

Angus shook his head.

“He’s been in France for years: a clammy, stiff-backed old pike. The billhook, I’ll bargain, came out lichened over.” He laughed again. “The first encounter between the old lad and Lord Wharton I shall see or die. They’ll be heaving each other’s guts out of the window.”

“Well,” said the Earl of Angus crossly, “what’s so funny about that? … You’re a weird sort of devil, George,” said his brother with the flatness of long usage.

W
ILL SCOTT of Kincurd was stringing his bow and singing.

Life at the moment was not unbearable. He was well-fed and warm. He had that morning shot a buck at a hundred and seventy yards and been congratulated by Matthew. He had a new ambition: in this penumbral region to cast a shadow bigger, grander and more devastating than Lymond’s.

It had not, he conceded, been easy to progress greatly toward this goal in a month, allowing as well for the hiatus which followed the
Annan affair. His own state of superficial injury he shared, he had discovered, with half the troop. Dead men there were none; a telling enough point in a retreat which had been hard-fought and narrowly won.

For Lymond had genius. When building his force, he had taken sixty heterogeneous ruffians and cut and buffed them like diamonds, each rootless creature made an artist in his own small field. Some of their stories he had already from Matthew.

Dandy-puff, of the bog-cotton hair, was their farrier, and at the horn over a small matter of a cousin’s sudden death which had unluckily brought to light a series of other unexplained mishaps.

Oyster Charlie, the cook, who bore young Scott no ill will (“It’s not your fault, lad: the Master’s an unchancy bastard to cross.”) had been dentally denuded by an infuriated husband who was also a barber and now, untimely, with Abraham.

Jess’s Joe (scout) was the ex-leader of a profitable band of dock thieves; the Lang Cleg (armourer) had been racked twice, but remained an unrepentant and unskilful pickpocket. Skinner, an ex-priest, was their barber-surgeon and, at need, their confessor; Cuckoo-spit, a magician with horses, had forgotten polite usage for rheum, if he ever knew it, in five draughty years in the Tolbooth …

These figures, he knew, were the grotesques in the bestiary. There were also unmarked, homeless men who for some reason had lost their farms and families, or had left them; individualists and misfits; and mercenaries like Turkey Mat, who had sold their swords over half Europe before one day falling in with Lymond and being brought here by him.

“Why is he back?” he had once asked Mat.

Matthew had grinned. “Just to be neighbourly. Besides, there’re two or three folk he wanted to see.”

“Jonathan Crouch?”

Turkey’s gaze was direct. “That’s one. How did you know?”

“He told me.… Mat, you’ve had three years of it. How d’ye thole him?”

Mat had chuckled gently. “Over there in Appin, a place you’ve
never heard of, there’s a bien stone house with an honest pinch of soil to it, and a doocot and an orchard and some fine dry byres. It’s mine for the taking, that house, and, man, when I’ve cooked my own fatted calf at the Master’s fire, it’s me for the white beach, groaning belly and all. I’ll lie on it from morning to nightfall throwing dice against myself, and whiles winning.… I can thole him; I can thole him.”

He had asked Mat about Bullo.

“Johnnie? Johnnie’s King of Little Egypt, and a law to his sweet sleekit self. He rules his wee pack of gypsy stoats like the Grand Turk, and keeps them happy with silk shirts and buckles forbye. You should see him at work in a fair: it’s a scholastic education. Johnnie,” said Mat, not without rancour, “has all the old crafts.”

Scott said, “I thought he worked for Lymond?” and Mat had shaken his head, rubbing rhythmically, whether of necessity or through association of ideas it was hard to tell.

“I suppose you would cry it a business partnership,” said he solemnly. “But when their interests collide, I’m feart it’s every man to his own dirk. Watch ’em together next time. Our John’s sly as a snake, but he can’t resist playing with Lymond, wit against wit. Man, he’s welcome,” had said Mat with emphasis.

Will was ready for lapping. He picked up the waxed thread and glanced at the ruined Peel Tower, their present headquarters, which he controlled during Lymond’s current absence. They moved about throughout the year, he knew: sometimes to farms; sometimes in the open or under canvas; sometimes to deserted buildings like this one.

They were extravagantly paid, all of them. In return, they suffered a grinding and despotic discipline. In Lymond’s hands they were fashioned into a shining and precise instrument for advanced theft, blackmail and espionage; and faults in the instrument were dealt with instantly and with a horrid inventiveness.

For the thick-skinned, there was physical punishment. There was also a less respectable kind. Scott had seen, and would not forget, a
courageous and rational man on his knees, weeping tears through his fingers as skin after skin of self-respect and human dignity peeled off him under Lymond’s verbal lash.

He learned to recognize from the slurred walk and the gentle dishevelment when Lymond was no longer quite sober; and with the rest to walk softly at such times. He didn’t mind. He had reached the point where he would notice nothing beyond the beauty and efficiency of superbly planned crime. One should always flee the impure. He was out of the muddle of truths and half-truths, and into the daylight. Only when—if—he were in Lymond’s shoes, there were a few things he would change.

Scott finished the knots, smiling.

The Master’s party returned to the tower just before dawn, rampaging hungry and saddle-sore. They fell over and quarrelled with the litter of sleeping bodies, kicked up the cooks and battered one of the boys until he had got the tallow dips and fires going again.

Scott and Matthew, cursing, got them settled down after a bit, and when the horses had been seen to and food was on the board, Will climbed the stairs to Lymond’s room.

The yellow-headed man had lit a candle, showing his hair and clothes full of dust, and was reading what seemed to be a letter. Scott said, “Nothing to report, sir. Did you have a good night?” with a professional woodenness, a little overdone.

Lymond hardly looked up. He finished reading, unbuckling his belt with one hand; then laid down the paper and threw scabbard and belt on the bed. “Excellent, Marigold. One generally does, at the Ostrich.”

This was true. The Ostrich was an inn within first-posting stage on the Cumberland side of the London road, whose comforts were peculiarly comforting and whose clientele was select.

Scott said nothing. The Master, who seemed unusually happy, pulled off his boots, slung them across the room and slopped some ale from jug to cup.

“A splendid night,” said Lymond, running on. “Of wyne and wax, of gamyn and gle. And profitable. Indeed, it’s an instruction to see how human messengers-at-arms can be, when they set their minds to it, if it’s minds I mean. Sic peril lies in paramours. Oh, well. And that, my Wally Gowdy, was only half the night’s work.”

Scott said obediently, “And the other half?”

“Concerned a distinguished nobleman set upon by marauders on the high road to Scotland, until bravely rescued by myself …”

Scott gave up. “I didn’t know you’d turned philanthropist.”

Lymond produced the sweet-rancid smile. “I refer you to John Maxwell. He gave me to understand he was my eternal debtor for saving his life. And at that,” he said, laying down the empty cup, “your colleagues fought each other like shrews. I thought at one time the Cleg was going to forget himself and spit me.”

Scott understood. “This was Maxwell of Threave and Caerlaverock? You want him in your debt?”

“The Master of Maxwell,” said Lymond, “is an important personage entirely surrounded by English. D’you play chess?”

Scott, knowing him less than sober, was unstartled. He nodded.

“Then you should recognize an opening for smothered mate. Which reminds me: copy that, will you? Unless you still despise my cunning clerking?”

This had once been a sore point with Scott: now he had other things on his mind. Taking Lymond’s letter, he remarked, “I suppose you know the men are getting restless, sir?” and was lucky to get instant backing.

“God, you’ve hit it.” Mat, entering, yawned and eased his shoulders. “Too much intrigue, sir, and too little rape: the boys are as unnatural nervy as water fleas.… And besides,” he added practically, “we’re nigh out of beer.”

The Master, leaning back, crossed his legs. “Good God. I knew we were spendthrifts, lechers and soaks: can we possibly be bored as well?”

This was taken at its face value by Mat. “Well, it’s three weeks since they last had a chance to spend anything, and a month since they had anything to spend.” He added reasonably, “Anything with women and money in it.”

Lymond closed his eyes. “Fie on their labour! Fie on their delight! Must I supply the cattle with toys? No, by God: I’ve affairs of my own to look after.”

There was a pause. Scott stayed dumb, but Turkey’s disapproval could be seen, and even heard. The Master, less characteristically, gave a hiccough of laughter. “Poor Mat. Sic strange, intestine, cruel strife. Alas, father, my mirth is gone. I see you think we must pander to this levity. What do you suggest?”

Turkey Mat’s face broke into a relieved grin. “Well, now; there’s maybe one of the Douglas houses would repay a visit. Or Cothally Castle—Seton’s away? Or a nice puckle sows from the Malinshaw—”

“Grey of Wilton’s in Hume Castle,” said Scott.

“Or there’s old Gledstanes, who broke his bond to us last month—”

“—If you took Grey—”

“—And Jardine of Applegarth must have got a consideration from Wharton—”

“—If you took Grey, you could set Arran and the Protector bidding against each other for him. Damn it, am I invisible?” said Scott, irritated, as Lymond’s eyes remained speculatively on Mat.

Absently, Lymond shook his head. “Fond Folie, sall I be thy Clark? And answer thee ay, with Amen?” He bent a cornflower-blue gaze on Scott. “One: have you seen Hume since it was fortified? I thought not. Two: we should be outnumbered roughly four to one. Three: this is a diversion, not an act of war; and four: you have a hole in one elbow, and I wish to God you’d keep your boots clean.”

Scott did not bother to look down. He persevered. “If the men will follow me, will you give me leave to try it on my own?”

The Master was flippant.

He grinned and got up. “Not yet, my Hinnysopps. My gentlemen are quaint cattle. You must teach them to trust you before you set up as their Rex Nemorensis.… Well, Mat!” He clapped Turkey on the shoulder. “Go summon the sheep before the wolf, and we’ll see.”

By the time the Master walked onto the broken dais and hitched himself on the edge of a board, the men were alerted and waiting, chewing, hugging their knees in the straw, and reasonably quiet.

Lymond collected eyes; began: “A number of curious blunders have come to light, gentlemen, which seem to be of a piece with your general behaviour over the last week …” And finished ten retching
minutes later with: “I would remind you that you’re here to carry out orders, not to discuss them. That’s the only reason you
are
here, and not in quicklime at the crossroads. Disobey me in action
or
in spirit, gentlemen, and you’ll stay alive for much longer than you want to.…” Absolute silence.

“That being so,” continued the Master gently, “I want volunteers for work tomorrow night. No one who isn’t ready to exert his talents to the fullest need trouble. The rest can put up a hand. Now!”

The hands rose, slowly at first, then multiplying. Behind their chief’s back, Scott and Turkey scanned the hall. Every arm was up.