The Game of Kings (32 page)

“The bonny piece! The bonny, bonny stonewark!” He tapped the twinkling cuff with a threadlike finger. “You wouldna get finer gin you took an elephant down Spittall Street and got off at Colombo. Man! They went at a bargain, too: I could have got twicet for them.”

The glove, flicked from his surprised grasp, arrested his attention. “Have you seen this before?” demanded Culter in a controlled shout.

Patey was astonished, but ready to oblige. “No, no. I havena seen the work before, of course not; it isn’t mine. But I supplied the bullion and the gems. I’m maybe not an Admiral on the side like Chandler of London, or so handy with a knife as yon Italian fellow, but I’ve got jewels like peevers and I ken them like weans.…”

His client was talking again. Patey listened hard. “Who ordered it? Now, hold you there and I’ll tell you.” The great ledger came out, and Patey after a methodical search for his spectacles, pored over it. The index finger trailed down page after page and then stopped. “There you are!” He reversed the book for Lord Culter to see. “Ordered by Waugh, the St. Johnstone glover, on October the second.”

“Where do I find this Waugh?”

Patey’s crusty eyes opened. “Are ye for going there? Well …” He tipped a packet of sand on the counter, drew a map with a sable and furnished its landmarks with jewels. “There.”

Richard thanked him and left. As he remounted, Patey climbed the stairs back to bed, tittering under his breath. “And a right merry Christmas to ye,” said Patey to the air.

*  *  *

The city of Perth, or St. Johnstone’s, is only thirty-three miles to the northeast of Stirling; but not a pleasant ride when the moors are humped with new snow and your adored and incalculable wife is looking to you to attend her at her first Christmas at Court.

Lord Culter, riding alone and fast, reached Perth before midday. Once through the heavily guarded main gate, he dropped his pace to
a walk, and steered the mare through a bustling and nervously armed High Street, past Cross and pillory, chapels and churches, Kirkgate and tenements and expensive houses with neglected gardens dating from the years when capital and Parliament were both in the city. But when he reached Glovers’ Yard, the booth was quite obviously closed and the windows shuttered above it.

Richard Crawford had not stopped for a meal on his way north; he was disturbed, cold and hungry. He hitched his mare to an iron hook and, taking his riding whip, began on the left side of the yard and beat methodically on every door until he finished on the right.

At the end of this operation, several bonneted, capped, tufted and indignant heads stuck in echelon, like heads from a dovecote from the three sides, and voided venomous complaints on his head. He stepped back and addressed the most responsible-looking, a blotched and stubbled gnome who listened, spat accurately on the cobbles and grinned, displaying horrid yellow teeth. “Jamie Waugh’s no in. You’ll not catch Jamie Waugh wasting his time inside on a holiday.”

“Where is he then?” asked Richard, to the interest of a swelling audience.

The yellow teeth displayed their stalwart abundance again. “I wouldna just trust myself to say,” said the aged one eggily. “Forbye, it wouldna be the least bit use to ye. Jamie Waugh never works on a holiday.”

“I don’t want him to work!” shouted Richard, trying to throw his voice two storeys up and no farther. “I only want to talk to the man.”

“D’you tell me? Well, I’m glad for ye that you’ve saved your time,” said Yellow-teeth serenely. “For you’d have just wasted your temper looking for him. Ye canna expect to speak to Jamie Waugh on a feast-day: he’s aye deid drunk on a feast-day, is Jamie.”

“I can sober him,” said Richard grimly. “Just tell me where I can reach him.”

“Sober him!” As if the words had touched off a hydraulic, Alexandrine weight the projecting heads gave a unified jerk and set themselves nodding. The ancient one looked sadly at his lordship. “Sober! You’ll not see him sober till Twelfth Night, nearabouts. Jamie’s the sturdy boy for the drink.”

There was a short silence. Richard was thinking, and the aged one was weighing him up with a rheumatic eye, setting the obvious
urgency of his quest against the cut of his lordship’s clothes. When he spoke again, his voice had a croon in it.

“Mind you, I’m not saying he couldna be sobered. I’m just saying it’s never been tried. And while I doot there’s a soul in the Yard could tell you rightly where to find Jamie—Jamie being incapacitated to clients at Christmas, ye understand—I would be willing to stretch a point for a gentleman. You look,” said Yellow-teeth, with a certain facility, “like a sporting gentleman to me, and that’s a grand wee dirk at your belt. Forbye you claim you can sober Jamie. Aweel, I’ll gie you his location at the price of a wager. I’ll lay you a pair of gloves against your dirk that you canna bring him back to this Yard by St. Stephen’s Day normal—or as near normal as God made him. Now. There’s a fair proposition before witnesses, and a wee frolic to tell the wife about, and anyway,” he ended practically, “there isn’t a soul else can direct you to Jamie.”

Richard folded his arms and stared at the artless one. A glance at the Yard had shown him he could expect little help from there. The proposition was ludicrous: at any other time he would have dealt with it promptly and sharply. But time was against him. He swore under his breath, and then said curtly, “All right. I accept your wager. Where is he?”

He had to wait until the aged one, disappearing and re-emerging at a lower door, took fond and personal custody of his knife (“just a formality”) before he received his answer. Horny hands picking and stroking at the jewelled hilt, the old man said, “Aye, aye. I kent ye were a gentleman. You bring Jamie Waugh back sober, and I’ll have dirk and gloves set out for you. He’s at his sister’s house in the Skinnergate,” said Yellow-teeth, retreating strategically within his doorway. “The fifth on the right going down. Merton’s the name. Merton.”

Richard, unwilling amusement in the grey eyes, put a foot in the stirrup and swung himself on the mare again. “Merton of the Skinnergate. Thank you. And your own name, sir?”

“Me?” The teeth yawed. “You’re easy named a stranger: every St. Johnstone’s man kens Malcolm—Chuckie-moued Malcolm, that’s what they cry me. Malcolm Waugh at your service, sir; farther o’ Jamie of that ilk, and an honest, sober man to be cursed with yon loose black glover. Good luck to ye, sir! I’ll keep the dirk safe! Trust me, sir!”

Richard turned his horse out and suddenly laughed aloud, as windows popped shut and the peace of Christmas Eve descended again on Glovers’ Yard.

Snow had fresh-laundered the Skinnergate; had put new bonnets on its thatched roofs and dressed the stakes in the yards. But the hands and feet of the Skinnergate children had returned the narrow lane to its pristine state of mud and offal, and cold weather or no, the ripe animal smell of the trade hung resonantly about the doors.

The fifth house was easy to find: the Mertons were holding festival, and the rest of adult Skinnergate and most of its children were choked into the single room above the yard, with the overflow jamming the stairs. Jamie Waugh was easy to find also: he was sitting in the fireplace with smoke slowly rising from his skin breeches, singing acceptably through a large earthenware jug upside down on his shoulders. The corners of the room were piled with undressed sheep and calfskins of bold personality, and a young heifer couched in the middle was giving warm seating to four or five men. Beer was in free circulation, and a fat cheerful woman in an apron, whom Richard took to be Mistress Merton, was dispensing winkles from a pot of boiling water and pins from a wooden box.

She had offered Lord Culter a spoonful before the implications of his dress struck her: she blushed, put down the ladle and wiped her hands. “Were you wanting Jock, sir? He’s not in the Yard today, but if you’d call tomorrow or the next day …”

She seemed a bright, honest person. He told her what he wanted, but not of the bargain perpetrated by Waugh, senior. Her reaction was much the same as that of Glovers’ Yard. “Jamie! Oh, Jamie’ll not be sober till Candlemas, nearly.”

“With your permission,” said Richard, “I was proposing to sober him now.”

She gave him a doubtful smile. “Well, sir, you’re welcome to try,” and bending over the happy Mr. Waugh, she pulled the jug off his shoulders. A plump, almond face revealed itself, remarkably like the old man’s, with a retroussé and rosy nose and ruffled black hair.

“Jamie, there’s a gentleman come to see you,” said Mrs. Merton. The suffused eye wandered distractedly from Lord Culter to his sister and back again; with a lurch and a jerk, Jamie Waugh got to his feet. “T’horse!” he exclaimed and bending dangerously from the waist, gave Richard a view of the lower hemispheres of two mottled
corneas. Then he folded backward in a quick graceful arch, straightened a little, and declaimed:

Seeing that her brother had reached, if not the end of his repertoire, at least the end of his breath, Mrs. Merton laid a hand on his shoulder, at which he gently folded up and sat on the hearth again. “Jamie. It’s someone wants to see you.”

Jamie’s eyes were fixed on the ashes.

“Here maun I lie, here maun I die,” said Mr. Waugh, who seemed to favour verse in heroic form. “By Treachery’s falsh guilesh,” and laid his cheek morosely on one knee. A tall, thin man pushed through the crowd, and Mrs. Merton went to him. “Oh, Jock! Here’s a gentleman wanting to speak urgently with Jamie, and he’s just at his very last wink.”

Mr. Merton eyed Richard, who told an edited version of the story yet again. “Oh, if ye want to trace a sale, Jamie’s the only one that can do it. Think ye can sober him?” said the skinner doubtfully. “I’ve been merrit twenty year and I’ve never known him able to speak this side o’ Twelfth Night, but maybe coming to it from a fresh airt, as it were, might make all the difference. What were you thinking of?”

“A swim,” said Richard. “And I’ll need some rope.”

The skinner’s face webbed itself with leathery wrinkles. “Man, I never knew Jamie in water for twenty year either,” he said with callous delight. “God: it’s a great day for the Waughs.”

They took the drunk man downstairs between them, and the inhabitants of Skinnergate, winkles and alepot in hand, poured down after. They rollicked down the stair; they lurched singing into the lane in black and merry procession, and they stood on the brink of the swift and icy River Tay as Richard solemnly addressed his victim.

“Mr. Waugh, what I’m about to do is as much for your own good as mine. I hope, when sober, you’ll appreciate it.” Then, receiving from the ready Mr. Merton a coil of light hemp, he noosed it, slipped and tightened the loop around the glover’s waist and to ringing cheers picked Jamie Waugh up in his arms and threw him plump in the middle of the river.

There was a splash, a yell, and a crunching of gravel; then two knees and a head appeared: Mr. Waugh was reclining on the river bed. Richard pulled gently on the rope. Mr. Waugh rolled over, leaned on his hands, and could be heard swearing vigorously into the waves. Richard pulled again.

Mr. Waugh stood up. “What the —— are you ——’s doing?” he bawled.

His brother-in-law called in reply, “Come on, Jamie. We’ve got you roped. You can walk to us, nearly.”

Mr. Waugh’s reply to this cast even his previous remark in the shade; indeed, he seemed ready to stand practising vowel sounds in the middle of the Tay till night fell. Mr. Merton, with less patience than Richard, leaned over. He gave a mighty tug at the rope, and the vociferating figure at the end disappeared in a flurry of spume and vituperation. His sister, tears of merriment streaming down her comfortable cheeks, said brokenly, “He’ll catch his daith! Better pull him in now, sir. Oh, Jamie!”

They pulled him in. He arrived not only sober but fighting mad, and Mr. Merton, who seemed to be an expert, took him over. The flailing arms were imprisoned in someone else’s coat; he was swept back to the house, towelled, reclothed and plied with hot milk. Then Mr. Merton came to the door and nodded to Richard, who came in and sat on a stool before the limp, riled and distrait swimmer. “If you want to blame anyone, blame me,” he said pleasantly. “I’m the one who threw you in.”

Mr. Waugh rose, bent-kneed, to his feet and was sternly pressed down again by well-wishers. Richard continued. “I’m sorry about it, but I need some information from you, in a hurry, and you won’t be out of pocket over it.” He threw a small bag, chinking, on the glover’s lap. “You can pay the damage to your sobriety pretty quickly with that, and have some left to spend at Pasche, perhaps.”

Jamie Waugh opened the bag, and the whole almond face altered. “Man, if it comes up your back again just send word to Jamie, and I’ll spend Lent in a stickleback’s front parlour. What did you want to know?”

“Something very simple.” He threw Lymond’s glove on top of the money. “Can you tell me who ordered that?”

The glover’s broad, brown fingers fondled the work. “I’ll have to look up the books in my shop, sir. But it’s my work, right enough.
I remember it fine. I got the gold for it off Patey Liddell in Stirling.”

Richard got up. “Can we go to your shop now?”

“Surely, surely.” The other laid down his mug, picked up money and glove and made for the door, slapping his sister in passing. “I’m off to the Yard for a minute, Jess: be a fine lass and put on the ham for when I’m back; my insides are clapping together and my mou tastes like a haddock’s spit-oot.” He eyed Richard diffidently. “You’d no care to come back and have a bite with us, sir? It’s ham, just; but, man, I tickled her backside day in, day out when she was fattening, and there’s not a wrong bit in her.”

Lord Culter put a hand on the wiry shoulder. “Jamie Waugh, you can count that ham half gone already.”

*  *  *

The early dark began to fall as Richard, with Waugh, returned to Glovers’ Yard, and candles in the thick, misted windows patterned the dirty snow below.