The Game of Kings (63 page)

“Lennoxes?” Smoothly, unhurriedly, the Master was playing for time. “They serve their turn: why not? A Lennox pressed is a Dead Sea apple, held by London instead of by Paris; and for the richest, not the fairest. Fairness has nothing whatever to do with the Douglases.”

“I think,” said the Earl of Lennox, white with emotion, “that my wife and I have heard enough insults. And I can dispense with a dissertation about our national characteristics. Knock him down! Hang him!”

Lymond turned suddenly. “‘Our’ characteristics? Whose? Whose are yours? Brought up in France; feted in Scotland; would-be bridegroom of Mary of Guise; would-be ruler; would-be conspirator; full of terrestrial appetites and an eagerness to feed your kindred flesh to all the feared and threatening raptors at your heels …

“What are you? A citizen of Europe or of the life of the shore: a thief, a renegade, a liar and a coward, as you have named me? But I can give you one name you can’t give me: cuckold, Lord Lennox!”

The Earl had risen slowly to his feet. As Lymond flung the word at him Lennox’s voice rang out, high-pitched as a bird’s. “My God, you stopped me once, Wharton, but not this time Not again! Clear the way—move aside—”

His path to Lymond was unexpectedly blocked. “Who the devil are you?” said Lennox hysterically. “Get out of my way!”

Henry, Lord Wharton’s son, shut the door behind him and blinked at the white and angry face. His gaze, mildly surprised, sought his father at the table and then, roving, fell on the Master of Culter. “Him!”

Ignoring Lennox totally, Henry Wharton flung his arms in a wide gesture of exultation, divesting himself with a twist of bow, quiver, helmet and pack. They fell on the table with a crash. “Lymond! You’ve got him?”

Repressively, Lymond himself answered. “I dislike being discussed as if I were a disease. Nobody ‘got’ me,” he said. “And where have you been, my billy: to the devil and back to have your beard combed?”

Before Grey’s astonished gaze, the scene of a moment before began to repeat itself. They had to hold the young man, struggling, away from the Master. Grey shoved him into his father’s grasp and said sharply,
“You
control him. What’s so inflammatory about … ?”

Wharton answered curtly. “Made a fool of himself at Durisdeer in February. Milked like a cow tree.”

“How?”

Lymond, irrepressible, answered. “It was a wonderful beard he had, a magnificent pelt. He was bearded like a Dammar pine, of the fashion of prophets and pards, one hair sitting here, another there.… But was it fitting? Was it well-considered? I asked myself: peach or nectarine, clingstone or freestone, bald or—forgive me—downy … which?”

“What,” said Lord Grey impatiently, “did he do to Henry?”

“Shaved and cropped him with his own knife,” replied Lord Wharton shortly, and the angry faces around the table, with the furious exception of Harry’s, broke into ill-repressed smiles.

“A picture,” observed Lymond. “It isn’t considered proper to shout in church. Besides, Lord Lennox is talking.”

He had courage, or a singular rashness. Tom Erskine, his hands gripping the tapestry, wondered also, jaw set, if Lymond had observed what he himself had just seen: the smallest stirring in the inert body of the messenger Acheson, lying stunned on the marble face of a tomb.

It forced Erskine himself to a decision. With infinite care he edged along the narrow passage behind the tapestry, reached the spiral stair, and slipping down it, stepped out on the wide, stone-flagged balcony which overhung the south transept where Lymond stood. Bending low, Erskine crossed the flags and lying still beneath the stone balustrade, raised his head cautiously and peered below.

From his low and castellated rampart he caught a glimpse of a yellow head. He raised himself higher. At the same moment Lymond
stepped back two paces before Lennox, who was shouting abuse: this brought him halfway along the table with his right side to the balcony and the catafalque with Acheson on his left.

He was, then, keeping the messenger under his eye. A moment later the Master turned his head to speak to the Countess of Lennox and raised his eyes a fraction, searching the stilted lancets and then, briefly, the wide Midnight Stairs and the gallery at their head. Erskine was by then almost certain the quick blue glance had identified him.

Someone was saying vehemently, “That’s a lie!”

Lymond seemed undisturbed. “Don’t be simple. Didn’t you know that Margaret spent her sojourn in Scotland with me?”

The woman raised her brows. “Haven’t we had enough of this? When I was captured, I was taken to Lanark. Matthew knows that. The offer of exchange came from Lanark, not from you.”

Lymond replied gently. “I naturally covered my mediator by giving him good credentials, but he did not, I’m afraid, come from Lanark. How deceitful of you not to have told your spouse. I wrote my offer of exchange, I remember, on the back of a letter from Lord Lennox to his wife which in itself was a thing of joy. I recall, for example …”

Lord Lennox shot a pale glance at his wife. “There is no need to go on with this nonsense.”

“… I recall, for example, a good many things, but don’t excite yourselves. I shan’t embarrass the dynasty. Didn’t you know she was using the war as a fulcrum for her fishing line with myself as the prey? I was to be driven into the nets since, unlike the beaver, my self-defence stops short of unserviceable gestures. Do you find that objectionable? Pitiful? Even a little ludicrous, perhaps? A self-interest so insanely exclusive that it includes even murder?”

Now Margaret as well was on her feet, her eyes burning. Lennox was pale; around the table the others looked angry and uncomfortable, as if mesmerized into allowing the intolerable scene to go on.

The man Acheson stirred again.

“Murder?” repeated Lord Grey. “Oh: the Stewart girl? She was killed riding.”

“She was killed riding, by an arrow. She was threatened, pursued, her young guide killed, and done to death herself as surely as if the arrow had been directed at her.

“If your eyes burned from their sockets now you would be lost and terrified and appalled as she was—and you are men. You’re not in
enemy country, in the hands of a cruel and bitter woman; or galloping blind on a frightened horse over unknown fields with a dead body behind you and a pack of the hounds who killed him baying at your heels. That isn’t only murder: it’s murder of a very special and damning kind, and there is a name for those who engage in it …”

The admirable voice was stripped, as was Lymond’s whole bearing, of his normal pleasant negligence. He went on.

“I have no very gratifying memories of Crawfordmuir. I offered myself for sale, as I remember, in exchange for the truth. Your wife was eager to buy, Lord Lennox; but she also deals in adulterated coinage. She told me something was unprovable which I knew could be proved, and she told me a man had been killed whom I knew to be alive—so I withdrew my offer. But to save Christian Stewart from these attentions, believe me, I should have honoured it at any cost.”

There was a grandeur in Margaret Douglas’s fury. “Stop your foul tongue! You paltry, conceited liar!”

“Did Christian Stewart die? How did she die?”

Lady Lennox stepped before him, shaken with rage. “She died of a fall from her horse. It was no fault of mine. She’s better off than she ever was as a mistress of yours! Only you won’t blacken my name from revenge in front of these people!”

The answer was implacably hard. “Look at your husband’s face. Look at Lord Grey.
Blacken your name!
Are you known, do you imagine, as Zenobia?”

She whirled on Grey. “Take him away! Can’t you stop this?”

“And al was conscience and tendre herte,” said the clear, forbidding voice. Grey cleared his throat. Wharton’s eyes were fixed on the roof corbels and their coats of arms; his son, standing sulkily by Grey, was biting his lip. The Earl of Lennox looked hard at his wife, his eyes glancing white like pale, sea-washed pebbles. Lymond addressed him, not looking anywhere near Acheson; not allowing anyone’s attention to stray to the white marble and the uneasily stirring body.

“Oh, you haven’t been cheated. You are one with Black Douglas and Royal Tudor, and through her with any man from the highest to the most humble whom she wants to dominate.
Any
man. The rotten apple, Lennox, hangs lowest. There’s more ambition in one of those tears of fury than in the whole of your Godforsaken career. You must let her push you; you can’t rest any more; you can’t fail her or she’ll destroy you. Won’t you, Margaret?”

Acheson groaned.

With sharp distaste Lord Grey said to Lymond’s guards, “Take him away!” but Margaret was already advancing on her tormentor. With all her considerable strength she struck at his mouth with the back-driving flat of her hand and Erskine, his heart in his teeth, saw the Master call smoothly on his reserves.

The woman’s wrist was caught and pulled to him. Then, behind the shield of her body, he side-stepped and snatched. With young Wharton’s bow and quiver in his free hand he backed to the stairs, dragging Margaret, wildly struggling, with him.

He held her, one-handed, until he reached the foot of the steps; then hurling her from him an instant before she fought quite free he turned and raced up the wide, shallow treads.

Erskine was ready. As Lymond crashed breathless beside him in the shelter of the balustrade his sword was out, ready to cut back the expected rush; but the other man was already on his feet again with the bow strung. There was only one arrow. He said under his breath, “Keep down, damn you!” and as Erskine knelt, Lymond took aim below.

Wharton and his son, halfway up the stairs, halted. “Get back!” said the Master.

There was a long pause. Lennox, at the foot of the steps, was bent over his wife. Grey, still at the head of the table, hadn’t moved; the two guards stood helplessly beside him.

Against a bow and a fine marksman, their swords might be unbarrelled shooks. The Whartons recoiled down the stairs and the tilt of the bow followed them. Behind, the gallery was empty, a half-open door leading to the deserted monks’ dormitory, the day stairs, the cloisters, the refectory, the storehouses: a thousand hiding places and a thousand exits.

They held the hour in their fingers, like a day lily. They had merely to destroy Acheson and go.

The bow in his hands, Lymond stood motionless. Erskine was turning on him, riven with urgency, when he saw the movement above his head. On the narrow ledge, to the right, the twin of his own former stance, a man stood with a hackbut.

From that ledge there was no turnpike down to the gallery, but the arquebusier had no need to come closer to Lymond to have him fully in range. Erskine turned, frantic exhortations in his mouth, and saw, at last, why Lymond had made no effort to shoot.

For Acheson had moved. Sitting up, hands on marble, he was attempting
weakly to stand. Until he did so, he was totally screened by the parapet. And there was only one arrow.

The loading of an arquebus is a protracted affair. Hidden under the low wall, Erskine had a terrible leisure to watch this man’s quick fingers. He saw the glimmer of the manipulated barrel and knew from the tightening of Lymond’s fingers on the bow that he also had seen.

The Master gave it no other attention. He was talking, the limpid, carrying voice penetrating the transept below as Acheson, disgruntled and bloody, rubbed his black head and muttered.

“Keep your voices down,” said Lymond. “Don’t move. Don’t shout for help. I can kill any one of you from here.” His eyes were tranquil, of a clearheaded strength: there was no hint in them of the day’s exhaustions and disasters. Talking, he moved slowly along the wall, trying to uncover Acheson. The hackbutter, in his haste, dropped something with a small bump and picked it up again.

“… teach you a lesson with some
ex cathedra
observations,” Lymond was continuing. “You may feel a little foolish; you don’t appear so to me. Wharton is a master of his profession: it’s a profession where one cannot stay detached, and he has paid that penalty. But he knows very well that corrective pressure and armed coercion are two of the longest, least successful and most offensive ways of waging a war.”

He paused, his eyes flickering to the obscured figure of Acheson and back to the upraised, angry faces. “Every war has the man on the balcony, the man in the tree, the man in the doorway. He stings; he frightens; he causes loss of face; but he is always caught in the end. Turn aside to hunt for him if you must, Lord Grey; but don’t ever unleash your vanity on his track. Today …”

In the heavy eyes, new life suddenly blazed. “Today,” said Lymond, “such an error has cost you a war.”

“Lord Grey?” said an uncertain voice: Acheson’s voice. “Take me to Lord Grey? I’ve a dispatch … about the Scottish Queen.”

Grey said “What?” as the glimmer of a slow match swept through the dark transept like a firefly. The black mouth of the hackbut, steady as a wand, inexorable as Melpomene, turned like a dark flower to its killing, and Erskine cried softly, “Oh, God!”

Adam Acheson repeated, dizzily, “It’s about the Queen;” and walked out into the centre of the floor.

The fine bow drifted in Lymond’s hands like the frail, side-slipping glide of a heron; the steel tip steadied, sparkling, and his knuckles
whitened. In the darkness opposite, the hackbutter’s arm jerked. Lymond smiled once, with a kind of surprised pleasure, and releasing the deadly, unerring arrow, shot Acheson through the heart.

The explosion of the hackbut drowned Margaret’s scream. Aiming for Lymond’s body, given the brilliant, unmoving target of his white shirt, the marksman made no mistake. He was defter, indeed, than he meant to be; because the shot, raking the stone coping of the balcony, acquired missiles and satellites of its own and struck home not once but several times.

Lymond flung up his head, turned half around with the force of the explosion. The bow fell. For one second—two—he held fast to the broken coping, defying the heralds of agony and an easy darkness. Below, Erskine caught a glimpse of the circle of white, upturned faces about the fallen body of Acheson.