“A mile away. I smell wind later on.”
“Good. Away thou dully night. Scott, into what impurities has Turkey led you, other than the giddy vaults of gambling?”
“Impurities!” exclaimed Mat, indignant on principle.
“Moral irregularities,” said Lymond. “Diversions.”
“Oh, diversions,” said Mat, with the air of a man who understood all. “God: we’ve been that damned hard at it, we havena had a diversion since the last night at the Ostrich.”
Scott, his face still crimson, said belligerently, “I’ve never been to the Ostrich.”
The familiar, chatoyant glint was in Lymond’s eyes. “The Ostrich is in the hands of a common woman, that dwells there to receive men to folly. The question is, do we seek such madness? The answer is, we do.”
He looked from one to other of the three men, his eyes flickering. “Let us go to Paradise, where every man shall have fourscore wives, all maidens. Let us go tonight, and speir at the Monks of Bamirrinoch gif lecherie be sin.… Scott?”
Will’s eyes were bright. He nodded.
“Matthew? Yes, I’m sure. And Johnnie, who is going in any case.”
Johnnie Bullo smiled, and hissed between his teeth. “Just so.”
Scott, caught watching Lymond again, blushed scarlet. The Master addressed him thoughtfully. “Are you anxious to go? These serpents slay men, and they eat them weeping.”
Sophisticated at all costs, Scott quoted Rabelais. “But the ravens, the popinjays, the starlings, they make into poets.”
“No,” said Lymond. “The popinjays they kill.”
* * *
The four men and the gypsies reached the Ostrich Inn at nightfall in thick fog.
During the long ride, Will Scott stayed with Bullo. In the first moments, the Master’s sorrel disappeared among the hoary beasts of the gypsy troop and stayed there: bursts of muffled laughter and occasional snatches of song excoriated the ears of the other three. Turkey Mat, flesh with the flesh of his horse, rode solitary: long tail, fluid back and supine, sentient wrist. Bullo, at Scott’s side, sat as an owl might sit, listening for the folding of long grasses. Once, with the uncanny thought-sense Scott had noticed before, he said, “He’s wild tonight,” and the boy hardly realized another had spoken.
To the new Scott, the core and engrossment of his days was their central figure. Nothing of the warm vulgarities of Branxholm or the artifice of the Louvre or the ambitious, emotional expediencies of Holyrood had prepared him for the inhumanities of Lymond. To the men exposed to his rule Lymond never appeared ill: he was never tired; he was never worried, or pained, or disappointed, or passionately angry. If he rested, he did so alone; if he slept, he took good care to sleep apart. “—I sometimes doubt if he’s human,” said Will, speaking his thought aloud. “It’s probably all done with wheels.”
A scintilla in the fog was the gypsy’s smile. “He proved very human in September. I seem to recall you had a sore head as well, after the skirmish with Culter and Erskine?”
Scott’s horse halted. He swore, kicked it on again, and said, “I was on my back for four days: d’you mean Lymond was hit?”
“Very humanly. By a stone. And led us the devil’s own dance bringing him back, Mat and I. We had to leave him under cover—Culter and the rest came about us like bedbugs in an almshouse dorter—and when it was safe to go back, the infallible Lymond had found himself a horse and vanished. We found him, of course.”
“Where?”
“It would be a shade indiscreet to say. Particularly with the two most interested parties at our elbow. You perhaps noticed that when we came back there was no mention of our passing faiblesse. Lymond, you see, is omnipotent, as you were saying.”
The white teeth flashed again. “Ask me again. I’m going to Edinburgh this Saturday, but when I come back, we might meet over it. The story’ll charm you. You’ll maybe want to write a poem about it, if you’re that way inclined: how Lymond passed the days after Annan. It’s a bonny tale.”
Scott listened, and hearing in Bullo’s voice an acid counterpoint to the high, sudden cackle of gypsy laughter behind, grinned sedately to himself and rode on.
They had kept to the high ground, where the fog was thinner and the ground less rotten. At some point the heather roots and tarnished bracken of Scotland became the heather roots and bracken of England. They crossed the Border like a fixed and hidden constellation and passed silently over lost grass behind the dim, leading form of Johnnie. The whiteness turned to black; the day withdrew, and they breasted the last incline.
Before them, vast golden parhelions blistered the fog. They approached. The colour changed and sharpened, became windows lit by lanterns and candles; and an open door, and faint music and voices, and a warm, stinging fragrance of roast meat curiously laced with musk. Became a courtyard with running ostler-wraiths, appearing and evaporating with the horses and, finally, an enormous shadow in the wide doorway: a monstrous, eighteen-stone shadow of a woman with a fresh, childlike face, who stretched powdered arms, calling, to Lymond. “It’s yourself … and Johnnie! Back at last … Lord! We thought we were abandoned.”
“Why else,” said Lymond, “are we here?” The eyes were sea-blue and the expression one of celestial affability. “This, Marigold, is the Ostrich Inn. So hop Willieken, hop Willieken: England is thine and mine …” and moving swiftly to the threshhold, he scooped up the tremendous form of his hostess, accepted a hearty kiss and a dimpled arm along his shoulders, and disappeared indoors.
Scott found Johnnie Bullo looking at him with an ironic glint in the brown eyes. “Come along,” said Johnnie. “We’re allowed in as well.”
* * *
Men keeping vigil at the dawn of battle spoke of the square common room of the Ostrich. It rose two silken stories high, and whole oxen confessed to the fires at each end and reached sizzling Judgment on the crowded tables, alongside pies and puddings and heaped fragrant trenchers and jars of bland, too-warm wines.
All the pleasures of unfilled time belonged to the Ostrich. For those who were shy about sleeping in public, a wooden arcade around three sides of the room supported a gallery at first-story level, off which opened the private rooms. Wax lights blazed. The gypsies, flooding the centre floor with music and violent colour, danced in the footsteps of tumblers and harpists and magicians and monkeys; of bears and minstrels and dogs and play actors and mimics; and the painted walls and brilliant hangings kept a sense of them. Combers of talk and laughter rolled aggrandizing from pillar to pillar with the beat of drum and guitar; the air bounced with fat enjoyment and gourmandise, and bright ministering women like chaffinches flew and darted between the dark arcades.
Will Scott, at one of the fires, found his fogged eyes swimming with the blaze of marching lights and his senses drugged with fleshly smells and mulled wine and the heat of the fat-spitting fire. Lymond had vanished; Johnnie Bullo was plying his trade with his gypsies, and Mat, after an encounter half glimpsed in the pillars, had disappeared too. A gigantic and violent nostalgia for venison seized Scott: in its very midst he saw on the table before him a perfumed and steaming haunch, laid by the white, ringed hands of the she-monster.
She smiled at him. She was beautiful. The round, rose-petal face was clear and young and yet maternal in its look; her hair was shining and clean, her great bulging torso massy with velvets and ermines cut to show the great snowy shelf of her breast, on which rubies lay, calm, beaming testimony to her serenity.
He rose uncertainly. She put down wine and two tankards, bread, sweetmeats, cheese and knives and salt; then swung off her tray with one hand and pressed him back into his seat with the other. “You don’t get Molly serving you every day … but then, you travel in very special company.” Her fine eyes with their dyed lashes appraised him. “Nice manners! You’re strong, but you’re kind: that means gentle birth and a pitying heart … What’s your name, my dear?”
Her sweetness was irresistible, and her bulk meant nothing. He smi
led back. “I’m called Will.”
“Will! That’s better!” The lovely eyes and mouth melted; she ruffled his hair gently, as his mother might have done. “Make a good meal, my dear, and your golden-haired friend will be with you shortly. Oh, God!” said Molly, and raised heavenly blue eyes to the rafters. “That hair! He was born to wreck us, body and soul, that one. Look at this!”
She lifted a white arm and fished below the rubies. A thin chain came into view, and at its end a ring with a single, magnificent square diamond. “I suppose I’ve had more jewels in my life than most, but this is the one I wear; the one I got from him.” She laughed, and let it slip back. “Don’t look scared! Diamond rings are proper currency for such as him, but you won’t need to pay for your dinner at the silversmiths. Never mind my babbling. Go on, eat up, and drink, and forget your troubles, whatever they are. That’s what the Ostrich is for.”
She went quickly, gentle-footed, and he saw her go with a pang, and with a sudden, pleased resolve to do with diamonds. Then he turned to the table and forgot her. The venison was rich and savoury and cooked to tender perfection. The wine was warmly fumed and superb. The candies were strange and sweet; the cheeses firm and flavoured.
Life was glorious.
With a soft elegance Lymond slid into the seat opposite, and drew wine and plate toward him. He had changed into fine, fresh clothes: studying him, Scott was made conscious of his own splashed jacket and breeches. Slicing the venison, the Master remarked, apropos, “Molly doesn’t clothe giants, unhappily, my Pyrrha. You’ve met her?” Will nodded.
“Molly married an innkeeper,” said Lymond. He poured wine and drank it, his eyes studying the other tables. “And the innkeeper was never seen again. He married Molly, and brought her to the Ostrich—and next month, there was just Molly. Molly and her girls.”
Will said, “She’s a great admirer of yours.”
“She likes my money,” said Lymond, and catching the look in Scott’s eye, grinned nastily. “Which ring did she show you? The diamond or the seed pearl?”
Resentment on Molly’s behalf faltered. “She showed me a diamond ring,” said Scott defensively.
Lymond grinned again. “If you’re fool enough to wear a valuable stone in your bonnet, you must expect to be sized up accordingly.” He laughed outright. “Never mind, my innocence: everyone falls in love with Molly. But not, of course, uniquely with Molly.” The pensive blue gaze continued to travel. “The dark wench by the other fire is Sal; the redhead by the kitchen door is Elizabeth, and the one at the next table Joan.”
Will looked at Joan. She was pink and brown; her eyes sparkled like tourmalines and she had sharp ankles and red-heeled shoes. “I’ve seen worse,” he remarked, and raised his tankard with an air. Lymond refilled it, and his own; and when Scott had finished his, filled it again. “Multa bibens …” Then he looked around, signalled, and returned the gentle, appraising stare to Will’s face. “And now,” said the Master, “suppose we fulfill our glad destiny?”
A cloud of musk approached and Molly in it, a cherub in its nest. “You’re ready, dear?”
“We are. And the room?” asked Lymond.
“Waiting for you. Number four, dear.” A key changed hands. “You remember the stairs?”
She laughed, and Lymond said, “They haven’t left any great impression, but I recall they exist. We’ll find them. Come, Marigold.”
Where there is no custom of reticence in childhood, there is no vice of which a well-brought-up young man need be ignorant—even a young man who three months before has cherished the purest ideals. When Will Scott got to his feet, his heartbeats were behaving oddly, but he was not slow in following the Master across the jammed, leg-strewn room, up a dark stairway leading from arcade to gallery, and along a long, stifling passage railed off on one side from the room they had just left. Wooden doors on the other side of the corridor were numbered. Lymond unlocked the fourth and went in, with Scott at his heels. The Master turned, and kicked the door shut.
The room held an uncurtained bed, a mirror, an armory, a table, two candlesticks and a youngish man, sitting on a low, cushioned bench. As Scott approached, the man jumped to his feet, frowning. He was tall, with long, fine hair and pale, opalesque eyes set shallowly in a triangular face. He said, “I am expecting a gentleman. Are you … ?”
“I am Lymond.” The Master moved into the candlelight, and recognition and relief showed in the other’s eyes. “And this is my lieutenant, Mr. Scott. Will—the Master of Maxwell.”
Three months of Lymond’s company had taught Will Scott presence of mind. He bowed, and out of the wreckage of his emotions salvaged the necessary recollection: of the Master staging a rescue on the Carlisle road on a dark, October night, and of his voice saying afterward, “The Master of Maxwell is an important personage almost entirely surrounded by English.… Consider this an opening for smothered mate.” Scott, directing a private grimace at Lymond’s unresponsive back, seated himself fatalistically on the edge of the bed; the Master of Maxwell was also reseated. Lymond, bringing a jug and cups from the armory, said, “You’re making for Carlisle, Mr. Maxwell?”
“If it’s any affair of yours, I am, sir.” Yellow tiercel eyes notched with black stared at the Master; Lymond, impervious, poured wine. Scott, his interest suddenly commanded, thought, A show of muscle, by God! Have we found one gentleman who hasn’t yet succumbed to the legend?
In silence, Lymond offered Maxwell wine; in silence, he took it. Then the Master hitched himself smoothly on the edge of the table, glanced at Scott, who had buried his nose in a cup, and said, “I chose the Ostrich as our rendezvous, Mr. Maxwell, because of its uncommon properties. This is the sounding board of the North. No whisper is too low for the Ostrich. No movement too faint for its eyes. Consider, for example, who passed north recently. Ireland, for one—your brother’s priest from London. He’ll be waiting for you at Threave, anxious to have your views on Lord Maxwell’s offer to surrender Lochmaben to the English. Who else? A surveyor from Calais, on his way to Wharton. The Scots garrisons at Crawford and Langholm are worrying his lordship: Mr. Petit is to advise on the best ways of fortifying Dumfries, and Kirkcudbright, and Lochwood, and Milk, and Cockpool Tower, and Lochmaben—when they have it.
“Then Mr. Thomson, Lord Wharton’s deputy, came north. That was in order to meet your uncle, Drumlanrig. Sir James failed, I’m afraid, to persuade him that between men of integrity hostages are irrelevant. And, of course, a number of gentlemen from the West Marches passed through to Carlisle to sign the celebrated oath. To serve the King of England, renounce the Bishop of Rome, do all in their power to advance the King’s marriage with the Queen of Scotland; take part with all who serve him against their enemies, and obey the commands of the Lord Protector, lords lieutenant and wardens.… And most recently, one of Wharton’s men came south with an indiscreet letter from your brother-in-law the Earl of Angus to someone else, which is going to interest the English considerably.”
Even to Scott, most of this was news. If it were true—and Maxwell would certainly know—it was a show of strength that even he could not afford to ignore. John Maxwell stretched his long legs, put down his cup, and lay back, the yellow eyes fixed on Lymond. “Do you own the Ostrich? Or only a capacity for pleasing Molly?”
The blue eyes smiled. “A distinction without a difference.”
Maxwell said, “Mr. Crawford, there is no need to show me the hood. I respond quite well to the lure. Our last talk intrigued me a good deal.”
“Sufficiently?”
“Sufficiently for your purpose.” The luminous eyes, apparently satisfied with their diet, released their grip. Maxwell rose, refilled his cup and sat down, continuing in his dry, brisk voice. “I have the information you wanted. Samuel Harvey, who is a bachelor, lives in London and is there at present on duty and unlikely to come north. Gideon Somerville is a wealthy man, now retired from court, with a manor called Flaw Valleys on Tyneside near Hexham. He is married and has a ten-year-o
ld daughter. I made these inquiries privately when last in Carlisle: there is nothing to connect them with your name.”
“I’m obliged for your care. As it turns out, it hardly matters.”
“You’ve no interest in these men?”
“I intend to meet them both. But one of your brothers-in-law is aware of it, and either he or Grey will almost certainly prepare the ground for me. No matter. Of Cat, nor Fall, nor Trap, I haif nae Dreid.”
“Your self-confidence is incredible, sir,” said Maxwell dryly.
“Subject to intelligence,” said Lymond, “nothing is incalculable. Your marriage, for instance.”
Scott, fascinated, thought he saw John Maxwell’s eyes narrow. There was the briefest pause, then the tall man said, “I have considered your suggestion. On my present standing with the Queen Dowager, neither she nor the Governor would conceivably agree, even if the plan worked.”
“Your standing might be improved.”
“My brother, Lord Maxwell, is still a prisoner in London. And there are hostages at Carlisle for my good behaviour.”
“It might be improved without overt harm to your reputation in England. It’s now mid-November. In two or three weeks’ time, the Earl of Lennox is due at Carlisle, and if affairs are favourable, he’ll try another experimental march into southern Scotland.”
“And so … ?”
“And so, by pure chance and natural greed, Lennox’s men might bungle the raid. The real nature of the chance being known only to the Scottish Government, acting on your advice. Lennox blames his men for the failure: the Queen knows it is due to the Master of Maxwell.”
Silence. Maxwell moved. “Is this possible?”
“You shall hear. I’ll describe it to you now; and in greater detail later when we know Lennox’s exact movements. And the credit shall be yours.”
The Master of Maxwell said, “I am trying to persuade myself that all this is not a matter of great disadvantage to yourself?”