It was too much.
Already weakened, the seel over Scott’s eyes jerked and broke through, and he stared at the other man with the eyes of an enemy. The blue eyes narrowed in response: Lymond was no fool. “Well?” he said, and this time his voice had no slur.
For answer, Will Scott raised one arm and sent the Master’s sword spinning from him across the floor. “Take it,” he said. “And befuddle yourself under the table if you want to. It’s no affair of mine.”
“Ah,” said Lymond. “You’re going downstairs to assume command?”
“If they’d accept me, I’d do it.” Scott’s hair flamed above his excited, light eyes; he stood by the door, tall, wide-shouldered and pale. “As it is, I’d be glad if you’d treat me from now on as one of the rest. I’ll keep faith with you as far as I’m able. But I want no part in your mudraking personal habits and your dealings with women.” And, maddened by the sheer, lax boredom in Lymond’s face, Scott burst out. “What wanton notoriety is left for you to dabble in? What devilry inspires you to gut the nerves of every man and woman trying to befriend you … ?”
“For God’s sake!” The exclamation was so quick and so savage that Scott froze. “For God’s sake!” said Lymond. “Isn’t one bitch with a rage for dramatics enough for one day? Spare me your mimicking morals and spring-tailed sensibilities for tonight, at least! What do you know of any of the women you presume to defend? You look, and puke, and scuttle away like a duck that’s laid an egg in a geyser.… Do you consider yourself better equipped in all your purity to lead this troop than I am?”
All fear had left Scott. “Yes, I do,” he said quietly. “But as I have said, they would follow no one but you.”
“Unless, perhaps, I instructed them to look to you as their leader?”
Scott’s face was set. “I’m no hanger-on waiting for a madman’s shoes.”
“I am as sane now as I shall ever be,” said Lymond grimly. “I’m offering you a chance to take command now, if you want it. Complete control. Of the men, and all the destinies of my female friends. Will you take it?”
This was—wasn’t it—what he had prayed for; what he had dreamed about and, more recently, what he had longed for to sting Lymond into shame. But—
“What,” he asked hoarsely, “do I have to do? Fight you for it?”
“‘I am thi master: willt thou fight?’ No. I am too much your master there, my sweet one. There’s another way.” He held out his mug.
“Drink with me. I have some hours’ start of you which is, shall we say, a just handicap. Match me cup by cup for as long as the beer lasts; and it’ll last longer, I promise you, than either of us. The man insensible first is the loser: the man with the staying power to open that door thereafter, walk down the stairs and show himself to Matthew has control of us all in future.”
Scott, making no move to take the beer, eyed the other with something like fright in his eyes. “God, but … to wager so much on a drinking bout!”
“Don’t you want the chance?”
“Why, yes—but—At least make the contest a real one!”
“Don’t you want the chance?” said Lymond again.
“Yes!”
“Then take it. It’s the only one you’ll get. The first qualification for leading a band of hard-drinking cutthroats is the faculty of drinking harder and cutting deeper than any of them. You needn’t be squeamish,” he added contemptuously. “I’m not too drunk to know what I’m doing, and I shall abide by the result. I have an excellent reason as a rule for everything I do, except perhaps recruiting redheaded predicants from the more notoriously pigheaded of our families.”
“And if I win,” said Scott, “—if I win, can I do what I wish about Lady Lennox and Lady Culter?”
“You can set up a seraglio with them if you want to,” said Lymond. “Agreed?”
“Agreed,” said Will Scott, and raised the first cup to his mouth.
* * *
High on the hilltops, among the wet scrub by the burn, a blackbird was singing. The notes, round as syrup, melted into the raw air of dawn and coaxed the cold, reddened sun to its day.
In the new tower, thick walls enclosed a warm, snoring darkness: men and dogs rustling together like the carved and stubby images of Asiatic deities in the straw of the common room. Then, far up the twisting staircase, a door opened above.
Matthew, supine on a straw paliasse, hands folded on his belly, snorted, belched and turned laboriously on one side, where he continued to snore. But now he faced the dark square at the foot of the stairs.
Silence. Then, distantly, the same door shut; there was a pause; then footsteps fell, descending with infinite care.
They came nearer. Matthew lay still: lay and snored while a dark figure appeared in the low entrance, took two unsteady steps and halted, outflung against a wall, snatching security in a grave and preposterous game with imbalance. Throbbing with birdsong, the grey light of morning searched and pricked along the plaster, illumining a flattened hand, a silk sleeve and a wry, colourless profile.
Behind the Assyrian beard and half-shut eyes, Matthew was grinning. “Well, well. And fu’ as a puggie …” He got up quickly and followed as Crawford of Lymond, pushing himself at last from the doorway, propelled his way from wall to wall and out of the door.
Mat reached the Master as he was taking his head out of the water barrel, his hair dark and streaming and his skin involuntarily trembling in the sharp air. Lymond expressed no surprise, but buried his head in the towel Mat held out, saying after a moment in a voice still stifled by the cloth, “The message from Lennox. Has it come back yet?”
“Half an hour ago,” said Mat, and met the other man’s eyes emerging from the towel. “They agree to exchange the Countess of Lennox for Lady Culter and have appointed a time and a place for tomorrow. And a safe-conduct.”
“Good.” Lymond dropped the towel, supporting himself on the edge of the water butt. “You know what to do.”
Although he had not thought it necessary to tell Scott, Matthew had received the fullest instructions about Mariotta. So, though his eyes on the Master were thoughtful, he simply said, “Yes, I know,” and picking up the cloth, waited patiently.
Lymond moved to the staircase and dropping on the bottom step, head in hands, said nothing for a while. Presently, he looked up. “I’m going away. I don’t want to disturb the others. Get my horse, Mat, will you? And my bow and a blanket and some clothes.”
It didn’t take long. Once in the saddle, Lymond looked rather better. “There’s some food in the bag,” said Turkey aggressively. “And a cloak.”
“Thanks … I don’t expect to be off long.”
“And—” Mat was not prone to ask questions, but the event was too much for him. “And young Will?”
“Upstairs. A jewel in its setting,” said the blurred voice, with a trace of its normal caustic assurance. Then Lymond turned the horse out of the yard and a moment later put it to the trot down the hill.
Matthew went in. No one had moved, although as the light grew, strange and welcome noises could be heard in the kitchens. Turning into the narrow staircase he walked up to the first floor and opened the door of Lymond’s room.
One solitary candle was burning still. The room reeked of tallow and spilled drink, and last night’s fire was a mess of charred wood and ash in the grate. Across the hearth, his head in the cold rubbish and his hand still clutching a pewter tankard which had emptied itself about him as he fell, lay Will Scott, snoring ferociously in an alcoholic stupor. Someone had loosened his clothing at the neck, put a cushion under his head, and laid a towel and a basin neatly and squarely on his stomach.
Matthew absorbed the spectacle; grinned; and still grinning, walked to the door and shut it gently behind him.
* * *
From Crawfordmuir, the Master made his way slowly across country to Corstorphine.
It took five days to arrange a rendezvous with Sir George Douglas, for Lord Grey, learning wisdom at
last, was keeping Sir George fast by the shirt-tails at Berwick while awaiting the arrival of Douglas’s elder son, the expected pledge of the Douglas good will. But by the beginning of March, Sir George was back at Dalkeith and free to arrange with Mr. Crawford of Lymond the more precise details of the exchange of Samuel Harvey for the life and person of Will Scott.
It was shortly after this that one of the Queen’s surgeons arrived late at the baby’s bedside at Dumbarton. He had more than elixirs to offer; he had astonishing news: of a tale of blindfold seduction. Of how he had been forced to care for a young woman in premature childbirth, in a tower solely frequented by men. Of how the child was stillborn, and he had stayed, perforce, a day or two after, until a woman arrived to relieve him of his task. Released, he had no idea of the tower’s location; but he had thought to ask the sick girl her name. She had told him: Mariotta, Lady Culter.
He had asked who brought her there, and she replied, her husband’s brother, Crawford of Lymond. He said, very conscious of the sensation he was causing, that the girl would recover.
III
Mate for the Master
A Quheyne movand scho shuld kepe colour aye,
In hir first moving may scho diverse waye,
First to ye poynt befor ye mediciner,
Syne to two poynts verraye anguler,
To ye poynt void befor ye notair.
1. A Bereft Knight Is Checked by His Own Side
AFTER seventeen days in the field, Richard rode back to Midculter, intending to apologize to his wife. She was not there. She had left some time ago, with a small escort, and it was assumed that she had joined Sybilla at Dumbarton. So he turned his weary horse and rode there too.
They came to the small Queen’s bedroom to tell Sybilla he had arrived. She glanced up, seeing the change in her own heart reflected in Christian’s blind face; then looked down and tucked the two flaying hands under the sheets for a second time. “Tomorrow,” she said. The Queen made a hideous face. “Now.”
“Tomorrow you shall get up,” said the Dowager firmly. “And put on the yellow dress. And go and see Sym’s cuddies in a jug. If you are a reasonable child today.”
Melting eye and embouchure veered from Sybilla to Lady Fleming, just beyond. “When I am ill you must do as I want.”
The Dowager saw the trap before Aunt Jenny did. Aunt Jenny, despite a dig in the arm, said brightly, “But you’re not ill any longer,” and Mary pounced. “Then in that case—”
“You’re convalescent,” finished Sybilla swiftly.
“What’s—”
“It means going to be well provided you do what you’re told.” A thwarted silence. “Then I had rather,” said the Queen sulkily, “be ill.”
“In many ways, things were easier,” agreed Sybilla. She bent over the little girl, curled tight as a leaf bud in the bedclothes, kissed her and handed over her vigil thankfully to Jenny Fleming.
Outside, she took Christian by the arm. “Richard has come—you heard. Will you go with me to see him?”
The blind girl hesitated, but only for a moment. If Sybilla was willing to sacrifice Richard’s pride, it was for a very good reason. And in the coming encounter she had a queer feeling that the Dowager would be more vulnerable than her son.
In Sybilla’s parlour, Richard began as they came in, with no preamble at all. “They tell me Mariotta isn’t here. She isn’t at Midculter either. Where has she gone?” And—“Is she dead?” added Richard, in the same incisive voice, looking straight at his mother.
Sybilla sat down suddenly. Hearing the little scrape of the chair, Christian found one for herself and dropped quietly into it. Then the Dowager said, “No, she isn’t dead. I know where she is. But I wish to say something to you first. If you’re alarmed, it’s because you deserve to be, you know.”
He walked impatiently to the fireplace and back to the window. “She has been comparing my romantic attentions unfavourably with—with others?” He shied at the name only at the last moment.
“With Lymond,” said Sybilla composedly. “No. She might have done, but I haven’t heard her. It was about Lymond that I wanted to talk.” Her eyes, blue and compassionate, achieved a critical stare. “You’ve had a free hand so far, Richard. We haven’t discussed the raid on the castle, or the attack at Stirling, or the presents Mariotta has been receiving—oh, yes!” as he made a startled movement. “In some things I’m less blind than you are.”
Richard said nothing; after a moment the Dowager continued quietly. “But we are going to discuss them now. For I think you have come to the point where you must choose. Which do you want most, Richard—Mariotta or Lymond?”
He stared back at her. “You can hardly expect me to answer that kind of question. Or to chatter about my wife’s … affairs. There has been a misunderstanding. It can be repaired easily when I meet her. It will vanish altogether when my brother comes to heel.”
“What I am telling you,” said Sybilla evenly, “is that if you insist on destroying Lymond personally, you may lose Mariotta altogether.”
His voice sharpened. “Lymond will take her life? Or she will take her own?”
“I mean that unreasonable hatred of Lymond now will convict Mariotta publicly of deceit. I mean that if he has become important in her eyes, you’ll win her back by being magnanimous, and not by destroying the monster and fighting the myth to your dying day. I mean that Lymond is with Mariotta now; that he has not touched her; but that she should be taken out of his influence as soon as possible. And if you will abandon this madness, I shall find her and bring her back to Midculter.”
He was on his feet before Sybilla had half finished. Christian heard him, her own hands crushing the arms of her chair, her mind invisibly protesting. No! … Dear God! thought Christian drearily. How could Sybilla, so clever, so acute with others, read her own son so badly?
In a queer, weightless voice, Richard was speaking. “Where are they? How long have they been together?”
Sybilla answered quickly. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. She was very ill when she came to him, Richard—she has been dangerously, terribly ill.”
Utter silence. Then Lord Culter said, “The child?” And there was a long interval while he read his answer in his mother’s face.
At length he spoke quite steadily. “So the child is dead. What would it have been? A girl?”
“A boy.” And Christian, with compassion, told him the surgeon’s story.
When she had finished, he laughed. At the tone of it, Sybilla cried out, and he rounded on her. “But this is genius! My irrepressible little brother … the infallible Lymond, with success at the end of each of his pretty fingers … You say you know where to reach them?”
By now Sybilla must have known what was coming, but she spoke steadily. “I said that if you would give up your hunt for him, I should probably manage to trace Mariotta for you.”
“And what possible use,” said Lord Culter, “would Mariotta be to me?”
“For God’s sake, you foolish man!” said Christian, and jumped to her feet. “Give the situation at least the amount of unprejudiced thought you’d give to one of your damned pigs in farrow. What possible misdemeanour can be expected from a woman at death’s door through childbirth? And why blame your brother? You ought to be damned glad that surgeon was called. If Lymond’s all you say he is, he’d have gone about it like Hephaestus with a hatchet.”
“Mariotta is Lymond’s mistress,” said Richard shortly. “She as good as told me so before she left. Where are they?”
“She was lying to spite you,” said Christian.
“Or telling the truth to spite me. Where are they?”
There was nothing more Christian could do. As the question was flung at the Dowager for the third time she heard Sybilla say, “I’ve told you. I don’t know the exact location. I won’t tell you what I do know unless you promise—”
Richard laughed again. “With this story around the whole of Scotland? I admit very few things wou
ld make me look sillier than I do now, but the idea of making Lymond a gift of my complaisance is one of them. Why shouldn’t she prefer him? All my women did. Nothing was ever mine that didn’t instantly become his—even your dearest hopes and first-born love—”
Sybilla’s hands suddenly clasped themselves. “Richard!”
“It’s true, isn’t it? Isn’t that why you are trying to save him now? Because you love this one son: not my father; not me; not even your own daughter—my sister—his sister—the girl he murdered?”
“Richard!” This time Christian was on her feet, stumbling across to the Dowager’s chair. She knelt, her arms tight about the older woman’s shoulders, as a voice bawled Culter’s name in the corridor outside.
The Dowager sat like a little ivorine, her blue eyes wide and dark. Richard himself stood by the fireplace, drawn to his greatest height and tension, as if his body were a metal mesh without bone or tissue. The door banged. “Lord Culter!”
The Dowager stirred, and Christian rose slowly, staying by her chair. A scared face appeared in the room. “Lord Culter? The Queen Dowager’s been waiting for you this last half hour, my lord. We couldna find—”
“Then she can continue to wait,” said Richard.
“My lord!” This time it was a new voice, a second page. “You’re wanted to come right away—”
Unstirring, Richard flung words at his mother. “I may be mistaken. It is for you to prove it. I ask you to tell me how to reach him.” The two pages shuffled.
For a long moment Sybilla looked Richard straight in the eyes, and neither pair flinched. Then, still mute, she shook her head.
“Very well,” he said. “I shall not ask you to outrage your feelings.” And, spinning on his heel, he was out of the room before they knew it. The two pages started, looked at each other, and made for the door. “Lord Culter! You’re wanted.…”
Inside the room, Christian slipped to the floor and laid her cheek on the Dowager’s warm, velvet lap. After a moment she felt Sybilla move, and the thin, pretty fingers began gently to caress her hair.