“My lords, my Lord Advocate: I suggest that you have surely material enough before you now to suggest a verdict to you; that nothing more of value can come from this inquiry; and particularly nothing of value from the path Mr. Lauder would have you tread. I do beg you to remember that I, and I alone, am the person whose acts you are judging today.”
He sat down, leaving behind him the uneasy silence of those who have watched a keg of gunpowder explode without a sound. Tom Erskine said in a whisper, “God Almighty!” glanced once at Culter’s face, and wiped his own brow. Lauder rose.
“Are you withdrawing from further questioning, Mr. Crawford?”
“I am not. But—”
“But you would like us to close this inquiry for the sake of your health,” said the advocate comfortably, and watched out of the corner of his eye a note passing hurriedly to the top table. Buccleuch, crumpling it in his hand, said, “I don’t much fancy the line the questioning has been taking either, Lauder; but—by his Grace’s leave—I don’t think we should close the business without hearing Will again. I understand the damned limmer’s got stuck somewhere, but he ought to be here at any moment.”
Argyll consulted his immediate neighbours and leaned forward. “We are satisfied to leave our preliminary investigation at this point, Mr. Lauder. I cannot imagine, Sir Walter, that your son will have anything of great moment to add to what we know, but if he appears before these proceedings are finished we shall of course admit his evidence, although we cannot, I think, prolong this diet to wait for him. First, we should like you, my Lord Advocate, to gather together the facts which have been revealed so far and correlate them for us. Then, if he so wishes the prisoner may speak.”
Erskine sprang to his feet. “My lords, I beg you not to close without hearing Mr. Scott. There is evidence of the first importance involved.”
“What?” said Reid. His ear was cupped in his hand and his face hot and irritable. “It is irregular to speak now, Mr. Erskine. Sit down.”
Argyll was more patient. “You have knowledge of this evidence?”
“Only that it may be vital.”
“You have no idea what it is?” Erskine flushed. “No. But—”
The Justiciar’s voice was final. “In that case, I am afraid you must abide by my decision. If it arrives before this Assize ends, we shall admit it. Mr. Lauder—” He paused. “Mr. Erskine, you may sit down.”
Tom said briefly, “I was to give evidence in support of the prisoner’s actions at Hexham. May I do so now?”
Argyll’s tolerance this time was not so evident. He leaned forward. “We know what happened there, Mr. Erskine, and accept that you can confirm it. We don’t need to know any more at present, I believe. Now, Mr. Lauder?”
The Lord Advocate was amused and intrigued—intrigued to such an extent that he took a hand in the game. He said, “There is one further thing, my lord, which we might have clear. We have heard no comment from Lord Culter for or against his brother. Although we all realize the matter is painful to him, he might be able to throw some light on the unhappy affair at the convent.”
Argyll began, “I think we have heard enough—” and paused as the lawyer’s face became concerned.
Lauder said, “It was Lord Culter who spared himself least in the past year in running his brother to earth, and who in fact brought him back in the end. Should we not ask him to give us his reasons?”
It was a justifiable slip; and it happened so late that the Crown suffered less than it might have done. The Justiciar waved a cursory hand, and Lord Culter rose, purposeful and solid as Ebenezer. “It is true that I spent many weeks pursuing my brother,” he began, and Lauder, already warned by his voice, swore quietly under his breath. “I did so under a complete misapprehension,” said Richard calmly. “I believe him innocent of the charges against him; and I want to say that when intercepted—”
“Don’t labour the point, Richard.” It was the defendant’s voice, quick and caustic.
“—When intercepted, I was about to help my brother leave the country.”
Sensation. Lymond gave a curious grimace and stayed quiet; the Lord Justice-General sat up. “You realize, Lord Culter, that if this man is found guilty you have made yourself an accomplice to his crimes?”
Richard said briefly, “He is not guilty.”
The Lord Advocate was looking at him very hard. “Your lordship has thoroughly surprised us. I do not propose to question you about your sister, but I must ask this: as to the other accusations on this sheet—do you have any proof that they are false?”
Culter stirred uneasily. Lymond’s malicious voice spoke before he could open his mouth. “No, he hasn’t. I’m sorry to disperse the gentle and evangelical light, but even Richard can’t achieve a complete volte-face as quickly as that. All this whitewashing is intended, I gather, to protect my sister’s reputation: that’s all.”
The Lord Advocate said nothing; he simply lay back in his chair, the blue chin dropped on his chest, and stared thoughtfully at Lymond, who stared thoughtfully back. It was Argyll who said, “We really must have this clear. Do I understand Lord Culter is romancing? That he didn’t help you to escape?”
“Imagination reels,” said Lymond, “before the improbable delights of such an event. No. He was bringing me here to have me hanged, having just failed to kill me in formal combat in England. Mr. Erskine will confirm.”
Mr. Erskine, in a dour voice, confirmed, without looking at Culter, who was on his feet and choked with protests. “I think,” said the panel kindly, “that you should sit down. It makes no odds now, you know.” And after a moment, Richard did so.
An odd silence had fallen. It was late: long past time for the evening meal. They were exhausted with argument and heat and concentration and the concealed ravages of fear.
No darts had been thrown; no mines exploded; no reputations peeled of their tactful patches and splints. All was righteousness and decorum; and the rich, pliant voice of the Lord Advocate, beginning in the stillness and unreeling delicately the case against Francis Crawford.
He was clever enough not to brush again through the harsh Orcadian pastures of Bishop Reid’s imagining. He kept to his indictment—kept concisely and damningly to its severities, and made no appeal to the heart: the time for that was past. Instead, he bent his mind to weaving a fabric of steel: a case so massive, so intellectually secure, so lockfast that no man, however fluent and however gifted, should break it. Of these bright phrases, forged and concatenated, would emerge the gyves which tomorrow would snap into place. He ended very calmly.
“And so I present to you a trespasser of a kind which the law in its grace and impartiality has scarcely knowledge to deal with: a man who has plunged his kindred men into untimely death; has rent blood and limb from them; has forced apart mother and son and scythed sheer to the stubble a meadow of children, for a handful of tainted and murderous coins. A man who, nourished in this generous womb, can turn upon his mother land and hack her, deface her and betray her, deny her and spit upon her as an empty waste, a name upon a map, a race of strangers and a source of wanton exercise and plunder.
“Such a man is Crawford of Lymond: such a man this land may pray never to see again in the difficult ways of her history. I say: busy yourself no longer about him, for he is better condemned, and most harshly dead.”
The silence of his careful making followed him and lay upon the Tribunal for a stricken and pulsing space. Then at the long table Argyll moved, and the twelve Assessors stirred and sighed.
Erskine, lifting his stunned head, saw that Richard’s eyes were wide and full on his brother; but Lymond looked at nobody, the queer cornflower gaze concentrated in space. The Lord Justice-General began to speak, and had to clear his throat.
“We have heard and understood you, Mr. Lauder, and have been well served by your skill and your clarity in this most distressing task today. The panel has also heard you. We now invite him to address us in his own defence on the charges so pref
erred against him. Mr. Crawford.”
From Lymond’s pale hair to his finger tips no uncomprehending muscle moved. “I have nothing to add,” he said.
In the crowded room the atmosphere tightened as if he had shouted. “Nothing?” exclaimed Argyll. “You are accused of treason, sir: you have heard the gravest accusations and the gravest doubts expressed about your evidence. Have you no excuse?”
Bare of irony, Lymond’s eyes left the Justiciar and rested on his own immobile and flatly crossed hands. “The margin is so small,” he said, “between life and no life, fact and lie, treason and patriotism, civilization and savagery … If Mr. Lauder can see it, he is lucky; if you can comprehend it you have a better right to judge than I have to plead. I have nothing to add.”
“If you can’t tell the difference between loyalty and treason, Mr. Crawford,” said the Bishop, “then you are certainly safer hanged.”
The Master’s eyes studied him. “Why, can you?”
“As long,” said Orkney broadly, “as I know the difference between right and wrong.”
“Yes. The position is very similar. Patriotism,” said Lymond, “like honesty is a luxury with a very high face value which is quickly pricing itself out of the spiritual market altogether.”
“Feeling for one’s country,” said the Lord Advocate softly, “is not usually considered as a freestanding riddle in ethics.…”
The easy voice lifted the comment and the topic, and carried them to deeper waters. “No. It is an emotion as well, and of course the emotion comes first. A child’s home and the ways of its life are sacrosanct, perfect, inviolate to the child. Add age; add security; add experience. In time we all admit our relatives and our neighbours, our fellow townsmen and even, perhaps, at last our fellow nationals to the threshold of tolerance. But the man living one inch beyond the boundary is an inveterate foe.”
He laced his long fingers and raised them, his gaze resting on the exposed palms. “Patriotism is a fine hothouse for maggots. It breeds intolerance; it forces a spindle-legged, spurious riot of colour.… A man of only moderate powers enjoys the special sanction of purpose, the sense of ceremony; the echo of mysterious, lost and royal things; a trace of the broad, plain childish virtues of myth and legend and ballad. He wants advancement—what simpler way is there? He’s tired of the little seasons and looks for movement and change and an edge of peril and excitement; he enjoys the flowering of small talents lost in the dry courses of daily life. For all these reasons, men at least once in their lives move the finger which will take them to battle for their country.…
“Patriotism,” said Lymond again. “It’s an opulent word, a mighty key to a royal Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. Patriotism; loyalty; a true conviction that of all the troubled and striving world, the soil of one’s fathers is noblest and best. A celestial competition for the best breed of man; a vehicle for shedding boredom and exercising surplus power or surplus talents or surplus money; an immature and bigoted intolerance which becomes the coin of barter in the markets of power—”
Into the silence, the Master spoke gently. “These are not patriots but martyrs, dying in cheerful self-interest as the Christians died in the pleasant conviction of grace, leaving their example by chance to brood beneath the water and rise, miraculously, to refresh the centuries. The cry is raised: Our land is glorious under the sun. I have a need to believe it, they say. It is a virtue to believe it; and therefore I shall wring from this unassuming clod a passion and a power and a selflessness that otherwise would be laid unquickened in the grave.”
With the unfettered freedom of his voice, with the disciplined and friendly ardours of his mind, he made it plain where he was leading them.
“And who shall say they are wrong?” said Lymond. “There are those who will always cleave to the living country, and who with their uprooted imaginations might well make of it an instrument for good. Is it quite beyond us in this land? Is there no one will take up this priceless thing and say, Here is a nation, with such a soul; with such talents; with these failings and this native worth? In what fashion can this one people be brought to live in full vigour and serenity, and who, in their compassion and wisdom, will take it and lead it into the path?”
For two, for three, for four seconds, the silence continued. Then Lauder, an expression of pure joy on his face, let out a long sigh; Argyll himself drew a deep breath, and Erskine, dragging his eyes from the quiet chair, found Richard staring at his brother with the privacies of his stubborn spirit exposed, unheeding, on his face.
For a mighty moment Argyll faced Lymond, conjecture and curiosity and a certain sharp respect informing the pallid Campbell features. Then he said, “I understand that you have said something you felt required saying at this time, and that you are not moved to argue and dispute over the complexities of the personal charges which have been put before us today. I am not sure that you are wrong; but this is not the place nor the time to reply to you, nor am I sure that I or any man present could do so—” He paused.
“We have been shown the public interpretation of a remarkable case: a series of events borne forcibly to their close by a strong and unusual personality. Mr. Lauder has given us one reading of its character. He would, I think, be the first to admit that he has not, patently, shown us the whole man and that, whatever the true reading may be, Mr. Crawford, we may know that it is not simple, or obvious, or in any way commonplace.
“We have listened to the evidence most carefully. Most of the charges referring to crimes since 1542 are to my mind much weakened by what we have heard, and would be difficult to sustain. The original accusation however still stands, and the evidence has in no way been shaken by any argument or proof offered by the panel.
“We shall consider these things, however, and tomorrow this court will make its recommendation to the Three Estates, before whom you shall appear. It is this decision you must fear and face, and I warn you now to prepare yourself for it.”
It was as near a warning of doom as the Assize could achieve. Lymond was already standing to receive it, and there was no doubt that he understood what he was being told: the stamp of the day’s assault lay in the very bones of his face. He bowed once, to the Assessors, and again, surprisingly, to the benches which held Erskine and his brother; then, flanked by his guards, he moved quietly to the door.
Neither Lauder nor the judges, nor the silent ranks of the witnesses remembered Will Scott.
* * *
A pretence of quiet had fallen on the night.
About the basin of the Tyne, small fires ringed Haddington: the boots of men clicked on the walls of the besieged town and padded in the trenches outside; and the unobtrusive gnawing of pick and mattock betrayed the pioneers still at work.
The river wound its way dimly to the coast; and the estuary, flat and moon-bright, with small ships black as buttons on its surface, lay at the bottom of the sky and rolled in the east-by-east wind which with spare and racking fingers was withdrawing the coasts from the English fleet.
Edinburgh, grimly warded, lay inside her walls, bedevilled by the shadows of her hills, her crag and tail a black and fishy emblem above the apologetic stench of the Nor’ Loch. The moon copied on the cobbles the profile of all the new, high houses: the thatched gables and uncertain slates and the dancetté roofs; and the gutters ran in and out of the shadows like pied and silvery eels.
As always, there were lights at the ports; and tonight there were lights as well at Holyrood, and at Mary of Guise’s palace on Castle Hill. Farther down the slope another candle shone in an upper window at the Tolbooth: behind it Lymond lay, drugged into sleep, with a guard outside his locked door until the night should pass and Parliament meet to pronounce his doom. In the Culters’ house in the High Street his family also waited, and the tapers burned all night.
They burned also at the Castle, where light and heat reeled in mortal embrace in the prisoners’ room. The ceiling, low and plastered, pressed down the strata of exhausted air, stale with old beer and swe
ating bodies. There was no room left to stand and no air to inhale, but the light beat down on a swaying corymb of heads, and shone on necks craning with a nervous, avid tension like beasts at a water hole.
At the centre sat Will Scott and Sir Thomas Palmer, half-naked: sunburnt thews glistening under multiple lights and sweat slithering down the tough cord of their spines.
For maybe an hour now, Palmer’s string of jocularities and pithy memoirs had stopped, and he was breathing hoarsely into the cards, eyes intent and chin set in three trim folds against his chest. Beside his chair, topped by a bundle of clothes, lay a good half of Scott’s belongings. Beside Scott, kicked into a disorderly tangle by the eager feet of the onlookers, was every article presently owned by Tommy Palmer except one: his cousin’s statement.
Scott was too tired to think. Often before he had played the night through, ending wild-eyed and unshaven and ravenously hungry and going on to perform prodigies of nuisance-making in his father’s wake. But against Palmer he needed more than a flair: he needed nerve and watchfulness and weblike concentration, with an instinct for bluff, and an inspiration to know when to call it.
He ignored the chaffing of his enthusiastic audience; he refused to be upset by the games he lost and by Palmer’s unworried bonhomie. He played on doggedly with his red hair sticking in cowlicks to his brow and stared at the tarots until they glimmered in his eyeballs like invitation cards to hell. He knew that it was dark, that the inquiry was over and, from Erskine standing now at his side, that it had gone against Lymond. He had no idea of the time.
Palmer was preparing his sequences. He did it slowly, as if the feel of the cards gave him pleasure. “My pretty atous,” he said, and admired them, his broad fingers sprawled across the painted backs.
Scott looked at his own hand, and the tarots’ sleek, Egyptian heads with ancient divination in their eyes stared back, warming their painted hands at a world of flesh. His feet were on le chemin royal de la vie and the thin travesties in his hands this time were real: the traitor and the hanged man, death and the fool. Their avid fingers were real, and the scent of an evil nostalgia. He closed the cards abruptly and held them closed until his brain cleared.