The Game of Kings

  From this aspect, it was a pity his wounds were no worse. The tender bonds of love and service which Mariotta would cheerfully have wrapped about a helpless and stationary invalid were stretched instead, frayed and snapping, to the heels of an absent, overactive, uncompromising gentleman, up before he should have been out of bed and out before he should have been up.

  Lady Buccleuch, approached by Mariotta, had proved an unhelpful confidante. “That’s his job,” she pointed out. “You don’t, I suppose, want to flit here and yon tied to the man’s collar like Agrippa’s dog with the devil.”

  “But are you telling me the two circles never meet?” cried Mariotta in exasperation. “Are we to spend the young days of our lives with never a shared doubt, or pleasure, or worry but what falls crash at our feet the one rare Sunday in five we’re together?”

  “God,” had said Janet. “I’m not likely to buy doubts off Buccleuch. I’ve enough myself for the two of us, and I’ll fight to the death to keep Wat’s great blundering thumbs out of them.…”

  That was at the start of November. Very soon afterward, the first parcel of jewellery arrived.

  Mariotta found it, wrapped and anonymous, in her solar: discreet inquiry could not discover how it came there. Inside was a handsome ring-brooch, disingenuously inscribed Nostre et toutdits a vostre desir. There was nothing else to betray its origin, and from that fact, and the arrogance of the message, she thought she guessed the sender.

  Lady Culter passed an uneasy afternoon, considering what to do. Tell Richard? She might be wrong. There might be a letter on its way with a perfectly innocent explanation. Or another less innocent. But Richard in his anger had already exposed himself too rashly to his brother: to repress further injury was something the Dowager, at least, would approve. She decided to wait.

  No letter came, but a week later, a second packet. This was a bracelet, demanding boldly, Is thy heart as my heart? with an insolence which was almost its undoing. Mariotta roamed her room, arguing and counterarguing, dogged by a recollection of blue eyes and a blurred, inebriated voice.

  It was monstrous, of course, even to compare the two men. A well-balanced, mature woman of nineteen would unpin the ring-brooch from inside her bodice and put it and the bracelet in Richard’s hands saying meekly, “Your brother is paying court to me. What do I do?”

  Mariotta didn’t ask what to do. She wore the bracelet and waited for Richard to comment first, and Richard failed to notice it. She wore the diamond brooch when it came as well; with the same results. The Dowager, on her return from Branxholm several days later, admired it, taking it for an Irish piece of Mariotta’s own. Committed, the girl did not contradict her. Then Lady Buccleuch had arrived, as invited, on the nineteenth, had remarked cheerfully on the pale, glittering gold, and had added: “Sybilla, that reminds me. Did Richard ever do anything about that glove of Lymond’s that he dropped at the Papingo?”

  The Dowager shook her white head. All three women were in Sybilla’s own room, and the firelight, rosy in the November mirk, fluttered over bed and desk and gave odd, frenetic life to the wall hangings.

  “The glove’s still in that French cabinet of mine in the Stirling house. Of course, we came south as soon as Richard was up, and he’s been so busy since.… Oh, here we are,” said the Dowager placidly as the door opened. “Come along in, Master Bullo. We are all agog to hear about the Philosopher’s Stone.”

  * * *

  When Lymond left the Ostrich, Johnnie Bullo had stayed on, moving only to go to Midculter the following Saturday. His troop, as Guilelessly advertised to both Lymond and Scott, had gone—without him—to Edinburgh.

  Shown now into the small, warm room, his bright eyes flickered over the Dowager and Mariotta, and rested a little longer on Lady Buccleuch. Janet dabbled in alchemy and medicine herself, and he was not altogether pleased to see her.

  But he took, without diffidence, the stool offered him at a proper distance; and plunged, as arranged at Stirling with the Dowager, into the strange and fabulous history of the Philosopher’s Stone.

  Time passed. The small panes of the Dowager’s window became grey, and then ultramarine, and the hot, scented air fondled and set about itself strange words. Sulphur, mercury and salt. The essential unity of matter. Meteors, perfect and imperfect compounds and the flesh of the Universe: Saturn and lead, Jupiter and tin, iron and Mars. The twelve processes of multiplication and projection. Cauda Pavonis. Ferrum Philosophorus. Dragon’s Blood.

  Johnnie Bullo, judging his moment, stopped when the room was quite dark. There was a heavy silence. Then Janet Beaton said reflectively, “Lapis philosophorum. The basic idea is simple enough. In man, perfect proportion of the elements means health; in metals, it means gold. Equate the two produce a system capable of creating such an elemental fusion and you have a means on the one hand of creating health—long life, power, vigour—and on the other, of creating—”

  “Gold,” said the gypsy softly. He watched their faces: Mariotta’s afraid and fascinated, Lady Buccleuch’s intent and practical, the Dowager’s vividly interested. “I have the secret. But I need the means of practising it.”

  “And having made the Stone?” said Sybilla.

  “I can transmute plain ore into gold, in any quantity you may want.”

  Lady Buccleuch said practically, “We should, of course, have to reach a proper commercial agreement about that,” and Mariotta exclaimed, a shade wildly, “Dragon’s Blood!”

  “It’s just a name for the residue, dear,” said Sybilla thoughtfully. She looked up with decision. “Glassware—I can get that: Janet, you’ll advise me. Ore … What sort? Lead? I can send to Edinburgh. Furnace … We’d have to rebuild one of the disused bakehouse ovens at the back of the courtyard.… Yes. Master Bullo,” said the Dowager, “I understand if we supply all this equipment, you’re willing to work here on creating the Stone, and to give us the benefit of it when it’s done?”

  “If you do that,” said Johnnie sincerely, “you’ll be making an unique contribution to the great science of alchemy and the sum total of human wisdom.…”

  Much later, when he had gone, Christian and Agnes Herries joined them and heard the tale.

  The Baroness’s eyes were wide as platters. “The Philosopher’s Stone! We’ll all live to be ninety, and have everything gold!”

  “Remember Midas, dear,” said Sybilla mildly. “Did you enjoy visiting Boghall?” And while the unsparing account unfolded itself, found and absently flourished a letter. “It came for you while you were away.”

  Agnes stopped dead. Letters in this expensive and empty young life were rare birds: her mother never wrote; her grandfather seldom. She seized and bore it away without a word.

  A moment later, she was back. “Can anyone,” asked Agnes in a voice oddly muted, “can anyone besides Christian translate Spanish?”

  “No.”

  The Dowager glanced over. “You seem to have a remarkably erudite correspondent, surely? But tell Christian if you want to. We shan’t listen.”

  Agnes said, after a moment, “It doesn’t matter. It’s a poem.”

  “A poem!” exclaimed Lady Buccleuch. “That girl’s got a love letter, or you can call me Ananias.”

  The Dowager’s voice was gently amused. “I think you’d better put us out of our misery, Agnes. Who is it from?” And the Baroness, in a voice in which surprise, pride and a kind of simple gratitude could be heard, answered, “The Master of Maxwell.”

  She read the letter aloud, in the end, with no persuasion at all.

  I fear to write. The great Pan is dead: there is no magic to bring you the likeness of my heart. My physical likeness you can have; but that will show you only a camelopard—no hero of romance; no prince of myths and sagas. My face will never do duty for my heart: my voice can never scale the barriers of your youth, your wealth, your hand promised—they say—to another.

  But birds of paradise feed on dew and rare vapours and men on Pytan live by the smell of wild apples: so pe
rhaps may the sound of words nourish us both. From here where all is night, I see a foolish-fire, and stretch my hands toward it and hope for miracles.

  I cannot come to your nectary. I can only boom like a bittern on my marshes and say, Have pity now, O bright, blissful goddess. Once, I wished to marry you. Now you are betrothed and I must not wish it … but in writing these words I have attained all my object; I have achieved what, with your help, has been all I desired.

  Read and remember sometimes the writer. You may see here no more than Mercury’s finger, but its office is no less sincere …

  And it ended in Spanish:

  Rosa das rosas, et fror das frores

  Dona das donas, sennor das sennores …

  A whole verse of it followed; then the signature: JOHN MAXWELL.

  There was a stunned silence. Christian, staring where she knew Mariotta to be, scowled like a heathen, daring her to laugh. Lady Buccleuch, greatly taken, said, “Well, for thirteen years old I call that a prodigious compliment: hardly a word under four syllables.”

  The Dowager was reflective. “Mercury’s finger. How odd. The Spanish, Christian—is it difficult to translate?” She had to repeat herself.

  “The Spanish?” said the blind girl. “Oh, I know it. In fact I recently—It’s very well known,” she ended rather lamely.

  “You recently translated it? Did you?” asked the Dowager.

  “I was going to say, I recently heard someone sing it,” said Christian truthfully. She gave them the gist, her mind elsewhere. I cannot come … In writing these words I have attained all my object … I have achieved what, with your help, has been all I desired. The mischievous, overdecorated tongue was the tongue—surely—of her nameless prisoner of Boghall and Inchmahome and Stirling. The song was his. The artifice was his. But the letter was from the Master of Maxwell: the seal was authentic and the messenger had been from Threave. Finally, it was addressed to Agnes, and not to her.

  But he had promised, odd as it had seemed, to write; and he knew that of the household, only she could speak Spanish, and would be shown such a letter. And in it, embedded in sly absurdities, was the news she wanted. Christian became aware that Agnes, in the same tentative voice, was saying, “Then you think I should answer?” and Sybilla was replying, “I think you certainly should. Of course, it’s ridiculously sudden, and you can never tell a man from his letters, and I certainly shouldn’t mention it in the hearing of a Hamilton; but a flirtation by correspondence never did anyone any harm.”

  Pause. Then said Agnes, “I can’t write Spanish and I’ve forgotten all my Latin.”

  Sybilla answered the panic too, in her calm way. “Then perhaps Christian would help you, dear. Write it together, and see how you get on.”

  This was dangerously apt, and Christian felt herself go scarlet. Yet she could certainly help Agnes. And it might be possible—and could do no harm—to slip in some sort of ambiguity of her own. She got up. “Come on,” she said. “We’ll go to your room and compose an answer straight away.”

  * * *

  The letter had been finished, a meal had been served, and Richard had joined them when Wat Scott of Buccleuch arrived to collect his wife.

  The Dowager, who had excellent control of her facial muscles, dispatched servants for food and wine, and drew Buccleuch in a cloud of disarming inquiry to the fire.

  Sir Wat sat, throwing an uneasy glance at his host, who said politely, “Your illness taken a turn for the better, I see, Wat?”

  Buccleuch shifted in his chair, casting an inimical look at his wife. “No, no. I’m not out of the wood yet, but Dod, I can hardly hold house all winter like a moulting hen. I’m taking a wee trip here and there betimes but incognito, you understand; without my pennants.”

  Richard, continuing with unruffled persistence, said, “What a pity. Then you won’t be with us at the cattle raid?”

  “This suggestion of Maxwell’s? Now, there’s a queer thing if you like,” said Buccleuch. “Here’s a man who’s been at Carlisle so often …”

  “—Or will you?” said Richard like the crack of a whip.

  Sir Wat halted. He said, “Well, as to that …” and stopped again.

  “Will you listen to this?” demanded Dame Janet of the ceiling. “The man’s lost his tongue and found a cricket’s hind legs. Wat Scott, will you say plain out what you mean?”

  She turned to Lord Culter. “The Queen’s agreed to Wat parleying with the English, provided he gives enough anonymous proof of his good intentions in other directions. So he’ll have to go to the raid, willy-nilly, if we have to put his head in a box to keep it quiet from those sharp-eyed ferrets at Carlisle.”

  An echo from Buccleuch’s own words arrested the conversation.

  “A suggestion,” demanded Agnes Herries, “of the Master of Maxwell?”

  “That’s right.” Buccleuch, offered an escape route, was concerned only with disappearing along it. “The idea was John Maxwell’s, though whether we can trust it is another story. But the man’s offered to send us time and place for Wharton’s next invasion across the Border, and at the very least to hold his own men from interfering. It sounds fair enough when you think of it: he’s dead anxious to keep in with the Queen.”

  “The fellow’s fairly running himself to a shadow,” said his wife. “We’ve been busy at it all afternoon reading correspondence from the same Master of Maxwell. Tell Buccleuch your news, Agnes.”

  Agnes conveyed, with a certain nonchalance, the gist of Maxwell’s letter. The eyes of the two men met, this time in irresistible speculation. Buccleuch said thoughtfully, “I see. Well, it’ll do no harm. She’s to reply, Sybilla?”

  “She has already,” said the Dowager placidly. “I thought it might be best.”

  Lady Buccleuch said, “What about it, Wat? Is he safe to deal with?”

  Buccleuch took a deep breath. “He might be. The Protector’s got him by the short hairs, of course; his brother’s in London, and Maxwell himself was due to report to Wharton just about now. Add to that the fact that all his lands are two hours out of Carlisle and the Earl of Angus is married to his only sister, and you’ve got the pattern of a harassed man. Harassed, but not stupid,” added Buccleuch. “It’s just possible he may be capable of juggling them all: we’ll have to wait and see.”

  When, finally, the Branxholm party rose to go, Dame Janet dropped behind with Lord Culter. “I’m remembering what we spoke of at Branxholm, Richard. Wat’s heard nothing from the boy up to now.”

  Culter said briefly, “You know what I think about that.”

  “Well, you heard him,” said Janet. “He’s not likely to change. It’s for you to decide how badly you want Lymond.”

  He offered no reply and, looking at him, she spoke under her breath. “And if you’d a different look on your face, my dear, I’d give you some damned good advice about your wife as well.”

  2. An Exchange of Pawns Is Suggested

  For the gentlemen, officers and heads on the west parts of Scotland entered to the King’s service said the notice. Read aloud by a staid, cultivated voice, it proceeded to expect the English gentlemen thus addressed to muster their horsemen at Dumfries on the following Sunday night, when the Earl of Lennox and Lord Wharton’s son Henry would command them in an attack on the Scots.

  “Goodness me,” said Kate Somerville, peering at and then watering a rather dilapidated flower in a pot. “What it is to be on holiday when the rest of the school’s at work. How would you spend your vacation, Philippa, if you were Father?”

  Philippa, a serious ten-year-old with long straight hair, thought. “Go hunting?”

  “In this weather? No, darling. Father doesn’t like wearing his tarry shirt unless he has to.”

  “Play backgammon?”

  “Father disapproves of gambling with people who play better than he does.”

  “Make us a new song?”

  “Now that,” said Kate, “is a harmless, genteel and civilized occupation for an unemployed gen
tleman. Certainly, he might make us a song.”

  Gideon Somerville laid down Wharton’s notice and gazed at his wife and daughter. “I may be old and unemployed, but I am not yet reduced to being administered totally from above, like a worthy but derelict sundial. Not yet. I am not going to compose a song for you. Or if I am, the idea will strike me of its own accord.”

  “Today,” said his wife, “Father is in a tetchy mood. Give him food, listen to what he has to say, but ask no questions, even intelligent ones.” And she grinned at her husband.

  Kate Somerville in her twenties was a neat brown creature with melting brown eyes and the temperament of a mature and witty old lady. All her life, and not least by Gideon, Kate had heard herself summed up as “sensible;” and no one, not even Gideon, guessed how she disliked it. An unusual blind spot, for Somerville was of all things perceptive: in his wife’s present smile he saw at once the reflection of his own uneasiness, and got tragically to his feet.

  “All right. I know my place. To the music room!” he observed, and had the satisfaction of seeing his wife and daughter laugh and make with one accord for the door. Soon Lord Wharton’s summons and the importunities of the Lord Lieutenant alike had vanished from his head, and as the winter rain fell on Flaw Valleys and its gardens and yards, on the stout, skeletal barrier trees and the Tyne, distantly hissing, and on the brown, patched hills and moors beyond, the Somervilles wrote and read and made music like bells in a campanile, and ignored the summons to Lord Wharton’s attack.

  But no English family within striking distance of the Scots Border ever sold its ears completely to pleasure. Kate, listening to the concert from her adjoining bedroom, heard voices outside, and against the sound of Gideon’s voice warbling happily (“Sir, what say ye? Sing on, let us see”) she distinguished one of his men below, calling. (“Now will it be, This or another day?”) She nodded encouragingly, shut the window, and returning to the next room, interrupted Gideon ruthlessly.