The Game of Kings

  “More impressive than Temple Newsam?” said Margaret; and the two pairs of eyes locked.

  The fine, scarred fingers which had killed the papingo and set fire to his mother’s house played gently with the thick, beautiful hair. “You would take me to your home?” said Lymond softly. “But even Lennox—”

  “—daren’t gainsay the Protector. And if you proved yourself valuable to Somerset, as you could—Francis, with your mind, your imagination, your leadership—”

  “—And my savoury reputation. It’s hopeless, Margaret. If my character in Scotland were intact, I could make Somerset uncle to an emperor; as an outlaw, my practical value is nil. Unless a good name can be created for me. Or restored.”

  He didn’t go on, and there was a silence. The woman had laid her cheek on his knee, her long hair fallen on the shining firelit swaths of her robe, spread about the hearth. A log dropped, turning the man’s hair a brighter gold. Without moving, Margaret repeated, “Restored?”

  Lymond’s soft voice was reflective. “Mightn’t some story be concocted that the authorities would believe? Of forgery—strategic betrayal—something with witnesses, convincing enough to clear me?”

  At bay before every weapon of his mind and body, Margaret answered him unwillingly. “It’s no use, Francis. It does no good to pretend. Nothing can restore the past: how could it? The man who left the dispatch is dead. I could teach speeches and confessions to any number in his place, but do you think they would withstand the boot or the rack? Arran would make very sure this time he was not being deceived again. You can’t remake a reputation out of nothing.”

  “I can’t, perhaps; but you generally manage to get what you want. Even me, for a consideration. I’ve told you my price.”

  This time, the pause was a long one. The woman gasped suddenly. “I make no conditions.”

  “And I make only one,” said Lymond, and with smooth strength pulled her up momentarily, his mouth on hers. “Do you want me, Margaret … at Temple Newsam?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then will you pay my fee?”

  “I’ll pay you … I’ll pay you anything,” she said, “if you’ll come away with me tonight.”

  “Tonight?” asked Lymond, and thoughtfully lifted the hair from her neck. “What will you pay me?”

  She kissed his roving hands. “I’ll find a man—someone to swear your dispatch was a forgery.”

  “What man?”

  “Anyone. A prisoner, perhaps. Or a condemned man. I could get him to do it for the price of his life, couldn’t I? I promise. I’ll make it convincing. Will you come? Oh! my love, will you come?”

  Scott had the second’s warning Margaret lacked; saw the face above the felicitous hands; glimpsed the relentless eyes. Margaret Lennox said, “Oh! my love, will you come?” and Lymond slipped from her like a fish, leaving her kneeling, empty-handed, addressing half-mouthed endearments to an empty settle.

  “Shall I come? God; no, darling. I like my sluts honest.”

  There was a single sound, dragged on the intaken breath; then the woman sank on her heels and Scott saw the blood on her lip where her teeth had snapped shut on it. “Well?” said Lymond, grinning, from across the room, and she flung to her feet, spitting Tudor venom and Tudor fluency into the fair, insolent face.

  “Conceited peasant! Gross, degenerate weakling, reeking of ditch philosophy and decay—Do you imagine I’d let you touch me if there was an alternative? I offered you freedom and security—”

  “You put me in purgatory, and you are offering me hell,” exclaimed Lymond. “Poor Thomas Howard. Did you offer him life and liberty too?”

  “Have you the effrontery to reproach me with lovers? What of your own?”

  “Mine all have whole necks and go to bed with me for joy, not for lions on their quarterings and galloon on their underwear.”

  “I would have you roasted alive.”

  “You would repent it. Who else can give you this brand of excitement? Not our marrowless Matthew, anyway.”

  “He doesn’t suffer from—from satyriasis, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I can’t help that,” said Lymond brutally. “Take your petty claws out of the prey, my sweet. I want your infant, not you.”

  There was silence. Tiger being revealed to tiger, the roaring died and was replaced by a brooding watchfulness. Then Margaret Douglas said, “You will never get my son.”

  “I shall, you know.” Lymond was the image of despotic calm. “Unless you get the proofs I ask for. I admire ingenuity, but not quite so much of it. My capture by the French was no accident. King Henry’s decision to make a scapegoat of me was no accident.”

  “Very well,” said Margaret. “It was no accident. And because of it, your beggarly deceits were made public property. What can I do about it? What false proofs and pseudo-confessions would convince when the world knows them to be extorted by threat? No, my dear Francis, you’ve closed that door yourself. Your life as a man ended five years ago: your life as a cur depends on how long you please your numerous masters—”

  “Or mistresses.”

  There were tears of rage in the black eyes. “Can I never forget?”

  “No. Why should you? I think of it often, with a certain aged melancholy. Chargé d’ans et pleurant son antique prouesse … Must I send for the boy?”

  Margaret Lennox stirred. Walking away from the fire, she lifted her cloak and threw it over her arm with a certain detached grace. “Your antique prouesse was a little better than this. Preserve me from naïveté.”

  His eyes were guarded but his voice was blithe. “It’s the simple life. An atavistic return to primitive barter. An instinct to buy things and people with shells, like the French.”

  She smiled. “I have no intention of giving you what you want. My son is quite safe.”

  Lymond’s expression conveyed qualified warmth. “You want to stay here and mend my shirts. But as I’ve already said, the positions are all filled.”

  “On the contrary. You will send me away yourself. Because,” said Lady Lennox, “we have your brother’s wife.”

  For a long time, no one spoke. The silence stretched on until Scott’s whole listening body tingled with it; then at length Lymond’s eyes dropped. The cord of his shirt had loosened, and with one hand, still looking down, he drew it together. “How do you know of this?”

  “By letter.” Smiling, she produced from her cloak and held out a longish letter which Lymond read, one hand still arranging his shirt. She watched him. “Can you make out the writing? She was captured by young Wharton during the march north on Wednesday, and should be with my husband now at Annan. He wanted me to join him quickly and chaperone her. Then he was going to hold her to ransom.”

  She relinquished the letter, still watching him cynically. “And that, my dear Francis, makes me an awkward possession. When Lennox hears I am missing, he has one simple remedy—to offer the life of the young Lady Culter in exchange for mine. And that means that the whole weight and power of your brother and his friends will be bent toward finding me.”

  “I am distraught at the prospect.” Lymond spoke readily enough, though his hands were white at the knuckles. “He’s exceedingly unlikely to do so. And what makes you think that Mariotta’s future—or lack of it—has any interest for me?”

  “My dear Francis,” said Margaret blandly. “Of course it interests you. Her death brings you one step nearer Midculter, doesn’t it?”

  His unemotional face seemed to stir a curious animation in her. She went on swiftly. “Send me back to England and the Scots have lost their counterhostage. Send me back, and I promise to see that your sister-in-law lives for thirty years apart from her husband—and that her child fails to survive.”

  “I have a better idea,” said Lymond, and finished lacing his shirt with both hands, his eyes resting on her. “Suppose we have an accident with you. Her death will naturally follow.”

  “But then your brother would be free to remarry.”

/>   “True.” He had crossed the room to a writing table, and was inscribing a long message on the back of the letter she had given him. Her voice sharpened a little, and she moved toward him. “What are you doing?”

  He didn’t look up, but continued to write quickly and fluently. “I prefer to be my own butcher.”

  He finished, opened the door, and called Turkey Mat. When the big man appeared, red with the climb and with open curiosity in his eyes, Lymond gave him the letter. “This is a message to the Earl of Lennox offering to exchange his wife for the young Lady Culter, whom he holds prisoner. He was known to have her at Annan, but he may be in Carlisle by now. This gives a time and place for the exchange, and also asks for a safe-conduct for our escort. I want someone to deliver it now, and a reply brought back as soon as possible. Can you arrange that?”

  “Easily enough.” Mat opened his mouth to say something else, caught the Master’s eye and thought better of it. He clattered down the stairs while Lymond stayed by the door, holding it open for Lady Lennox to pass through. “Let me speed you to your slumbers,” he said sardonically. “It has been a fascinating evening.”

  Triumph glowed in her face. “You concede me my victory?”

  “Out, alas! Now goeth away my prisoners and all my prey. If you mean do I agree that you’ve saved your offspring at the expense of Lady Culter’s, the answer is yes.”

  For a moment the black eyes lingered. “You would have been wiser to come with me.”

  “I prefer to be unwise and safe.”

  Margaret moved slowly to the door. “And Lady Culter? Are you reserving for her one of those filled positions you were speaking of?”

  “What—Mariotta too, do you think?” asked Lymond. “Good God, is there no peace? Is there no privacy, even in my present squalid estate? Shall I send you each an eye on a thorny stick like St. Triduana to preserve my chastity?”

  Standing close beside him, her face was as hard as his. “How you hate women! They succumb too easily. They give you no contest for power. They don’t understand the ironies and the obscure literary jokes. You make love with your nerve ends and all the time the brain under that yellow hair is scheming, planning, preparing, analyzing.… Worn machinery may rattle on for a time, my dear; but there comes a day when the axle chafes and grinds, the rod breaks and the engine is nothing but scobs and lumber fit for the madhouse.… Go on driving yourself. Drive your men. Conceive more and subtler ways of getting the better of a sniggering world. Take out the spigot of your spleen and let it choke your masters. But when you’re brought to infest my door with your begging, expect nothing; for I should sooner pity Apollyon himself.”

  “For our next meeting I must put my own phrases to fatten,” said Lymond. “In the meantime—good night.”

  There was a flame in the black eyes. “That hurt, did it? Is it possible? Krishna among the milkmaids gored by a cow?”

  He warned, impassively. “Make an end, Margaret. My patience can outlast your dignity.”

  The reminder brought her to herself. The wildness faded from her eyes; the full lips twisted in a grimacing smile. “By all means, let us remember our manners. It would be rude not to take leave of our audience as well.”

  The smile broadened, and before Lymond could move, she turned on her heel and crossed the room. Scott, caught half rising from the floor, blinked in the rush of light as the intervening door was flung open and the Countess of Lennox confronted him, bright contempt on her face.

  “What! Only one!” she said. “How rash of you, Francis!” And, to the boy: “I hope your cramps won’t trouble you. Your master is too verbose.”

  Wretchedly angry and embarrassed, Scott could find nothing to say, and saw that she knew it and was laughing at him. She held out the cloak on her arm—“The stairs are so draughty”—and waited while he clumsily put it around her. Then without thanking him she turned and swept back to the staircase where impassively Lymond waited. He, too, let her pass; and spoke when she was already on the steps. “Go up and lock her in.”

  Scott carried out the order soberly and quickly. He would not have crossed the Master then for all the breeding gold in the nurseries of these dark hills.

  * * *

  Later, it was different. Later, his sensibilities muffled with beer, Will Scott wandered upstairs and tried to get into his room. The outer door to Lymond’s through which he had to pass was locked. He tried the handle twice before he realized this; and ran downstairs. Matthew grinned when he saw him, and hiccoughed lightly. “No entry?”

  Scott shook his head. “God: he’s been in there for hours.… He hasn’t come down?”

  “Always excepting he’s raxed himself scaling the window, no.”

  “Well, I’m damned if I’m going to sleep on the floor because his lordship has gone to bed with the door locked. I’m going up to wake him.”

  Matthew continued placidly to hammer nails into his boots, a process that seemed to disturb his neighbours’ sleep not at all.

  “I shouldna bother, if I were you. You can have my bed down here.”

  Scott stared. “Dammit, why should I take your bed? I’ve got one of my own. What’s up with him now?”

  Bang. Mat took another nail from his strong teeth and set it in the big sole. “Nothing that three days of concentration won’t cure. He likely couldna come down if he wanted to.”

  Scott, leaning over, whipped the remaining nails from between the broken teeth. “Why can’t he come down?”

  A hairy elbow was wagged.

  “For three days?”

  “It’s the usual.”

  “And what,” said Scott, outraged, “if the Queen’s troops come looking for the Countess of Lennox? Good God, we’re sitting on explosive, and he knows it better than anyone. Doesn’t anyone stop him when this happens?”

  “There’s no right reason,” said Turkey, investing in another crop of nails, “why no one should. We just prefer not to, that’s all. There’s nothing to stop you, if you’re keen.”

  “I’m not keen. But I don’t see why he should be allowed to drown his inadequacies at the cost of our safety. Why,” said Scott, who had drunk quite a bit himself, “are you scared to go up?”

  Matthew looked at him indulgently. “Scared? Not the least bit of it. We just like to give a man leave to enjoy himself … God: are ye going?” For Scott had risen and was making for the stair.

  Matthew’s beard split and all the nails fell out of his mouth.

  “Jesus, you’re the brave fellow,” he said. “Here, laddie: take a lend o’ my hammer.”

  * * *

  Through the door, Lymond’s voice was perfectly clear and composed. “Who is it?”

  “Will Scott.” He stopped banging. “I want to come in!”

  “Well, you can’t come in,” said the voice pleasantly. “The door’s locked.”

  “I know that.” Scott, already irritated, began to get angry. “Let me in!”

  There was a silence. “Why?” said the Master.

  “I want to speak to you.”

  “You are speaking to me.”

  “I want to go to bed.”

  “Go to bed downstairs.”

  “I want to go to bed in my own—” Scott, finding the ring of this a little undignified, revised it. “Open the door. Or”—with a rush of spirits to the head—“or I’ll open it for you with a hatchet.”

  This worked. There were no footsteps, but the key suddenly turned and the door opened on a drawn sword. Lymond, slender and gently dishevelled, regarded his lieutenant with a reflective blue stare.

  Scott was suddenly very prudent indeed. Lymond sober was someone distinctly to be reckoned with: Lymond sodden was a child of danger. “I wanted to speak to you,” said the boy. “But not over a sword.”

  “Through it, then.” The silk shirt was crumpled and sweat-stained, the hair tawdry, but the point of the sword was unwavering.

  More than a little hampered by his public downstairs, Scott prevaricated. “I came to sug
gest that you had some food. There’s a lot to plan for. Your brother might already have traced the Countess … and there’s Lady Culter to be looked after when she comes.”

  The sword gave a small, evil flash. “Don’t fuss, my sackless father-lasher: everything is being taken care of. I don’t want a meal. I prefer you to sleep below tonight. I don’t wish to continue this conversation. Good night.”

  Unfortunately, a Buccleuch was incapable of leaving well alone. Scott said truculently, “You can drink yourself into a jelly any other time. This is an emergency.”

  Above the blade were merciless eyes. “Emergency? But what emergency could be outwith your ineffable talents? Or Matthew’s?”

  This exposed the root of the trouble. Scott said sharply, “You know they’ll obey no one but you when there are women about. You can’t mean to expose Lady Culter to that rabble downstairs!”

  “Why not?” asked the obliging, slurred voice. “I’ve every confidence in the rabble downstairs. None of them, for example, has so far tried to teach me my job.”

  Restraint was impossible. “It might be a good thing if they had,” said Scott, and flung himself to one side as the steel drove at his throat. He hit the doorpost, ducked, and with a speed and accuracy that Lymond himself had taught him, pulled the Master’s doublet from a doorside chair and with muffled hand snatched and twisted the attacking blade.

  The sword fell instantly to the floor. Scott slammed the door and picked it up, but slowly; for it came to him that the Master was a good deal less drunk and a good deal more dangerous than he had thought. Lymond, watching him, said, “Look after it. If you let me touch it a second time, I shall kill.… You’re admirably pretty emerging from your pupa robe a chevalier des dames; but I’ve a dislike of interference amounting to morbidity.… And I fight only with women.”

  Scott, with his next remark cut from under his feet, floundered. Then he said baldly, “What are you going to do with your sister-in-law?”

  “Sit on my sacrum and sneer at her,” said Lymond. He walked to the window and turned, supporting himself on the sill. “All right. Strangle your inchoate chivalry and take yourself off. I’m being indecently reasonable, but my control doesn’t last long in this state.”