By the afternoon, some little sharpnesses and corners began to show through. The conversation took an unexpected turn toward Christian’s fiancé.
“So different in appearance, of course: poor Tom; I shan’t disillusion you. After all, you are affianced to him,” said Lady Lennox. “Although you must have a soft spot for our naughty friend to do what you did for him at Haddington.”
“I like to think,” said Christian steadily, “that I’d do as much for anyone in trouble.”
Margaret laughed. “What an extraordinary person you are! To spend days by the bedside of a dying man, just to ask his address!”
Christian was silent.
“Or was it just his address?” asked Lady Lennox, and the black eyes were sparkling. “Sym didn’t think so, last night. I like your young bodyguard, my dear; but he hasn’t a strong head, has he?”
“Sym!” said Christian sharply. “Damn it … !”
The boy’s voice wailed in her ear. “I was drunk. I didna know what I was saying!”
“He was certainly drunk,” said Margaret’s cool voice.
Christian said again, “Sym—” and checked herself. He was gabbling. “I couldna help it. Ye ken I canna hud up under beer.…”
She made an effort. “It doesn’t matter. Lady Lennox: I depend on Sym for a great many things. There’s nothing to stop you from associating with my servants if you want to, but I’d prefer not to have the younger ones reduced to a state of crapulence for your purposes.”
Irresistible but impolitic. Margaret said blandly, “Am I worrying you? I’m sorry. But there’s nothing wrong in listening to a dying man’s confession; or even in getting it recorded and signed by a priest and thereafter hiding it—where have you hidden it, I wonder? Never mind. There’ll be plenty of time to look, at Hexham.”
There was a little silence. Then the blind girl said slowly, “You’re quite safe, you know. Harvey confessed to a lot of things, but they had nothing to do with me. If he signed anything, it’s probably on its way to his relatives in the south. Why on earth should I want it? If you don’t believe me, I’m quite willing to be searched.”
“That’s very sensible of you,” said Margaret Douglas cheerfully. “Because I don’t believe you, and although I’m sure you’ve been most ingenious, I was proposing to search you very thoroughly indeed.”
Sym, coming out of a cloud of misery, suddenly took her up. “Search her! Just try and touch her, ye bitch! Try and touch either of us!”
“You misunderstand me,” said Lady Lennox. “I wouldn’t soil my fingers. On you or your complaisant little mistress.”
Sym cried out. “What have I done? She means ye harm: what have I done? I didna mean—it was just the drink—and she asked me—”
“Never mind, Sym,” said Christian. “I’m afraid it was a mistake. She’s no friend of ours—or of our friends.”
She could hear him swallow. He said in a low voice, “The Master of Culter? She wants to hurt you and the Master of Culter?”
“Yes.”
“Then she willna!” said Sym, and hurled himself at Christian’s horse.
The impact of his body jarred her forward, breathless. She felt him settle behind her, the brush of the reins as he gathered them tight; the firm clasp of his arm around her waist. The horse drew himself in, quivered, and answering Sym’s heels swerved, spun, and drove like an arrow through the cavalcade.
Burst asunder, rearing, scattered, speechless, they looked after the flying horse; then, streaming up from the green Tyneside meadows, scrambling and pecking and hullooing over the little hills, they followed in full cry.
Christian had no breath. Crushed in the boy’s grip, thought was driven from her by the speed of the animal; her hair buffeted and flew about her face, and her skirts tugged and twisted. The clasp at her waist shifted, and she managed a gasp. “Sym, you fool, go back! We’ll be overtaken and it’ll be—all the worse for us both.”
For answer Sym drove his spurs again. “I started the trouble, and I’ll get you out of it, if it’s only to find a place for those papers … could ye get them ready, now?”
She couldn’t. Samuel Harvey’s statement—the paper she had denied to Margaret Douglas—was sewn very thoroughly in her saddlecloth. Nor were they likely, doubly burdened, to make enough ground to retrieve and hide it unseen. She said forcibly, “Simon: stop this horse and turn around. It’s no good!”
He didn’t answer her. Instead, above the thud and jangle and creak of the galloping horse there came an odd, rustling noise. It stopped suddenly with a bump, and Sym gave a little grunt. The arms about her slackened and the pressure at her back shifted. Christian cried once, “Simon!” and then with a clatter the whole body behind her shook itself loose and, rolling over the gelding’s haunches, thudded on the heather.
The horse, already overexcited, entered a glory of self-induced fright and, the reins swaying against its knees, took the bit between its teeth.
The lifeless weight had nearly pulled the girl off too. But, barely realizing what had happened, Christian closed her knees instinctively and gripped the uncut mane with one hand, groping for the fallen reins. They eluded her: the horse was galloping wildly, shoulders and haunches lurching on the uneven ground; scrambling up slopes and down them, reaching higher and higher ground. Bushes clawed at her and once, a whipping branch stung her cheek.
She was holding now with both hands deep in the coarse hair. What kind of country? Not the homely paths between Boghall and Culter, or Stirling, or Dumbarton, or the High Street in Edinburgh with Simon, or Tom, or Jenny Fleming chatting placidly, describing the way to her.
A foreign land. Enemy country, where the earth existed to foster her ill-wishers, and trees to shelter them, and bushes to hide them. She who already carried in her eyes her own enemy.
Pursuit sounded now far distant. Ahead, the soft air of her passing pressed freely against her and the sound of birdsong came from great distances, as if spread sparkling through the warm air: a singing dust. Singing sand.… Would she ever visit the islands again? Or be with the children? Or Sybilla. Or Wicked Wat. Or the man for whom she was now flying blind, on an uncontrolled horse through the small hills of Redesdale?
Behind, swooning on the air, rose a great shout. It rolled, remote and hollow, over the moor, and sank whispering among the flags.
Her pursuers saw, as she did not, the stalking, gem-cut line of the Wall ahead; the clustering gorse bushes and the debris of fifteen centuries which hid the brink of its twenty-foot ditch. Long before that warning cry faded, Christian’s horse had taken those deceptive bushes in its stride; had hurtled into the fossa beyond, trundling, rolling and threshing its broken limbs in agony as the girl, a flash of white arms and dusty skirts and dark red hair, tumbled with him.
Margaret Douglas stood and watched Gideon’s gentle, bloody hands lift Christian Stewart, the red hair drifting in his face. Then Lady Lennox stooped in turn by the dead horse and with nimble fingers and a sharp knife ripped open first the girl’s pack, and then the trappings.
The cloth gave up its secret immediately. She pulled out a small bundle of papers, separated them, glanced on both sides, and made a curious sound, so close to a laugh that Gideon turned sharply on her. She was refolding the same papers and stuffing them back into the lining where they had been hidden. She did it quite carefully and then stood up, dusting her hands.
One of Gideon’s own men had already helped him lift the quiet figure into the saddle in front of him: there was hardly any pulse. Margaret looked curiously at the unconscious face. “Is there a house nearby where you can take her?”
Kate wouldn’t have recognized the look in Gideon’s eyes. He said levelly, “My home isn’t far away. She may as well die among friends.”
The black eyes raged at him: Margaret also had had a shock. “It’s hardly my fault if my bowman tries to stop a prisoner from escaping. That’s what he’s paid for.” She kicked the saddle and its furniture. “You’d better take that,
too. Her family might want it.”
“Is that all you have to say?” said Gideon.
“She was blind. It’s too great a handicap. She’s better out of it,” said Margaret in a staccato voice, and mounted her horse.
“Was that her sin?” said Gideon, watching the cavalcade move off. “I had come to fancy it might be something quite different.”
3. The Last Move
When Lymond set foot for the third time in Flaw Valleys, Gideon went downstairs to greet him slowly, and found his upturned face abounding with an electric vigour which quite overlaid the marks of his journey.
“I’m sorry,” he remarked ebulliently when his host was halfway down. “Adhesive as St. Anthony’s pig. Qu’on lui ferme la porte au nez, il reviendra par les fenêtres. Thank you for your messages: your name will fly tetragrammaton round the world, and this fair blind Fortune will be made immortal. I’ve asked your henchmen to lock up an indignant gentleman who was leading me to Lord Grey and here I am. Where is she? How can we free her?—and what, my God what, did she learn from Samuel Harvey?”
It was worse than Somerville expected: it was frankly damnable. After just too long a space, as Lymond’s face already began to alter, Gideon said bluntly, “She’s freed herself. There’s nothing to do. I wish to God you’d never got my message.” And added, regaining proper hold of his tongue, “There’s been an accident.”
As he expected, Lymond took the news undemonstratively, in answer to his training; however much the flesh might shrink and melt, the sarcophagus was decently void of temperament. “Where is she?”
“Kate is with her upstairs. She hasn’t much time. I’ll take you to her.”
“Thank you.” An automatic reply, and an automatic climbing of the stairs. As they went, Gideon told his story, shooting curious side glances at the younger man. The blond face was lightly sheened with perspiration, but it was a warm day; there was no tremor of sentiment in it.
The music room was filled with sunlight and the smells of warmed wood and fruity earth from Kate’s pot plants. They passed the lute and rebec and the fiddle and harpsichord sealed in silent jubilee, and crossed to the inner room.
Kate had also heard the story, attacking the situation with her mind and squashing emotion and surmise with a prompt if temporary thumb.
She did what was necessary out of the bounty which suffering naturally commanded, and out of a sharp reaction to the courage of the injured girl. Conjecture firmly dismissed, she sat down beside her own bed, when every service of comfort had been performed, and took quiet and efficient note of the quiet and efficient messages enumerated from the pillows.
Christian’s mind was perfectly clear. Her chief anguish, clearly, was the death of the boy Simon. Beyond that she wasted no time on regrets or self-pity, except perhaps when she had said all that was vital to say, and after lying silent for a moment observed: “You know, life has so many ridiculous hazards when one is blind—and yet I never expected somehow to die so far from home, without anyone of my own.” She smiled quite successfully and added, “I don’t suppose it matters. We’re all pretty solitary anyhow, aren’t we? Is someone else coming in?”
Kate hadn’t heard Lymond enter. Across the bed she saw him tweak a strand of dark red hair gently between finger and thumb, and then slip into a chair beside the pillow. “Don’t be so superior. Someone of your own is here,” he said.
The girl’s control was weaker than his. Her brow creased and tears sprang into her opened eyes. She shut them and said shakily, “It’s witchcraft. You are about to babble like magpies and herring gulls.”
“But not about the ruin of charity: in Flaw Valleys it multiplies like rhubarb.… What in God’s name must you think of me after all the drivel I had to talk at Threave?”
There was an undeniable smile on the white face. “That you expected to be hanged. And didn’t want me to be pointed out solely as the girl with a strong attachment for her dependents. It was all right. I understood.”
“It wasn’t all right,” said Lymond flatly. “It’s been all of a piece. I’ve been a joyless jeweller up to the last, exquisite drop from the crucible.”
“There aren’t any dregs in my cup,” said Christian. “You’re the only person who could make me swallow them. I’d do what I did over again. I never cared for old age, or the idea of outliving my friends and being a chattel to my relatives. I mourned a little because nobody would ever point to a page of history and say, ‘The stream turned there to the right, or to the left, because of Christian Stewart.’ You could make that come true for me, if you think you owe me anything. And you could promise me not to retreat to a wine barrel and reduce what we’ve both done to a few artificial bubbles of regrets and self-blame. You prophesied yourself that I should have all I wanted from life, did you not? And I think I have,” she said.
He answered her like the lash of a whip. “There seems no doubt I’ve been reserved for great things—
“Io son fatta da Dio, sua merce, tale …
I am the chosen of God. He will see
That your suffering does me no harm
That the flames of this fire never touch me.”
The impact of the words was almost physical. Kate flinched and the girl in the bed cried out, “No!”
He broke off of his own accord. “No,” he agreed after a moment. “God knows why you think it’s worth it, but I wouldn’t have the puny effrontery to waste what you’ve done. When I think of my brilliant pose of anonymity …”
A smile twitched her lips again. “I knew you’d be much too high-minded to come back if you suspected I knew. That’s why I stopped you at Inchmahome.”
Lymond’s face was as white as the girl he was talking to, but his voice hardly varied.
“I am grovelling. I also owe you one or two stinging innuendoes for those letters. If Agnes Herries ever stumbles on a glossa interlinearis there will be civil war.”
“Erskine made her burn them.… Is that your hand? It’s colder than mine. I told you not to worry.”
Christian blinked suddenly and roused herself. “My mind’s wandering. Listen: I have something for you. It’s sewn in my saddlecloth. Mr. Somerville will show you. Hurry!” Her face, framed in the strewn hair, was as matronly as a nurse commanding a treat for a child.
For the first time, Lymond’s eyes met Kate’s. He rose slowly and walked to the door. Kate heard her husband speak in the corridor, and then both men’s footsteps receding. After no more than a few minutes, Lymond returned.
This time, his eyes never left the girl in the bed. Sitting beside her, he raised her hand and put under it a crumpled fold of small papers bloodstained—as Kate saw—in one corner.
Christian’s face was alight. “You’ve read them? They’re all there?”
“I’ve read them. But how … ?” Lymond was saying in a kind of lunatic daze. “How the devil—how the devil could you do it? To have it in black and white at the eleventh hour … Did you threaten him? Cut off his ears and souse them in vinegar? Propose to confine him in a locked room with Lord Grey for six months?”
The girl gave the ghost of a laugh. “It was on his conscience. He dictated the whole story and signed it. The priest was there too—that’s the second signature. Is it what you’d hoped?”
There was the fraction of a pause. Then Lymond picked up Christian’s hand and carried it to his lips, holding it afterward folded in both his own. “More than I ever dreamed of,” he said—and like the serpent she had once called him, snarled voicelessly into Kate’s eyes as she looked up, horror-struck, from what the girl’s lifted hand had left revealed.
For the sheets of creased paper which Christian had brought with such pains from Haddington, which Margaret had found not worth her attention, and which Lymond had at last received, were quite blank.
Kate gave nothing away. Christian, it appeared, wanted her company. Since she couldn’t go, she was forced to sit and watch, listening to the murmur of their voices. They were talking of things and
people Kate knew nothing about, but she knew contentment when she saw it, and didn’t interrupt even when the girl’s voice began to lapse and the air to falter at last in her lungs.
Christian did what was necessary herself, turning her head painfully toward Kate. “I was never much good at waiting,” she said. “It’s a sign of immaturity, or something. I wonder if maybe music would be soothing? If someone would play … Not you,” she added quickly, as Kate rose. “If you don’t mind. It’s comforting to have you sitting so close.”
“Of course I’ll stay,” said Kate, her mind racing. “Would you like Mr. Crawford to play for you? The music room is only through a door by your bed.”
She had, obviously, guessed right. The smile this time was one of relief. “He still has to finish a song he played for me once. Do you remember?”
“The unfortunate frog. Of course,” said Lymond, straightening. Kate met his eyes and nodded: she thought he looked almost at the end of his endurance, but he could be relied on to make no mistakes. He bent quickly and taking both Christian’s hands, kissed her on the brow. “The frog was a pretty poor creature. This time you shall have music to sound in a high tower—”
“—So merrily that it was a joy for to hear, and no man should see the craft thereof.… You give me such pleasure,” said Christian.
A moment later the music began, and Kate shrank beneath the onslaught of its message: the fury of hope and joy that towered in the notes, outburning the sunlight and outpouring the volumes of the sea. All that was bold and noble and happy in created sound burst from the metempirical quills, and it was a blasphemy not to rejoice.
Christian died in its midst, purposeful and successful; the last struggle unseen by anyone but Kate, and laying no bridle on the living. Kate drew the bright curtains around the bed.