The Game of Kings

  Jouissance vous donneray

  Mon amy, et vous méneray

  Là où prétend Votre espérance

  Vivante ne vous laisseray

  Encores quand morte seray

  L’esprit en aura souvenance.

  Her eyes were closed with tears: strangers—foreigners—what were they to her? The man was playing still, his eyes resting on the windows as they had done all along. Through the glass she saw that a column of mounted men had come over the moor and up to her lodge gates: like squirrels their faces were pricked at her windows; like Ulysses perhaps their ears were tingling with the music of the sirens. She dried her cheeks and walked forward a little, and Lymond, seeing her reflection in the panes, raised his hands.

  The horseman in the lead was bending down, addressing someone very young or very small. Kate saw the white flash of a face, and one bare arm waving toward the house. She was infinitely more afraid of the immobile man at the keyboard. She rested her hands, as in prayer, on the instrument. “It happened peacefully.”

  “Did it?” said Lymond.

  The entire file had moved forward to the gatehouse. There seemed to be a moment of confusion, then the doors opened and the horsemen came through, rather fast.

  “I believe she meant what she said,” said Kate. “About being contented.”

  She wasn’t sure if he heard her. After a moment he stirred, and lifting a hand to the keys again, picked out some slow chords. “It was the Frogge on the wall, Humble-dum; humble-dum.”

  “You didn’t finish it for her, after all,” said Kate.

  The house was alive with noise. He said nothing and did nothing; and at length even Kate’s resolution gave way. “Who are they? What do they want? Who is it?”

  He had watched the long file of horsemen sweep over the moor: while he loosed his fierce elegies he had watched them sense the music on the wind and point to him like hounds. He had promised Christian music for her minion and outrider, and he kept his promise.

  “What is it?” cried Kate, and Lymond turned with grim finality from the keys. “What is it? The end of the song. Where Dickie our Drake, Mrs. Somerville, takes the Frog.”

  And on the last word, the stark and pitiful peace of his anthems had gone. With a crash of bruised post and split panels and an assault which sent gut and sounding board screaming, the door of the music room opened.

  “—Richard, my brother,” ended Lymond.

  It was Culter, his search over.

  Broad, powerful, shivering within the frame of smashed wood, he was a primitive figure, of pantheistic and dreadful force. Standing still, all his mind and his passions embraced the two silent people by the window, allowing the texture, the luxury, the exquisite savour of the prize to drive him to ecstasy. A little sound, involuntary and wordless, broke from him.

  For a moment, she thought it was going to strike an answer from Lymond. Another person might have screamed at him, or at the intruders; but Kate did neither: she literally held her breath, watching pressures she could only guess at being licked by this vengeful fire. She obeyed an instinct to keep quiet, and by lending Lymond the support of her calmness, to avert the thing that would destroy them all.

  He succeeded. In the teeth of unleashed hatred and on the heels of tragedy he shackled human reaction and, rising smoothly and quickly, addressed his brother as men poured into the room.

  “I know. Aha, Oho, and every other bloody ejaculation. Let’s take it as read. You’re delirious at the idea of manhandling me and can’t wait to start. I in turn may say I find your arrival offensive and your presence blasphemous, thus concluding the exchange of civilities and letting us get out of here. If there’s anything novel or extra you want to add, you can think of it on the way home.”

  The words struck and fell dead to the ground. Richard made not the slightest movement, his grey eyes wetly shining; the fat veins visible on his temple and neck. “He’s in a hurry, isn’t he? It’s a love nest, as I live. Who’s the wench?”

  “The wench is a lady, and mistress of this house,” said Lymond in the same controlled and insulting voice. “Erskine: take him downstairs. Something’s happened.”

  Lord Culter grinned lecherously. “I’m sure it has.”

  “Later, Richard. You can have all the sport you want. Erskine—”

  Tom Erskine said, “Come on, Richard. We’ve got him: there’s no point in wasting time.”

  Lord Culter ignored him. He was wandering around the room, touching things and still smiling. Kate moving quickly before him shut the door to her bedroom and returned to Lymond’s side. “There has been—”

  “Be quiet,” said Richard pleasantly. “And you, little brother. How would five years of this sort of thing appeal to you, Tom? Where’s the bed, I wonder? Behind the door they’re not looking at? With another wench in it, maybe?”

  He had an unlooked-for agility. He reached the bedroom door a second before Lymond and got it open. The Master’s hard shoulder crashed into him and he hurtled back with the shuddering wood, but already half-braced and with a purchase on his brother’s arm which brought Lymond stumbling with him. Then there was a rush to help, and the Master went down under six others.

  They pulled him to his feet as Richard, rising, was confronted by the young woman who had first shut the door. “Get out of this room and listen to me, you uncivilized lout!” said Kate.

  Richard struck her to her knees with the hardened flat of his hand, the first blow he had ever aimed at a woman, and wrenched back the yellow silk curtains.

  Over their tawdrinesses grieved the benign detachment of death.

  At Richard’s blanched rigidity, Lymond fell silent, unstruggling, by the door; Kate rose and found her way obstinately to a chair, one hand to her face; and Tom Erskine, struck by the silence, moved from the doorway. Lymond’s long fingers shot out and halted him.

  “There’s bad news. We tried to tell you. It’s Christian.” Erskine broke from his grasp without a sound.

  Presently, Lord Culter moved from the bedside, leaving Tom where he knelt. Back in the music room where his men waited, silent and uneasy, he picked out one with a glance. “Send for the man—Somerville, is it? I want him here.” Then he turned to his brother, his face as hard as the bones of the earth. “I’d neither foul a cage by capturing you nor offend justice by taking you to Court. Covet the sunshine: you are dying.”

  “No!” exclaimed Kate Somerville from the doorway. She had dropped her hand from her bruised face. “No, you’re wrong. The girl met with her accident while travelling in English company to Hexham. When Mr. Crawford arrived she was already dying. He did all he could for her.”

  “Concluding with jigs and hornpipes over her deathbed. I know. My God, we heard him!”

  “What my wife says is true.” Gideon had arrived in the doorway.

  Richard didn’t turn his head. “Exposing her to public obloquy at Threave—that’s another fact. Cheating her about his identity. Making this blind girl an accomplice traitor, an accomplice murderer, adulterer …”

  Lymond’s voice cut sharply across. “We’ve all had as much as we can stand, Culter. You know perfectly well you can’t kill me here unless I resist capture: it needs one busybody to pipe up in Parliament and you’ll be arrested yourself. Let the fools argue it out in Edinburgh: I’ll go quietly. Come along. Half the English army’s at Hexham. I don’t want to meet Grey, even if you do. And for God’s sake get Erskine out of that room for a start.”

  Lord Culter paid not the slightest attention. He was issuing quiet, concise orders to his men, and to Somerville, who listened tight-lipped. When he had quite finished, he turned back to Lymond.

  “I don’t murder anybody. I’m offering you a proper trial—trial by combat. Observing all the rules. You may even think you have a chance of killing me. If you do, you are free, of course.”

  Gideon’s eyes met his wife’s. He said quietly, “Take him to Edinburgh as he asks. He’s quite right—Grey and Wharton are at Hexham. If a
nyone calls, you haven’t a chance. And,” added Gideon with some bluntness, “you haven’t seen his swordplay.”

  A heretical insolence had found its way back to Lymond. “Why worry, children? I’m not going to fight.”

  “I thought we’d have that,” said Richard calmly. Somerville, after hesitating, left, pushed by two soldiers. “You’d prefer to be skewered like a sheep?”

  “I’d prefer to take a nice, quiet journey to Edinburgh and stand my trial. Think how deliciously prolonged it would all be.”

  The flat grey eyes were unmoved. “You’ll fight,” said Richard without emotion, and jerked his head. Preceded by Lymond and the rest of his men, he left the room.

  Kate saw them go, her brown face stiff with trouble, and then turned back into her bedroom. For a moment she watched the kneeling man, and then bending over him, touched his shoulder. “Mr. Erskine. Please come away.”

  For a moment nothing happened. Then he raised a face curiously blurred, as if the subcutaneous fat had melted and recongealed in his grief. He said thickly, “It’s all right.… How did it happen?”

  She pulled a chair toward him and he sat, while she told her story. At the end there was a pause, and then he said with difficulty, “I wondered … I couldn’t quite understand why she did it.”

  Kate said with care, “She would help anybody, I think: wasn’t that so? And then—you’ve all condemned him pretty thoroughly as a blackguard, haven’t you?”

  “What else is he?”

  “Well,” said Kate. “I’m not one of the simple kind who spend a jolly time romping on Olympus with the object of becoming a little, leering star at the end. I never met the girl before today: I don’t know what their past relations have been. But I can say that he spoke of your Lady Christian with nothing but respect. By her desire I was with them both till she died, and I should be ashamed to think of guilt or offence in anything they said. And more than that. It was you I was to tell of her regrets, and to you I was to give her love.”

  He got up slowly, a man not incapable of a moment of insight. But he said only, “Thank you. I’m glad you were with her,” and walked out, without looking back.

  Kate smoothed the crumpled sheets with gentle fingers, and spoke aloud. “He was very nearly good enough for you, that one,” she said; and drawing the yellow curtains, shut out the sun.

  * * *

  Since he was quite a young man, Gideon Somerville had grown used to the role of bystander. Other men—less intelligent, shallower men—plunged into a tidal race of action, conflict, argument and sinewy bravado. But within Gideon something shrank from pressing his intangible opinions, his doubt-ridden intellect and humane heart on the destinies of others as helpless as himself. He knew the ache of indecision too well.

  Today, brought to disturbing acquaintance with new minds, he weighed them up, watching with his clear eyes, and tacitly stepped aside. There was no tangle here that he or any stranger could undo. Flaw Valleys was no prison. His staff could break out if he incited them: he could send a man to Hexham for help if he tried; but he had no wish to try. He asked quietly that his wife shouldn’t be asked to be present; he made sure that Philippa wasn’t left unwatched or frightened; and he brought to Lord Culter a pair of matched rapiers and two daggers.

  As the weapons arrived, Tom Erskine came into the hall and took charge.

  The fact that he did so sobered them all. In a year he had become used to command: his father, after all, was within the most intimate circle of the Court; his grandfather was Archibald, second Duke of Argyll; his grandmother and his sister had borne sons to two kings. He came now into the room, collected everyone’s attention and said quietly, “Richard: this is a warning. This man is a prisoner of the Crown and has to answer to the Crown for his crimes. To do what you mean to do demands strong cause. Do you have it?”

  “You ask me that? Yes. Of course I have.”

  “To kill this man in a private house for a private quarrel in foreign territory may lead you to be charged with his murder. Could you refute that?”

  “Yes,” said Richard. “As you very well know. At this moment he’s carrying papers that’d mean the end of us as a nation and very likely the death of the Queen if they reached Hexham.”

  Lymond, who had been staring out of one of the tall windows and drumming with his finger tips on the shutter, came to life and spun around. “That isn’t true!”

  Erskine kicked something at his feet. “Is that your baggage roll?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this, which was in it, is your letter?”

  Without speaking, Lymond accepted the papers Erskine held out—papers which, as Erskine and Culter both knew, gave in detail the plans for the Queen’s escape to France.

  He took a long time over the pages, his eyes staying a moment, unseeing at the foot; then he returned them. “Well?” said Erskine.

  “The man with me: Acheson. Have you questioned him about these?” asked Lymond. “He’s locked up belowstairs.”

  “Yes,” said Erskine. “We’ve seen him. He was carrying two letters from George Douglas about the safety of his sons. That’s all he’s got, and that’s all he knows about.”

  “I see,” said Lymond slowly. “The obvious answer, of course. The classic escape from this kind of situation, as you know, is for each party to blame the other. In which case, I assume for safety’s sake that you’ll take him back home with you? I should strongly advise you not to let him out of your sight.”

  “He put the papers in your baggage?” said Richard helpfully.

  “Something like that. But let’s put it at its lowest. He knows the contents of the papers. So for God’s sake don’t admit him to your social circle just because you’re happy he’s given you a hold over me.”

  “And has he?” asked Erskine—and misinterpreting the ensuing pause added, “Well?”

  “Well enough for everybody’s purpose,” said Lymond without passion. “One crime more or less isn’t going to deter Richard now.”

  It was treated as an admission; there was a murmur of abuse and contempt, irresistibly, and someone spat. Erskine turned his back on the younger man and addressed Richard again. “That being so, you have a public reason for bringing this man to trial here and now. You also have private reasons?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are they?”

  Richard was silent, his jaw doggedly set.

  “State them,” said Erskine sharply. “If this is to be trial by combat, the defendant has a right to hear your complaint.”

  Lord Culter said, speaking very fast in a low voice, “He has degraded our family name … committed theft and arson and attacked a guest beneath my roof. He has tried to take my life repeatedly.”

  Lymond made a sudden movement, apparently involuntarily, and the gesture restored Richard’s voice. He said quite clearly, “He has dishonoured my wife and killed my only son.”

  Nobody spoke. Between man and man the sunlight hesitated, sparkling, and sank to the floor with the languishing dust. Gideon bit his lip. “What have you to reply?” asked Erskine.

  Lymond’s voice was undramatic and his face unreadable. “Your choice is between executing me here or in Edinburgh. I will not fight.”

  Erskine had begun to say, “Do you admit, then …” when Richard interrupted. “Wait a moment. Let us all have it clear. If one of us fails to fight, it means he admits he has no honour to defend?”

  “That is the usual interpretation.”

  “In other words, that he admits the truth of the charges against him. Do you freely admit to treason, brother? To murder and rape? Fratricide as near as may be?”

  “I admit none of it.”

  “Yet you won’t fight. You admit your—connection with my wife?”

  “No!”

  “And yet you won’t fight. You admit that you deceived that girl upstairs into becoming your blind and complaisant mistress, and then killed her when you tired of it?”

  Erskine’s voice clashed
harshly with Lymond’s. The Master’s prevailed through sheer bite. “You uncivilized maniac: that’s a damnable lever to use.”

  “If you won’t defend your story, we must assume it’s true.”

  “You can assume,” said Lymond, stirred at last into straight speaking, “that I’m trying to prevent you from getting your bloody throat cut; that’s all.”

  “You imagine,” said Richard, his voice rocketing between prayerful hope and excitement, “that you could fight me and survive?”

  “I could see you drop dead this minute from paralysis of the brain cells and burst into uninhibited applause. I had nothing to do with Christian Stewart’s death, nor did I touch her when she was alive. I’ll defend that, damn you, against anybody. Set up your tin-foil trial and try and prove otherwise if you can.”

  Richard, flexing the fingers of his right hand, raised his eyebrows at Tom Erskine. “You heard? He’s going to fight,” he said gently.

  Set below the music room, the hall at Flaw Valleys was lit by the same pattern of tall windows along one of its long sides; on the other, double doors at its centre made the only entrance. The shining wood floor had been cleared of furniture and the spectators stood behind rope at either end: Gideon to the right, with six of his own men, and Erskine and Culter’s men to the left. Within the arena, Lymond had resumed his stance by one of the window seats. Both Culter and Tom Erskine were missing.

  Conversation was low. Gideon wondered what his wife was doing. He thought of the music he had heard that afternoon, and of his conversations with Lymond, and of something Lymond had said to Kate. “If it’s going to happen, it won’t happen here.” But how much, indeed, could flesh and blood stand?

  A table was put in the centre of the room. On it, Gideon could see the four weapons, four slots of blue; and beside them a heavy book: a volume of the Four Gospels impressed with tarnished gold leaf, which had belonged to Kate’s mother. Culter came in and stood by it; then Erskine, and the doors were shut.

  Erskine stood just in front of the carved oak. He was still without colour, but composed and firmly in authority. He looked at his audience to the right and left extremities of the room, to Lymond by the window and to Richard in front of him and said quietly, “You know the purpose of this gathering. We are about to hold trial by combat between these two men here before you, and I take to myself the authority to regulate and to take oath as if this were done in Scotland, in champ clos. Will you both abide by that?” He waited for their assent, and then in a grave, clear voice began to administer the oath.