The Game of Kings

  * * *

  Long after, Richard himself stood in the doorway, gazing out at the quiet night. Then, moving noiselessly, he collected the wood he needed and stacked it inside.

  It was late. The fire, rebuilt under the overhung ledges, glimmered on his brother’s face: the artless, sleeping face of his childhood.

  But Lymond was now in the cold sleep close to death. Experienced soldier and countryman, Lord Culter had faced the spilled blood, the spoiled muscle, the split bone with no qualms; and had washed, cleaned and bandaged with steady hands, missing nothing: the scarred hands, the old whippings; the last degradation of the brand.

  There was no more he could do now. The door cloth secure, he stretched at length by the fire, his saddle for pillow, and waited side by side with the silenced tongue which had mocked him so long. The cushats had long since returned sidling to their roosts. As stillness fell, they settled too, with frilled feathers and the rasp of dry feet. Then it was quiet, and the only sound in all the warm June night was Lymond’s faint, gasping breath.

  Through the darkest hours of the short night Richard slept, wrenched by sheer exhaustion from his vigil; and woke stupid, forgetting.

  Then his bemused eyes picked out the pale, dawn-lit arches of the lantern above him and the wintry skeleton of the potence, and the dark, enclosing walls with their hundred upon hundred of empty sockets, black and salaciously flickering with the dying glimmer of the fire. And the wide, fathomless eyes of his brother, resting on him.

  In that crude second, neither spoke. Culter rose, and stooping to the fire, rebuilt it with unhurried care. In its spreading light, pale hair gleamed beside him, and whitened cheekbones and white lips, all tinged to health by the flames. Roseate and sardonic in extremis, Lymond spoke with the least possible expense of sound.

  “You still snore like a frog. Did Tom Erskine get me out?”

  Richard was building a cathedral of boughs. “Who else? He brought you here and then took his men home. We’re just outside Hexham.”

  There was a difficult pause. Then Lymond said clearly, “If you’re waiting to preach in articulo mortis, don’t put it off for my sake.”

  The oblique inquiry gave Richard the metal he needed. He said with a grim pleasure, “I don’t mind waiting.”

  Something—hardly laughter―glimmered in the heavy eyes. “Neither do I. But the fenestration seems fairly extensive.”

  Richard had hung a can of water over the new fire, and his fresh bandages were waiting. “Not if you have a good surgeon.”

  The careful voice was resigned. “Two chapters of Anatomía Porci and they think they’re Avicenna. Don’t trouble. No wriggling and no recantations from this quarter.”

  “You’re surprised?” Richard tested the water with a broad finger.

  “What did you expect? That I’d curse you, kill you and drop you in the Billy Mire?”

  “Yes. You tell me why not: I can’t help you. Overtures of friendship from me would sound damned silly at this point … I can’t drink any more.”

  Richard took away the flask. “You said no recantations.”

  “That doesn’t rule out the plain, freestanding explanation.”

  “Make it later,” said Richard equably, unwinding bits of torn sheet. “You’ll have plenty of time.” He knelt, and the incalculable eyes dropped.

  It was not a pretty business: a grim, forbidding task even had there been proper gear and the skilled treatment of the doctor he was not. The bowls of water became scarlet and the makeshift wads reeked.…

  Explanations. What explained the killing of one’s son? The seduction of one’s wife? And these were the hands that Mariotta knew better than he did: this the mouth; this the marked body.…

  Lymond took too long to recover when the dressing was done. But in the end his eyes opened, and after a time he spoke. “All right. I love sadism too,” he said. “But try that too often, Master Haly Abbas Cat, and you won’t have a mouse left to play with.… Your move.”

  Richard was careful. “Not yet,” he said. “When I make it, I want your undivided attention. All you have to do is get well.”

  * * *

  That day Lord Culter spent some time looking for a fresh harbour for his patient: one that would give some shelter, and be sufficiently remote from both houses and paths.

  Late in the afternoon, on his last sally, his arms full of moss for dressings, he found the ideal spot. A small stream running through sandstone had created a toy gorge within which for perhaps twenty yards the bottom widened on each side of the water into a secluded and grassy meadow. There was room there, and in other and more distant bays, to graze his horse, and better still, a place where the rocky sides of the banks steeply overhung and enclosed the grass, forming a shallow cave within. There he could safely light fires, and there too they would be dry in bad weather.

  He explored it thoroughly, and it was later than it should have been when he returned.

  Lymond watched him pack with bright eyes. “Hullo! Are we setting up house elsewhere? Far away?”

  “A short ride. I’ll strap you to Bryony.”

  There was a pause. Then, detached, the Master observed, “Richard. You can’t seriously picture me pursuing a healthy career as a sieve. Time isn’t on your side either. Stop toying with the prey and let’s get this thing over with. Say what you have to say to me.”

  “We didn’t,” observed Richard, “take long to get to the wriggling.”

  “No. I’m only trying to find a knee-high viewpoint that’ll interest you. Before one of us bores the other to death I have to talk to you about Mariotta.”

  Lord Culter straightened, the two packs under his arms. “Not to me.

  “To you, here and now. After which you can make your own conversation in whatever damned draughty hole you’ve picked for yourself, and put your own bloody feet over your bottom like the Romans when it rains. Mariotta—”

  “You’re not dying,” said Richard. “Keep your pitiful confessions for someone else.”

  “Whose guts are they?” demanded Lymond, offended. His hair was dark with sweat and his fingers cramped, resisting the oncoming tides. “I’m going to tell you what happened, brother mine. You’ll have to execute me, leave me, or listen to me.”

  “Or remove your tongue.”

  “Happy are the cicadas’ fives. Go ahead. But then you’ll never know the truth.”

  “I know all I need to know.”

  “What do you know? How to match, but not how to marry. How to choose, but not how to husband. Grand Amour should be received royally, Richard, as a harsh and noble art. You idiot.… You nearly lost her. But not to me.”

  The sword was in Culter’s hand. The thoughtful eyes of his brother and even the shadowed walls of the dovecote disappeared. With the last rags of self-possession, Richard drove himself out of the door.

  And bathe my son in morning milk, said the doves. And other voices, too, hammered in his ears. Here, reeking and blubbering over the green fields, were the resurrected deaths he had died because of Lymond. “You haven’t packed the ladies off to Stirling, have you?”—An arrow, tearing ignominiously into one’s shoulder, before a shouting crowd—a drunken glover and a frozen ride—the prison at Dumbarton and the walk across the ballroom floor—the failure at Heriot; the trickery with Scott; and monstrously, Mariotta, Mariotta, Mariotta, blazing with jewels.

  “Believe, if you like, that the child is Lymond’s.” … “He is with Mariotta now.” … “It would have been a boy.”

  The grass at his feet, the blue sky, the short purple shadows of the trees, came into focus again. He unbuckled his dagger, and laying it together with his sword within the doorway, walked back and seated himself on the edge of the stone table. “Go on. We have five minutes to spare. Discourse on the seductive arts. I want to quote you to Mariotta.”

  “I,” said Lymond plaintively, “am the octogenarian who planted. In my marrows are my monument; and your wife, thank God, is no marrow of mine. I was gallan
t at Midculter, God save me, through being most damnably drunk: but never again.”

  “You didn’t approach her, or she you?”

  “My dear ass, I ran like a corncrake. You can ask leading questions till you’re cross-eyed as Strabo: that’s what happened. Unfortunately, becoming tired of home life, she ran too; and got herself taken by the Englisn. I had her redeemed, like a fool, and my poor morons brought her to me when she fell ill on the road instead of running like hell when at least she’d have arrived at Midculter unsullied, if dead.”

  Richard said quietly, “I hope she thanked you for the trinkets, since she had the chance.”

  “She did. It was a little embarrassing,” said Lymond. “Because I didn’t send them.”

  “Oh. You haven’t any idea who did, I suppose? Buccleuch, for example?”

  He bent suddenly to enclose Lymond’s wrist, his eyes intent, as the Master’s weakened voice said, “I don’t see why I should spoil another man’s fun.… Although he must have been damned annoyed to find me getting the credit for it all.… If you’re curious, you could try asking Mother.”

  Richard laid down the scarred hand. “I don’t mean to exact retribution from all my wife’s lovers. Just those actually related to me. Although you’ll be glad to hear that Sybilla is still your infatuated devotee.”

  His brother’s gaze was unexpectedly severe, with a marked line between the brows. He said, “But Mariotta is not. She made it quite clear before she left that she thought my existence unnecessary, and that the third baron was her only patron. What you did when she got back God knows, but it didn’t sound very intelligent in the fourth-hand version I got, and if she agrees in the end to come back to you it’ll be a miracle of constant vapidity over assiduous obstinacy.…” Prone on the spread rug, he studied Richard’s expression of harsh amusement. “Not very convincing?”

  “No.”

  “No, I suppose not. I could enact you Phoenissae-like tragedies and you’d believe them, but the truth, as I once said to someone—”

  “What?”

  “Is a queer thing to meddle with,” said Lymond rapidly. “Must we go? Accord me a niche. I don’t mind being calx in a columbarium: the doves will feed me and I shall rise and found Nineveh.… Hic turtur gemit, drowning the groans of the Britons.… Must we go? An elephant’s head riding on a rat—the symbol of prudence, Richard. Are you listening?”

  Richard was already kneeling, hands gripped as if physical force could hammer back the shutters closing on life and consciousness. “You aren’t going to die. Not until I’m ready for you.”

  “Don’t be silly, Richard,” said Lymond, coming from a great distance. For a moment his quick mind cleared; he squinted at the darkening cupola with clouded eyes, and then closed them with a wisp of a grin. “God, I forgot. You don’t like glovers.”

  He fought for Lymond’s life for two days: thorough, methodical, intelligent; mending with dedicated skill like a man cleaning and mending an engine of war. He longed for his brother, desperately ill as he was, to know what was being done for him, and to savour this devoted nursing at his hands.

  On the second night in their new home, sitting in the mellow darkness with the stream bubbling companionably beside him and the odours of warm, fresh turf and flowers and quenched mosses breathing into the withered air, he thought of that coming moment with pleasure.

  Lymond was steadier; the pulse a fraction stronger; the sound of his breathing more settled. Assume he survived. Assume a convalescence of weeks—two or three, perhaps, before they could move north …

  This was a man who prized his self-control. This was the contaminating mind whose presence in daily life was insupportable. Three weeks—or even two—should be enough.

  * * *

  “Is this fraternall charity

  Or furious folie, what say”

  Since Lymond was alone, the question was pointlessly rhetorical. After a moment he removed a grave blue stare from the clouds and closed his eyes again.

  Two days of fever: two of infantile helplessness. The stream, a strip of grass, the rug, the makeshift pillow, and immobility under the hot sun. He stirred in a difficult, indistinct way, the light beating on his closed lids, and then lay painfully silent.

  A pebble dropped.

  Richard, approaching downstream with a bouquet of fish, watched the effect of it, smiling. Lymond, instantly awake, gave no answering smile as his brother strolled up to him.

  Richard’s skin, amenable to the sun, was smooth and brown, and his hair bleached from umber to something near straw colour where it stood ruffled around his head. After five days of foraging, neither his shirt nor his hose were particularly respectable: he wore light shoes from his baggage which were already much the worse for wear, and his brother was wearing his only spare shirt.

  These sartorial deficiencies were clearly not weighing on him. He cast down the fish, bestowed an effervescent twinkle on the Master and said, “Comfortable?”

  “Acutely so.”

  “You don’t look very comfortable,” said Richard, arrested. “How odd of me. More delightful little fish. Where are you hatching them?”

  There was an uncomfortable pause. “I’m doing my best,” said Richard gently. “I haven’t your touch for killing birds.” He walked around, and grasping the edges of his brother’s makeshift pallet, pulled it two or three yards into the shade. “Has Patey Liddell ever been publicly whipped before?”

  The change brought such physical relief that Lymond closed his eyes. He opened them again and said, “He only does what he’s told. I thought you’d enjoy a trip to Perth. Good for the olefactory senses.”

  Culter shook his head over the fish. “Crawfordmuir gold and Liddell: how dull of us not to connect the two.”

  “How dull of some of you. What a delicious smell. You nurse; you cook. Do you sew?”

  “I reap. Who was the exception? Mother?”

  “And getting quicker, too,” said Lymond’s light voice admiringly. “The country must miss you on the frequent occasions when you are absent. How long were you in prison for?”

  Richard rubbed the palm of his hand on his seat, and then held it up, square, clean and unmarked, for Lymond to see. “I was lucky. No one could tell, could they?”

  “The point is registered. Pannage, my dear brother. You’re a butterfly as much as I am. You failed Arran, you defaulted at Dumbarton, you walked out on your wife and mother, you engaged Janet Beaton in a charming little conspiracy behind her husband’s back and displayed a remarkable incapacity on the rare occasions when you did set foot on a battlefield. If you contrived to nip the enthusiasms of young Harry a bit quicker at Durisdeer, to mention only one, you might have had Lords Wharton and Lennox behind bars for the asking.”

  “And stopped your income?” asked Richard, laying the cleaned fish neatly on his baking stone. “Not when you must have needed every penny to cajole your rabble of thieves into obedience. Or does one simply glut them with women and drugs?”

  “One uses force of character. Wo worth your tedyus synne of lechery. That’s a damned silly way to bake fish.”

  “It works. You know,” said Richard, rubbing his fingers on a handful of grass, “considering who you are, you choose intriguing subjects for invective. Are you still quite comfortable?”

  “In this line of country,” said Lymond, “I have a phenomenal staying power. Probe on, if you want to.”

  “Thank you. I thought an exchange of civilized opinion might help pass the time. Until you can travel.”

  There was a pause. “All right,” said the Master at length. “That was quite artistically done. Behold me in a state of suitably agitated inquiry. What then?”

  “Guess,” said Richard amicably.

  “Oh, try somebody else’s sudorific. This really is too damned childish.” Lymond’s eyes were black with fatigue. Richard observed it, as he observed everything about him, eagerly and with a clinical thoroughness.

  “Nothing childish about having a res
pect for the law,” said Culter cheerfully. “Once up on your feet; once up on your horse; and it’s Edinburgh for you. Prison and chains and a series of unpleasant questions. You’re going to stand trial before Parliament as indicted, brother mine.”

  No recoil, but a temper as taut as a fishing line. “There’s nothing juvenile either about having a care for one’s family. You know what kind of sensation this will make.”

  “Beautiful,” said Richard. “You’ll enjoy it. You know how you like extravagant gestures. Have some fish.”

  His brother ignored the outstretched hand. “Look: suspend the godlike poking for a moment. I thought you’d make a clean end of it, at least, even if it was pretty dirty going in the middle—You wouldn’t come to any harm: no one expected me to live.

  “The scandal of five years ago will be nothing compared to what they’ll raise in open court. You know damned well I’ll be found guilty: nobody has any illusions about that. But you’ve got the rest of your life to live, and what’s more important, so has Mother and so has your wife. Do you want your sons to have that sort of nauseating exhibition cast up to them?”

  “Don’t get excited,” said Richard. “Knowing Mariotta, I should never be perfectly sure that they were my sons anyway.”

  “That’s what I mean,” said the Master slowly. “Your sense of values has broken down, and you won’t face it. I had some sympathy—some—for this idiotic pursuit of yours: I was labelled cur, and in the end I had to bark. Not entirely your fault.

  “But what the hell are you doing out of Edinburgh now? What reason had you to deprive Erskine of the support he had a right to expect at Flaw Valleys? What sort of a lead have you given anybody in the last six months? And now more intelligent, reasonable people are to be thrown into the circus so that you can continue to view your prejudices through a thick, green eyeglass. A long, fancy humiliation is to flatten your circle into conformity and your soul into grace. Well, it won’t do, Richard.”