The Game of Kings Read online

  “I haven’t a spoon,” he said. “But I had a knife I could trust.”

  “This?” The Master slipped from his belt the dirk he had removed when Will, the solemn tracker, had been ambushed by his quarry. He tossed it thoughtfully once, twice, and then pitched it to its owner. Will caught it, his expression an odd compound of surprise and mistrust.

  With acute misgiving, Turkey Mat watched him. “You’re not taking him on, sir?”

  “On the contrary,” said the Master, his eyes on Scott “It’s the other way round.”

  Matthew persevered. “He’ll wait till we’re settled, oath or no oath, and then bring Buccleuch and the rest down on top of us.”

  “Will he?” said Lymond. “Will you, Marigold?”

  Brilliant, youthful face confronted restless one.

  A little, malicious smile crossed the Master’s face.

  “Oh, no, he won’t,” said Lymond confidently. “He’s going to be a naughty, naughty rogue like you and me.”

  * * *

  Much later, Lymond appeared again, still in riding dress, with a steel helmet fitted closely over his hair. A heavy white cloak marked with some kind of embroidery in red hung over one arm.

  “Mat, I’m off to Annan. I leave you in charge. If that English messenger gets into trouble, Jess’s Joe will report to you. Take all the men you need to free him and get him to Annan. I shall be back before dawn. Then we move to the Peel Tower.”

  Turkey’s hand automatically massaged his stomach. “Fair enough.” He added bluntly, “You’ll not expect us to get you out of Annan if you fall into trouble?”

  “My dear Mat, I can’t possibly fall into trouble,” said Lymond. “I shall be under the best protection. I’m taking Will Scott with me.”

  2. Pins and Counterpins

  That evening at sunset the whaup and peewit lay quiet in Annandale and the black shadows of the Torthorwald and Mousewald hills marched east over moors prickling with movement and furtive noise.

  Darkness fell, and two horsemen slipped silently around the hills and made directly for the gates of Annan, capital town of the district and newly possessed and occupied by the English army of Lord Wharton. On the last rise the riders paused to look down at the red eye in the plain, the bloody glitter of the river and the drifting thickets of white smoke. The wooden houses of Annan were on fire.

  A peal of laughter shivered the silence.

  “O wow! quo’ he, were I as free

  As first when I saw this countrie …”

  The sound died away in the cold air, and there was silence again.

  Will Scott, in no mood for verse, shot a look at the silver-tongued, malignant animal beside him and blurted a question. “Why did you let me join you?”

  Lymond’s eyes were fixed on the burning town; his voice was entirely prosaic. “I need someone who can read and write.”

  “Oh.”

  “Further. I’m anxious to meet and talk with an Englishman of the name of Crouch. Jonathan Crouch. He may be in Annan. If he isn’t you shall help me find him and then, Aenobarbus, you shall have a diamond, a maiden and a couch reserved in the Turkish paradise. Meanwhile—”

  “Are they expecting you,” asked Scott, “at Annan?”

  The half-seen mouth curled. “If they are, I advise you to fly like a woodpecker, crying pleu, pleu, pleu. Lord Wharton has threatened to gut me publicly and the Earl of Lennox has a personal price of a thousand crowns on my head. No. I propose to appear in one of my twenty-two incarnations, as a messenger from the Protector, with yourself as my aid. My name is Sheriff: yours shall be—what?”

  Scott had also read his poets. He quoted dryly. “This officer but doubt is callit Deid.”

  “Apt, if pessimistic. You have nothing to do,” said Lymond, “but look beautiful, honest and English and pray that one Charlie Bannister has arrived before us to smooth our way. Our John the Baptist. A poor soul, but even if he has barely one head, much less eighteen, he will do to vouch for us. We shall converse briefly with the gullible ones at the gate, encounter Crouch—I trust—and return. An innocent and worthy programme. Si mundus vult decipi, decipiatur. Come along then, Marigold. It’s warmer down there!”

  And the two figures swept downhill, neck and neck, the red crosses on their cloaks bellying in their passing.

  * * *

  “Halt and …” began the Cumberland voice, and trailed off for the second time; whereat Scott found in himself an unexpected impulse to hysteria.

  Above the two horses rose the gates of Annan; around them pressed an escort of the outlying guard; before them stood the gatehouse where the guard on duty was trying to extract their names and business under harassing conditions.

  “Look,” Lymond was saying bitterly, “at the dirt on your pauldrons. And your doublet.”

  “… declare …”

  “Your sword’s filthy. And your dagger: how d’you expect a rusty blade to bite?”

  “… declare—I can’t help that!” said the guard excitedly, abandoning formalities. “Robin! Davie! Move a step and I’ll spit you!”

  “Well, if you do,” said Lymond resignedly, “for God’s sake use someone else’s sword.”

  But when the captain came, a swarthy, middle-aged Bewcastle man, Lymond dismounted at once and introduced himself. “You won’t remember me; Sheriff’s my name. One of the Bishop’s men from Durham. Sorry to make a mystery of myself, but I’m supposed to tell you to your face: it’s business of the red tod’s cub.”

  The password worked its miracle. As Lymond spoke, the captain’s face changed; the guards were dismissed, and in privacy he turned to the two newcomers. “You’ve a message for their lordships from the Protector?”

  “On the heels of one only,” said Lymond. “You’ve spoken with Charlie Bannister?”

  “The Protector’s man? No.”

  “Damnation!” Scott shortsightedly found some amusement in Lymond’s anger. After a moment he went on. “The fool must still be on the road here—I hope nothing’s come to him. I started from Leith yesterday with a message-round like the Odyssey. He was due to leave just after and come straight here.… It doesn’t matter. I’m behind time,” said Lymond busily, “and I’ve got a message for one of of your men: Jonathan Crouch. That’s all.”

  Drinks had been brought; the captain’s eyebrows rose above the rim of his cup. “Crouch of Keswick? Then you can forget it. He was lifted in a skirmish two days ago.”

  The wine went down Lymond’s throat like a drain. “One message less, thank God. Who got him?”

  “Whose prisoner is he? I dunno. They’re welcome,” said the captain with relish. “Drive you funny in the head, Crouch would. Tongue like the clatterbone of a goose’s arse. Are you going?”

  Lymond was certainly going, and so, he hoped, was Will Scott. The captain was quite ready to speed them off … provided they spent ten minutes first with the joint commanders.

  “A few minutes either way won’t hurt you; and Wharton’ll have my skin if this man Bannister doesn’t arrive and I let you go too.”

  Cheerfully, Lymond continued to make for the gates. “What Wharton will do to you will be nothing to the Protector’s delight if I spend half the night here. I’ve told you already. I left long before Bannister. We won the battle on Saturday: that’s all I know.”

  The captain, unmoving, blocked his way. “Come along, man. Don’t let me down. If you’ve nothing to say you’ll be out in a trice.” There was a half-formed suspicion in his mind, and to object again was clearly unsafe. Without further demur, Lymond remounted and, with Scott, followed his guide through the main streets of Annan.

  It was difficult riding. The young horses trembled in the passing glare from burnt thatch and timber. Acrid smoke rolled and hung about the narrow road and caught their throats; the streets, deserted of people, were littered with charred wood and rags and smashed pottery. Scott wondered, with an interest nearly academic, how Lymond was going to extract them from this.

  Farther o
n, when the fires were more infrequent and stone-built houses loomed ahead, a man accosted them. The captain was wanted at the gate.

  Captain Drummond was a careful man. He was about to ignore the summons when Lymond spoke, solving his problem. “I don’t suppose Lord Wharton’s son Harry is anywhere about? I once knew his sister, and I’d like to meet him. He could perhaps direct us to his lordship as well.”

  It was a happy suggestion. The captain, clearly relieved, spoke to the man who had waylaid them, and in a few minutes they were joined by Henry, younger son of Lord Wharton, commander of the English army on the west. Drummond explained and left with his man, and young Wharton turned to Lymond and Scott. “Of course, I’ll take you both there. It’s the middle house in the square through there.” Restless, energetic, at twenty-five already a leader of horse, Henry Wharton led the way, beginning a long, newsy conversation about his family, which Lymond appeared to be sustaining surprisingly well. But Scott, some of the detachment worn off, thought: By God, hell never make it.…

  The pend leading to the square was dim. On it lay the shifting black shadows of the tall buildings fringing the fires; the darkness was full of movement and the three horses, scared, huddled close.

  As the shadows closed about them, Lymond launched himself on Wharton. There was the beginning of a cry, and then nothing but the cracking of hoofs as the other horse shied at the struggling shapes. It was then that Captain Drummond, released from his errand, cantered cheerfully up at the rear and made to join them. Then he said sharply, “What’s happening there?” and peered into the alley.

  Scott saw the whistle in his hand just in time. Instinctively, the boy’s hand went to his belt. He found his dagger, stood in his stirrups, and threw. The captain gave a brief cry, and fell to his horse’s mane, and from there to the street.

  It was suddenly very quiet. Wharton’s horse stood nose to nose with Lymond’s bay, snuffling gently, and there was an extra dark shadow on the road. The Master’s voice said tartly, “Dropped off to sleep?”

  “Oh!” Scott dismounted in a hurry. Young Wharton was, he found, lying face down in the road, a cloth stuffed in his mouth and bent arms savagely clinched by Lymond.

  “Where’s Drummond?”

  “I knifed him. He’s lying in the road.”

  “Then get him out of it, for God’s sake. We don’t want a public wake for him. Take two of the horses and tie them up here. Drag the captain to the wall. Is he dead?”

  “I don’t know,” said Scott self-consciously.

  Lymond wasted no time on comment. “Gag and bind him if he isn’t, and put him on your own horse with a saddlecloth over his head.”

  He was unhitching rope from his own saddle as he spoke, and expertly binding Wharton, leaving only his knees and ankles free. He then pulled the man to his feet and, wrapping the folds of his cloak about him, took the cloth from his mouth.

  Wharton said, in a kind of parched croak, “Set me free, or my men’ll burn you alive!”

  “If wishes were buttercakes,” said Lymond, and tossed something shining into the air, “beggars might bite. I have a little knife which says you will take us quietly to your father.”

  Scott, distrusting his ears, stared.

  Wharton said dramatically, “Never!” Lymond’s elbow moved and the young man gave a convulsive jerk. “First scene, second act,” said the Master. “Stop play-acting, you fool, and take us in. Nobody I ever met could argue with a knife at his ribs.”

  Probably, more than anything else, the supreme confidence in his voice convinced the young man. Holding his arm tight against the short incision Lymond had cut, he bit his lip, and began to move reluctantly onward. Scott, leading Lymond’s horse and his own, walked after.

  The events which followed were always to have for Will Scott of Kincurd the curious, narcotic quality of a bout of fever. In the course of it, he became dimly aware that they had arrived at a house; that Lymond had again produced the allusive password and, with sullen acquiescence from Wharton, demanded private audience with their lordships for himself, his colleague and a Scottish prisoner with valuable information.

  It passed off without a hitch. One of the guard inquired of their lordships above; and then, clattering down, jerked a thumb. “That’s all right: up ye go!” he said. And they went.

  * * *

  The Provost of Annan had built according to his station; and the parlour adopted by the joint leaders of the invading English army was decently panelled in linenfold, with a particularly fine Italian desk pulled near the scarlet peat fire.

  At the desk sat my Lord Wharton, knight and member for Parliament, Captain of Carlisle, Sheriff of Cumberland, Warden of the West Marches and loyal and perspicacious servant of the English crown in the north. He was reading aloud passages from a paper covered with his secretary’s writing, pausing for comment as he went. The Earl of Lennox, nose to nose with his own fair reflection in the dark window, was drumming his fingers on the sill and indulging in witty interjections.

  Thomas, first Baron Wharton, was a tough little self-made Englishman with a whittled brown face and cold disenchanted eye. But Lord Lennox was a different matter. The Earls of Lennox reached back into the history of Scotland; this one had been reared in France and had lived blithely on his wide lands in Scotland until deciding that wealth and power lay closer to hand in the south. The title Matthew Lennox coveted was King Consort of Scotland. When Mary of Guise, the widowed Queen Dowager of Scotland, would have no truck with him, he merely turned coat, joined the forces of England and married Margaret Douglas, King Henry VIII’s niece who herself had a strong claim to a crown or two.

  He was, incidentally, worried about his wife Margaret. The next day’s march lay through her father’s lands. The Earl of Angus, head of the noble Douglas family once castigated by Buccleuch, had written to him anxiously pointing this out and hoping that his son-in-law and Lord Wharton would, if invading, remember the ties of kinship. Lord Lennox remembered them, but he doubted whether Wharton would; especially if this time Margaret’s turbulent father should plump for the Scottish side and join the Queen’s army against him.

  Jubilation over the news from Pinkie had meantime however swept gloom from the air. Wharton was planning his exodus from Annan to the north, and Lennox was dreaming of throne rooms when the door opened.

  Being well oiled, it opened quite gently, and Henry Wharton, followed closely by Lymond, was within the room before either commander looked around. By then Scott too was inside, unloading the wounded Drummond in a corner. He retired to the door and stood with his back to it just as the man at the desk turned and half rose. “Harry! You blundering fool! What’ve you done?”

  Unequivocably, the firelight showed the bound hands, the glitter of Lymond’s knife.

  His son was mute; and the hard eyes of Lord Wharton shifted to the figure behind. “You, sir! Who are you, and what d’you want?”

  Lymond laughed. He laughed again as Lennox, who had spun around, took a step forward. With his free hand, the Master pulled off his steel bonnet and tossed it neatly into the hearth. The peats clouded with smoke, then blazed around it, lighting the pallid face and the colourless hair, stained with sweat. “Money,” he said.

  Lord Lennox stared. A tide of scarlet, patched and mottled, washed up to the roots of his hair and disappeared, taking horror and disbelief with it, and leaving the face swollen with rage. “It’s Crawford of Lymond!” said the Earl of Lennox, and the pale eyes, china-hard, shot to his lordly colleague. “Here, in Annan. In the middle of your precious guard!” He exploded into ugly language. “Your chicken-livered rabbit of a son … !”

  Lord Wharton spoke sharply. “Control yourself, sir!” and his eyes, on Harry, promised payment by someone, in time, for Lord Lennox’s bad temper. He addressed Lymond. “How did you get past the gate?”

  Scott had finished lashing young Wharton to a bench, and was regagging him methodically. Watching him, his knife lingering at Harry’s back, Lymond replied. “My
dear sir, how to avoid it? Their hospitality was most pressing. Besides, I got the password from Bannister.”

  “Bannister?”

  “The Protector’s messenger. He fell in with us.”

  Wharton said sharply, “You have his dispatch then?”

  The fair brows were raised. “Dear me, no! I’ve finished with huckstering these days. Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness. I hope to be appreciated for my beaux yeux alone—and those of Harry, of course. Manhood but prudence is a fury blind.”

  Too wise a fox to be baited, Wharton kept to the point. “Then I take it this man Bannister is dead?”

  “He was in the best of health when I left him,” said Lymond, surprised. “In fact, I had him escorted part of the way. The roads to the north are rather busy with Scottish gentlemen.”

  “In fact, you sold him to the other side, this time!” said Lennox, making his first contribution to the conversation.

  Lymond looked mildly chagrined. “Not at all. What a reputation to have! Not all of us have your lordship’s gift for trusteeship.”

  This was a very shrewd hit. Everyone present knew that Lennox, ostensibly acting for the Scottish Queen Dowager, had once taken delivery of a shipload of French gold and arms on her behalf; and had then shipped himself and the gold south to England.

  For a moment the earl was speechless with anger. “You have the damnable effrontery—My God, if I’d only left you lashed to your stinking oars! You were grateful enough when I clothed you and fed you and gave you money … more fool I. I was repaid all right! Bring a cow to the hall,” Lennox snarled, “and she will to the byre again.”

  “And foul water slockens fire,” added Lymond. His voice became noticeably mellow. “But then I was brought up in bad company. From oar to oar, you might say.”

  If his previous remark had caused an explosion, this one was greeted with a silence which could be felt. Scott, his heart thudding inexplicably, looked from Lymond’s imperturbable face to Lennox, who had gone bone-white.