The Game Of Kings Part 14

The silence was absolute; the stillness profound. But for the ruffling of the trees and the gentle singing of the perch stays, a man might have thought himself deaf. He nocked, raising his arm with the poetic, compact motion of the master bowman; the thin, echoing official voice called "Fast!"; he drew, held lovingly, and loosed.

His arrow leapt; but another was already airborne. Slender, deadly, red as hot steel in the sun, a shaft came hissing from the farthest suburbs of the crowd. There was never an instant's doubt of its destination. It drove into the crossbar, slicing off the crude ties with a razor barb, freeing the papingo in the instant that Culter's arrow flew toward it.From the audience, a sea of upturned faces, rose a breathy gasp. Weak and stiff from its bonds, the bird jerked grotesquely, fell, wavered, flapped; and with a sudden strong upbeat, recovered itself.

As if over its corporate soul the crowd, mesmerized, yearned over the bright wings. At its back Andrew Hunter, his face set in anger, had already reached the higher ground, racing; thrusting; running free like a madman.

They hardly noticed him. For as the parrot, gaining height, swooped wildly away from the field, a second arrow breathed by and feathered into its mark. The papingo, transfixed in its blundering flight, stopped, tilted, and dropped like a stricken star to the ground. A yellow feather, wanton and unseemly, danced its way after.

Then, on the wave of a roaring uprush, the crowd was moved to action: too late, for the third arrow was already launched.

It arched in the air, a gleaming parabola, the feathers susurrant with curses, and found this time its designed, human mark.

Cuiter, standing white, taut and watchful at the base of the perch, flung out an arm blindly, held himself a moment upright against the pole, then slowly folded against it and thence to the ground.

2. Check and Cross Check

That evening, bright in the dusk, a great fire glowed in the parlour at Bogle House, bestowing light, warmth and comfort on its occupants. It flickered on the faces about it: the Dowager, Mariotta, Buccleuch,Hunter, Agnes Herries, Christian and Tom Erskine. It glittered on the table beside it, on which lay three arrows, two of them dark with blood, a longbow and a leather embroidered shooting glove. It flared, lastly, on the calm face of Lord Culter, lying stiffly bandaged on a long settle before it.

For the arrow which struck Richard came from a great distance and had to fly over many heads to an almost invisible mark. Unlike the first two, it was not faultless. It had dropped, losing power, and had torn its way across cheek and ear to bury itself beside the collarbone. And so, again charmed, again flouted by tragedy, Lord Culter was able, studying the exhibits on the table, to hold a post-mortem on a parrot.

"An English bow: that'li be part of the booty from Annan, I expect. And three arrows from the same source, fully barbed . . . very naughty, in a perch contest. And a glove..

He picked it up and sniffed at it. It was a right-hand glove in white buckskin, its newness betrayed by the absence of rubbing on the first three fingers.

"Discreetly perfumed," observed Lord Culter, turning it over. "Beautifully st.i.tched, and some jewellers' work on the back, to boot. A nice toy, if you can afford it-and since friend Lymond presumably paid for it with my money, he can. G.o.d!" he said. "I'd give my chance of heaven, nearly, to match against him, perch or clout..

Tom Erskine observed critically, "Wind behind him, of course; and he had a bit of elevation too, hadn't he, Dandy?.

Sir Andrew nodded. "He shot from behind one of the dressing tents, just where the ground rose to the wood. I was just too late getting there. Found the stuff where he dropped it. . . ." He groaned. "We all underrated him. I worked out that he couldn't possibly shoot from among the crowd. It didn't cross my mind that a first-cla.s.s marksman might just do it from the ground behind..

"Well, you gave us a shaking-up all right, Culter," said Buccleuch. "Thought you were away with th~ papingo, my lad!.

The Dowager, who had been, for her, unusually silent, remarked at once, "Well, it wasn't very rea.s.suring, I admit, coming back to find Richard laid out all b.l.o.o.d.y in one bed and Mariotta fainting in the next, but then Wapenshaws are notorious, aren't they? Did anyone remember to ask who got the prize?.

Tom said, "Well I suppose, strictly speaking, they ought to give it to Lymond, but I should put it past even his impudence to claim it..

"I don't know." Mariotta's voice was detached. "He seems able to do almost anything he wants..

Agnes, her eyes fixed on Culter, heaved a sigh. "I thought I was going to die..

"Well, you behaved very sensibly, darling," said the Dowager. "And now we shall enjoy the gypsies all the more..

"Gypsies!.

"Yes, of course. From the fair: had you forgotten? And here they are," said Sybilla.

It was a triumphant example, in the outcome, of her own brand of humane genius. Under the spell of the entertainment, even Mariotta's taut nerves slackened, and colour came back into her face. Christian Stewart, listening gravely to Erskine's commentary, sat with her hand on Agnes's shoulder, thus regulating (but not eliminating) her interruptions, aided by a tactful Sir Andrew. Culter himself lay quietly, his eyes heavy, under the watchful gaze of the Dowager, who was having a long and intermittent discussion at the same time with the leading gypsy.

Toward the end of the performance, and during a phase which involved something noisy with a tambourine and much stamping, she caught Buccleuch's rather distracted eye, and slipped out of the room, followed by Sir Wat.

Sybilla shut the door on the noise.

"Dod!" Sir Wat, breathing the cold air on the deserted landing, wiped his forehead. "Clever rascals, Sybilla, but not just my meat, y'know..

"I thought you stood it very well," commented the Dowager. "And really it's a great comfort to have you, for I mustn't bother Richard, and Sir Andrew and Tom are dear boys but a little occupied; and they have their own troubles anyway.~~Sir Wat looked apprehensive, not without reason."About the bloodhounds," said Sybilla.

"Bloodhound yourself," said Buccleuch, jerked, in his alarm, out of even the nominal form of courtesy he usually practiced. "How did you know-.

"Oh, I know Richard," said Sybilla. "I always could interpret these silences, you know, more easily than half an hour of his brother's chatter. He was performing very prettily in there, and I'm sure all the girls felt better for it, but I didn't. What did he ask you to do?.

Buccleuch shrugged, and gave up. "Track down Lymond, ofcourse. There's the glove, and-you're right-I still have the dogs at Branxholnl.' He looked down at her, an unaccustomed diffidence struggling among the appalling burst-whinbush whiskers.

"He's been made a fool of-twice, you know," he said. "Feels like a sulky fat goose in a barrel, being shot at by gutter boys. Can't stomach it-won't stand for it. Wouldn't try to stop him, either..

"I shall," said Sybilla.

"Why? Discredits you all-sorry, m'dear-as it is. The boy's no good to himself or anyone else till it's settled..

"Yes," said the Dowager. "But 1 shall settle it, not Richard. Anyway, aren't you supposed to be ill? You are a fool, Wat," she added, with a kind of affectionate resignation. "You know perfectly well word'll reach England inside forty-eight hours that you're playing games at Stirling when you're supposed to be too ill to go and speak nicely to old Grey at Norham..

Sir Wat accepted the stricture with surprising meekness. "Well, as to that-" He scowled at the landing arras. "That's what makes it unco knotty, if you want the truth, to do what Richard asked..

"Which was?.

"Well, to let go everything else and hoe up the country till we find Lymond. We could do it-but-.

"-But in Richard's present mood, in bringing Lymond to face his deserts, he's also liable to bring Will Scott to face his," said the Dowager concisely.

Buccleuch wriggled. His face got red, then the s.p.a.ces under his hair; finally he burst into speech which lost no violence through being compressed into undertones.

"Dod, Sybilla: if you want to know, I'm in the h.e.l.l of a jawboxy mess. Seymour's Lord High Suleyman the Magnificent Grey at Norham's been sending me polite notes ever since Will snipped his nose for him at Hume. asking when I'm coming to parley and a.s.sure them of help. It's d.a.m.ned awkward. They know it was Will-how, I can't understand, for at my last taste of him he was too blasted whaup-nosed to claim his own mother. But there it is, and if I refuse to help, they'll burn me to the ground on the next raid. I've put it around that I'm ill, but short of following it up that I'm dead, I don't know what to do next..

The broad, capable Scott hands, with their spatulate fingers and white scar seams, gripped the bal.u.s.trade and blanched, as he leaned his uneasy weight on them. "I'll have to disown Will publicly, andhope they'll believe I had nothing to do with Hume. I doubt they won't, though; it looks too d.a.m.ned neat, right to the cartload of cutty sarks on my land at Melrose..

He stared disconsolately at Lady Culter. "And here's the joke. I'm not a praying man, Sybilla, but I've had these baw-heids at the chapel on their knees ever since he went, hoping that Will'd see he'd been a d.a.m.ned stupid fool, and come back. Now, if he does, I'm made to look an accomplice to the fiasco at Hume, and Grey'll see I suffer accordingly. Whereas if he doesn't, and I'm forced to disown him to Grey-and if word of it gets to the Queen-and if he's captured with Lymond-.

"He'll get the same treatment as Lymond. But not if I catch him," said Sybilla.

Buccleuch eyed her. "Then, by G.o.d, I wouldn't care to be in Lymond's shoes..

"How my sons turn out is rather my affair," said the Dowager coolly. "And involves rather less risk, on the whole, to Richard. If you'll co-operate..

"By not co-operating?" Sir Wat gave a relieved bark. "It'll give Culter a poor opinion of me, but I don't mind. No. My dogs'll be sick; and I'll be sicker than the lot put together. Listen-someone's coming." He broke off ,hurriedly as light and warmth streamed in on them.

"And so." said Sybilla placidly, "I had a long talk with him- Johnnie Bulb, his name is; a real gypsy' king-and he tells me he knows how to make it..

"Make what, Lady Culter?" It was Christian who had opened the parlour door on sounds of imminent departure from within. "The gypsies are just going..

"Make the Philosopher's Stone, dear," said the Dowager, driving haphazard but triumphant into her subject. "You know, the thing that turns tin into gold, and makes frisky old gentlemen senex bis puer, and mends broken legs and all sorts of practical things..

"It's what we need at Branxholm," said Sir Wat gloomily. "Janet broke another vase last week..

For some reason this tickled both Sybilla and Christian. The Dowager was the first to recover.

"Just you wait," she said. "I have it all from Bulb, and it all sounds remarkably well authenticated, considering. Anyway, he's coming again to Midculter to explain it to me..

"Good G.o.d!" said Buccleuch, to whom the Dowager was the source and fount of all astonishments. "You don't mean you believe all that rubbis.h.!.+ I've enough of it at home with Janet; and the Lee penny never out the house..

"All what rubbish?" said Sybilla. "You see, you don't know yourself what you're talking about, and neither shall 1," she added as an afterthought, "until Master Bulb has been and explained it again..

"Well, I don't know what you want the Philosopher's Stone for," said Christian. "It seems to me that as a family you're quite indecently rich already..

"Oh, you never know," said the Dowager mysteriously. "Healing charms-elixirs of life-love potions-.

"What I came to ask," said Christian, her face rather red, "was whether we might all go to the Fair-Agnes, Mariotta and myself, I mean. The trouble is-.

"The trouble is, Master Bulb won't read our fortunes here: he hasn't got his crystal, he says, and he won't go and bring it back." Agnes, squeezing through the door, provided the explanations, fortissimo. "But he says we can call at his tent, and Tom'll go with us-.

The Dowager spoke quietly. "What about Richard?.

"It's all right." Christian was quick in defence of the absent Mariotta. "As a matter of fact, he's asleep, and . . ." And it won't do him any harm to be spared a performance of wifely reproach, her hesitation added.

The Dowager made no objection. So the gypsies left, and a little later, wrapped in heavy cloaks and hoods, the three girls walked out with Tom Erskine, and an un.o.btrusive following of Erskine's men. Sir Andrew and Buccleuch left. In the snug parlour the big fire hissed and murmured in the silence, glimmering on mother and son. Sitting beside Richard's quiet couch, Sybilla put on her spectacles and threaded a needle. Then she put it down and sat quite still for a long tune, staring owlishly into s.p.a.ce.

And it was into s.p.a.ce that at last she spoke. "Oh, my darling!" said Sybilla. "I do hope I've done the best thing..

* * *"Are you all right?" asked Tom Erskine. And again, later on, "What's wrong? Are you feeling all right?.

"Of course. It's the cold," said Christian rather snappishly, andrelaxing her grip on his arm, tried furiously to still the uncalled-for and humiliating frisson set up by her nerves.

It was not cold, as she well knew. It was the crowded strain of the day; the blaring darkness; the devils' orchestra of uncouth music; the coa.r.s.e chatter, the catcalls and the mindless, ganting laughter. The Fair had become by night a bloated Saturnalia, sodden, sottish and leering of voice. She was buffeted by blundering bodies and twitched by grasping hands. Smells a.s.sailed her: beer smells, food smells and leather smells; the stink of human bodies and once, as two struggling shapes crashed into her, the reek of blood, forcing on the mind the warm fire and the reeking arrows of an hour before-Culter's voice:"If that's what a life of depravity does for your archery"; Mariotta's:"He seems able to do almost anything he wants"; the Dowager, bandaging with cool hands, refusing to panic.

"Buy a rare pippin!" said a voice in her ear. "A fine rosy pippin for a fine rosy la.s.s-.

"A chain of gold for that bonny dress, now! Five crowns and a kiss for yourself, my bonny may!.

"Hatpins, sweeting: a thousand and a half for sixteen pence-.

"A puppet for your sister!.

"Mackerel!.

"Hot pies!"-And grease brus.h.i.+ng her cheek as the pastry was thrust upward. The shaking became uncontrollable.

"Tell your fortune, la.s.sies!" in the sly, garlic-laden voice.

It was some kind of a booth. First Agnes went in; then Mariotta; and they were both quite remarkably reticent when they came out. Tom, waiting with Christian, was bored. "It sounds poor stuff to me. Let's go home..

Agnes objected. "Christian hasn't been yet..

"Fortune, lady?" said Bulb's voice again, at Christian's elbow. "One other lady?.

"I'll come with you-.

"Oh, no you won't." Christian eluded Tom deftly. "If I'm going to have the secrets of my boudoir revealed, you're staying outside. Master Bulb will take me..

Silently, the gypsy caught her sleeve, and they moved forward. Something brushed her hood, and from the deadening of noise, she guessed the tent flap had closed behind her. Underfoot, the street cobbles were spread with fabric; the darkness was stuffy and cold, smelling vaguely of cheap incense. She walked a few paces, and thenwas aware of a new aperture. The grip on her elbow disappeared; Bulb's soft steps could be heard receding; then these in turn were cut off. This time, there was absolute silence.

Her face forced into lines of composure, her betraying hands tight-held behind her back, Christian stood quite still and waited in the cold and the dark.

Mothlike in its lightness and rapid insistency, the so-familiar voice spoke. "This, of course, is the chamber of devils, who sit in hexagon babbling like herring gulls about the ruin of charity and the disorderly rupture of souls. . . . The aforesaid malignants have provided a chair, a little to your left: that's it. Before you lie four feet of carpet; then a box upon which I am rudely-but I hope rea.s.suringly-seated. Nothing else is worth noting except a bundle of effects belonging to Johnnie Bulb-you'll have discovered his name. He was, of course, my friend of the cave. A long time ago. Is that better?" he asked. "I wonder what frightened you?.

Astonis.h.i.+ng that a voice should carry such power to soothe and disarm. She said, seated, clasping her hands, "It's been a bad sort of day-I'm sorry-and the Fair on top was a little too much..

"A day remarkable, certainly, for a wholesale slaughter of the innocents," he said. "I wonder how the parrot enjoyed its brief second of freedom. And the victim of the less schismatic shaft, how's he?.

She told him, and he received it with a hint of mockery, adding:"Don't, for your own sake, begin weaving fantasies of evil around me as well. I haven't tried to kill anybody today, I give you my word..

"Well, if you had, I think you probably would have succeeded," said Christian. "Do you shoot?.

"Yes. Very well, as it happens: one of my vanities, you see. It's handsome to watch, and satisfying to perform; it's convivial and compet.i.tive and artistic and absorbing. Poets love it: they rush home to unpick all their quills and write odes with them..

"Others don't," she said quickly. "Others kill..

There was a little silence. Then he said, "And that's what you're afraid of, isn't it? Violence?.

It was true, and she acknowledged it. "Except that it isn't trained and purposeful violence that terrifies me: it's the negligent, casual kind. All these people today . . . They were taking wagers, you know, on Culter's chances of life. And violence of a nasty, inconsequent kind, tonight at the Fair. Or the kind that amuses itself bystuffing women and children into a cave and smoking them to death. In slaughtering livestock and burning a harvest for fun. Or after Pinkie, when the army broke; and the Durham and York and Newcastle boys, and the landknechts and Italians and Spaniards sat on their beautiful horses and flew along the Leith sands, and the Holy-rood road, and the Dalkeith road, hawking men with their swords like b.u.t.terflies"Violence in nature is one thing," said Christian, "but among civilized mankind, what excuse is there?.

His voice was cheerful. "Nothing more civilizing than a good crack of thunder. One hot unsettled summer and whole countrysides end up like St. James with their knees hard as camels. . . No. I take your point. But what in G.o.d's name had that poor, enthusiastic, politically imbecile troop of Englishmen last month got to do with civilization? And what's going to stop them? Religion? With their music, their churches, their prayers, in a rag bag at home; His Most Christian Majesty of France egging on the Turks to scimitar the head off His Most Imperial Majesty King Charles; the Bishop of Rome seducing the Lutherans in Germany to secure his posterity . .

Christian said, "What kind of excuse would you make then for a private a.s.sa.s.sin?.

He was silent for a moment, then said, "Let's get one thing clear. I'm not excusing anything. I'm no theologian, only a pedagogue in rhetoric, with whatever shreds of humanity the universities have left me with..

"Well, as an apologist for human nature, then. What of private murder?.

"What of it? This afternoon's, if you mean to particularize, was neither very private nor very successful, by all accounts. It shouldn't be difficult to cla.s.sify. Not high-spirited; not casual; an act of instructed force, like Somerset's: a matter of policy, in fact.

"And brilliantly carried off-by the Old Man of the Mountains himsell, obviously, the Sheikh-al-jebal, tw.a.n.ging his hemp instead of eating it. Motives: greed, hate, envy-I don't know. Excuses: there don't seem to be many. He might, of course, be a saintly old sheikh, whose doctrines Culter was denying; or a lascivious old sheikh, whose mistress Cuiter had alienated . . . except that Culter, Jerome bless his childlike head, is such a remarkably dull and blameless creature himself..

"For a humanist," she said, "you~re very scathing on the subjectof virtue. For one thing, you shouldn't confuse stolidity and self-control..

"You admire self-control?" he asked, and she took her chance.

"I admire candour..