The Game Of Kings Part 43

The silence of his careful making followed him and lay upon the Tribunal for a stricken and pulsing s.p.a.ce. Then at the long table Argyll moved, and the twelve a.s.sessors stirred and sighed.

Erskine, lifting his stunned head, saw that Richard's eyes were wide and full on his brother; but Lymond looked at n.o.body, the queer cornflower gaze concentrated in s.p.a.ce. The Lord Justice-General began to speak, and had to clear his throat.

"We have heard and understood you, Mr. Lauder, and have been well served by your skill and your clarity in this most distressing task today. The panel has also heard you. We now invite him to address us in his own defence on the charges so preferred against him. Mr. Crawford..

From Lymond's pale hair to his finger tips no uncomprehending muscle moved. "I have nothing to add," he said.

In the crowded room the atmosphere tightened as if he had shouted. "Nothing?" exclaimed Argyll. "You are accused of treason, sir: you have heard the gravest accusations and the gravest doubts expressed about your evidence. Have yau no excuse?.

Bare of irony, Lymond's eyes left the Justiciar and rested on his own immobile and flatly crossed hands. "The margin is so small," he said, "between life and no life, fact and lie, treason and patriotism, civilization and savagery . . . If Mr. Lauder can see it, he is lucky; if you can comprehend it you have a better right to judge than I have to plead. I have nothing to add..

"If you can't tell the difference between loyalty and treason, Mr. Crawford," said the Bishop, "then you are certainly safer hanged..

The Master's eyes studied him. "Why, can you?.

"As long," said Orkney broadly, "as I know the difference between right and wrong..

"Yes. The position is very similar. Patriotism," said Lymond, "like honesty is a luxury with a very high face value which is quickly pricing itself out of the spiritual market altogether..

"Feeling for one's country," said the Lord Advocate softly, "is not usually considered as a freestanding riddle in ethics. . .

The easy voice lifted the comment and the topic, and carried them to deeper waters. "No. It is an emotion as well, and of course the emotion comes first. A child's home and the ways of its life are sacrosanct, perfect, inviolate to the child. Add age; add security; add experience. In time we all admit our relatives and our neighbours, ourfellow townsmen and even, perhaps, at last our fellow nationals to the threshold of tolerance. But the man living one inch beyond the boundary is an inveterate foe..

He laced his long fingers and raised them, his gaze resting on the exposed palms. "Patriotism is a fine hothouse for maggots. It breeds intolerance; it forces a spindle-legged, spurious riot of colour.

A man of only moderate powers enjoys the special sanction of purpose, the sense of ceremony; the echo of mysterious, lost and royal things; a trace of the broad, plain childish virtues of myth and legend and ballad. He wants advancement-what simpler way is there? He's tired of the little seasons and looks for movement and change and an edge of peril and excitement; he enjoys the flowering of small talents lost in the dry courses of daily life. For all these reasons, men at least once in their lives move the finger which will take them to battle for their country. .

"Patriotism," said Lymond again. "It's an opulent word, a mighty key to a royal Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. Patriotism; loyalty; a true conviction that of all the troubled and striving world, the soil of one's fathers is n.o.blest and best. A celestial compet.i.tion for the best breed of man; a vehicle for shedding boredom and exercising surplos power or surplus talents or surplus money; an immature and bigoted intolerance which becomes the coin of barter in the markets of power-.

Into the silence, the Master spoke gently. "These are not patriots but martyrs, dying in cheerful self-interest as the Christians died in the pleasant conviction of grace, leaving their example by chance to brood beneath the water and rise, miraculously, to refresh the centuries. The cry is raised: Our land is glorious under the sun. I have a need to believe it, they say. It is a virtue to believe it; and therefore I shall wring from this una.s.suming clod a pa.s.sion and a power and a selflessness that otherwise would be laid unquickened in the grave..

With the unfettered freedom of his voice, with the disciplined and friendly ardours of his mind, he made it plain where he was leading them.

"And who shall say they are wrong?" said Lymond. "There are those who will always cleave to the living country, and who with their uprooted imaginations might well make of it an instrument for good. Is it quite beyond us in this land? Is there no one will take up this priceless thing and say, Here is a nation, with such a soul; with such talents; with these failings and this native worth? In what fas.h.i.+oncan this one people be brought to live in full vigour and serenity, and who, in their compa.s.sion and wisdom, will take it and lead it into the path?.

For two, for three, for four seconds, the silence continued. Then Lauder, an expression of pure joy on his face, let out a long sigh; Argyll himself drew a deep breath, and Erskine, dragging his eyes from the quiet chair, found Richard staring at his brother with the privacies of his stubborn spirit exposed, unheeding, on his face.

For a mighty moment Argyll faced Lymond, conjecture and curiosity and a certain sharp respect informing the pallid Campbell features. Then he said, "I understand that you have said something you felt required saying at this time, and that you are not moved to argue and dispute over the complexities of the personal charges which have been put before us today. I am not sure that you are wrong; but this is not the place nor the time to reply to you, nor am I sure that I or any man present could do so-" He paused.

"We have been shown the public interpretation of a remarkable case: a series of events borne forcibly to their close by a strong and unusual personality. Mr. Lauder has given us one reading of its character. He would, I think, be the first to admit that he has not, patently, shown us the whole man and that, whatever the true reading may be, Mr. Crawford, we may know that it is not simple, or obvious, or in any way commonplace.

"We have listened to the evidence most carefully. Most of the charges referring to crimes since 1542 are to my mind much weakened by what we have heard, and would be difficult to sustain. The original accusation however still stands, and the evidence has in no way been shaken by any argument or proof offered by the panel.

"We shall consider these things, however, and tomorrow this court will make its recommendation to the Three Estates, before whom you shall appear. It is this decision you must fear and face, and I warn you now to prepare yourself for it..

It was as near a warning of doom as the a.s.size could achieve. Lymond was already standing to receive it, and there was no doubt that he understood what he was being told: the stamp of the day's a.s.sault lay in the very bones of his face. He bowed once, to the a.s.sessors, and again, surprisingly, to the benches which held Erskine and his brother; then, flanked by his guards, he moved quietly to the door.

Neither Lauder nor the judges, nor the silent ranks of the witnesses remembered Will Scott.

A pretence of quiet had fallen on the night.

About the basin of the Tyne, small fires ringed Haddington: the boots of men clicked on the walls of the besieged town and padded in the trenches outside; and the un.o.btrusive gnawing of pick and mattock betrayed the pioneers still at work.

The river wound its way dimly to the coast; and the estuary, flat and moon-bright, with small s.h.i.+ps black as b.u.t.tons on its surface, lay at the bottom of the sky and rolled in the east-by-east wind which with spare and racking fingers was withdrawing the coasts from the English fleet.

Edinburgh, grimly warded, lay inside her walls, bedevilled by the shadows of her hills, her crag and tail a black and fishy emblem above the apologetic stench of the Nor' Loch. The moon copied on the cobbles the profile of all the new, high houses: the thatched gables and uncertain slates and the dancett~ roofs; and the gutters ran in and Out of the shadows like pied and silvery eels.

As always, there were lights at the ports; and tonight there were lights as well at Holyrood, and at Mary of Guise's palace on Castle Hill. Farther down the slope another candle shone in an upper window at the Tolbooth: behind it Lymond lay, drugged into sleep, with a guard outside his locked door until the night should pa.s.s and Parliament meet to p.r.o.nounce his doom. In the Culters' house in the High Street his family also waited, and the tapers burned all night.

They burned also at the Castle, where light and heat reeled in mortal embrace in the prisoners' room. The ceiling, low and plastered, pressed down the strata of exhausted air, stale with old beer and sweating bodies. There was no room left to stand and no air to inhale, but the light beat down on a swaying corymb of heads, and shone on necks craning with a nervous, avid tension like beasts at a water hole.

At the centre sat Will Scott and Sir Thomas Palmer, hall-naked:sunburnt thews glistening under multiple lights and sweat slithering down the tough cord of their spines.For maybe an hour now, Palmer's string of jocularities and pithy memoirs had stopped, and he was breathing hoa.r.s.ely into the cards, eyes intent and chin set in three trim folds against his chest. Beside his chair, topped by a bundle of clothes, lay a good half of Scott's belongings. Beside Scott, kicked into a disorderly tangle by the eager feetof the onlookers, was every article presently owned by Tommy Palmer except one: his cousin's statement.

Scott was too tired to think. Often before he had played the night through, ending wild-eyed and unshaven and ravenously hungry and going on to perform prodigies of nuisance-making in his father's wake. But against Palmer he needed more than a flair: he needed nerve and watchfulness and weblike concentration, with an instinct for bluff, and an inspiration to know when to call it.

He ignored the chaffing of his enthusiastic audience; he refused to be upset by the games he lost and by Palmer's unworried bonhomie. He played on doggedly with his red hair sticking in cowlicks to his brow and stared at the tarots until they glimmered in his eyeb.a.l.l.s like invitation cards to h.e.l.l. He knew that it was dark, that the inquiry was over and, from Erskine standing now at his side, that it had gone against Lymond. He had no idea of the time.

Palmer was preparing his sequences. He did it slowly, as if the feel of the cards gave him pleasure. "My pretty atous," he said, and admired them, his broad fingers sprawled across the painted backs.

Scott looked at his own hand, and the tarots' sleek, Egyptian heads with ancient divination in their eyes stared back, warming their painted hands at a world of flesh. His feet were on le chemin royal de Ia vie and the thin travesties in his hands this time were real: the traitor and the hanged man, death and the fool. Their avid fingers were real, and the scent of an evil nostalgia. He closed the cards abruptly and held them closed until his brain cleared.

He had a good hand, but not a first-cla.s.s one; and he suspected Palmer's was better. There was one way he might improve on it: by calling on luck. He had the World and the Bateleur in his hand. He could challenge Palmer for the Fool; if he didn't have it, his two tarrochi n.o.bili would bring him five points extra and almost certainly the game. It had to. Each article redeemed by Palmer cost him another game to win it back. If he lost this game he had to play a minimum of two more and win both. And he doubted if he had a reserve of mental energy for even one.

It was very quiet. Scott looked at the cards again. Palmer, breathing heavily, had the beginning of a smile compressing his stubbled chins.

"Qui ne l'a," said Scott, and Palmer's gaze, arrested, narrowed and shot to meet his. "Qui ne l'a? Well? Have you got one?.

Palmer scratched his nose. He grunted, and the silence moved down on the bruised and foundered men like a wine press.

For as long as he dared, Palmer tested Scott's nerve. Then slowly he shook his big head. "No. d.a.m.n it to h.e.l.l: I have not..

Will moved his hands very slowly: red hands like Buccleuch's. The tarots, throttled and limp, dropped to their places on the table: sullen; maudlin; sulkily protesting the laughterless starvation of a paper world. There was a moment's pause, then Palmer moved, and his tarots ran like b.u.t.ter from corner to corner of the table.

It was a losing hand. "My game, I think," said Will Scott.

The welter of congratulations, of back-slapping and draughts of flat beer and mounting noise hardly penetrated his brain; even when Palmer himself, after upending a pint of ale over his own head and shoulders with thunderous curses, broke into an equal percussion of laughter and embraced him like a son. Scott sat like a marmorean and gently smiling Buddha, the disputed paper safely clutched in his hand, and when he could be heard, spoke mildly. "You can have back all your other stuff if you like. This is all I wanted..

Surging up, Palmer elbowed his way forcefully to the window and stood with his back to it, flexing his beefy shoulders till the muscles flowed. "What a game. G.o.d! What a game. I've played in every county in England and up and down France and in and out of Clinton's boats, but I've never met the man who could read my mind like you did. Never. I sat like a b.l.o.o.d.y plant and you read me as if my brains were thumbing signals from my ears. Where'd you pick it up?.

Scott was hauling on his s.h.i.+rt. "I was taught," he said invisibly, ''by . .

Palmer swept up a fistful of linen and jerked. "What?.

Like the rising sun, Scott's head reappeared, still talking. "I was taught by a fellow called Jonathan Crouch..

Sir Thomas's arms dropped like felled boughs. "An Englishman?.

"Yes..

"With a wife called Ellen and a tongue with the peris.h.i.+ng shakes?.

"Yes..

"I taught that man to play tarocco!" yelled Sir Thomas.

"Yes, I know," said Will Scott.

* * *An hour later he was in Lymond's room.

The Master was difficult to waken. Under the boy's insistent fingerswhe stirred at length, and his weighted lids lifted a little. After a moment he recognized him and said "Scott!" in a voice thickened with opiates. Then his eye caught a movement behind the boy and he turned his head. ". . . And Mr. Lauder too, I see..

The lawyer, his clothes rumpled and his hair on end, bowed and shut the door on inquisitive guards. Scott didn't look around. Instead, he held out the paper with Samuel Harvey's statement, the superscription lit by the bedside tallow. "It's Samuel Harvey's confession," the boy said. "He made it to Christian at Haddington when he was dying, and it was taken down by their priest. It frees you from every taint of treason..

The Master's fingers touched the folded papers, lingering on the broken seal, and delicately flattened them. Scott, watching his downcast eyes, visualized the pages as he had seen them an hour ago, when before his witnesses he had studied his prize.

summoned from the Princess Mary's household and taken before the King. Essential to mislead the enemy as to the ident.i.ty of the spy . . . Convenient presence of the Scotchman CrawfordLetter to his friends in Scotland already purloined . . . Forgery affixed and taken north with me .

And the last sentences.

I learned afterwards that, ironically enough, the spy for whom all this trouble was taken died on his next visit to London. Of the others implicated, I have given my word not to mention them, and I do not see that I need do so, since it does not affect the substance of what happened. I am not ashamed of what I did: I obeyed orders in a justifiable act against the enemy.

Although he had reached the last page, the Master did not immediately look up. Scott was glad when at length he spoke. "So she did get her proofs..

"No one knows what went wrong," said the boy. "Either she was given the unwritten sheets franked and folded by mistake, or it was a deliberate deception: perhaps Harvey came to regret what he had done. The priest doesn't know..

Lymond turned his head, searching the bright, sea-blue eyes under the gaudy thatch. "And you: where did you get it?.

"Sir Thomas Palmer is Harvey's cousin. I found that out from Lady Douglas after she was released from Haddington. She told meas well that they were keeping Harvey's belongings for Palmer when he next came north..

( . And?.

"And when he did come north, Father captured him," said Scott, a.s.sailed with unforeseen embarra.s.sments. "Palmer's at the Castle now, and they also have the friar who wrote it out-I found that out later. I made them all witness the contents too, so that they could . .

"Your young catachumen played tarocco all night with Palmer to get possession of it," said the Lord Advocate's most sumptuous voice. He had found a chair and was lying back in it, grinning benevolently at the ceiling. "By G.o.d, I wish you'd take me in hand for six months in that troop of yours. Anyone who can beat Buskin's brother-.

"Not my doing: we imported a trainer for that," said Lymond gravely, his skin faltering between red and white, his eyes brilliant. "I don't think we could teach you much, Mr. Lauder..

The legal gaze, leaving the rafters, swooped down to the pillows. "Who stole your letter, Mr. Crawford? That d.a.m.ned Douglas woman, I take it." He paused. "You were very gentle with our friends today..

Lymond's thoughts were clearly a thousand-a hundred-miles away. "Our friends . . .

Wiser than Scott, Henry Lauder ignored the boy's scowl and talked on. "The Douglases. The Earl of Angus undertook, I believe, to set the crown of Scotland on Henry VIII's head by midsummer of that year. There was also talk of a secret bond signed by both Sir George and his brother in London, promising all their help to make Scotland Henry's. The King wouldn't want that noised abroad at the time..

"No." Lymond's hands still lay on the folded pages of the confession. He lifted the packet, a speculative, balancing finger at each end, and said, "Nothing about the Douglases is news any more. The unpleasant truth is that, being a long-sighted family, they will attach themselves to the winning side, and not necessarily to the side that pays them most.

"When Douglas goes to Berwick as spokesman for the Scottish court, when he comes to Edinburgh sworn to promote the English marriage, both the Protector and Arran know very well he is putting his own words to the song he was taught. Perhaps even words which appear to be his own are sometimes not. These are stormy petrels:they show where the heavy seas are coming from and are to thatextent useful. Their transactions shelter under sham diplomacy and they can truly be influenced in one way only, by personal shame. The side which succ.u.mbs to the temptation to strip the Douglases naked will lose them, and the considerable power of their men with them. Grey knew that: that is why he handled Sir George so tenderly in spite of the Protector and Wharton..

Scott said defensively, "My father also got permission to negotiate with the English. To protect his own interests..

The Lord Advocate smiled involuntarily. "Buccleuch has been driven to doing a lot of queer things to protect his own interests, but no one would ever confuse him with the Douglases. Mr. Crawford is right. The undiscrinilnating vulture is not our real danger: open scandal would simply drive him into profitless exile again, and would be of no possible advantage to us. Neither should we fear our st.u.r.dy patriots who, like your father, are busy with their loyalties in queer and crooked ways. Our danger lies with the men who want to take this country by trunk and limb and wreak it into such a shape that it will fit them and their children for hose and jerkin in their old age..

"Some of them are sincere," said Lymond.

"I know: and such men will wreck us yet. Preserve us above all from the honest clod and the ambitious fanatic..

"There doesn't seem to be a bewilderment of types left to choose from..

"The Culters, for example?.

Scott caught up Lauder with angry eyes. "This rn-starred family with a wastrel son?.

The lawyer smiled. "My business is with words, my boy; and the best ones grow like mushrooms on a good bedding-down of law. Your friend used some fairly choice expressions himself. . . . I admire your gift for commanding loyalty in spite of your tongue, Mr. Crawford. What will you do now?.

"I was going to ask you the same thing," said Lymond; and it was clear that he had used the breathing s.p.a.ce Lauder had given him to good effect.

The Lord Advocate rose. "I think there are some people who should be shown this statement, and without much more delay," he said. "If you'll trust me with it..

Lymond's voice saying "Of course" clashed with Scott's "No!" His hands lingered a moment longer on the papers, then he ran finger and thumb along the fold and held the doc.u.ment out. Lauder took it.

"I should advise you to dress, if you can. Mr. Scott will help, perhaps. It may be necessary to send for you..

The door shut behind him. Lymond said, his long mouth twitching at the sight of Scott's face, "You must trust somebody, Will in spite of any repeated advice to the contrary you may hear..

Scott muttered, avoiding his eyes, "You must have thought me the qualified king of the simple-minded..

"If I did, I should never have allowed you to join me. Your father said as much to the Tribunal today-G.o.d, yesterday; and I can endorse it..

"In spite of my h.e.l.lish mistakes?.

"I was thinking of tonight. You made no mistake with that." With an enslaved eagerness, Scott asked the question Lauder had put in vain. "What will you do now?" But Lymond, stretching, caught him by the arm and forced him into a chair beside him.

"Wait a moment. It is gradually forcing itself on my consciousness that I am not to be divided into four pieces tomorrow. No appointment with Apollyon. You appear to have made a decision about my life far more arbitrary than any I made about yours..

Scott's voice was uncertain. "I owed you that much, at least..

"You didn't owe me anything," said the Master. 'There's an unnatural conspiracy to keep me alive, that's all. I hope to G.o.d you don't regret it. I hope to G.o.d I don't regret it. How the h.e.l.l did you manage to thrash Palmer at cards?.

Delight rose within Scott's soul. Not expecting Lymond to say more, and not knowing that he dared not say more, the young Buccleuch explained, while the Master dressed.

* * *The Culters' house in Bruce's Close had a red roof and a motto over every window; but inside it was comfortable and convenient, with two separate bedrooms and a parlour with a wide, light window above the garden for Sybilla's sewing.

At midnight the Dowager ordered her son and daughter-in-law to bed, promising firmly to retire. But she sat on at her window, a still shadow on the bright square of rosebushes outside, and every separate nerve in her body trembled and ached.

For five days Sybilla had launched herself and all her bountiful possessions-her brains, her charm and her money-in a single-minded bombardment of authority. Her friends and contemporaries of church and n.o.bility, the suitors of the Court of Session, the power.. ful of both s.e.xes at Court, had all felt the impact of the Dowager's fear, and many of them tried to help because she was Sybilla, and people would lend her a needle to cobble the moon to her gates if she asked for it.

To no avail. From the start she had known that nothing could save this son's life for her: the law recognized proof, and there was no proof. On his return from the Committee Richard had been made to repeat again and again the pattern of question and answer. They had thrashed the case out, the three of them, until they were exhausted; and she had sent her son and Mariotta to bed.

She moved, and the dark roses s.h.i.+vered. There was an Ewe had three lambs, and one of them was black. What of it? Sheep are commonly white: does that make white una.s.sailable, any more than the pure light of the sun before the prism? How may a breed freshen except under mutation? How improve its whiteness except by admitting a rogue cobalt to its candid meadows? . . . Not that the misery had been lived through quite in vain. In all her life she had never heard Richard speak as, distressed and vehement, he had spoken to them that evening.