Part 12 (2/2)

”No, of course not. . . . What about Crouch?.

”Departed, protesting, with the rescuer. G.o.d knows what the man wanted; my impression is he hardly knew himself. All I got out of it were a couple of English names they bandied about; if I had any contacts over the Border I'd follow them up for the devil of it, to see if I couldn't track down my agile friend. I don't suppose they mean ,anything at all to you? Gideon Somerville and Samuel Harvey?.

Sir George admitted they didn't, and his commiserations were halted by the arrival of Patey, grousing, with Sir Andrew's finished brooch. Sybilla had seen it being altered. She admired it again, listening still; but the conversation had drifted to less interesting channels.

And what duplicity!” said the Dowager much later, describing all this over pheasant at Bogle House to Christian Stewart and herson Richard. ”After telling the rest of us the bruises came from a fall from his horse. But of course Dandy is shrinkingly sensitive about money; heaven knows how he manages to shower his mother with diamonds. It must have been someone he was hoping to ransom, poor man..

”No,” said Richard. ”He was going to exchange him for a cousin of his own held prisoner in England..

The Dowager eyed her son with such gentle surprise that he explained. ”Overheard him discuss it at Drumlanrig. He bought the fellow from George Douglas there..

”Well, I never heard that he had a cousin in England,” said Sybilla; ”and even if he has, I don't see why poor Dandy should have to redeem him. What that man wants is to marry an heiress, although heaven knows I shouldn't ask Medusa to share her castle with Catherine..

Richard, she thought, was looking tired. The weeks she and Mariotta had pa.s.sed at Menteith had been spent by him in hara.s.sing activity. He had visited them once at Inchtalla: that apart, it occurred to the Dowager, he had hardly spent a complete day in his wife's company since the battle.

She had been extremely cross to find him at Bogle House when she arrived there, late, Trom Patey's; to learn that he had been released from those activities she had circuitously arranged for him at the castle, and that Tom Erskine, arriving in his absence, had taken Mariotta and Agnes to the games, leaving (perforce) Christian, who insisted on waiting for herself.

She was considering the next move when fate forestalled her: a roaring separated itself from the excitements of the street, wound up the stairs in increasing volume, and debouched into the room at the tail of a disorganized servant.

”Hey!” said Buccleuch, hauling off his hat and nodding perfunctorily at the ladies. ”I've been looking everywhere for you! You've missed the best of the wrestling!.

”Sir Wat!” said Lady Culter.

”And the jumping's over!” said Buccleuch, unheeding. ”And the running! Where've you been? There's only tilting at the glove, and the ring, and then the Papingo. The b.u.t.t shooting's nearly finished, too, and these d.a.m.ned Kerrs are having it too much their own way.” He made for the door. ”Come on. Where's yqur bonnet?.

”In his room,” said Sybilla, outstaring her son's sharp glance. ”And there it stays. Wat Scott, I knew you had no manners out of your first two wives, but I thought Janet Beaton had taught you how to address a lady..

”But I'm not here to address a lady,” Buccleuch pointed out unwisely. ”I want Richard to-.

”But since you've called, and I'm hostess, I'm afraid you can't avoid it,” explained Sybilla. She agitated her hand bell. ”Malnisey or Canary?.

Buccleuch cast an agonized glance at Richard, got no help and tried Sybilla again. ”We're going to miss the Popinjay,” he pleaded.

”I'm not!” remarked the Dowager. ”I never liked birds, and still less when they talk-Canary, please, John..

It all but succeeded; by the third cup Sir Wat was well launched on a detailed theory about hard snaffles and would have been there yet had not Hunter's face appeared around the door, anxiously addressing Buccleuch and Lord Culter, after a quick bow to the ladies.

”I've to bring you both quickly. They're getting to the Popinjay.” The look which pa.s.sed between Sir Andrew and Buccleuch was the briefest possible, but Sir Wat jumped guiltily to his feet, his eye wandering agitatedly toward Lady Culter.

Sybilla sighed. ”Don't say a word. I can guess. The news of Lymond's challenge is being shrieked from the chimney tops..

Sir Andrew had the grace to look uncomfortable. ”I'm sorry, Lady Culter. But the crowd have got to know that your sons are to compete-.

”Stuff and nonsense,” said the Dowager irritably. ”How can they, with one of them at the horn?.

'They know that,” said Christian from the fireplace. ”It's not a shooting match they're expecting. It's an a.s.sa.s.sination..

”It's no use, my dear,” said Sybilla. ”We are face to face, like poor Janet Beaton, with a severe case of Moral Philosophy, and there is nothing we can do about it..

Lord Culter crossed to the settle and bending down, kissed his mother on the hand and on the cheek. ”It'll be over in an hour,” he said. ”Don't be afraid. I'll come back, if only to teach you the proper meaning of Moral Philosophy..

The door closed behind them all.

* * *”Well, I must say,” said Lady Herries definitely, and loudly enough to turn several interested heads, ”if I were married to Lady Culter, I shouldn't let her spend the whole afternoon at the games alone..

”Thank you very much,” said Tom Erskine, grinning at Mariotta, who sat on his other side.

She smiled politely back, and Mr. Erskine's soul moaned within him. Reduced, singlehanded, to coping with so much potential gunpowder, he felt himself, like the bird which cleans crocodiles' teeth, a.s.sailed by hideous doubts.

Privately, he agreed with the brat. He couldn't blame the Dowager for taking her own measures to keep Richard away, but then, she didn't know how public the thing had become. Neither did the two girls beside him; and the Herries child, ignorant of the challenge as well, insisted on fretting at the subject like a b.i.t.c.h at the spit. Exiled from his own group of friends by his female company and unwilling, in any case, to listen to his neighbours sharpening their wits at Richard's expense, he wished heartily he were elsewhere. A Lindsay won the b.u.t.t shooting and his annoyance increased.

Had he but known it, Mariotta too was battling with an acid frustration. The girl was pretty, rich and wearing new clothes. Today, sitting under streaming banners, with peers and pageantry around her, the green gra.s.s in front and the castle soaring above, was her first public appearance in Stirling since her wedding. And it was Tom Erskine, not Richard, who sat beside her and supplied the endless introductions. It was all exactly as she had insisted and devastatingly flat.

It was flat when the procession of contestants wound down the hill, flags and livery mincing in the sun, musicians playing apoplectically against the wind. When the Queen and the Governor had made a brief appearance among the royal benches. When the tilting was at its best, with deal splinters flying among the spectators; when one of the wrestlers broke an arm.

Then they were pulling arrows out of straw and targets, and clearing the way for a vociferous, red and white centipede, which turned out to be the 120-foot pole and its rigging for the last of the contests: the Papingo Shoot.

”Come along,” said Tom, getting to his feet. ”This is where we move back..

”Why?” said Agnes. ”Oh no, Mr. Erskine: we must see the Papingo first..

Back,” said Tom firmly. ”Unless you want a hatful of arrows. Sixty yards' clearance for spectators: that's the rule. Look! There's the parrot in a wicker cage: see it? They'll take it out and tie it to a crossbar on top of the pole before they hoist it..

At this precise moment, to Tom Erskine's heartfelt delight, reinforcing troops arrived in the person of Sir Andrew Hunter, looking not unlike an uncommonly ruffled parrot himself after a stormy pa.s.sage through the crowd.

He exchanged greetings. ”Papingo shoots! If you haven't the slashed style to begin with, you're certainly wearing it by the end, and be d.a.m.ned to the Continental rules-I thought you might want to compete,” he explained to Erskine. ”I don't-no bow with me, anyway. Oh”-in good-humoured answer to Lady Herries-”I can manage all right at the b.u.t.ts, but I'm a fool at perch shooting. Tom knows..

”Tom certainly does,” said Erskine, grinning. ”The Kilwinning baillies used to hand down their suits of armour like chains of office for when Dandy was perch shooting at the steeple..

Sir Andrew aimed a friendly cuff at him. ”Watch your own step. The old man won't be pleased if you break one of his windows..

Since the Keeper's quarters were not only several hundred feet up the castle rock but invisible, this seemed unlikely. However, Tom replied, ”You're safe, as it happens-I'm not competing either. But if you'd do squire for me, Dandy, I'd be grateful. There's something I must do in town..

He received Hunter's cheerful acquiescence, took leave of the ladies, and burrowed away, to a chorus of exasperated groans.

The field, having encouraged the perilous rearing of the perch, settled down into its new stance. Well back from the danger area there was an air of comfortable expectancy.

Looking around, in the bright, sparkling air, Mariotta found that, like tesserae in a mosaic, her warring emotions had merged, peaceably, into untrammelled pleasure. She was sorry for the papingo, winking blue and yellow in the sun on his high pole; but admired the sunlit castle rock behind him, the wide gra.s.s arena, with its elderly, occupied officials which spread on its three exposed sides; and even found something to please her in the crowd, of which she was one, which impinged on three sides of the gra.s.s behind the barriers, filling all the s.p.a.ce between the arena and the bright rows of pavilions behind.

Protocol, having much the same separatist requirements as a good, fancy jelly, produced much the same results. The layer of peers, in wind-blown furs and large flat hats, was naturally in the best position, next the barrier; then came the clergy, almost indistinguishable except for their plainer headgear; then the merchants and their wives, obviously full of good dinners and dressed at cost, in much better cloth on the whole than the n.o.bles; then the less prominent burgesses and the more reserved professionals, nonclerical lawyers and teachers and Household and other people with minor positions at Court; then all the people one saw in the street, whom one's steward dealt with, and, occasionally, one visited. The fleshers and brewers and smiths and weavers and skinners and saddlers and salters and cappers and masons and cutlers and fletchers and plasterers and armourers and porters and water carriers, and the one-eyed man who had called at Bogle House selling fumigating pans. And country people on holiday, and beggars, and pickpockets (no doubt) and somers and the wandering unemployed.

The sun shone. Trumpets blared; and drew every nose to the field as one of the heralds, his tabard looking a trifle end-of-season and tarnished, made an announcement, inaudible. More trumpets. Then a temporary barrier was removed and the compet.i.tors, fifty n.o.blemen and fifty commoners, filed self-consciously onto the field and around its margin.

One recognized one's friends at once from the banners. The pages were obviously enjoying the parade much more than their masters, who were smiling in a resolute sort of way at their friends in the crowd, indicating that they only did this kind of thing to entertain the tenants. One looked for the warmth and hilarity which halfway through, by unexplained custom, would suddenly enliven and vulgarize the proceedings.

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