Part 16 (1/2)

The gypsy settled on his barrel and flashed the white teeth. ”Why,” he asked Mr. Crouch, ”did Lymond release you from Ballaggan?.

”You may well ask,” said Jonathan strongly. ”To send me home:that's what he said. And what does he do? Lock me up to catch my death in an upended quarry I wouldn't dignify by the name of a house, with robbers and cutthroats for companions-present company excepted; no intellectual resources-present company excepted; and no clothes but the one clean s.h.i.+rt on my back..

”You're away ahead of present company there,” said Johnnie. ”Why?.

”Why? How should I know?” exclaimed Mr. Crouch with exasperation. ”The man hasn't spoken two words to me since I came here..

”Matthew knows why,” said Johnnie, and smiled to himself. The Englishman presented Turkey with a face of indignant inquiry, and Matthew sighed. ”The Master has notions about being discussed behind his back. But it's not all that private. The fact is that since the money began coming in fairly easy we've been filling in our time looking for a gentleman, and Lymond thought you were maybe him.~~”And it's a fine thing for you that you're not.” Bulb's white teeth shone. ”For-at a guess-the man the Master is looking for is the man who betrayed all those treasonable games of his to the Scottish Government five years ago. Am 1 right, Mat?.

Mr. Crouch got up so quickly he upset the cards. ”Is that true? Because-.

”It's right enough. What of it?.

”Because,” said Mr. Crouch with agitation, ”I gave him the names of the two other officers of the household of my own rank in those days. Somerville and Harvey. I told him the names in all good faith. And now, from what you say-.

”You've dispatched at least one of them to a very fancy death,” said Johnnie Bulb cheerfully; and watched Mr. Crouch, making little e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns to himself, shoot in the direction of the door.

Will Scott reached it just before him. ”Where are you off to?.

”I demand,” said Mr. Crouch, ”to see the Master of Culter. or whatever he calls himself. I find his whole treatment of me intolerable, and I intend to tell him so..

”Lymond isn't here,” said Will. With dreamlike punctiliousness the door beside them opened and white fog swam and curdled about them. A shadow, beaded and plateresque, spoke. ”Ring the bells backwards: on his cue, he is here. Who wants me?.

Mr. Crouch peered and was rewarded with a study, sfumato, of unmistakable hands ungboving themselves deftly. Then the door closed and Lymond became wholly visible, embracing Scott and Crouch in the heavy, unpleasant regard. ”Well?.

For a moment the Englishman's heart failed him. Then he said stoutly, ”I demand some satisfaction from you, sir. Four weeks have pa.s.sed since I left Ballaggan in your company, and no effort has been made to restore me to my home. Had I stayed with Sir Andrew Icould expect to be ransomed and back with my Ellen a month before this..

”I doubt it,” said the Master. He threw the gloves on a chair and took an alepot from a tray hurriedly brought him. ”I am disappointed in you, Mr. Crouch. Here you are in our Paestum, warm, fed and rent free, and with a face like cheese rennet. Are your companions dull? Surely you can educate them? Are they poor conversationalists? Then edify them: they should make princely listeners. Do they have little skill at cards? Then ruin them: you have my permission. It is really time,” said Lymond, ”that you were developing some sense of social responsibility.” And he walked to the fire and seated himself, his eyes sliding over Matthew and Johnnie and the scattered cards. Will Scott sat down near him. Mr. Crouch, affronted and unhappy, stood stiff-legged before the fire. He began: ”If I had stayed at Ballaggan-.

The Master, stretching in a leisurely way, looked up at his prisoner. ”The a.s.s with the voice of Stentor,” he remarked. ”That was all you were to Sir Andrew, I regret to tell you. The cheese in the mousetrap, Mr. Crouch..

Will Scott suddenly found his tongue. ”A trap to catch you, sir?” Lymond clicked down his tankard on the table beside him as a fresh one approached. ”Who at Annan knew we were asking about our friend here?.

”The captain at the gate, I suppose, who let us in?” said Scott, remembering.

”Who let us in and suffered accordingly. When the English got out of Annan and my dear brother got in, the captain was left to breathe his last. He did so, I fancy, into Sir Andrew Hunter~s ~-And guessing you had an interest in Crouch, Sir Andrew set about getting hold of him in order to take you . . . but,” said Scott, working out the problem with some care, ”why keep it to himself in that Case?.

”It's not difficult to imagine,” said Lymond dryly. ”First, Sir Andrew is a young man living considerably above his means; second, I have a price of a thousand crowns on my head; and third-” He paused, and Scott saw his eyes were cold. ”The third reason,” said Lymond slowly, ”is still open to conjecture. In any case: the ensuing flight of fancy has cost friend Hunter a broken head and Mr. Crouch-I see-a cold in the head and an unhappy lapse in good manners..

”Now look here,” said Mr. Crouch, too riled to be afraid. ”I've had about enough of this. I was taken a prisoner of war, all right and proper, and I've got the right to be exchanged or ransomed back, as soon as may be, according to the law on both sides. You talk,” said Jonathan heatedly, ”as if it was a privilege to be shut in a d.a.m.ned, filthy-.

”But it is.” Lyniond uncurled and rose; with a long index finger he pressed the t.i.tmouse into his own seat and closed his protesting fingers around the second mug of beer. ”But it is. Such a study you will never meet again. Here we are, our beards smugly shaven, prolixt, corrupt and perpetuall. You have come until the grisly land of mirknes, and with reasonable luck you may leave it yet. And that, Mr. Crouch, is the greatest privilege of all..

Mr. Crouch, pot in hand, made to speak. Lymond forestalled him. ”No. You spend your speech and waste your brain. Accept our gifts and be grateful. Either Gideon Somerville or Samuel Harvey is a douce and G.o.d-fearing man and has nothing but legitimate shock to expect from me. Whatever happens to the other he will probably deserve and would have happened most likely whether you helped or not. But I don't want my birds flushed, Mr. Crouch. When I've spoken to both, you can ~o home..

The prisoner was not rea.s.sured. ”I want to go now,” he said starkly.

”You can,” said Lyniond gently. ”Oh, you can. Whenever you ~wish. Fragment by fragment. Drink your wine and learn grat.i.tude. Quoi! Ce n'est pas encore beaucoup d'avoir de mon gosier retire votre cou?.

Mr. Crouch, succ.u.mbing to force majeure, drank his wine: the Master, turning his back on him, rambled to the card table and idly fingered the scattered suits. ”Blind Fortune, stumbling chance, spittle luck, false dealing-take to cards if you will, Marigold, but must you stare at me like a kitten with its dam? . . . Johnnie, are your gypsies all here?.

”A mile away. I smell wind later on..

”Good. Away thou dully night. Scott, into what impurities has Turkey led you, other than the giddy vaults of gambling?.

”Impurities!” exclaimed Mat, indignant on principle.

”Moral irregularities,” said Lymond. ”Diversions.~~”Oh, diversions,” said Mat, with the air of a man who understoodall. ”G.o.d: we've been that d.a.m.ned hard at it, we havena had a diversion since the last night at the Ostrich..

Scott, his face still crimson, said belligerently, ”I've never been to the Ostrich..

The familiar, chatoyant glint was in Lymond's eyes. ”The Ostrich is in the hands of a common woman, that dwells there to receive men to folly. The question is, do we seek such madness? The answer is, we do..

He looked from one to other of the three men, his eyes flickering. ”Let us go to Paradise, where every man shall have fourscore wives, all maidens. Let us go tonight, and speir at the Monks of Bamirrinoch gif lecherie be sin. . . . Scott?.

Will's eyes were bright. He nodded.

”Matthew? Yes, I'm sure. And Johnnie, who is going in any case..

Johnnie Bulb smiled, and hissed between his teeth. ”Just so..

Scott, caught watching Lymond again, blushed scarlet. The Master addressed him thoughtfully. ”Are you anxious to go? These serpents slay men, and they eat them weeping..

Sophisticated at all costs, Scott quoted Rabelais. ”But the ravens, the popinjays, the starlings, they make into poets..

”No,” said Lymond. ”The popinjays they dismember..

* * *The four men and the gypsies reached the Ostrich Inn at nightfall in thick fog.

During the long ride, Will Scott stayed with Bulb. In the first moments, the Master's sorrel disappeared among the h.o.a.ry beasts of the gypsy troop and stayed there: bursts of m.u.f.fled laughter and occasional s.n.a.t.c.hes of song excoriated the ears of the other three. Turkey Mat, flesh with the flesh of his horse, rode solitary: long tail, fluid back and supine, sentient wrist. Bulb, at Scott's side, sat as an owl might sit, listening for the folding of long gra.s.ses. Once, with the uncanny thought-sense Scott had noticed before, he said, ”He's wild tonight,” and the boy hardly realized another had spoken.

To the new Scott, the core and engrossment of his days was their central figure. Nothing of the warm vulgarities of Branxholm or the artifice of the Louvre or the ambitious, emotional expediencies of Holyrood had prepared him for the inhumanities of Lymond. To themen exposed to his rule Lymond never appeared ill: he was never tired; he was never worried, or pained, or disappointed, or pa.s.sionately angry. If he rested, he did so alone; if he slept, he took good care to sleep apart. ”-I sometimes doubt if he's human,” said Will, speaking his thought aloud. ”It's probably all done with wheels..

A scintilla in the fog was the gypsy's smile. ”He proved very human in September. I seem to recall you had a sore head as well, after the skinnish with Culter and Erskine?.

Scott's horse halted. He swore, kicked it on again, and said, ”I was on my back for four days: d'you mean Lymond was. .h.i.t?.

”Very humanly. By a stone. And led us the devil's own dance bringing him back, Mat and I. We had to leave him under cover- Culter and the rest came about us like bedbugs in an almshouse dorter-and when it was safe to go back, the infallible Lymond had found himself a horse and vanished. We found him, of course..

”Where?.

”It would be a shade indiscreet to say. Particularly with the two most interested parties at our elbow. You perhaps noticed that when we came back there was no mention of our pa.s.sing faiblesse. Lymond, you see, is omnipotent, as you were saying..

The white teeth flashed again. ”Ask me again. I'm going to Edinburgh this Sat.u.r.day, b~t when I come back, we might meet over it. The story'll charm you. You'll maybe want to write a poem about it, if you're that way inclined: how Lymond pa.s.sed the days after Annan. It's a bonny tale..

Scott listened, and hearing in Bulb's voice an acid counterpoint to the high, sudden cackle of gypsy laughter behind, grinned sedately to himself and rode on.

They had kept to the high ground, where the fog was thinner and the ground less rotten. At some point the heather roots and tarnished bracken of Scotland became the heather roots and bracken of England. They crossed the Border like a fixed and hidden constellation and pa.s.sed silently over lost gra.s.s behind the dim, leading form of Johnnie. The whiteness turned to black; the day withdrew, and they breasted the last incline.

Before them, vast golden parhelions blistered the fog. They approached. The colour changed and sharpened, became windows lit by lanterns and candles; and an open door, and faint music and voices, and a warm, stinging fragrance of roast meat curiously laced with musk. Became a courtyard with running ostler-wraiths, appearing andevaporating with the horses and, finally, an enormous shadow in the wide doorway: a monstrous, eighteen-stone shadow of a woman with a fresh, childlike face, who stretched powdered arms, calling, to Lymond. ”It's yourself . . . and Johnnie! Back at last . . . Lord! We thought we were abandoned..