Part 17 (1/2)

”Have no qualms,” said Lymond gravely. ”We are well matched.” Maxwell, astonis.h.i.+ngly, laughed and went out.

Lyrnond shut the door. ”And that,” he said to Scott, ”is how mulberry trees grow into silk s.h.i.+rts..

”Yesh,”' replied Will Scott.

Lymond tilted the wine jar toward him. Then, with a sardonic flash toward the faintly squinting Scott, he opened the door, crossed the pa.s.sage and shouted over the gallery rail. ”You keep a d.a.m.ned dry house, Molly..

She was sitting under the blazing lights at a crooning, besotted table of guests: she raised two jewelled arms to Lymond. ”Come down, my duck. We're a poor, sleepy company down here..

The Master grinned, surveying the spent and torpid room. Men snored; drinkers drooped and murmured about the slow fires; and s.n.a.t.c.hes of wavering harmony smothered themselves in the reeking, smoke-hazed air. In a corner, the gypsies slept in a limp heap like gillyflowers. Mat had reappeared and lay stomach down on a bench, his bald head rosy in the firelight.

”Have I to teach you your business?” asked Lymond.

”Give us excitement!” demanded Molly. ”Come down! Have you lost your storms? Come and enliven us, Lucifer!.

Lymond withdrew an arm, found his tankard, and spun it accurately at Matthew, who awoke and fell off his bench with a crash.

”It's a terrible thing,” said the Master, ”to lose consciousness at the very start of a party. Molly has a hogshead of claret in her wine store, Matthew. Bring it out for her, and we shall part the Red Sea again. Then, Molly, my sweet honey-mountain, my day's darling, we shall want both fires made up, and fresh candles and more of them, and music..

”And you, my love,” said Molly. ”But there's devil a note of music in it. The players are as drunk as sows..

The yellow-haired man straightened, and his laughter brought Scott wavering into the pa.s.sage. ”There are nine devilish notes not two yards away. Have you forgotten, my sweeting, who is in room number one?.

”h.e.l.l!” said Molly, and added a word which even the wives of innkeepers seldom p.r.o.nounce. ”Did I not shut the door?.

Lymond shook his head.

”No!” screamed Molly. She clapped her white hands over her ears and the rubies flared. ”No!” A sleepy voice from a private room raised itself in complaint, and one or two somnolent drinkers, rousedby the shout, made querulous inquiry. ”But yes!” said the Master, and disappeared.

The vast room, swimming in heat and hazy light, and heavy with dreaming murmurs and drunken croonings, sank into torpor. Will, propping his elbows on the rail, stared below and saw that Molly, her fists still over her ears, had doubled over the table in mild hysteria. Her eyes were tight shut.

Then several things happened at once.

A dim thunder outside the arcades heralded Matthew with the hogshead; the fires flared with fresh coal and peats, and a white dazzle searched the floor as candies were renewed.

A little silence fell; the silence, fateful and perspiring, of the imminent storm.

Then a desolate, mammoth, mourning Troll inflated its lungs and uttered. Through the shocked air tore a stern, snoring shriek followed by another. It became a united bray; the bray a wobble; the wobble a tune. High above the gallery bal.u.s.trade swam a human head, in-humanly antennaed; the cheeks plimmed, the eyes closed, the fingers leaped, and all audible h.e.l.l released itself. Tammas Ban Campbell, piper to Argyll, ransomed prisoner of Pinkie now travelling north and home, stalked around the three-sided gallery of the Ostrich and gave them Baile Ioneraora so that beam roared at beam and door at door; so that gla.s.ses smashed and windows rattled and hams vibrated and fell; so that sleepers snorted and leaped awake with their dirks in their fists, sots opened bloodshot, maddened eyes, and the sober dissolved according to temperament into shocked laughter or oaths.

There was a man in the corner who went down on his knees and prayed, but the rest of the Ostrich rose and roared, like a summer herd of caaing whales, to the foot of the stairs to the gallery.

Lymond met them at the top, sword in hand and his eyes like jewels. He had peeled off his doublet and had locked every door in the pa.s.sage, as thunderous hammerings testified. Will, dazed but willing, hesitated behind him and Mat, summoned not an instant too soon, was at his side.

Faced with three sword blades in the narrow stair, the tidal wave stopped. Lymond looked down on the carpet of crimson, jostling faces and pitched his voice against the bellow of the pipes, which had switched to Gillie Calum. ”What about it, my dormice! D'you mislike my lullaby?.

A tall well-built man in a green fustian coat screamed, ”Listen, myfriend put your walking mandrake on Ben Nevis and myself on the Cheviot, and it's still too close for my liking. Do you stop him, or do we make the two of you digest the drones for your supper? There's honest folk trying to sleep down here..

A chorus of a.s.sent bore them two steps up; a flash of the sword drove them three down again. ”Such nice, fine, miniken fingering,” said Lymond. ”You should skip like Alexander. Where are your ears? The best piper in Scotland: eight warblers between the bars, and eleven if you give him whisky between the second and third variation. Sleep! Whoever slept at the Ostrich between midnight and five in the morning? You're a trashy, glum company for men of music. Are you awake yet? Then bring the blood out of your feet and up to your fingers. My companion and I will give you a match..

”Oh, G.o.d!” said Molly. ”I knew it! I knew it! Stop it, you mad poet, will you?.

”A match?” repeated Green-fustian, out of continuing cries of rage and distress. ”Give us the piper, that's all we ask. Or the pipes. But unhabble the one from the other, for G.o.d's sake. Blood! There's not a drop of mine moved from one vein to the next since that belly-prophet of a Scotchman corked his mouth with the chanter..

”All right,” said Lymond. ”We have the piper, and you have the women; and here's the proposal. If you've a wrestler among you able to throw Matthew here or myself, he gets free access to Tammas and the pipes. If we throw one of you, we earn the kitty that's with you. Shoulders once to the floor mean a throw, and no bodily harm to come to the piper. How's that for a wager?.

The man in green fustian, who appeared to be spokesman for the crowd, grinned and looked around. ”I'm for it: fair enough. What about it, dormice? Are you ready to fight for your rights, or d'you like being miscalled by a towheaded daisy with a private banshee?.

There was a roar of response. Scott, watching through the vague fumes of alcohol, saw that the faces were mostly good-humoured: the fancy had fired loose imaginations and the guests, now fully awake, appeared ready for anything. The man in green turned back; above the variations to Spaidsearachd Cloinn Mhic Rat/i he shouted, ”It's a match. You and your friend to wrestle any of us, turn about for a single fall. If either of you is thrown, the winner gets to silence the piper. If any of us is thrown, we give up any la.s.s we have with us. We'll play it on the floor, and I'll stand guarantee for all of us down here..

Lymond waved a.s.sent. The party flowed back down and into the common room in tumult and laughter and a ifiling of tankards, while a centre s.p.a.ce was cleared for the fighters. Lymond held the hilt of his sword to Scott. ”Your job is to guard the stairs for the winner..

Scott eyed the blade. ”Up here?.

”Up here. G.o.d, I thought you were musical?” Scott closed his eyes and took the sword. Tammas, reaching the third wall, turned and paced steadily back, and Will shuddered and leaned to look over the bal.u.s.trade.

The transformation was memorable. Lit like a stage, with a tester of candlelight, the improvised wrestling ground was ringed by the audience, hotly vociferous, the girls squealing in flattered excitement. In the centre, white s.h.i.+rts rebuffing the light, Lymond and the tall spokesman stalked each other, arms hanging, on soft stockinged feet. Green-fustian leapt; the two figures hurtled, rolled, separated, joined and clasped. There was a gasping cry, a crash, and Lymond, laughing, stood over a p.r.o.ne figure.

The throw was agreed a fair one. Sally, giggling, wiped her leman's scratched face, saw him escorted off, shaking his head, and ran upstairs to hang over the gallery with Will. Beside them Tammas, turning smartly, took a deep breath and started, with a nice appreciation, on Cath f uathasach, Pheairt.

Mat took on a stout blacksmith with thews like tubers and threw him in five minutes. Joan came upstairs.

Lymond threw for the fun of it a young clerk and a Dutch pioneer, neither of which had a girl to give up, and retired for Mat who, in conquering a shoemaker from Chester with an agile wrist, inadvertently broke his arm and, all solicitude, splinted and bound it and shared a pot of ale with the victim before the play was resumed.

He found it a little difficult after that to find a challenger, the more so as the audience by now was making more noise than the piper; but he heaved a lawyer through a window, and the Master followed up by winning Elizabeth from a lithe packman, who put up a cracking fight for twelve minutes. This he topped by two easy successes, each of which was greeted by storms of applause.

There was a brief caesura.

Molly herself brought fresh wine to Lymond and he took it, grinning, in one hand while blotting the sweat from his eyes with the other. ”Drink, you wildcat: did I ask for this? I must have been mad. Giveover, now, before the whole house is in s.h.i.+vers and shards. Stop that d.a.m.ned piper and let's have some music..

Lymolid raised his eyebrows. ”You'll have to throw me first..

”That I will!” said Molly purposefully.

Scott, deaf and enchanted in the gallery, and the whole row of pretty heads at his side saw the concerted rush on Lymond: his a.s.sailants downed him without malice and eighteen stones of Molly planted themselves on his chest. ”A throw!” said Molly, and Lymond, half buried, gave a choked whoop of laughter and raised a defeated hand in signal to Tammas.

Silence, like a supernatural thunderbolt, burst upon the Ostrich.

It lasted perhaps two seconds. Then a shout of responsive laughter hit the roof, the guitars and fiddles of the gypsies started up, and life flowed across the common room. Lymond, released, flung his head back and, viewing his winnings, gave them solemn dispensation to descend for the s.p.a.ce of the dance. He asked for and obtained some chalk, and set to marking his and Mat's property where the cross was most obvious and the whim most appreciated. Then he swept Molly off her feet and into the dance, and the room rocked with beating feet and whirling bodies, and the candle flames bent like comets in the wind of pa.s.sing skirts.

Scott, laying down his sword and with Joan's hand in his, ran downstairs and into the rollicking hail and danced blisters into his shoes; he drank; he danced; he had something else to eat, and he danced again. Then, as muscles and musicians tired, the trestles and benches were drawn to the fires and song after song went around until the choruses became rounds, and the rounds trios, and the trios duets, and finally one solitary, happy, wavering voice made itself heard.

Scott's eyes closed. Joan and the other woman had disappeared, and Lymond was missing. Thick murmurs vying with the snores finally ceded to them. His head, brighter than the fire, jerked, drooped, and laid itself at last on the table. The Ostrich slept.

At five o'clock Lymond, dressed again in his riding clothes, came to Scott and took the alepot out of his lax hand. ”Dronken, dronken, y-dronken. A wilted and forfoughten Marigold,” he said caustically. ”Upright, sluggard. The fog's lifted, and I propose to be gone before daylight..

Will didn't remember getting up. From nowhere, it seemed, a sweet, blowing air touched the sweat on his face, and he saw that hewas in the courtyard of the Ostrich, in the flinching light from the broken window; that his horse was beside him, ready saddled; and that Matthew, mounted, was waiting at the gate. Lymond threw him up, then mounted himself and raised his head.