Part 21 (2/2)

Agnes looked down. Between her fingers, dark with melted snow but warm and perfect, was a st.u.r.dy red rose. She said ”Oh!” in asurprised delight, and repeated it as his words penetrated. ”From Threave?.

”From Jack Maxwell. With his respectful love. Well, Lady Herries:are you disappointed?” asked the Master of Maxwell.

She shook her head. ”I think,” said Agnes, with a young and tender naYVet~, ”you are as handsome as your letters, sir..

* * *Long after the parapet was empty, a clatter of hoofs foretold a latecomer approaching the Castle Wynd, riding alone on a stumbling horse. The captain of the guard admitted him instantly and, soaked and battered with mud, Lord Culter dismounted and walked into the yard.

Richard had come straight from Perth, and brought with him from the Provost of Perth an account of the raid on Balinerino Abbey in which he was notably concerned. This he gave to one of the Queen's officers, being hardly presentable enough to ask for audience himself. On the same grounds, he asked that his wife should be brought to the Palace to speak to him.

Crossing the flying bridge from Hall to Palace, Mariotta was aware of a very creditable sense of relief. At least the bloodhound had taken no actual harm this time; although his behaviour remained erratic, antisocial and evasive. Mariotta marched into the Palace with reconciliation to sell, at a price; Richard rose to welcome her with an expression which the Dowager would have recognized as discomfort and guilt. In the net result, Mariotta looked angry and Richard looked wooden, and the opening round was not one to inspire confidence.

This was because Richard made the mistake of blaming his absence on the fighting outside Perth. Mariotta heard him in silence, and then inquired stonily about the tracing of the glove. Richard's account of this was lamentable. Told in the cold light of reason, the sobering of Jamie Waugh sounded remarkably like a drunken brawl: the exact points of difference were hard to define. He was brought to admitting, austerely, that the entire trip had been a wild-goose chase expressly fabricated by Lymond; he then apologized again for his absence and indicated that, if she would allow him, he would leave for Bogle House and change his clothes.

Mariotta listened to it all, sitting judicially in a whirl of velvet with all the Culter jewels and the emerald necklace for moral support.

She said thoughtfully, ”I wonder you didn't tell us where you were going? Were you afraid we should refuse to let you leave?.

Richard looked at her quickly, then studied the floor. ”I knew you might be worried. As I said, I expected to be back quite soon..

”We were very worried. You don't think,” said Mariotta carefully, ”that it might even have been helpful to talk it over beforehand?.

”Oh?” said Richard. ”Who with?.

Lady Culter got up and stalked to the door. ”The Great Chan of China,” said she with awful and unaccustomed sarcasm, and swept out.

At that precise moment, the Dowager Queen sent for him. So he had after all to cross to the Hall in his travel-stained dress, and had a brief interview with Mary of Guise, magnificent on her dais with laughter and French wit for canopy. She had some shrewd questions to ask; then she abandoned business and introduced him to her compatriots and chafled him on his pretty wife. Richard who, when clean, was a presentable as well as a solid person, responded adequately and at length was allowed to go. He got as far as the first door, and was arrested by a vigilant figure which whisked him out of sight around the standpost.

”Stay there while I speak to you. If Wat sees you, he'll burst,” said Lady Buccleuch. ”What's come over you? You'll be a fat old bigot like Buccleuch if you keep on at this rate. Never mind. Here's the point-Wat's made a rendezvous with the boy..

For a moment, she thdught the man looked at her as if she was talking Hebrew; then his face changed and he sat down, a trifle heavily. ”By G.o.d, has he? How did he get in touch? Will Lymond be there?.

”Will sent a message-they met at that cattle raid affair, I think. I don't know if Lymond is involved-officially, I don't know anything: Sybilla is the one in Wat's confidence at the moment. But I got a wee glisk a the note when it came, and it said-.

”Wait a bit.” Richard rubbed two fingers and a thumb over his brow, transferring to it a long smear of harness dye. ”Before you say any more. Buccleuch and I had words recently. We're not on good terms, and we've got different opinions about how this business of Lymond should be treated. You know all that. The last thing Buccleuch wants is to have this piece of information in my hands..

”What Buccleuch wants and what he gets,” said Dame Janet serenely, ”don't always coincide in my experience. Don't be a fool,man. You may whinny at the method, but you can't deny we've got motive and provocation enough to defend it to the Pope, if need be. With or without Lymond, Will's engaged to meet Buccleuch in the beech wood at the foot of the Crumhaugh-the hill between Branxholm and Slitrig Water-at dusk on the first Sunday in February.” She rose laboriously. ”There you are. Do what you like about it..

Richard looked past her into the Hall. A new dance had begun and the Queen-the youngest Queen, aged five-was leading it, cheeks like fruit below a fiercely combed and s.h.i.+ning head, one arm erect as a flag in her partner's grasp. The lines of long, slow sleeves marched and swayed with the music; coloured limbs were pleached and latticed in pattern. The music, piping, thudding, nasal, escorted the murmur of voices. Somewhere in one of the ranks Mariotta was dancing, and behind her, Agnes Herries with the Master of Maxwell.Richard looked down at his own muddy clothes and rubbed his face again. ”Yes.” He added abruptly, ”You understand, I'm not interested in Will. I want to take my brother..

”Do that, and the boy will come back of his own accord,” said Janet. ”Look, there's Wat hunting for me. Goodbye. If you've a grain of sense you'll go straight home to bed..

”Good night-and thank you. I'll take care Buccleuch doesn't hear where my information came from,” said Culter.

”Och, I'll tell him myself,” said Dame Janet. ”Just so soon as it's all over. He'll be all the better of a good row after mincing away with Kincurd and his morals. Wicked Wat of Buccleuch! Saints preserve us.” She turned back into the Hall~ and Richard went home.

3.

Another Royal Lady Enters the GaMeTo Lord Grey of Wilton, the Protector's Lord Lieutenant of the North, Gideon Somerville reported in full the incident of the cattle raid and of the a.s.sault on his home and the taking of Sir George Douglas's letter. He was frank and even pointedly detailed with one exception: he held back the name of the interloper. Gideon had no intention of being asked to reopen negotiations with him, should he be known to Lord Grey.

The interview took place in the Castle of Warkworth on the bright, bracing coast of Northumberland.

For domestic reasons, the English Protector urgently needed asplendid success at something, and his first instinct was to put a stop to the squabbling inaction in the north. This he did, characteristically, by ordering his Lords Warden to meet and devise an instant plan for, first, devastating the House of Buccleuch; second, pulverizing the House of Douglas; and third, joining the power of the three Border Marches and burning Scotland up to the eyebrows. The object of this last, as ever, was to wrest the child Queen from these antique and wiry arms and rear her, unequivocably, as the bride of the King of England. The Lords Warden, answering faintly, undertook to excel themselves and arranged to meet on this last Friday in January at the Castle of Warkworth. The Lords Warden detested each other, but they distrusted the Protector more.

Gideon was present at the historic meeting, and with him was Lord Wharton, who had spent a night at Flaw Valleys on his way. The fourth member was Sir Thomas Bowes, a large and silent man who was Warden of the Middle Marches.

As senior commander, Lord Grey chose to open the meeting with a striking list of his activities on the east of Scotland. In the front of his mind was a courteous desire to complete the military picture for his fellow officers. In the back of it marched a procession of letters from the Lord Protector, making concise reference to some aspect of Lord Wharton's energy and initiative on the west. He went on.

”Now, what we have to do most urgently is to break this mood of optimism. This French arrival has done a lot of damage: men and money pouring into Scotland from the French king, and the promise of more-we can't ignore that. And your friend Lennox crawling into Dumfries and home again like a half-drowned kitten, Wharton, hardly had the appearance of a military tour de force..

”The Earl of Lennox, like the baker of Ferrara, thinks he is made of b.u.t.ter,” said Wharton dryly. ”I am in no position to disabuse him of the idea..

”Well, he's no tactician: that's obvious,” said Grey. ”Figureheads are dangerous. Would never touch 'em. And if I had to, I should go with them and make d.a.m.n sure they didn't get into mischief..

”I bow to expert opinion, of course. But the gentleman is married to the King's cousin. The effect is to make him touchy about bearleading..

”Tact!” said Lord Grey.

”It is a little difficult,” said Lord Wharton, ”to convey acceptably to a n.o.ble gentleman that he is an interfering fool.” And he let apause develop just sufficiently before going on. ”If I might suggest it, we should be better employed in considering just how Lord Lennox might be used-since inescapably he must be used-in the next combined raid. And how he can help us against the Douglases. .

They had got exactly so far when Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, was announced.

a a *Meg Douglas in girlhood had possessed the gorgeous, leonine sort of beauty that her uncle Henry VIII had frittered away, and of which her father, the Earl of Angus, was the vestigial affidavit. In sixteen years' residence in England, careening at Henry's whim from near-throne to near-block, Margaret had kept her splendour.

Her mother, Margaret Tudor of England, had been married to King James of Scotland nearly fifty years before; and had stayed in Scotland to become Angus's wife when her first husband lost his life at Flodden.

Now Henry was dead; his sister was dead; Angus had married again and Margaret Douglas had become the good-conduct prize which persuaded the Earl of Lennox to abandon his singiehanded bid for the Scottish throne, and throw in his lot with England. She was not an unwilling bride. Once, when Henry was in the throes of illegitimizing his children, the Lady Margaret had been heiress to the throne of England. The royal blood which she and Lennox shared and which ran in their children was a powerful claim to both the English and Scottish thrones. Lennox might be a bad tactician, but his wife was not.

Her entry into the solar at Warkworth was consciously magnificent. Gideon, effacing himself, studied her. Her hair was a dark, lichen-blond and the features strongly marked in a pale skin, the mouth warm and decided, the chin cleft, the eyes observant. His impression was one of natural graces overlaid by years of merciless experience.

She was speaking with perfect composure. ”I'm afraid my family have been troubling you greatly. It's never easy for an Englishman to understand all the pressures Scots are subject to..

No one had any illusions that this was a social call. Lord Wharton was blunt. ”Saving your presence, Lady Lennox, I have made no secret of my views about the Douglases. I know the difficulties they are under. But until they show themselves friends, we must treatthem as enemies. I have raided Angus's land and Drumlanrig's land on instructions from the Lord Protector, and I regret if Lord Grey feels that his friends.h.i.+p with Sir George and his private promises of immunity are endangered, but further than that I cannot go..

The Lord Lieutenant was taut with temper and the need to preserve the social decencies. ”I dislike, as any gentleman would, the appearance of breaking my pledged word,” he said. ”The damage done, however, I agree that the Douglases have taken unwarrantable revenge and, as you know perfectly, I have pledged my word to punish them..

”We'll be lucky if we get the chance,” said Wharton bluntly. ”But in case we do, I've asked everyone who is able, to report to me for service as soon as they can. If you will carry out your second raid on Buccleuch, Lord Lieutenant, I shall put all the force I can to shake the Douglases out of their bushes..

”Wait a moment.” Lady Lennox spoke, and both Grey and Wharton, intent as circling dogs in their antagonism, showed their surprise. ”The Protector told me his intention was that you should enter Scotland again, Lord Grey, and form a new centre of operations at Haddington, just south of Edinburgh. Is that right?.

”The Protector wanted all three armies to invade at once, but that is impossible because of the weather and the ground, Lady Lennox. Quite impossible. In a month's time, I might be in a position to march to Haddington. In the meantime, we are to attack Buccleuch..

”I understand.” She looked at her wine. ”In that case, it seems a pity for Lord Wharton to draw on himself the undivided attention of the west. Would it not be better to wait a week or two for better weather, and then to synchronize your raids?.

Bowes ventured. ”But time is against us, Lady Lennox. The French-.

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