Part 23 (1/2)

It was bitter delight: to feel Lymond, the cool, una.s.sailable Lymond, wince beneath his grip. He pressed with all his weight, and felt the other man jerk. Then, brutally as Dandy Hunter had done, Scott felt a surge through their locked limbs; cramp gripped his legs, and he was raised in the air and smashed on the rubble.

His own grip weakened. ”G.o.d . . . I.

The powerful muscles opened again; again he fell, and this time struck his head, his senses spinning with the pain. He had rolled halfway across the Master's legs; he had no sort of hold at all; Lymond could do as he pleased . . . but he wasn't going to. Scott's right hand was free. Thank G.o.d, to be reminded in time. His right hand was free; his jerkin was tom apart; and beneath it, strapped to his body, was the small, sharp knife he had put there long before.

It came to his hand like a child. He balanced it a moment in the dark, cheris.h.i.+ng it; and then with a grim and G.o.dly triumph, drove it up to the hilt into Lymond's hard flesh.

The blow delivered, energy, initiative and even normal sensation left Scott. Lying flaccid on the dark stones he was aware of noise and vibration; aware dimly that the roof was shaking and men~s voices, shouting, were calling his name. There was a crash, and plaster and stone rattled about him, sifting lax into eyes and hair. He laid a hand over his face.

Matthew was shouting, and now he knew. Of course. Stoneshot first, then Greek fire. He ought to get up and stop them; after a moment he did get up. In the dark, there was no movement beside him.

Painfully blundering, he found the stairway and began climbing just as Matthew, working obstinately in the darkness from wall to wall, found and fell on his knees beside Lymond.

Covered with dust and mould, with blood on his hands from the sharp stones, Scott waited in the open air with the rest while Sir Andrew Hunter and a few others went down with lights. He had resented the sardonic cheer they gave when he appeared.

Presently, Sir Andrew also returned to the daylight. Collected as always, he walked over to Scott and took from the boy's hand the bridle of Lymond's riderless horse. ”Wake up! It's a fine June day now..

Scott changed colour. ”Can we go?.

”When your friend has mounted,” said Sir Andrew calmly. ”What did you think you had done to him? He has a bad shoulder, that's all.” And Scott, the colour driven out of his face, looked ~where he nodded.

In the centre of Hunter's men, Lymond was waiting equably, handkerchief to shoulder, while they prepared to truss and mount first Turkey, then himself. He was as dirty as Scott, the stained whites.h.i.+rt gaping between broken points and his face white with shock and masked with stone dust. But there had been, clearly, no lethal, no maiming wound.

Sir Andrew Hunter's gaze was critical. ”The fabulous Lymond, trapped like a rat in a cellar..

”Like cats to catmint. Everyone finds you so irresistible, Dandy: are you surprised?” Lymond had heard him.

He was unhelpful, but they put him firmly on horseback, and in a moment they were moving, with the Master riding between Hunter and Scott, and Turkey well back in the cavalcade.

The rain had gone, leaving a haze of suns.h.i.+ne. Heartsease quailed under their hoofs and honeysuckle dispensed bees and a yearning of scent; the elms pa.s.sed like weeping seneschals. Behind them, dwindling into a green silence, lay the convent, denying its fractured bones to a tranquil grave; ravished and inviolate; wearing the nimbus of its injuries like a coronal.

But neither Francis Crawford nor the boy Will Scott looked back.

* * *Twenty miles from Threave, Lymond's silence became intolerable to Hunter as well as to Scott, already pierced between the shoulder blades by Matthew's gaze. Then Sir Andrew said something at last which aroused the man between them. Lymond looked at him suddenly, and the flexible mouth curled. ”Other than apologizing for not being Asmodeus, what can I do?.

Scott's cla.s.sical knowledge fell short of the reference, but he saw Hunter change from red to white. Lymond went on. ”Do you usually bolt your rats with other people's terriers?.

”Your young friend came to me of his own free will..

”Initium sapientiae,” said Lymond absently, ”est timor Domini. You may look in vain for the sapientia, but the timor, I promise you, will be very much in evidence.~~”I don't think he'll have much to fear. There's another saying. Wha sits maist high shall find the seat maist slidder..

There was a spark in Lymond's eyes. ”Or- Like to die mends not the kirk yard: how does that one suit you? And how is Mariotta?.

Sir Andrew answered repressively. ”Lady Culter is alive. No thanks to your monstrous efforts..

”Sadder, but also subtler. The intellect and its cultivation, as some-one once said, bring a higher form of fertility and a n.o.bler pregnancy into human life.” Having delivered this sentence with perfect aplomb, Lymond addressed Scott. ”Cheer up. Better luck next time..

Scott snapped without dignity, ”You would have done the same to me!” and Lymond was about to answer when his gaze went beyond Scott. Stark-free of frivolity, his voice rang out. ”My G.o.d,” said Lymond furiously. ”No! You fool..

For behind them, the column had burst asunder.

Scott, holding the Master's reins fast with his own, saw that Matthew, the wily campaigner, had seized his moment. While the men around him, grinning, listened to the entertainment ahead, Mat had kicked his horse out from the others and riding at full gallop, disappeared through the trees.

It was easy to follow, and they did, strung out through the wood while Turkey crashed with unnecessary violence through scrub and undergrowth, his hands freed with the practice of a dozen similar embarra.s.sments. Unluckily the wood wasn't big. As the trunks thinned out, they caught sight of him, and Sir Andrew gave an order. A shower of goose feathers hissed through the air.

Turkey continued riding for perhaps a minute after; then he lurched forward, his bald pink head bewigged among the tangled grey mane of his horse.

Scott, his sword out and his hand tight on Lymond's reins, worked both horses around and cantered through to the others. There he dismounted, and after a moment's hesitation, untied the Master and let him get down.

Turkey Mat, pulled from his horse, was lying flat on his back under the trees, with Sir Andrew bent over him. As Scott and Lymond came up, Dandy straightened. He was rubbing a handful of gra.s.s between his palms, and they s~w the skin stained green and red. ”I'm sorry, Scott,” he said. ”Whatever possessed the fool to do that?.

Scott, knowing very well, said nothing, but Lymond dropped like a shadow beside the heavy, scuffed body. ”Mat,” he said quickly.

The tough, scarred face was twitching with pain, but Turkey opened his eyes and grinned into Lymond's blue ones. The grin disappeared. ”Did yon greetin' wean stop ye?.

”No. I didn't go. Mat, you d.a.m.ned senseless fool!.

The p.r.o.ne man opened blue lips. ”It's nae loss: I'd have been sweir tae see ye leave, and me with nothing but my big wame on mymind from morning to night. Tell Johnnie I got there one step ahead of his mixtures..

”I will..

”And tell the boy he's a-.

”No,” said Lymond. ”It was my b.l.o.o.d.y fault..

”Aweel. I'm not for arguing,” said Turkey, and his voice suddenly was hardly audible. ”If you get a chance at the gold, my bit's yours. And the croft. Appin's a nice place,” he said with a faint wistfulness. ”But it's d.a.m.ned cold in winter..

And his eyes, moving aimlessly among the trees behind Lymond's head, suddenly halted there with a pleased look, as if a sunny beach and a flat board and a pair of celestial dice had manifested themselves among the leaves.

* * *Violence was the odour of Threave. As the rose and the rat and the whale and the beaver yield their essence, so the glands of Threave answered love, warmth and terror with dispa.s.sionate violence.

It was two hundred years old. Under the Black Douglases, the River Dee which islanded it had cherished blood as its native weed. Under the Maxwells it gathered to itself a robust bride; it cast its suggestive shadow on John Maxwell's exchanges with England, and it let fall its mailed fist at random to flex its power the while.

When Hunter's long train, with his disreputable prisoner, swept through Causewayend, forded the Dee and clattered into the courtyard at Threave, the reception, fremescent to a degree, gave fierce delight to Scott and allowed him temporarily to forget the raw episode of Turkey Mat's end.

About Lymond's sinful head, publicly exposed for the first time, blew the rages, the jeers, the curses and the gibes which had five years' ripening to them. He sailed through them as white and insouciant as swansdown but, thought Scott, his emotions for once must be a little irregular-have I touched some pulse? Or will this sudden cxposure do it for me.

John Maxwell was away, to Scott's overwhelming relief. Until Buccleuch came for Lymond, Dandy and he would be pa.s.sionate jailers. Not that Maxwell. whatever his past relations with the Master, would have risked an inch of his new security to help him; but one wouldsavour the situation more expansively away from that remembering yellow eye.

Threave, pockmarked and exigent, hung above them. While a temporary prison was being made, Lymond, fingered impiously off his horse, was lashed to one of the four drum towers of the wall. He was now very white; his fingers un.o.btrusively linked in the tethering ring behind held him firmly erect. Scott, talking to a fleshy man with a thick yellow eye and a jovial smile, the captain of Threave, looked away as the crowd surged around the drum tower; and then was driven to look back as, mysteriously, the quality of noise changed.

They reached the wall none too soon. Lymond, out of what looked like sheer boredom, had begun answering back. Scott could hear the sound of his voice, followed by a roar; then someone else speaking, then Lymond and another roar. The response was not threatening, it was appreciative. In a minute, Scott recognized with fury, it would become laughter, and laughter like Cupid is a notorious locksmith.

For their essay in comedy the crowd had launched a mock trial. Pressing thickly about the prisoner's negligent person they clamoured accusations and he replied instantly with the kind of double and even triple entendre commonly fished for at the bottom of an alepot and commonly never caught. The captain roared with laughter; he was wildly amused and even joined in; he saw, to Scott's annoyance, no possible harm in it. The castle had emptied itself; so had the kitchens and the b.u.t.tery and the brewery and the bakehouse and the stables and the byres.

The little performance lasted ten minutes, and then Lymond suddenly stopped. They slung their ripostes at him and this time he shrugged his shoulders impatiently. They shrieked and he was silent; they went on shouting and he ignored them. Perhaps he had tired of the game; perhaps under its besetting pressures, invention had failed. At any rate, there was no mistaking the hubbub now. These were threats, and these, clattering off the tower wall, were stones.

The captain forced his way through. ”None of that, now: we want the fellow alive. What's happened to you? Answer them, can't you, when you're civilly spoken to?.

Lymond said nothing, but his stare was an insult.