The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett.


Opening Gambit:
Threat to a Castle.

First of ye chekker sail be macioune maid
And sync efter of ye proper moving
Of every man in ordour to his king
And as the chekker schawis us yis forne
Richt so it mayc the kinrik and the crowne,
The wand and all that is therein suthlye,
The chekker may in figour signifyc.






LYMOND is back."
 It was known soon after the Sea-Cane reached Scotland from Campvere with an 
illicit cargo and a man she should not have carried.
Lymond is in Scotland."

It was said by busy men preparing for war against England, with contempt, with 
disgust; with a side-slipping look at one of their number. LLf hear the Lord 
Culter's young brother is back." Only sometimes a woman's voice would say it 
with a different note, and then laugh a little.
Lymond's own men had known he was coming. Waiting for him, in Edinburgh they 
wondered briefly, without concern, how he proposed to penetrate a walled city to 
reach them.
When the Sea-Cane came in, Mungo Tennant, citizen and smuggler of Edinburgh, 
knew nothing of these things or of its passenger. He made his regular private 
adjustment from douce gentility to illegal trading; and soon a boatload of 
taxless weapons, bales of velvet and Bordeaux wine was being rowed on a warm 
August night over the



Nor' Loch which guarded the north flank of Edinburgh, and toward the double 
cellar beneath Mungo's house.
Among the reeds of the Nor' Loch, where the snipe and the woodcock lay close and 
the baillies' swans raised their grey necks, a man quietly stripped to silk 
shirt and hose and stood listening, before sliding softly into the water.
Across four hundred feet of black lake, friezelike on their ridge, towered the 
houses of Edinburgh. Tonight the Castle on its pinnacle was fully lit, laying 
constellations on the water; for within, the Governor of Scotland the Earl of 
Arran was listening to report after report of the gathering English army about 
to invade him.
Below the Castle, the house of the Queen Mother also showed lights. The late 
King's French widow, Mary of Guise, was sleepless too over the feared attack, 
for the redheaded baby Queen for whom Arran governed was her daughter. And 
England's purpose was to force a betrothal between the child Queen Mary and the 
boy King Edward, aged nine, and to abduct the four-year-old fiancee if chance 
offered. The burned thatch, the ruined stonework, the blackened face of Holyrood 
Palace showed where already, in other years, invading armies from England had 
made their point, but not their capture.
Few civic cares troubled Mungo Tennant, awaiting his cargo, except that the 
ceaseless renewi of war against England made a watch at the gates much too 
stringent; and the total defeat by England thirty-four years since at Flodden 
had caused high walls to be flung around Edinburgh which were damnably 
inopportune for a smuggler. And for Crawford of Lymond, now parting the flat 
waters of the Nor' Loch like an oriflamme in the wake of the boat. For where a 
smuggler's load could pierce a city's defences, so could an outlawed rebel, 
whose life would be forfeit if caught.
Ahead, the boat scraped on mud and was lifted silently shoreward. The rowers 
unloaded. Burdened feet trod on grass, crossed a garden, encompassed an 
obstacle, and were silent within the underground shaft leading to the cellar 
below the cellar in Mungo's house. The swimmer, collared with duckweed, 
grounded, shook himself, and unseen followed gently into, and out of the same 
house. Crawford of Lymond was in Edinburgh.
Once there, it was simple. In a small room in the High Street he changed fast 
into sober, smothering clothes and was fed two months' news, in voracious 
detail, by those serving him. ILIL~ And so the Governor's expecting the English 
in three weeks and is fair flittering


about like a hen with its throat cut. . . . You're gey wet," said the spokesman.
"I," said Lymond, in the voice unmistakably his which honeyed his most lethal 
thoughts, ILLI am a narwhal looking for my virgin. I have sucked up the sea like 
Charybdis and failing other entertainment will spew it three times daily, for a 
fee. Tell me again, precisely, what you have just said about Mungo Tennant."
They told him, and received their orders, and then he left, pausing on the 
threshold to pin the dark cloak about his chin. ILLShy,~~ said Lymond with 
simplicity, aLas a dogtooth violet." And he was gone.

In his tall house in Gosford Close with the boar's head in chief over the 
lintel, Mungo Tennant, wealthy and respectable burgher, had invited a neighbour 
and his friend to call. They sat on carved chairs, with their feet on a 
Kurdistan carpet, ate their way through capon and quails, chickens, pigeons and 
strawberries, cherries, apples and warden pears, and noticed none of these 
things, nor even the hour, being at grips with a noble and irresistible 
argument.
At ten o'clock, the rest of the household went to bed.
At ten-thirty, Mungo's steward answered a rasp at the door and found Hob Hewat, 
the water carrier.
The steward asked Hob, in the vernacular, digressing every second or third word, 
what he wanted.
Hob said he had been told to bring water for the sow.
The steward denied it. Hob insisted. The steward described what instead he might 
do with the water and Hob described in detail how he had ruined his spine 
raising the steward's undistinguished water from the well. Mungo, above, thumped 
on the floor to stop the racket and the steward, cursing, gave in. He led the 
way to the apartment beneath the stairs where lived Mungo's great sow, the badge 
of his house, the pet and idiotic pig's apple of his eye, and waited while Hob 
Hewat filled its water trough. He then sat down suddenly under an annihilating 
tap on the head.
Hob, who had done all he had been paid to do, disappeared.
The steward slipped to the floor, and stayed there.
The sow approached her water dish, sniffed it with increasing favour, and 
inserted both her nose and her front trotters therein.
Crawford of Lymond tied up the steward, left the stye, and climbed the stairs to 
Mungo Tennant's apartments.


In the gratified presence of their host, Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch and Tom 
Erskine were still hard at it. Buccleuch, beaked like a macaw, was a baroque and 
mighty Scots Lowlander with a tough mind, a voice like Saint Columba's, and one 
of the biggest estates on the Scottish Border. Erskine, much the younger, pink, 
stocky and vehement, was a son of Lord Erskine, who was head of one of the 
families nearest the throne, and captain of the Queen's fortress of Stirling.
ILIL Just wait," Buccleuch was roaring. LILJust wait, man. Protector Somerset 
will get his damned English rabble together and march into Scotland up the east 
coast. And he'll tell off his commander, Lord Wharton, to get his Cumberland 
English together and invade us at the same time up the west coast. And half the 
west coast landowners are pensioners of the English already and won't resist 
'em. And all the rest of us'll be over here at Edinburgh fighting Ned Somerset-"
LLNot all of us," said Erskine neatly.
Buccleuch's whiskers promenaded. "Who'll stay in the west that's worth a 
docken?"
"Andrew Hunter of Ballaggan?"
"Christ. Andrew's a nice, gentlemanly lad, but his estate's been bled dry; and 
as for the ill-armed crew he calls followers- Man, they'd lay on a battlefield 
like dandruff."
"The third Baron Culter?" suggested Tom Erskine, and Buccleuch got the derisive 
note and turned red at the wattle.
~	know fine the cheeky clack of the court," shouted Buccleuch. ILILThey say 
Culter's not to be trusted."

Tom Erskine lifted the broad, brocade shoulders. "They say his younger brother's 
not to be trusted."
"Lymond! We know all about Lymond. Rieving and ruttery and all manner of vice-"
"And treason."
"And treason. But treason's not Lord Culter's dish. There are those that want to 
take time and men to hunt down Lymond and his band of murderers; and those that 
demand that Culter should lead them as proof of his loyalty. But if Richard 
Crawford of Culter won't interfere; says he has better business to attend to and 
refuses flatly to hound down his brother baying like the Wild Jagd, that still 
doesn't make him a traitor." And inflating the great chasms of his cheeks, 
Buccleuch added, "Anyway, Culter's just got married. D'ye blame him for keeping 
his shield on the hook and his family blunders all tied up at the back of the 
armory?"



"Damn it," said Tom Erskine, annoyed, "I don't blame him for anything. It isn't 
my fault. And if it's that black Irish beauty he married, I don't expect he'd 
notice if the Protector knocked on the front gate at Midculter and asked for a 
drink of water. But-"
The large red face had calmed down. "You're dead right, of course," said 
Buccleuch cordially. "In fact you've given me a wee notion or two I can use to 
the fellow himself. If Culter's going to be in credit at court at all, he'll 
need to bring himself to capture that honey-faced de'il."
Mungo Tennant, the silent and flattered host, was able to make respectful 
comment at last. "Crawford of Lymond, Sir Wat?" he said. "Now, he's not in this 
country, as I heard. He's in the Low Countries, I believe. And when he'll be 
back, if ever, God knows.
Bless us, what's that?"
It was only a sneeze; but a sneeze outside the door of their chamber, which 
dislimned every shade of their privacy. Tom Erskine got there first, the other 
two at his heels. The room beyond was empty, but the door of Mungo's bedroom was 
ajar. Taking a candle like a banner in his fist, Erskine rushed in.
His hair soft as a nestling's, his eyes graceless with malice, Lymond was 
watching him in a silver mirror. Before Erskine could call, Buccleuch and Mungo 
Tennant had piled in beside him and Lymond had taken two steps to the far door, 
there to linger, hand on latch and the blade of his sword held twinkling at 
breast level as they jumped, weaponless, to face him, and then fell back.
"As my lady of Suffolk saith," said Lymond gently, "God is a marvellous man." 
Eyes of cornflower blue rested thoughtfully on Sir Wat. "I had fallen behind 
with the gossip. . . . Nouvelle amour, nouvelle affection; nouvelles fleurs 
parmi l'herbe nouvelle. Tell Richard his bride has yet to meet her brother-in-
law, her Sea-Catte, her Sea-Scorpion, beautiful in the breeding season. What a 
pity you didn't wear your swords."
Rage mottled Buccleuch's face. "Ye murdering cur. . . . You'll end this night-"
"I know. Flensed, basted and flayed, and off to hang on a sixshilling gibbet-
keep your distance-but not tonight. The city is not full great, but it hath good 
baths within him. And tonight the frogs and mice fight, eh, Mungo?"
"Man's mad," said Buccleuch positively. He had managed to pick up a firedog.



"Mungo doesn't think so," said Lymond. "His mind is on fleshly lusts and his 
treasure." And certainly, the jennet fur at his neck warped with sweat, Mungo 
Tennant was gaping at the intruder.
Lymond smiled back. "Be careful," he said. "Pits are yawning publicly at your 
feet. O mea celia, vale, you know . . ." And suddenly, it came to Mungo what he 
was threatening.
"Don't linger, I pray you, cuckoo, while you run away," said the sage. Mungo 
Tennant said nothing. He rushed toward Lymond, collided with Tom Erskine on the 
way, and falling, sat on the candle. There was a moment's indescribable hubbub 
while the three men and the firedog blundered cursing into each other in the 
dark; then they got to the far door and wrenched it open. The corridor as far as 
the stairhead was quite empty, and the light feet running downward were already 
some distance away. They hurled themselves after him.
They were three fibors above the ground, and the staircase was spiral. The 
spilth of Buccleuch's bellow rattled the pewter in the kitchens; Tom Erskine 
shouted and Mungo piped like a hen-whistle. The servants on their pallets heard 
and started up; tallows flared and a patter of bare feet began on the rushes 
below.
Mungo's sow heard it too. Drunk as a bishop, she hurtled stair-ward as the first 
of the servants arrived. Great blanket ears flapping and rump arched like a 
Druid at sunrise, she hurled herself at them as Lymond and his pursuers fled 
down. She bounced once off the newel post, scrabbled once on the flags, trotters 
smoking, then shot Mungo Tennant backward, squealing thickly in a liberated 
passion of ham-handed adoration. Mungo sat down, Buccleuch fell on top of him 
and Tom Erskine swooped headfirst over them both, landing on the pack of unkempt 
heads jamming the stair foot like stooks at a threshing. Winnowing through them, 
utterly unremarked in the uproar, was Lymond.
Screaming, squealing and grunting, the impacted cluster swayed on the stairs, 
torn and surging like rack where the pig unseen hooked the bare feet from under 
them. Buccleuch was the first to get free, grey whiskers overhanging the swarm 
like a Chinese kite at a carnival. "Lvmond!" he shrieked. "Where's he got to?"
They scoured the house in the end without a trace of him, although they found 
Mungo's steward mute and bound in the pighouse. "Damn it!" said Buccleuch 
furiously. "The windows were barred and the door lockit-he must be here. Where's 
your cellar?"


Mungo's face was spotty under the pig-spit. "I've looked there. It's empty."
"Well, let's look again," snapped Buccleuch, and was there before Tennant could 
stop him. "What's that?"
It was, undoubtedly, a trap door. In bitterest necessity, Mungo Tennant held 
them up for ten minutes protesting: he claimed it was sealed; it was ornamental; 
it was locked and unused. In the end Buccleuch stopped listening and went for a 
crowbar.
It opened with a hissing, fairly oiled ease.
Mungo need not have worried. The lower cellar, the cavern and the long 
underground tunnel to the Nor' Loch contained no contraband at all. But, because 
tuns of Bordeaux wine make hard rowing, all the wells of Edinburgh ran with 
claret next day; and on this, the eve of the English invasion, the commonality 
of the High Street were for an hour or two as blithe as the Gosford Close sow.
Late, the laminated sheet of the Nor' Loch held a faint chord of laughter.

"There was a lady lov'd a hogge
Honey. quoth she
Won't thou lie with me tonight?
Hoogh, quoth he."

And, long since ashore with his men and his booty, Crawford of Lymond, man of 
wit and crooked felicities, bred to luxury and heir to a fortune, rode off 
serenely to Midculter to break into his new sister-in-law's castle.

"Won't thou lie with me tonight?

Hoogh. quoth he."
	*	*	*


In the Castle of Midculter, close to the River Clyde in the southwest lowlands 
of Scotland, the Dowager Lady Culter had reared three children of whom the 
youngest, Eloise, died at school in her teens. The two boys remaining were 
brought up variously in France and in Scotland: she had them taught Latin, 
French, philosophy and rhetoric, hunting, hawking, riding and archery, and the 
art of killing neatly with the sword. When her husband died, violently, in the 
field the elder boy Richard became third Baron Culter, and Francis his



brother received the heir's title of Master of Culter as well as taking name 
from his own lands of Lymond.
Until Richard's marriage, Sybilla Lady Culter had lived alone at Midculter with 
her older son. What she thought of Lymond's activities she did not say. She 
welcomed Mariotta, Richard's new bride, with warm arms and dancing blue eyes, 
and today, in the late summer of 1547, had dismissed her son to his eternal 
local meetings and had invited the women of the neighbourhood to meet her 
daughter-in-law. And thus, in Richard's absence, forty women clacked each to 
each on plush chairs encased by the barrel vaulting, the tapestries and the 
carving which made the Great Hall of Midculter famous.
Mariotta, black-haired and beautiful, walked on air decorated with compliment 
and envy. Richard's mother Sybilla, small and splendid, with cornflower eyes and 
fair skin, effaced herself as well as she could, controlled the household 
machinery with half her mind and kept her own counsel about the other half.
"And how's Will?" she said rashiy to Janet, third and most formidable wife of 
Wat Scott of Buccleuch, and Janet, big-boned and handsome and heartily florid, 
thirty years younger than Buccleuch and the cleverest of a diabolically clever 
family, fixed an unwinking eye on the ceiling and groaned.
In Sybilla's mind, Buccleuch's heir by his first wife was a pleasing, red-haired 
child who, losing his mother at five, had been gently reared by Sir Wat's then 
chaplain. Then Buccleuch had sent him to France, where he had attended Grand 
College until this year. Nevertheless, Sybilla was able to put her own accurate 
interpretation on Janet's groan. "Religion or women?" asked Lady Culter 
expertly.
"Women!" It was a cry of despair. "Can you see Buccleuch turning a whisker about 
women! Not a bit of it. Moral Philosophy, that's the trouble," said Janet with 
gloomy relish. "They've taught poor Will moral philosophy and his father's fit 
to boil."
"It is theology then," said Sybilla uneasily. "I suppose he might manage if he 
sticks like Lindsay to the vulgarities in iambics; but if he's developing into a 
Calvinist or a Lutheran or an Erasminn or an Anabaptist it isn't very healthy: 
look at George Wishart and the Castillians."
"He isn't quoting Luther. He's quoting Aristotle and Boethius and the laws of 
chivalry and the dreicher speils of the Chevalier de Bayard on loyalty and the 
ethics of warfare. He's so damned moral


that he ought to be standing rear up under a Bo Tree. And he won't keep his 
mouth shut. I grant," said Lady Buccleuch with a certain grim amusement, "that 
~he pure springs of chivalry may be a little muddy in the Hawick area, but 
that's no proper excuse for calling his father, an unprincipled old rogue, and 
every other peer in Scotland a traitorous scoundrel."
Sybilla pulled herself together. "Wat knows how to argue, heaven knows. Why not 
explain?"
"Because Buccleuch isn't a plaster saint and Will would drive the Archangel 
Gabriel to lunacy and drink," said Lady Buccleuch with candour. "Wait till you 
hear him on the subject of perjury, patriotism and divided loyalties. The last 
time he trailed his coat Wat and he were shrieking at one another in five 
minutes like the Ghibellines and the Guelphs. Damn them both," she said 
thoughtfully, "for a couple of sumphs," and paused, her gaze suddenly 
sharpening.
Sybilla, her smile unimpaired, caught her daughter-in-law's eye smartly as Lady 
Buccleuch spoke again. "You've heard Lymond's back."
For an instant the clever blue eyes focused. Then Lymond's mother, turning, 
said, "Oh, Mariotta, my dear. The gypsies. I expect they've finished supper 
below, and it might be safer to send them away before Richard and the horses 
come back. Although they looked very honest. Could you . . .
Between Mariotta and the Dowager Lady Culter there was perfect rapport. Mariotta 
laughed and instantly took herself off to see the gypsies dismissed.
"So fortunate that they came," said Sybilla, "-with the extra musicians being 
held up; although acrobatics are not my favourite entertainment. And what do you 
intend to do about Will?"
"We weren't discussing Will," said Lady Buccleuch with brief exactitude. "As you 
perfectly well know, I was talking about Lymond."
"Yes," said the Dowager. "Yes, I remember; and yes, I know he's been seen about. 
So they say."
With difficulty, Janet transfixed the wandering blue eye. "Sybilla. What about 
this marriage of Richard's and Lymond?"
"It makes no difference. None at all. Lymond never could be Lord Culter as 
things are. Even his own estate of Lymond was forfeited when he was outlawed. 
There isn't another heir. If Richard and Mariotta both died, the whole fortune 
would go to the Crown."



"He couldn't succeed Richard now, certainly," said Janet. "But if the English 
took over? Criminals at the horn with the right kind of politics have died in 
silk sheets before now."
"So they say. Perhaps it's lucky then," said Sybilla, "that this criminal has 
cheated his way out of favour with every party in Europe. Did you try some 
brazil on your curtains?"
And this time, Lady Buccleuch took the hint.

Mariotta was returning from her errand by the wheel stair when she heard the 
horses in the courtyard and guessed that Richard and his train were coming in. 
The requirements of dignity fought with a wifely desire to scamper below. She 
was hesitating still when footsteps turned the stair corner below and an alien 
and unknown yellow head rose from the serpentine depths, a nautilus from the 
shell.
Young and exhibitionist by temperament, Lady Culter gathered her skirts, darkly 
glowing, and just missed a simper. "Can I help you, sir?"
Norman fairness recognizing Celtic darkness howled like a duncane. "I've got the 
servants' stair again. This place was built by mouldiewarps for mouldiewarps, 
and to the devil with lords and gentlemen. Jennie, m'joy, where is thy master? 
The traces d'amour? The path to a Culter? Any Culter: old Lady Culter, young 
Lady Culter, or his middle-aged lordship . . .
If she thought the mistake genuine, it was only for a moment. Then:
"A rather primitive sense of humour, surely?" she said pleasantly. "My husband 
has not yet arrived, but his mother the Dowager is upstairs. I shall take you to 
her, if you like."
A crow of delighted laughter answered her. "A Culter, and bad-tempered, and 
black. Come dance with me in Ireland."
"I," said Mariotta firmly, "am Lady Culter. I take you to be a friend of my 
husband's."
He came to rest two steps below her. "Take what you like. Yellow doesn't suit 
you, and neither does angling for compliments."
"I-really!" said Mariotta, roused. "There is no excuse for rank bad mapners."
"Richard doesn't like me either," said the fair one sorrowfully. "But that's 
unmannerly rank for you. Do you like Richard?"
"I'm married to him!"
"That's why I asked. You don't believe in polyandry by any chance?" He rested a 
shoulder and elbow against the newel post,


staring at her cheerfully. "It's difficult, isn't it? I might be a distant 
cousin with a quaint sense of humour, in which case you'll look silly if you 
scream. I might be a well-known cretin to be kept from your guests at all costs. 
Or I might be-oh no, my angel!"
Quick fingers, closing on her wrist, wrenched her up from a headlong plunge to 
the lower floor, to the servants and her husband.
"-Or I might be annoyed. Don't be a fool, my dear," he said. "These were my men 
you heard entering below. You are not being badgered; you are being invaded."
Held close to him as she was, she found his eyes unavoidable. They were blue, of 
the deep and identical cornflower of the Dowager's. And at that, the impact of 
knowledge stiffened her face and seized her pulses. "I know who you are! You are 
Lymond!"
Applauding, he released her. "I take back the more personal insults if you will 
take back your arm without putting it to impious uses. There. Now, sister-in-law 
mine, let us mount like Jacob to the matriarchal cherubim above. Personally," he 
said critically, "I should dress you in red."
So this was Richard's brother. Every line of him spoke, palimpsestwise, with two 
voices. The clothes, black and rich, were vaguely slovenly; the skin sun-glazed 
and cracked; the fine eyes slackly lidded; the mouth insolent and self-
indulgent. He returned the scrutiny without rancour.
"What had you expected? A viper, or a devil, or a ravening idiot; Milo with the 
ox on his shoulders, Angra-Mainyo prepared to do battle with Zoroaster, or the 
Golden Ass? Or didn't you know the family colouring? Richard hasn't got it. Poor 
Richard is merely Brown and fit to break bread with . .
"The poem I know at least," exclaimed Mariotta, chafing her wrist. "Red wise; 
Brown trusty; Pale envious-"
"And Black lusty. What a quantity of traps you've dropped into today. . . . If 
you wish, you may run ahead screaming. It makes no difference now, although five 
minutes ago we were in something of a hurry . . . the servants to be tied up . . 
. the silver to collect .
Richard's personal hoard to recover from its usual cache. A man of iron habit, 
Richard."
He had wandered absently past her and ahead up the stair when Mariotta, fully 
alert and aghast, started after him. "What do you want?"
He considered. "Amusement, principally. Don't you think it's time
21



my family shared in my misfortunes, as Christians should? Then, vice is so 
costly: May dew or none, my brown and tender diamonds don't engender, they 
dissolve. Immoderation, Mariotta, is a thief of money and intestinal joy, but 
who'd check it? Not I. Here I am, weeping soft tears of myrrh, to prove it."
They had reached the door to the Hall. One hand on the stand-post, he turned, 
and the kitten's eyes were bright blue. "Watch carefully. In forty formidable 
bosoms we are about to create a climacteric of emotion. In one short speech-or 
maybe two-I propose to steer your women through excitement, superiority, 
contempt and anger:
we shall have a little drama; just, awful and poetic, spread with uncials and 
full, as the poet said, of fruit and seriosity. Will they thank me, I wonder?"
Mariotta, collecting her wits, produced the only deterrent she could think of. 
"Your mother is in there."
He received this with tranquil pleasure. "Then one person at least should 
recognize me," Crawford of Lymond said, and pushed the door gently open for her 
to walk through.
	.	*	*



Meanwhile Sir Wat Scott of Buccleuch was riding westward from Edinburgh, free at 
last of the Governor's councils, and leaving be-hind him his good friend Tom 
Erskine, a distraught smuggler, and a depressed pig.
Buccleuch was accustomed to war. Since the golden age before Flodden of a 
dynamic kingship and culture, it seemed that he had been governed by children, 
or by their elders and so-called protectors locked in civil struggle for power. 
And always the nobles who fell out of power were able to look for help to 
England's Henry VIII, who as a matter of personal pride and pressing European 
politics meant to conquer Scotland for himself, and to take the child Queen Mary 
to England, there to rear her in English ways and marry her in due course to his 
son.
Henry had sent -force after force over the Border into Scotland to harry them 
into submission. He had taken hostages; offered inducements; granted pensions; 
offered high positions to the discontented, impoverished great and, in the very 
month of Mary's birth and her father King James's death, had snatched as 
captives to Londc~n half the Lowland Scottish peerage at the disastrous battle 
of Solway Moss,



and had there extorted from them as the price of their freedom a written promise 
to help him achieve the marriage between his son Edward and Mary.
Now Henry was dead, and a child sat on the English throne too:
Edward VI, for whom ruled his uncle, Edward Somerset, Protector of England and 
avid adherent to Henry's policy for the marriage, who also burned and pillaged 
and put to the sword, and seduced the Scottish nobility with other weapons; for 
King Henry in marital and concupiscent frenzy had severed his country's church 
from the Pope; and there were many in Scotland who looked away from the French 
Queen Mother and their old ally, Catholic France, and toward the Reformed 
Religion instead.
None of that, however, concerned Bucclcuch who was little troubled, if ever, 
with matters of right and wrong. He thought occasionally about religion when it 
appeared to be taking too close a grip on politics and therefore on the future 
of the Scott family, but this latest upheaval was nothing to him. The Bishop of 
Rome was no paragon, but old Harry of England had damned nearly overrun 
Buccleuch's home of Branxholm, and that put him anyway in the bottommost pit 
with the heretics. When your nation has no standing army, there is nothing for 
it but to defend it yourself, with your tenants at your back, and hired swords 
and foreign mercenaries to eke out, depending on what the privy purse can 
afford. Buccleuch liked fighting. Having received his orders, he turned westward 
ready to explode into militant activity, and digressed on his way home to call 
at Boghall, a castle placed on its malodorous peats in the centre of Scotland 
and owned by the Flemings, a family uniquely loyal to the Queen, whose head Lord 
Fleming had himself married a lively and illegitimate daughter of the royal 
house.
Lady Fleming, who was governess as well as aunt to the baby Queen, was away, but 
the honours of Boghall were done by her goddaughter Christian Stewart.
She was a favourite of Buccleuch's. Comely and tall, with hair of fine dark red 
and a decisive air to her, she was pleasant and positive to talk to, and it was 
impossible to tell that she was blind from birth. Familiar with every inch of 
Boghall, she stood chatting to Sir Wat after his necessary talk with Fleming, 
and it was she who told him Lord Culter was upstairs.
"Culter?" said Fleming, overhearing. "I thought he had left?"
"Not yet," said Christian unemotionally, and followed slowly as



Buccleuch, losing no time, took the stairs for all his fifty-odd years like a 
sheared ram.
Richard, third Baron Culter and Sybilla's older son, was not only upstairs; he 
was on the roof. On the main parapet the sun slapped at the face off turrets and 
battlements, and far below, the castle rose from the bog like a lighthouse on 
its circling strands of barmkin, park and moat. The great dusty apron of the 
courtyard, the outbuildings and stables, the bakehouse, the brewery, the barns, 
byres and d5mestic offices seethed with foreshortened life. Buccleuch walked 
forward and the girl followed, sure-footed, the red hair lifted about her 
shoulders with the wind.
Lord Culter watched them come. There was about him none of the mad abandon of 
the bridegroom. A sober, thickset figure with brown hair and reliable grey eyes, 
Richard Crawford in his thirties was a man of wealth and tried power. He waited, 
his face stony, and before Buccleuch opened his mouth, he spoke. "If it's about 
Lymond, don't trouble, Buccleuch."
"It's about Lymond," said Sir Wat grimly, and let fly.
As Mungo Tennant had listened, so Christian Stewart heard the argument in 
silence, but with a concern and understanding which Mungo Tennant applied to 
nothing.
Buccleuch ended roaring. "Man, you might as well be in league with Lymond as let 
others think you are, and the army that fights on suspicion is a whacked army. 
Look at what's happening! Five years ago your brother Lymond was found to have 
been selling his own country for years: he's been kicked from land to land 
committing every crime on the calendar and now he's back here, God forgive him, 
with filthier habits and a nastier mind than he set out with.
"All right. Meanwhile, what's left of a national entity struggles on. Half a 
million folk. And three million English are trying their damndest for the 
overlordship of Scotland with the hairy natives like you and me kicked out, and 
the land parcelled out to the Dacres and the Howards and the Seymours and the 
Musgraves. And in between the raids every landowner between Berwick and Fife is 
courting England like a pregnant scullery-maid. God knows, I don't blame them. 
I've taken English money myself to protect my house and my tenants. You promise 
food and horses and nonresistance and when they invade, you do or don't lick 
their boots according to the thickness of your walls and the kind of conscience 
you have."
He got up suddenly from his seat on the parapet, and began to


pace. "Then we've got the Douglases, the beauties, and others like them. They're 
the folk who're accepted as go-betweens with the English in London; who've got a 
kistful of gold, a family tree back to an acorn, and too many men-at-arms to 
need to tolerate a rough word.
"They get respect from both sides, and money comes pouring to the purse because 
each faction thinks it's bought the man's ultimate loyalty. But Sir George 
Douglas's loyalty is to his own house and the devil, and if the devil doesn't 
see the Douglases up there at the top of the dynastic dungheap, then to the Pope 
with the devil. Are ye with me?" asked Buccleuch.
"Yes, I'm with you," said Lord Culter. "Go on."
"Right. We've all those, and we've the rest, like yourself, who carry the throne 
on their backs from generation to generation-maybe just because you've so much 
at stake in Scotland that there's no other game worth the risk; still you do it. 
. . . We think the Protector's going to invade. We hope to put an army in the 
field to stop him at Edinburgh. It won't be a very good army because it'll have 
one eye on the Lothian lairds and one eye on the Douglases. And by God, Richard 
Crawford," ended Buccleuch with a growl that lifted the pigeons off the turrets, 
"if they've got to watch you too, there'll be a wheen of skelly-eyed Scotsmen at 
the Golden Gates in the next few weeks."
There was silence, and wily choleric eye stared into bright grey. Then Christian 
said sharply, "Richard! I smell smoke!"
He had gone in a moment, running across the slats and up, higher, to the 
battlements. Buccleuch, caught mopping his face, gaped at the girl and at 
Richard's vanishing figure. Christian spoke fast. "He came up here because he 
thought he saw smoke coming from Culter direction." In a moment, Buccleuch was 
with Richard on the highest rampart.
The August sun mobilized against them the last furious heat of midafternoon, 
beating from the crowded roofs and turrets, the grained corbelling and cherry-
caulked flanks. To the east lay the roofs of the barony town of Biggar, smoking 
in the socket of Bizzyberry Hill, and the Edinburgh road. On the south, the 
horizon was jumbled 'with hills; footstools before the greater furniture of the 
English Border. To the north and northwest the roads for Ayrshire and for 
Stirling girdled the crag of Tinto.
To the west, springing from the base of the castle, the bog rolled, jellied 
green and shimmering between an avenue of hills, to dip three




miles distantly into the bed of the Culter burn, where stood the village and the 
castle of Midculter.
For a moment, nothing was to be seen, and Buccicuch became jocular. "Smoke! 
Never worry, man. My chimneys were in mourning for a month before my first wife 
and the cook got the hang of the ovens .
The wind patted their faces, and turned. A great column, black as the onset of 
night, rose from the west and hung wavering on the horizon.
With an undreamed-of turn of speed Lord Culter reached the stairs with Buccleuch 
after him, yelling bills and bows for the castle to hear. Left alone, Christian 
Stewart herself found the stairs and descended, with debate in the unseeing 
eyes.

. * *


When the door opened, the women in the Hall at Midculter were not surprised. 
They expected to be fed; and Lady Buccleuch, for whom pregnancy spelled food, 
had already taken strategic foothold by the windows, where the cold dishes were 
ready laid. Sybilla, standing by the hearth, was in the middle of a long, grave 
story provoking much mirth. As the door opened she said happily, "Now we can 
eat. Janet will be so pleased." The blue eyes smiled at her daughter-in-law, 
ceased to smile, and then simply rested, thought suspended, on the still-open 
door.
Lucent and delicate, Drama entered, mincing like a cat. Leaning on the door, 
Lymond shut it and without looking turned and took out the key with one hand. In 
the other a naked sword point, descending, was poised among the slit lavender 
stems. At his side, Mariotta stood perfectly still.
After the first moment, every trace of expression left the Dowager's face; her 
white hair shone like salt. Moved by her stillness, the sound of the key, the 
blaze of the sword, the first heads turned. A murmur grew and expired. Dumbness, 
flowing among them uncovered like a crocus in the snow the lost reprise of a 
hornpipe, pursuing its scratchy but dogged course in the musicians' gallery. 
Then that also died.
Back to the door, the newcomer spoke indolently, slurring his words. "Good 
evening, ladies. The gentlemen now entering behind


you are all fully armed. I am Francis Crawford~ of Lymond and I want your lives 
or your jewels-the latter for preference; both if necessary."
Through the rustle of shock came the first cries of horror: from these rose a 
storm of exclamatory fright and abuse, and from that an orchestration of 
outraged feminine frenzy that tortured the very harp strings in the gallery. 
Someone, losing her head, plucked at the small, stately figure. "Sybilla! It's 
Lymond!" And fell back, frozen, before the Dowager's stony face.
The room was lined with armed men. Some, working efficiently, stripped each 
woman of money and jewellery; others searched and denuded the room, and with 
cocked weapons encouraged resistance with a leer. There was none.
On them all rested Lymond's peaceful blue gaze, quite at random. But long ago 
instinct told Mariotta he was fully aware of one thing. Bent urgently on 
exposing some frail nerve, she spoke. "Why not look at her? Your drama wants 
dialogue."
He turned on her the vague survey. "Oak of linen and pole of jewels, I've 
decided on pantomime."
"What a shame, now. I was all ready for buskins, and it's nothing but socks."
"Mime doesn't always mean comedy, my dear; far from it."
An approaching voice, of the self-same timbre, answered him. "Farce, then," said 
the Dowager composedly. "My son is not very complicated, Mariotta, although the 
artifice glitters. He's afraid-"
"Afraid!" Blue eyes, dead of feeling, looked into blue. "Afraid of what? Damned 
by the church and condemned by the law: what possible capacity for fear can 
heart and head still find? Oim~ el cor, oim~ Ia testa . . . After five years of 
villainy, I promise you, I have the refinement of a cow-cabbage."
"-Afraid I might puncture the cocoon of Attic detachment. What we see is acting, 
isn't it, Francis?"
"Is it?" he said derisively. "You won't get your diamonds back, I fear, when the 
curtain comes down. And the name, please, is Lymond: a new medal: choose the 
trussell or the pile. My present face is the provident, forbearing one." The 
smiling eyes turned on her were empty. "De los alamos vengo, madre. From the 
stews and alleyways of Europe with a taste for play acting-yes--and krning and 
treason and crimes, they say, nameless and enticingly erotic.


Haven't I been worth five years' excellent gossip to you? Are you not all 
waiting agog to see me seize my sister-in-law by the hair? When I think of it, 
damn it, I'm a public benefactor."
"Chattering ape!" Lady Buccleuch took a hand in the game, full of rage and pity 
for Sybilla and hatred for the black-bearded ruffian who had just seized her 
emeralds. "What's poor Richard ever done to you except get himself born first?"
The blue eyes were speculative. "Ill-calculated," he agreed. "But not 
necessarily final."
Strophe and counterstrophe reached their epode. The Master was out of her reach, 
but not the grinning thief at her side. "Final as far as I'm concerned, ye 
petty-souled slug, ye!" shrieked Dame Janet with ear-cracking clarity, and 
seized and hurled a cold pudding into Blackbeard's face. As the big man, 
cursing, scraped at blancmange with both hands, Janet filched his own dagger and 
made for him.
But not fast enough. Lymond. watching from the door, had no mind to lose one of 
his men. Good humour and indolence tittered into the shadows, and as Dame Janet 
began her lunge, Lymond drew back his own arm and threw.
In the silence of the room Janet screamed, once; and her right arm dropped to 
her side, the knife slipping from big, relaxed fingers. Then slowly and 
disjointedly, Buccleuch's wife fell, and Lymond's dagger, thrown with accuracy 
across the width of the room, glittered in her gown, stained and sticky with 
blood.
"Afraid?" said the yellow-haired man and laughed. "Forgive me, I should have 
warned you: I have a tendency to be bloody-minded. Bruslez, noyez, pendez, 
ompallez, descouppez, fricassez, crucifiez, bouillez, carbonnadez ces m~chantes 
femmes. Matthew! When you have digested your windfall will you kindly report 
progress below? Now"-as Blackbeard, red with shame, disappeared through the 
screen door-"come along, ladies. Leave your female Telemachus alone for a 
moment; she's not dead."
He surveyed them pleasantly. "Epilogue," he said. "We have heard sweet-voiced 
Calliope busily shrinking me like a sea worm and calling me play actor. And the 
lady of Buccleuch taking heart therefrom to give us a roaring, a howling, a 
whistling, a mummying and a juggling, with sorry results. And Mariotta, trying 
to wring shame from the unshamable."
He turned his head, and the girl's heart jumped. "Qu'es casado, el



Rey Ricardo. Weel, weel, sister, what shall we do with you, Mariotta?" He 
watched her thoughtfully, and then looked beyond her and smiled. "Observe," he 
said. "Their eyes lit like corpse candles. I beg, under the circumstances, to be 
original. . . . Yes?"
Blackoeard had reappeared. "All finished, sir; and the horses are ready."
"All right. Get them out." The men began to leave, and the reports came in: "AU 
doors barred, sir. Valuables loaded, sir."
With careful and porcelain tread, Crawford of Lymond walked to the screen, and 
the women fell back before him. At the door he turned. "We've had a deal of bad 
poetry, haven't we? Suggesting the climax to this thrilling and literary 
spectacle. The Olla Podrida, my sweethearts, will now be set on the fire. I 
regret Richard isn't with you. No matter. God hath a thousand hand~s to chastise 
and I have two- how can Richard escape us both?"
He scanned them all, and they gave him back contempt for reflective stare. "I 
don't suppose," he said regretfully, "we shall meet again. Goodbye."
The door shut behind them all, and locked. The women stared at it, mesmerized, 
and observed across it the wavering shadow of an uncanny cloud. Behind the 
chamfered windows the sun was obscured by drifting wreaths of grey smoke, and 
the silence filled with the crackling of flames. The youngest surviving 
Crawford, in leaving, had deftly set fire to the castle.

* * *


The bonfires stacked against its walls were blazing merrily when the party from 
Boghall shot down the incline toward the castle. Behind Richard came every able-
bodied man from Lord Fleming's garrison. They tore away the faggots and, using 
hatchets, broke through the main door and again through the door of the Hall.
Richard, gripping his wife, looked over her head at his mother. "Who did it? 
What happened?"
But Mariotta answered. She shut her eyes; the darkness showed her a cool blue 
gaze, and she opened them again. "It was your brother. He must be insane."
"Not insane, dear." Sybilia, speaking gently, contradicted. "Not insane. But 
magnificently drunk, I fear."
He listened to what they had to tell him; he dropped beside Janet


as she lay nursing her shoulder wound and spoke to her, and came back with an 
unseeing face to his mother's side through the babble of relief and hysteria. 
Through white lips he said, "I appear to have made a fool of myself. But not 
again, in that way, I promise you."
Buccleuch's hand was on his arm. "By God, when we come back . .
"Back?" said the Dowager.
Sir Wat's beard folded; a sign of concern. He said flatly, "You've not heard the 
news?"
"What news?"
Without looking at Mariotta, Richard answered for him. "We heard at Boghall. 
It's open war, and sooner than we thought. The English have collected an army 
and are on their way north. We are all summoned instantly to the Governor to 
fight
So Lymond-dear God, Lymond must wait."

* * *


Only eight months had gone since Henry VIII of England had been suspended in 
death, there to lie like Mohammed's coffin, hardly in the Church nor out of it, 
attended by his martyrs and the acidulous fivefold ghosts of his wives. King 
Francis of France, stranded by his neighbour's death in the midst of a policy so 
advanced, so brilliant and so intricate that it sh buld at last batter England 
to the ground, and be damned to the best legs in Europe-Francis, bereft of these 
sweet pleasures, dwindled and died likewise.
From Venice to Rome, Paris to Brussels, London to Edinburgh, the Ambassadors 
watched, long-eared and bright-eyed.
Charles of Spain, Holy Roman Emperor, fending off Islam at Prague and Lutherism 
in Germany and forcing recoil from the long, sticky fingers at the Vatican, cast 
a considering glance at heretic England.
Henry, new King of France, tenderly conscious of the Emperor's power and 
hostility, felt his way thoughtfully toward a smzll cabal between himself, the 
Venetians and the Pope, and wondered how to induce Charles to give up Savoy, how 
to evict England from Boulogne, and how best to serve his close friend and dear 
relative Scotland without throwing England into the arms or the lap of the 
Empire.
He observed Scotland, her baby Queen, her French and widowed Queen Mother, and 
her Governor Arran.



He observed England, ruled by the royal uncle Somerset for the boy King Edward, 
aged nine.
He watched with interest as the English dotingly pursued their most cherished 
policy: the marriage which should painlessly annex Scotland to England and end 
forever the long, dangerous romance between Scotland and France.
Pensively, France marshalled its fleet and set about cultivating the 
Netherlands, whose harbours might be kind to storm-driven galleys. The Emperor, 
fretted by Scottish piracy and less busy than he had been, watched the northern 
skies narrowly. Europe, poised delicately over a brand-new board, waited for the 
opening gambit.

PART ONE.


The Play for Jonathan Crouch.
	

1.

Taking en Passant..

The gardes and kepars of cytees ben signefied
By the vii Pawn. . . . They ought . . . to enquyre of all thynges and ought to 
rapporte to the gouernours of the cyte such thynge as apperteyneth
and yf hit be in tyme of warre, they ought not to open the yates by nyght to no 
man.





1. The English Opening


ON Saturday, September 10th, the English Protector Somerset
and his army met the combined Scottish forces on the field of Pinkie, outside 
Edinburgh, and smashed them to pieces in a defeat as dire as any the Scots had 
suffered since Flodden. They did not, however, capture the baby Queen or take 
the fortress of Edinburgh, but remained outside its gates burning and wrecking 
while, as Buccleuch had predicted, a second English army invaded Scotland on the 
southwest, and ensconced itself in the near-Border town of Annan on its 
triumphant way north.
On the same day, quite near Annan, a man rode a broad-faced pony into a farmyard 
and stopped, a pike at his chest. Sitting still, he hissed through his teeth, 
brown eyes judicial over inquisitive nose. "Cohn, Cohn! You're not doing 
yourself justice! It's as smart, ye ken, to let Lymond's friends in as his 
unfriends out." And as the pikeman answered him with a bleat-"Johnnie Bulb! I 
didna ken ye, man!"- the rider clicked his teeth and the pony moved on.
It carried him gently through a rubble arch and up a long alley to a yard 
crowded with men. Saddlebags, rugs, weapons, tenting and food sacks lay piled 
against the house wall; and the reek of a boiling pot over an open fire fought 
weakly with the odours of sweat, leather and horse dung. Johnnie Bulb entered 
the yard through a gate, and dismounting, addressed the air.
"Turkey in?"
A man passing with a bonnetful of eggs jerked his head across the open yard and 
grinned, showing two sets of bereaved gums. "Over yonder, Johnnie."
Turkey Mat, professional soldier and veteran of Mohacs, Rhodes and Belgrade, sat 
against an upturned barrel, hauling off his boots and bellowing orders. Forty 
and liverish, he had done nothing for his looks by growing a curled black beard 
in the Assyrian style. The men in the yard admired Turkey.
Johnnie Bulb approached gently. "Man, you've a fire there you could lead the 
Children of Israel with."
Turkey Mat was emptying river sand from one boot. "Hey, Johnnie! No harm in a 
lowe with the farm bodies at home." And as Bulb wordlessly turned to survey the 
planks nailed over doors and windows: "That's the farmer, not us. He's got six 
lassies and says he pays us for protection, no' for stud fees. . . . We're 
moving on tomorrow anyway; and I hope to God it's to the Tower: my stomach's 
declared war on my elbow. Have you brought the dose?"
The gypsy brooded. "What d'you suppose? I've had it a fortnight. It's begun to 
grow whiskers like your own. What you want is a cross between an apothecary and 
a bloodhound."
Flinging down the other boot, Turkey swore. "There's been a war! Do they no' 
tell you anything in these parts?"
Johnnie grinned, dropping to the ground beside him. "I thought you went east?"
"So we did. I never saw so many weel-kent faces all in the one place; the most 
of them chowed off and in no state to give the sort of snash you get from hail 
of them when they're upright. It was better," said Matthew, "than a front seat 
at the Widdy-Hill the day after the Assizes."
"And profitable?"
"Oh, aye." A smile winked in Turkey Mat's beard. "There was Arran, biting his 
nails to the elbows at Musselburgh, wanting men and food and powder and 
intelligence (and wanting the last more



than most); and Protector Somerset coming north hung over with booty and Wee 
gifts from the Lothian lairds, with a trail of tumble-down castles behind him . 
. . man, the moneybags were fleeing here and yon like cockroaches on a biscuit. 
Mind, that was last week," he added with belated caution, watching Bulb bounce a 
small leather bag in one hand.
"Twelve crowns," said Johnnie agreeably.
"Twelve crowns! Twelve crowns for a teazle o' Tay sand and chopped henbane and a 
week's rakings from the doocote! It's robbery!"
Nevertheless the transaction was completed, the gypsy derisive. "What's money to 
Lymond's men? I hear Governor Arran's thinking of calling him in to finance the 
next expedition." He waited a moment, then added lightly, "And I hear you got 
yourselves a new prize up-by into the bargain?"
Turkey registered surprise. "Not us. We fell in with an English messenger with a 
dispatch from the Protector to his commander at Annan; but Lymond wouldn't touch 
him."
Bulb raised an eyebrow. "So the Master's money is on England, is it? Now that, 
Matthew, is interesting."
The other shrugged and bawled an order across the yard. "God knows; but he sent 
Jess's Joe after to make sure the message reached Annan safely. Did you want 
him? He'll be back directly. He turned off with Dandy-puff for a minute just 
before we came in."
Bulb showed his teeth. "And in drink, maybe? It would be nice to have him civil, 
for once."
There was no chance to comment. As he spoke, three riders passed through the 
gate and drew rein: two were the Master of Culter and the man Dandy-puff, while 
the third was a stranger, a young man, tied to his horse and wild about it. 
Johunie Bulb's smile widened. "Hell's hell again: the de'il's back."
Francis Crawford of Lymond, Master of Culter, was neat as a pin and stone sober. 
He dismounted, emitting a feu de joie of explicit orders: the prisoner was 
unhorsed and unbound, the animals led away, and the muddle in the yard cut up to 
shape instantly. "God!" said Matthew in simple admiration. "He's got a tongue on 
him like a thorn tree." And they watched him approach, the stranger trailing 
sulkily behind.
As at the sack of his mother's home, Lymond was lavishly dressed. The 
knowledgeable gypsy eyes scanned the dairy-maid skin, the



gilded hair, the long hands, jewelled to display their beauty while the Master, 
serenely smiling, returned the compliment under relaxed lids.
"Johunie, my night-black familiar. Civility's nearly as dull as sobriety and ii 
cannot-will not-be labelled dull. I have peper and piones, and a pound of 
garlik; a ferthing-worth of fenel-seed for fasting dayes, but dullness have I 
none: nor am I overfond of being discussed, my Johnnie."
"You've quick ears, Lymond."
"But yours, like Midas whispering in the hole, are closer to the ground. . . . 
What do you think of our new recruit?"
If the gypsy found the question surprising, or the reference offensive which it 
undoubtedly was, he showed nothing of it, but simply turned and bent an admiring 
glance on the tall young figure behind Lymond.
"My, my. 1-le's a bonny blossom to be let away from his nurse."
The stranger flushed. He was a graceful creature, with fair skin and a thatch of 
carroty curls. His clothes, of a thoroughiy expen~ve and unostentatious kind, 
were a credit to tailor and souter: his scabbard and accoutrements were inlaid 
and ornamented with a little more brie than the rule.
"-And his fancy hat!" breathed Matthew in awe.
The newcomer addressed Lymond with dignity. "I must confess to disappointment. 
Do you mete out this kind of treatment to every gentleman who offers you his 
sword?"
"Big words, too!"
Turkey Mat was silenced by the Master's hand. Lymond, his back to the stone dike 
at one end of the yard, crossed his legs gently before him and instantly the 
yard, led by curiosity and its hope of a roughhouse, deployed itself. Turkey and 
Bulb, grinning, ranged themselves on either side of the Master. The young man, 
stranded perforce in an open circle, stood his ground.
"Oh, Marigold!" Lymond spoke plaintively. "A silken tongue, a heart of cruelty. 
Don't berate us. We're only poor scoundrels-vagabonds-scraps of society; 
unlettered and untaught. Besides, we didn't believe you."
"Well, you can believe me now," said the young man belligerently. "I didn't ride 
all the way from-all this way to find you just to pass a dull Tuesday. I'm taken 
to be a fair fighting man. I'm prepared to join you; and I'd guess you need all 
the swords you can get. Unless you're overnervous, of course."
"Terror," said Lymond, "is our daily bread in the Wuthenheer. We



eat it, we live by it and we disseminate it; and not only between Christmas and 
Epiphany: there is no close season for fright. So you want to join us. Shall I 
take you? Mat, my friend, awful and stern, strong and corpulent-what do you 
say?"
Turkey was in no doubt. "l'd want to know a good bit more about the laddie, sir, 
before I had him next me with a knife."
"Oh," said Lymond, "would you? And what about you, Johnnie?" Johnnie Bulb 
regarded his fingers. "If I were yourself, I would perhaps give him his head. He 
looks a meek enough child."
"So did Heliogabalus at an early age," said Lymond. "And Attila and Torqueinada 
and Nero and the man who invented the boot. The only thing they had in common 
was a cherubic adolescence. And red hair, of course, makes it worse."
He considered, while the boy watched him steadily; then said, "Infant, I can't 
resist it. I'm going to put you to the proof; and if you impress us with your 
worth, then quicquid libet, licet; as was remarked on another, unsavoury 
occasion. Are you willing to be wooed, sweet Marigold?"
Redhead was not charmed. "I'm willing to give you reasonable proof of my 
talents, of course."
"Proof of your talents! . . . Oh, little Peg-a-Ramsey, we are going to do well 
together. Come along then. Gif thou should sing well ever in thy life, here is 
in fay the time, and eke the space. Your name?"
"You can call me Will."
"-Sir," said Lymond affectionately. "Surname and parentage?"
"My own affair." A rustle among the onlookers gave credit to this piece of 
bravura; Lymond was undisturbed. "Never fear. We're all runts and bastards of 
one sort or another. Do you swim? Hunt? Wrestle? I see. Can you use a crossbow? 
Your longest shot? Can you count? Read and write? Ab, the sting of sarcasm- Have 
we a scholar here? Then produce us a specimen," said Lymond. "What about some 
modest quatrains? Frae vulgar prose to flowand Latin. Deafen us, enchant us, 
educate us, boy."
There was a pause. The examinee, dazed by mental gymnastics at top speed, at 
first boggled. Then he had a pleasing idea. Lowering his lashes over a malicious 
sparkle he recited obligingly.

"Volavit volucer sine plumis
Sedit in arbore sine louis
Venit homo absque mani bus


Flat incomprehension informed every face. He halted.
There was an uneasy and deferential pause. Then Lymond gave a short laugh and 
capped him in German:

un Ireet den Vogel jedderlos
Van den Boem blattlos

"You appear," said the Master, "to have left your studies at a very tender age? 
Don't trouble to explain: tell me this instead. What about Pharaoh's chickens 
appealed to you? Why did you decide to join me?"
"Why . . . ?" repeated Redhead, needing time to think.
"Word of three letters," said Lymond. "Come along, for God's sake: no need to 
let me have it all my own way. What was it? Rape, incest, theft, treason, arson, 
~vetting the bed at night . .
Or burning my mother alive," said the other sarcastically.
"Oh, be original at least." The Master was undisturbed. "Why are you here?"
Silence. Then the boy said slowly, "Because I admire you."
An appreciative titter ran round the audience. "You shock me," said Lymond. 
"Explain, please."
"All right," said the boy. "You've chosen a life of vice, and have been 
consistent and reliable and thorough and successful in carrying it out."
Lymond considered this with every appearance of seriousness. "I see. Thus the 
baseness of my morals is redeemed by the stature of my manners? You admire 
consistency?"
"Yes, I do."
"But prefer consistency in evil to consistency in good?"
"The choice is hypothetical."
"Lord; is it? What an exciting past you must have."
"I despise mediocrity," stated the young man firmly.
"And you would also despise me if I practiced evil but professed purity?"
"Yes. I should."
"I see. What you are really saying, of course, is that you dislike hypocrisy, 
and people who can't stand by their principles. I find it so helpful," continued 
Lymond, "when some of my gentlemen have welldefined codes of conduct. It makes 
them more predictable. What security have I got for your loyalty?"
Redhead chanced his arm, solemnly. "Your appraisal of me, sir."


"Touching; but I'd prefer your appraisal of yourself. Do your principles admit 
an oath of fealty?"
"If you want it. I won't betray you, any of you; you can have my word on that. 
And I'll do anything you want, within reason. I don't mind," said Redhead 
recklessly, "what crimes I commit, as long as they've got a sensible purpose. 
Wanton injury and destruction, of course, are just juvenile."
"Of course," said the Master, digesting this remarkable statement. "Then let us 
be adult at all costs. Do you have a mistress? A wife? No? All, all in vain, 
this flors de biaut~? A little quietness, if you please. We are all ready to 
help, you see. What else . . . Do you use broadsword or rapier? A hackbut?"
Smoothly spinning, the inexorable questions resumed, faster and faster. "What do 
you know about gunpowder? Not very much, is it? How old are you? Year of birth? 
If you must invent, stay awake afterwards. . . . What are you like with the 
longbow? There's Mat's quiver: hit that tree. Passable. Now the thorn. Good. 
Now," said Lymond, "kill the man by the cooking-pot."
Exhausted, deflated and angry, the boy directed one haughty grimace at the 
Master, hauled on the bowstring and sent the shot of a lifetime buzzing for the 
mark.
A great cheer, part shocked, part sardonic, arose. There was a blur of movement. 
Mat disappeared, and a swarm of curious bodies shut off the view of the target. 
Redhead knew, if he had never shot straight before, that he had put an arrow 
through blood and bone this time. He stood still.
A gentle voice rebuked him.
"Careful, careful! my slave of sin. These are Sordidi Dei. How nice," said 
Lymond, "to have simple emotions. No trouble with principles; no independence of 
thought; no resistance to suggestion; no nonsense about adult behaviour when it 
comes to one's own amour propre."
The skin around the boy's mouth was taut. "I'm not immune to trickery. And the 
Sordid Gods in this case are yours, I think; not mine."
no: not mine; I am godless," said Lymond. "Not for me to solve the enigma.

"When a hatter
Will go smatter


In a philosophy
Or a pedlar
Wax a medlar
In theology

"There is the waste of purpose. Whereas I always have a purpose- you were wiser 
than you knew, and less successful than you feared. Oyster Charlie has been 
giving me a little trouble. But if his wits are moribund, his hearing is 
sensational-a matter of compensation, I suppose. Well, Mat?"
Turkey Mat shook himself free of the crowd, grinning. "Just a shower of 
blisters," he said. "He dodged behind the pot and got a spray of chicken bree 
for his pains. He's laying low now, is Oyster. He kens as well as you what that 
was for."
"Excellent. The warning cock and the Devil's bath," said Lymond, amused. 
"Symbolism is coming cheap today."
"You mean I didn't kill him?"
"No. Thus even your remorse of conscience is rooted in hallucination. Oyster is 
not dead; merely lightly boiled in the shell. I hope you will both perceive the 
point of the experiment."
Lymond surveyed the grinning audience with an air of gentle discovery. "Is there 
no work to be done? Or perhaps it's a holiday?"
In a moment, the spectators had vanished. Left facing the three men, the boy 
stood straight and with some natural dignity, although silent. Indeed, there 
seemed little to say. The Master evidently thought the same. He smiled warmly. 
"A pleasant entertainment. Thank you. Have you thought of doing it for money? 
No? You should. It would go down very well on fair days in Hawick. . . . Take 
the young gentleman's boots off, Mat, and loose him on the hills somewhere. 
Preferably not within ten miles of me."
The young gentleman turned scarlet. Of course. Having made the bear dance, turn 
it to the dogs. And to that, youth and hurt pride had only one answer. "You're 
welcome to try," said Redhead, and lunged.
Lymond got hold of the upraised arm halfway to his face. He shifted his grip, 
twisted, and holding the limb on the edge of agony, smiled.
"Softly, softly! Remember your superior upbringing, and your Caxton. How 
gentlemen shall be known from Churls. Don't be a Churl, Marigold. Full of sloth 
in his wars, full of boast in his manhood, full of cowardice to his enemy, full 
of lechery to his body, full of drinking and drunkenness. Revoking his own 
challenge; slaying his




prisoner with his own hands; riding from his sovereign's banner in the field; 
telling his sovereign false tales . .
"You have it pat." The boy, suddenly released, rubbed his arm. "Naturally. My 
rule of thumb. We all have our religion. With Johnnie, it's Paracelsus. Mat here 
follows Lydgate; and your father and Ascham fit very well together. If he 
thunder, they quake; if he chide they fear; if he complain-"
Shocked into interrupting, Mat spoke, a broad finger directed at the redheaded 
boy. "His father? He was nameless."
"Allow me to introduce you." Lymond, speaking mildly, was watching Bulb. "Will 
Scott of Kincurd, Buccleuch's oldest son."
The gypsy smiled back boldly. "A prize indeed."
Understanding and contempt filled the boy's face. "Of course. Your diffidence is 
explained. But I assure you, you needn't be afraid of Buccleuch. He'll neither 
hound you for taking me nor pay you for ransoming me. In fact, he knows I've 
left to join some such as you."
"Some such," repeated Lymond idly. "And didn't try to stop you?" The young man 
laughed. "He didn't much fancy seeing his son and heir exposed in the gutter. He 
tried. But there are two other boys in the family. He'll get used to it."
Lymond shook his head sadly. "There goes your day's work, Johnnie."
Johnnie Bulb slid noiselessly to his feet. an ecstasy of white aeeth. He 
stretched lazily, sketched an elaborate bow to Lymond, nodded to Mat, and made 
for his pony. On the way, he stopped and prodded the boy with a long, dirty 
finger. "Home for you, laddie: home!" said he. "You need a longer spoon than the 
cutlers make to sup with this one."
"Well?" said Lymond. And Will Scott, to his secret astonishment, read an 
invitation in the tone.
"I haven't a spoon," he said. "But I had a knife I could trust."
"This?" The Master slipped from his belt the dirk he had removed when Will, the 
solemn tracker, had been ambushed by his quarry. He tossed it thoughtfully once, 
twice, and then pitched it to its owner. Will caught it, his expression an odd 
compound of surprise and mistrust.
With acute misgiving, Turkey Mat watched him. "You're not taking him on, sir?"
"On the contrary," said the Master, his eyes on Scott "It's the other way 
round."



Matthew persevered. "He'll wait till we're settled, oath or no oath, and then 
bring Buccleuch and the rest down on top of us."
"Will he?" said Lymond. "Will you, Marigold?"
Brilliant, youthful face confronted restless one.
A little, malicious smile crossed the Master's face.
"Oh. no, he won't," said Lymond confidently. "He's going to be a naughty, 
naughty rogue like you and me."

* * *



Much later, Lymond appeared again, still in riding dress, with a steel helmet 
fitted closely over his hair. A heavy white cloak marked with some kind of 
embroidery in red hung over one arm.
"Mat, I'm off to Annan. I leave you in charge. If that English messenger gets 
into trouble, Jess's Joe will report to you. Take all the men you need to free 
him and get him to Annan. I shall be back before dawn. Then we move to the Peel 
Tower."
Turkey's hand automatically massaged his stomach. "Fair enough." He added 
bluntly, "You'll not expect us to get you out of Annan if you fall into 
trouble?"
"My dear Mat, I can't possibly fall into trouble," said Lymond. "I shall be 
under the best protection. I'm taking Will Scott with me."


2.	Pins and Counterpins

That evening at sunset the whaup and peewit lay quiet in Annandale and the black 
shadows of the Torthorwald and Mousewald hills marched east over moors prickling 
with movement and furtive noise.
Darkness fell, and two horsemen slipped silently around the hills and made 
directly for the gates of Annan, capital town of the district and newly 
possessed and occupied by the English army of Lord Wharton. On the last rise the 
riders paused to look down at the red eye in the plain, the bloody glitter of 
the river and the drifting thickets of white smoke. The wooden houses of Annan 
were on fire.
A peal of laughter shivered the silence.

"O wow! quo' he, were I as free
As first when I saw this countrie . .



The sound died away in the cold air, and there was silence again.
Will Scott, in no mood for verse, shot a look at the silver-tongued, malignant 
animal beside him and blurted a question. "Why did you let me join you?"
Lymond's eyes were fixed on the burning town; his voice was entirely prosaic. "I 
need someone who can read and write."
"Oh.''
"Further. I'm anxious to meet and talk with an Englishman of the name of Crouch. 
Jonathan Crouch. He may be in Annan. If he isn't you shall help me find him and 
then, Aenobarbus, you shall have a diamond, a maiden and a couch reserved in the 
Turkish paradise. Meanwhile-"
"Are they expecting you," asked Scott, "at Annan?"
The half-seen mouth curled. "If they are, I advise you to fly like a woodpecker, 
crying pleu, pleu, pleu. Lord Wharton has threatened to gut me publicly and the 
Earl of Lennox has a personal price of a thousand crowns on my head. No. I 
propose to appear in one of my twenty-two incarnations, as a messenger from the 
Protector, with yourself as my aid. My name is Sheriff: yours shall be-what?"
Scott had also read his poets. He quoted dryly. "This officer but doubt is 
callit Deid."
"Apt, if pessimistic. You have nothing to do," said Lymond, "but look beautiful, 
honest and English and pray that one Charlie Bannister has arrived before us to 
smooth our way. Our John the Baptist. A poor soul, but even if he has barely one 
head, much less eighteen, he will do to vouch for us. We shall converse briefly 
with the gullible ones at the gate, encounter Crouch-I trust-and return. An 
innocent and worthy programme. Si mundus vult decipi, decipiatur. Come along 
then, Marigold. It's warmer down there!"
And the two figures swept downhill, neck and neck, the red crosses on their 
cloaks bellying in their passing.

* * *



"Halt and . . ." began the Cumberland voice, and trailed off for the second 
time; whereat Scott found in himself an unexpected impulse to hysteria.
Above the two horses rose the gates of Annan; around them pressed an escort of 
the outlying guard; before them stood the gatehouse



where the guard on duty was trying to extract their names and business under 
harassing conditions.
"Look," Lymond was saying bitterly, "at the dirt on your pauldrons. And your 
doublet."
declare . .
"Your sword's filthy. And your dagger: how d'you expect a rusty blade to bite?"
declare-I can't help that!" said the guard excitedly, abandoning formalities. 
"Robin! Davie! Move a step and I'll spit you!"
"Well, if you do," said Lymond resignedly, "for God's sake use someone else's 
sword."
But when the captain came, a swarthy, middle-aged Bewcastle man, Lymond 
dismounted at once and introduced himself. "You won't remember me; Sheriff's my 
name. One of the Bishop's men from Durham. Sorry to make a mystery of myself, 
but I'm supposed to tell you to your face: it's business of the red tod's cub."
The password worked its miracle. As Lymond spoke, the captain's face changed; 
the guards were dismissed, and in privacy he turned to the two newcomers. 
"You've a message for their lordships from the Protector?"
"On the heels of one only," said Lymond. "You've spoken with Charlie Bannister?"
"The Protector's man? No."
"Damnation!" Scott shortsightedly found some amusement in Lymond's anger. After 
a moment he went on. "The fool must still be on the road here-I hope nothing's 
come to him. I started from Leith yesterday with a message-round like the 
Odyssey. He was due to leave just after and come straight here. . . . It doesn't 
matter. I'm behind time," said Lymond busily; "and I've got a message for one of 
of your men: Jonathan Crouch. That's all."
Drinks had been brought; the captain's eyebrows rose above the rim of his cup. 
"Crouch of Keswick? Then you can forget it. He was lifted in a skirmish two days 
ago."
The wine went down Lymond's throat like a drain. "One message less, thank God. 
Who got him?"
"Whose prisoner is he? I dunno. They're welcome," said the captain with relish. 
"Drive you funny in the head, Crouch would. Tongue like the clatterbone of a 
goose's arse. Are you going?"
Lymond was certainly going, and so, he hoped, was Will Scott. The



captain was quite ready to speed them cif . . . provided they spent ten minutes 
first with the joint commanders.
"A few minutes either way won't hurt you; and Wharton'li have my skin if this 
man Bannister doesn't arrive and I let you go too."
Cheerfully, Lymond continued to make for the gates. "What Wharton wrn do to you 
will be nothing .o the Protector's delight if I spend half the night here. I've 
told you already. I left long before Bannister. We won the battle on Saturday: 
that's all I know."
The captain, unmoving, blocked his way. "Come along, man. Don't let me down. If 
you've nothing to say you'll be out in a nice." There was a half-formed 
suspicion in his mind, and to object again was clearly unsafe. Without further 
demur, Lymond remounted and, with Scott, followed his guide through the main 
streets of Annan.
It was difficult riding. The young horses trembled in the passing glare from 
burnt thatch and timber. Acrid smoke rolled and hung about the narrow road and 
caught their throats; the streets., deserted of people, were littered with 
charred wood and rags and smashed pottery. Scott wondered, with an interest 
nearly academic, how Lymond was going to extract them from this.
Farther on, when the fires were more infrequent and stone-built houses loomed 
ahead, a man accosted them. The captain was wanted at the gate.
Captain Drummond was a careful man. He was about to ignore the summons when 
Lymond spoke, solving his problem. "I don't suppose Lord Wharton's son Harry is 
anywhere about? I once knew his sister, and I'd like to meet him. He could 
perhaps direct us to his lordship as well."
It was a happy suggestion. The captain, clearly relieved, spoke to the man who 
had waylaid them, and in a few minutes they were joined by Henry, younger son of 
Lord Wharton, commander of the English army on the west. Drummond explained and 
left with his man, and young Wharton turned to Lymond and Scott. "Of course, 
I'll take you both there. It's the middle house in the square through there." 
Restless, energetic, at twenty-five already a leader of horse, Henry Wharton led 
the way, beginning a long, newsy conversation about his family, which Lymond 
appeared to be sustaining surprisingly well. But Scott, some of the detachment 
worn off, thought: By God, he'll never make it. .
The pend leading to the square was dim. On it lay the shifting black



shadows of the tall buildings fringing the fires; the darkness was full of 
movement and the three horses, scared, huddled close.
As the shadows closed about them, Lymond launched himself on Wharton. There was 
the beginning of a cry, and then nothing but the cracking of hoofs as the other 
horse shied at the struggling shapes. It was then that Captain Drummond, 
released from his errand, cantered cheerfully up at the rear and made to join 
them. Then he said sharply, "What's happening there?" and peered into the alley.
Scott saw the whistle in his hand just in time. Instinctively, the boy's hand 
went to his belt. He found his dagger, stood in his stirrups, and thrcw. The 
captain gave a brief cry, and fell to his horse's mane, and from there to the 
street.
It was suddenly very quiet. Wharton's horse stood nose to nose with Lymond's 
bay, snuffling gently, and there was an extra dark shadow on the road. The 
Master's voice said tartly, "Dropped off to sleep?"
"Oh!" Scott dismounted in a hurry. Young Wharton was, he found, lying face down 
in the road, a cloth stuffed in his mouth and bent arms savagely clinched by 
Lymond.
"Where's Drummond?"
"I knifed him. He's lying in the road."
"Then get him out of it, for God's sake. We don't want a public wake for him. 
Take two of the horses and tie them up here. Drag the captain to the wall. Is he 
dead?"
"I don't know," said Scott self-consciously.
Lymond wasted no time on comment. "Gag and bind him if he isn't, and put him on 
your own horse with a saddlecloth over his head."
He was unhitching rope from his own saddle as he spoke, and expertly binding 
Wharton, leaving only his knees and ankles free. He then pulled the man to his 
feet and, wrapping the folds of his cloak about him, took the cloth from his 
mouth.
Wharton said, in a kind of parched croak, "Set me free, or my men'll burn you 
alive!"
"If wishes were buttercakes," said Lymond, and tossed something shining into the 
air, "beggars might bite. I have a little knife which says you will take us 
quietly to your father."
Scott, distrusting his ears, stared.
Wharton said dramatically, "Never!" Lymond's elbow moved and the young man gave 
a convulsive jerk. "First scene, second act," said


the Master. "Stop play-acting, you fool, and take us in. Nobody I ever met could 
argue with a knife at his ribs."
Probably, more than anything else, the supreme confidence in his voice convinced 
the young man. Holding his arm tight against the short incision Lymond had cut, 
he bit his lip, and began to move reluctantly onward. Scott, leading Lymond's 
horse and his own, walked after.
The events which followed were always to have for Will Scott of Kincurd the 
curious, narcotic quality of a bout of fever. In the course of it, he became 
dimly aware that they had arrived at a house; that Lymond had again produced the 
allusive password and, with sullen acquiescence from Wharton, demanded private 
audience with their lordships for himself, his colleague and a Scottish prisoner 
with valuable information.
It passed off without a hitch. One of the guard inquired of their lordships 
above; and then, clattering down, jerked a thumb. "That's all right: up ye go!" 
he said. And they went.

* * *



The Provost of Annan had built according to his station; and the parlour adopted 
by the joint leaders of the invading English army was decently panelled in 
linenfold, with a particularly fine Italian desk pulled near the scarlet peat 
fire.
At the desk sat my Lord Wharton, knight and member for Parliament, Captain of 
Carlisle, Sheriff of Cumberland, Warden of the West Marches and loyal and 
perspicacious servant of the English crown in the north. He was reading aloud 
passages from a paper covered with his secretary's writing, pausing for comment 
as he went. The Earl of Lennox, nose to nose with his own fair reflection in the 
dark window, was drumming his fingers on the sill and indulging in witty 
interjections.
Thomas, first Baron Wharton, was a tough little self-made Englishman with a 
whittled brown face and cold disenchanted eye. But Lord Lennox was a different 
matter. The Earls of Lennox reached back into the history of Scotland; this one 
had been reared in France and had lived blithely on his wide lands in Scotland 
until deciding that wealth and power lay closer to hand in the south. The title 
Matthew Lennox coveted was King Consort of Scotland. When Mary of Guise,




the widowed Queen Dowager of Scodand, would have no truck with him, he merely 
turned coat, joined the forces of England and married Margaret Douglas, King 
Henry VIII's niece who herself had a strong claim to a crown or two.
He was, incidentally, worried about his wife Margaret. The next day's march lay 
through her father's lands. The Earl of Angus. head of the noble Douglas family 
once castigated by Buccleuch, had written to him anxiously pointing this out and 
hoping that his son-in-law and Lord Wharton would, if invading, remember the 
ties of kinship. Lord Lennox remembered them, but he doubted whether Wharton 
would; especially if this time Margaret's turbulent father should plump for the 
Scottish sidc and join the Queen's army against him.
Jubilation over the news from Pinkie had meantime however swept gloom from the 
air. Wharton was planning his exodus from Annan to the north, and Lennox was 
dreaming of throne rooms when the door opened.
Being well oiled, it opened quite gently, and Henry Wharton, followed closely by 
Lymond, was within the room before either commander looked around. By then Scott 
too was inside, unloading the wounded Drummond in a corner. He retired to the 
door and stood with his back to it just as the man at the desk turned and half 
rose. "Harry! You blundering fool! What've you done?"
Unequivocably, the firelight showed the bound hands, the glitter of Lymond's 
knife.
His son was mute; and the hard eyes of Lord Wharton shifted to the figure 
behind. "You, sir! Who are you, and what d'you want?"
Lymond laughed. He laughed again as Lennox, who had spun around, took a step 
forward. With his free hand, the Master pulled off his steel bonnet and tossed 
it neatly into the hearth. The peats clouded with smoke, then blazed around it, 
lighting the pallid face and the colourless hair, stained with sweat. "Money," 
he said.
Lord Lennox stared. A tide of scarlet, patched and mottled, washed up to the 
roots of his hair and disappeared, taking horror and disbelief with it, and 
leaving the face swollen with rage. "It's Crawford of Lymond!" said the Earl of 
Lennox, and the pale eyes, china-hard, shot to his lordly colleague. "Here, in 
Annan. In the middle of your precious guard!" He exploded into ugly language. 
"Your chickenlivered rabbit of a son . . .
Lord Wharton spoke sharply. "Control yourself, sir!" and his eyes, on Harry, 
promised payment by someone, in time, for Lord Lennox's


bad temper. He addressed Lymond. "How did you get past the gate?" Scott had 
finished lashing young Wharton to a bench, and was
regagging him methodically. Watching him, his knife lingering at Harry's back, 
Lymond replied. "My dear sir, how to avoid it? Their hospitality was most 
pressing. Besides, I got the password from Bannister."
"Bannister?"
"The Protector's messenger. He fell in with us."
Wharton said sharply, "You have his dispatch then?"
The fair brows were raised. "Dear me, no! I've finished with huckstering these 
days. Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness. I hope to be appreciated for my 
beaux yeux alone-and those of Harry, of course. Manhood but prudence is a fury 
blind."
Too wise a fox to be baited, Wharton kept to the point. "Then I take it this man 
Bannister is dead?"
"He was in the best of health when I left him," said Lymond, surprised. "In 
fact, I had him escorted part of the way. The roads to the north are rather busy 
with Scottish gentlemen."
"In fact, you sold him to the other side, this time!" said Lennox, making his 
first contribution to the conversation.
Lymond looked mildly chagrined. "Not at all. What a reputation to have! Not all 
of us have your lordship's gift for trusteeship."
This was a very shrewd hit. Everyone present knew that Lennox, ostensibly acting 
for the Scottish Queen Dowager, had once taken delivery of a shipload of French 
gold and arms on her behalf; and had then shipped himself and the gold south to 
England.
For a moment the earl was speechless with anger. "You have the damnable 
effrontery- My God, if I'd only left you lashed to your stinking oars! You were 
grateful enough when I clothed you and fed you and gave you money . . . more 
fool I. I was repaid all right! Bring a cow to the hall," Lennox snarled, "and 
she will to the byre again."
"And foul water slockens fire," added Lymond. His voice became noticeably 
mellow. "But then I was brought up in bad company. From oar to oar, you might 
say."
If his previous remark had caused an explosion, this one was greeted with a 
silence which could be felt. Scott, his heart thudding inexplicably, looked from 
Lymond's imperturbable face to Lennox, who had gone bone-white.
"And how," pursued the Master suavely, "is the Pearl of Pearls?"



He was talking about the Countess of Lennox, and this time the allusion was 
unmistakable. Scott saw in Lord Wharton's face, for an instant, the same kind of 
shocked surprise that he felt himself; then Lennox's sword came hissing from its 
scabbard and Wharton, with a curse, sprang to put a hand on his arm. "Put up, my 
lord!"
The Earl of Lennox didn't even look at him. He said through his teeth, "I'll 
suffer insult and insolence for no man's brat!"
"Then you have me to reckon with as well, my Lord Lennox," said Wharton 
furiously. "Put up!"
There was a long pause. The knife glittered in Lymond's hand, over young Harry's 
spine; Wharton's fingers dug into the earl's arm. Lennox swore, and rammed home 
the blade with fingers that shook.
Wharton removed his hand. He said quietly, "I remember this scum. There is no 
need to play his game for him." To Lymond he continued, "I understand you are 
bargaining with my son's life. Naturally, it is worth a price to me, but don't 
expect me to pay too much. What do you want?" Then, natural feeling breaking 
through for a moment, he said bluntly, "State your business, and get you gone. 
The very air you breathe makes me retch."
"Courtesy," said Lymond, "will get you nowhere." He fitted his shoulders 
comfortably into the panelled wall. "I must say you appear to be taking your 
martial duties very lightly. Don't you want to know what the Protector's 
dispatch said? I read it, you know, before sending it on. There's been another 
stupendous victory at Linlithgow, and the Protector thinks you should meet him 
in Stirling right away to talk it over. Doesn't that excite you? Scotland 
conquered at last! Duke Wharton on the Privy Council; King Matthew on the 
throne!"
Lennox had to know. His eyes searched Lymond's face; he said, almost against his 
own will, "A victory on the Stirling road . . . is that true?"
Lymond stared back. "Why not, your Majesty? The Scottish Queen's sickly; the 
English King's a bastard-or so the Catholics say, don't they, Matthew?-Arran's 
an idiot and his son a fool . . . lo! my lords, a crown!"
Half mesmerized, four pairs of eyes watched as swiftly he leaned to the fire, 
seized the hearth tongs and stepped back. High above his bead, gripped in the 
metal, flamed his own helmet, red-hot from the blazing peats, bits of burning 
stuff falling smoking to the floor.


"A crown!" said Lymond exaltedly. "Who will wear it? Harry, perhaps?"
This was leading the field with a vengeance. The rigor which seized them lasted 
less than thirty seconds. Then Lennox said, loudly and rather wildly, "The man's 
mad!" and Wharton, his face rigid, reseated himself at the desk. "Money?"
"Of course!"
"In the chest." Wharton indicated a small coffer against one wall.
"Get it."
All the men in the small room, wounded, bound and free, waited, in a tension 
which knit them together, as five leather bags were placed on the desk, and 
taken away by Scott.
The Master opened one of them. "O beautiful bageheeks. Bonnets bellissimi; ecus; 
ryals- Dear me, the assured ones of Dumfriesshire are going to be much the 
poorer for this. Wrap 'em up, my Pyrrha!"
He ripped off Harry's cloak and flung it to Scott, who made a rough bundle of 
the gold, and laid his hand on the door.
"And so," said Lymond gravely, "we see the final end of our travail. Farewell, 
my masters!"
But the final paraph, the flourish which in time Scott was to recognize as 
habitual, was still to come. As he moved from Harry, and both Wharton and Lennox 
started forward, Lymond let drop his aryn. The helmet, dull now with black heat, 
fell accurately on young Wharton's brow, and the boy, his eyes staring, gave, 
behind the gag, an unpleasant choked scream.
"That will perhaps remind you," said Lymond, "not to speak to strange gentlemen 
in dark streets"-and in the ensuing confusion, transported himself and Scott 
outside the door and locked it.
Scott stumbled down the dark stairs with his bundle. He was aware of a noisy 
conversation going on at the bottom between Lymond and the guards, of riding 
gently back down the pend, fighting to keep his spurs still, and recalling with 
a short prayer of gratitude the thickness of that parlour door. The gate. A 
sharp passage, with the edge on Lymond's voice, and the sullen and abashed look 
on the faces of the gatemen. The creak as the timbers were drawn, miraculously, 
to let them through.
Outside, in the cool, flickering darkness, the free night lay waiting, and 
swallowed them.

* * *





It seemed to Scott, riotously crossing the moors with Lymond, that he had done 
pretty well. He had prevented the fellow Drummond from giving the alarm. He had 
successfully comported himself in the presence of English military dignitaries 
of the most imposing sort. If the thought of the flaming helmet stuck 
unpleasantly on his mind, he dismissed it. What did it matter about cross-
examinations! This was man's work.
It was then that two horses appeared wraithlike in the gloom ahead, and Lymond 
said sharply, "Joe! What arc you doing here?" and rode forward.
Words drifted to Scott. "Bannister, sir . . . taken by a strong party of Scots . 
. . yes, sir, I did. . . . Turkey took all the men and went after him . . . to 
look out for you and tell you
yes..."
By the long-distance cramps across his shoulder blades and the worn patches 
inside his thighs Scott was reminded that he had been in the saddle all day; and 
with no great joy he felt Lymond return to his side suffused with fresh, 
delicate energy. "Now, don't lose interest, my Pyrrha," said the light voice. "I 
bring, lover, I bring the newis glad. Friend Bannister has got him~elf ambushed 
and now, my frivol Fortune, the ambushers are walking into the net. I'll trip 
upon trenchers; I'll dance upon dishes-it is now perfect day."
And led by Jess's Joe, Lymond rode quickly onward over the dark Annandale moor, 
Will Scott following.


3.	Capture of a King's Pawn

"Lymond must wait," said Lord Culter; and he and Buccleuch, and the Erskines, 
and Andrew Hunter and Lord Fleming and every man with a horse under him and a 
sword in his hand had ridden to Pinkie.
Among the ten thousand dead of that day were Lord Fleming of Boghall and Tom 
Erskine's older brother.
Among the living, the hungry and battle-weary, with lined faces caulked with 
dust, were Lymond's brother Lord Culter and Tom Erskine himself, far from 
slight, irritating adventures with a drunken sow. With the rags of their 
following the two men left the battlefield together and, knowing their families 
to be safe with Queen Mother, baby Queen and Court in the fortress town of 
Stirling, they crossed Scotland from the River Forth to the River Annan in an 
attempt to


put a block-not enough men; not enough ordnance; not enough food-between the 
advancing army under Lord Wharton and the treasure at Stirling.
So while the spirits of my lords Wharton and Lennox were being mortified in 
Annan, two parties of Scottish troops lay still in the darkness to the north: so 
still that Charlie Bannister, the Protector's ill-fated messenger to Wharton, 
walked straight into one of them. He had the presence of mind to destroy his 
dispatches before they caught him; but catch him they did, and took him to Lord 
Culter.
The man Bannister might have been weak in geography, and uncertain in his grasp 
of minor essentials such as avoiding the attention of large bodies of cavalry. 
But in one thing he excelled: he could keep his mouth shut.
Agonizingly aware of the danger to Stirling, excoriated by the need to know the 
Protector's and Wharton's plans, they tried every method of persuasion; for the 
messenger knew the gist of his message:
incautious to the end, he had let that out himself.
With failure confronting them, Culter took his captain aside. The dilemma was 
plain, if the English Protector, now at Edinburgh, was ready to move on to att~k 
the Queen and the Governor, he would order Wharton north to support him. Were 
these the orders Charlie Bannister carried? And when they didn't come, would 
Wharton stay a while in Annan? Long enough, for example, to let Lord Culter and 
Tom Erskine with their men, however few, ride back to the defence of Stirling, 
their two Queens, their womenfolk?
"But if you're wrong, sir," said Lord Culter's captain, "you unstop this hole by 
moving away."
There was a short silence; then Culter took his decision. "Get your horse and 
bring Erskine and the other party to me. If it is as I think, we abandon Annan 
and march north."
The captain left, and still Bannister held out. Lord Culter, watching the 
assault, lips compressed, saw the decision he did not want to make striding 
toward him.
He waited unmoving as time passed. Erskine had not yet had time to join him; 
dawn was still a long way off. To the south, a dull red haze challenged. He 
watched it mechanically, then chopped a hand on the torchbearer's shoulder. 
"Lights out!"
In the sudden darkness, a lookout confirmed what he had seen. "Body of troops 
coming up from the south, sir!" It was Erskine, of course. He gave orders 
quickly. Going through the motions for




defence, the same certainty lay reassuringly on the men. It was Erskine, of 
course.
It was not Erskine. The horses were at the edge of the wood, and the leaves 
shivering before they knew it; and then a growing, sphincteral circle of sound 
told them they were surrounded by a force much bigger. In ten minutes it was 
over. Pulsing inward, the incomers squeezed the Scots in a knot below the 
scarred trees, and held them there.
By the relit torches, the vanquished, on foot, stared at the mounted ring of 
their victors. The horsemen wore no emblems, and no banners were shown: the 
conspicuous red cross of England on the white background was nowhere to be seen. 
Lord Culter, weaponless and fine-drawn, stepped forward and addressed them. "Who 
is your leader?"
No one offered the civility of a reply. Instead, a bald, black-bearded giant who 
had been fidgeting about the radius of the circle, suddenly bent from his horse. 
"So there ye are, ye hell-tarnished gomerel!"
Forgotten in the bracken, the bound figure of Bannister stirred hopefully.
"It's a wae job keeping some folk out of trouble," remarked the big man with 
some sourness. "We told ye the right road, didn't we?"
Charlie Bannister, tried nearly beyond mortal man's endurance, released a 
heartbreaking groan. Bending over his mare's neck, the big man flicked off the 
ropes with his sword edge.
"On your plat feet, ye glaikit Mercury. There's a horse here ye can have, and a 
guide to take ye as far as Annan. I suppose you handed your papers to the bold 
laddies here?"
Bannister got shakily to his feet. "I tore them up. How was I to know you 
directed me right?"
The big man invoked his Maker, spoiling the effect with an alarming hiccough. 
"What else would we need to do to prove it: wrap you and your dispatch in a 
clean sark and lay you on his lordship's bed?"
-with heavy sarcasm. "Get off with you, man, before we get glutted with the fair 
sight o' you."
"Wait!" said Lord Culter. He defeated his own purpose. Bannister instantly 
discovered the use of his legs and, helped impolitely with the flat of the big 
man's sword, went stumbling through the bushes. Culter's instinctive move to 
follow was checked by the same sword.
Blackbeard grinned and swept him a bow. "My lord Culter. Good


e'en to you," he said ceremonially. "Now, gil you'll excuse us .
"I doubt there's a decent man in Scotland will do that," said Culter. Was it 
possible that they were to escape with their lives? "Scots in English pay, I 
take it?"
"Maybe." The big man was not forthcoming. More, he seemed miraculously to regard 
his business as complete. Having collected their weapons and cut loose Culter's 
horses, he bowed again and took rein.
At that precise moment, the dark rustling spaces behind him expelled more 
horsemen.
"But how magnificent!" said Lord Culter's younger brother, and rode forward with 
unrestrained cordiality. "Look, children: it's Richard!"
Watching curiously, Scott and all the others saw Lord Culter's face alter. Then 
he took a step backward, to narrow the angle between himself and the horseman, 
and spoke with deliberate and soul-hacking contempt. "This rabble is yours?"
"Not rabble, Richard." The blue gaze sorrowed. "There's no merit in being 
outwitted by a rabble. Don't let your sense of superiority get the better of 
you. After all, I'm on the horse, like the frog in the story, and while I can 
stare you down, it's a little difficult for you to stare me up. You've put on 
weight, haven't you? And cautious! Even Nero watched, Richard, while the family 
became encaramelled. I hardly thought you would resist the desire to be present 
as well."
Among Culter's men there was a rustle of anger, but Richard himself said nothing 
at all. For an infinitesimal space, the blue eyes were forced down by the grey. 
Then the slack lids were drawn back farther than Scott had ever seen them, and 
the full malice of Lymond's cornflower eyes bent on his brother.
"Talk to me, Richard. It isn't difficult. Move the teeth and agitate the tongue. 
Tell me news of the family. Am I superseded yet? Oh, Richard, a blush!"
"No." Culter's voice was perfectly level. "No. You are not superseded. You are 
quite safe to kill me." And added stiffly, forcing the time to pass: "Your 
services are at present with Wharton, I take it?"
Lymond's voice was absent. "Well, he's certainly paying me. Once our friend 
Bannister reaches Annan, the road north is going to be a little crowded, what's 
more."
Culter moved involuntarily. "Is the Protector then in Stirling?"
"Yes, of course," said Lymond readily. "Take care: you asked me




a question; it's the thin edge of the wedge. What's so interesting about the 
Protector being in Stirling? . . . Oh, Richard!" he said with an air of sudden 
discovery. "You haven't packed the ladies off to Stirling for safety, have you?"
Lord Culter, guarding his eyes, was speaking mechanically. "You should be 
delighted."
"Well, it opens up a number of interesting possibilities, doesn't it?" said 
Lymond. "I wonder if the Protector insists on merchetis, and his princely free 
access to the bedchamber, or anything novel like that. I used to know a number 
of women who would be all the better for a fate plus mal que morte. Which brings 
me rather to the point: Changeons propos, c'est trop chants d'amours. . . ." And 
he laid a gentle hand on his sword.
With an uneasy twist of relief, Scott recognized the climax, and drew a 
fortifying breath. At the same instant, Lymond said suddenly, "Richard, my 
child, have you by any chance more brains than I gave you credit for?"
The words were hardly out when the rumour of noise, the furtive boot on the 
heather and the laboured breath resolved themselves into a torrent of crumbling 
sound as Erskine's incoming Scottish force flooded the wood.
In the last flare of the torches, Scott saw Lord Culter, his face alight, snatch 
a bow and raise it. Passion lent to the silent tongue the drama once derided by 
his brother. "Your turn now, Lymond! And by God, before I let you take over my 
shield and my bed, l'll give you one night to remember the head of your family 
by!"
And as he swung his horse frantically and went crashing and bumping outward 
through the confusion, Scott also heard Lymond's reply.
"All right: a challenge, Richard! I'll meet you at the Popinjay in the next 
Stirling Wapenshaw, and we'll try then who's Master!"
He laughed, and the excitement in the laugh was the last thing Scott remembered.


2.

Blindfold Play.

And hit is not fittynge ne convenable thynge for a woman to goo to bataylle for 
the
fragilitie and feblenes of her. And therfore holdeth she not the waye in her 
draught as the
Knyghtes doon.





IN THE long grass by the water's edge a man lay half buried, with small life 
moving past his head and a tarnishing damp spread into his clothing. Behind him, 
four miles of bog rolled and steamed in the morning sun. Ahead, the turgid 
waters of the moat sucked and plopped in a leisurely way against the grazing 
meadows and scrub which lay behind Boghall Castle.
The sun moved.
At the castle, from which Richard, Lord Culter, had once watched the smoke of 
his mother's burning house, the watch changed with weary abuse on both sides. 
"If one more old body," said Hugh the Warden( to his junior, "asks me to send a 
horseman to Pinkie to inquire after her great-nephew Jacob, I'll skin her alive. 
Old quarry-faced Wharton on the road north, and ten men and twenty-two women to 
hold this castle and look after all of Biggar . .
But breakfast and a pint of beer must have modified his temper, because he was 
patient with the next anxious inquirer. "Don't fret. The boys'll be back all 
right."
He was reminded as he spoke that some were already back: the




barber-surgeon with his knives and ointments had already made the double journey 
twice between the castle and the thatched houses of Biggar. Hugh thought of 
that: he thought of his master, the dead Lord Fleming; he swore loudly and shot 
up to the watchtower, there to gaze earnestly and hopefully at the unstirring 
south.
"Oh, God! Let them come!" said he, addressing the hills. "Oh, God! Let them 
come, and me and Dod Young'll make collops of them!"
The morning dragged on. At noon Simon Bogle, bodyguard, got his lady's 
permission to fish for one hour, and left by the back postem. A dark, angular 
child, Sym was Stirling bred, and had for three years served the household with 
fierce attachment. At present, however, his mind was on fish. He passed through 
the bushes, untied the skiff, and shipped himself and his rod to the other side 
of the water. He thereupon walked twenty yards, stumbled, walked another yard, 
and went back to look.
A man's foot, lying in his path, proved to be attached to a body, and the body 
to an English cloak. He bent, gripped and rolled it over. Among a wealth of 
impressive detail there appeared a young man's profile, splendidly unconscious. 
"Whoops, cock and the devil!" said Simon Bogle breathlessly and pounced, like 
divine Calypso, on his prey.
He reached the postern with his burden, dispensing pulses of excitement and bog 
smells as his mistress opened it from the inside; and as he explained, Christian 
Stewart knelt beside their captive in her garden, her dark red hair fallen 
forward, her blind eyes resigned.
What to Sym was an English magnifico, ripe for ransom, took, bearlike, a 
different shape under the hypertactile fingers-the shape of an unconscious boy, 
with a dirty wound, raised and sticky, in the short hair over the nape. She drew 
together the shirt cords thoughtfully and rose.
"Um. Well, you've hooked a twenty-pounder this time, my lad, by the feel of his 
clothes. . . . If I were married or promised to that young gentleman I'd sell 
the lead off the roof to ransom him back. Unless he's a Spaniard, do you think?"
"Not with that hair, m'lady. Maybe," said Sym with a sort of agonized calm, 
"maybe it's the Protector Somerset? Or Lord Grey?"
"Och, Sym, he's too young," said Christian. "Although in a way it's a pity he's 
not, because, Sym my lad: what are you going to do about Hugh?"


"Oh, cock!" said Sym, his excitement checked. "Right enough. Hugh's in an awful 
bad temper about the English."
"Hugh's bad temper takes practical forms," said Christian thoughtfully. "Ransom 
or no ransom, your gentleman will find himself in multiple array on the wall 
spikes if Hugh sets eyes on him."
Sym devoted some thought to this. "Of course, we can't write for ransom anyway 
until he wakes up and says who he is."

"And by that time, Hugh might be feeling more like himself."
"I find the resemblance to himself at the present moment quite startling," said 
Christian. "But never mind. Go on."
"So," said Sym hurriedly, "if we got him up the privy stairs and put him into 
Jamie's room, no one need know. All that wing's empty except for me, and I could 
look after him. Until he says who he is
and the window's too high to let him escape and the door could be lockit."
Christian said slowly, "We could, I suppose, certainly . .
"And if he's nobody," said Sym fairly, "we can just hand him over to Hugh."
"In which event," said Christian, "he will certainly become nobody in record 
time. All right. I agree."

* * *



To carry the prisoner within, to strip, wash and bed him, to surround him with 
hot bricks in socks and light a fire to heat cock-a-leeky and milk and honey 
sneaked from the buttery took Sym, borne on the wings of simple cupidity, less 
time than bedding a child.
Christian, pulled by outside necessity, set aside ten minutes to examine his 
handiwork and used the time to relax, hands clasped, on a chair by the bedside 
while Sym, a cudgel beside him, bestowed himself hopefully on the window seat.
Blessed silence, and the slow dissolving of the nagging images of the day into 
something near dreams. Flurried movements of the big fire, to her left. Silk, 
pricking her right hand as the bed curtains stirred in an eddy. A rustle from 
Sym's feet in the rushes. A voice far below in the courtyard, crying something 
she could not quite catch. A creak from the bed.
Another.
A languid stir of the bedclothes.



It was, thought Christian, fully awake and gripped with laughter, like attending 
a birth. Were they wrong and he was Scottish, a purebred orthodox achievement 
with full honours: all well?
There was a thin crackle of pillow-feather; a stifled expletive; then a voice 
said resignedly, "God: my skull's split."
It was a cultured voice, with no inflection which would have seemed out of place 
at any point north of the Tyne. Like the jewelled aiglettes it announced 
consequence, character and money. Considering it, she spoke reassuringly. 
"Better not move. There's a bump on your head like the Old Man of Storr." And to 
save him time and breath she added, "I'm Christian Stewart of Boghall. My lad 
over there picked you up off the moor."
There was a long pause; then he spoke, clearly with his head turned toward her. 
"Bog-Bog . . .
"Boghall. Yes. You were thoroughly cold and damp, and here's Sym with some broth 
for you."
Unexpectedly, underneath shock and weakness there was the accent of laughter. 
"Think of the Cauldron of Hell," remarked their prisoner, "and you have my 
inside arrangements. But I'll tiy. Like the spider, I'll try. That lightlie 
comes will lightlie ga . . . steady
That's it. I can feed myself-or can I? I'm so sorry. The counterpane is not 
improved by spilt broth."
He ate, and much intrigued, Christian waited. At the end, he spoke again. "I was 
not, I hope, wearing a nightshirt when discovered?"
An artless gentleman. Christian followed the lead. "Your clothes are drying, 
sir. Your weapons were impounded when we found you were English."
"English! Lucifer, Lord of Hell!" (Here was passion.) "Do I look like an 
Englishman?"
"I," said Christian with wicked simplicity, "am blind. How should I know?"
Used rarely and with reluctance this was, she had found, the infallible test. 
Braced, she waited: for remorse, embarrassment, dismay, pity, forced sympathy, 
naked fear.
"Oh, are you? I'm sorry. You hide it extremely well. Then what," he asked 
anxiously, "made your friends think I was English?"
Exquisitely done, my young man, thought Christian. She said aloud, "Well, to 
begin with, you were wearing an English cloak. We've disposed of that for your 
own sake. Feeling in Boghall about the English



has been running gallows high since Lord Fleming was killed. You're safe in this 
room with Sym and myself, but I shouldn't advise you to attract the attention of 
anyone else in the castle."
"I see. Or I shall meet my fate. Without pitie, hanged to be, and waver with the 
wind. My beard, if I had one-Lord, I nearly have- is full young yet to make a 
purfie of it, even to replace the one I've stained. And why, Mistress Stewart, 
should you and your henchman trouble to defend me from death and horrible 
maims?"
"What a suspicious mind you have." Blandly, Christian matched metre with metre. 
"Why do you think? For gold, for gude; for wage or yet for wed?"
"I think no such thing: you malign me, I assure you. Every coherent sentiment 
escaped from the louvre at the back of my head long ago, and I am swimming in a 
sea of foolishness. I've -already forgotten what we're discussing."
Simon Bogle, a single-minded person, had not. "Lady Christian and 1," he said 
dourly, "were wondering what your name and style might be?"
In a feverish silence, the young man stirred restlessly. "Lady
Christian. Damnation. She has a title and I don't know it. She lives in
a bog; and of this also I am ignorant. Q.E.D. I cannot be Scots.
Therefore why your excessive kindness . . . Oh God! Of course.
Ransom."
"And natural virtue. For gold and for gude, in fact." Christian, visited by an 
unworthy satisfaction, was magnanimous. "But as part owner of the property, I 
think we should defer speech until you're more rested. You've had a sore knock 
there."
"Several sore knocks," he said, and fell silent, rousing himself only as she 
felt for and took away pillows. "Don't you want my name?" And dreamily, "This 
officer, but doubt, is callit Deid. . .
"No." Aware of Sym's silent resistance, she spoke firmly. "No, never mind. Not 
just now," feeling exhaustion and faintness overwhelm him. Even so, he managed a 
gruesome chuckle.
"O lady: nor later. Deceit deceiveth and shall be deceived. It's no good and I 
can't prove it's no good: I shall be as much use to you as the Nibelunglied. For 
I can recall nothing . . . nothing . . . not the remotest damned shred of my 
identity."

* * *



Christian left the situation in Sym's hands that night. Next morning, however, 
she woke thinking of her prisoner, and obtaining food and wine by a shameless 
lie in the kitchen, made her way with it up the private stair.
Inside the sickroom, she was aware of a strange step even before she shut the 
door; and indeed as she turned to do so, a voice said readily, "You may want to 
come back later, Lady Christian. Sym is out, and I'm up and standing by the 
window."
She shut the door. "Ab, you're feeling better. My dear man, not even an attack 
on my virtue would drive me downstairs till I've done. I've already climbed more 
steps this morning than a bell ringer."
He laughed, but did not come to help her, she noticed; and, respecting his tact, 
she took the tray herself to the window seat and laid it on a kist. Then, 
sitting by the bed, she ascertained that the fever was gone, the headache was 
less; that he was profoundly grateful, and remarkably well up in current events.
"So Simon has been talking to you."
"He has seldom stopped. He tells me Lord Fleming's widow and family are all at 
Stirling, and thinks it uncommonly rash of you to stay behind. With which, as a 
special hazard myself, I must agree."
She shrugged. "I can do more good here at the moment than in Stirling." And felt 
impelled to add, "Naturally, I can't risk being an encumbrance, or a hostage 
either. If things get much worse-or much better for that matter-a friend of the 
family will take me to Stirling."
"And I shall stay with captors somewhat less benign. Ah me," he said rather 
ruefully. "It may sound selfish but, as the poet said, words is but wind, but 
dunts is the devil."
"Doesn't that depend who you are?" she remarked. "If you bear a Scots name, 
you've nothing to fear. Or is this officer, but doubt, still callit Deid?"
There was a pause. Then he said, "Are you quoting from me?"
"Your very words last night."
"Oh. I must have been in dire spirits. Have you ever lost your memory? I suppose 
not. It's an experience. Pleasant but precarious, like the gentleman who sat 
under palm trees feeding fruit to a lion . . ." Pausing for breath, he added, "I 
rely on you to put down any lacunac to the effects of a blow on the head. I am 
but ane mad man that thou hast here met-"
"-I do you pray," she said gravely, "cast that name from you away."



Delighted, he took her up at once. "Yes, of course. Call you Hector, or Oliver . 
. . What else? Sir Porteous-Amadas--Perdiccas-- Florent . . . How common the 
predicament seems to be. Most of the heroes and all the poets appear to have 
been there before me. I am as I am, and so will I be; but how that I am, none 
knoweth truly
Disdain me not without desert! Forsake me not till I deserve, nor hate me not 
till I offend." And he abandoned English plaintively.

"Li	rosignox est mon p?re, qui chante sur le ram~e, el plus haut boscage.
La	seraine, ele est ma mt~re, qui chante en la mer salle, el plus haut rivage 
. .

"Your French is excellent, of course," said Christian. "And you disliked being 
called English."
"Thank you."
"Implying Scottish rather than English affinities-"
"I hoped you'd notice that."
"-In which case," said Christian reasonably, "do you not owe it to yourself to 
appear in public? Someone here might even recognize you."
"A shrewd move, decidedly," said the prisoner with interest. "If I disagree, I 
am undoubtedly lying about my loss of memory. On the other hand, it might be 
genuine, and my belief that I am Scots might be unfounded; in which case your 
friend Hugh, according to Sym, will be apt to give free play to his prejudices, 
and your hopes of a ransom will vanish."
"You must think us very mistrustful," said Christian equably. "Why should you be 
lying? If you are English, you would have no motive for hiding your name. The 
sooner we know, the sooner we should arrange your freedom."
"I find the Socratean method even more uncomfortable than plain sarcasm. I 
propose to say what you wish me to say, viz.: there are two exceptions in your 
category. If I were English but destitute, and if I were English and politically 
important, I should avoid identification like the plague."
''-Therefore?"
"Therefore when I say, as I do, that I have no wish to appear to your friends 
before my memory comes back, you have no means whatever of proving the honesty 
of my reasons-"
"Which in fact are . . .



"Funk," he said promptly. "Sheer terror of the dark. I don't like standing 
outside the door of a crowded room any more than you do, waiting to be pounced 
on from inside."
Christian said, "A priest would tell you this was pride and selfconceit.
"If anyone so described it to you, I hope you impeached him for a pompous liar."
"My dear man, would you have me excomnlunicate? It's a process of hardening one 
goes through. You would find me hard to shock."
"And to deceive?"
She smiled, and threw his own quotation back at him. "Deceit deceiveth and shall 
be deceived. You have an incorruptible voice and a lawyer's tongue. One thing I 
commend in you: you refused to add to the sins of the poets. A false pedigree is 
always worse than none at all."
"Avoiding your traps, O virtuous lady, O mixt and subtle Christian. But, as you 
see, I am honest and good, and not ane word could lie."
She laughed. "I deduce that you've lived on Hymettus on honey and larks' 
tongues."
"And can, I suppose, die in a bog as well as anywh~re," he said dryly.
No one likes to appear cheap. Betrayed into archness, Christian caught her 
temper and said evenly, "I can't, of course, answer for what will happen to you 
if I leave before your memory comes back. But meanwhile, until it does, you may 
have grace to stay anonymous, if you wish."
She rose, adding briskly, "And meantime, there are many would envy you. Make the 
most of your freedom, my friend-you've more of it than any of us."
"True. Only lunatics have more. I'm ungrateful to find it intolerable; and more 
than intolerable, of course, not to know the extent of the burden I'm putting on 
you."
Christian had reached the door. She turned, and said ironically, "No burden at 
all. You haven't forgotten?

"Ho, ho: say you so;
Money shall make my mare to go."

She shut the door, smiling, and left him to think it over.


This was Thursday, the 15th of September. Tom Erskine had gone south on Monday: 
he might very well be back for her any day now.
In the meantime, the demands on her time and her resources were continuous. All 
the lands of Biggar and Kilbucho, Hartree and Thankerton were in the care of the 
castle. In the absence of all the able men who had followed Lord Fleming to 
Pinkie and who had not yet returned-who might never return-the families on these 
lands must be succoured: given advice, news and medical help as they needed it; 
and plans made for their reception if the invaders broke through.
For the news from the east was pitiful. The army, ill-assorted and suspicious of 
itself, had crowned tactical blunder with panic: breaking up on the field, it 
had given way and had been hunted into extinction. While, forty miles to the 
north, the Court had found temporary refuge at Stirling, the English Protector, 
moving victorious toward Edinburgh, had put his horse into empty Leith, camped 
outside, and embarked on leisurely discussions about its fortification while 
English ships, sailing unchecked up the east coast, took and garrisoned the 
island of St. Colme's Inch, strategic gem in the midst of the Forth estuary 
north of Edinburgh.
And at any moment, they might hear of the approach from the southwest of Lord 
Wharton and the Earl of Lennox, and their English soldiers.
The day at Boghall wore on. The strain was bearing on them all:
Christian began to feel herself drained of comfort and vitality. In 
midafternoon, she made time to visit the deserted wing, aware of increasing 
irritation with the situation. Baulked meantime of his hopes of ransom, Sym 
might well have tired, she thought, of acting nursemaid-cum-jailer, and think 
there would be less danger and more fun if he brought Hugh into the affair. In 
accepting four years of Sym's unshakable loyalty, she had discovered his 
weaknesses. Thinking thus, she made for the private stair.
A clash of swords above her drove the blood from her heart. She stopped, and was 
rewarded with a crack of gasping laughter. "Man, it's not shinty! Use yourself 
neatly: see, to the left; forward; then up and through."
There was a further clatter as pupil evidently followed suit. She swept to the 
stairhead.
"You pair of fools: they can hear your swords in Biggar. Sym. Is this the way 
you look after a sick man? And you, whoever-you-are!



You're taking our care of you very lightly." Ignoring excuse and apology, she 
dispatched Sym to keep guard at the top of the stair, and seized the other man 
by the arm. "You deserve to hop like St.
Vitus:	turning fencing master with the fever hardly off you. Sit down at 
the stair bottom. Your head-"
"-Would serve a cat in a bowl eight days," he said, with another gasping laugh, 
and set about controlling his breath.
The doorway in the turret looked onto her private garden. Overlooked by the 
deserted wing and surrounded by an eight-foot wall it was silent and secret. The 
sun was warm; the peace absolute.
Beguiled from her duty she rested too, shoulders held by the wail, face upturned 
to the sun. Nothing moved but great rumours of perfume swelling and fading, 
sforzando and diminuendo; an orchestration of woodwind in the warm air.
Silence, broken by three golden notes of a lute: her own, she remembered, left 
on the bottom step. She said, "If you play, please go on. Music's my joy and my 
obsession."
"What shall it be?" He ruffled the strings, and made a false start. Then a spray 
of notes flew into the air, modulating in descending arpeggios. He suddenly 
sang, neatly and gaily,

"En mai au douz tens nouvel
Que raverdissent prael,
Qi soz un arbroisel
Chanter le rosignolet.
Saderala don!
Tant jet bon
Dormir lez le buissonet."

He paused, and evidently accepting her smile, continued. Tentatively, Christian 
joined him next time:

"Saderala don! Tant jet bon Dormir lez le buissonet."

They sang the last chorus together, melody and descant, and when he stopped she 
said trumphantly, "Sang School! I knew it!"
Plucking crotchets like raindrops, he responded. "Am I a schoolmaster, think 
you?"
"Or a monk?"-innocently.
Laughter intensified in the voice. "When clerics sing like little


birds?-No, surely not . . ." and he swept tempestuously into a song made 
immortal by its far from clerical sentiments; and from there to an estampie she 
did not recognize.
His playing was restrained and skilled. Drifting from this to that composer~ he 
discoursed gently about musical theory and philosophy; and she found herself 
stating her own views, asking questions, listening intently. With humble and 
rather touching delight, she entered into her own world; the world of sound, and 
was happy until Conscience put a hand on her shoulder. She said suddenly, "Who 
is Jonathan Crouch?"
"Who?" he said lazily. "Oh, Jonathan Crouch. He's an Englishman, at present pns- 
The hiatus, the inhalation, the shaken voice, were plain for her to hear. "You 
use drastic methods, don't you?" he said.
Christian replied quickly. "Memory's a strange thing, taken unawares. Sym told 
me you spoke the name in your sleep."
"Did I? Then it must have some personal importance, I suppose but what? I'm 
sorry. It's vanished. Try again."
"Then it probably isn't your own name?"
His laugh sounded genuine enough. "God forbid! Surely I'd know it if I heard 
it?"
"It might strike you suddenly. Or maybe you'd rather select one? O Dermyne, O 
Donnall, O Dochardy droch..
"No," he said. "Look, we could go on forever. I think I prefer being an old, 
nameless article to a new-minted one with a false label around my neck. Or, 
indeed, anything of a ropelike character. Leave me to spend my remaining wit on 
Jonathan Crouch, and in the meantime let there be dancing and singing and all 
manner of joy . .
The lute sang, irresistibly, and so did he.

"The Frogge would a wooing ride
Humble-dum, hum ble-dum
Sword and buckler by his side
Tweedle, tweedle twino.

"When he was upon his high horse set
Humble-dum, humble-dum
His boots they shone as black as jet-"

The break was as violent as if death itself had struck. The four strings gasped, 
once, under clenched fingers, and there was silence.



Alone with the hammering of her heart, with infinite patience, Christian waited.
"Memory's a strange thing." What aspect of the bold, ill-fated frog had opened 
the gates? Frogs-and wells. What lay at the bottom of a well? Cats; and kelpies; 
and curses; and cures for warts . . . and Truth, of course.
As if the thought had reached him, there was a movement beside her. The light 
insouciant voice showed no inclination to dive into wells.
'I

-Tweedle, tweedle, twino. I have a confession to make. The first rule of prison 
life is to curry favour with your jailer. This I have done with some success: 
Sym tells me he has no desire either to hang or to impoverish me. On the 
contrary: this afternoon he showed me how to escape with the key of the postern 
and over a secret path in the bog. I promised not to use it without your 
permission."
Christian said, "I see. You seem to have been working very hard. And what is the 
rule when there are two jailers?"
He was silent for a moment; then said, "Look: swear me God from top to toe in 
one breath if you will; but remember, I exposed myself voluntarily."
"All right," she said. "Provided you have a clear idea of the situation. I take 
it you've recovered your senses, and your identity is not one that would be 
pleasing to Hugh. You are likewise unwilling to be a source of profit or revenge 
to Simon or myself. You are therefore asking us both, in view of past favours, 
to connive at your escape."
If she had expected him to betray any further emotion, she was disappointed. 
"Admirably just, and justly damning," said the voice equably. "Well, the remedy 
is in your own hands." And he quoted mockingly:

"Se'l ser un Si, scrivero'n rima;
Se'l ser un no, amici come prima."

There followed a pause, during which Christian came to the annoyed conclusion 
that she had once more been outmanoeuvred. Possessing the key, he had flung 
himself on her mercy. Why? It occurred to her that when referring to the 
enslavement of Sym, he had refrained with the utmost tact from drawing a 
parallel. He had left her to do that. To betray him now would suggest the 
vindictiveness of a disappointed woman, and she might well, in his opinion, 
shrink from that.


"Amici come prima, indeed!" repeated Christian viciously to herself, and added 
aloud, "I assure you that if you've persuaded Sym out of his dream of wealth 
through sheer weight of personality, I'm unlikely to insist on furca and fossa 
out of spite or low curiosity. But what I must and will have clear is that once 
free, you'll do us no harm."
"I could give you my word on that, except that, like the wonders of Mandeville, 
my probity is problematical."
"The thought had occurred to me," admitted Christian. "Therefore while accepting 
your promise-of course-I must make one other condition. Tell me your interest in 
Jonathan Crouch."
"God!" he said; and this time she heard genuine amusement. "Next time I'll make 
straight for Hugh. Rather the thumbscrews than the confessional. But I warn you, 
it's a poor bargain. You won't trace me through Crouch."
"I'll risk that," she said, and then had further words struck from her by a 
sudden, vast commotion, echoing among the towers. At the same moment, a familiar 
voice rolled down the stair. "Good news, Christian! Are you there? Can I come 
down? Christian!"
She said, "It's Tom Erskine- Outside the postern, quick. Where's Sym . . . oh, 
there you are. Yes, I know: he's told me. Look: go with him, take him to the 
cave and come back . . . it's a small cavern halfway along the path; well 
hidden. You can stay there till dark. I'll get a cloak and some food over to you 
later."
"My sword-"
"I'll send it. Here's the postern key. Quick!"
She turned, as their running footsteps receded. "Tom, my dear! Wait and I'll 
come up!"
Christian Stewart lifted her skirts and began climbing the stairs thoughtfully. 
"Damm the man!" said she, as she went; and it was not at all clear which man she 
meant.

* * *



With Erskine were all his troops; tired, filthy and in the wildest of spirits. 
Biggar opened its doors to them: Bizzyberry echoed with laughter and music and 
at the castle, officers and garrison, suitably freshened up, shared a happy 
excess of food and drink in the banqueting hall.
Sitting beside Tom, smelling the white soap he used and picturing



him, clean, rosy and normal, Christian was moved to say, "Tom, I'm so gJad 
you're here!"
He said apologetically, "I'd have been here long before if I could. You look 
tired to death. Idiotic of Jenny Fleming to leave you."
She smiled. "It's only my capacity for intelligent sympathy that's exhausted-I'm 
longing for simple, positive, cheerful conversation. Tell me more of your news."
For it was not only good, but miraculous. Lords Wharton and Lennox, dug deep 
into Annandale, had turned tail; and pursued by himself and Lord Culter had 
scampered back to England. There was a garrison still at Castlemilk-no very 
great danger-but the deadly thrust north had been stopped: the western arm of 
the nutcracker had broken.
"Why?"
"Overconfidence, we think. They spread a rumour they meant to march north, and 
got a shock when Culter assumed the opposite and charged in. Made a mess of poor 
old Annan, but nothing to what Clydesdale missed, thank God. Although I don't 
mind saying," he added frankly, "that Culter took a chance I wouldn't have 
touched with a billhook."
"But it worked," said Christian. "And now?"
"Report to the Queen Mother. Dispatch rider ahead, of course, with details but I 
follow tomorrow. You'll come, won't you?"
"I think I shall, yes," said Christian. "If there's no threat to the castle they 
can dispense with me here. And I ought to take those children off Lady Fleming's 
hands. Is there a moon tonight?"
"No: It's got overcast," said Tom, surprised. "Why?"
"Oh, it doesn't matter. Sym wanted some night fishing. And I must finish packing 
as well," said Christian, with the appearance of absolute truth.

* * *



The path through the bog was not easy to find. Even steered firmly by Sym, her 
booted feet kept gouging into wet sponges and clucking, half-dug hags. Her gown 
was soaked and her spirits still damper when she heard a murmur ahead.
Sym, a joyful conspirator, whispered. "There's someone else with him in the 
cave, my lady."
Christian said, "Be quiet!" but the low voices stopped, and there



was a stealthy sound to their right. She pushed Sym a little, and he stepped 
forward, rising surprisingly to the occasion with a bold voice. "Stay where you 
are! We bring food from Boghall, but we're armed, too.',
"Doubly armed, I trust," said the voice of their former prisoner. "My faith, 
yes. Food, my sword and dagger-Sym, you're a hero.
Good God!" it said plaintively. "Good God! Lady Christian. The most determined 
creature since Bruce. I owe you some mformation, don't I?"
"You do. How do you feel after your wallc?"
"In good heart and excellent health. Happier than Augustus, better than Trajan. 
And one of my own senators, to boot, has already traced me and is about to 
restore me to my empire. It's the new moon. Like the elephants of Mauretania, my 
friends are foregathering to perform mysterious rites . . . Jonathan Crouch is 
an Englishman I want to speak to, that's all. I know nothing about him, except 
that he's a prisoner in Scotland, but I mean to trace him, if it takes me to 
Hell and back."
"It needn't do that," said Christian. "Because I can do it for you, through Tom. 
He has access to all the lists at Stirling, and he'll be discreet, if I ask him. 
Come to this cave on Tuesday, and I'll leave word for you."
The voice this time was brief. "Thank you, Shalirazad, but I think not."
She spoke bluntly. "Crouch will be ransomed back to England long before you can 
find him yourself."
"Nevertheless, no."
Meeting the rock of his will, she had no mind to plead. "Well, whether you want 
it or not, the information will be there," said Christian. "Ignore it if you 
want to. Good night." And pulling Sym's coat, she moved.
She was stopped at three paces by long, wiry fingers and a gust of garlic. Then: 
"God damn you, Johnnie, let her go!" said the expressive, flexible voice, and 
the hands dropped. She moved on quickly, without waiting for more.
Hallway back to Boghall, Simon spoke. "Who's Shahrazad?"
"A farsighted lady who kept the Shah on a leading rein by telling him stories."
Pause. "I don't see the connection," said Sym.
"Oh, don't be a fool!" said Christian irritably. "There isn't any."



3.

More Blindfold Play:

The Queen Moves Too Far

In figour mild be maid in chess a quene
A fair ladyc yat galye cled suld bene
And in a chyar scho suld be set on bight,
A crowne of gold apone hir bed weile dicht.
Richt sad in moving suld yir wom~ be
And of short space, and to no fer ciltre.






"F	IREARMS!" said Wat Scott of Buccleuch with a powerful disgust. "Firearms! 
I could do more harm with a good spit through
a peashooter. .
Tom Erskine located the voice without enthusiasm.
He had had a frustrating week. Stirling was his home: his father was Keeper of 
the castle, and in the romantic and ingenuous soul which lurked behind his rouad 
exterior, the Master of Erskine loved above all things to see between his 
horse's ears the Rock of Stirling, a homely Lorelci in the green meadow of the 
Forth.
It had taken all Friday to bring Christian Stewart and her women to Stirling. He 
had left them at Bogle House, which the Culter family and the Flemings shared, 
and had found his town like one with the plague at the door. Court, government, 
the tougher shreds of army command, had all recoiled on the place, and the 
streets were a nightmare of horsemen and wagons. More than that: inside the 
packed


lands lived an invisible disease of fright and nerves ten times worse than the 
newsless, suffering strain of the country because, like proud flesh, it 
increased on itself. Arran the Governor, awaiting the final, destined disaster 
of Somerset's attack, saw Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin in lapidary capitals 
before him and was sick with nerves. The town followed his lead.
At least, Tom found, they had taken thought for the Queen. For a week, the baby 
had been in hiding with her mother, and Mariotta and Lady Culter, now taking the 
place of the new-widowed Jenny Fleming, had gone to be at their side. Later, he 
heard that Christian had been commanded to join them.
He could not even be her escort. He was held fast in Stirling by affairs, and by 
the necessities of war. On Monday night. they heard that Leith was on fire and 
Holyrood Abbey overthrown; later, that the English Protector had struck camp and 
was on the move, while an English fleet was sailing farther north. No question 
now, of being sent to join the Queen, and Christian. Erskine stayed, and 
lightheaded with the despair of high crisis, the town awaited fresh news.
In the evening, it came. The English army was marching-not west, toward them, 
but south.
It was news that would be repeated, word for word, as long as they lived. On 
Monday, it was confirmed. The Protector, at Lauder, was still moving toward 
England. On Tuesday and Wednesday, fresh reports: the English fleet had simply 
fortified Broughty Castle on Tayside, and appeared to be waiting only for a wind 
to leave again. Thursday and today, Hume Castle had fallen to the enemy and had 
been garrisoned; the English army were now at Roxburgh, and apart from these 
outposts and the cut and dead wrack left by the storm, the pounding seas had 
withdrawn and the tide had flowed south.
Impossible to understand why Somerset had failed to press his brilliant 
advantage. The tired captains in Stirling could only surmise. The cautious 
pointed to the four English garrisons: two seabound on the open east coast, two 
within reach of the Border; but jubilation, like a truant, crept up on the town 
and its army.
Tom Erskine, at last free to escape, was impatient alike of wild opinions and 
delay, and irritated beyond reason to find Bucclcuch in the company on his first 
visit to Stirling since Pinkie. Particularly when the company, sleek and 
splendid, was George Douglas, whose elder brother, the Earl of Angus, was head 
of the House of Douglas in Scotland and father to Lord Lennox's wife.



He walked forward nevertheless and was seized. "Here, Erskine:
you've used 'em. Hackbuts, boy! Damned dangerous things!" Fighting had left Wat 
Scott of Buccleuch unaltered: bonnet crammed with Buccleuch bees, he looked as 
he had done when, standing with Lord Culter on the Boghall battlements, he had 
watched smoke rise from the castle where his wife Janet lay with a knife in her 
shoulder.
And that was a theme painfully close to Erskine's mind-and Sir George's too, it 
appeared, for interrupting Buccleuch blandly he observed, "Hullo, Erskine. Come 
to tell us about poor Will?" And so Tom had to embark, perforce, on his errand.
"I've seen your boy, Buccleuch. He's in good health." That, at least, was true.
Circumscribed by lowered eyebrows and raised beard, Buccleuch's face did not 
change. "Poor Will?"
Sighing, Erskine discarded finesse. "He's with Crawford of Lymond."
The thickets of grey curls tightened. "Lymond!" bawled Buccleuch. "As a 
prisoner? A hostage?"
Tom shook his head. He told the tale quickly: of the English messenger, of 
Lymond's attack on his brother; of his own arrival which saved Lord Culter. At 
the end there was a short silence; and though Buccleuch's eyebrows were lowered, 
there was a pleased spark in his glare. He cleared his throat.
"The fact is, the boy came back from France with a skinful of damned, moony 
ideas, and I could make nothing of him-nothing at all. So he stamped out, 
consigning us all to the nethermost hole and the wee deils with the pitchforks. 
In fact"-he paused, as memory struck him-"he said he'd probably be there before 
us. Which explains . . . God, Will!" growled Buccleuch, with a kind of numbed 
exasperation. "You'd have a damned nerve to choose Lymond to go to hell with."
"Oh, come." Sir George's eyes hadn't left Buccleuch's face. "I think we're all 
underestimating him. Be patient, and your Will might surprise you one day."
Buccleuch returned the stare. "If you're a decent body by nature, you don't sell 
your captain, even if he's captain of nothing but carrion.
"But surely Will knows what Lymond is?" Tom's voice told of anxiety as well as 
puzzlement.
"Will is no innocent," said Buccleuch flatly. "H&s a cocky young


fool with a head too big for his bonnet, but he's not daft, and he's not 
twisted. If Lymond took him on, he knew what he was doing. Will won't betray 
him. He'll rub his own nose in the midden, to make a point of principle to his 
soft-heided relations, but his great new code of honour'll keep the stink from 
his nose while he does it. That boy," snarled Sir Wat, "thinks with his nether 
tripes- Let's have some claret, for God's sake."

* * *



It was evening before Erskine had leave to go.
He took no escort because he knew none was permitted; but turned alone out of 
the gates of Stirling and rode into the sunset, which flared and died as he 
went.
It grew dark. Around him, the trees closed in and then fell behind:
beyond them were the moors, with the hills of Menteith on his right. In a light 
wind, grasses hissed like spray. The path became better: he saw cottage lights 
and smelled wood smoke. Then he was stopped.
That was the first guard. There were two more, past the hamlet of Port, the 
chapel, the barns, the Law Tree. The last of the beeches moved past him: he gave 
his name and password and was recognized yet again; and then drew rein.
Black and unrippled at his feet spread the Lake of Menteith, one and a half 
miles across, island home of his brother's priory; island seat of the Earls of 
Menteith. Barring its texture lay like ribbons the thousand lights from the two 
islands in its centre, and music fled across the water: organ notes from the 
Priory of Inchmahome, where monks sang at Compline and children slept; a consort 
playing a galliard from Inchtalla, where the Scottish court took its leisure in 
hiding.
A ferry, already signalled by its prow lantern, arrived, chuckling; and he got 
in.

* * *



"My dear man," said Sybilla next day, placidly stitching before Earl John's big 
fire. "Admit you've never had to live with eight children on an island, and 
every one with the instincts of a fullgrown lemming."
The Dowager, who had her own way of reducing tension, sat next to Tom Erskine, 
her aristocratic nose decorated by a pair of horn



rimmed spectacles hung around her neck on a thin gold chain, the inevitable 
embroidery on her lap. Christian Stewart was out, and Sybilla was free, which 
meant that she commandeered both Erskine and Sir Andrew Hunter, newly in with 
dispatches, to help her entertain Mariotta.
For the attack on Midculter had tumbled Richard's wife into a cold bath of 
nerves which the upheaval of the last three weeks had not helped at all. The 
theft of their silver had hardly touched the ledger pages of Richard's wealth: 
what made her flesh shiver was the thought of Lymond, and the cool, impertinent 
grip of the mind he had used; in five indifferent minutes pioneering where 
Richard's diffident courtesy had never taken him. On her husband, too, the 
incident had borne grossly. She realized as much during the two sleepless, 
congested days before he left to join the army in the east. Since then, the only 
news of or from Richard had been that brought by Erskine-news received without 
comment by the Dowager, who continued to arrange her affairs without further 
reference to the uncomfortable and icy springs of satire and denunciation. 
Mariotta turned to Sir Andrew Hunter.
He had been watching her. A distant neighbour, a near-contemporary, a gentle and 
distinguished landowner and courtier, Andrew Hunter was well known to the 
Culters, and Mariotta had learned to like him, and to enjoy his kindness, his 
willing attentions, and an articulate turn of speech which made her now and then 
sick for home. Now, on a sudden impulse, she addressed him. "Tell me, Dandy, 
what do men talk about? Richard, for example?"
He was taken aback, but he answered her. "What does Richard discuss with other 
men? Horses, of course. And pigs. And the state of the barley, and the new 
cocks, and the hawking, and what the Estates are up to, and the wrestlers, and 
any new shiploads he's expecting, and the rates of exchange, and taxes, and 
poaching, and pistols, and the price of roofing, and his deerhound litter, and 
Milanese armour, and the lambing. . . . Richard's interests," said Sir Andrew, 
with a hint of defensiveness in the soft voice, "are pretty wide."
"But never dull. I wonder," said Mariotta, her eyes expressionless, "what Lymond 
makes of light conversation?"
Hunter sat up. "Lymond's conversation doesn't give me a moment's alarm. It's his 
actions that hurt. Richard's bent on this challenge at the Wapenshaw and, my 
God! if he goes, it'll be suicide."


Mariotta's eyes opened. "But the challenge wasn't serious! Lymond at Stirling'd 
be under instant arrest. And besides, Richard's the finest shot in-"
She broke off. Hunter was right. What use was all that with an arrow in the 
back? "God has a thousand handes to chastise," had said Lymond, and at Annan he 
had nearly succeeded. Mariotta opened her mouth, but Sybilla, stabbing 
industriously with her needle, spoke first. "Did you hear any word of Will Scott 
in town, Tom?" And added, composedly, "We know he's with my son. Sir Andrew 
brought back news from Annan of his meeting with Richard."
Saved from plunging a second time into the same diplomatic whirlpool, Erskine 
sat back, relieved. "There's nothing new. Saw Buccleuch, as a matter of fact, 
yesterday and broke the news to him. And that fool George Douglas hovering by 
while I told him."
"Where? At Stirling?" Hunter was interested. "I thought Sir George was with his 
brother."
Erskine shrugged. "He's off to Drumlanrig by now, anyway, thank God: can't thole 
the man." His mind was not on George Douglas, but on Christian, and her odd 
behavior last night. He had gone to the Priory first, with his report, and had 
been worried because the Queen Dowager kept him late, and Christian might have 
gone to bed. But when the ferry took him over to Inchtalla, she was waiting in 
the hail, pulling him by the arm before the usher led him away. "Tom-in case we 
have no other chance-the name I asked about? Jonathan Crouch?"
He had told her what she wanted to know, breaking off because the Dowager 
materialized, carrying her embroidery and standing on his toe because she had 
forgotten to take off her spectacles. After that, Christian had done no more 
than thank him firmly for his help and indicate the matter was closed. He was 
slightly nettled. Despite the noble disclaimers he remembered making she might, 
he thought, have let him into the secret. .

The next day, the autumn trumpets gave tongue, the sun shone like copper, and a 
flaming row was taking place in the Priory cloisters. To the north the hills of 
Ben Dearg reared empurpled, and soft airs shuddered on the blue water. On 
Inchmahome, Discord beat against the ancient pillars, where five adults and a 
child sat or stood about the green cloisters.
The Queen Dowager of Scotland was in a state of Gallic rage. "Will



someone kindly inform me how this escapade has arrived?" Thus Mary of Guise, 
seated bolt upright in a carved chair.
Croaking reply from a middle-aged nurse, white as her tortured apron. "Oh, 
Madame; that I dinna ken, the puir wee lassie . . ." and she broke off, shooting 
a basilisk glance at a younger maid, completely overcome, who was being patted 
by Mariotta.
The Dowager Lady Culter, who was also seated, wisely said nothing, partly out of 
diplomacy and partly from sheer respect for her vocal chords: a very small child 
with tousled red hair standing before her continued to hammer on her knee in a 
detached sort of way, screaming gibberish at the top of her voice.
"Hurbie-purple, hurble-purple, hurble-purple!" chanted the child.
"On the rivage, in broad daylight! Murder! Kidnap!"
"She'd cuddle a milk jug, .the jaud!"
"Boo-hoo-hic-hoo!"
"Elspet! You'll be ill! Be quiet, now!"
"Hurble-purple, hurble-purple, hurble-purple!" said the child with ascending 
power.
Lady Culter winced slightly, and drawing her knee away, put out a kindly but 
restraining arm. She spoke briskly. "I doubt there's no need to hunt for 
villains, Ma'am; the lass was scatterbrained, and Mistress Kemp as bad, to let 
her go off alone with the child. But there was no worse intention that I can 
see. Just an escapade."
"Escapade!"
Sybilla, after a daunting glance at the hysterical Elspet, returned to her task.
"Yes. The foolish girl had a tryst with one Perkin at Portend Farm, and the 
child wanted to visit the pleasance. There was a skiff unattended, and off they 
went to the shore, where Elspet apparently left Mary playing while she went up 
to the farm-"
"Alone and unattended," said outraged motherhood grimly. "And then of course my 
daughter is accosted, attacked! One hears her screanis, the girl returns, 
thrusts her back into the boat and attempts to return unobserved. Oh, I grant 
you the girl Elspet is innocent: by returning she doubtless foiled the attempt. 
But how could such a thing be? Is there not a bodyguard, here at Inchmahome . . 
. attendants . . . the good fathers? Are there not armed men surrounding the 
lake, blocking the roads~. Dame Sybilla, but for my daughter's screams, where 
would she be now?"
"Sitting in the Pleasure Gardens, I imagine," said Lady Culter dryly,



"although I must admit that the attractions of Perkin seem to have played ducks 
and drakes with our safety precautions. Suppose we ask the Queen's Grace?"
Mary of Guise, Queen Dowager, stretched an arm and called her daughter. "Marie! 
Come and tell Maman what the ill-doing man did?"
"What ill-doing man?" asked the red-haired child, trailing over the grass 
without lifting her dress, and proffering a sticky mouth. "Can I say my rhyme?"
Her Royal mother, ignoring this, wiped the mouth thoroughly with a clean 
handkerchief and said, "The man in the Pleasure Gardens, ma p'tite. What did he 
say?"
Her Most Noble Majesty Mary, crowned Queen of all Scotland, found her pomander 
and began to play with it, with unsavory results.
"He wasn't a malfaisant. I liked him. Can I-"
"Mary, was he a monk?" said Sybilla gently, mindful of one of the unlikelier 
aspects of Elspet's story ("But all the monks are at Sext").
"He was a nice monk," said the child, with a single inflection neatly robbing 
the statement of all value. She bit the pomander, spat, and relented. "He said 
the rhyme, and he knew my name."
"But . . ." said the Dowager Queen.
"But . . ." said Mariotta.
"I wonder," said Lady Culter, recognizing defeat, "if it could be Dean Adam back 
from Cambuskenneth? He went last Monday, and I suppose- Or a wandering 
Observant? Oh well, he did her no harm-I think her screams were annoyance when 
Elspet lost her head and tried to get her into the boat and back."
"They found no one?"
"No one. Lady Christian herself had been walking there, and heard no one at all 
in the gardens."
"Can I," said the Queen's Most Noble Majesty, with urgency, "say it now?"
"What . . . I suppose so," said Maman, her brow still furrowed. "Eh bien," said 
Mary smoothly. She recited.

"Hurbie purple hath a red girdle
A stone in his belly,
A stake through his arse
And yet hurbie purple is never the worse.

"What is it, what is it, what is it?" roared the Queen.
There was a shaken silence.


Then Lady Culter, in a voice preternaturally grave, said (rather unkindly), "I 
think-it's a hawthornberry, is it not, cherie?"
Her Majesty's face fell.

* * S



Christian laughed outright. "How absurd . . . 'Comment le saluroye, quant point 
ne le congnois?' Of course I recognized who it was. Credit me with ears, at 
least."
There was a moment more of the kind of constraint she remembered from their last 
interview in the cave, then the man beside her gave a mock sigh. "Forgive my 
obtruseness. My voice again? Crying the coronoch on high. I'm sorry about the 
uproar. I didn't expect company, but even so, all would have gone well if that 
blasted girl hadn't snatched the child so suddenly. Magnificent lungs for her 
age."
They sat in the short grass in the middle of the maze a previous Earl of 
Menteith had designed on the north shore of the lake. Dusty box hedges with an 
unused air shut off any view of the water: from the rear a folly in marble 
overhung them.
It was warm and still, as it had been at Boghall, where, as her prisoner and her 
patient, he had played the lute and sung to her of frogs. Christian bugged her 
knees. "But how did the child find you?"
He answered ruefully, "I fell asleep. Considerably more than doth the 
nightingale. And the next thing I knew she was sitting on my chest."
"What did you say?" said Christian, fascinated.
"She said, 'M. l'abhe' (you'll have gathered I'm dressed like a magpie)-'M. 
l'abb4 you 'ave greatly insufficient of tonsure.' And I said, 'Madame la reine 
d'Ecosse, you are greatly in excess of tonnage.' After which exchange of 
pleasantries .
"She got off?"
"Not at all. She bounced like a cannon ball and said that DEDO-."
"Her pony.~~
"-That Daydo had long yellow teeth; and did I know-"
"That," said Christian in chorus, "you can tell a person's age from their teeth. 
That's a favourite one."
"Oh. Well, as you say. So she opened her mouth, and I pronounced her seven years 
of age, and she admitted to five. (What is she- four?) Then I opened my mouth-"


"What was it, a pebble?"
"-I opened my mouth and received inside it a small fish, still resisting 
delivery to its Maker. After that-"
"But what did you do? With the fish?"
"I pretended to eat it," he said simply. "Then we played a game or two, and sang 
a bit, and discussed a number of subjects. Then the nursemaid, or whoever she 
was, arrived, and whipped off the child, crowing like the cocks of Cramond. And 
you know the echo, to boot."
"I wish I'd been there," said Christian. "Had you been waiting long? I'd walked 
to the far end of the garden."
"Not very long. But I have been, and am, all a-quiver like goose grass. My dear 
lady, you mustn't toss the secret of the Queen's hiding place at the feet of a 
complete stranger. It's not in the rules. Quite apart from perjuring yourself on 
my behalf just now."
She said regretfully, "I make some terrible mistakes. But then I'm a very hasty 
person. You see, they wouldn't let me bring Sym, and I'd no one to send, even if 
Tom Erskine had found out by Tuesday- which he hadn't. Then old Adam Peebles had 
to go to Inchkenneth, and I asked him to give a message to Sym so that he could 
go to the cave and tell you to come today. I had to make the message so garbled 
. . . and it was a gamble whether Tom would even have reached us by now . . . 
but he has, so everything has turned out well. Did you have much trouble coming? 
And getting the robes?"
He brushed the questions aside. "It wasn't difficult-it should have been more 
so: the guard is wretched. I came by the hill path, and I had your password. 
There again . . . I don't mind being a lame duck, but the pond you've put me 
into has a kingdom in it, my dear. By all means let's play guessing games. 'Will 
you hide me, Yes, par foi! Shall I be found out? Not through me!'-and all the 
rest of it; but not with your life, or the child's: and think what happened to 
Eve, at that .
"Good God," he said, coming to a stop. "I appear to be giving you a miserable 
nagging for risking your life and reputation for me. Look to me as Wat did to 
the worm, and relieve my conscience.
She made no attempt either to answer or to argue with him. "Is your head quite 
better?"
To her relief, he accepted the change of subject. "Quite healed, thanks to you. 
I fall asleep sometimes rather a lot-as demonstrated
-that's all." He hesitated; then said, "How do you get bark?"



She showed him a whistle at her girdle. "I blow from the shore, and a boat 
comes. Then Lady Culter or Mariotta will meet me." She smiled. "We're a crowded 
household."
He said, "The Culters. Of course. Who else-Buccleuch?"
She shook her head. "In Stirling. Tom Erskine had to tell him that-" She 
stopped.
"What?"
She said, "Oh, well. It's common gossip now. His oldest boy Will has joined 
forces with-"
"-The God of the Flies, the Lord of the Dunghill-I know," he said. "How did he 
take it?"
"Buccleuch? Terribly shocked, and grieved, and remorseful, I think. He felt he's 
driven him off in a fit of temper."
"I expect he should have thought of that in the first place," he said with 
unexpected asperity, and she heard him get to his feet. "My dear lady, they'll 
wonder what's become of you. Did Erskine really tell you about Crouch?"
She told him, rising with the help of his arm in its coarse monk's robe. "Crouch 
is Sir George Douglas's prisoner."
"Douglas has him!" There was a thoughtful silence.
"Does that help?" she said tentatively.
"Yes, of course it helps. Very much." He appeared to be in a difficulty. "Yes . 
. . I have been postponing . . . Lady Christian, whtm we last met you were 
unthinkably kind and generous-for no kind of thanks that I remember making. I 
swore to myself not to involve you further. Then when I got your message I was 
irresponsible enough to come here after all. But at least you shan't be in the 
dark. You shall hear-now-who I am, and if you want to call the guard, I shan't 
try to escape this time."
"No!" she exclaimed. "I don't want to know!"
There was, for the first time, a weary distaste in his voice. "But you require 
to know-you must see that. This secret-the Queen's hiding place-"
"Have you betrayed it? Will you betray it?"
''No.''
"Then leave me ignorant," said Christian. "What would make matters easier for 
your conscience might make them insupportable for mine. I prefer to be selfish. 
God knows I've been wrong-politically, legally, conventionally and every other 
way-in judgments before. But these always seemed to me the more irrelevant



aspects of human decency. . . . You are at least Scottish, I think?"
"Yes."
"-And in trouble. Well, I'm human," said Christian. "I don't want conscience 
money in the form of secrets: not just now, thank you. But the day you genuinely 
want help, I'll be proud to have your confidence. Till then, show your thanks, 
if you wish to, by letting me have news of you sometimes."
The man was silent. Then he said lightly, "I can say naught but Hoy gee ho!-
words that belong to the cart and the plough. Your confidence is fully misplaced 
this time, but I imagine you suspected that all along. . . . Tell me: would you 
know again the other voice you heard in the cave?"
She nodded.
"Good," he said. "Yes, I shall keep in touch. Not as often as I should like, but 
certainly more than I ought by all the tenets you quoted." They were almost out 
of the shelter of the box hedges, and he stopped and took her hand, as if 
examining it. "What in God's name are you going by?" he said. "Instinct? 
Intuition?"
"Common sense. Which describes your case as fortunae telum, non culpae."
He answered, bleakly, in the same language. "Heu! The darts which make me suffer 
are my own. Common sense can be a poor guide and an uncertain surgeon. Better-
much better-be foolish, like me. God clip you close," he said, and was gone.
Christian walked to the shore and there blew a nerve-racking blast on the 
whistle.



Iv

Several Moves by a Knight

A Knyght ought to be wise, liberall, trewe, stronge and full of mercy and pite 
and kepar
of the peple and of the lawe. . . . And therefore behoveth bym to be wyse and 
well advysed, for some tyme arte, craft and engyne is more worth
than strengtbe or hardynes . . . for otherwbyte hit happeth that whan the prynce 
of the batayll affieth and trusteth in his hardynes and strength, And wole not 
use wysedom and engyne for to renne upon his enemyes, he is vaynquyshid and his 
peple slayn.





1.	Mishap to a Queening Pawn

ON SUNDAY, the day after the affair at Lake of Menteith, Lord 

 Culter was also taking aquatic exercise of a kind which all but turned his 
epithalamics into elegies.
Mariotta, it is certain, was not alone in finding her husband baffling. Whatever 
his thoughts about being separated from his wife after three weeks of marriage, 
Richard kept them to himself and applied his undeniable ability to work.
Under his remote, laconic leadership, the Culter men spent an enlivening week, 
racing through the night after Wharton, harrying his outposts and nibbling his 
tail as he recoiled on Carlisle. Then, changing with equal aplomb to the 
politician's bonnet, Lord Culter


set about taping and testing the mood of the southwestern districts which had 
been the theatre of Wharton's operations, and still lay open to foray and 
seduction from the south.
The English had left garrisons at Castlemilk and Langholm. These, with his small 
force, he could not touch; neither could he do a great deal at Dumfries or 
Lochmaben, or with those unlucky citizens- "assured Scots"-who lived nearest the 
shadow of Carlisle and had in sheer self-preservation to buy immunity with 
promises, and even carry them out sometimes.
But with those nineteen hundred who had promised help for England in August he 
had surprising success, and when he turned back north for Midculter on Friday, 
September 23rd, his train was slightly out of hand with high spirits and very 
little damaged; and he left behind him a number of impressed Johnstones, 
Armstrongs, Elliots and Carruthers.
Halfway home, he remembered a promise, and sending on most of his men to 
disperse to their homes, turned aside at Mollinburn with six horsemen to ride 
through the Lowthers to Morton.
On Sunday afternoon, the party he was expecting came in from Blairquhan, and he 
left Morton on the Sanquhar road to take the Mennock Pass north. With him rode 
the Baroness Herries, his six men and two women servants.
Agnes Herries was thirteen years old, inexpressibly rich, and not very pretty. 
In spite of two years in the Culter household acquiring, supposedly, polish and 
panache, she still had a loud and energetic voice, poor skin and a passion for 
romans idylliques. Even Sybilla, soul of charity and tolerance, had mentioned to 
the girl's grandfather that the child had regrettable taste; adding inaccurately 
that it came no doubt from the late Lord Herries her father, and not from her 
mother who had thrown over the joys of widowhood for a well-endowed marriage.
Grandfather Kennedy of Blairquhan, who was waiting with ill-concealed impatience 
for Agnes's two younger sisters to qualify also for Lady Culter's hospitality, 
had said rapidly that nevertheless she was a dear child and a pleasure about the 
house. He had then, mindful of his responsibilities, suggested that Lady Culter 
should take the girl to Court for the autumn. It wasn't to be hoped that she 
would ever look much better than she did then, and if the Governor expected his 
son to marry her (they had been affianced since infancy) the sooner they got on 
with it the better. .



Thus Richard, escorting Lady Herries north to stay with his mother at Stirling.
It was a miserable day. Saturday's golden autumn had given way to a wet and 
sullen Sabbath; the rain dripped from the small feathers in Culter's cap, and 
showers of drops from Agnes's hood shook onto her nose.
Lest this should be misconstrued, she blew into a sodden handkerchief for the 
twentieth time and rode stiffly on.
Lady Herries had her own resodrces. Bodily, she might be damp, cold and in 
Lanarkshire: in spirit she was with troubadour and minnesinger in the fields of 
romance. There, in passages of chivalry and courtship, the heroine-thirteen, 
lovely and highborn-was immutable. The hero, true to legend, was apt to 
reassemble under pressure into different shapes. The Baroness's eyes at present 
were fixed on Lord Culter's prosaic back: her lips moved slightly as she rode.
"Daphne! Vision! Shining she-lamb!" Bowing, the prince removed his cap, the 
little leathers wet with rain. Crying, he said- "Devil take the rain; there's 
someone coming. Anyone recognize the standard?" said Richard sharply. His 
lordship, looking slit-eyed through the downpour, was insensitive to ruined 
fantasy at his heels. "Frank! Job!" The two riders in front increased speed for 
a bit, then wheeled. "It's Sir Andrew Hunter, sir, and some of the Ballaggan 
boys."
In a moment the two parties met. "Dandy! Echoes from civilization at last. 
What's happening up north?"
Sir Andrew greeted him smiling, shoulders hunched. "Worse than the time old 
Scott's patent water system broke down. I've just left your wife and mother-
flourishing both-everyone's safe so far. .
Look," said Hunter. "We'll drown if we exchange news here. Come with me to 
Ballaggan-you could do with something hot inside you anyway. Who's the lassie?"
Lord Culter explained and introduced, and the two parties struck off in company 
for Hunter's house. The rain ran interminably down Agnes's nose. Covertly, she 
studied Sir Andrew.
Slimmer, and with better hands than Lord Culter. Lord Culter never joked. She 
liked dark men with a twinkle in the eye.
The prince, a slender dark man .
But again, they had halted. The Nith, which lay between themselves and 
Ballaggan, ran unusually fast and high at their feet, and


an outrider who drove his horse in at the ford thudded out again, wet to the 
stirrups.
Culter was studying the river with some misgiving. "I doubt the women oughtn't 
to try."
For answer, Hunter dropped down the bank and himself rode into midstream. The 
horse staggered a little with the force, foam gathering at its hocks, but after 
a moment mastered its footing and stood firm. He called, "They can't get wetter 
than they are already. Put a line of horse upstream to break the current. I'll 
come back and lead you over."
He splashed back, and giving decorous permission, Agnes was lifted up into Lord 
Culter's saddle where he held her firmly, lefthanded, the reins in his right. 
The prince, repigmented instantly from black to brown, pressed his horse into 
motion while the she-lamb, cheek to chest, approved the even beats of his heart. 
The impartial grip redoubled; the horse entered the water, and the heiress 
closed her eyes.
Discomfort claimed her. The saddle poked and prodded; the powerful feet threw up 
snatches of spray, and she was rubbed, pricked and jagged by Culter's 
unaccommodating attire. He began moreover to talk to the horse. Mild resentment 
overtook her.
When they were halfway over, there was a sickening lurch. Culter exclaimed 
sharply; the pommel drove sharply into the girl's side and briefly the sky was 
made, blackly, of a shaking, arched mane. Then horse, rider and heiress fell, 
stirrups free, and in a bruising splash of colliding bodies, Agnes Berries hit 
the water. Wrenched from penastral dreams she became Lady Berries, just thirteen 
years old, and screamed and screamed with choking, soundless hysteria as the 
current spun her in rough fingers and shot her, buoyed up by petticoats, 
straight down the Nith.
Intense cold, and a weight pulling her down. Waterlogged hair, like a curtain of 
weed on her face, filtering air bubbles through a throat choked with water. A 
seething clamour in the head and a bubbling voice-her own.
A gasping voice-someone else's. Then a hand, shuddering with effort, in her 
armpit, and another hand ripping the cloak from her throat, wringing her hair 
off, exposing her face. An agony of air; an interval of bumping and pressure 
that hurt, and then of retching that hurt worse, her cheek pressing on mud. And 
then, at last, she heard



a voice clearly. "My God, w~ need practice at that. Shall we do it again?" said 
Lord Culter.


2.	A Knight Wins an Exchange

They put her to bed, wrapped in woollens, and she slept, weak and full of hot 
milk, until the daylight had gone.
Below, in the overornate hail, Lord Culter lay in a lugged chair, displaying 
collected impassivity once more, bathed and with his cuts dressed, and wearing a 
loose gown borrowed from Sir James Douglas, their host.
For they were in a Douglas household, instead of Hunter's elegant, exhausted 
estate of Ballaggan. Alone and without help, Richard had brought Agnes Berries 
ashore: his own men were upstream and Andrew Hunter, far ahead, had been deaf to 
his shouts. But afterward, warned by the commotion, he had raced to their aid, 
wrapped the girl in his own cloak and carried both swimmers to Drumlanng, the 
cavalcade following. Ballaggan was nearly an hour's journey away and could wait. 
These two could not.
The house of Drumlanrig was full of Douglases, and whether sincere or not, their 
welcome was a suitable blend of shock and cordiality. From Lord Culter they 
heard simply that his horse had put his near hind in a pothole; but listening to 
Hunter they were left in no doubt that Richard had saved the girl's life.
Downstairs the owner of Drumlanrig had demanded the whole tale yet again for his 
wife's two brothers, the Earl of Angus and Sir George Douglas. Sly and splendid 
as a hall-tamed leopard, Sir George had smiled; and the Earl, lissom Royal lover 
of thirty years ago lost in alcoholic fat and sparse beard, had been free if 
trite with his compliments.
The evening passed. Most of the household went early to bed. Sir James and Angus 
had gone and silence lay on the three still sitting before the big fire. In his 
deep chair, Culter was motionless, his face lost in shadow. Andrew Hunter 
glanced at him, and Sir George Douglas, alert on the second, said, "He's asleep, 
I think. Did you wish to say something private?"
Sir Andrew smiled gratefully. "Not at all. But I did want to open up a small 
matter of business." He went on, with some hesitation.
"You may not know, but a cousin of mine, a great favourite of



Mother's, was taken in '44, and has been in Carlisle ever since." He paused 
awkwardly. "I have a good little estate, you see, but not a very profitable one, 
and Jeff has no other relatives-"
"But of course," said Sir George with fine courtesy. "Not a word more. I shall 
be delighted. How much . . .
Hunter flushed a deep red. "No. I- It's true we can't pay what they ask. But if, 
for example, I could repay in kind . .
"An exchange of prisoners? Yes, I suppose that would be one way out."
"So I went to Annan. But I was unlucky," Hunter said, flushing again. "And then 
I heard-"
"-That I have a prisoner," said Sir George. "Yes, I have. With a fearful stock 
of conversation-I've forgotten his name-Couch, or Crouch." He thought for a bit 
while Sir Andrew watched, his face a little anxious.
Then Douglas said pleasantly, "All right. I'll sell him to you for a hundred 
crowns. You needn't feel it's charity; and I expect it's a good deal less than 
they were asking for your cousin.
"Yes . . . I'm afraid it is charity," said Hunter rather ruefully. "You could 
probably sell him yourself for-"
"-Very little," said Sir George dryly, crossing a superb leg in blue silk. 
"Don't worry: he's yours. Will you send for him?"
"Right away!" Sir Andrew got up with rather touching enthusiasm. "I'll give you 
a bill for the money now, if I can find paper and ink. Excuse me, sir: and 
believe me, I'm most grateful." He betook himself off, shuffling over the rushes 
a little in his borrowed shoes.
The silence lengthened. Then Sir George Douglas said, "Why so silent, Lord 
Culter? Don't you approve of such transactions?"
Culter opened his eyes, and the faintest smile crossed his lips. "Sir, when two 
friends discuss money, the third friend should invariably be asleep."
Sir George laughed, and rising, clapped him on a brocade shoulder. "Poppyhead! 
Get to bed, man!"

* * *



Lady Hermes, arranged in antique pose at the breakfast table, laid a large and 
languid hand on her chest. "Do you think," said Agnes, gazing hopefully at her 
troubadour, "do you think I ought to ride your horse today again?"



Lord Culter, who had just finished stuffing himself with baked crane and sack, 
said robustly, "Not if you want to get to Stirling this week. You'll be 
perfectly all right in your own saddle. Anyway, don't you want to be in time to 
see the papingo?"
Lady Hermes dropped a slice of bread, instantly lost to the dogs, and in ringing 
tones unsoftened by immersion, demanded data. "Is it a real parrot?"
"Quite real," said Sir Andrew solemnly. He put down his tankard. "Bright blue 
and yellow, with a beak like Buccleuch's."
She said with vigour, "My faith, I should like a papingo. I wonder how you feed 
them. What a waste to kill it! I suppose they'll hang it on a high pole?"
"They will. And my Lord Culter and a number of other gentlemen will shoot at it. 
And there'll be wrestling, and throwing, and tilting at the ring, and running, 
and prizes given; and then a fair all afternoon and half the night . .
Agnes snapped him up. "A fair!"
Remembering something, Hunter looked across her head. "By the way, Richard: I 
hope you won't be fool enough to . . . that is, your womenfolk are pretty 
anxious about Lymond." He broke off, daunted by Culter's continued silence. "Oh, 
well. None of my business. She'll tell you herself."
Culter stirred and raised his eyes. They fell on Agnes, looking at him with 
rather a silly expression. He smiled at her. "Child, relations are the devil. 
Think yourself lucky yours don't bother you. Will you come and see me shoot at 
this wretched bird?"
This was self-sacrifice with a vengeance. Sir Andrew threw his lordship a 
commiserating grin, and felt it stiffen on his lips at the look in the other 
man's eyes. Hot water under cold ice, then, he thought. He wasn't surprised.

* * *



"And there they go, poor dears," said Sir George. He watched the two parties 
ride down the long, wet avenue and then leave the Drumlanrig policies-Hunter to 
the northwest; Culter and the girl for the Dalveen road.
The Earl of Angus, who hadn't bothered to get up, grunted from the fire. "Pity 
the river wasn't a lot higher. That whelp Culter's done a lot of harm in the 
south."


"Don't be crude." Sir George admonished his brother, moving away from the 
window. "All the same, I wish that damn fellow Lyniond would get on with it. 
Can't we induce him to be a little more persevering?"
Sir James said, "We can't contact him: you know that. No one can."
"Well, one man could," pointed out Angus. "That brat Will Scott apparently met 
him in broad daylight, as plain as a fishwife on Friday."
"Proving only that Lymond wanted to be met," said Sir George. "I wish to God the 
man would stick to one side. What I couldn't do with his intelligence system! 
The Protector told me-he lifted all of Wharton's campaign gold at Annan, and 
left your precious son-in-law Lennox black in the face."
He looked curiously at his brother. "What went on between Lymond and Lennox 
anyway? If Margaret was involved, you'd do well to hush it up."
The Earl of Angus brushed this aside. "No one's going to clap Margaret Douglas 
in the Tower these days-cousin of Edward of England; a daughter of an ex-Queen 
of Scotland; the wife of the Earl of Lennox, with a claim to the throne every 
bit as good as Arran?"
"But not as good as young Queen Mary's."
Angus was contemptuous. "God's Mass, George: there's bigger
game than governerships and pensions. Edward's sickly. Look at him.
And our Queen's four years old: well, they die like flies at that age.
Arran's a fool. So's Lennox; but he's married to Margaret. And
Margaret's heir to-"
"Heir to nothing," said Sir George wearily. "You know perfectly well Henry of 
England disinherited her from the succession in the midst of his uxorial 
fluctuations. And on top of that, she had a cracking row with him the week 
before he died, and he cut her out of his will. Edward, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth 
and then the Suffolk infants. Not a word of his own niece."
"Yes. Well. She's highly strung."
"Highly strung! God, Archie, that wasn't what you called her mother."
"Oh, be quiet, George," said the head of the Douglases. "What do you want, 
anyway? The trouble with you is, you keep letting the Protector push you too 
far. One of these days, the Scottish Queen Dowager will see what you're up to, 
and then bang goes Douglas and




Drumlanrig, Dalkeith, Coldingham, Tantallon and your fine neck into the 
bargain."
"On the other hand," said Sir George painstakingly, "if the Protector feels we 
are insufficiently helpful, he sends in a raiding party, and bang they all go 
just the same." He studied his brother's heavy, once-handsome face. He had never 
in his life had to worry about searching questions from Archie, and he was 
thankful now that it was the same old ground.
His sister's brother, Sir James, said a little petulantly, "You're talking as if 
the invasion was over for good. Is the Protector really going south?"
"Oh, yes." Sir George smiled. "He'd only food for a month, and he didn't get the 
local support he'd expected-notably from the Douglases, Archie: now d'you wonder 
that I've been so forthcoming with him? Then a really nasty political mess 
flared up in London:
be thankful, dear, that you have a prudent brother. The Protector's young twig 
of fraternity is graithing himself a nice sharp axe for Tower Green."
He tilted the ruby on his finger, and a beam of sunlight ran over a sardonic 
cheekbone.
"Andrew Dudley's stuck with an English garrison at Broughty; Luttrell at St. 
Colme's Inch; and that senile idiot Lady Hume persuaded to glve up Hume Castle. 
He'll fortify Roxburgh, most likely, on his way south, and supply 'em all 
through the winter from Berwick and Wark." He grinned. "An entertaining 
prospect, isn't it?"
Angus and Sir James looked gloomy. "And what then?" asked his brother.
"Oh, well." Sir George kicked a log into place in the fire. "The Queen Dowager 
here, of course, will try to get some money and troops out of France. Meantime, 
the Protector can't do much: bad roads, difficult supply lines, winter weather 
and all that. He'll probably hang out until spring, and then fling in his full 
strength before the French come, using all these garrisons as jumping-off 
points."
He looked consideringly at the Earl. "If I were you, Archie, I should wait until 
the really bad weather, and then suggest that your precious Lennox comes north 
with a raiding party. They'll never do it, but it'll assure the English of your 
good will. And then come the spring, why not ask them to send Margaret too? A 
joint command
that would stiffen Lennox's back for him!"
Sir James, in painful doubt as to whether this was meant to be



humorous or not, said feebly, "And who'll command from Berwick, I wonder?"
"Who d'you think?" said Sir George. He laughed. "Old Grey of Wilton, recovered 
from swallowing a bilihook, and talking, I'm told, like a featherbed with a leak 
in it. Do you know Lord Grey, Archie?"
Angus shook his head.
"He's been in France for years: a clammy, stiff-backed old pike. The billhook, 
I'll bargain, came out lichened over." He laughed again. "The first encounter 
between the old lad and Lord Wharton I shall see or die. They'll be heaving each 
other's guts out of the window."
"Well," said the Earl of Angus crossly, "what's so funny about that? . . . 
You're a weird sort of devil, George," said his brother with the flatness of 
long usage.


V

Castling

The rybauldes. players of dyce And the messangers and corrours ought to be sette 
tofore the rook.
For hit apperteyneth to the rook . . to have men convenable for to renne here 
and there for
tenquyre and espie the place and cyties that
myght be contraryc to the kynge.





1.	Capture of Some Advancing Pieces


WILL SCOTT of Kincurd was stringing his bow and singing.

Le douxiem' mois de l'an
Que donner a ma mie?

Life at the moment was not unbearable. He was well-fed and warm. He had that 
morning shot a buck at a hundred and seventy yards and been congratulated by 
Matthew. He had a new ambition: in this penumbral region to cast a shadow 
bigger, grander and more devastating than Lymond's.

Douz' bons larrons
Onze bons jambons
Dix bons dindons

It had not, he conceded, been easy to progress greatly toward this goal in a 
month, allowing as well for the hiatus which followed the


Annan affair. His own state of superficial injury he shared, he had discovered, 
with half the troop. Dead men there were none; a telling enough point in a 
retreat which had been hard-fought and narrowly won.
For Lymond had genius. When building his force, he had taken sixty heterogeneous 
ruffians and cut and bulled them like diamonds, each rootless creature made an 
artist in his own small field. Some of their stories he had already from 
Matthew.
Dandy-puff, of the bog-cotton hair, was their farrier, and at the horn over a 
small matter of a cousin's sudden death which had unluckily brought to light a 
series of other unexplained mishaps.
Oyster Charlie, the cook, who bore young Scott no ill will ("It's not your 
fault, lad: the Master's an unchancy bastard to cross.") had been dentally 
denuded by an infuriated husband who was also a barber and now, untimely, with 
Abraham.
Jess's Joe (scout) was the ex-leader of a profitable band of dock thieves; the 
Lang Cleg (armourer) had been racked twice, but reinained an unrepentant and 
unskilful pickpocket. Skinner, an expriest, was their barber-surgeon and, at 
need, their confessor; Cuckoospit, a magician with horses, had forgotten polite 
usage for rheum, if he ever knew it, in five draughty years in the Tolbooth

Neal boels cornus
Huit moutons tondus
Sept chiens courants
Six Ii~vres aux champs

These figures, he knew, were the grotesques in the bestiary. There were also 
unmarked, homeless men who for some reason had lost their farms and families, or 
had left them; individualists and misfits; and mercenaries like Turkey Mat, who 
had sold their swords over half Europe before one day falling in with Lymond and 
being brought here by him.
"Why is he back?" he had once asked Mat.
Matthew had grinned. "Just to be neighbourly. Besides, there're two or three 
folk he wanted to see."
"Jonathan Crouch?"
Turkey's gaze was direct. "That's one. How did you know?"
"He told me. . . . Mat, you've had three years of it. How d'ye thole him?"
Mat had chuckled gently. "Over there in Appin, a place you've




never heard of, there's a bien stone house with an honest pinch of soil to it, 
and a doocot and an orchard and some fine dry byres. It's mine for the taking, 
that house, and, man, when I've cooked my own fatted calf at the Master's fire, 
it's me for the white beach, groaning belly and all. I'll lie on it from morning 
to nightfall throwing dice against myself, and whiles winning. . . . I can thole 
him; I can thole him."

Cinq lapins trottant par terre
Quatre canards volant en l'air

He had asked Mat about Bulb.
"Johnnie? Johnnie's King of Little Egypt, and a law to his sweet sleekit self. 
He rules his wee pack of gypsy stoats like the Grand Turk, and keeps them happy 
with silk shirts and buckles forbye. You should see him at work in a fair: it's 
a scholastic education. Johnnie," said Mat, not without rancour, "has all the 
old crafts."
Scott said, "I thought he worked for Lymond?" and Mat had shaken his head, 
rubbing rhythmically, whether of necessity or through association of ideas it 
was hard to tell.
"I suppose you would cry it a business partnership," said he solemnly. "But when 
their interests collide, I'm feart it's every man to his own dirk. Watch 'em 
together next time. Our John's sly as a snake, but he can't resist playing with 
Lymond, wit against wit. Man, he's welcome," had said Mat with emphasis.

Trois ramiers des bois
Deux tourterelles
Une pertriolle

Will was ready for lapping. He picked up the waxed thread and glanced at the 
ruined Peel Tower, their present headquarters, which he controlled during 
Lymond's current absence. They moved about throughout the year, he knew: 
sometimes to farms; sometimes in the open or under canvas; sometimes to deserted 
buildings like this one.
They were extravagantly paid, all of them. In return, they suffered a grinding 
and despotic discipline. In Lymond's hands they were fashioned into a shining 
and precise instrument for advanced theft, blackmail and espionage; and faults 
in the instrument were dealt with instantly ~nd with a horrid inventiveness.
For the thick-skinned, there was physical punishment. There was also a less 
respectable kind. Scott had seen, and would not forget, a



courageous and rational man on his knees, weeping tears through his fingers as 
skin after skin of self-respect and human dignity peeled off him under Lymond's 
verbal lash.
He learned to recognize from the slurred walk and the gentle dishevelment when 
Lymond was no longer quite sober; and with the rest to walk softly at such 
times. He didn't mind. He had reached the point where he would notice nothing 
beyond the beauty and efficiency of superbly planned crime. One should always 
flee the impure. He was out of the muddle of truths and half-truths, and into 
the daylight. Only when-if-he were in Lymond's shoes, there were a few things he 
would change.
Scott finished the knots, smiling.
Une pertriolle
Qui vole et vole et vole
Une pertriolle
Qui vole du bois au champ.

* * *



The Master's party returned to the tower just before dawn, rampaging hungry and 
saddle-sore. They fell over and quarrelled with the litter of sleeping bodies, 
kicked up the cooks and battered one of the boys until he had got the tallow 
dips and fires going again.
Scott and Matthew, cursing, got them settled down after a bit, and when the 
horses had been seen to and food was on the board, Will climbed the stairs to 
Lymond's room.
The yellow-headed man had lit a candle, showing his hair and clothes full of 
dust, and was reading what seemed to be a letter. Scott said, "Nothing to 
report, sir. Did you have a good night?" with a professional woodenness, a 
little overdone.
Lymond hardly looked up. He finished reading, unbuckling his belt with one hand; 
then laid down the paper and threw scabbard and belt on the bed. "Excellent, 
Marigold. One generally does, at the Ostrich."
This was true. The Ostrich was an inn within first-posting stage on the 
Cumberland side of the London road, whose comforts were peculiarly comforting 
and whose clientele was select.
Scott said nothing. The Master, who seemed unusually happy, pulled off his 
boots, slung them across the room and slopped some ale from jug to cup.



"A splendid night," said Lymond, running on. "Of wyne and wax, of gamyn and gle. 
And profitable. Indeed, it's an instruction to see how human messengers-at-arms 
can be, when they set their minds to it, if it's minds I mean. Sic peril lies in 
paramours. Oh, well. And that, my Wally Gowdy, was only half the night's work."
Scott said obediently, "And the other half?"
"Concerned a distinguished nobleman set upon by marauders on the high road to 
Scotland, until bravely rescued by myself . .
Scott gave up. "I didn't know you'd turned philanthropist."
Lymond produced the sweet-rancid smile. "I refer you to John Maxwell. He gave me 
to understand he was my eternal debtor for saving his life. And at that," he 
said, laying down the empty cup, "your colleagues fought each other like shrews. 
I thought at one time the Cleg was going to forget himself and spit me."
Scott understood. "This was Maxwell of Threave and Caerlaverock? You want him in 
your debt?"
"The Master of Maxwell," said Lymond, "is an important personage entirely 
surrounded by English. D'you play chess?"
Scott, knowing him less than sober, was unstartled. He nodded.
"Then you should recognize an opening for smothered mate. Which reminds me: copy 
that, will you? Unless you still despise my cunning clerking?"
This had once been a sore point with Scott: now he had other things on his mind. 
Taking Lymond's letter, he remarked, "I suppose you know the men are getting 
restless, sir?" and was lucky to get instant backing.
"God, you've hit it." Mat, entering, yawned and eased his shoulders. "Too much 
intrigue, sir, and too little rape: the boys are as unnatural nervy as water 
fleas. . . . And besides," he added practically, "we're nigh out of beer."
The Master, leaning back, crossed his legs. "Good God. I knew we were 
spendthrifts, lechers and soaks: can we possibly be bored as well?"
This was taken at its face value by Mat. "Well, it's three weeks since they last 
had a chance to spend anything, and a month since they had anything to spend." 
He added reasonably, "Anything with women and money in it."
Lymond closed his eyes. "Fie on their labour! Fie on their delight! Must I 
supply the cattle with toys? No, by God: I've affairs of my own to look after."


There was a pause. Scott stayed dumb, but Turkey's disapproval could be seen, 
and even heard. The Master, less characteristically, gave a hiccough of 
laughter. "Poor Mat. Sic strange, intestine, cruel strife. Alas, father, my 
mirth is gone. I see you think we must pander to this levity. What do you 
suggest?"
Turkey Mat's face broke into a relieved grin. "Well, now; there's maybe one of 
the Douglas houses would repay a visit. Or Cothally Castle-Seton's away? Or a 
nice puckle sows from the Malinshaw-"
"Grey of Wilton's in Hume Castle," said Scott.
"Or there's old Gledstanes, who broke his bond to us last month-"
"-If you took Grey-"
"-And Jardine of Applegarth must have got a consideration from Wharton-"
"-If you took Grey, you could set Arran and the Protector bidding against each 
other for him. Damn it, am I invisible?" said Scott, irritated, as Lymond's eyes 
remained speculatively on Mat.
Absently, Lymond shook his head. "Fond Folie, sall I be thy Clark? And answer 
thee ay, with Amen?" He bent a cornflower-blue gaze on Scott. "One: have you 
seen Hume since it was fortified? I thought not. Two: we should be outnumbered 
roughly four to one. Three:
this is a diversion, not an act of war; and four: you have a hole in one elbow, 
and I wish to God you'd keep your boots clean."
Scott did not bother to look down. He persevered. "If the men will follow me, 
will you give me leave to try it on my own?"
The Master was flippant.

"And he took out his little knife
Loot a' his duddies Ia'
And he was the brawest gentleman
That was amang them a'. . .

He grinned and got up. "Not yet, my Hinnysopps. My gentlemen are quaint cattle. 
You must teach them to trust you before you set up as 'their Rex Nemorensis. . . 
. Well, Mat!" He clapped Turkey on the shoulder. "Go summon the sheep before the 
wolf, and we'll see."
By the time the Master walked onto the broken dais and hitched himself on the 
edge of a board, the men were alerted and waiting, chewing, hugging their knees 
in the straw, and reasonably quiet.
Lymond collected eyes; began: "A number of curious blunders have come to light, 
gentlemen, which seem to be of a piece with your general behaviour over the last 
week . . ." And finished ten retching minutes later with: "I would remind you 
that you're here to carry out orders, not to discuss them. That's the only 
reason you are here, and not in quicklime at the crossroads. Disobey me in 
action or in spirit, gentlemen, and you'll stay alive for much longer than you 
want to. . .
Absolute silence.
"That being so," continued the Master gently, "I want volunteers for work 
tomorrow night. No one who isn't ready to exert his talents to the fullest need 
trouble. The rest can put up a hand. Now!"
The hands rose, slowly at first, then multiplying. Behind their chief's back, 
Scott and Turkey scanned the hall. Every arm was up.
The shadow of a smile crossed Lymond's face. He waited as the arms dropped, and 
spoke into sullen silence.
"At dusk tomorrow night a supply train of wagons is due to leave Roxburgh Castle 
for Hume. Among other things, it will contain the month's supply of beer for 
Lord Grey and the Hume garrison-"
The bang of relief and approval hit the ruined roof and brought mouldering 
plaster down on their regardless heads. An anonymous voice skirling through the 
din gave it its leitmotif. "Now you're talking!" it shrieked. "Now you're bloody 
well talking!"
Scott thought, "Don't they realize they're sixty to one?" And answered himself 
wryly. "He's the Golden Goose. They'll never touch him."
He said to Mat, "Your credit."
Turkey shook his head. "Listen. He's had it planned for days." He sighed. "Man, 
man: he can play them like a chanter."
But Scott was listening to the Master's voice explaining the forthcoming raid; 
giving times, places and numbers, and making it crystal clear that anyone 
attempting to force Hume Castle itself had no future whatever.
Rightly or wrongly, Will Scott called that an overstatement.


2.	Sudden Danger for a Passed Pawn

To ride cross-country from Eskdale to Teviotdale is good for the liver; to do it 
without being seen healthier still.
The forty-five men who passed over the hills next day with Lymond and Will Scott 
were fortified, within and without, and sang impolite songs in discreet harmony, 
syncopated by beer and rough ground.



They reached the Tweed at dusk, crossed between Dryburgh and Roxburgh, and had 
the last of the beer and some ham and biscuits apiece, after leaving a couple of 
men to the north of Roxburgh. Then they lit a very small fire and settled down 
to a ferocious night at the dice.
The outposts came up just after midnight.
Lymond received them from a comfortable hollow in a stone outcrop, where he 
played a solitary game of his own with a worn pack of cards.
"They're coming, Master!" Excited in spite of himself, the Lang Cleg was 
peching. "They left Roxburgh an hour back, coming the way you said. Thirty horse 
and five drivers; three carts and two heavy wains with oxen pulling."
"Oxen!" Lymond looked up for the first time from his game.
The Cleg nodded. "They took them on at Roxburgh and left some of their horses. 
It'll be the ordnance carts. They're ower heavy, and the castle's hard up for 
horses."
Lymond said, dealing again, "Thirty horses. How many mares?"
"Ten geldings and twenty mares, fairly fresh. They must have come up from 
Berwick yesterday and rested all evening."
"All right." Lymond gathered up the cards and stood up.
"Scott! Matthew! They're taking the route we thought and should be among the 
thorn scrub before the moon rises."
He recapitulated briefly. Scott watched sardonically. ("The great leader in 
action.")
"We aim to disable, not to kill. We take important hostages, if any, and you, 
Matthew, select the beer and any other goods we need. Then we split: Scott takes 
as many men as he needs, parcels the rest of the prisoners, loads them into a 
cart with any goods we don't want, and drives them as near Meirose as he can 
get, joining us thereafter. Understood?"
Mat, who hadn't heard of the latest refinement, grinned. "Melrose! Daddy 
Buccleuch'll be pleased!"
Scott waited for the sour smile. It duly appeared. "Payment for goods received, 
let's say. Scott concurs, don't you? All right. Cry boot and saddle, my dears, 
and we're off."
He turned the impervious gaze on the company. "To horse, you drouthy maggots. 
Are you deaf?"


By the time the maggots were duly embedded, one mile south of Hume Castle, the 
English supply train was still toiling north and everybody in it was sick to 
death of the oxen.
The beasts straddled the causeway, two to a wainload, surging Un-progressively 
through the night with poached and indolent eye. Behind them groaned the carts, 
tamped with humped canvas, and behind that, more carts, horse-drawn. The mounted 
escort, fidgetting on all sides, was in a foul temper and raw-alert.
The night, moonless and unsympathetic, stretched around them, and visibility at 
thirty yards granted them a view of a quantity of stunted thorns.
The bullocks puffed gently, and a mare snickered. She was answered by one of the 
other horses.
Above the wheel-rumbling, someone cursed. "Hold her nose! We don't want the 
whole God-damn percussion band." But as he said it, one of the cart horses threw 
back its head and presented the night with a splitting neigh.
"Wait a minute!" They listened; while the speaker laid hands on the ox harness 
and the procession rolled to a halt.
There was silence-broken by a dim beat far out in the night. Then the first tap 
was begetting others and the pattern was recognizable. Horses, in a solid body, 
were sweeping in on them from the moor.
A crackle of orders arose; hurried movements and sudden, heavy breathing: bows, 
pikes and lances readied, they made for the shelter of the carts. They barely 
got there before, out of the night, dim forms came flying, heaving, nudging, 
bouncing and kicking in a cacophony of horse language. Lost in the flailing 
morass, with their own mounts rearing and threshing, the supply men had a 
confused impression of barrel ribs, rolling eyes and merciful, saddleless backs.
"Blood an' bones!" They were hoarse with anger and ~llef. "It's a damned great 
herd of wild ponies. Get away with yoq! Off! Off!" And they rose out of shelter, 
cursing and whipcracking at the steaming bare backs and flying manes. Hoofs 
sparked on the stones; horses neighed, nosed, bumped and reared.
The hill pony is a stout and independent citizen: bold, uncatchable, inquisitive 
and gregarious. The herd went seriously to work, exploring all these and fresh 
talents. The mares were going silly and even the oxen were beginning to plunge.
"Hell an' thunder!" said someone, taking a moment's breathing space to have a 
good look. "That's funny!"



"What the hell's funny about it?" snapped someone else, bucketting past with 
heels flapping like windmills.
"Well, for instance," said the first speaker, gasping, "every one of these 
brutes is a stallion."
But nobody heeded him, for just then the leading wain rolled in bovine panic off 
the road and sank two wheels up to the axle in mud.
They were attempting to drag it out, to calm the bullocks, to chase off the 
ponies and to control their mounts when Lymond's men descended like moths; and 
even then they lost seconds in realizing that these horses had riders. The 
infiltration was neat and unspectacular, involving close-quarter cudgel work and 
little injury: there were simply fewer and fewer vertical English and finally 
none at all. It took them longer to round up the ponies again than it had taken 
to capture the train.
It was a first-class haul. Matthew supervising, flour, biscuits, oats, meat, and 
leather powder bags with serpentine and corn powder were unloaded and put up in 
creels ready strapped to their own horses. One cart with hackbuts, bills, bows 
and arrow sheaves was unstrapped from the oxen and harnessed to a team of 
ponies. The rest of the ponies, without exception, carried beer.
A wooden box, heavily padlocked, yielded to maltreatment and proved, 
satisfyingly, to hold the end of the month's wages. It was tied to Matthew's 
saddlebow.
Lymond watched, moving everywhere. To Scott, roping prostrate bodies together, 
he intoned: "Sawest not you my oxen, you little, pretty boy? With hemp, with 
howe, with hemp. . . . Any familiar faces?-No, of course: you wouldn't know."
He looked over the silent row of gagged figures. "Unfortunate. A Spanish 
captain, and not worth his own weight in olive stones. Take em all to Melrose, 
and the rest of the wagons too. How many do you want for escort?"
Scott said quickly, "I have ten men: that'll do."
"All right, Barbarossa. Allez-vous-en, allez, allez. You've a job to do before 
dawn."
Scott nodded earnestly, and rode back to load up the leading cart with his 
prisoners.

* * *


The English lookout at Hume Castle, slumped in the empty fire pan on the roof, 
was doing sums gloomily in his head. Below, night hid



the great sweep of the Tweed valley and the Merse. Slabbed with fortifications, 
packed with soldiers, and stuck on a precipice with a six-foot curtain, the 
place was as safe as Durham Cathedral . . . and he was bored.
If the old man sent up the pay from Berwick, he was due two pounds for the 
month. Then he owed twelve shillings for food. That left
He groaned, working it out. It was a relief when he heard the wagons 
approaching, and caught glimpses of activity at the gatehouse, and familiar 
riding dress. He made for the bell rope. "Supply train from Berwick, ho! There's 
the beer, Davie-boy!" sang the lookout.
Long before the portcullis was down, word had gone from the fire pan to the 
allure, and the allure to the keep, where sat Sir William Grey, thirteenth Baron 
Grey of Wilton, Field-marshal and Captain-general of the horse, Governor of 
Berwick, Warden of the East Marches and General of Northern Parts on behalf of 
His Majesty King Edward VI of England.
Few commanders enjoy visiting outposts in enemy country: the risks of making a 
fool of oneself are relative to the distance from base.
Through an unlucky incident at Pinkie, Lord Grey was, as it happened, in a fair 
way toward doing this in any case for a little, whether he liked it or not. 
Sitting at his temporary desk, sleek, pink and picturesque, hair and beard a 
silver perfection above splendid riding clothes, he was in as petulant a mood as 
a gentleman of quality can be.
"I with to God," said his lordship bitterly to his secretary, "I with to God I 
wath thtuck with the Crewth again. Even Boulogne and that damn rhymthter Thurrey 
wath plain thailing to thith."
Mr. Myles rigidly agreed.
Lord Grey gave him a sharp look; then ruffled impatiently through the papers 
before him. He picked one out, and slapped it down again with the same gesture.
"Fifteen labourerth dithappeared during the work at Roxthburgh:
four Thpanith bombardierth and twelve pikemen climbed the wallth and gone home. 
If I could, I'd do it mythelf. No beer: not enough food. How can I thtaff 
garrithonth without gold and thupplieth? And how do they think they can get 
thupplieth to uth when winter thetth. in? Hell and perdithion!" said Lord Grey, 
goaded to fury by the unfair stings of Fortune. "Ith there no word in the 
Englith language wanting an Eth?"


Mr. Myles was saved by the entrance of Dudley, regular captain of the garrisons 
bringing the leader of the Berwick supply train to report.
"Mr. Taylor, my lord," said Dudley; and stood back.
Mr. Taylor, a personable young man with red hair, was coolly received. "Taylor? 
I was ekthpecting one of my men from Berwick."
Taylor, in the more normal person of Will Scott, had anticipated this question. 
He said smartly, "I've just arrived at Berwick, sir. I had some of your men with 
me, but was asked to leave the more experienced ones at Roxburgh."
"I thee," said Grey noncommittally. "Well, what have you brought with you?"
He read the lists proffered without comment; handed them to Dudley with an air 
of private martyrdom, and turned again to Scott.
"Your men being looked after?"
"Yes, my lord." He wasn't afraid of that. They all wore clothes stripped off the 
real English, and the lists were authentic. "Ten men below, sir: I put two or 
three to guard the wagons until ordered to unload. Beer, my lord," he added in 
explanation.
"Good. Any meth-word from London?"
Scott, standing at the door, said still briskly, "One verbal message for 
yourself, sir, from his Grace. I was to deliver it for your ear only."
Surprise registered briefly on all three faces, then the secretary, laying his 
papers deferentially on the edge of the desk, caught Grey's eye and left the 
room. Dudley raised an eyebrow and stayed.
Scott said, "I'm sorry, sir: my orders are .
Grey said, "Thir Edward remainth," because to his mind a general should appear 
to keep no secrets from a cousin of the Earl of Warwick. He hoped the boy had 
some discretion.
Scott, fulminating, wished his lordship had less.
At this moment of impasse the window fell in.
A second later, a crack like the Eildons parting fell on their ears, and a 
bouquet of flame bellied up from the courtyard.
Grey strode to the window and Dudley had begun to follow when, under cover of 
chain detonation and shouting outside, Will Scott leaped. Dudley, overcome 
before he realized it, gave a muffled groan and rolled over, stunned by an 
efficient blow on the prominent jaw.
The explosion had taken place in the middle of the newly arrived wagon train. 
The carts had already disappeared in smoke, and the nearest thatches were 
blazing merrily. Grey, staring out, saw the yard striped with shadows running 
haphazard about the well and courtyard. Then Woodward, Dudley's lieutenant, 
appeared below, and some sort of order began to materialize.
Grey opened his mouth and turned, missing in that instant a descending stick, 
and found himself promptly pinned from behind, with an arm across his mouth.
He bit, fruitlessly and painfully. He kicked, with better results; then, 
summoning his considerable reserves, embarked on a wrestling trick which most 
mercenaries would have recognized, but Scott did not. The boy held the older man 
as long as he was physically able, and then fell back for the fatal instant that 
was necessary for his lordship to shout, "Help! Guard! Athathinthl" having 
little time to choose his words; and that was long enough for the guard outside 
to burst in, and for Dudley to erupt onto his feet.
In the brief and damaging interval which followed, the fighting was less 
preventative than justly punitive. By the time the interloper had been knocked 
to, on, and across the floor, the room was packed with avidly assisting 
soldiery, and the affair had taken on the look of a riot.
Dudley, at a sign from Grey, cleared them all out and gave orders to lock up all 
the men who were with Taylor. Two pikemen were set against the door, and then 
Dudley, after a brief inquiry below, joined his lordship in studyi~ig his 
bedraggled captive.
The ex-Mr. Taylor lay on a small carpet, bleeding copiously from the nose and 
with the beginnings of a glorious black eye. His shirt showed white through the 
tears in his jerkin, and his skin showed pink through the tears in his shirt; 
his red hair stood on end.
Surprisingly, he was not an object of pity. His one good eye regarded the two 
men with a fair assumption of calm, and he even grinned a little, ruefully, at 
Grey.
"The devil!" he said impertinently. "Now we've hardly one whole set of features 
between us."
Lord Grey seated himself fastidiously at his desk, first clearing a
litter of papers which had whirled from desk to chair. He passed a
hand over his thick, fine hair, pulled down his sleeves, and gave a
jerk to the short skirt of his doublet.
"Now," he said, putting thirteen generations of ice into his voice, "let uth 
thee what we have here." And he fixed Scott with the kind of look linked with 
Assizes.
"You have not, of courthe, come from Roxthburgh?"
"Find out!"


"I propothe to thend to Roxthburgh to do jutht that." He paused. "Do you know 
the penalty for arthon and attempted murder?. . . or wath it a kidnapping? In 
any cathe, you won't dithpothe me to lenienthy thith way."
No reply.
Grey tried again. "I prethume you ~re a Thcotthman?"
His Lordship's misfortune was Scott's downfall as well. He couldn't resist it.
"Yeth!" said Scott, and got his mouth shut for him by the buckle of his own 
belt. He tasted blood.
Dudley swung it again, warningly. "Keep a civil tongue, sir. What is your real 
name?"
"Find out."
Again the belt. He supposed they questioned him for ten minutes, and still 
pumped full of excitement, ~ie not only kept them guessing, but in a masochistic 
way, even enjoyed himself.
Finally Grey swung around to the desk again. "We need to uthe thtronger 
perthuathion. The men below are obviouthly in colluthion too."
Dudley said, "They've lost their tongues as well," and went on hurriedly. 
"Woodward tells me it looks as if most of the stores are missing, even allowing 
for what was burnt. The boneheaded fool at the gate let them in on the strength 
of their dress and the seals-they were authentic enough-and-of all things-
because he recognized two of the horses. Of course, the train was dead on time, 
and he was desperate to get the beer in, into the bargain. Which reminds me-"
Lord Grey for the first time looked really disturbed. "Not the beer?" Dudley 
said, "There's not a barrel left. Nor any ordnance to speak of, apart from what 
blew up. And what's more, no money."
"What!" The two men stared at one another. This affair was serious. Water was 
scarce and unsafe: men had to have ale; and the horses needed hard feed to 
enable them to foray and keep open their communications. The need for arms and 
food was equally pressing.
Grey was silent for a long time, and then he got up and, walking over to the 
prone man, stirred him with one foot. This time, the voice was a general's 
voice, and the lisp was not even remotely funny. "Where ith the retht of the 
train, and where are the men who thet out with it?"
The exhilaration had worn off; extreme mortification was biting at



the edges of his courage. But he fought hard to keep his eyes calmly on Grey, 
and if the effort was visible to the soldier's practiced eye, Scott didn't know 
it. He said dreamily, "Far, far away! And farther every hour!"
Dudley said sharply, "Ah, then you had others with you who didn't come to Hume?"
They would be halfway home by now, and surprised that he hadn't joined them. 
Then they would find the carts had never been driven to Melrose. And tomorrow, 
wait in vain for himself and his party. And then, somehow, Lymond would find 
out: against orders, he had got into Hume . . . but hadn't the brains or the 
guts to get out. Scott braced himself.
"Naturally," he said. "I hope they keep some beer for me."
This time he had no trouble in meeting their eyes. After a moment Grey swung to 
the desk and began writing. "Two men to Berwick for replathementth, two to 
Roxthburgh, to look out for thignth of ambuth, and dithcover the latht point the 
train got to." He finished writing and handed both papers to Dudley. "Right 
away."
Then he stood up and came over again to Scott.
"I am thorry you've thet thuch a thmall prithe on .your life. I cannot afford to 
feed you and your men with what food we have left. Tomorrow you can e,kthpect to 
meet a thpy'th death. We have a prietht. If you want your relativeth to know, 
you had better give him your true name."
Scott said, "My men are mercenaries. If you pay them, they will fight for you as 
well as your Germans and Spanish do."
"Pay them?" said Grey. "With what, prithee?"
Scott was silent, in the bitter awareness that his exercise in self-expression 
had murdered ten men. Grey addressed the pikemen.
"Lock him up. But away from hith men . . . they might take advantage of him."
In the revolting hole they took him to, he had only one comfort. He hadn't said 
who he was. If they knew he was heir to Buccleuch, he thought cynically, they 
wouldn't let him so much as catch cold. They'd take him to Berwick and use him 
as a tool to make his father do as they wanted.
For all his airy words to Lymond, he didn't think for a moment his father would 
stand by in public and watch him murdered. No. He'd do what the English asked 
him to do-again. And this time, ironically, he would be the cause of it. Ii he 
told them who he was.



He thought, lying bruised on the cold flags: This time tomorrow I shall be out 
of the whole damned mess. It didn't help very much.

* * *



Nor did the news that Grey's small search party had found and brought back the 
two remaining carts and the original English members of the supply train, found 
tied up and frozen where he had left them, just off the causeway.
They arrived, packed shivering among the crates, and jumped down from the 
wagons, shirt-tails flying, to cheer after cheer. There wasn't a man among them 
with a pair of hose, breeches or a jerkin on him:
their teeth chattered and their feet were blue. Even the masons repairing the 
explosion breech dropped tools and poured over to watch as the unlucky 
travellers hopped into the castle. Comment was rife and on well-marked lines.
When the last of the men had gone indoors, Dudley examined the two carts and set 
a strong guard on them before reporting in high spirits to Grey.
"We've got some of the beer after all; and most of the heavy ordnance . . . 
culverin and stoneshot-"
What else he was going to say was never known.
The door burst open, the tapestries flapped, and a human tornado, enveloped in a 
whorl of depot-stamped canvas and trailed by protesting soldiers, erupted into 
the room.
The visitor brushed off his escorts, slamming the door in their faces, and 
strode headlong to Grey's desk.
"Madre Dios! Caballeros, su ayuda . . . su venganza! Ladrones!" Hissing, the 
newcomer fixed his lordship with a burning eye, and even Lord Grey had to admit 
the magnificence of his rage.
"He sido mortificado, insultado-.-hombre-me hecho hazmerrefr!
-Mirame!" screamed the insulted one, and peeled off the canvas. Mr. Secretary 
Myles, tried beyond endurance, gave a soul-destroying quack. Dudley and Grey, 
pinned to the petrified edge of diplomacy, gazed at the sorry remains of a 
ruffled shirt, pleated and trimmed with shredded bullion; hair, once black, 
oiled and curled, swooning from a coarse woollen cap, askew; and below, bare 
thighs, blue with cold, and tarred and feathered from toe to knee as a duck goes 
to market. A single destitute earring winked next to the highbred nose and 
smooth olive skin.



Lord Grey, recovering an aplomb he had hardly known for a month, rendered 
sympathy, concern and indignation in a mollifying buzz. By a combined effort he 
and Dudley got the still-detonating visitor into a chair, rewrapped in Dudley's 
cloak, and his feet in a pewter basin of hot water to melt off the tar. He was 
brought a pot of mulled wine and invited, at last, to address himself to Mr. 
Myles, who spoke Spanish.
The caballero was displeased. "But," he said with some hauteur, "I speak the 
Scottish perfecto."
"Oh," said Dudley, taken aback. He, Grey and Myles waited.
The Spanish gentleman inspected his feet, sat back and proceeded to prove his 
point. He introduced himself: Don Luis Fernando de Cordoba y Avila, leader of 
the captured supply train, and said much about his relatives on both sides. He 
referred in passing without deference to His Majesty the Emperor; to the noble 
and adventurous life of himself and a few compatriots as masters of their own 
swords in London and Flanders, and drew their attention to the proverb "Un 
hidalgo no debe a otro que a Dios, y al Rei nada."
Mr. Myles was anxious to translate. Grey restrained him. "I can gueth."
"De veras," said Don Luis politely. "My Lordship has the true Spanish lisp of 
Castile. His Spanish sin dude is as much good as the mine.
At this point, discretion came to Mr. Myles, and he studied the floor.
"And now," said Don Luis. He rose splashily to his feet. "To action, sefiores. 
Mas veen quatro ojos que no dos. If the sefiores will lend clothing to myself 
and my men, with your aid we shall follow and kill the animals who put the hand 
on us. By el engafio, the trick."
The dark face flamed with renewed vitality. "The leader, I wish to meet. The 
confusion with the horses, the skilful overcoming of such a man as me: there is 
no man mediocre. Ay, ay, dios. Y cuando ... When I meet him. .
"You may meet him now, if you with," said Grey calmly. "We have him and motht of 
hith men locked up here."
"Que pasa? How is this?" Lord Grey saw with satisfaction that the caballero was 
impressed at last.
"Pero-como asi?"
They explained. Don Luis, the ends of his cloak slopping in the


bath, stood in astonishment. Then he swept out of the tub, imprinting the carpet 
with black sticky footmarks.
"This terrible Sefior Huile! Lead me to him!"
"Seilor . . . Wait a moment," said Grey sharply.
Don Luis paused in the midst of a characteristic rush to the door. Grey said, 
"You don't by any chanth know how the leader wath called?"
"But of course!" said Don Luis simply. "Do you not? It is Don Huile del 
Escocia."
"Don . . ." Dudley suddenly experienced a terrible nostalgia for the King's 
English, unadorned. "He can't be called that. He's a Scotsman."
"No, no." Don Luis was annoyed at his own stupidity. "This I translate to 
remember. El nombre de pila . .
("Christian name," said Mr. Myles surreptitiously.)
It is Huile, that is in Scottish, Oil. An unusual name, is it not?" said Don 
Luis, amused.
"Oil!" said Grey rather hollowly.
"And the patronimico," continued Don Luis with undiminished helpfulness. "It is 
del Escocia, of Scot."
"Thcot!" said Grey. His face suddenly lightened. "Wait a moment. Thcott! That'th 
Buccleuch'th name. Huile- It'th the Thpanith pronunthiathion, idiot, not the 
Englith. What thoundth like Huile . Will! Will Thcott! Buccleuch'th oldetht 
son!"
"Idiota?" said Don Luis stiffly, picking out the insult unerringly from the maze 
of multisyllables. His feet, a tarry mound, were ringed with pools of water from 
the cloak, and his eyes were narrowed at Grey. "Idiota?"
The secretary saved the day. He took the sefior's arm and murmured in his ear. 
Phrases floated to his lordship: "defecto de boca
quere decir 'ideal' . . ." Mr. Myles did his best, and only ceased when 
entangled with the unforunate word "embarazar." He flushed bright pink and 
released Don Louis, now regarding Lord Grey with unconcealed curiosity.
"Perhapth," said Grey icily, "Don Luith might be given thome help to clean hith 
feet and a chanth to dreth, and then we will have Mr. Thcott brought up."
Dudley opened the door. "Woodward! Get those men below into decent clothes, and 
fetch a suit for the sefior."
Woodward looked doubtful. "We've already fixed up the men be-



low, sir, and it's taken nearly all the spare clothing we've got. What's left 
wouldn't be"-he hesitated-"entirely suitable for the gentleman."
"Then strip it off one of the prisoners," said Dudley impatiently. "The fellow 
who led them-Scott's his name-he's probably wearing the sefior's own suit."
Woodward said, "Well, even if he is, sir, it's no good. It's in ribbons."
There was a pause. Then the Spanish gentleman said, very distinctly, "I do not 
hear aright. I trust one does not ask me to wear clothes of the common soldier 
with, no doubt, the louse?"
They saw with apprehension that his brow had blackened again.
Grey said, "Dudley
"Too small, sir," said Dudley. "Same applies to Woodward and Myles."
It was true enough. They were all big men, far taller than Don Luis.
Another short, pregnant silence. Dudley and the lieutenant stared into middle 
space. Mr. Myles thought of something.
"He's just about your own height, your lordship, if I may say so," he said co-
operatively.
Mr. Woodward murmured "Well played, sir!" under his breath and continued to look 
woodenly at the wall. Mr. Myles looked surprised.
Lord Grey allowed to lapse the longest possible interval consistent with 
civility. He then said without any sign of gratification, "Of courth. I am 
afraid I require my riding clotheth, but I would be happy, naturally, to therve 
the thefior with my thpare dreth."
The seilor, it was apparent, was also happy. So, too, were Dudley and Woodward, 
but circumspectly so.


* * *




Scott was pitchforked into Grey's room an hour later.
His lordship, courtesy worn a littl~ thin, sat again at his desk; Dudley, 
Woodward, Myles and some others at his side and by the window. Beside the desk 
lounged an elegant gentleman in tawny velvet, with combed black curls and a 
diamond in one ear.
"Thith," said Lord Grey, "ith Don Luith Fernando de Cordoba y


Avila, of the forthe of Don Pedro de Gamboa, therving under the King'th Majethty 
in the North. I believe you had the impertinenthe to capture and unbreech him 
earlier tonight." That took the smile off his majesty's face, he noted 
sardonically.
Scott stared.
Don Luis de Cordoba uncrossed long, exquisite legs, rose languidly from his 
chair, and strolled toWard the prisoner. He contemplated him, face to face in 
silence, through hall-closed eyes, blue as corn-flowers. Then, before Scott had 
time to dodge, he brought the percussion of his right hand with the savagery of 
a machine across the boy's swollen lips.
Blood from the smashed mouth welled and poured.
"We have a proverb, Seffor Huile," said Don Luis sweetly. "A unque manso tu 
sabuesro, no le muerdas en el beco."
Scott moved bleeding lips. "Hay un otro, Sefior Luis. Ruin seuior cria ruin 
servidor."
The malicious glitter increased. "The sefior speaks Spanish? That should be 
cured. It is a tongue for gentlemen."
Dudley, already on his feet, reached the Spaniard. "Remember, Mr. Scott's a 
valuable hostage, Don Luis. Seat yourself, and we'll thrash the matter out."
Mr. Scott! A sensation like the pounding of a die stamp was beginning to operate 
behind the boy's eyes. He parried their questions:
Had his father, they asked, sent him to capture Don Luis and the supply train? 
How had he known the train would be there? What would his father pay to recover 
him?
He was jolted by a Spanish exclamation. "Dios!" said Don Luis in vexation. "I 
believe the young man faints. He is a person debil, the Scot, in spite of many 
words. Ay! he goes!"
For Scott, after a moment's helpless indecision, took the path thus offered. He 
swayed; he fell.
Woodward stooped over him. "He's off all right. Better take him back to his 
cell."
Don Luis rose. He smoothed a curl, reassured himself of his diamond, and took 
control of the situation. "But no. It does not value the trouble. You have done 
all you wish with him now?"
Dudley shrugged and looked at Grey. "More or less."
"Then," said Don Luis, "I would prefer much to return the night to Berwick. I 
shall take him and his friends, and thus there is no need to waste the food. The 
hostage affair can also begin en seguida,




and the questioning gooder organized, no?" He regarded them vivaciously.
Lord Grey became aware that he was dead tired and another hour of the brilliant 
sefior would undoubtedly drive him crazy. He said with a sort of upheaval of a 
sigh, "Well, thefior; if you and your men feel fit to go back, then it would be 
a great benefit to be rid of the men right away."
Don Luis bowed. "Bueno. If you will then write me an order for Berwick
"Of courthe." Grey turned to the desk.
Don Luis watched him for a moment, and then murmured delicately to Dudley, "I 
fear to beg also the horses from you. The ours were taken and loosed by Sefior 
Scott, and the his will be needed for him and his men."
Dudley looked doubtful. "Oh. Can't you manage without? We're short of hacks just 
now."
Don Luis spread his hands. "How manage without? We shall send more from Berwick, 
and meantime there are lesser mouths to feed."
That at least was true. Dudley gave in, and had a word with the Master of Horse, 
who left the room.
Don Luis bowed.
Woodward bowed.
Myles bowed.
Grey bowed.
Dudley spoke to someone at the door, and two of Don Luis' men, in brave new 
jerkins, came in smiling and hauled off the inert figure of Scott.
Clamour from the courtyard told of Scott's men being tied to their own horses; 
of new horses being brought for the Spaniard's troop.
"I depart," said Don Luis maguificently. "For the hospitality, for the food, for 
the beer, for the horses, for the clothing, a million embracings. My dear lord; 
my dear sir; my dear gentlemen."
Everybody bowed again.
"Adios!" said Don Luis, and left the room.

* * *



Long after the last rider had passed the portcullis, when all at last was still 
and Lord Grey was preparing for bed, Dudley came, yawning, to share a last cup 
of wine with him.


"That damned Don!" They laughed a little, thinking of the tar and feathers. 
Dudley stretched.
At that moment, the wagon with the culverins blew up.
It was much later when they thought of checking the second wagon. The beer 
barrels were intact, but contained only brackish water, and one of them a slip 
of paper, which read pontifically, No es todo oro lo que reluce.
"All is not gold that glisters," translated Mr. Myles, coming into his own at 
last.
For a long time they digested the implications in silence. Then Dudley said, 
rather dazedly, "They were all impostors. . . . Don Luis. Who was he?"
Grey stared thoughtfully at the smoking wreck of the opposite wall. "I don't 
know. But I propothe to dithcuth thith night'th work thoon with William Thcott 
of Kincurd."
They retired, but not, it is certain, to sleep.

* * *



The long string of horsemen was far away from Hume, driving westward, when the 
moon came up. The need for hard riding made talking impossible for the first ten 
miles, though a knife, tossed silver from horse to horse, let Scott and his ten 
men cut their lashings. Far ahead of the others, Lymond rode in tawny velvet. He 
had taken off the black wig, but Scott glimpsed his hair, paler than ever above 
the dyed skin: the nearest view he had had of him since accepting that vicious 
blow on the face.
He was beaten to the knees, and knew it.
Riding knee to knee with the Cleg, one of the ten whom his own recklessness had 
nearly killed, he had muttered some sort of apology.
The Cleg had received it with no more than his usual vacant good humour.
"Marry, man, that's just the way it goes," he'd said. "The Maister gave us our 
choice-twa-three hours in jail with you, he said, or ride bare-arsed with him 
an' get a new set o' clothes for it; and mindin' I catch cold easy, I chose to 
come wi' you. Not but what," he said warmly, "I never saw a loon put up wi' all 
what you put up wi', for a scatterbrain scheme like yon. They must have fair 
bashed the brains out o' ye."
Scott covered a burning eye with one hand. "You mean Lymond




told you I'd be asking for volunteers to go to Hume with me?" It was, of course, 
impossible. He had only decided yesterday to contradict Lymond's own express 
orders not to go to the castle.
The Cleg said, "Ay, like I told you. He gave us all our choice, an' told us 
forbye you'd maybe not let on the plan to us, as you'd likely take a fair 
bashing." He smiled cheerfully. "I ken you dma think we'd keep our mouths shut, 
but ye'll admit we did ye proud the day."
"You did indeed," said Scott, and turned his head away from the ungrudging 
admiration in the Cleg's eyes.
At ten miles, they overtook Mat with the pack horses, Lymond's own bunch of 
riding hacks, their clothes, and the remaining cart: the genuine English 
prisoners were already, Scott gathered, on their way, bound, to Meirose-the job 
ostensibly given to himself.
In the short breathing space before they set off again, Scott dismounted and, 
moving stiffly, walked forward to where Turkey and the Master were having a 
brief conversation.
"S'wounds," said Mat. He eyed Scott's face. "It looks to me as if someone has 
sat on our William."
The Master turned, passementerie glittering. He might have changed sex, so 
complete was the change from the haughty, choleric Don.
"Barbarossa! We are covered with admiration. An actor manqu~, my dear, to 
convince them so thoroughly that you expected to perish directly. You have had," 
he said inquiringly, "a little accident to the mouth?"
Busy as they were, the men around them were not deaf: the nearest, taking the 
remark at its face value, grinned sympathetically at Scott. It was obvious they 
had all known of the double plan-except him. Obvious, too, that they assumed to 
a man that he knew as well.
So there it was. First, corporal punishment, carefully applied. Next, spiritual 
chastisement-and not the obvious, open ridicule. Not with Lymond. Instead, the 
dreadful humiliation of accepting his own reputation, intact, from the 
chastising hand. That, and the corollary that Lymond found him so inconsiderable 
that he could cheerfully add to his stature.
What now? Reject the heroic role Lymond had prepared for him? He could explain 
that the Master had goaded him into a private attempt to take Grey: had made an 
opportunity for him to do it; had foreseen that he would bungle it; and had in 
fact based his entire plan on that certainty . . . and on the genuineness of the 
apprehension that he, Scott, would betray inside Hume. He could easily say all 
that,



and earn himself the biggest guffaw since Cuckoo-spit hooked his own ears at the 
salmon.
Young Scott heaved a long sigh, and meeting the sardonic blue eye, said flatly, 
"Not an actor, an apprentice . . . but I hope to learn. And one day to be able 
to play without the gift of a pawn."
The glittering eyes appraised him. "Certainly. But next time take care, or you 
may be receiving the Bishop, with appropriate rites. Any questions?"
One puzzle still nagged. "How," asked Scott, "did you know that the leader of 
the supplies would be Spanish?"
The Master raised weary eyebrows. "He wasn't."
That was all the conversation he ever had on the subject; and soon they were 
safely back at their tower. Drinking went on for two days after the barrels were 
broached; and Will Scott made a point of surfacing into sobriety as little as 
possible.
Amid the brawling, dancing, chorusing and squabbling, he was aware of Lymond, 
totally and grossly drunk, with the tawny velvet creased and stained with beer 
and food. He appeared to be in amatory mood, and was singing long Spanish love 
songs to his own accompaniment on the guitar.



6.

Forced Move

for a Minor Piece

Efter also yis pownis first moving
Frome poynt to poynt ye course furth sail bring,
And never pass to poynts angular
But sa it be to sla his adversar
The quhilk is lyk, be his passing yan,
In anguler wyss, to spuize sum pur man.





A
 NEWS will, news of the hoax at Hume got out.
By breakfast time on the second day, a kind of collective snigger, moving 
downwind from the castle to Edinburgh and points west, betrayed the progress of 
the story: the discovery of the entire English troop bound and frozen outside 
Melrose Abbey swelled the snigger to a belly laugh.
Sir George Douglas, breakfasting in his castle of Dalkeith seven miles south of 
Edinburgh, got word of it with his quails and became unusually thoughtful.
Thoughtfully, he allowed himself to be dressed and barbered, his beard trimmed, 
his lounging robe slipped over discreet Swiss shirt. Thoughtfully, he opened the 
tower door which led out of his bedchamber and climbed twenty steps to his 
private study, where a dishevelled-looking person was waiting. He shut the door. 
"Forgive


the delay. I cannot always receive the Lord Protector's messages as freely as I 
should wish."
The rain was driving against the exposed tower window: the man's outer clothes 
were sodden. He pushed back his hood, revealing a close cap fitting from 
eyebrows to ears, and said courteously, "I am sure his Grace would be unhappy to 
think otherwise, Sir George."
This was a trifle near the mark for a messenger, but Douglas had his mind on 
other things. He said briefly, "I must confess, as matters now stand between 
myself, Lord Grey and the Protector, I had not expected to hear from London 
yet."
"How providential," said the hatted one comfortably, "that you didn't on that 
account have me stopped at the gate. So fickle are statesmen. Today the palace, 
tomorrow the oubliette and the elegiac distich."
This time, Sir George turned his full attention on the stranger. "If you have a 
dispatch, sir, I should be glad to see it."
"In a way I have," said the other cheerfully. "Je suis oiseau: voyez mes ailes. 
And then again, in a way I haven't. Je suis souris; vivent les rats. What I have 
is worth hearing, though. Shall I read it to you?" And he pulled from his coat a 
creased bundle of papers. "Here we are. Rather long, but I'll spare you the clay 
and disinter the lotus. For example-" And picking out a page, he read quickly 
aloud.
"'Sir George Douglas, the laird of Ormiston, and two of the Humes have been 
here, Douglas coming as a Borderer to serve the King. . . . I reminded him of 
his benefits from the late King, and threatened him if he revolted again, I 
should pursue him and his friends to the death. He answered he would advance the 
marriage, and promised to draw his brother and the rest clean from the Governor
and to do his utmost to put the Queen in our hands, if requited in England for 
his lands-which I have guaranteed with my own lands. I have resolved to prove 
him, and if he does not keep his promise, the very next day Coldingham shall 
down, and himself smart font
"Postscript- Oh," said the stranger disingenuously, turning over the last page. 
"I remember. I left the postscript with my friends, although that was rather 
interesting too. What do you make of it all?"
What Sir George thought was soon forthcoming. With undisturbed calm, he drew his 
gown about him, and seating himself negligently near the door, remarked, "I 
should guess this to be a somewhat naYve effort at blackmail. I assume that 
unless I pay you a large sum of
121


money, and release you unharmed, your friends will send the original to the 
Scottish court."
"Well, at least you seem to know what it's all about," said the reader, 
refolding the papers. "The extract is, of course, copied from a dispatch from 
Lord Grey to the Protector, and I am sure you are about to take the wind from my 
sails by telling me that the Queen Dowager knows all about it."
If alarmed by this perspicacity, Sir George gave no sign. "She does, of course."
"Quite. But even if I believed that-which I don't-I still think you might be 
interested in seeing that postscript. It does exist, you know. So does the copy. 
I'm King of the Fidlers and swear 'tis a truth. You can have them all for a 
nominal price."
"And the nominal price?"
"You have an English prisoner called Jonathan Crouch," remarked the blackmailer, 
affably, and was interrupted by Sir George himself, showing the first signs of 
animation.
"Dear me!" he said. "You seem to be a remarkably subterranean young man. I took 
such a prisoner, yes; although it is not generally known."
"Let me see him and you may have the report."
There was a short pause. The offer was nicely put. No one, however reinforced by 
his sovereign's complicity, could be expected to resist the lure of a postscript 
devoted to his own affairs in an English dispatch. That the postscript existed 
he felt sure: the fellow was too damnably pat with the rest. Ergo, by falling in 
with the suggestion, he was admitting to no more than natural curiosity: a 
subtle and far from fortuitous point.
There was a further consideration. He did not particularly care that this 
dispatch should reach the Queen. And there might be others which he would care 
about even less. At this point in his meditations Sir George cleared his throat. 
"You appear to take monumental measures for a very simple end. A man of your 
resource would prefer, I should have thought, to use his powers of . . . 
interception for a more rewarding cause." He slipped the cabuchon ruby off his 
thumb and tossed it on the table between them.
"Fools make news, and wise men carry it. You could become a rich man."
"I am a rich man," said his visitor. He fixed a cool eye on the Douglas, 
disregarding the ring. "As you, I am sure, are a busy one. If
122



therefore our bargain is concluded, perhaps Mr. Crouch might be bought here."
There was nothing else for it. Sir George said regretfully, "I am afraid I 
cannot keep my side of the bargain. A matter of some disappointment to me. The 
gentleman you mention was sold to a friend of mine some time ago." He added 
kindly, "If it will serve, I can direct you to him and even enable you to enter 
the house, if you wish."
A pause developed, and prolonged itself to uncomfortable lengths. Then, 
unexpectedly, the other laughed. "Oh Douglas, oh Douglas, Tender and true . . . 
I am moved to respect. Very well. The bargain stands. Tell me the name of your 
friend, and you shall have your documents."
Sir George rose, crossed to his desk, and tossed a paper from it into the 
other's hands. On the one side was a signed note from Sir Andrew Hunter, 
promising payment of one hundred crowns for the person of Mr. Jonathan Crouch; 
on the other was a scrawled note in Hunter's handwriting. It said, For our 
friendship, send me word if there is an attempt to trace Crouch. I would not 
lose him to enemies before I can exchange him for my cousin.
His visitor read both sides and smiled. "You weigh your scales generously. Thank 
you."
Sir George said, retrieving the paper, "Of course, I cannot as a gentleman 
ignore the note. I propose to send one of my secretaries to Ballaggan, with a 
fairly large escort, to warn Sir Andrew that a stranger has indeed inquired 
about Crouch. Hunter keeps a well-guarded house, but it is not always possible 
to make sure that, in the confusion of entering, a party such as mine might not 
become larger than it should be . . . a common risk, I fear, in these times."
"Yes. Oh, indeed, I am quite aware of the risk," said the other, and a long, 
slow smile pleated the skin around his mouth.
Sir George found himself for some reason smiling back. For an instant he was 
overcome with an extraordinary feeling of kinship for this odd sharp-witted 
person. Borne on the tide of this sensation, he said, "Then to seal our bargain, 
will you drink with me? I have a very fine claret to hand . .
His visitor assented politely, adding, as Sir George crossed to the armory, 
"Although I trust you have nothing against beer?"
"On the contrary," said Sir George, pouring with an anticipatory hand.



"Because-your health-" said the other, "I took the liberty of leaving a hogshead 
for you with your Chamberlain below. A little stirred up, I'm afraid; but it 
should settle." And, understanding each other very well, the eyes of the two men 
met; Sir George's alight with evocative delight.
Left alone after bidding his anonymous friend goodbye, Douglas returned to the 
study and stood for a moment, playing absently with the ruby where it lay on the 
table. "Well, I shan't make that mistake again."
He slipped it back on his finger and gazed at it for a moment. "But if he 
doesn't fancy bullion, what sort of bait is he going to take, this wild 
cormorant, this acidulous osprey of ours? Something. There must be something he 
wants. And whatever it is, by God, I'll find it and make a collar and chain of 
it with 'Douglas' in fine Gothic letters on the neck."

* * *



The spirit of Ballaggan Keep, imperious, impervious, implacab~, brooding over 
its fastness like a tribal mascot, was Dame Catherine, Sir Andrew's mother.
Catherine Hunter was rising seventy, and crippled in her lower limbs to a degree 
which condemned her to bed or chair for life. This, together with the loss of 
her husband at Elodden and the death shortly afterward of a brilliant older son, 
had turned the wines of her palmy days-already rather a variable commodity-into 
a corked and vinegary brew.
The keep, tall, gauche and of no particular charm for the passer-by, was stuffed 
inside with the prizes of Lady Hunter's epicurean eye. No rushes covered the 
floors: these were set with Spanish azulejos and covered with rugs from Turkey 
and the Levant. The beds were wrought and gilded, and hung with heavy taffetas; 
the chests and tables in marble and scented woods wore tapestry cloths and 
carried a pellicle of Aldine folios. Other specimens of her library shared 
bedside honours with her Maltese terrier Cavall.
The accretion of all these aids to graceful living would have taxed
a larger estate than Ballaggan. Lamentably aware that-even if gold
mines sprang beneath his feet, like Olwen's trefoils-his mother's
fancy would still outpace him, Sir Andrew was sometimes reduced to
a state of nervous irritation very close to rebellion. That he invariably


spared her either complaint or reproach labelled him a soft mark among his 
fellow knights and earned him a solid revenue of womanly sympathy.
It also brought him the admiration of Mr. Jonathan Crouch, whose temporary 
career as a prisoner of war, or a sort of promissary note on two legs, had 
brought him finally to lodge with Sir Andrew.
With Mr. Crouch came his tongue, his teeth, his lips, his hard and soft palate, 
his maxillary muscles, larynx, epiglottis and lungs: all the apparatus which 
enabled him, ne plus ultra, to talk. Like the enchanted garden of Jannes, 
tenanted by daemons, the keep of Ballaggan encased the ceaseless drone of Mr. 
Crouch's voice. He droned through September until it and his captors were 
exhausted; then pounced on October with undimmed vigour and worried the 
blameless days for a fortnight.
By the middle Saturday of the month, atrophy had set in, reaching its nadir in 
the dead time between two and four, when Sir Andrew, whatever business was 
pressing, visited his mother's room to sit with her. Lady Hunter, strutted 
upright with pillows, was brushing the terrier rhythmically as it lay cushioned 
across her knees. Her face, bewigged and topped by a hooped pearl cap, had the 
skin of an invalid and her mouth, lightly whiskered, was hatched, above and 
below, with the spidery wrinkles forced by powerful lips. Her black eyes were 
fixed unwinkingly on her son, who in turn was directing his aquiline profile, 
with an air of polite attention, toward Mr. Crouch.
Mr. Crouch, wittily obese like a middle-aged titmouse, sat enthroned on his 
stomach, giving tongue. Incidents of his boyhood surged to cataclysmic peaks of 
pointlessness. Episodes from his career in the Princess Mary's household 
explored tedium to its petrified core.
"Never," said Mr. Crouch, pulling himself out of a frenzy of adjectives, "never 
shall I weary of describing it, if I live to be a hundred. That I won't."
Something like a strong shudder passed over his host. Almost involuntarily Sir 
Andrew said, "By the way, are you married, Crouch?"
If the titmouse was surprised, it was also pleased. It beamed. "Why, yes sir, I 
am; and what's more, God and my Ellen have blessed me with six lovely children; 
every one a girl, but the Lord will provide. I've had my share of adversity, 
sir; but as I always say, the way I met my Ellen goes to show that Providence is 
on our side; as you'll agree when you hear the full story which, since you so 
kindly ask, I shall have great pleasure in relating to you in due course." There 
was


a brief pause, during which Sir Andrew shut his eyes; then Mr. Crouch-his 
intention duly filed and registered-picked up the limp threads of his monologue. 
"And then-.-"
"Andrew!"
"Yes, Mother?" said Sir Andrew. He shot an apologetic look at the soloist, who 
broke off politely but providently took a fresh breath.
"The people with whom you have contracted to buy fish have been cheating you for 
five weeks," said Lady Hunter, brushing steadily at the terrier's coat. "The 
fish served to me while you were away on whatever business you discovered was 
not only bad, but often putrid. Putrid!" she repeated, with horrid inflection. 
"Yet it seems a relatively simple matter to arrange."
Mr. Crouch, a kindhearted person, shut his mouth and fiddled with his points. 
Sir Andrew said, "Mother, you should have mentioned it before. I'd no idea, of 
course. I'll have it put right."
"You were hardly visible long enough to listen," remarked Lady Hunter, brushing. 
"You must forgive me for imagining you were much too busy. The wool coming in 
for spinning, incidentally, has not improved in quality. Whatever steps you took 
about that seem to have been baulked by another agency. You must tell me if you 
are finding things a little difficult, Andrew," pursued the lady. "After all, no 
mother expects both her sons to be alike. Dear Andrew," she said, fixing her 
black stare on Crouch and brushing still, "is going to be a great help to me in 
my old age."
"I'm sure, Mistress," said the titmouse, glancing uncomfortably at his host's 
submissive head. And from his good-natured soul he added, "And he did you honour 
in the fighting last month, I'll be bound."
The black eyes travelled slowly over Sir Andrew's body, and rose to his face. 
"My son is always remarkably fortunate in battle," she said. "He has never yet 
received a mark of any kind."
"And damn it," Mr. Crouch was to say much later to his wife, his face reddening 
again at the thought, "the old sow said it as if she'd have liked him better 
mincemeat."
As it was, the occasion was awkward enough to make Hunter flush and force a 
change of subject. Shortly afterward he set Biblical phrases buzzing in Mr. 
Crouch's head, by producing from his purse a small wrapped bundle which he laid 
on his mother's bed. "I thought this might interest you: I came across it the 
other day."
The paralyzed woman looked neither at him nor at the packet; she allowed it to 
lie until she finished grooming the lapdog, replaced the



brushes, and with a sudden ill-tempered smack sent the stertorous creature 
bundling to the floor. Then she smoothed the counterpane, pulled away a long, 
tawny hair caught in one of her rings, and opened the parcel.
A vast, hexagonal brooch set in ebony and diamonds shouted into the sunshine in 
a cacophony of light.
The thing was enormous. Crouch, sitting within yards of the bed, could see the 
centrepiece was a heart set with pointed diamonds:
around the heart and attached to it by foliated gilt wire were crystal plaques, 
each bearing an angel's head, bewinged and carved in onyx:
the plaque below the point of the heart was joined to it by a scroll, and on the 
scroll in diamonds were the initial letters H and D, entwined.
It was the most expensive-looking jewel Mr. Crouch had ever seen in his life. He 
looked, suffused with pleasurable excitement, at Sir Andrew. Hunter, his 
expression at once eager, deprecating and defensive, watched his mother.
"H for Henri, D for Diane de Poitiers!" cried Mr. Crouch. "My dear sir, seldom 
if ever have I seen such an exquisite piece. A tour de force. A veritable 
masterpiece. I am surprised," said Mr. Crouch, taking thought, "I must own, that 
the French King's-er-lady should have allowed it out of her hands. A piece of-"
For the second time he was interrupted by his hostess. She raised her black eyes 
from the gift to her son, and the expression in them deepened at the expectancy 
in his face. She threw the covering back across the jewel.
"A remarkable piece of vulgarity," she said. "I fear, Andrew, that a stronger 
woman might have been able to do more than I to educate your taste a little. It 
is a great grief to me that I cannot help you more. However, there is no need 
for you to waste your purchase. I am sure there is some good burgess's daughter 
whom you have a kindness for, who would be perfectly satisfied with it. I 
believe," she continued without a pause, "that I saw some new arrivals cross the 
courtyard a few moments ago. I don't wish to appear to remind you continually, 
Andrew; but as master here you really must not appear discourteous. I am sure 
Mr. Crouch will excuse you."
Mr. Ciouch hastily did. Sir Andrew, with an apology, left the room, and Lady 
Hunter tossed the rejected gift on to her bedside table. Mr. Crouch ventured a 
remark.
"That'll likely have cost Sir Andrew a small fortune, now," he said. "Nor it 
won't be easy to resell, I wager."



The crippled woman directed her unwinking stare at him. He wriggled. "The price 
of aesthetic education, Mr. Crouch," she said, "is never small."
Mr. Crouch (for once) did not feel competent to answer.
Belowstairs, even among the crowded majolica ware, the air was freer, and the 
need to welcome visitors a blessed distraction. Sir Andrew knew and liked Sym 
Penango, Sir George Douglas's secretary: he made him welcome and received his 
message over a cup of wine, while his men were accommodated in the buttery.
An inquiry about Mr. Crouch? Oh. Did Sir George say from whom? But Penango had 
no further information, and supposed Sir George had none either. Presently he 
excused himself: he and his men were expected at Douglas. In due course the 
stragglers were coflected, wiping mouths on padded sleeves, and the troop rode 
off into the dusk.
Sir Andrew went thoughtfully upstairs, stopping to relight a torch which had 
gone out on the landing. Inside his mother~s room it was becoming dark. In the 
failing light from the windows he could see her, upright in bed, her head turned 
toward him.
Something struck him vaguely as odd, then he placed it: the miraculous silence. 
Crouch wasn't talking.
A closer look showed the prohibition to be quite involuntary. Mr. Crouch was 
sitting on the floor beside his chair, tied and gagged.
As Sir Andrew took this in, the door behind him banged, locked, and a knee like 
the hammer of God took him, hard, in the kidneys and hurled him to the floor. 
His chin hit the blue tiles like a pharmacist's pestle; he tried, swimniily, to 
roll over and found himself pinned by a relentless matrix of bones. He heaved, 
unsuccessfully, felt his assailant groping for purchase to wrench back his arms, 
resisted, and finally did manage to roll over.
For a moment, the two men breathed the same sweating air. Hunter saw a pitiless 
mouth, two intent eyes behind a black mask, and a head covered with some sort of 
woollen cap. The mouth twisted; so did the deadly trained body, and pain leapt 
from a lock on his knee. Black-mask gave a sudden, triumphant laugh. "The Common 
Thick-knee," he said breathlessly, "is a bird . . . capable of running at great 
speed." He increased his leverage, grinning. "Now here, Dandy mine, we have a 
specimen of the Uncommon-"
How he broke the lock, Hunter never knew, but he afterward wondered if the 
strength which surged up in him would have done so



but for anger at the stupid jibe. He jerked, broke the hold on his legs and 
threw the other man half on his side, driving off at the same time the predatory 
fingers feeling for his throat. Then he flung himself on his opponent. The 
clenched figures rolled over completely, then again; a fine stool splintered, 
its prowling leopards bifurcated, and a row of medicine bottles fell from the 
bedside table with a tympanitic crash. Catherine Hunter, her eyes like charcoal 
above her bound mouth, stared without expression at her son. Crouch, pink with 
emotion, watched, squirming in his bonds.
Hunter was on top. He wanted to shout, but all the power of his lungs was 
occupied in driving his body: the sound of both men's breathing was like tearing 
cloth. Feeling the black eyes on him, Hunter set his teeth and grinned; then, 
listening to his muscles speaking, exerted all his force to flatten the other's 
body and approach the twisting throat with his thumbs. The masked figure writhed 
desperately; its arms threshed; it began to go limp. Sir Andrew, his fingers 
finding and burying themselves at last in the flesh over the great vessels, 
threw caution to the winds and, raising himself, exerted all his power in 
pressing on the neck below him. He had an instant's vision of eyes screwed, not 
in pain, but a kind of barbarous hilarity, and then booted feet curled 
themselves neatly and smashed into his unguarded and exposed groin; one of the 
searching hands, now armed with iron from the hearth, cracked open his face and 
beat him back as he knelt, retching; then Black-mask, rising, threw away his 
andiron and bent over him.
Hunter, racked with the torments of the damned, heard him say through the 
throbbing in his brain, "Come along, Dandy . . . observe the modus operandi . . 
. How can thou float . . . without feather or fin." He was gripped by wanton 
arms, balanced a moment, helplessly convulsed, and then with a sickening wrench 
sent hurtling across the room. Chairs, candlesticks, books, fell. The world 
vanished in a bloody mist, reappeared inspissate with pain, disappeared. 
Playful, inhuman fingers rested on his collar, hooked below it, and methodically 
began to flay his head against the high gloss of the tiles.
The voice said, erratically, "Who . . . falls upon rushes, falls soft; beware of 
. . . vain pride in terrestrial treasure, Sir Andrew. And
doused lights . . and fireirons . . . and wrestling in slippers." He was 
released, and lay, three parts unconscious, looking up at his tormentor.



"And of tempting me further," said Black-mask, smiling. "I have come to see your 
little English friend, Sir Andrew; but I'll break you a limb in the Turkish 
style as often as you like. . .
Hunter, drowning in tides of nausea, closed his eyes, and shut out the mask, and 
the black, unwinking eyes in the bed.



7.

A Variety of Mating Replies

For suth ye Rok in to his first moving . . . m
He may nocht pass, nor of his steid to steire,
Quhill knycht or pawne is standand hi so nere,
And in mydfield, gif he be stedit still,
To four poyntis he passis at his will
Two rokis may a king allone put downe,
And him depryve of his lyf and his crowne.






1.	Play with a Rook Proves Dangerous


THE shop of Patey Liddell, goldsmith, was on the south side of the Middle Raw in 
Stirling, handy for the Burgh Yett, and only a short walk from St. John Street. 
It was a tall thin building, with a coloured timber arcade, and outside steps to 
the first floor where Patey stored his stock, and Lady Culter was sitting having 
her miniature painted.
From time to time Patey peered down, Cyclops-fashion, to the shop proper through 
a neat hole in the floor boards, partly to watch for customers, and partly to 
howl threats at his apprentices, known caustically as the Seven Little Masters, 
who dwelt among mystic coloured, fires at the back of the shop.
Mr. Liddell was lively as a frog, his small face niellated with gold dust, and 
his white hair trained over his ears, which were missing. Patey readily 
explained how this happened, and the numerous versions, in toto, lent substance 
to Sybilla's private belief that the man


was a rogue. He was also a brilliant goldsmith; and the source to Lady Culter of 
much simple entertainment.
Why she had made this appointment for today, the morning of the Wapenshaw, was 
beyond her to recall. Why indeed the plans for the Wapenshaw had been allowed to 
stand so soon after Pinkie was another matter, but the Dowager could guess. She 
thought, with unusual depression, that it was probably just as well, under the 
circumstances, to have a count of arms: that had begun in the morning and would 
be over by now. And if the Queen thought that outdoor exercise would keep the 
lieges from one another's throats until the meeting was safely convened, she was 
probably, in a French way, right. This brought her mind on to her son.
"Patey!" said the Dowager at the top of her voice. "It isn't a tapestry! Haven't 
you done yet?"
Patey Liddell raised a denunciatory finger. "You moved!"
"I can't help moving," said Sybilla, in a nicely controlled shriek. "Your 
wretched cushion's come adrift from the stool: it's like trying to steer hurley-
hackit. Are you going to be long?"
The old man beamed, nodding vaguely. "A wee thing to the right." Lady Culter 
turned obediently. "Are-you-going-to-be-muchlonger?"
Patey worked away, his tongue silently tracking the strokes of his brush. "As to 
that," he said piously, "the gude Lord alone kens. You've changed your hair, 
tae."
"I've washed it," said Lady Culter tartly. "If you think I'm going to remain 
unchanged and unwashed for sixteen months while you immortalize me, you're 
wrong. If you could pin up the sun permanently in the top left corner of your 
ceiling, you would."
"Ah, the bonny lad," said Patey, working phonetically through the last sentence. 
"Only the other day I said to him, says I: wi' the separations o' war, says I, 
whitna better than a bonny picter o' the wee lassie tae carry neist the heart."
"What did he say?" shouted Sybilla with interest.
"He said," said Patey, a shade reluctantly, "that he'd think about it when he 
kent whit I was charging for this yin. Acourse, I told him, it's all in the 
frame. Says I, gin ye choose gold now, that'd be a wee thing costlier than your 
dear mother's: on the other hand, tin's dirt cheap, and if the lassie puts up 
wi' the insult, who'm I tae-" He raised an astonished eye from the floor. "'S 
breid! There's a customer!" And before Sybilla could murmur, he skipped to the 
stairs and vanished.
The Dowager instantly got off her seat and picked up the miniature. The likeness 
was, she thought, fairly good. Appraising her face at one remove, she was glad 
to find that sixty harassing years had left it, on the whole, quite presentable. 
The eyes and bones, of course, had always been good.
"But I must have it today!" A familiar voice, laboriously distinct, rose through 
the peephole, and the Dowager, entranced, prepared to listen.
Patey's voice said, "Well, it's no done yet, Sir Andra."
"Then when will it be ready?" Hunter sounded impatient, and Sybilla sympathized. 
There was another exchange, then silence as Patey disappeared to the back of the 
shop. Then a new voice:
"Hullo, Sir Andrew! Man, what's happened to your face?"
The Dowager had no special interest in Sir George Douglas, but her wandering 
attention was jerked by Sir Andrew's reply.
"My face?" said Sir Andrew, and laughed ruefully. "God; like the beggar, I'm all 
face. It was that damned Crouch man, the prisoner of war."
"Good Lord!" Sir George sounded startled. "I must say, he'd none of the air of a 
man-eater."
"Dammit, it wasn't Crouch that did the damage," said Hunter. "It was some 
murderous brute with a black mask who smashed the house open, tied up Mother 
like a boiling fowl and thumped me-I must confess-to a pulp. It wasn't too funny 
at the time."
"No, of course not. . . . What about Crouch?"
"Departed, protesting, with the rescuer. God 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 her



son 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 passed 
at Menteith had been spent by him in harassing 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 butt shooting's nearly finished, too, and these damned 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 passed 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 assassination."
"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, assailed 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 
bitch 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 butt 
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 grass 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 passage 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 damned 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 butts, 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 grass 
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 grass behind the barriers, filling all 
the space 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 nobles; 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 competitors, fifty noblemen 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.
Nevertheless, and not to be carping, the long file of athletic and purposeful 
bowmen looked very splendid, though not as splendid as if one's own husband were 
there. The wind blew the standards straight toward the castle rock.
Blue and silver. She liked her own standard. The St. Andrew's Cross; the crest 
(argent, a phoenix azure), and the highly ambiguous motto, chosen (of course) by 
the First Baron, which always eluded her, Contra Vita-whatever it was.
As the thought crossed her mind, the motto itself appeared, almost within 
touching distance: CONTRA VITA RECTI MORIAMUS. The


Culter slughorli, carried by Richard's servant. And walking behind it, looking 
neither to left nor to right, but perfectly self-possessed, unaffected and 
blase, Lord Culter himself. Mariotta was aware of a dismayed flutter in the 
stomach.
"My God!" said a voice behind her. "There's old man Culter decided to make a 
pincushion of himself after all: now we should see some fun. All the same"-
generously-"rather him than me."

* * *



Fighting his way uphill to the top of St. John Street, past the corner of St. 
Michael's, the almshouse, and then the uneven row of buildings of which Bogle 
House was one, Tom Erskine found no difficulty at all in stiffing his better 
feelings, which told him he had bequeathed to Sir Andrew a thoroughly unnerving 
afternoon.
The death of Lord Fleming had naturally made a good deal of difference to his 
household. Having buried her husband at Biggar, Lady Jenny had rejoined the 
court with her children, and the half-life she had always had, as the little 
Queen's governess, was now her whole career. Of the older children, Margaret had 
moved like an uncertain ghost between her late husband's home at Mugdock, her 
married sisters', and Lady Culter's friendly, undemanding hearth; and the duties 
Lady Fleming had discarded at Boghall had fallen on her blind goddaughter's 
shoulders. And Christian, though now staying with the Dowager at Bogle House, 
would very shortly be leaving for Boghall to take them up. Which argued a need 
for haste.
Tom Erskine therefore hopped in and out of the crowds down St. John Street, got 
himself admitted to Bogle House and bolted up the stairs fired with missionary 
zeal, to find himself nose to nose with his loved one on the middle landing.
"Who is it? What's happened? Have you news?" said Christian.
He was startled. "What about? It's me. Not particularly."
Relief showed on her face. "Oh, Tom. That's all right. Come along in, then." And 
she added in sufficient explanation as they walked toward the parlour door, 
"Richard's gone to the Papingo Shoot, you see."
Erskine was not, at bottom, a selfish man. He said, "Oh, damn," and paused 
irresolutely. "I didn't know. I'd better get back. Left Dandy with the ladies-he 
didn't say; must have thought we knew- and there'll be the devil to pay if . .



Christian took his arm. "Believe me, if anything's going to happen, nothing you 
can do will stop it. Anyway, I want you here."
"You do?" He was delighted.
"Yes. How long will the shoot last? An hour? Two hours?"
"A hundred men-two shots each: Oh, over two hours, if they all shoot, but of 
course it will end if someone hits the papingo."
Christian said, "Then will you take Lady Culter and myself around the Fair, Tom? 
Until the shoot is over?"
This was hardly the programme he would have chosen, but it was understandable 
enough. He said, "She's worried, is she?"
"Well, she's not exactly tolling the passing bell yet, but she oughtn't to go 
out alone, and you won't get her to go out with you and leave me. I know it's 
early and there won't be much happening yet, but at least we can try and forget 
that God-bereft bird."
Tom looked at her in some astonishment. "I believe you're as much on edge as 
Sybilla."
This time she snapped. "If you would tear your mind sometimes from backgammon 
and horses, you'd see something in the Crawfords that'd make your rattlepated 
friends look pretty thin. If I remembered my own mother, I don't suppose I'd 
value her half as much as I do the Dowager. And Mariotta may not be what you 
fancy, but there's breeding and spirit there too, if you're minded to look for 
it-" She broke off, her brow cleared; and with one of those competent mood 
changes that was one of her chief characteristics, gave him a friendly push. "Go 
on. Tell Sybilla we're all off for a jolly day a-fairing. And don't let her- 
sidetrack you either."

* * *



"I don't suppose-" said Sybilla.
"No!" rejoined Tom Erskine and Christian Stewart in unison.
"No. I see not. Our hands are rather full, I'm afraid. But Agnes adores 
gingerbread-I wonder," said the Dowager doubtfully, "if it would sit in my 
hood."
The progress of Sybilla though a market was the progress of worker bee through a 
bower of intently propagating blossoms.
Everything stuck.
From the toy stall she bought two ivory dolls, a hen whistle, a rattle and a 
charming set of miniature bells for a child's skirts: all


were heroically received and borne by Tom, henceforth marked by a faint, 
distracted jingling.
From the spice booth, set with delicious traps for the fat purse, she took 
cinnamon, figs, cumin seed and saffron, ginger, flower of gillyflower and crocus 
and-an afterthought-some brazil for dyeing her new wool. These were distributed 
between Christian and Tom.
They listened to a balladmonger, paid him for all the verses of "When Tay's 
Bank," and bought a lengthy scroll containing a brand-new ballad which Tom 
Erskine read briefly and then discreetly lost. "No matter," said the Dowager 
cheerfully, when told. "Dangerous quantity, music. Because it spouts sweet venom 
in their eam and makes their minds all effeminate, you know. We can't have 
that." He was never very sure whether she was laughing at him, but rather 
thought not. They pursued their course purposefully, and the Dowager bought a 
new set of playing cards, some thread, a boxful of ox feet, a quantity of silver 
lace and a pair of scissors. She was dissuaded from buying a channel stone, 
which Tom, no curling enthusiast, refused utterly to carry, and got a toothpick 
in its case instead. They watched acrobats. invested sixpence for an 
unconvincing mermaid and finally stumbled. flattened and hot, into a tavern, 
where Tom forcibly commandeered a private space for the two women and brought 
them refreshments.
"Dear, dear," said Lady Culter, seating herself among the mute sea of her 
parcels, like Anon among his fishes. "I'm afraid l've forgotten which are the 
squashy ones. Never mind. If we spread them out, they can't take much hurt, I 
should think. Unless the ox feet . . . Oh. What a pity, Tom. But I'm sure it 
will clean off."
They sipped their wine and chatted. The sun, doing its best for an October day, 
threw the crow-stepped shadow of the Town House on the quantities of gay little 
booths, the bunting and the coloured wares; and the drone of professional 
singers made comic counterpoint with the chorus of street cries and 
exhortations, the gypsies' pipes and tambours. It was bright, airy, innocent and 
gay.
"Ribs o' beef!"
"Fine, skinned hides!"
"Crusty pies, hot as hell!"
"Rushes green!"
"Fine broken geldings, stark and stout!"
"Hoods for my lady!"
"Guts for your playing, six shillings the dozen!"



"A rare pretty parrot in a cage .
"Well. Ce n'est pas tout de boire; it faut sortir d'ici," said the Dowager. 
"There's a cloud over the sun, and if the saffron gets wet, Tom, you'll be or as 
well as gules, and very likely rampant as well. Come along."
They left the tavern.
Almost immediately, Christian, pulled along by Erskine's handclasp, felt a tug 
at her gown. A voice, very close to her, said in a sort of whine, "Tell your 
fortune, my bonny mistress!"
"Wait!" she screamed above the din to Tom, and felt the strain on her arm 
slacken as he stopped.
"What is it?" asked the Dowager over his shoulder. "Oh, a fortuneteller, how 
delightful. Of course. Wait a moment," she said, cocking her head in its blue 
velvet hood to one side. "I've seen you before, haven't I? Of course! It's the 
gypsies who were in Culter last August. Aren't you?" she ended in triumph.
The would-be fortune teller flashed beautiful teeth at her. "Of course, my lady; 
and had the pleasure of performing for you as well."
"Of course," said Sybilla. "And what are you doing? Fortunetelling-"
"Tumbling, dancing, singing . . ." The gypsy waved an airy hand. From a scatter 
of bright mats behind him, a group of black-eyed young people were watching 
their leader. "Every kind of entertainment."
The inevitable thought struck the Dowager. "Tom! Christian! Why shouldn't they 
come to Bogle House tonight? Buccleuch's never seen them, nor Richard, nor 
Agnes. We'll get Dandy Hunter in, and the older Fleming children .
Polite argument was futile, and any other kind unthinkable. For an enormous fee, 
to cover their temporary absence from pitch, the troop undertook to perform that 
night at Bogle House.
The Dowager was enchanted. "So good of them. Have you any money, Tom dear? I 
seem to have spent all I had with me."
It took their concerted efforts, hindered considerably by the leaking ox feet, 
to get at Tom's pouch and extract from it the necessary number of angels. "Now, 
straight home," said the Dowager, a suspicion of tiredness making itself heard 
in her voice at last; and they made for the end of the Square, arm in arm, and 
started down Bow Street.
Dandy Hunter met them at the bottom. They saw him from some


distance away, boring weevil-like through the thickening crowd, and waving.
"just as well he's as flat as a turbot," said Tom Erskine judicially,
watching him. "That's twice he's breenged through his betters today." But by 
that time they were close enough to see his face.
"Something's happened," said the Dowager in a voice notable for its unsurprised 
grimness, and led the way quickiy toward him, clutching all her parcels as if 
these, at all costs, she would preserve.

* * *




Owing simply to Lord Culter's presence, the October Papingo Shoot moved through 
its stately preliminaries to the beating of a fierce expectancy. Mortal 
challenge was not only piquant but eerie when the challenger was also wanted for 
treason.
Tension brought the automatic reaction. Ten thousand heads, capped,. hooded, 
bonneted and bare, bobbed and jerked as the betting surged from point to point, 
fed by rumour: he isn't among the competitors; they've got guards all around the 
field; Culter's shooting twentieth.
The odds rose.
"The brother's game-shy, man: a shirker. Never finished a contest in his life."
The odds rose higher.
Andrew Hunter, standing between Richard's wife and Lady Herries, cursed Tom 
Erskine continuously under his breath. Mariotta would not go home. Staring in a 
hypnotized way at the side view which was all she could see of her husband, she 
seemed unaware, he was thankful to note, of what else was going on around her.
Agnes Herries, however, was both aware and equipped with opinions on the 
subject, which palled only as the drawing of lots came to an end. Listening with 
half an ear, Hunter noticed she was now complaining of the viewpoint she had 
been given. This, since he could do nothing to improve it, he ignored.
"It strikes me," said Lady Herries, reminded suddenly of a sore subject, "that a 
Ward of the Crown might as well be a by-blow for all the difference it makes. A 
girl Ward, that is. Who wants to marry John Hamilton? Not me. I've never seen 
the man, even."
A more unsuitable place in which to air her opinions about her



contracted fiance could hardly be found. With the speed of a watchful mother, 
Sir Andrew said, "Look: there's Buecleuch."
He failed, as better men had done before him. "Yes. But if I'd been a boy," 
pursued Lady Herries, intent on her theme, "I'd never have been contracted to 
John Hamilton."
This penetrated even Mariotta's preoccupation. She turned, diverted against her 
will. "Well, that's true enough."
"What I mean is," said the Ward of the Crown, frowning, "that people have no 
business to settle other people's future for them when they're five years old. 
It's a typical man's scheme," said Agnes ruthlessly. "It's not for our own good; 
it's no use saying it is. It's to add to their rotten lands, or because they 
need to carry on the family name, or because it'll bring them enough money or 
tenants or rights of lineage to stop a war, or start a war, or carry out their 
own uninteresting masculine affairs."
There was a short, respectful silence. "Well," said Mariotta soothingly, "I 
wasn't contracted when I was five."
"Yes," said Lady Herries with devastating frankness. "That's just what I mean. 
Trust a man to take advantage. Brood mares and-"
Whether her own undeniably single-track brain or Sir Andrew called a halt first, 
it would be hard to say; but in the net result the Baroness shut her mouth 
rather suddenly and Hunter said, "Look: the shooting has started."
On the field, an orderly pattern, pleasing in itself to the eye, had fallen into 
place. Far out to one side stood the Master and officials of the games, dressed 
in Arran's red and white livery; and beside them a group of arrow boys, minute 
fungi under cartwheel rush hats. Beside that again, in a long line against the 
painted barriers, the competitors waited; a trifle uneasy; a trifle tense now 
the moment had come.
The first bowman, flexing his shoulders, took his place in the centre of the 
field below the high, painted pole, and footed the mark. The parrot, brilliant 
in the eye of the sun, struggled and screamed against the backdrop of the castle 
rock, scarlet with bracken and the autumn glory of beech and sycamore; above the 
rock, the Palace windows gave back the sun in stabs of flame behind their cage 
grilles. A voice shouted "Fast!"; the archer raised his longbow smoothly to the 
sky, nocked his arrow, drew, held and released; replaced his second shaft, 
aimed, held and released again.
The papingo squawked bad-temperedly and swore with an Aberdeen



accent; the arrows arched and fell harmlessly, six yards to the left. To a roar 
of sardonic cheering the tension broke, and Sir Andrew suddenly moved.
"There's only one place Lymond can shoot from," he said, almost to himself. "And 
that's from the shelter of the rock."
Mariotta heard him. She raised her eyes as he had done and studied the broken 
face of the crag. "Shooting against both the sun and the wind?"
"That's the difficulty, of course," he acknowledged. "But look. The rest of the 
field is hedged in by the crowd: a man couldn't raise his arms in it, never mind 
aim six feet of a longbow." He hesitdted, and then said, "Lady Culter, if you'd 
give me leave, I'll climb up and look through some of that scrub there."
But Mariotta, unimpressed by the suggestion that he should safeguard Richard's 
life at the risk of his own, refused and would not be persuaded. He argued 
uneasily, found her adamant, and dropped the proposal. In silence they watched.
The wind, violent and skittish, was making better sport of it than the 
competitors were. Buccleuch, shooting third, nicked the post with his first 
shaft and overshot with his second, retiring bellowing amid a chorus of 
witticisms. The next two were wide; the fifth caused a mild sensation by 
breaking his bow and nearly amputating himself with the shards; the sixth lost 
his thread and bungled both draws; and the seventh squirted off like a 
firecracker.
The eighth nearly got it.
"Oh!" said Agnes, sparkling. "It's very exciting, isn't it?" And she added, a 
little wistfully, "A woman would enjoy being married to a wonderful archer."
In the midst of their anxiety, the eyes of the other two met, and laughter 
sprang into Hunter's. "My dear girl," he said, "your mind's running a great deal 
on marriage today, surely?"
Lady Herries looked surprised. "Not specially. But I'll have to get married this 
year, I expect; and if I've got to be sold like a packet of wool-"
"Agnes!"
"Well. I mean, having children and doing embroidery may not be fun, but it'd be 
more so if at least they fought battles for you and pretended they liked it. 
Courts of Love, and sonnets, and scarves in their helmets. That's what I think. 
Otherwise," pursued Agnes, "there's not much point in it all, is there?"


"Well, I'm afraid Johnnie Hamilton won't write any odes to your eyelashes," said 
Sir Andrew cheerfully. "Besides, that's a limiting form of courtship, isn't it? 
You'd be much more comfortable with a husband who worked up a connection at 
Court, or developed his lands, or exercised his money in trade so that you had 
diamond bracelets by the gross and a house in each county."
"But I've got all the diamonds I want," said Agnes succinctly. "Like Mariotta. 
And the little Queen. So I don't see there's any point in marrying, unless it's 
to get something you haven't got already. And nine times out of ten, you needn't 
marry for that, either," she added as an afterthought.
Watching the twelfth bowman loose off, Sir Andrew said unhappily, "How much land 
have you got, Lady Herries? And how many able-bodied tenants?"
She looked at him with vague distaste. "You sound like Grandfather Blairquhan."
"Never mind. How many, and where are they all?"
She said rather sulkily, "You know. I share them with Cathie and Jean. 
Terregles, Kirkgunzeon, Moffatdale, Lockerbie, Ecclefechan
next to the Maxwell lands on the Border."
"H'm," said Hunter. "On the Border. You don't say how many tenants, but I 
imagine it'll run to a few thousand. And who do you imagine is going to look 
after all that for you and protect it from the English? And, if you'll forgive 
me for being practical, who's going to lead them into the field in wartime? You 
can't dodge your national obligations, even if you think you can dodge your 
moral ones."
"I knew you were going to sound like Grandfather Blairquhan," said Agnes 
pettishly. "Anyway, we've all got men kinsfolk who'd do that for us, surely, 
without having to marry them first. The point is, whether it's kinsfolk or 
husbands, they'd do it just because it suits them, no matter whether we were 
fifty and fat and had bowlegs, and that," she ended with dignity, "simply isn't 
romance as I see it."
Mariotta suddenly intervened. "Don't be silly: what do you want? An altruistic 
uncle for security and a boudoir full of lovers for pleasure?"
"I should like," pronounced Lady Herries with a stately air, "a husband who put 
me before business or politics."
"They don't exist."
"oh, yes, they do," said Hunter unexpectedly. (Fifteen.) He glanced down, his 
lips twitching. "You're being a bit hard, you know;




both of you. It's pretty well a full-time job, these days, keeping a family 
housed and clothed and warm and protected. Doesn't leave much time for poetry 
under the apple trees. But chivalry hasn't gone:
don't think it. You'll even find it paramount still with some people, but a 
trifle the worse for wear, because it's not the best protection against an 
aggressive and materialistic world. . . ." He smiled again, rather ruefully. 
"And don't forget: a man has other claims and duties too-to relatives; and old 
folk; and his friends. He's not always free, as you seem to think, to slap down 
the money and carry off the bride of his choice."
Mariotta said, instantly repentant, "We know that, of course. Agnes only means, 
I think, that often in arranged marriages there's a good
deal of unhappiness on both sides."
"-And it's a pity to go through with it for the sake of posterity if posterity 
is simply going to repeat the process. Yes. I see that," said Sir Andrew. "But 
look around you. I think you'll find that marital bliss sometimes fights its way 
to the surface in the end. And then, you see, there are so many other things 
involved as well-the continuance of a great house, for example-family loyalty's 
a powerful thing, and that's as it should be. Even sometimes the continued 
existence of a nation-that's the price royalty pays. And that's got a romance of 
its own, of course; not quite the kind you mean, but one that lies perhaps a 
little deeper."
"As far as I'm concerned," retorted her ladyship, "it can bury itself. They 
won't get me to marry anyone I don't want to, contract or no contract. Oh, look: 
there's Menteith shooting."
They were already looking, for young Menteith, Mariotta's host from Inchmahome, 
was the nineteenth archer, and the crowd was now perfectly quiet.
He took position, aimed and loosed. His first arrow struck the crossbar on which 
the parrot was bound. The bar jerked, and held; the arrow twisted and plummeted 
as the second flew, ruffling the bird's plumage. Two good shots. A subdued shout 
went up, followed by a crawling hum of anticipation. The arrow boys, one of them 
with a goose feather waving in his hatbrim, ran forward briefly into the field; 
the perch, chipped and scratched, threw a thin wavering shadow toward the castle 
rock; the autumn leaves, lit by the dipping sun, turned from tawny to crimson.
Richard Crawford, holding himself uncommonly straight, walked steadily across 
the field and paused at the foot of the perch, looking



down momentarily at the big yew in his tabbed hand, then up at the crossbar. He 
took his stand, and Mariotta, reaching out panic-stricken, found Sir Andrew had 
gone.
The silence was absolute; the stillness profound. But for the ruffling of the 
trees and the gentle singing of the perch stays, a man might have thought 
himself deaf. He nocked, raising his arm with the poetic, compact motion of the 
master bowman; the thin, echoing official voice called "Fast!"; he drew, held 
lovingly, and loosed.
His arrow leapt; but another was already airborne. Slender, deadly, red as hot 
steel in the sun, a shaft came hissing from the farthest suburbs of the crowd. 
There was never an instant's doubt of its destination. It drove into the 
crossbar, slicing off the crude ties with a razor barb, freeing the papingo in 
the instant that Culter's arrow flew toward it.
From the audience, a sea of upturned faces, rose a breathy gasp. Weak and stiff 
from its bonds, the bird jerked grotesquely, fell, wavered, flapped; and with a 
sudden strong upbeat, recovered itself.
As if over its corporate soul the crowd, mesmerized, yearned over the bright 
wings. At its back Andrew Hunter, his face set in anger, had already reached the 
higher ground, racing; thrusting; running free like a madman.
They hardly noticed him. For as the parrot, gaining height, swooped wildly away 
from the field, a second arrow breathed by and feathered into its mark. The 
papingo, transfixed in its blundering flight, stopped, tilted, and dropped like 
a stricken star to the ground. A yellow feather, wanton and unseemly, danced its 
way after.
Then, on the wave of a roaring uprush, the crowd was moved to action: too late, 
for the third arrow was already launched.
It arched in the air, a gleaming parabola, the feathers susurrant with curses, 
and found this time its designed, human mark.
Cuiter, standing white, taut and watchful at the base of the perch, flung out an 
arm blindly, held himself a moment upright against the pole, then slowly folded 
against it and thence to the ground.


2.	Check and Cross Check

That evening, bright in the dusk, a great fire glowed in the parlour at Bogle 
House, bestowing light, warmth and comfort on its occupants. It flickered on the 
faces about it: the Dowager, Mariotta, Buccleuch,


Hunter, Agnes Herries, Christian and Tom Erskine. It glittered on the table 
beside it, on which lay three arrows, two of them dark with blood, a longbow and 
a leather embroidered shooting glove. It flared, lastly, on the calm face of 
Lord Culter, lying stiffly bandaged on a long settle before it.
For the arrow which struck Richard came from a great distance and had to fly 
over many heads to an almost invisible mark. Unlike the first two, it was not 
faultless. It had dropped, losing power, and had torn its way across cheek and 
ear to bury itself beside the collarbone. And so, again charmed, again flouted 
by tragedy, Lord Culter was able, studying the exhibits on the table, to hold a 
post-mortem on a parrot.
"An English bow: that'li be part of the booty from Annan, I expect. And three 
arrows from the same source, fully barbed . . . very naughty, in a perch 
contest. And a glove."
He picked it up and sniffed at it. It was a right-hand glove in white buckskin, 
its newness betrayed by the absence of rubbing on the first three fingers.
"Discreetly perfumed," observed Lord Culter, turning it over. "Beautifully 
stitched, and some jewellers' work on the back, to boot. A nice toy, if you can 
afford it-and since friend Lymond presumably paid for it with my money, he can. 
God!" he said. "I'd give my chance of heaven, nearly, to match against him, 
perch or clout."
Tom Erskine observed critically, "Wind behind him, of course; and he had a bit 
of elevation too, hadn't he, Dandy?"
Sir Andrew nodded. "He shot from behind one of the dressing tents, just where 
the ground rose to the wood. I was just too late getting there. Found the stuff 
where he dropped it. . . ." He groaned. "We all underrated him. I worked out 
that he couldn't possibly shoot from among the crowd. It didn't cross my mind 
that a first-class marksman might just do it from the ground behind."
"Well, you gave us a shaking-up all right, Culter," said Buccleuch. "Thought you 
were away with th~ papingo, my lad!"
The Dowager, who had been, for her, unusually silent, remarked at once, "Well, 
it wasn't very reassuring, I admit, coming back to find Richard laid out all 
bloody in one bed and Mariotta fainting in the next, but then Wapenshaws are 
notorious, aren't they? Did anyone remember to ask who got the prize?"
Tom said, "Well I suppose, strictly speaking, they ought to give it to Lymond, 
but I should put it past even his impudence to claim it."


"I don't know." Mariotta's voice was detached. "He seems able to do almost 
anything he wants."
Agnes, her eyes fixed on Culter, heaved a sigh. "I thought I was going to die."
"Well, you behaved very sensibly, darling," said the Dowager. "And now we shall 
enjoy the gypsies all the more."
"Gypsies!"
"Yes, of course. From the fair: had you forgotten? And here they are," said 
Sybilla.
It was a triumphant example, in the outcome, of her own brand of humane genius. 
Under the spell of the entertainment, even Mariotta's taut nerves slackened, and 
colour came back into her face. Christian Stewart, listening gravely to 
Erskine's commentary, sat with her hand on Agnes's shoulder, thus regulating 
(but not eliminating) her interruptions, aided by a tactful Sir Andrew. Culter 
himself lay quietly, his eyes heavy, under the watchful gaze of the Dowager, who 
was having a long and intermittent discussion at the same time with the leading 
gypsy.
Toward the end of the performance, and during a phase which involved something 
noisy with a tambourine and much stamping, she caught Buccleuch's rather 
distracted eye, and slipped out of the room, followed by Sir Wat.
Sybilla shut the door on the noise.
"Dod!" Sir Wat, breathing the cold air on the deserted landing, wiped his 
forehead. "Clever rascals, Sybilla, but not just my meat, y'know."
"I thought you stood it very well," commented the Dowager. "And really it's a 
great comfort to have you, for I mustn't bother Richard, and Sir Andrew and Tom 
are dear boys but a little occupied; and they have their own troubles anyway.~~
Sir Wat looked apprehensive, not without reason.
"About the bloodhounds," said Sybilla.
"Bloodhound yourself," said Buccleuch, jerked, in his alarm, out of even the 
nominal form of courtesy he usually practiced. "How did you know-"
"Oh, I know Richard," said Sybilla. "I always could interpret these silences, 
you know, more easily than half an hour of his brother's chatter. He was 
performing very prettily in there, and I'm sure all the girls felt better for 
it, but I didn't. What did he ask you to do?"
Buccleuch shrugged, and gave up. "Track down Lymond, of








course. There's the glove, and-you're right-I still have the dogs at 
Branxholnl.' He looked down at her, an unaccustomed diffidence struggling among 
the appalling burst-whinbush whiskers.
"He's been made a fool of-twice, you know," he said. "Feels like a sulky fat 
goose in a barrel, being shot at by gutter boys. Can't stomach it-won't stand 
for it. Wouldn't try to stop him, either."
"I shall," said Sybilla.
"Why? Discredits you all-sorry, m'dear-as it is. The boy's no good to himself or 
anyone else till it's settled."
"Yes," said the Dowager. "But 1 shall settle it, not Richard. Anyway, aren't you 
supposed to be ill? You are a fool, Wat," she added, with a kind of affectionate 
resignation. "You know perfectly well word'll reach England inside forty-eight 
hours that you're playing games at Stirling when you're supposed to be too ill 
to go and speak nicely to old Grey at Norham."
Sir Wat accepted the stricture with surprising meekness. "Well, as to that-" He 
scowled at the landing arras. "That's what makes it unco knotty, if you want the 
truth, to do what Richard asked."
"Which was?"
"Well, to let go everything else and hoe up the country till we find Lymond. We 
could do it-but-"
"-But in Richard's present mood, in bringing Lymond to face his deserts, he's 
also liable to bring Will Scott to face his," said the Dowager concisely.
Buccleuch wriggled. His face got red, then the spaces under his hair; finally he 
burst into speech which lost no violence through being compressed into 
undertones.
"Dod, Sybilla: if you want to know, I'm in the hell of a jawboxy mess. Seymour's 
Lord High Suleyman the Magnificent Grey at Norham's been sending me polite notes 
ever since Will snipped his nose for him at Hume. asking when I'm coming to 
parley and assure them of help. It's damned awkward. They know it was Will-how, 
I can't understand, for at my last taste of him he was too blasted whaup-nosed 
to claim his own mother. But there it is, and if I refuse to help, they'll burn 
me to the ground on the next raid. I've put it around that I'm ill, but short of 
following it up that I'm dead, I don't know what to do next."
The broad, capable Scott hands, with their spatulate fingers and white scar 
seams, gripped the balustrade and blanched, as he leaned his uneasy weight on 
them. "I'll have to disown Will publicly, and



hope they'll believe I had nothing to do with Hume. I doubt they won't, though; 
it looks too damned neat, right to the cartload of cutty sarks on my land at 
Melrose."
He stared disconsolately at Lady Culter. "And here's the joke. I'm not a praying 
man, Sybilla, but I've had these baw-heids at the chapel on their knees ever 
since he went, hoping that Will'd see he'd been a damned stupid fool, and come 
back. Now, if he does, I'm made to look an accomplice to the fiasco at Hume, and 
Grey'll see I suffer accordingly. Whereas if he doesn't, and I'm forced to 
disown him to Grey-and if word of it gets to the Queen-and if he's captured with 
Lymond-"
"He'll get the same treatment as Lymond. But not if I catch him," said Sybilla.
Buccleuch eyed her. "Then, by God, I wouldn't care to be in Lymond's shoes."
"How my sons turn out is rather my affair," said the Dowager coolly. "And 
involves rather less risk, on the whole, to Richard. If you'll co-operate."
"By not co-operating?" Sir Wat gave a relieved bark. "It'll give Culter a poor 
opinion of me, but I don't mind. No. My dogs'll be sick; and I'll be sicker than 
the lot put together. Listen-someone's coming." He broke off ,hurriedly as light 
and warmth streamed in on them.
"And so." said Sybilla placidly, "I had a long talk with him- Johnnie Bulb, his 
name is; a real gypsy' king-and he tells me he knows how to make it."
"Make what, Lady Culter?" It was Christian who had opened the parlour door on 
sounds of imminent departure from within. "The gypsies are just going."
"Make the Philosopher's Stone, dear," said the Dowager, driving haphazard but 
triumphant into her subject. "You know, the thing that turns tin into gold, and 
makes frisky old gentlemen senex bis puer, and mends broken legs and all sorts 
of practical things."
"It's what we need at Branxholm," said Sir Wat gloomily. "Janet broke another 
vase last week."
For some reason this tickled both Sybilla and Christian. The Dowager was the 
first to recover.
"Just you wait," she said. "I have it all from Bulb, and it all sounds 
remarkably well authenticated, considering. Anyway, he's coming again to 
Midculter to explain it to me."








"Good God!" said Buccleuch, to whom the Dowager was the source and fount of all 
astonishments. "You don't mean you believe all that rubbish! I've enough of it 
at home with Janet; and the Lee penny never out the house."
"All what rubbish?" said Sybilla. "You see, you don't know yourself what you're 
talking about, and neither shall 1," she added as an afterthought, "until Master 
Bulb has been and explained it again."
"Well, I don't know what you want the Philosopher's Stone for," said Christian. 
"It seems to me that as a family you're quite indecently rich already."
"Oh, you never know," said the Dowager mysteriously. "Healing charms-elixirs of 
life-love potions-"
"What I came to ask," said Christian, her face rather red, "was whether we might 
all go to the Fair-Agnes, Mariotta and myself, I mean. The trouble is-"
"The trouble is, Master Bulb won't read our fortunes here: he hasn't got his 
crystal, he says, and he won't go and bring it back." Agnes, squeezing through 
the door, provided the explanations, fortissimo. "But he says we can call at his 
tent, and Tom'll go with us-"
The Dowager spoke quietly. "What about Richard?"
"It's all right." Christian was quick in defence of the absent Mariotta. "As a 
matter of fact, he's asleep, and . . ." And it won't do him any harm to be 
spared a performance of wifely reproach, her hesitation added.
The Dowager made no objection. So the gypsies left, and a little later, wrapped 
in heavy cloaks and hoods, the three girls walked out with Tom Erskine, and an 
unobtrusive following of Erskine's men. Sir Andrew and Buccleuch left. In the 
snug parlour the big fire hissed and murmured in the silence, glimmering on 
mother and son. Sitting beside Richard's quiet couch, Sybilla put on her 
spectacles and threaded a needle. Then she put it down and sat quite still for a 
long tune, staring owlishly into space.
And it was into space that at last she spoke. "Oh, my darling!" said Sybilla. "I 
do hope I've done the best thing."

* * *



"Are you all right?" asked Tom Erskine. And again, later on, "What's wrong? Are 
you feeling all right?"
"Of course. It's the cold," said Christian rather snappishly, and



relaxing her grip on his arm, tried furiously to still the uncalled-for and 
humiliating frisson set up by her nerves.
It was not cold, as she well knew. It was the crowded strain of the day; the 
blaring darkness; the devils' orchestra of uncouth music; the coarse chatter, 
the catcalls and the mindless, ganting laughter. The Fair had become by night a 
bloated Saturnalia, sodden, sottish and leering of voice. She was buffeted by 
blundering bodies and twitched by grasping hands. Smells assailed her: beer 
smells, food smells and leather smells; the stink of human bodies and once, as 
two struggling shapes crashed into her, the reek of blood, forcing on the mind 
the warm fire and the reeking arrows of an hour before-Culter's voice:
"If that's what a life of depravity does for your archery"; Mariotta's:
"He seems able to do almost anything he wants"; the Dowager, bandaging with cool 
hands, refusing to panic.
"Buy a rare pippin!" said a voice in her ear. "A fine rosy pippin for a fine 
rosy lass-"
"A chain of gold for that bonny dress, now! Five crowns and a kiss for yourself, 
my bonny may!"
"Hatpins, sweeting: a thousand and a half for sixteen pence-"
"A puppet for your sister!"
"Mackerel!"
"Hot pies!"-And grease brushing her cheek as the pastry was thrust upward. The 
shaking became uncontrollable.
"Tell your fortune, lassies!" in the sly, garlic-laden voice.
It was some kind of a booth. First Agnes went in; then Mariotta; and they were 
both quite remarkably reticent when they came out. Tom, waiting with Christian, 
was bored. "It sounds poor stuff to me. Let's go home."
Agnes objected. "Christian hasn't been yet."
"Fortune, lady?" said Bulb's voice again, at Christian's elbow. "One other 
lady?"
"I'll come with you-"
"Oh, no you won't." Christian eluded Tom deftly. "If I'm going to have the 
secrets of my boudoir revealed, you're staying outside. Master Bulb will take 
me."
Silently, the gypsy caught her sleeve, and they moved forward. Something brushed 
her hood, and from the deadening of noise, she guessed the tent flap had closed 
behind her. Underfoot, the street cobbles were spread with fabric; the darkness 
was stuffy and cold, smelling vaguely of cheap incense. She walked a few paces, 
and then



was aware of a new aperture. The grip on her elbow disappeared; Bulb's soft 
steps could be heard receding; then these in turn were cut off. This time, there 
was absolute silence.
Her face forced into lines of composure, her betraying hands tight-held behind 
her back, Christian stood quite still and waited in the cold and the dark.

Mothlike in its lightness and rapid insistency, the so-familiar voice spoke. 
"This, of course, is the chamber of devils, who sit in hexagon babbling like 
herring gulls about the ruin of charity and the disorderly rupture of souls. . . 
. The aforesaid malignants have provided a chair, a little to your left: that's 
it. Before you lie four feet of carpet; then a box upon which I am rudely-but I 
hope reassuringly-seated. Nothing else is worth noting except a bundle of 
effects belonging to Johnnie Bulb-you'll have discovered his name. He was, of 
course, my friend of the cave. A long time ago. Is that better?" he asked. "I 
wonder what frightened you?"
Astonishing that a voice should carry such power to soothe and disarm. She said, 
seated, clasping her hands, "It's been a bad sort of day-I'm sorry-and the Fair 
on top was a little too much."
"A day remarkable, certainly, for a wholesale slaughter of the innocents," he 
said. "I wonder how the parrot enjoyed its brief second of freedom. And the 
victim of the less schismatic shaft, how's he?"
She told him, and he received it with a hint of mockery, adding:
"Don't, for your own sake, begin weaving fantasies of evil around me as well. I 
haven't tried to kill anybody today, I give you my word."
"Well, if you had, I think you probably would have succeeded," said Christian. 
"Do you shoot?"
"Yes. Very well, as it happens: one of my vanities, you see. It's handsome to 
watch, and satisfying to perform; it's convivial and competitive and artistic 
and absorbing. Poets love it: they rush home to unpick all their quills and 
write odes with them."
"Others don't," she said quickly. "Others kill."
There was a little silence. Then he said, "And that's what you're afraid of, 
isn't it? Violence?"
It was true, and she acknowledged it. "Except that it isn't trained and 
purposeful violence that terrifies me: it's the negligent, casual kind. All 
these people today . . . They were taking wagers, you know, on Culter's chances 
of life. And violence of a nasty, inconsequent kind, tonight at the Fair. Or the 
kind that amuses itself by



stuffing women and children into a cave and smoking them to death. In 
slaughtering livestock and burning a harvest for fun. Or after Pinkie, when the 
army broke; and the Durham and York and Newcastle boys, and the landknechts and 
Italians and Spaniards sat on their beautiful horses and flew along the Leith 
sands, and the Holy-rood road, and the Dalkeith road, hawking men with their 
swords like butterflies
"Violence in nature is one thing," said Christian, "but among civilized mankind, 
what excuse is there?"
His voice was cheerful. "Nothing more civilizing than a good crack of thunder. 
One hot unsettled summer and whole countrysides end up like St. James with their 
knees hard as camels. . . No. I take your point. But what in God's name had that 
poor, enthusiastic, politically imbecile troop of Englishmen last month got to 
do with civilization? And what's going to stop them? Religion? With their music, 
their churches, their prayers, in a rag bag at home; His Most Christian Majesty 
of France egging on the Turks to scimitar the head off His Most Imperial Majesty 
King Charles; the Bishop of Rome seducing the Lutherans in Germany to secure his 
posterity . .
Christian said, "What kind of excuse would you make then for a private 
assassin?"
He was silent for a moment, then said, "Let's get one thing clear. I'm not 
excusing anything. I'm no theologian, only a pedagogue in rhetoric, with 
whatever shreds of humanity the universities have left me with."
"Well, as an apologist for human nature, then. What of private murder?"
"What of it? This afternoon's, if you mean to particularize, was neither very 
private nor very successful, by all accounts. It shouldn't be difficult to 
classify. Not high-spirited; not casual; an act of instructed force, like 
Somerset's: a matter of policy, in fact.
"And brilliantly carried off-by the Old Man of the Mountains himsell, obviously, 
the Sheikh-al-jebal, twanging his hemp instead of eating it. Motives: greed, 
hate, envy-I don't know. Excuses: there don't seem to be many. He might, of 
course, be a saintly old sheikh, whose doctrines Culter was denying; or a 
lascivious old sheikh, whose mistress Cuiter had alienated . . . except that 
Culter, Jerome bless his childlike head, is such a remarkably dull and blameless 
creature himself."
"For a humanist," she said, "you~re very scathing on the subject


of virtue. For one thing, you shouldn't confuse stolidity and self-control."
"You admire self-control?" he asked, and she took her chance.
"I admire candour."
He retorted instantly. "Oh, nothing better-in the right place. 'It's only right 
you should know'-I wonder how many that classic betise has driven to the river 
and the dagger and the pillow in a quiet corner. Truth's nothing but falsehood 
with the edges sharpened up, and iUtempered at that: no repair, no retraction, 
no possible going back once it's out. If I told you I'd murdered my own sister 
you'd register appropriate feelings of hate and revulsion; and if you found 
later I hadn't, I'd be sure of your interest and sympathy in twice the depth of 
your hate. Whereas, if you simply found proof positive that I had killed her . .
I might loathe you, but I'd respect your courage," she said candidly. "Besides, 
that sort of truth wouldn't hurt me, would it? It might affect you, but then 
you'd deserve it."
She had surprised him into laughter. "Oh, God! Generously abstaining from the 
sword in order to macerate with a cudgel. Pax! Leave me some pride. Pretend at 
least that you wouldn't collapse in a delirium of joy as I dance a vuelta on the 
widdy. In any case, I stick to my point. Not ninety-nine women out of a hundred 
really prefer that kind of honesty; and even if you are the hundredth, I'm the 
last to help you prove it to yourself. No. Si vis pingere, pinge sonum, as Echo 
rudely remarked. If you want a full study of me, then paint my voice. It's all 
there is on display at present."
"Th be sure," said Christian serenely. "And painting with breath is my stock-in-
trade-you'd forgotten that, hadn't you? I'm an architect in lexicography; I can 
build you a palace of adverbs and a hermitage of personal pronouns . . . and I 
can give you information about Crouch."
For the first time, she felt him at a loss. She went on serenely. "Jonathan 
Crouch. The man you asked about. George Douglas sold him to Sir Andrew Hunter, 
who wanted to exchange him for a cousin, or something. Then Crouch escaped with 
someone-Hunter doesn't know who, but he's violently angry about it all, and 
swearing death to whoever released him."
"I see-wait," he said. "How do you know all this?"
"Because," said Christian, rising, "he was overheard giving George Douglas two 
English names mentioned by Crouch, and he more or



less asked Douglas to help track them down in the hope they'd lead to the man 
who freed his prisoner. I thought you'd be interested
and now I must go. Oh!" She sat down again, smiling. "Hadn't you better tell my 
fortune first?"
To her glee, he sounded taken aback. "Oh, Johnnie looks after all that, although 
under certain circumstances I tell him what to say. Do you really want it done?"
She laughed. "Not really. It'd be more to the point, I think, if I could read 
yours."
"Yes. Well, you'd qualify for M. Rabelais's next Almanac if you could do that," 
he said dryly. "But if you're anxious, I'll tell you something that'll satisfy 
our misdoubting Tom. Your loof, lady. I'm sorry, a bit closer. The only candle 
is guttering like a drunk man's fancy. Now."
Firmly, her wrist was taken, and the fingers spread out. "A fine, capable hand. 
Line of life-hub! You appear to have died at the age of seven.',
"The embalmers are exceedingly skilful nowadays," she said gravely.
"But I will say this. . . . You'll get the most out of life, never fear; and 
meet the sort of man you want, that too; and get your heart's desire, I think, 
in the end-if you believe the results of Johunie's teaching. But what are we, 
after all? Charlatans, faiseurs d'horoscope .
She did not know quite what to say. "It sounds like an exemplary future?"
"If you bring your own candle next time, I might do better. Equipment rather 
limited, imagination in free supply. Are you leaving Stirling soon?"
"On Tuesday. If Lord Culter can travel. All the Crawfords and Agnes are going 
back to Midculter: I shall go with them, and then on to Boghall until 
Christmas." She hesitated. "There's still nothing I can do? We seem to waste all 
our meetings talking nonsense, and allthetimelfeel . .
The sands are running out? Well, if they are, it's only from one end of a great 
silly pot to the other. Someone'll come and stand us on our heads, and the 
sand'll run back again-same sand-same span of time, all the grains saying 
excitedly to one another: Hullo! It's you again! Met you in '47 in a 
fortuneteller's booth in Stirling!"



"I'm not sure," said Christian carefully, "but I think that's cheap theology."
Well it's a poor apologue, I agree," he said, "and a sorry kind of note to leave 
on. All right. Cancel the sand.

"Li jalous
Envious
de car rous
morra
et Ii dous
savourous
amourous
m'aura

"No, dammit," he said, dissatisfied. "Too fleshly a note altogether

"Goodbye!" she said, feeling behind her for the curtain.
"My measures are all mad. They prick, they prance, as princes that were woud . . 
. Goodbye," he said, part-returning from sunny contemplation among the iambics. 
"There's Johnnie coming now: he'll see you out." He clasped her hand briefly. "I 
may not see you for a while, but perhaps I shall write."
"JVrite!"
"Yes. It's all right. I mean that-I haven't forgotten: wait and see," he said 
rapidly. "Till then!"
There came a firm grasp on her elbow from behind, and Bulb led her to the outer 
tent. For half a dozen paces she could still hear his voice, soulfully 
declaiming, half to himself, she thought:

"And evermore the Cukkow, as he fley
He seyde Farewell, Farewell, papin jay!"

* * *



Johnnie Bulb, his eyes speculative, watched the party go from the doorway of the 
tent. Then he returned inside, lit another candle, and opened the inner flap.
The man inside, deftly booting one supple limb, looked,up.
"Have they gone?" said Lymond. "Thank you, Johunie. Your performance with the 
first two filled me with respect. For chastely



phrased double-entendres you have no master." He adjusted his straps. "Three 
well-endowed kitties."
"Well, two of them were well enough," admitted the gypsy. "The wee one had a 
face like a pound of candles on a hot day."
"The devil she has." Lymond put one spurred foot on the floor and reached for 
the second boot. "The wee one, as you call her, has a face informed with beauty, 
wisdom and wit. In other words, my Johnnie, she's thirteen, free and stinking 
rich."
"Oh. Then you've had a good day of it, I suppose."
"Then you suppose wrong," said Lymond shortly. "I've had a damned carking 
afternoon. A Moslem would blame my Ifrit, a Buddhist explain the papingo was 
really my own great-grandmother, and a Christian, no doubt, call it the 
vengeance of the Lord. As a plain, inoffensive heathen, I call it bloody 
annoying."
He stood up. "Where's my cloak? Oh, there. I'm off, Johnnie. A small memento on 
the table."
Bulb saw him to the doorway. "You're off south tonight?"
"I am. There's a gentleman I have to meet on the Carlisle road on Friday." The 
Master glanced once, with calculation, around the tent; and then brushed past 
the gypsy. Without further leave-taking, he had gone.
"And not to the gentleman's profit, either," said Johnnie to himself with a 
grin, watching the nondescript figure merge into the dark crowd. The grin became 
wider, became a laugh, became a convulsion of secret mirth.
Johnnie Bulb, hugging himself, went back into the tent.


PART TWO.


The Play for Gideon Somerville.

1.

Smothered Mate.
	The sixthe pawne	resembleth the Taverners, hostelers
	and sellars of vitaylle	   Many paryls and adventures
may happen on the wayes and passages to hem that ben herberowed within their 
Innes.





1. Removal of a Blocking Knight


LORD CULTER, gently examining the tapestries in the big hail at
Branxhohn, was talking in a soft and savourless voice which his host found 
peculiarly uncomfortable.
Branxholm, great throne of the Buccleuchs, lay twelve miles from the English 
border. The present house, less than twenty years old, was built from the crusts 
of the Branxholms which had already been fired, and fired again, by the 
enthusiasms of its neighbours. Branxholm was a bald edifice of vile architecture 
and no blandishments of moss or ivy. Inside, it was the tilting ground and 
battlefield of the Buccleuch young.
Babies bounced and abounded in the Scott household: babies with mouths round and 
adhesive as lampreys; babies like Pandean pipes, of diminishing size and 
resonant voice; babies rendering torture and catalysis among the animate, the 
inanimate and the comatose. The Buccleuchs themselves were totally immune. While 
their younglings fought, and nurses and tutors swooped and called like 
starlings, Sir Wat and Dame Janet pursued their own highly individual courses, 
and talked to each other about whatever came into their heads.
Today, a morose and pallid Friday in November, the subject was Lymond. In a 
childless oasis at one end of the big hail Sir Wat glowered uneasily in his big 
chair, feet in furred boots stuck out before him in the rushes, a woollen 
nightshirt peeping through the folds of his ample damask nightgown, and a 
variety of dogs heaped panting about his legs. Dame Janet, her gown napped with 
tufts and trails of wool, was spinning and swearing indiscriminately when the 
thread broke and when her husband roused her temper.
From the wall behind them both, his eyes still on the battered hangings, Lord 
Culter said, "I've already gathered you have no intentibn of helping me. I 
wondered if, perhaps, you meant actively to hinder me instead?"
Sir Wat irritably shoved from one knee a heavy jowl which confidingly and 
automatically replaced itself, chumbling. "Man, have I to go yap, yap all day 
with the same tale? I've told you. I'm sick."
Dame Janet gave a bark of laughter. "Sick to the tune of two flounders, a pike, 
a cod, a quart of claret and a quince pie. Hah! You'll do yourself a hurt, Wat; 
forcing the nourishment down at all costs, and you a sick man.~'
Buccleuch snapped, justifiably riled, "It's the English I'm supposed to be 
ailing for-or am I to live on sops in wine in case Grey of Wilton's sitting up 
the kitchen lum? I've told you all till I'm tired. Grey wants me. I'll have to 
promise something. I've asked the Queen and Arran to let me give the Protector 
some sort of lip service: until I have proper permission I'm ill, and I stay 
ill. Dod, Culter: have you seen what Seymour and his wee friends from the 
Lothians did to Cranston Riddell in September? And the Wharton brats and the 
Langhoim garrison popping in and out like hen harriers-three weeks ago they were 
raiding Kirkcudbright and Lamington. It'll be Branxholm next, and you'll wish 
you'd listened to me when you're frying like eggs on the saddle roof."
Lord Culter left the tapestry. He strolled to the fire, turned, and looked down 
on Buccleuch. "Then stay at home and give me your men and your dogs."
There was a harried silence. Then Buccleuch said bitterly, "The implication 
being that I enjoy sitting here on my behind while there's danger in the wind. 
Were you at the last Council meeting? Arran's off to lay siege to the English 
garrison on the Tay, the Ambassadors are off to ask men and money from Denmark 
and France. And meantime it's all the clack that a sort of unofficial hint has 
gone from Paris


 to London promising neutrality if the English'll get out of Boulogne.
A fine lookout, isn't it? And winter here, and no excess of food, and precious 
few ships getting through the blockade, and half the able men shot to the devil 
at Pinkie. Be damned to your brother!" said Buccleuch heatedly. "I've got my own 
worries."
Culter watched him quietly, one hand pattering on the chimney piece. "I'm sure 
you have. I thought perhaps you might consider me less dangerous to Will than 
Lymond will be. Or to be less parochial
-that you might agree that obstruction of royal messengers and leakage of state 
information ought to be stopped by responsible people."
"Responsible! That's nearly a bad word to a Buccleuch," said Dame Janet, 
pouncing as she spoke on a snatch of down. She missed it: it became incandescent 
and whisked up the chimney. "And there's Will's immortal soul for you," said 
Lady Buccleuch, seizing her moral with evangelical skill from her own 
hearthstone. "And here's his f ather, worried yellow in case the poor creature 
scandalizes the nation and promotes an international incident anent the 
Buccleuch family."
"International incident my-!" said her husband rudely, going red in the face. 
"Let the Council put the chains on Will, and he'll be lucky to escape with his 
silly neck. You wouldn't be so rarin' keen to haul him into the light of grace 
if he were a son of your own, Janet Beaton. And why the sour mouth, pray?" 
pursued Buccleuch, who on a celebrated occasion had pulled an even sourer. "What 
unnatural sort of corruption is Will to meet at Lymond's that's new in the 
French court? Credit the boy with more strength of mind than a new-gutted lamp-
wick. Or are you maybe not so much worried about Will as anxious to put a bit 
rope round that yellow-headed cacodemon's neck? I told you at the time, if you 
kept your mouth shut, you wouldn't have got a hole in your shoulder. . . . 
Dod!"-as a storm of juvenile complaint exploded in the rafters-"Woman, can you 
not keep those brats quiet! Some folk," said Buccleuch to Lord Culter with heavy 
sarcasm, "have woodworm and weevils. Branxholm has weans."
Lady Buccleuch was tart. "And whose fault is that?"
"Oh, mine; mine; mine, I suppose," bawled Sir Wat. "I'm a fair oddity: I can 
raise my weans in an annual crop like barley all on my own, and I'd think a wife 
just a plain interference in the business."
"I wouldn't just say you were wrong," said Dame Janet cruelly. "At least you 
were getting some fine yields, by all accounts, before ever a priest said a 
marriage service over you."



"Oh, is it sermons now? You'll make a bonny figure in a surplice, my lady: 
Sister Berchta with the long, iron nose and the ae big foot; and it forever slap 
in someone else's business.
The Buccleuchs, foaming pleasurably, pranced into battle. Richard stood still, 
his eyes on Sir Wat's profile: a cheek more than usually red proved that 
Buccleuch was aware of it. The exchange continued. The argument became 
corybantic and public; it blared; it stopped. A commotion at the door, a 
magnetic tumescence of children, a bright voice and a beaming servant announced 
the unbooked-for arrival of Lord Culter's mother.
"Sybilla!" Buccleuch, in a spray of cushions and offended dogs, got up and went 
forward. Janet, her tongue arrested in blistering flight, rose likewise from her 
coiling threads and hugged the small, self-contained figure. "Come and sit 
down."
"Well, Richard!" The Dowager, relinquishing her furs, approached the fire and 
offered a cheek to her son. He was courteous, but with a wariness in his manner 
which did not escape Lady Buccleuch. They all sat, Sybilla capturing the nearest 
child, diying its thumb and setting it firmly on her lap. "I want sanctuary from 
the Hermes child. You're looking very well, Wat. Being in a decline suits you."
Janet said quickly, "What's wrong with young Agnes?"
"We have had a visit," said the Dowager gloomily, "from the prospective 
bridegroom. Arran's son. He was not well received."
"What about it?" said Buccleuch. "She's a ward of the Crown. Arran can dispose 
of her as he wants, and if he wants the Hermes lands for his son, who's to stop 
him?"
"His son," said the Dowager prosaically.
"Good lord." Buccleuch stared. "There's nothing wrong with that lassie's face 
her dowry won't correct."
"I don't think even her dowry can drown her voice," said the Dowager. "When 
exercised with intent. Besides, she's waiting for a thin man with a romantic 
smile named Jack: palmistry can be so embarrassing. Which reminds me. Janet, 
you're bid to Midculter tomorrow week. We are to have a dissertation on the 
Philosopher's Stone."
"The Phil . . .
"I knew Wat would forget to tell you." In greatest detail, Sybilla explained. 
She outlined the properties of the talisman and the subtleties of its 
manufacture. From there she launched into a technical description of the cure 
for a tertiary.



Thus drummed out of the conversational stakes, her son rose. The Dowager 
declined his escort home, gracefully accepted an invitation to stay the night, 
and watched as, impeded by remarkably little pressure on all sides, Richard 
prepared to go home.
Lady Buccleuch, walking with her guest to the yard, was in no carefree mood 
either. "Wat has a tongue on him like an anteater, and he doesn't much care what 
he does with it. Damn it, I like Will. He's as much to me as any child of my 
own."
"Buccleuch understands that, of course," said Richard. "All he's concerned with 
is protecting the boy, after his fashion. But the brutal fact is that there is 
no protection. I tell you, Lymond has taken three months to kill all the years 
of my childhood. He'll destroy Will Scott in a week."
Not the statement but the expression of it moved her. She valued him 
sufficiently not to show it, but said flatly instead, "You don't need to 
convince me. I'll go further and say I'd stop at nothing- nothing at all-to part 
Will from the Master."
Richard was silent. Lady Buccleuch waited, then trapped an arm, and with it, his 
eyes. "God-if your conscience is as tender as that, I'll say it. I know what's 
good for Buccleuch. One of these days he's going to catch up with Will, and when 
he does, he'll take good care that you don't get to hear of it. But there's 
nothing to stop me from telling you- Wait, now! Wait and hear me. Lymond dead 
means Will captured and facing his deserts. Buccleuch's afraid of just that 
thing; but surely nothing could make it clearer to England that Will has been 
acting without sanction? And no one, surely, on the Scottish side is going to 
hurt Bucclench's oldest son-the more so since his venture at Hume. That's common 
sense; and being so, I haven't the slightest compunction in going behind Wat's 
silly back. Do you agree with me?"
There was another pause. Finally Richard said, "I do, of course. But-I'm sorry-I 
can't see myself entering into a kind of conspiracy against 'Wat. Not when his 
own views are quite clear. Persuade Buccleuch of all you've just said, Janet, 
and then I'll be glad to get all the help I can from both of you." He mounted, 
and eyed her from the saddle. "Janet Beaton: go in and manage your man. Then 
I'll discuss it 'vith you."
Lady Buccleuch's face split into its disarming grin. "Och, I've finished 
discussing it," she said. And smacking the rump of his horse, she waved him 
goodbye.



2.	Irregular Partie Between Two Masters.


Three days later, the land was choked with fog, consuming the sight from the eye 
and the air from the nostrils of Scot and Englishman alike. In the two estuary 
forts the militia were hagridden in the white gloom by the creak of marauding 
rowlocks; Hume and Roxburgh went red-eyed to bed, and the Borderers lay 
sleepless at night with their swords and dirks warm about them. The Peel used by 
Lymond's men was likewise lost and cradied in fog. In the ruinous hail of it, 
the heir to Branxholm was playing cards with every mark of professional ease and 
skill.
"Play the eight," advised Mr. Crouch intelligently. "Then Matthew can put down 
his ten."
Turkey Mat, flinging down his cards, dragged a horny palm over his bald head and 
breathed like a sailing skiff, lee rail under. "Fancy, now: I had the queerest 
notion there that you were out of this game."
Mr. Crouch was unperturbed. "I am. You told me yourself to keep off, or you'd 
play the next with my chitterlings."
Turkey, grunting, unbuckled a leather purse at his belt, reversed it, then let 
it fall with an eloquent flop on the table. "And you needna skin your nose 
looking for the reason," said he. "It's the ones with the smooth pansy faces 
that turn out to be the know-alls at cards. Three months' wages off me in as 
many minutes, and my very breath pledged before it comes out between my teeth. 
Englishmen? Sharks! And the cooing voice on them like a bishop piping for his 
red bunnet."
"Your mistake." Will Scott, sprawled elegantly over a chair, had in two months 
found a certain style, and was enlarging on it. "Next time look at its teeth 
before you fleece it."
"You can talk." Turkey eyed the pile of money in front of the boy. "I'll swear 
Crouch has been giving you lessons. You were safe for twenty crowns any day when 
you first came, and now you've a nose for pips like a peccary hog."
"Mr. Scott has a quick mind." Since his enforced residence at, and his lightning 
departure from, Ballaggan, Mr. Crouch had been short of an audience, and he was 
not the man to lose a chance. He said, a trifle wistfully, "The best man I ever 
saw at the tables was Buskin Palmer-"
"Him King Harry hanged for taking too much off him at cards?"
"Him. He," said Mr. Crouch, a stickler for accuracy. "The great



master, that was. I owe any little touch I might have at cards to that man and 
his brother. When I was in the Princess Mary's household-"
"And when would that be, now?" inquired a new voice.
The trio turned. With some forethought, table and stakes had been set up at a 
distance from the other activity in the crowded room, and the authority of Mat 
had so far kept their bailiwick exclusive. When Turkey turned, it was with a 
snarl which changed to a mild roar. "Johnnie Bulb! Man, I wish you'd take to 
wearing clappers on your breeches; you're desperate sore on the arteries. And 
that last damned powder you gave me would have done Jimmie of Fynnart a twelve-
month and pointed up the whole of Linlithgow if you laid it on with a trowel. 
Will ye bring to mind it's my inner workings you're repairing, not the Toil Brig 
o' Duntfries."
Johnnie Bulb, gently oblivious, drew up a barrel, sat on it, and again addressed 
the Englishman. "So you were in the Princess Mary's household, were you? When? 
Was it the year of Soiway Moss?"
Jonathan Crouch looked blank.
Johnme expounded. "The year the Scots King James died, and the small Queen was 
born. The year Wharton broke up the Scottish army on the Solway and took half of 
it prisoner to London, including Lymond. The year Lymond's pastime was first 
discovered in Scotland, and the English gave him a fine manor for his pains. 
Fifteen forty-two."
Mr. Crouch said, "Well now . . . Yes. I'd be with the Princess about that time. 
Five years ago, near enough."
"I thought so," said Johnnie. Mr. Crouch looked confused, Matthew seemed vaguely 
annoyed and Will Scott, removing Turkey's purse from the board and laying down a 
fresh card, said, "Well, go on. We can't bear the suspense."
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 shirt 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 ejaculations 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 passed 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 I


could 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 ass 
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 damned, filthy-"
"But it is." Lyniond uncurled and rose; with a long index finger he pressed the 
titmouse 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 God-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 reassured. "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 gratitude. Quoi! Ce n'est pas encore 
beaucoup d'avoir de mon gosier retire votre cou?"
Mr. Crouch, succumbing 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 understood


all. "God: we've been that damned 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 hoary beasts of the gypsy troop and stayed 
there: bursts of muffled laughter and occasional snatches 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 grasses. 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 the



men exposed to his rule Lymond never appeared ill: he was never tired; he was 
never worried, or pained, or disappointed, or passionately 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 hit?"
"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 passing faiblesse. Lymond, you see, is omnipotent, 
as you were saying."
The white teeth flashed again. "Ask me again. I'm going to Edinburgh this 
Saturday, 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 passed 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 passed silently over lost grass 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 and


evaporating 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."
"Why else," said Lymond, "are we here?" The eyes were sea-blue and the 
expression one of celestial affability. "This, Marigold, is the Ostrich Inn. So 
hop Willieken, hop Willieken: England is thine and mine . . ." and moving 
swiftly to the threshhold, he scooped up the tremendous form of his hostess, 
accepted a hearty kiss and a dimpled arm along his shoulders, and disappeared 
indoors.
Scott found Johnnie Bulb looking at him with an ironic glint in the brown eyes. 
"Come along," said Johnnie. "We're allowed in as well."
* * *



Men keeping vigil at the dawn of battle spoke of the square common room of the 
Ostrich. It rose two silken stories high, and whole oxen confessed to the fires 
at each end and reached sizzling Judgment on the crowded tables, alongside pies 
and puddings and heaped fragrant trenchers and jars of bland, toowarm wines. All 
the pleasures of unfilled time belonged to the Ostrich. For those
who were shy about sleeping in public, a wooden arcade around three sides of the 
room supported a gallery at first-story level, off which opened the private 
rooms. Wax lights blazed. The gypsies, flooding the centre floor with music and 
violent colour, danced in the footsteps of tumblers and harpists and magicians 
and monkeys; of bears and minstrels and dogs and play actors and mimics; and the 
painted walls and brilliant hangings kept a sense of them. Combers of talk and 
laughter rolled aggrandizing from pillar to pillar with the beat of drum and 
guitar; the air bounced with fat enjoyment and gourmandise, and bright 
ministering women like chaffinches flew and darted between the dark arcades.
Will Scott, at one of the fires, found his fogged eyes swimming with the blaze 
of marching lights and his senses drugged with fleshly smells and mulled wine 
and the heat of the fat-spitting fire. Lymond had vanished; Johnnie Bulb was 
plying his trade with his gypsies, and Mat, after an encounter half glimpsed in 
the pillars, had disappeared too. A gigantic and violent nostalgia for venison 
seized Scott:
in its very midst he saw on the table before him a perfumed and



steaming haunch, laid by the white, ringed hands of the she-monster. She smiled 
at him. She was beautiful. The round, rose-petal face
was clear and young and yet maternal in its look; her hair was shining and 
clean, her great bulging torso massy with velvets and ermines cut to show the 
great snowy shelf of her breast, on which rubies lay, calm, beaming testimony to 
her serenity.
He rose uncertainly. She put down wine and two tankards, bread, sweetmeats, 
cheese and knives and salt; then swung off her tray with one hand and pressed 
him back into his seat with the other. "You don't get Molly serving you every 
day . . . but then, you travel in very special company." Her fine eyes with 
their dyed lashes appraised him. "Nice manners! You're strong, but you're kind: 
that means gentle birth and a pitying heart . . . What's your name, my dear?"
Her sweetness was irresistible, and her bulk meant nothing. He smiled back. "I'm 
called Will."
"Will! That's better!" The lovely eyes and mouth melted; she rufiled his hair 
gently, as his mother might have done. "Make a good meal, my dear, and your 
golden-haired friend will be with you shortly. Oh, God!" said Molly, and raised 
heavenly blue eyes to the rafters. "That hair! He was born to wreck us, body and 
soul, that one. Look at this!"
She lifted a white arm and fished below the rubies. A thin chain came into view, 
and at its end a ring with a single, magnificent square diamond. "I suppose I've 
had more jewels in my life than most, but this is the one I wear; the one I got 
from him." She laughed, and let it slip back. "Don't look scared! Diamond rings 
are proper currency for such as him, but you won't need to pay for your dinner 
at the silversmiths. Never mind my babbling. Go on, eat up, and drink, and 
forget your troubles, whatever they are. That's what the Ostrich is for."
She went quickly, gentle-footed, and he saw her go with a pang, and with a 
sudden, pleased resolve to do with diamonds. Then he turned to the table and 
forgot her. The venison was rich and savoury and cooked to tender perfection. 
The wine was warmly fumed and superb. The candies were strange and sweet; the 
cheeses firm and flavoured.
Life was glorious.
With a soft elegance Lymond slid into the seat opposite, and drew wine and plate 
toward him. He had changed into fine, fresh clothes:
studying him, Scott was made conscious of his own splashed jacket


and breeches. Slicing the venison, the Master remarked, apropos, "Molly doesn't 
clothe giants, unhappily, my Pyrrha. You've met her?"
Will nodded.
"Molly married an innkeeper," said Lymond. He poured wine and drank it, his eyes 
studying the other tables. "And the innkeeper was never seen again. He married 
Molly, and brought her to the Ostrich
-and next month, there was just Molly. Molly and her girls." Will said, "She's a 
great admirer of yours."
"She likes my money," said Lymond, and catching the look in Scott's eye, grinned 
nastily. "Which ring did she show you? The diamond or the seed pearl?"
Resentment on Molly's behalf faltered. "She showed me a diamond ring," said 
Scott defensively.
Lymond grinned again. "If you're fool enough to wear a valuable stone in your 
bonnet, you must expect to be sized up accordingly." He laughed outright. "Never 
mind, my innocence: everyone falls in love with Molly. But not, of course, 
uniquely with Molly." The pensive blue gaze continued to travel. "The dark wench 
by the other fire is Sal; the redhead by the kitchen door is Elizabeth, and the 
one at the next table Joan.~~
Will looked at Joan. She was pink and brown; her eyes sparkled like tourmalines 
and she had sharp ankles and red-heeled shoes. "I've seen worse," he remarked, 
and raised his tankard with an air. Lymond refilled it, and his own; and when 
Scott had finished his, filled it again. "Multa bibens . . ." Then he looked 
around, signalled, and returned the gentle, appraising stare to Will's face. 
"And now," said the Master, "suppose we fulfill our glad destiny?"
A cloud of musk approached and Molly in it, a cherub in its nest. "You're ready, 
dear?"
"We are. And the room?" asked Lymond.
"Waiting for you. Number four, dear." A key changed hands. "You remember the 
stairs?"
She laughed, and Lymond said, "They haven't left any great impression, but I 
recall they exist. We'll find them. Come, Marigold."
Where there is no custom of reticence in childhood, there is no vice of which a 
well-brought-up young man need be ignorant-even a young man who three months 
before has cherished the purest ideals. When Will Scott got to his feet, his 
heartbeats were behaving oddly, but he was not slow in following the Master 
across the jammed, legstrewn room, up a dark stairway leading from arcade to 
gallery, and


along a long, stiffing passage railed off on one side from the room they had 
just left. Wooden doors on the other side of the corridor were numbered. Lymond 
unlocked the fourth and went in, with Scott at his heels. The Master turned, and 
kicked the door shut.
The room held an uncurtained bed, a mirror, an armory, a table, two candlesticks 
and a youngish man, sitting on a low, cushioned bench. As Scott approached, the 
man jumped to his feet, frowning. He was tall, with long, fine hair and pale, 
opalesque eyes set shallowly in a triangular face. He said, "I am expecting a 
gentleman. Are you . . .
"I am Lymond." The Master moved into the candlelight, and recognition and relief 
showed in the other's eyes. "And this is my lieutenant, Mr. Scott. Will-the 
Master of Maxwell."
Three months of Lymond's company had taught Will Scott presence of mind. He 
bowed, and out of the wreckage of his emotions salvaged the necessary 
recollection: of the Master staging a rescue on the Carlisle road on a dark, 
October night, and of his voice saying afterward, "The Master of Maxwell is an 
important personage almost entirely surrounded by English. . . Consider this an 
opening for smothered mate." Scott, directing a private grimace at Lymond's 
unresponsive back, seated himself fatalistically on the edge of the bed; the 
Master of Maxwell was also reseated. Lymond, bringing a jug and cups from the 
armory, said, "You're making for Carlisle, Mr. Maxwell?"
"If it's any affair of yours, I am, sir." Yellow tiercel eyes notched with black 
stared at the Master; Lymond, impervious, poured wine. Scott, his interest 
suddenly commanded, thought, A show of muscle, by God! Have we found one 
gentleman who hasn't yet succumbed to the legend?
In silence, Lymond offered Maxwell wine; in silence, he took it. Then the Master 
hitched himself smoothly on the edge of the table, glanced at Scott, who had 
buried his nose in a cup, and said, "I chose the Ostrich as our rendezvous, Mr. 
Maxwell, because of its uncommon properties. This is the sounding board of the 
North. No whisper is too low for the Ostrich. No movement too faint for its 
eyes. Consider, for example, who passed north recently. Ireland, for one- your 
brother's priest from London. He'll be waiting for you at Threave, anxious to 
have your views on Lord Maxwell's offer to surrender Lochmaben to the English. 
Who else? A surveyor from


Calais, on his way to Wharton. The Scots garrisons at Crawford and
Langholm are worrying his lordship: Mr. Petit is to advise on the best
ways of fortifying Dumfries, and Kirkcudbright, and Lochwood, and
Milk, and CockpOOl Tower, and Lochmaben-when they have it.
"Then Mr. Thomson, Lord Wharton's deputy, came north. That was in order to meet 
your uncle, Drumlanrig. Sir James failed, I'm afraid, to persuade him that 
between men of integrity hostages are irrelevant. And, of course, a number of 
gentlemen from the West Marches passed through to Carlisle to sign the 
celebrated oath. To serve the King of England, renounce the Bishop of Rome, do 
all in their power to advance the King's marriage with the Queen of Scotland; 
take part with all who serve him against their enemies, and obey the commands of 
the Lord Protector, lords lieutenant and wardens.
And most recently, one of Wharton's men came south with an indiscreet letter 
from your brother-in-law the Earl of Angus to someone else, which is going to 
interest the English considerably."
Even to Scott, most of this was news. If it were true-and Maxwell would 
certainly know-it was a show of strength that even he could not afford to 
ignore. John Maxwell stretched his long legs, put down his cup, and lay back, 
the yellow eyes fixed on Lymond. "Do you own the Ostrich? Or only a capacity for 
pleasing Molly?"
The blue eyes smiled. "A distinction without a difference."
Maxwell said, "Mr. Crawford, there is no need to show me the hood. I respond 
quite well to the lure. Our last talk intrigued me a good deal."
"Sufficiently?"
"Sufficiently for your purpose." The luminous eyes, apparently satisfied with 
their diet, released their grip. Maxwell rose, refilled his cup and sat down, 
continuing in his dry, brisk voice. "I have the information you wanted. Samuel 
Harvey, who is a bachelor, lives in London and is there at present on duty and 
unlikely to come north. Gideon Somerville is a wealthy man, now retired from 
court, with a manor called Flaw Valleys on Tyneside near Hexham. He is married 
and has a ten-year-old daughter. I made these inquiries privately when last in 
Carlisle: there is nothing to connect them with your name."
"I'm obliged for your care. As it turns out, it hardly matters."
"You've no interest in these men?"
"I intend to meet them both. But one of your brothers-in-law is


aware of it, and either he or Grey will almost certainly prepare the ground for 
me. No matter. Of Cat, nor Fail, nor Trap, I haif nac Dreid."
"Your self-confidence is incredible, sir," said Maxwell dryly.
"Subject to intelligence," said Lymond, "nothing is incalculable. Your marriage, 
for instance."
Scott, fascinated, thought he saw John Maxwell's eyes narrow. There was the 
briefest pause, then the tall man said, "I have considered your suggestion. On 
my present standing with the Queen Dowager, neither she nor the Governor would 
conceivably agree, even if the plan worked."
"Your standing might be improved."
"My brother, Lord Maxwell, is still a prisoner in London. And there are hostages 
at Carlisle for my good behaviour."
"It might be improved without overt harm to your reputation in England. It's now 
mid-November. In two or three weeks' time, the Earl of Lennox is due at 
Carlisle, and if affairs are favourable, he'll try another experimental march 
into southern Scotland."
"And so . . .
"And so, by pure chance and natural greed, Lennox's men might bungle the raid. 
The real nature of the chance being known only to the Scottish Government, 
acting on your advice. Lennox blames his men for the failure: the Queen knows it 
is due to the Master of Maxwell."
Silence. Maxwell moved. "Is this possible?"
"You shall hear. I'll describe it to you now; and in greater detail later when 
we know Lennox's exact movements. And the credit shall be yours."
The Master of Maxwell said, "I am trying to persuade myself that all this is not 
a matter of great disadvantage to yourself?"
Lymond smiled gently. "The road Lennox will take passes the road to Hexham," he 
said. "I told you there would be a trap. And the English will spring it for me."
They rose at midnight, Maxwell lifting his cloak and hat, gloves and whip. He 
nodded to Scott and stooping, turned in the doorway to Lymond. "And curb your 
mad, antic mind, I beg you. I've no heart to spend myself sustaining what you 
are creating for me."
"Have no qualms," said Lymond gravely. "We are well matched." Maxwell, 
astonishingly, laughed and went out.


Lyrnond shut the door. "And that," he said to Scott, "is how mulberry trees grow 
into silk shirts."
"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 passage and shouted 
over the gallery rail. "You keep a damned 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 snatches 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 passage. "There are nine devilish notes not two yards away. Have you 
forgotten, my sweeting, who is in room number one?"
"Hell!" said Molly, and added a word which even the wives of innkeepers seldom 
pronounce. "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, roused



by 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 
balustrade swam a human head, in-humanly antennaed; the cheeks plimmed, the eyes 
closed, the fingers leaped, and all audible hell 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 glasses 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 passage, 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, my



friend 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 assent 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, God!" 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 God'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 lass we have with us. We'll 
play it on the floor, and I'll stand guarantee for all of us down here."



Lymond waved assent. The party flowed back down and into the common room in 
tumult and laughter and a ifiling of tankards, while a centre space 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. God, 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 balustrade.
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 
shirts 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 prone 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. Give



over, now, before the whole house is in shivers and shards. Stop that damned 
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 assailants 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 space 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 passing 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 he



was 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.
Under a pale, fresh moon, trees and bracken sighed and gentle cloud washed over 
the sky.
"Th'erratic starres heark'ning harmony. Look up," said the Master. "And see 
them. The teaching stars, beyond worship and commonplace tongues. The infinite 
eyes of innocence."
But Scott was too drunk to look up.



3. Cross Moves by a King's Knight

Lord Grey of Wilton, general of the northern parts for His Majesty King Edward 
of England, had swallowed a sour autumn and was encompassing an acid winter 
since the unlucky affair at Hume Castle.
On the Eastern Marches the River Tweed, with Berwick at its mouth, divided 
England and Scotland. Like the ancient pike Sir George Douglas had once called 
him, Lord Grey bitterly patrolled his forces on this boun4ary throughout October 
and November. On a slipstream of orders, reports, demand', inquiries, case 
papers, he stalked from fortress to fortress on its brawling banks and now, on 
the last Tuesday in November, swam back to Norham with the complaints and 
entreaties of Luttrell, Dudley and Builmer pursuing him like hagfish. To the 
keep of Norham Castle, he summoned Gideon Somerville.
The court office which had crowned the painstaking career of Jonathan Crouch had 
led Gideon Somerville to the inner chambers of the Palace, the favour of King 
Henry, and the friendship of any with that commodity still to spare. On Henry's 
death, Gideon had brought his wealth and his young family north to Hexhani, had 
settled there, and was little seen unless for summons of war.
Or but for the importunities of Lord Grey. Gideon was sufficiently well-born to 
please the Lord Lieutenant, and good-humoured enough to suffer him. So he waited 
now in a room at Norham, listening to his lordship-not a young man, except in 
resilience and a certain honest hardihood of mind: a man with clear eyes and a 
pink skin, and hair thickly grey like a badger's.








"I supposes" said Lord Grey, coming at last to the point, "I suppose you've 
heard of the occurrence at Hume?"
Gideon, a compassionate man, shook his head.
"Oh. Well. That fellow Sir George Douglas has offered to give me access to one 
of the Scotts-Buccleuch's heir, in fact. He's roving the Borders in bad company, 
and one of his associates has a vendetta with someone in London. Douglas 
suggests we trap young Scott through this man."
"Someone in London . . . ?" sought Gideon.
"Samuel Harvey's the man this bandit-whoever he is-wants, but the bandit himself 
doesn't know it yet," said Grey. "He thinks it might be you."
"I assure you, I haven't a vendetta with anyone," said Somerville. "Particularly 
a Scottish desperado. I didn't know Sam Harvey had, either."
"Well, I haven't communicated with Harvey, so I don't know what it's about," 
said Grey impatiently. "But that doesn't matter. The point is, this associate of 
Scott's is going to try and get in touch with one of you, and as Flaw Valleys' 
near the Border, it's likely to be you first."
"How pleasant," said Somerville. He looked a little taken aback. "And who is 
this spadassin who is about to visit me, and what do I do with him when he 
comes?"
"He's got to trace you, so it may be some time before you meet him. Who he is 
doesn't matter-Douglas was vague about his identity and I haven't inquired. All 
you have to do is act as messenger for us, Gideon. When the man comes, give him 
this letter from Douglas. It's all in order-I saw it before it was sealed. 
Here's a copy for you to see."
Somerville read the letter in silence. At the end he said, "And the only way of 
reaching him is through me?"
"The only way we know."
Gideon pushed back the paper and getting up, walked about the room. "You're 
thinking of Kate," said Grey. "But you needn't worry. I'll give you as many men 
as you want for extra guard. All I ask is that you let the man in when he comes, 
and hand him that letter."
Somerville said, "Forgive the egotism, but I'm thinking of myself as well as of 
Kate. I can't quite see myself convincing an irate mercenary that I am actually 
his best friend. In any case, may he not even bring the man you want-Scott, is 
it?-with him?"



"All the men I shall give you will be capable of recognizing Scott, if he 
comes," said Lord Grey; and for some reason his skin darkened. "Scott and 
another man, a Spaniard I'm anxious to catch. Yes. If Scott comes, they'll take 
him. And you can tear up the letter."
"Hum. And what if I'm away from home? If I'm called to Carlisle for Wharton's 
next sally-"
"You have leave to refuse in my name," said Lord Grey, with a certain 
satisfaction. "This time you can serve the King better by staying at home."
"I can see," said Gideon, "I'm going to be popular everywhere. Willie, I'm a 
peaceable man with a happy family life trying to mind my own business. What on 
earth am I involving myself in this for?"
"Because," said Lord Grey, "you're a fair and loyal friend to your country."
The clear eyes viewed him. "Have it your own way," said Gideon Somerville 
resignedly. "As usual."


2.

Discovered Check.

The third pawne . . ought to be figured as a clerk yf they wryte otherwyse than 
they ought to doe
may ensewe moche harme and damage to the comyn. Therfore ought they to take good 
heede that
they chaoge not ne corrumpe in no wyse the
content of the sentence. For than ben they first
forsworn. And ben bounden to make amendes to them that by theyr tricheryc they 
have endomaged.





1. Diagonal Mating Begins


 IF THE Richard Crawford who went to Branxholm was a troubled and reticent man, 
the Richard Crawford who returned was, as his wife ruefully put it, as sociable 
as a Trappist monk.
From this aspect, it was a pity his wounds were no worse. The tender bonds of 
love and service which Mariotta would cheerfully have wrapped about a helpless 
and stationary invalid were stretched instead, frayed and snapping, to the heels 
of an absent, overactive, uncompromising gentleman, up before he should have 
been out of bed and out before he should have been up.
Lady Buccleuch, approached by Mariotta, had proved an unhelpful confidante. 
"That's his job," she pointed out. "You don't, I suppose, want to flit here and 
yon tied to the man's collar like Agrippa's dog with the devil."
"But are you telling me the two circles never meet?" cried Mariotta



in exasperation. "Are we to spend the young days of our lives with never a 
shared doubt, or pleasure, or worry but what falls crash at our feet the one 
rare Sunday in five we're together?"
"God," had said Janet. "I'm not likely to buy doubts off Buccleuch. l've enough 
myself for the two of us, and I'll fight to the death to keep Wat's great 
blundering thumbs out of them. . .
That was at the start of November. Very soon afterward, the first parcel of 
jewellery arrived.
Mariotta found it, wrapped and anonymous, in her solar: discreet inquiry could 
not discover how it came there. Inside was a handsome ring-brooch, 
disingenuously inscribed Nostre et tautdits a vostre desir. There was nothing 
else to betray its origin, and from that fact, and the arrogance of the message, 
she thought she guessed the sender.
Lady Culter passed an uneasy afternoon, considering what to do. Tell Richard? 
She might be wrong. There might be a letter on its way with a perfectly innocent 
explanation. Or another less innocent. But Richard in his anger had already 
exposed himself too rashly to his brother: to repress further injury was 
something the Dowager, at least, would approve. She decided to wait.
No letter came, but a week later, a second packet. This was a bracelet, 
demanding boldly, is thy heart ar my heart? with an insolence which was almost 
its undoing. Mariotta roamed her room, arguing and counterarguing, dogged by a 
recollection of blue eyes and a blurred, inebriated voice.
It was monstrous, of course, even to compare the two men. A well-balanced, 
mature woman of nineteen would unpin the ring-brooch from inside her bodice and 
put it and the bracelet in Richard's hands saying meekly, "Your brother is 
paying court to me. What do I do?"
Mariotta didn't ask what to do. She wore the bracelet and waited for Richard to 
comment first, and Richard failed to notice it. She wore the diamond brooch when 
it came as well; with the same results. The Dowager, on her return from 
Branxholm several days later, admired it, taking it for an Irish piece of 
Mariotta's own. Committed, the girl did not contradict her. Then Lady Buccleuch 
had arrived, as invited, on the nineteenth, had remarked cheerfully on the pale, 
glittering gold, and had added: "Sybilla, that reminds me. Did Richard ever do 
anything about that glove of Lymond's that he dropped at the Papingo?"
The Dowager shook her white head. All three women were in Sybilla's own room, 
and the firelight, rosy in the November mirk,



fluttered over bed and desk and gave odd, frenetic life to the wall hangings.
"The glove's still in that French cabinet of mine in the Stirling house. Of 
course, we came south as soon as Richard was up, and he's been so busy since. . 
. . Oh, here we are," said the Dowager placidly as the door opened. "Come along 
in, Master Bulb. We are all agog to hear about the Philosopher's Stone."

* * *



When Lymond left the Ostrich, Johnnie Bulb had stayed on, moving only to go to 
Midculter the following Saturday. His troop, as guilelessly advertised to both 
Lymond and Scott, had gone-without him-to Edinburgh.
Shown now into the small, warm room, his bright eyes flickered over the Dowager 
and Mariotta, and rested a little longer on Lady Buccleuch. Janet dabbled in 
alchemy and medicine herself, and he was not altogether pleased to see her.
But he took, without diflidence, the stool offered him at a proper distance; and 
plunged, as arranged at Stirling with the Dowager, into the strange and fabulous 
history of the Philosopher's Stone.
Time passed. The small panes of the Dowager's window became grey, and then 
ultramarine, and the hot, scented air fondled and set about itself strange 
words. Sulphur, mercury and salt. The essential unity of matter. Meteors, 
perfect and imperfect compounds and the flesh of the Universe: Saturn and lead, 
Jupiter and tin, iron and Mars. The twelve processes of multiplication and 
projection. Cauda Pavonis. Ferrum Phibosophorus. Dragon's Blood.
Johnnie Bulb, judging his moment, stopped when the room was quite dark. There 
was a heavy silence. Then Janet Beaton said reIlectively, "Lapis philosophorum. 
The basic idea is simple enough. In man, perfect proportion of the elements 
means health; in metals, it means gold. Equate the two~ produce a system capable 
of creating such an elemental fusion and you have a means on the one hand of 
creating health-long life, power, vigour-and on the other, of creating-~"
"Gold," said the gypsy softly. He watched their faces: Mariotta's afraid and 
fascinated, Lady Buccleuch's intent and practical, the Dowager's vividly 
interested. "I have the secret. But I need the means of practising it."


"And having made the Stone?" said Sybilla.
"I can transmute plain ore into gold, in any quantity you may want." Lady 
Buceleuch said practically, "We should, of course, have to reach a proper 
commercial agreement about that," and Mariotta exclaimed, a shade wildly, 
"Dragon's Blood!"
"It's just a name for the residue, dear," said Sybilla thoughtfully. She looked 
up with decision. "Glassware-I can get that: Janet, you'll advise me. Ore . . . 
What sort? Lead? I can send to Edinburgh. Furnace . . . We'd have to rebuild one 
of the disused bake-house ovens at the back of the courtyard. . . . Yes. Master 
Bulb," said the Dowager, "I understand if we supply all this equipment, you're 
willing to work here on creating the Stone, and to give us the benefit of it 
when it's done?"
"If you do that," said Johnnie sincerely, "you'll be making an unique 
contribution to the great science of alchemy and the sum total of human wisdom. 
. .

Much later, when he had gone, Christian and Agnes Herries joined them and heard 
the tale.
The Baroness's eyes were wide as platters. "The Philosopher's Stone! We'll all 
live to be ninety, and have everything gold!"
"Remember Midas, dear," said Sybilla mildly. "Did you enjoy visiting Boghall?" 
And while the unsparing account unfolded itself, found and absently flourished a 
letter. "It came for you while you were away.~~
Agnes stopped dead. Letters in this expensive and empty young life were rare 
birds: her mother never wrote; her grandfather seldom. She seized and bore it 
away without a word.
A moment later, she was back. "Can anyone," asked Agnes in a voice oddly muted, 
"can anyone besides Christian translate Spanish?"

The Dowager glanced over. "You seem to have a remarkably erudite correspondent, 
surely? But tell Christian if you want to. We shan't listen.~~
Agnes said, after a moment, "It doesn't matter. It's a poem."
"A poem!" exclaimed Lady Buccleuch. "That girl's got a love letter, or you can 
call me Ananias."
The Dowager's voice was gently amused. "I think you'd better put us out of our 
misery, Agnes. Who is it from?" And the Baroness, in


a voice in which surprise, pride and a kind of simple gratitude could be heard, 
answered, "The Master of Maxwell."
She read the letter aloud, in the end, with no persuasion at all.

I fear to write. The great Pan is dead: there is no magic to bring you the 
likeness of my heart. My physical likeness you can have; but that will show you 
only a camelopard-no hero of romance; no prince of myths and sagas. My face will 
never do duty for my heart:
my voice can never scale the barriers of your youth, your wealth, your hand 
promised-they say-to another.
But birds of paradise feed on dew and rare vapours and men on Pytan live by the 
smell of wild apples: so perhaps may the sound of words nourish us both. From 
here where all is night, I see a foolish-fire, and stretch my hands toward it 
and hope for miracles.
I cannot come to your nectary. I can only boom like a bittern on my marshes and 
say, Have pity now, O bright, blissful goddess. Once, I wished to marry you. Now 
you are betrothed and I must not wish it . . . but in writing these words I have 
attained all my object; I have achieved what, with your help, has been all I 
desired.
Read and remember sometimes the writer. You may see here no more than Mercury's 
finger, but its office is no less sincere

And it ended in Spanish:

Rosa das rosas, et fror das frores
Dona das donas, sennor das sennores

A whole verse of it followed; then the signature: JOHN MAXWELL.
There was a stunned silence. Christian, staring where she knew Mariotta to be, 
scowled like a heathen, daring her to laugh. Lady Buccleuch, greatly taken, 
said, "Well, for thirteen years old I call that a prodigious compliment: hardly 
a word under four syllables."
The Dowager was reflective. "Mercury's finger. How odd. The Spanish, Christian-
is it difficult to translate?" She had to repeat herself.
"The Spanish?" said the blind girl. "Oh, I know it. In fact I recently- It's 
very well known," she ended rather lamely.
"You recently translated it? Did you?" asked the Dowager.
"I was going to say, I recently heard someone sing it," said Christian 
truthfully. She gave them the gist, her mind elsewhere. I cannot come . . . In 
writing these words I have attained all my object .
I have achieved what, with your help, has been all 1 desired. The mischievous, 
overdecorated tongue was the tongue-surely-of her


nameless prisoner of Boghall and Inchmahome and Stirling. The song was his. The 
artifice was his. But the letter was from the Master of Maxwell: the seal was 
authentic and the messenger had been from Threave. Finally, it was addressed to 
Agnes, and not to her.
But he had promised, odd as it had seemed, to write; and he knew that of the 
household, only she could speak Spanish, and would be shown such a letter. And 
in it, embedded in sly absurdities, was the news she wanted. Christian became 
aware that Agnes, in the same tentative voice, was saying, "Then you think I 
should answer?" and Sybilla was replying, "I think you certainly should. Of 
course, it's ridiculously sudden, and you can never tell a man from his letters, 
and I certainly shouldn't mention it in the hearing of a Hamilton; but a 
flirtation by correspondence never did anyone any harm."
Pause. Then said Agnes, "I can't write Spanish and I've forgotten all my Latin."
SybiDa answered the panic too, in her calm way. "Then perhaps Christian would 
help you, dear. Write it together, and see how you get on."
This was dangerously apt, and Christian felt herself go scarlet. Yet she could 
certainly help Agnes. And it might be possible-and could do no harm-to slip in 
some sort of ambiguity of her own. She got up. "Come on," she said. "We'll go to 
your room and compose an answer straight away."

* * *


The letter had been finished, a meal had been served, and Richard had joined 
them when Wat Scott of Buccleuch arrived to collect his wife.
The Dowager, who had excellent control of her facial muscles, dispatched 
servants for food and wine, and drew Buccleuch in a cloud of disarming inquiry 
to the fire.
Sir Wat sat, throwing an uneasy glance at his host, who said politely, "Your 
illness taken a turn for the better, I see, Wat?"
Buccleuch shifted in his chair, casting an inimical look at his wife. "No, no. 
I'm not out of the wood yet, but Dod, I can hardly hold house all winter like a 
moulting hen. I'm taking a wee trip here and there betimes but incognito, you 
understand; without my pennants."
Richard, continuing with unruffled persistence, said, "What a pity. Then you 
won't be with us at the cattle raid?"
"This suggestion of Maxwell's? Now, there's a queer thing if you









like," said Buccleuch. "Here's a man who's been at Carlisle so often
"-Or will you?" said Richard like the crack of a whip.
Sir Wat halted. He said, "Well, as to that . . ." and stopped again.
"Will you listen to this?" demanded Dame Janet of the ceiling. "The man's lost 
his tongue and found a cricket's hind legs. Wat Scott, will you say plain out 
what you mean?"
She turned to Lord Culter. "The Queen's agreed to Wat parleying with the 
English, provided he gives enough anonymous proof of his good intentions in 
other directions. So he'll have to go to the raid, willy-nilly, if we have to 
put his head in a box to keep it quiet from those sharp-eyed ferrets at 
Carlisle."
An echo from Buccleuch's own words arrested the conversation. "A suggestion," 
demanded Agnes Herries, "of the Master of Maxwell?"
"That's right." Buccleuch, offered an escape route, was concerned only with 
disappearing along it. "The idea was John Maxwell's, though whether we can trust 
it is another story. But the man's offered to send us time and place for 
Wharton's next invasion across the Border, and at the very least to hold his own 
men from interfering. It sounds fair enough when you think of it: he's dead 
anxious to keep in with the Queen."
"The fellow's fairly running himself to a shadow," said his wife. "We've been 
busy at it all afternoon reading correspondence from the same Master of Maxwell. 
Tell Bucclcuch your news, Agnes."
Agnes conveyed, with a certain nonchalance, the gist of Maxwell's letter. The 
eyes of the two men met, this time in irresistible speculation. Buccleuch said 
thoughtfully, "I see. Well, it'll do no harm. She's to reply, Sybilla?"
"She has already," said the Dowager placidly. "I thought it might be best."
Lady Buccleuch said, "What about it, Wat? Is he safe to deal with?" Buccleuch 
took a deep breath. "He might be. The Protector's got him by the short hairs, of 
course; his brother's in London, and Maxwell himself was due to report to 
Wharton just about now. Add to that the fact that all his lands are two hours 
out of Carlisle and the Earl of Angus is married to his only sister, and you've 
got the pattern of a harassed man. Harassed, but not stupid," added Buccleuch. 
"It's just possible he may be capable of juggling them all: we'll have to wait 
and see.~~



When, finally, the Branxholm party rose to go, Dame Janet dropped behind with 
Lord Culter. "I'm remembering what we spoke of at Branxholm, Richard. Wat's 
heard nothing from the boy up to now."
Culter said briefly, "You know what I think about that."
"Well, you heard him," said Janet. "He's not likely to change. It's for you to 
decide how badly you want Lymond."
He offered no reply and, looking at him, she spoke under her breath. "And if 
you'd a different look on your face, my dear, I'd give you some damned good 
advice about your wife as well."


2.	An Exchange of Pawns Is Suggested

For the gentlemen, officers and heads on the west parts of Scotland entered to 
the King's service said the notice. Read aloud by a staid, cultivated voice, it 
proceeded to expect the English gentlemen thus addressed to muster their 
horsemen at Dumfries on the following Sunday night, when the Earl of Lennox and 
Lord Wharton's son Henry would command them in an attack on the Scots.
"Goodness me," said Kate Somerville, peering at and then watering a rather 
dilapidated flower in a pot. "What it is to be on holiday when the rest of the 
school's at work. How would you spend your vacation, Philippa, if' you were 
Father?"
Philippa, a serious ten-year-old with long straight hair, thought. "Go hunting?"
"In this weather? No, darling. Father doesn't like wearing his tarry shirt 
unless he has to."
"Play backgammon?"
"Father disapproves of gambling with people who play better than he does."
"Make us a new song?"
"Now that," said Kate, "is a harmless, genteel and civilized occupation for an 
unemployed gentleman. Certainly, he might make us a song.''
Gideon Somerville laid down Wharton's notice and gazed at his wife and daughter. 
"I may be old and unemployed, but I am not yet reduced to being administered 
totally from above, like a worthy but derelict sundial. Not yet. I am not going 
to compose a song for you. Or if I am, the idea will strike me of its own 
accord."
"Today," said his wife, "Father is in a tetchy mood. Give him


food, listen to what he has to say, but ask no questions, even intelligent 
ones." And she grinned at her husband.
Kate Somerville in her twenties was a neat brown creature with melting brown 
eyes and the temperament of a mature and witty old lady. All her life, and not 
least by Gideon, Kate had heard herself summed up as "sensible"; and no one, not 
even Gideon, guessed how she disliked it. An unusual blind spot, for Somerville 
was of all thing§ perceptive: in his wife's present smile he saw at once the 
reflection of his own uneasiness, and got tragically to his feet.
"All right. I know my place. To the music room!" he observed, and had the 
satisfaction of seeing his wife and daughter laugh and make with one accord for 
the door. Soon Lord Wharton's summons and the importunities of the Lord 
Lieutenant alike had vanished from his head, and as the winter rain fell on Flaw 
Valleys and its gardens and yards, on the stout, skeletal barrier trees and the 
Tyne, distantly hissing, and on the brown, patched hills and moors beyond, the 
Somervilles wrote and read and made music like bells in a campanile, and ignored 
the summons to Lord Wharton's attack.
But no English family within striking distance of the Scots Border ever sold its 
ears completely to pleasure. Kate, listening to the concert from her adjoining 
bedroom, heard voices outside, and against the sound of Gideon's voice warbling 
happily ("Sir, what say ye? Sing on, let us see") she distinguished one of his 
men below, calling. ("Now will it be, This or another day?") She nodded 
encouragingly, shut the window, and returning to the next room, interrupted 
Gideon ruthlessly.
"Come on, Chanticleer. There's a crisis in the farmyard."
He followed her down.
An agitated crowd of men broke the news. "It's the horses, sir! Someone's got 
into the stables and taken the lot. There's not a beast in sight, sir!"
Gideon questioned them sharply. They had seen no one. The groom in charge had 
been felled from behind and could tell nothing. They had heard the drumming of 
hoofs and had run after, to see a pack of scared horses sweeping down on the 
gatehouse. There, the guards had rashly run out and had been engulfed; in spite 
of them the gates were opened and the herd disappeared down the road.
"And what about-" began Gideon, and stopped. "You-and you
-and you!" he said sharply. "Shouldn't you be elsewhere?"
As he spoke, a tumbling figure appeared, calling. Kate, standing


quietly in the background, clicked her tongue. "I thought so. Your sly old nags 
have been decoys for your cattle, Gideon. Someone's emptied the byres while all 
our sleuthhounds were sniffing after hoofprints."
She was right. Someone had not only emptied the byres, but stripped the farm of 
its livestock. Every sheep, every cow, every heifer on Flaw Valleys had gone.
The men of the household were seldom berated, but not because Gideon Somerville 
was incapable of straight talking when he felt like it. They listened, and then 
ran like hares under his voice to beg and borrow every horse his neighbours 
could muster and to collect food and weapons for the long chase that might be 
ahead.
Gideon turned to his wife. "I'm sorry, lass. Employment for the unemployed 
gentleman after all."
"Oh, well. Everyone else has suave, cosmopolitan sheep: why not us? The Millers 
at Hepple have a ewe that's been to Kelso three times, and they've never been 
farther than Ford in their lives." Kate peered absently into the farm pond, and 
clucked again. "Thoughtless creatures. They've forgotten the fish."
"I'll come back as soon as I can," said Gideon, undeceived. "Those damned guards 
at least will be on their toes now."
"All right," said h~s wife philosophically. "Double the guard; put the fowling 
pieces under the bed and call in the chickens. If this is a trick, it'll have to 
be a good one to catch a Somerville sleeping, again."
Gideon bent and kissed her, and shortly afterward, armed and mounted on borrowed 
horseflesh, led his men out of the yard and north after the raiders.

* * *



The raid on Flaw Valleys was the most easterly of a series of robberies which 
swept the south side of the Border that day and were guided and controlled by 
Crawford of Lymond.
While, like some fissured lodestone, Lord Wharton presided at Carlisle and drew 
toward him the reluctant hearties of Cumberland and Westmorland, the unmanned 
farms of both counties were neatly stripped also of their tenants on the hoof, 
and a stream of hide and wool toiled docilely to the Border, bleat and bellow 
mingling with soprano from the outraged hearths.



win Scott, working fast from herd to herd, showed the marks of his three months' 
apprenticeship. Meeting him in the press, Johnnie Bulb grinned. "Man, for a 
minute I thought it was your chief, except it's a different sort of sneer."
At Carlisle the Lord Warden, totally unaware, marshalled his force, conferred 
with his colleague the Earl of Lennox and consulted the sky, which told him that 
something unpleasant was probably on the way and made him very glad indeed, in 
the small and unkempt civilian corner of his soul, that the Earl of Lennox and 
not himself was going on this expedition.
In Scotland at the same time, the Queen's forces made somewhat confused 
rendezvous at Lamington, as directed by John Maxwell, and prepared to march 
south, Lord Culter and Wat Scott of Buccleuch among them.
By nightfall, the hail was already whipping down in gusts and the raids on 
livestock in Northern England were coming to a systematic close. Trickles of 
animals met and joined, tributary met tributary and river engulfed river. By the 
time the Earl of Lennox left Carlisle the united four-footed Sabaoth was already 
ahead of him and steering at a tangent for his line of march. Beyond them to the 
north the Scottish army was bedded down on their line of march, the ice making 
faint and Aeolian music about their steel helmets.
Between England and Scotland here lay river and marsh: on the west the smooth, 
treacherous skins of the Solway estuary; on the east the high, wild Roman hills. 
As the English army under Lennox marched through that night the lightly covered 
ground opened polyp mouths to their hoofs and made thick mud-slides of every 
bank. They foundered and staggered and trotted and cursed, and Lennox the 
commander spat with fury when his scouts reported out of the dark that there was 
a cattle blockage in the narrow road ahead.
There was nothing unusual in the wilder Border clans taking a dark night to 
steal some cattle on the Scottish side and drive them south. The Elliots in 
charge of the herd were apologetic about it and no doubt did their best to clear 
the road. But when Lennox and his men arrived they met nose to nose with what 
seemed like every beast in Scotland with four feet to it.
Lennox looked about. Deep, quaking marsh lay on his left and right; the road 
ahead of him was banked above it and exceedingly narrow. Fifty yards off on his 
right a small hill thrust up from the bog and overhung the road on its eastern 
edge. Between this escarpment and the western marsh the dim white of the 
causeway was hidden by packed and ponderous bodies. "What's the road like beyond 
that hill?" snapped tiw Earl of Lennox.
"Wide and flat, sir," said the Elliot. "You'll have no trouble there."
"You mean you'll have no trouble," said Lennox viciously. "We're going to turn 
your herd and drive it back through the defile, my man; and then I shall ride 
through them. If you think I'm staying here to be nudged into the marsh by a 
baron of beef, you're mistaken." And, rising in the saddle, Lennox's men with 
whoops and cracking of whips cantered down the road toward the hill; and the 
herd, after much eye-rolling and heavy breathing and ponderous caracole, heaved 
itself around and trotted back the way it had-supposedly--come. The citizens of 
Cumberland gambolled after it.
Who can tell by what signs, on a dark, stormy night far from home, a farmer can 
recognize his own? Lennox's army was just moving under the lee of the hill when 
the first shout rent the night. "Hey! Wait a bit! I could swear . . . God damn 
it, there's three of my cattle over there!" It was joined by another. "Here-
those are Gilsland sheep!" And an anguished recital began. "Hey! Wait! Stop! 
Turn them!"
Lennox, riding irritably in front, had his bridle seized by a sweaty hand. 
"There's been a mistake, sir. These aren't Scottish cattle, they're our own; and 
sheep and hacks too. We'll have to turn them." And the speaker, releasing 
himself, shot past him and was followed by half the army.
Lennox stood in his stirrups and shouted himself hoarse, but no one replied. He 
was alone with a handful of men on the southern fringe of an inextricable mess 
of animals and men, and the latter were exclusively engaged in finding and 
rounding up their possessions. The Earl of Lennox sank back in the saddle, and 
at that moment, there was a hissing of wet, grey feathers and the arrows began.
They fell from the heights of the small hill to the east, and from the Scottish 
end of the road to the north, and as the English, abandoning their livestock, 
faced about-from the south as well, from over a small group of cattle which, 
appearing from nowhere, blocked the only way out.
Lennox's men, pulling out bow and quiver with numbed fingers among the nudging 
rumps and dripping muzzles, found themselves handicapped players in an 
unpleasant and one-sided game. They dismounted very quickly indeed, and dodging 
bent among the heaving



flanks, began to make hopeless dashes like mice in a cornfield. The arrows fell 
faster.
On the slope overlooking the trap, Scott of Buccleuch was enjoying himself 
hugely. "One for Tam Scott, and one for Bob Scott, and one for Jocky Scott, and 
one for . . . Christ, they'll make off down that Carlisle road if we're not 
careful."
"It's all right." One of his own officers reassured him, peering through the 
dark. "Someone's driven a small herd across the south end of the road as well, 
and they're fighting across it."
"Dod, are they? Someone's got brains," said Sir Wat admiringly. "Well, come on 
then. Let's help him." And he swept over the hill, passing the men fighting at 
the top-strangers and Maxwells, he supposed. At this point he also saw something 
else. A shadow. An easy, competent-looking shadow, with wide shoulders and an 
adroit way with a horse.
Buccleuch waved on the rest of his men and let them pass him, his eyes glued to 
the solitary horseman. Then the figure opened its mouth to give some advice to a 
heifer and Sir Wat roared "Will!" in a voice unmistakable over six counties. His 
son wheeled.
Against an infernal fresco of heaving cattle Scott saw his father's Red Jimmy 
beak and two sparks for his eyes; Buccleuch saw a hard elegance of outline and 
suspected an unaccustomed set to the mouth. He said, and had to clear his throat 
first, "Boy-will ye come back with me? Now? They won't miss you in the dark"-
speaking fast because men were coming toward them.
He thought the boy jerked, but Will only said in a low voice, "No. It's too late 
. . . I must go," and gathered his reins. The others were nearly on them.
"Will . . . meet me then. Just to talk. I won't keep you, I swear, unless you 
want it. Send me word, and I'll come anywhere. Will you do it?"
They were Lamington men coming toward him; Buccleuch watched them in a ferment 
of fury. Then his son nodded. "Very well. I'll send word when I can come." The 
boy lingered a moment with a look odd, and almost avid; then he wheeled and 
drove his horse down the road.
After that, the rout was complete. Broken between panicking animals and 
remorseless archery, provisions lost, weapons lost, nerve shattered, Lennox's 
troops escaped into the moss and out of it as best they could, and a good many 
did not escape at all. The Scots had



begun to withdraw when Lord Culter noticed that the group of cattle blocking the 
Carlisle end of the trap had disappeared. It was trotting instead across the 
faint, crooked path which led to the hills in the east with men all around it, 
driving it on. And at the head of the circle, knotting it tight and glittering 
in the sudden, faint moonlight, was a bright yellow head.
Lord Culter dismounted, running, and pulled the bow from his saddle as his horse 
passed. He fitted an arrow and flung up his arm.
All his vision was filled by a broad, carapace back, leading a troop of men 
unerringly along the path of his bowshot. It was Buccleuch, bellowing as he 
went. "A Scott! A Scott!"
Warned, the golden head turned. Culter saw a white blur; then a curtain of 
arrows fell between Buccleuch's men and Lymond. The men hesitated, drew up and 
turned back as the raiders, in that moment's grace, vanished.
Standing where he had dismounted, Lord Culter, the enigmatical, the impersonal, 
the impervious, raised a stiff right arm and smashed an expensive yew bow like a 
whip on the rocks. Sir Wat, slightly discomposed, was trotting back.
"Dod, did you see who that was?"
Lord Culter said dispassionately, "How your son debases himself is no concern of 
mine. You might however recall that to protect a murderer and a traitor is a 
capital offence."
Buccleuch, braced for rebuke, had not quite expected this. He took a whistling 
lungful of Border air, swallowed it down with offence and resentment, and said 
simply, "Man, you're obsessed. Come on. Everyone's waiting."
"Just a moment. Understand me," said Lord Culter, and his eyes for a moment were 
as foreign as Lymond's. "Next time, regardless of what is in the way, I shoot."
But Buccleuch's patience, a slim and frangible thing, could carry no more 
pressure that night. With a brief, unforgivable click, it snapped. "I had 
rather," said Sir Wat through his beard, "have a son tried and hanged for being 
driven into bad company, Richard Crawford, than be known in company, honourable 
or otherwise, by a name fit to spit on." And wheeling, he drove his horse into 
the night, leaving Culter motionless, unseeing, at his back.

In the small hours of Sunday morning the sky cleared, the temperature dropped, 
and the stars described a country silted and sparkling



with white. Trampled mud grew a coating of thin, iCy paint and the marshes 
spawned their own sluggish and gelid roe. The earth became very still. In all 
Cumberland nothing stirred but a round, black herd of beasts, running swiftly 
east within a circle of horsemen.

* * *



In the valley of the Tyne, the manor of Flaw Valleys waited with vacant stable 
and empty byre for Gideon's return; and in the yard and in the garden Grey's men 
crammed themselves into impossible corners out of the wind and rasped together 
glazed palms.
The sound of hoofbeats alerted them. Kate heard it too, and opened a window, her 
shadow languishing, dimly sparkling, on the grass. She called, "Are they 
coming?" and someone above her replied, "Yes, ma'am, I see them-Allan! Get the 
gate open!-And good work too, ma'am. Looks to me as if he's got the whole herd 
back."
Kate's face sparkled like a new penny. She ran for Philippa. Together they hung, 
fascinated, out of the window and watched the seething backs filling the yard 
below. Above the din they could hear men on horseback shouting, and the crack of 
whips combing the excited beasts back to their quarters. "Don't they look 
tired?" said Kate sympathetically, of a huddle of sodden and glass-eyed ewes. "I 
don't see Father, Philippa, do you?"
But Pippa's brown eyes shone, and she turned away from the window, plaits 
swinging. "I know where he is! Listen!" said the child, and opened the door.
Along the corridors of Flaw Valleys poured the notes of a harpsichord, played 
triumphantly and fast. Kate seized her daughter's hand, and pranced along the 
passage. "Do you suppose sheep can play Morales? No? Then it's Father with four 
hands," she said, and flung open the music room door.
It was not Gideon. "Lord: the tame assassin!" said Kate, and popped Philippa 
outside the door.
"There are some rough men of mine in every passage out there," said a cool voice 
from the harpsichord. "You will both be safer with me. Shut the door."
Kate brought Phiippa in and closed it.
"And sit down."
Firmly tightening the belt of her oldest wrap, Kate took her daughter and sat. 
In her orderly brain, the situation was clear. This



was the man of whom Lord Grey had warned Gideon. It was her task to convince him 
that Gideon was not the man he was after, and without frightening Philippa. She 
longed to know if her husband was in the house.
Mrs. Somerville ran her tongue round her lips and spoke weakly. "I hope you 
won't find us tiresome, sitting here looking at you."
He could certainly play. He continued to do so, paying not the slightest 
attention.
"I don't suppose," said Kate sociably, "you get much time for practice. Are you 
here for a long stay?"
"I am afraid," said the cool voice, "you must have patience until your husband 
comes back. He's been following me carefully: he won't be long."
"Following you . . . Did you steal the animals?" exclaimed Kate, surprised into 
an unpremeditated question.
"And brought them back."
"Oh!" She hid her face. "These mighty marksmen of Lord Grey's Of course. And 
they opened the gates for you, thinking it was
Gideon. Oh, shame on you. Is there no God who looks after little brains?"
Silence. So she was on her own, Kate thought, and instilled all the friendly 
helpfulness she could into her next question. "Excuse me, but are you the bad 
company young Mr. Scott has got into?"
In one gentle movement, the yellow-haired man lifted both hands from the 
keyboard, rested one on the instrument, and swivelled to face mother and 
daughter. Kate, her arm around Philippa, met wide eyes like a kitten's; then he 
said without stress, "A humourist, I see. Why did you mention Scott's name?"
"If you're the person who's in company with Buccleuch's son, we have a letter 
for you," said Kate. "But you'll have to get it yourself, if you've got feet 
under there. I'm all against heroism in women."
He found it without trouble as she directed, and then crossing to the door with 
the same, noiseless, lingering tread, held it open. "Your company enthralls me," 
he said. "But I believe I can dispense with it. Get out, please."
It meant he wanted to read the letter by himself, and probably see Gideon alone, 
which wasn't at all what Kate intended. She got up slowly, taking Philippa's 
hand. "We are adjudged suitable company for the rough men outside-" and broke 
off. "Oh, Gideon!"
Gideon Somerville, marched alone his own passage by strangers


and deposited outside the door of his own music room, gazed in a perplexed way 
at his wife and child, and then at the silent man who held the door open. His 
fresh skin lost colour, and a very real consternation came into his eyes. Then 
Kate propelled Phiippa firmly back into the room, reseated herself, and 
addressed her husband as he walked slowly past the other and into the room.
"That's right," said Kate. "Behold the fruits of Willie Grey's little scheme. He 
came in with the cattle, that also be fair beasts and well smelling. He's got 
the letter."
Back to the shut door, the intruder watched them, the unopened letter tapping 
against his leg. With characteristic hesitation, Gideon said, "You have put-put 
us all to a great deal of trouble for nothing, my friend. I was told to expect 
you, and to help you when you came. If you'll read the letter, it will tell you 
I am not the man you want."
The other man continued to study him. Then he walked slowly to the far end of 
the room and, turning by the desk where he could keep them all under view, he 
broke Sir George Douglas's seal and read. When he had finished he smiled, the 
long lashes fluttering. "That proves nothing," he said.
Kate could feel the weariness and anger in Gideon, but he kept his voice level. 
"Then ask me anything you want. I can assure you that till the ridiculous 
performance tonight I've had no enmity for you, and have never, to my knowledge, 
done you an injury. I don't even know your name.~~
"My name is Lymond."
It was unknown to them. "Well, Mr. Lymond-"
"Lymond is a territorial name. My family name is Crawford."
"Then, Mr. Crawford-" said Gideon patiently, and broke off, for the yellow-
haired man was looking beyond him.
"Philippa!" said Lymond.
Crouched at Kate's knee, the girl made no movement. Kate said, "This child needs 
her beauty sl&ep. Off you go, pet. If the gentleman wants to speak to you, he 
can catch you tomorrow with your eyes Open."
Lymond opened his hand, on which lay the key of the door. He said, "What the 
letter says and what you say are unsupported evidence. You claim you are not the 
man I want. All right. Let the girl prove it."
Kate's brown eyes were blazing. "My dear Mr. Crawford, you're not thinking. This 
child's been a Messalina from birth"


The blue, feminine gaze moved to Gideon. "Send her here."
"Not unless she wants to." Gideon was quite unarmed.
Philippa got up, the plaits swaying and her short dressing gown dragged away 
from the white nightdress. She said, her lips trembling, "Don't worry, Father: I 
won't tell him anything."
Her parents' eyes met. Then Gideon said, with an effort, "It's aM right, chick. 
You can tell him anything he wants to know. He can't hurt us."
The child said again, "Don't worry. He shan't make me speak. Don't worry."
With one raging glance ahead, Kate slid to her knees, pulling the child's head 
to her breast, her mouth in its hair. "Pippa. Pippa, we're awful fools. What 
Father means is that truly nothing we have ever done can harm us, and Mr. 
Crawford has mixed us up with someone else. But you know what unstable-looking 
p. :ents you have. He doesn't believe us, but he says he'll believe you. It's 
not very flattering," said Kate, looking at her daughter with bright eyes, "but 
you seem to be the one in the family with an honest sort of face, and your 
father and I must just be thankful for it. Go over to him, darling. I'll be 
behind you. And just speak," she said with an edge like a razor. ~'Just speak as 
you would to the dog."
There were tears on the child's cheeks, but she was not crying. She got up and 
walked down the room, stopping just out of Lymond's reach. "I'm not a liar," she 
said. "Ask anything you want to."
Gideon jerked. "I can't stand this-" and was gripped by Kate's fingers. "No. Let 
her be. It's the only safe way. Damn and blast Willie Grey," said his wife 
passionately under her breath.
The ugly business began. The man Lymond, his back half turned, bent stiffly over 
the desk, his weight on both hands, seeking inspiration perhaps from the 
polished wood between them. He asked, "How old were you when you left London, 
Philippa?"
She thought, and replied steadily.
"Do you remember the oldest English princess? The Princess Mary? Did your father 
work for her? Do you remember when you lived at Hatfield? What time of year was 
that? Were you playing in the garden? Then when did you leave?"
She did not always remember: sometimes he led her to answer by deduction; 
sometimes Kate helped her a little, without actually prompting. At length, the 
questions seemed exhausted. There fell an odd little silence during which Kate 
thought, He has exquisite wrists and


hands. What an unspeakably foul thing to do to a child. Out of the mouths . . . 
What had she really told him? Enough tt clear Gideon? Or worse, something 
damning . . . some childish error; a confusion of dates
Rage boiling inside her, she said, "Well, Mr. Crawford. Are you satisfied, or 
would you like to try all over again with a divining rod?"
The fellow raised his head and turned to Gideon. "I am satisfied that you were 
not present at the time my unknown friend became adventurous with my reputation. 
Therefore the unknown friend must be Samuel Harvey. You might think there are 
easier ways of discovering that simple fact, but I assure you that if there 
were, I should have spared myself a long and unexciting evening."
"I hope," said Gideon shortly, "by that definition never to experience an 
eventful one. May we hope to be rid of you now?"
"Probably." The roving gaze fell on Philippa's white face: her brown eyes fixed 
on his looked out of bruised circles, as if the orbits had been minutely 
pummelled.
Lymond dropped to one knee. With the musician's hands he transferred from his 
doublet to her night robe a pin with, in its centre, a spreading, flowerlike 
sapphire the colour of his eyes. The girl shuddered as he touched her, but bore 
it passively: when he drew away she looked down and touched the brooch, fumbling 
with the unfamiliar catch. Then, before anyone could stop her, the brooch was 
out, and on the floor, and being smashed, and smashed again by Philippa's stout 
wooden heel. Then she ran.
Holding the child sobbing in her arms, Kate looked at Lymond with calm eyes. 
"And that," she said, "settles, I think, any matter of insult by apology."
For a Ir~oment he stood, the fair face quite still; then he walked softly to the 
door and opened it. "If it seems any recompense, your animals have performed in 
the night a feat of multiplication which I believe, genetically speaking, to be 
quite fabulous," said Lymond. Good night." And the door closed.

* * *



Collecting his men unmolested, the Master left Flaw Valleys, picked up Scott and 
the rest of his force and camped at daybreak in a sheltered and uninhabited 
valley where fires would be unnoticed, and where a stunted belt of firs gave dry 
fuel and protection.


During the ride there, Lymond made no secret of his mood. His eyes were savage 
and his voice, freezingly hostile, rang out again and again as the men riding 
silently with him came under the lash. The Lang Cleg had suffered a passing 
fancy to go into the cattle business for himself. Pitilessly exposed, the whole 
tale was soon complete, and Lymond did what he rarely troubled to do: personally 
flayed the man, tied wrist and ankle to a tree, with his great riding whip.
Scott watched until the Cleg slumped bloody from his ropes, and turned away 
sick.
Then it was over, and they lay close-wrapped about the big open fires as a 
frosty dawn bleached the hilltops and the watch, turn and turn about, paced on 
the heights.
And now, when the longed-for sleep was on him, Scott could not rest. In a dark 
corner of the trees, remote from interfering light he lay and listened to the 
incessant whisper of Lymond's footsteps. Then the familiar voice, directly above 
him, said, "Sit up. I want to speak to you."
His face in shadow, Lymond leaned against the next tree and looked down on him. 
"You had a long talk with Johnnie Bulb today, didn't you?" he said. "You adhere 
for three months, and now we are sundered. We are no longer articulated. We are 
no longer articulate. What did Bulb tell you?"
Scott had seen a man flogged that night, but he was in no mood for finesse. He 
said uncompromisingly, "We were discussing your aberration after your visit to 
Annan in August."
"I see. And Johnnie told you-"
"How you arranged for a blind girl to save your life without giving away to her 
who you are. How you induced her to spy for you. How you arranged to meet her, 
secretly, after you shot your brother in Stirling."
There was a pregnant pause. "I thought it was that," observed the Master. "You 
object, do you?"
But Will was no longer an easy subject: a reflection of Lymond's own irony 
gleamed in his eyes. "Why should I? You've made no secret of your habits."
"And those very habits are feeding and clothing you, so why indeed?" The Master 
dropped neatly to the ground, and resting his back against the tree, looked up 
into the dark branches. "And yet you do object, my sullen one. In that fine, 
unreasoning, Pharos-like brain which works so hard at reflecting other people's 
emotions, some minor


luminary is sitting intoning disticha: it's damned unchivalrous to employ women 
agents; and infamous to employ them without their knowledge and indecent to 
employ them when they are physically defective. And such an offender will never 
enter the Kingdom of Hawick. So here you are, complaining thus in black and 
white and grey, and armed with a moral code like an ogee."
It was clear that Lymond was out for trouble. Scott said, "Does it matter?"
"That's what Buridan's Ass kept saying. It matters to this extent. If you are 
going to develop a pure and unspotted psyche you'll need a freer air than this 
to develop it in. Did Bulb tell you the name of the girl?"
"Yes. Christian Stewart. I played with her when we were children," replied Scott 
quietly. "I swore to do all you asked of me and I have. I haven't changed. But I 
can't match your tone over this episode, that's all."
"You'll allow me pogrom and heresy, but not Christian Stewart. Why?"
Scott said crisply, "I don't mind hitting anyone who has a reasonable chance of 
hitting back. The girl thought she was helping someone in need. Instead, she's 
spying for a condemned man, which means that if she's found out, she'll hang."
The Master's manner continued to suggest that he thought he was having a 
companionable chat. Will said with sudden violence, "I'd cut off my right hand 
rather than do that to a girl."
"No doubt you would," said Lymond, twirling a dry sprig. "And sacrifice everyone 
else for your principles as usual. But bend that stern eye on the other side of 
the picture. We know the disadvantages to the lady: wnat price the advantages? 
Is she happier for my coming? Modesty is clearly out of place. She is, in the 
purest sense, ravished. Is her life more exciting, more filled with achievement, 
pride and natural enjoyment in a charming and docile member of the opposite sex? 
Yes. Finally-if she is found out, will she suffer shame and discomfort? She will 
not. She will be revered as the delicate subject of outrage, and the odium will 
fall on my always inaccessible head. Three formidable weights on my side of the 
scales. And I haven't troubled to list the advantages to myself, which are 
enormous."
To separate truth from sophistry was almost beyond Scott's tired brain. He flung 
off the wraps and got to his feet. With his back to Lymond, fidgetting among the 
leaves, he said, "I can't understand how


you could do it," and the voice was the voice of an upset boy. Lymond also rose, 
suddenly. "You can't understand how I could
do it? By God, what pit of feminine logic have we tumbled across now? What are 
we discussing, a test case in casuistry or my personal complexity of habits? If 
you have a saint in your soul, I'm willing to bait him for you, but I'm damned 
if I'm going to meet you stumbling about with a candle inside my pia mater. For 
one thing, you would find it harsh on the nerves." Lymond stretched out an arm, 
and digging in long fingers, twirled Will painfully to face him. "Don't you 
believe me? I can prove it. If you were truly conducting an analysis, my dear 
one, you would want to have this as evidence."
Will Scott took the paper Lymond held out to him, noting the broken seal. The 
familiar knot twisted his stomach again. The letter was headed simply, To the 
Master, and went on:

I am leaving this in the hope that one day you will call at Flaw Valleys. You 
wrn already have discovered that in other respects your visit is in vain. The 
gentleman you wish to interview is Mr. Samuel Harvey, and he is not only in 
England but quite inaccessible to you.
He is not inaccessible to Lord Grey. The proposal he has made to me is that 
Samuel Harvey will be brought north, and an interview arranged between you and 
him, if in exchange you provide Lord Grey with the person of Will Scott of 
Kincurd, Buccleuch's heir, who is at present under your disposal. The 
arrangements have been left for me to conclude; and for this purpose I am 
prepared to make myself available to you at any time on any day at one of my 
castles. My movements are doubtless well known to you.
To obtain access, you need only mention that you bear a message about Mr. 
Harvey.

The letter was signed, GEORGE DOUGLAS.
Scott felt as if he were being suffocated. He knew his face was white, and his 
eyes were almost too heavy to keep open. He pulled himself together and said, 
with a trace of his original irony, "I see. Have I been sitting another test? It 
hasn't escaped me, of course, that Grey wants me because of Hume. And that it 
was you who arranged for me to be prominent at Hume."
"Partly," said the Master. "You did some of it yourself . . ." And struck, 
perhaps, by the confusion in Scott's face, Lymond suddenly began to laugh. For a 
moment, so amused and so tired was he, the laughter was less than controlled and 
Scott, shocked, recognized in



the other for the first time since he had known him, the extreme outward signs 
of fatigue.
Then Lymond said, "And now where are we? It's difficult, isn't it, to know whom 
to trust? Fide et diffide, in fact: and that is the moral of this little story. 
Be mistrustful, and you will live happy and die hated and be much more useful to 
me in between.
"Sit down," said Lymond, and waited while Scott dropped again to his blankets. 
He took the letter from the boy's hand and straightened. "I showed you this, my 
would-be catharist, because I don't need you as a barter. I've got something 
George Douglas wants much more- information. And if that fails, I have a feeling 
I can acquire a hostage of my own worth two-forgive me-of Buccleuch's expanding 
nursery. In that, indeed as in all else," he added with exaggerated courtesy, "I 
shall want your help."
Scott lay back on his rugs. He said cravenly, "I understand. If that's so . . . 
I'll help all I can." Sleep swam in his head, his lids closing with it.
"Of course," said the Master politely, and tossed a blanket over the boy. "For 
my boy Willie. .

"My bird Willie, my boy Willie, my dear Willie, he said;
How can ye strive against the stream? For I shall be obeyed."



3.

French Defence

The seconde pawne that standeth tofore the Knyght bath the forme and figure of a 
man. . . . By this is signefied all maner of werkman, as goldsmithes.





1. Touching and Moving


IN THE two weeks after the cattle raid, several moves followed each other in 
apparently random sequence.
Christian Stewart, adroitly missing an encounter with Tom Erskine, left 
Lanarkshire and went north to Stirling to await the coming of the Culters and 
Lady Herries to spend Christmas at Bogle House. Shortly after, Buccleuch and 
Janet left also for the Scott house in Stirling, moving slowly to accommodate 
Walter, David, Grisel, Janet and scven ninths (as Buccleuch crudely put it) of 
Margaret.
The Culters stayed at home until the third Sunday in December; then, leaving 
Richard to his inevitable business, the Dowager seized a break in the weather to 
transport herself, Mariotta and Agnes to visit Sir Andrew Hunter's mother.
Before the gates of Ballaggan, and after they had crossed the Nith safely and 
dry-shod on its upper reaches, the Dowager rallied her party. "Hear me, 
children," said Sybilla. "This is a naughty old woman, but she's too old to 
change, and too feeble to be lectured. So speak up, keep your tempers, and 
remember you'll be naughty old


women yourselves, one of these days." So they went in and, Sir Andrew being 
temporarily absent, were taken straight upstairs.
Lady Hunter's room was as warm as a byre and as forbidding as a lying-in-state. 
Cocked on her pillows, the paraplegic greeted and seated the three visitors. 
Then the puckered mouth, fiercely active, said: "Mariotta. Come and let me see 
you."
She studied the girl. Mariotta, hanging grimly to her temper, gazed back. "I 
have good news of you," remarked Lady Hunter. "You haven't the bones for it, but 
that can't be helped. None of the Craw-fords would make more than a hen-sparrow. 
When will it be?"
Mariotta's face was pink with controlled emotion. She said politely, "In the 
spring."
"Hum. Richard pleased?"
"Yes. Of course."
"He will be. Hah! Sybilla. That's two lives between Lymond and the money. You'll 
be happy now, I dare say."
Mariotta, supposing herself dismissed, returned to her seat with an expressive 
glance at the Dowager who said mildly, "We were all perfectly merry before, so 
far as I know. I can't say I ever considered the matter in a racial light, but 
it will be nice to have babies about again. You ought to prod Dandy a little: 
it's high time he got married. It would do you good to nurse something other 
than that smelly terrier of yours."
Lady Hunter's brittle fingers played with her rings. "In these days of 
opportunism, Andrew has little to commend him to an heiress, either in fortune 
or appearance. Unlike his brother."
Forgetful, Mariotta contradicted. "Oh, surely not? He has everything to 
recommend him. . . . There must be pretty girls by the score who'~l give the 
nails off their fingers for him."
"Oh, yes. Plenty of those. Ballaggan can't afford that kind, however," said Lady 
Hunter. "Pretty girls with no dowry are for the hedgerow, not the altar. We are 
not all as fortunate as Richard."
"Dear Catherine: yes," said the Dowager. How lucky that we are all rich and 
beautiful. Otherwise we should be so affronted. Do you drink everything in those 
bottles?" And the conversation was safely transferred to physics, and from there 
to herbs, on which the old lady was expert and, in her own acid way, 
entertaining.
Mariotta listened, more interested than she had hoped to be; Agnes, within reach 
of a lethargic Cavall, amused herself by parting its fur idly with her slippers; 
and neither did more than give fair ballast to



the conversation until the Dowager, gauging swiftly the amount of time to be 
filled before Sir Andrew might come, got to her feet saying something bantering 
about vaults.
The bite returned to Lady Hunter's voice. "If you were bedridden as I am, 
Sybilla, you wouldn't care for all the affairs of the household to lie about for 
servants to read. As I've told you before, these recipes are worth money: there 
is no call to be careless with them. The keys are behind you."
The Dowager disappeared, and after a sizable interval returned in time to 
disentangle Mariotta from an appalling inquisition into the state of the linen 
at Midculter. With her she brought the promised book of recipes, which lasted 
safely until Sir Andrew came m.
Mariotta, watching him, found her defences rising on his behalf. She knew him 
already as a kind and ready confidant. No one, looking at the fine hands and 
good carriage, could say he was uncomely; no one listening to the warmth of his 
voice could find him displeasing.
...	Poor Dandy.
The evening passed and then, as the invalid slept early, they went their 
separate ways. But not before Mariotta contrived to have a word with Dandy 
alone.
In his private study, he installed her gently in front of the fire. "Two 
minutes; and then I'm going to pack you off to bed. So you finally broke the 
news to Richard?"
"About the baby? Yes, Dandy. With magnificent results. For a week now, no air is 
pure enough and no whim too foolish for the mother of a Culter."
"And the presents are still coming?"
Mariotta nodded, and touched a small and very fine string of pearls around her 
neck. "They just appear in my room." A nervous giggle overtook her. "Lymond 
can't know yet about the baby. What am I supposed to do? I've no way of 
returning them."
Sir Andrew got up and, crossing to the fire, kicked the logs with his boot. 
"Mariotta, my heartfelt advice is to tell Richard about it. I'm willing to help 
all I can, but you must know how he'd feel if he thought you felt driven to 
confide in someone outside the family, no matter how well-intentioned we both 
are. And this business of Lymond is serious." He turned and said soberly, "Tell 
him, my dear. It need cost you nothing: you have, surely, all the jewels that 
you want and you, of all people, have had a chance of judging exactly what the 
Master is."



waiting, Sir Andrew of a sudden looked sharply at the girl's face. Then she 
said, playing with the pearls, "He isn't unattractive, Dandy. If he hadn't been 
forced into outlawry by a single mistake, all those years ago
"A single mistake! Do you know how many died and how many were taken prisoner at 
the battle of Solway Moss?" exclaimed Hunter with sudden savagery. "Do you know 
how many years he had been spying for England before that? That when the secret 
leaked out they got him safely to London and Calais to save him from hanging? 
That when the French caught him and he was freed by Lennox he served Wharton and 
Lennox for years until they found he was cheating them too, and he had to turn 
mercenary abroad? Tell Richard, tell him quickly, and let him look after Lymond. 
All we both want is to see you safe and happy."
For a moment Mariotta continued to twist the necklace. Then she got up, with a 
sudden impatience that made Hunter step back. "Surely there's some way out of it 
other than setting them at each other's throats? . . . Oh, never mind! But I 
doubt very much who's going to be safer and happier if Richard finds out about 
all this . .
said Mariotta.


2.	A Queen's Knight Fails Signally to Adjust

A letter lay on the round, cypress table in the parlour at Bogle House.
Christian knew it was there. Passing and repassing, she was aware of it; it sat 
among her innocent and mundane thoughts like a tiger among peahens. In all 
Stirling, none was gladder or more relieved than Christian when at nightfall on 
the 23rd the yard exploded into life and Lord and Lady Culter, the Dowager, 
Agnes Herries and all their formidable train arrived.
Agnes pounced. "Another letter! From Jack?"
"Jack?" said the Dowager, turning.
"Jack Maxwell. I wrote him we'd be in Stirling for Christmas." And she broke the 
seal and read it, standing. "Christian! he says will I answer him as usual, but 
he may be with me before I get a reply . . . he means to come to Stirling!"
"Does he say so in English?" inquired Christian warily.
"Yes, as plain as can be. Listen!" said Agnes.



Christian heard her read, thanking heaven for the child's verse-infested mind 
which saw nothing strange in the outrageous metaphor in which her messages were 
wrapped. He had managed, she gathered, to eliminate one of the two men he must 
see, and was in train of seeing the other. A suitable moment, obviously, to 
break off the correspondence; to snap the whole tenuous link; for Johnnie Bulb, 
former ally and messenger, seemed now to avoid her.
So a curious, painful episode in one's life bid fair to end. But she had to 
admit that, whatever it purpose, the dignities of happiness had transformed Lady 
Herries.

* * *



That night, snow fell on the Lowlands, and Stirling woke to its Christmas Eve 
bowered in white above grey river and eye-aching plain. Against tender blue the 
distant hills gave eye for candid eye with the sun, and above castle and Palace 
the griffins sat, capped and chaliced in snow.
Warmed by the snow and melted by the season, Mariotta sought early for her 
husband and found he had left the house, no one knew why. While sharing her 
bafflement with the Dowager, the thought struck Mariotta. She marched to 
Sybilla's inlaid French cabinet and flung it open.
The top drawer was empty.
"It's gone!" said Richard's wife, spinning around, her violet eyes black. "The 
glove we found at the Papingo has gone. Richard's taken it-on Christmas Eve, on 
his own, without a word to any of us- our fine, cold, brass-blooded hero has 
taken it to try and trace Lymond."

* * *



Culter had indeed taken the glove, but had not carried it far.
The bullion with which it was decorated must have been supplied by a goldsmith; 
and since some time today he must call at Patey Liddell's for the completed 
miniature of his mother, he took the glove with him to Patey's, and left very 
early so as to be back before Mariotta missed him.
Patey was not yet up. After an interminable amount of banging, a moplike head 
thrust itself from a top-story lattice and Patey's voice


yapped~ "Chap away: I'm as deif as a board-oh! It's yc~rself, my lord. Wait you, 
and I'll be down."
Below in the shop, a purple robe over his nightgown, Patey handed over the 
miniature, not without an involved search, and after pocketing the outrageous 
cost of it, bent over the glove Richard produced. He held it at arm's length and 
smirked at it.
"The bonny piece! The bonny, bonny stonewark!" He tapped the twinkling cuff with 
a threadlike finger. "You wouldna get finer gin you took an elephant down 
Spittall Street and got off at Colombo. Man! They went at a bargain, too: I 
could have got twicet for them."
The glove, flicked from his surprised grasp, arrested his attention. "Have you 
seen this before?" demanded Culter in a controlled shout.
Patey was astonished, but ready to oblige. "No, no. I havena seen the work 
before, of course not; it isn't mine. But I supplied the bullion and the gems. 
I'm maybe not an Admiral on the side like Chandler of London, or so handy with a 
knife as yon Italian fellow, but I've got jewels like peevers and I ken them 
like weans. .
His client was talking again. Patey listened hard. "Who ordered it? Now, hold 
you there and I'll tell you." The great ledger came out, and Patey after a 
methodical search for his spectacles, pored over it. The index finger trailed 
down page after page and then stopped. "There you are!" He reversed the book for 
Lord Culter to see. "Ordered by Waugh, the St. Johnstone glover, on October the 
second."
"Where do I find this Waugh?"
Patey's crusty eyes opened. "Are ye for going there? Well . .
He tipped a packet of sand on the counter, drew a map with a sable and furnished 
its landmarks with jewels. "There."
Richard thanked him and left. As he remounted, Patey climbed the stairs back to 
bed, tittering under his breath. "And a right merry Christmas to ye," said Patey 
to the air.

* * *



The city of Perth, or St. Johnstone's, is only thirty-three miles to the 
northeast of Stirling; but not a pleasant ride when the moors are humped with 
new snow and your adored and incalculable wife is looking to you to attend her 
at her first Christmas at Court.
Lord Culter, riding alone and fast, reached Perth before midday. Once through 
the heavily guarded main gate, he dropped his pace to



a walk, and steered the mare through a bustling and nervously armed High Street, 
past Cross and pillory, chapels and churches, Kirkgate and tenements and 
expensive houses with neglected gardens dating from the years when capital and 
Parliament were both in the city. But when he reached Glovers' Yard, the booth 
was quite obviously closed and the windows shuttered above it.
Richard Crawford had not stopped for a meal on his way north; he was disturbed, 
cold and hungry. He hitched his mare to an iron hook and, taking his riding 
whip, began on the left side of the yard and beat methodically on every door 
until he finished on the right.
At the end of this operation, several bonneted, capped, tufted and indignant 
heads stuck in echelon, like heads from a dovecote from the three sides, and 
voided venomous complaints on his head. He stepped back and addressed the most 
responsible-looking, a blotched and stubbled gnome who listened, spat accurately 
on the cobbles and grinned, displaying horrid yellow teeth. "Jamie Waugh's no 
in. You'll not catch Jamie Waugh wasting his time inside on a holiday."
"Where is he then?" asked Richard, to the interest of a sweliing audience.
The yellow teeth displayed their stalwart abundance again. "I wouldna just trust 
myself to say," said the aged one eggily. "Forbye, it wouldna be the least bit 
use to ye. Jamie Waugh never works on a holiday."
"I don't want him to work!" shouted Richard, trying to throw his voice two 
storeys up and no farther. "I only want to talk to the man."
"D'you tell me? Well, I'm glad for ye that you've saved your time," said Yellow-
teeth serenely. "For you'd have just wasted your temper looking for him. Ye 
canna expect to speak to Jamie Waugh on a feast-day: he's aye deid drunk on a 
feast-day, is Jamie."
"I can sober him," said Richard grimly. "Just tell me where I can reach him."
"Sober him!" As if the words had touched off a hydraulic, Alexandrine weight the 
projecting heads gave a unified jerk and set themselves nodding. The ancient one 
looked sadly at his lordship. 4'Sober! You'll not see him sober till Twelfth 
Night, nearabouts. Jamie's the sturdy boy for the drink."
There was a short silence. Richard was thinking, and the aged one was weighing 
him up with a rheumatic eye, setting the obvious



urgency of his quest against the cut of his lordship's clothes. When he spoke 
again, his voice had a croon in it.
"Mind you, I'm not saying he couldna be sobered. I'm just saying it's never been 
tried. And while I doot there's a soul in the Yard could tell you rightly where 
to find Jamie-Janije being incapacitated to clients at Christmas, ye understand-
I would be willing to stretch a point for a gentleman. You look," said Yellow-
teeth, with a certain facility, "like a sporting gentleman to me, and that's a 
grand wee dirk at your belt. Forbye you claim you can sober Jamie. Aweel, I'll 
gie you his location at the price of a wager. I'll lay you a ~>air of gloves 
against your dirk that you canna bring him back to this Yard by St. Stephen's 
Day normal-or as near normal as God made him. Now. There's a fair proposition 
before witnesses, and a wee frolic to tell the wife about, and anyway," he ended 
practically, "there isn't a soul else can direct you to Jamie."
Richard folded his arms and stared at the artless one. A glance at the Yard had 
shown him he could expect little help from there. The proposition was ludicrous: 
at any other time he would have dealt with it promptly and sharply. But time was 
against him. He swore under his breath, and then said curtly, "All right. I 
accept your wager. Where is he?"
He had to wait until the aged one, disappearing and re-emerging at a lower door, 
took fond and personal custody of his knife ("just a formality") before he 
received his answer. Horny hands picking and stroking at the jewelled hilt, the 
old man said, "Aye, aye. I kent ye were a gentleman. You bring Jamie Waugh back 
sober, and I'll have dirk and gloves set out for you. He's at his sister's house 
in the Skinnergate," said Yellow-teeth, retreating strategically within his 
doorway. "The fifth on the right going down. Merton's the name. Merton."
Richard, unwilling amusement in the grey eyes, put a foot in the stirrup and 
swung himself on the mare again. "Merton of the Skinner-gate. Thank you. And 
your own name, sir?"
"Me?" The teeth yawed. "You're easy named a stranger: every St. Johnstone's man 
kens Malcolm-Chuckie-moued Malcolm, that's what they cry me. Malcolm Waugh at 
your service, sir; faither o' Jamie of that ilk, and an honest, sober man to be 
cursed with yon loose black glover. Good luck to ye, sir! I'll keep the dirk 
safe! Trust me, sir!"



Richard turned his horse out and suddenly laughed aloud, as windows popped shut 
and the peace of Christmas Eve descended again on Glovers' Yard.
Snow had fresh-laundered the Skinnergate; had put new bonnets on its thatched 
roofs and dressed the stakes in the yards. But the hands and feet of the 
Skinnergate children had returned the narrow lane to its pristine state of mud 
and offal, and cold weather or no, the ripe animal smell of the trade hung 
resonantly abo~it the doors.
The fifth house was easy to find: the Mertons were holding festival, and the 
rest of adult Skinnergate and most of its children were choked into the single 
room above the yard, with the overflow jamming the stairs. Jamie Waugh was easy 
to find also: he was sitting in the fireplace with smoke slowly rising from his 
skin breeches, singing acceptably through a large earthenware jug upside d(wn on 
his shoulders. The corners of the room were piled with undressed sheep and 
calfskins of bold personality, and a young heifer couched in the middle was 
giving warm seating to four or five men. Beer was in free circulation, and a fat 
cheerful woman in an apron, whom Richard took to be Mistress Merton, was 
dispensing winkles from a pot of boiling water and pins from a wooden box.
She had offered Lord Culter a spoonful before the implications of his dress 
struck her: she blushed, put down the ladle and wiped her hands. "Were you 
wanting Jock, sir? He's not in the Yard today, but if you'd call tomorrow or the 
next day .
She seemed a bright, honest person. He told her what he wanted, but not of the 
bargain perpetrated by Waugh, senior. Her reaction was much the same as that of 
Glovers' Yard. "Jamie! Oh, Jamie'll not be sober till Candlemas, nearly."
"With your permission," said Richard, "I was proposing to sober him now."
She gave him a doubtful smile. "Well, sir, you're welcome to try," and bending 
over the happy Mr. Waugh, she pulled the jug off his shoulders. A plump, almond 
face revealed itself, remarkably like the old man's, with a retrouss~ and rosy 
nose and ruffled black hair.
"Jamie, there's a gentleman come to see you," said Mrs. Merton. The suffused eye 
wandered distractedly from Lord Culter to his sister and back again; with a 
lurch and a jerk, Jamie Waugh got to his feet. "T'horse!" he exclaimed and 
bending dangerously from the waist, gave Richard a view of the lower hemispheres 
of two mottled



corneas. Then he folded backward in a quick graceful arch, straightened a 
little, and declaimed:
"Tohorsh, tohorsh, maroyaleesh;
Your faesh shtand on the Shtrand.
FulL Twenny-thoushand glitt'ring Shpearsh
The King of Norshcommandsh."

Seeing that her brother had reached, if not the end of his repertoire, at least 
the end of his breath, Mrs. Merton laid a hand on his shoulder, at which he 
gently folded up and sat on the hearth again. "Jamie. It's someone wants to see 
you."
Jamie's eyes were fixed on the ashes.
"Here maun I lie, here maun I die," said Mr. Waugh, who seemed to favour verse 
in heroic form. "By Treachery's falsh guilesh," and laid his cheek morosely on 
one knee. A tall, thin man pushed through the crowd, and Mrs. Merton went to 
him. "Oh, Jock! Here's a gentleman wanting to speak urgently with Jamie, and 
he's just at hi~ very last wink."
Mr. Merton eyed Richard, who told an edited version of the story yet again. "Oh, 
if ye want to trace a sale, Jamie's the only one that can do it. Think ye can 
sober him?" said the skinner doubtfully. "I've been merrit twenty year and I've 
never known him able to speak this side o' Twelfth Night, but maybe coming to it 
from a fresh airt, as it were, might make all the difference. What were you 
thinking of?"
"A swim," said Richard. "And I'll need some rope."
The skinner's face webbed itself with leathery wrinkles. "Man, I never knew 
Jamie in water for twenty year either," he said with callous delight. "God: it's 
a great day for the Waughs."
They took the drunk man downstairs between them, and the inhabitants of 
Skinnergate, winkles and alepot in hand, poured down after. They rollicked down 
the stair; they lurched singing into the lane in black and merry procession, and 
they stood on the brink of the swift and icy River Tay as Richard solemnly 
addressed his victim.
"Mr. Waugh, what I'm about to do is as much for your own good as mine. I hope, 
when sober, you'll appreciate it." Then, receiving from the ready Mr. Merton a 
coil of light hemp, he noosed it, slipped and tightened the loop around the 
glover's waist and to ringing cheers picked Jamie Waugh up in his arms and threw 
him plump in the middle of the river.
221


There was a splash, a yell, and a crunching of gravel; then two knees and a head 
appeared: Mr. Waugh was reclining on the river bed. Richard pulled gently on the 
rope. Mr. Waugh rolled over, leaned on his hands, and could be heard swearing 
vigorously into the waves. Richard pulled again.
Mr. Waugh stood up. "What the - are you -'s doing?" he bawled.
His brother-in-law called in reply, "Come on, Jamie. We've got you roped. You 
can walk to us, nearly."
Mr. Waugh's reply to this cast even his previous remark in the shade; indeed, he 
seemed ready to stand practicing vowel sounds in the middle of the Tay till 
night fell. Mr. Merton, with less patience than Richard, leaned over. He gave a 
mighty tug at the rope, and the vociferating figure at the end disappeared in a 
flurry of spume and vituperation. His sister, tears of merriment streaming down 
her comfortable cheeks, said brokenly, "He'll catch his daith! Better pull him 
in now, sir. Oh, Jamie!"
They pulled him in. He arrived not only sober but fighting mad, and Mr. Merton, 
who seemed to be an expert, took him over. The flailing arms were imprisoned in 
someone else's coat; he was swept back to the house, towelled, reclothed and 
plied with hot milk. Then Mr. Merton came to the door and nodded to Richard, who 
came in and sat on a stool before the limp, riled and distrait swimmer. "If you 
want to blame anyone, blame me," he said pleasantly. "I'm the one who threw you 
in.
Mr. Waugh rose, bent-kneed, to his feet and was sternly pressed down again by 
well-wishers. Richard continued. "I'm sorry about it, but I need some 
information from you, in a hurry, and you won't be out of pocket over it." He 
threw a small bag, chinking, on the glover's lap. "You can pay the damage to 
your sobriety pretty quickly with that, and have some left to spend at Pasche, 
perhaps."
Jamie Waugh opened the bag, and the whole almond face altered. "Man, if it comes 
up your back again just send word to Jamie, and I'll spend Lent in a 
stickleback's front parlour. What did you want to know?"
"Something very simple." He threw Lymond's glove on top of the money. "Can you 
tell me who ordered that?"
The glover's broad, brown fingers fondled the work. "I'll have to look up the 
books in my shop, sir. But it's my work, right enough.
222



I	remember it fine. I got the gold for it off Patey Liddell in Stirling." 
Richard got up. "Can we go to your shop now?"
"Surely, surely." The other laid down his mug, picked up money and glove and 
made for the door, slapping his sister in passing. "I'm off to the Yard for a 
minute, Jess: be a fine lass and put on the ham for when I'm back; my insides 
are clapping together and my mon tastes like a haddock's spit-oot." He eyed 
Richard diffidently. "You'd no care to come back and have a bite with us, sir? 
It's ham, just; but, man, I tickled her backside day in, day out when she was 
fattening, and there's not a wrong bit in her."
Lord Culter put a hand on the wiry shoulder. "Jamie Waugh, you can count that 
ham half gone already."

* * *



The early dark began to fall as Richard, with Waugh, returned to Glovers' Yard, 
and candles in the thick, misted windows patterned the dirty snow below.
Jamie was not one to stand on ceremony. He no sooner set foot on the cobbles, 
walking smartly by Richard's stirrups, than he flung back his wet head and 
roared, "Faither!"
Propelled by curiosity, the windows of the court shot up. After a pause, Malcolm 
Waugh's front window glimmered with an approaching taper; the casement opened, 
and the erratic parent looked out. "Jamie!"
"Aye: Jamie. I want in to the shop, Faither."
The bristled jowl quivered. Mr. Waugh, senior, leaned farther out of the window. 
"Jamie! Are ye sober, lad?"
The glover, who was getting a little tired of the continuing stress on his 
condition, frowned. He said tartly, "A damned sight too sober to stomach the 
sicht o' the wagglin' chops on ye muckle longer. Will ye come down?"
But Faither only hung farther out. "Jamie! Tell me! Ye havena had an encoonter 
with a sleekit-spoken chiel . .
Richard, leaning on his pommel, looked up.
"Oh, it's yourself!" said the old man hurriedly. A yellow grin, hastily 
summoned, jerked into place. "Man, you're a great case. From the Mull tae Dunnet 
Heid there isna another body could have brought Jamie Waugh to his faither as 
stone-sober and ill-tempered as the day


he was weaned." He ducked smartly as a stone, flung by his impatient son, 
cracked on the woodwork. "Just wait; wait now. I'll be down."
He let them in and watched as Jamie, having lit a candle, opened his ledger and 
conned it. Richard, looking around the perfumed and ffickering gloom, saw 
something wink on a table, and strolling across, picked up his dagger. Slipping 
it back in his belt, he grinned into a lugubrious bloodshot eye. "I'll excuse 
you the gloves I've won, Mr. Waugh. It's been worth the experience to know you."
The loose mouth wobbled. "Man, I can just say the same: there's many an alehouse 
would keep you in drink for life for a loan o' your talents." He melted 
unobtrusively into the gloom as his son came forward slowly, the big book spread 
in his hands. There was a pause, then the man Jamie gave an exclamation, laid 
down the book and held the glove over to the light. "The deil!" he said. "He's 
used it as a shooting glove!"
With some grimness Richard replied. "He certainly has."
"Well, it's no meant for a shooting glove!" said Jamie Waugh in righteous 
indignation. "It's a fancy glove that-one of a pair, and far too much decoration 
on it for shooting with. I mind it fine, and the chap that bought it."
Richard found a seat and dropped very gently into it. "Do you? Tell me what 
happened."
"Well; in comes this fellow ordering gloves, and as fussy as a flea in a bathtub 
over the pattern, and that Patey has to do the gold, and-"
"What did he look like?"
The glover thought. "Kind of fancy-looking-no offence, sir, if he's any 
relation. Yellow hair, and an awful tongue in his head."
"In aurum coruscante et crispante capillo," said Richard unexpectedly, and gave 
a kind of a smile as Waugh stared at him. "Have you ever seen him before, Mr. 
Waugh?"
"Never. Nor since. He's not a native of these parts."
"No. Go on."
"Well, when it comes to the bit, he hasn't the price of a full pair on him, and 
we had a bit of an argument. However-as you'll understand, sir-he's riot the 
sort of person it's just easy to cross. He paid a bit-just some silver, and left 
his address, and said he'd accommodate me by taking one glove and collecting the 
other when he sent the money. I knew it was a tale," said Mr. Waugh with some 
reminiscent anger, "but he had such a manner on him-"



"I know," said Richard. "And has he ever sent the money?"
Jainie Waugh went and rummaged in a cupboard, returning with the twin of the 
embroidered glove. "No. There it is. No one's come for it."
"Would you permit a man of mine to watch at the back of your shop till this man 
arrives? I'll pay you, of course."
Surprise showed on Jamie's face. He hesitated, then shrugged. "Just as you like, 
sir," and was about to shut the book when Richard stopped him. "Just a moment. 
What address did your yellow-haired man give?"
Waugh peered along the crabbed entry. "It'll be a false one, belike Address . . 
. Address-oh. Here we are. Aye, it's false, I'm
afraid. 'Castle of Midculter, County of Lanark,' it says." Richard got up 
suddenly. "And the name?"
"Well, now. He didn't give his own name, just the name of the man he was to send 
to pay for the gloves. Devil, whei'e is it? Oh, here. 'Richard Crawford, third 
Baron Culter.' How's that for impudence? A lord, no less. Man, you can't trust a 
soul nowadays. When did you say your man would be here?"
Whatever bitter self-mockery lay behind the impassive face, Lord Culter showed 
none of it. He said coolly, "I shan't require now to send anyone . . . I have 
made the mistake of underrating my friend," and, laying a gold piece on the 
table, added, "No one will come for the gloves now. Keep them both, and look on 
the sale as discharged. Now: there was some talk of ham . . .
But with all that, the man was only human. He didn't return to Stirling that 
night, but buried anger and disappointment in the Skinnergate, under rashers and 
eggs and ale and good company; and Jock Merton said, sotto voce, that gentleman 
or no, he was damned if the fellow wasn't good value at a party and could hold 
his liquor like a fisherman: a statement that Mariotta, and perhaps even the 
Dowager, would have been astonished to hear.
It was late when ~e left. They were loth to let him go, and he might have been 
overpersuaded to stay but for Jamie, who had spent the evening making up for 
lost ground and achieved the full cycle, as Culter mounted his horse, by 
descending the stairs in one airborne step. Richard waited only to make sure the 
glover was unhurt, then waved and set oft.
He had no notion of arriving at any of the houses known to him at Perth with a 
thick head in the middle of Christmas. After a little



thought, he directed the mare to the castle where he could command a bed for a 
few hours and set out for Stirling at the crack of dawn next day.
It was no fault of his that the English army at Broughty Fort also set out that 
night, with malicious intent, on a punishing raid of the neighbourhood. He was 
wakened at five in the morning by the crash of emergency and, driven by duty, 
set out to pass the day not at Stirling but by the side of the Provost and 
Constable of Perth at Balmerino.
He rode to the fighting in no cheerful mood. "I thought," said Richard wearily, 
"there was only one man playing hell with my life. But by God! Ruthven, it's 
become a national pastime."

* * *



At midday-and with still no sign of Richard-Sybilla exercised her native wit 
and, putting on furs and boots and refusing escort, plodded down the street to 
Patey Liddell's.
"Well, now-your ladyship's all wet- This is a pleasure, but- Come away over to 
the furnace- You know Lord Culter went off with the picture- That's a 
comfortable chair, now: sit you down
He's not here," said Patey, who under the forcible blue eye seemed a little 
upset.
"I guessed that," said Sybilla. "Where did he take the glove, Patey?" The 
goldsmith eyed her and decided evidently that only truth would serve. "To 
Perth," he said simply.
"Oh, Richard!" exclaimed Sybilla in extreme exasperation. She turned the blue 
eyes on Patey again. "Is that where the glove was made?"
He nodded, hesitated, then volunteered, "No one'll lay a' finger on him, your 
ladyship: I warrant you that. Jamie Waugh's a terrible man, but there's not a 
drop of harm in him, and he'll treat his lordship as kind as a maid with her 
rich new joe. . . . You'll take some spirits?" added Patey, at a speed 
suggesting a desire to efface his own conjecture.
"No, I must go back." Rising, Lady Culter bent to look at a small nugget lying 
on the smith's bench in a drift of sparkling dust. She lifted it to examine it 
more closely. "It was a pretty glove. That pale yellow gold is from 
Crawfordmuir, isn't it? You use a lot of it, Patey."


"What?" said Liddell. He grinned vaguely. "It's a bonny wee nugget, that. Gold."
"I wasn't talking about the nugget," said Sybilla, "particularly. What's the tax 
on Scottish-mined gold these days, Patey? Fairly high? And isn't it all supposed 
to go straight to the Mint?"
"Scottish gold?" said the smith, and shook his white head. "It's well enough; 
well enough; but a wee thing soft, and there's them that prefers a good brosy 
yellow to yon pale stuff. No. Whatever it is you're wanting, you come to me and 
I'll show you gold that'd make crowns for angels."
"Well, that'd be a change," said the Dowager sourly, "from making crowns for 
Patey Liddell. You're a perverse, deaf old man, and I don't know why I come to 
you."
"Do you not?" said Patey, exerting to the full his highly selective aural 
powers. "Then I'll tell you: it's to get a good bargain; and you can be sure of 
this: whatever Patey Liddell's got a hand in'll never hurt a Crawford."
"Then I suggest," said Sybilla, making for the door, "you steer clear of my 
daughter-in-law; or something Patey Liddell had a hand in this day is going to 
be a sore affliction to Patey Liddell." And she went home.

* * *



So Christmas, unappalled at Lord Culter's absence, came cantily to Stirling.
It was a French Christmas; a debonair Christmas full of frolic and folly; a 
spry, Gallic unctuous Christmas. Henry of France, at last roused to boldness and 
the cunning exercise of spite, had sent a small fleet to Scotland, and in it 
money for the Queen Dowager, and French military experts for her guidance and 
the better security of her fortresses. The military experts, tricked out in 
scent and white satin, danced like well-mannered clouds and talked in the 
Council Chamber of chests of money and major landings of troops waiting to come 
with better weather. The Government blew a sigh of relief, eyed the cut of the 
white satin and, flinging its armour out of the window, bawled for its valet.
The Court danced. The Court played rough games and watched masques. Cardboard 
cumuli, joggling cautiously from ceiling to floor, emitted Spirits of Love, 
giggling, with siren voices half a tone sharp



with nerves. Forty-two different kinds of main dishes were offered at one 
sitting, and even the puddings burst asunder and became sweating cherubs 
released from cardboard confinement and prone to emergency and fits of tears.
Sybilla, animatedly and comfortably at home, found time to watch her small 
flock. She observed Agnes Herries, graced with a new diffidence and dancing, 
under the Governor's orders, with the Governor's son. Christian, who did not 
care to dance in public, had been strategically waylaid by Tom Erskine. 
Mariotta, who should not have been dancing, was doing so, incessantly. The 
Dowager breathed a faint prayer for the well-being of the future heir of the 
Culters and returned her gaze to Lady Herries.
So she saw a tall, stooping figure appear in the distance; saw Agnes Herries 
hesitate, and then saw her disappear up the turnpike stair which gave access to 
the wall-walk on the roof. The tall figure followed her.
The Dowager walked over to Christian and sat down. "Hold my hand and talk to 
me," she demanded. "Something interesting is happening on the tower stairs and I 
feel nervous and grandmotherly."
Christian turned on the older woman her affectionate grin. "Nothing like 
practice," said she.

* * *



The tall man was dressed in blue silk. Agnes, watching him emerge from the 
tower, noted the deliberate, light walk and the brome-grass hair ruffling in the 
night wind. He came nearer, and she saw yellow peregrine eyes with black, buried 
pupils.
"Lady Herries?" he asked; and when she nodded, he smiled suddenly.
"You're so small. I have something for you, my lady-but it's like Abbey Craig 
speaking to Dumyat. Perhaps, if you'll allow me, we should settle our 
differences first." And before she could object, he put both hands around her 
waist and swung her easily to the broad parapet. She arrived with a bump, had a 
fleeting thought about the state of the ledge, then arranged her skirts and 
turned again to the gentleman's eyes. They were still very yellow, but kind. He 
took her hand and put something into it. "From Threave," he said.
Agnes looked down. Between her fingers, dark with melted snow but warm and 
perfect, was a sturdy red rose. She said "Oh!" in a


surprised 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 God, 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 shining 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 GaMe

To 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 assault 
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 a


splendid 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 butter," 
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 damn 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 noble 
gentleman that he is an interfering fool." And he let a


pause 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 treat


them 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 
friendship 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-"
"The same wind blows in the Channel as on the Solway," she said. "No fleet will 
put out in this weather."
Gideon interposed briefly. "The Protector is asking for action quickly against 
the Douglases, Lady Lennox."
"And that he shall have," said the woman serenely. "If you will allow me to make 
a suggestion." She looked up at four, noncommittal faces and smiled. "There was 
a time when I was a Douglas, and then I became more Tudor than Douglas. Now I am 
more Stewart than both. Listen."
And she outlined a plan which was bold, practical and, unintentionally, quite 
formidable in its ultimate effect. In which she showed herself to be, after all, 
more Tudor and Douglas than Stewart.


* * *


With Will Scott at his side, Lymond met John Maxwell briefly by appointment in a 
bothy of mud and thatch in the hills near Thornhill.
Sitting watching by the bright, whining fire, Scott saw that Maxwell was now 
handling the other man carefully. He made one flattering reference to the 
conduct of December's cattle raid, but did not repeat the mistake. He referred 
also to his meeting with Agnes Herries.
"That goes very well. You were right about the letters. She had already created 
the mould, and I stepped into it. Not a bad thing. I shall try not to disappoint 
her."
"What did you make of her?" Lymond asked.
"Your reading was perfectly accurate. She will make an excellent wife-if that 
were the main issue. And if her marriage were a matter of free choice, I should 
be Lord Hermes tomorrow. But of course, it's not. I'm afraid it will take more 
than one cattle raid to shake off Arran. He's determined to have her for his 
son, and he has a promise on paper.~~
"The Queen Dowager is not unsympathetic," remarked Lymond.
"But Arran is Governor."
"And as such is accountable to the French for the fervent persecution of the 
enemy."
"Arran won't attack: he has neither the stomach nor the power."
"He won't attack; but he'll have to defend, shortly. There's another combined 
attack from Carlisle and Berwick coming next month."
The pupils in the golden eyes narrowed and expanded. "How do you know that?"
"Spies. I have no direct contact with Carlisle," said Lymond laconically. "If 
you want my opinion to reinforce your own, then that's your bargain. Throw the 
Maxwells openly this time against Wharton, and you have the Dowager on your 
side. She likes the glrl, and she's being pushed for results by her relatives in 
France as well as by the French Ambassador. Let her persuade Arran for you."
There was a long silence. Then the Master of Maxwell said, "The real deterrent 
lies with my hostages at Carlisle. If I turn, they may hang. But, as you no 
doubt will tell me, life is cbeap."
Lymond raised fair brows. "It is another disease that grieveth me.



What I will say is that sentimentality is expensive. Let them hang:
it is still a good bargain."
Maxwell said, "I am not so ruthless."
"We might differ about that. . . . But save the Carlisle chickens, and you let 
the Stirling stables burn."
"Some might feel one hen of a sort was worth twenty horses," said Maxwell.
"And yet you won't get far without horses, be your poultry never so prolific."
Lymond was clearly mocking, and the other switched subjects curtly. "Do you wish 
to continue the letters to Agnes Herries? We agreed that you should have this 
channel for messages."
Lymond said, "Let it lapse. I can find other means now, if need be." He rose. "I 
am grateful for your co-operation. We may still meet, of course. Next month, for 
example. In spite of your fondness for the chicken ~
Maxwell also got up. He hesitated, stooping a little under the low roof, his 
half-armour fogged with condensation. "There is one piece of news you might find 
of interest," he said. "It's not the kind I should pass on to Edinburgh, as the 
woman is, I suppose, a niece by marriage. .
Lymond's face and ~voice were his first weapons, and he used them consciously 
with the same control that in his brother kept expression away.
But this time, something new filled the blue eyes; and Scott, sitting forgotten, 
saw it, and his breathing stopped. Then it was over, and Maxwell, unobserving, 
was still talking.
"Lennox and Wharton are trying a new gambit this time. The Countess of Lennox is 
being sent north to Drumlanrig to try and splint together all these burst 
Douglas loyalties before the army invades."
Lymond said in his accustomed voice, "The Lady Margaret Douglas? Angus's 
daughter? When is she coming?"
Maxwell shook his head and took up his hat. "I have no other details. But I 
expect she'll arrive shortly before they march, and wait for her husband. I 
thought you might be interested."
He turned in the doorway, one hand on the lintel. "Good day to you both. I fancy 
these meetings will not be to our loss."
"I fancy not," said Lymond dryly; and Maxwell, mounted, leaned down. "You have a 
nice touch with the Latin tag, but I found the



French a little indelicate, here and there." And, one of his infrequent smiles 
lighting the solemn face, the Master of Maxwell rode off.
Scott, straightening from dousing the fire, found Lymond waiting with both 
horses at the door, his expression angelical. "O rubicund blossom and star of 
humility! O famous bud, full of benignity! O beautiful Master of Maxwell!"
Scott came out and took his horse. "What's happened, sir?"
"Ce n'est rien: c'est une femme qui se noie," said Lymond, and laughed. "Love 
Mr. Maxwell, my cherub: he has brought your old age with him today. We require a 
hostage to exchange for Samuel Harvey. And behold, we have a hostage. My 
brilliant devil, my imitation queen; my past, my future, my hope of heaven and 
my knowledge of hell . . . Margaret, Countess of Lennox."

PART THREE.


The Play for Samuel Harvey.
	
Why had he imagined the company to be perpetual? It had been created at Lymond's 
whim, and was being disbanded by the same lordly hand. . . . Scott took to 
watching for the return of the weekly messenger to the Ostrich, and he knew 
before anyone when the word finally came summoning Lymond to the Castle of Wark 
on the second of June for his portentous meeting with Samuel Harvey.
The Master announced the disbandment the same day in the hall, over the uproar 
of sixty furious employees. The Long Cleg had the loudest voice. "We dinna want 
to go. There's no need. We're doing fine. We want to go on."
"By all means. But without me."
"No! You're to stay!"
"And who will make me?"
The thunder increased. "We're sixty to one!" And Turkey had turned from his 
comfortable seat in the front. "Two, man: two. And I'm the only other one that 
kens where your pay is."
Lymond snatched the ensuing decrescendo in which to be heard. "If you want to be 
paid, I'm afraid you must accept it. And even if you don't, you really can't 
make me stay, can you?"
And, of course, they couldn't. Sardonic to the last, he had surveyed them. "All 
right. Get out. Think for yourselves for a change. You've been pedlars: go and 
be merchants. You've been mercenaries: go and find something of your own to 
defend. You've finished teething and there's the world: crack it open if you 
can. It's a damned sight pricklier than I am. In any case, whatever you do, keep 
well clear of me. . .
They were paid, and took their leave, clattering out in twos and threes: Oyster 
Charlie, the Long Cleg, ~Dandy-puff, Jess's Joe. Turkey and he were last, as 
Scott knew they would be, because they had special claims. The money for them 
was in French gold and was in Scott's own custody. But not in the tower.
Dreadjng a homily, Scott was relieved to find that Lymond himself, travelling 
light, was packing quickly for his journey to Wark and made no effort to see him 
alone. When the matter of the gold cropped up, the boy said nothing about a 
convent. He said casually, "The store's on your road, as a matter of fact. If 
you like, I'll take a pack horse and ride with you so far."
Lymond had been indifferent, but Turkey was not. He thought bluntly that a 
fellow fetching a double salary of gold ought to have company on the way back as 
well. He attached himself firmly to


Scott, who attempted to argue and only succeeded in making him obstinate.
Thus in the long run, Turkey Mat as well as Scott took the Wark road along with 
the Master. The golden dales of Crawfordmuir fell behind them, broken, gouged 
and abandoned, and whether the four rivers they left were of Hell, or the 
Pischon, Dichon, Chiddikel and Perath of Paradise might have been hard for any 
one of them to say.

That was this morning. The question now was how far the tiger would enter the 
cage.
Lymond was riding very fast, taking no risks, although he had plenty of time to 
reach the north of England by next day, when Harvey's convoy would pass through 
Wark. Turkey Mat, knee to knee with him, was talking more than usual, and it was 
a little time before either realized that Scott had halted.
Waiting, the boy saw the Master turn, and then bring his chestnut in a fine arc 
back to him; saw Lymond's eyes flicker to the splintered, obelisk elms on his 
left and then alter. When he came abreast, however, he merely inspected Scott's 
green face and groaned. "Oh God: sermons and symbolism; I can't stand it. Don't 
bother to tell me. You've put the gold in the convent."
Scott said heavily, "It seemed a good place to me. The basement is quite intact, 
you know."
Unexpectedly, Lymond failed to rage. "Then go and get your money. Half for you; 
half for Mat, and for God's sake jump off the pendulum next time before it gets 
my length. . . . Mat! This is where I leave you both."
Mat had heard, cantering up. "Already? What about your share of the gold?"
Scott let him talk. He had thought of this possibility too: he had thought of 
everything. He moved restively behind the two men and made his unobtrusive 
signal and then rejoined them, a little sulky and very young, his brow round and 
flecked with the sun. Mat was still arguing, but only seconds elapsed before 
they all heard the drumming of hoofs from behind the hill they had just passed.
Lymond's head came up instantly, listening; weighing up the quality of the 
sound. It was a large body of cavalry not yet in sight:
Scots or otherwise hardly mattered; both were a danger to him, and a danger at 
this special and delicate crisis in his affairs.
He turned quickly. There was only one source of cover, and it



had to be reached before the first riders came into sight. After the merest hint 
of a pause he collected the chestnut, jerked his head, and followed by Turkey 
and Scott, raced for the convent.
They got there, as he intended, before the first horses came into sight. They 
jumped the broken wall, dismounting, tying their horses out of sight in the 
roofless, rubble-filled building and flinging themselves among the toadflax as 
the grey light flickered like St. Elmo's fire on the pikes and drawn swords of 
galloping horsemen rounding the hill.
Turkey, his beard full of burs, his clothing soaked with the light rain, spared 
breath for an ironic cheer as the troop streamed frieze-like along the road: 
they galloped to the exact point the three men had just left, and then forsaking 
the road entirely, bore like a grey and shining harrow through the wet grass, 
making straight for the convent.
Mat's mouth fell slightly open. "It's the second sight. It must be:
I'm damned if they saw us."
Brittle as exploding glass, Lymond said, "They didn't see us. They expected to 
find us here. They're Ballaggan men."
"The horses-"
"Too late. You heard Scott: there's a basement," said Lymond, and twisting like 
a dorcus led them full tilt through the shattered rooms, Scott beside him and 
Mat at his heels. The stairs plunged downward, broken and shallow. At the head 
of them the Master took a quick step, wrenched Scott's sword screaming from its 
sheath and flung the boy weaponless down the stairs with such force that he 
landed knee and shoulder at the first bend. The look in the blue eyes chilled 
even Turkey. "You lead. Another trick and I'll kill you."
Then they were running downstairs, Lymond with a sword in each hand. Mat said, 
"The boy . . .
"Of course: who else? But he may not know there's a passage out of that cellar. 
Unless it's full of Hunter and his friends, waiting for us."
It wasn't. At the next bend there was light: a sickly glint from a wall taper 
exposing the sunk treads and checkered green walls. Then they were in the 
basement.
The floor was littered with rubbish from the groined roof, and dust covered 
everything. In a corner stood a heavy leather chest, securely locked: their 
useless gold. They sought instead what their lives depended on: the low and 
obscure door to the nuns' under-



ground passage. It was there. They saw the lintel. The rest was blocked, 
triumphantly and symbolically indeed, with stacked cases of gunpowder.
It was suddenly very quiet.
Overhead, they could hear the jangle of harness and men's voices but no steps 
descending, although Mat moved instinctively to the narrow stair and put his 
sword across it. Scott was standing motionless between the gold and the 
gunpowder, the tallow dip in his hand, light and shadow racing in freshets over 
the stone between leader and accolyte.
Softly Lymond said, "You put the cost of your pride at three lives?"
"Three!"
Lymond answered Mat without turning his head. "Why do you fancy he's holding the 
torch?"
It was quick, of course, admirable; but quick thinking would hardly rescue him 
now. Scott raised the flare, beside red ear and thick jaw and tousled, ,marigold 
hair. He said, "Just a precaution. You have ten minutes to walk upstairs and 
give yourselves up; otherwise they fire stoneshot, and then Greek fire, and 
there'll be an explosion like Muspelheim. By waiting, of course, you'll take me 
with you; but that's a dull prospect compared with setting a score of young 
lassies to fry..."
"You bloody little traitor, shut your mouth!" It was Matthew, not Lymond.
The direct assault on the memory was intentional: a revenge indeed for every 
doubt and indignity and misery that Scott had suffered. He had perhaps reckoned 
without Lymond's peculiar strength.
No trace of the ordeal was visible to Scott. The raw light shuddered on the 
Master's face but Lymond himself was quite still. He said, "You evidently want 
to be taken seriously. I am now doing so. You are prepared to take 
responsibility for Matthew's death?"
Buccleuch had hinted, and Sir Andrew had confirmed. You don't make concessions 
to a man who has killed his own sister. "Matthew's safe," said Scott. "We're all 
safe, for ten minutes. She was called Eloise, wasn't she? Why did she die?"
"Because in this age only the intolerable have survived. Matthew, quickly."
Scott reached the gunpowder before them, the tallow spluttering in his hand, 
smiling. "Touch one box and I'll explode it."


The dreadful, fragile little situation was too much for Mat. He raised his heavy 
sword, inhaling stale air with a roar. "Explode it then, you bloody little rat: 
you don't have the guts!" and stumbled, arrested by Lymond, iron-armed.
"You're dealing with hysteria, not guts or lack of them. Scott: if I were alone 
I'd say throw and be damned. Burn us into red and white rose trees. Make sweet 
cinders of our bloody gold. Exercise this pitiful, feckless piety you've 
discovered and reap your own trashy reward. Why the melodrama, I don't know. If 
you were determined to trap me, it seems a fairly simple thing to do without the 
busking. If you want the satisfaction of a discussion, you won't get it. Make 
your decisions, such as they are: you're in command. I have nothing to say to 
you."
"Hell, but I have!" said Mat. "Jump him! Start on the boxes. He won't throw."
"He will," said Lymond calmly. "Big bangs and primary colours appeal to the 
young."
"What then?"
"Up to the realms of this universal patron."
"Dandy Hunter? Give ourselves up?"
"Unless like Hanno you wish to sail by streams of fire. Unbuckle your sword. The 
suicide impulse is very strong in the air."
Lymond was already, left-handed, unfastening his own sword belt. He pulled it 
off complete with scabbard and dropped it on the rubble behind him. Mat's 
followed, in his right hand Lymond continued to hold Scott's sword. "The ten 
minutes are nearly up. You were saying?" he said to the boy.
It was the steadiness of the voice that shook Scott. He exclaimed, "For God's 
sake: this is where she died. Doesn't that mean anything?"
"If I killed her, why should it? If I didn't, I'm not likely to be goaded into 
triple suttee, even to enable you to expire in a spray of madder-fed milk."
"You are willing," said Scott harshly, "to give yourselves up?"
"We are waiting with, I hope, well concealed impatience to do so."
"In that case, I'll take back my sword."
Knowing Lymond, Scott was well prepared. He expected a thrust or a cut, or even 
the heavy blade hurled in his face. Instead Lymond said briefly, "I'm damned if 
I'll give it to you. This one wrote a betrayal. It can stay and sign it." And he 
hurled it away from himself,


far across the dark cellar where it spun with a little tongue from the torch 
flame, carrying the boy's gaze instinctively with it.
In that one small blind instant, like the tiger of Scott's own fantasy, Lymond 
jumped.
Too late to avoid him, Scott had all the time in the world to do what he wanted. 
The heavy torch, flung with all the boy's strength, left his hand and soared 
high over the gunpowder boxes, jettisoning sparks. The shadows pounced after it; 
the new, rough wood of the boxes bloomed under its high star; then it fell.
Hallway to the powder it collided with the clogged, sodden wool of Lymond's 
cloak, simultaneously thrown. Torch and cloak fell together; the wrap, batlike 
and sluggish, rolled over the lower boxes like a carpet and the tallow dip, 
upright, hit the topmost box, hesitated, bowed, and then halting in the surge of 
its own fire, toppled slowly forward and into the cloak. There was a flare of 
light, writhing over ceiling and uneven, web-clotted walls. Then Matthew leaped 
forward and Scott, borne to the floor by Lymond's hard strength, twisted vainly 
to stop him. There was a shrinking of light; a stink of tallow; a hiss; and the 
shock of utter darkness seized them all.
There was no light; there was no air. Scott heard Matthew blundering about, 
seeking them. He could hear Lymond's quick breathing, close to his face and his 
own raucous panting. He could feel cool fingers bending and turning, the weight 
of the lean, clever body and the steady leverage on his own limbs. . . . Kill 
girls! He could kill girls; but he wasn't going to stop Will Scott.
He broke that hold, and the next. He knew some of Lymond's tricks, but not all. 
The pressure on his ribs had gone. Now he needed only to get his right hand 
free. He twisted.
Matthew stumbled on them and laid hands on something. Lymond's voice, 
breathless, told him curtly to keep away. There were men~s voices m the convent 
above, and someone shouted something, but the blood roaring in his ears deafened 
Scott. He crashed again on his side, bruising his hip agonizingly against fallen 
stone, gritted his teeth, and shifted his own grip again.
It was bitter delight: to feel Lymond, the cool, unassailable 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. "God . . . 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 God, 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, 
cherishing it; and then with a grim and godly 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 white


shirt 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 sunshine. Heartsease quailed under their 
hoofs and honeysuckle dispensed bees and a yearning of scent; the elms passed 
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 classical 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 nobler 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 God," 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 embarrassments. 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 grass 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 damned senseless fool!"
The prone 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 my



mind 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 bloody 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 damned 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 dispassionate 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 passionate 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 would


savour 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 unobtrusively 
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 buttery 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.
Or so the captain thought. "Ho!" he said. "Jesus, you're particular, aren't you? 
Canna trouble to reply to the likes of me. Man: you're going to stand there and 
sing like a linnet before we shift you a step. So cheep, my laddie, give us your 
tongue. .


Nothing.
The captain raised his voice. Scott could see he was a popular man. "Oh, fine 
then. We know how to Sort this kind. There's a legal punishment for refusing to 
plead. Alec: have we got any weights? Well, chains, then. Plenty of chains. 
Davie: there's two high rings. Cut him off and stick his hands on these. Now. 
That's a fine bit of chain, man. A shade rusty but no harm to it: we wouldna 
want to dirty a nice clean one. We'll put the first one around his neck."
The Peine Forte et Dure was a perfectly valid punishment for silence: it used 
weights to achieve a gradual pressing to death. Scott said, "Wait a moment. 
We're supposed to deliver the man alive. The courts won't exactly thank you for 
doing their job for them."
The captain was engineering the laying of the first chain like a Roman with his 
first viaduct; he didn't even bother to look around. "Never heed. We'll have him 
talking that fast he'll wear his tongue thin."
And they would, of course. Lymond might be capriciously vain, but he wasn't 
foolish. Like some mountainous and ironic chain of office the cable bedecked 
him; he had braced himself against its weight so that there was no needless drag 
on his arms, spread-eagled above. His face was set like iron. Never before had 
Scott seen so clearly the force of his will.
The captain was bringing forward another chain, ostentatiously, to cheers. 
Lymond took the strain in silence, with an odd mixture of impatience and 
resignation, and Scott, bemused by the sickly luxury of the event, almost missed 
the flickering lashes as Lymond looked fleetingly up and beyond the crowd. Scott 
turned unobtrusively.
At an open window on the first floor of the castle stood Christian Stewart. He 
saw her, saw the blowing red hair and listening face and then no more, for with 
an uproar greater than all Threave could offer, his father and his father's 
train appeared. The sharp Buccleuch eyes swept over the throng; over the 
grotesque, taut figure by the tower over the captain, whom he jerked to his 
side, and over his son's re~ face.
"Chains. That's a new idea. Thank God ye didna have them at Crumhaugh. . . . Are 
you the captain? Just so. The Master of Culter may be anathema to you, as he is 
to the rest of us, but that doesna alter the fact that . .
The window was empty. Christian had gone, thought Scott, mercifully missing the 
name. Then he saw a billow in the crowd: a red




head and two stout elbows made remorseless passage and Christian Stewart, 
agonized and dishevelled, arrived among them like an arrow, Sym flying at her 
side.
"Buccleuch? They're killing a man here. Your snivelling whelp and that ape-"
"Hey!" said the captain resentfully.
Buccleuch, with plenty on his mind, looked both annoyed and alarmed. "Are you 
staying here? Well away back in: Hunter's there; I've seen him. Nobody's being 
killed, and this is no place for lassies." But she was off, Sym pulling her, and 
paid not the slightest attention.
Cleated with iron, his wrist tendons stark and his yellow head poised like a 
tassel, Lymond watched her like a cat, chilling even Sym's red-faced grin into 
blankness. Within a yard of him, the blind girl said, "Mr. Crawford?"
The way it was said caught Scott by the throat. His father's breath hissed 
through his teeth; there was a surge of intrigued whispering and Lymond turned 
his full regard for the first time, wide-eyed, on Scott. The boy jumped forward, 
and put a hand on her arm.
He raised his voice. "It's Lymond, Culter's young brother, they've got," he 
said. "Let me take you indoors. We'll look after him: don't worry."
"I know who it is, you fool: I heard your father," said Christian. "Are those 
improbable, schoolboy chains still on him? Sym, take them off. Francis Crawford: 
you're another fool, playing Macanus with the lockjaw. I told you sound was my 
stock-in-trade. I've known your voice since I was twelve. You intended, I 
suppose, to sink like a pressed duck into a vertical grave." There were tears of 
fright in her eyes.
Sym's sturdy arms raised the last garland of cable, its manifold prints embedded 
below in pulped cloth. Lymond, obsessed and unheeding, opened tight lips at last 
and hurled words at her. "There are two hundred people listening to you. 
Buceleuch, damn you: get her out of here.~~
"I don't care," snapped Christian, "if there are two thousand. I'm not 
accustomed to denying my friends in public."
"Lady Christian knows the prisoner?" The captain, no less than his audience, was 
fascinated by this glimpse of frailty in high places. Scott rushed to her aid. 
"The Master imposed on the lady's kindness without telling her who he was."
That touched off the explosion. Ignoring Buccleuch's hand on her



elbow, Christian rounded on his son. "I knew who he was. To know isn't 
necessarily to inform, as with some people."
"But he believed you didn't know, didn't he? Hence the pantomime."
The captain was impressed. "Jesus, that's crafty. He wouldna pipe up in case the 
lassie linked his name with his voice, and let on that the two of them
"I told you!" said Scott angrily. "He got her to shield him. You've no right to 
assume . . . But his voice was lost in the deluge of ribald laughter and 
comment.
The row lessened as Buccleuch let out a roar, but it didn't stop. He gripped 
Christian's arm afresh and she shook him off. "I don't move until he's safely 
out of this yard." Her face creamy white within the masking red hair, she was 
quite unflinching. "It's more than time some things were said and done in the 
open, instead of underground like a nation of moles. This time, I'm going to 
stop a man from knitting his own noose. Mr. Crawford-"
Lymond's voice, carrying its full power, cut across her words. For his own sake, 
clearly he must silence her. He did it in his own way, raising his voice in a 
mockery which insolently denied pain, or strain, or any experience of ignominy.
"There goes my epic moment again!" he said. "Pantomime! I'd have held the Rose 
of Hamborough in twenty fathoms on a gravel bottom in a southeast gale, and all 
for nothing and less than nothing:
my illusions destroyed, my deceptions dragged into the light of day and my 
speech miscarried and scattered to the hyenas. I do not complain. You may have 
your frolic. But on one thing I insist. I will not have my name coupled with a 
redheaded woman. Red-ribboned mares kick. Red-horned cattle gore. Rowans poison, 
and so do redheads, given the chance. . . . Is that clear?"
Sym had drawn back. The blue eyes pursued him coldly. "Well? What more? You 
heard her. She won't move until I'm freed."
He had lost any good will left to him. Sym, at a nod from the captain, moved 
forward doubtfully to unlock Lymond's wrists. The captain cleared his throat 
uneasily. Inside the castle his temporary prison was ready, and there was an 
escort of soldiers waiting; the sooner the fellow was locked up now the better.
He glanced sideways. In spite of what they'd just heard the girl showed no signs 
of anger with the jackanapes. And she had high-up friends, he knew. As the 
shackles were unfastened, he addressed her.



"It's a fine, dry cellar, my lady, and he'll come to no harm. Forbye, we hardly 
laid a finger on him."
"Ye leid, ye leid, ye filthy nurse," said the prisoner pleasantly. "One hand 
free. God. Manus loquacissimae-it's pantomime all right. And the second free. 
Competently done. Restored without loss to the parent trunk: ulna, radius, 
humerus
There was a long pause. "Not very," said Lymond rapidly. "Not at all, in fact."
He had lowered his arms very slowly. Ceasing to speak, he cupped his face 
momentarily, grimacing; then with a gesture of hall-comic resignation slid like 
a trout through Sym's grasp to the ground.
And the odd thing was, as Scott bending sardonically over him discovered, that 
he really had fainted.

* * *



They had Maxwell's permission to use the castle for one night, leaving for the 
capital next morning.
In the privacy of Threave, once the prisoner had been battened down under triple 
guard, the chief actors expended their nervous excitement on each other. 
Christian, frustrated in her efforts to visit Lymond and irritated by 
Buccleuch's wholesale damning of that gentleman's anonymous ways, finally lost 
her temper completely and went off to bed. Scott fared little better.
The question was one of naming his former colleagues. Accused of standing with 
one foot in each camp; of leaving the countryside at the mercy of leaderless 
cutthroats, of lack of responsibility and of owning a head full of pulp and pips 
like a Spanish orange, Scott replied in kind without a trace of exhaustion, and 
he and his father were still going at the subject hammer and tongs long after 
Hunter had collected his men and departed. Finally Buccleuch roared. "It's a 
pity, since you're so keen on them, ye didn't stay with your precious friends!"
Will, already on his feet, snatched up his cloak. "All right; I will!"
"Ye kale-heided coddroch! They'll cut ye in triangles if ye show your neb there 
after what you've done!"
'Then I'll go somewhere else!"
"You'll go somewhere else all right," snarled Buccleuch, and rang the handbell 
as though he were twisting a cockerel's neck. "You'll spend the night where you 
can't do any harm and where you'll have


every chance of comparing your dear old friends with your new ones- Fetch the 
captain."
Scott jumped to his feet, but Buecleuch's heavy hand was on his sword arm. When 
the captain came, Wat alarmed him by continuing to shout. "Here's another 
prisoner for you. I want him under lock and key for a night to clear the mud off 
his brain."
The captain was anxious to please, but unprepared. "I havena a fast room, Sir 
Wat. The dungeon's blocked, and there's only the cellar . .
"That's what I mean," said Buccleuch vindictively. "Put him in the cellar."
The captain hesitated. "But the Master of Culter's in the cellar."
"I know that, you fool!" said Buccleuch. "Put him with Lymond for a night, and 
let's see if he's hare, hound or rabbit, the fool."
Will Scott fought every plank of the way to the kitchen; he fought while they 
unbolted the heavy trap door in the floor, and he bit and kicked while they 
shoved him through it and halfway down the wooden steps which led to the cellar. 
Then the trap thudded shut above his head, the bolts clattered, and he was left 
alone with initium sapientiae and the Master of Culter.

* * *



There is nothing very jolly about being locked in a cellar with a man whom, in 
every possible sense, you have just stabbed in the back. As Will Scott crashed 
into the stair rail and heard the trap thud above him, his very thews melted 
with apprehension.
The cellar had been used as a storeroom. Opposite, two barred windows near the 
ceiling imprisoned the night sky. There was a well in the shadows on his right, 
and a quantity of sacks, barrels and boxes. On two of these Lyniond lay 
stretched at ease, a solitary candle at his side.
Within the light, shapes and colours were sudden and strong: the butter-yellow 
head, impeccably neat, with a bag of meal under it; the fresh Hessian bandaging; 
the silver spark of burst points and the blue of the light cloth at shoulder and 
raised knee; at neck and cuff, the half inch of cambric glinting white. All that 
was unsightly had been removed from Lymond's appearance.
Looking for traces of the day's humiliations or the languor of bodily weakness, 
Scott found neither. With the face of a Della Robbia







angel, Lymond spoke. "In a day of gimcrack cannibalism and snivelling 
atrocities, we have now touched rock bottom. God send," pursued the voice as 
Scott, descending, made his way to a trestle by the well, "God send that 
somebody else is about to flay the gristle from your inestimable backbone."
Scott sat down. He had already had enough of physical violence. The other kind 
hung in the air, a raw miasma, sapping his robust and righteous anger. He said 
curtly, "You challenged me yourself."
"'ro attack me. Not to engineer a cheap death for Turkey Mat."
"It was his own fault. Father would have looked after him."
"Father would have had his work cut out, after your Jove-like pyrotechnics at 
the convent. Don't fancy yourself the neo-Christ of Branxholm, by the way. You 
weren't saving anybody. I'm used to being taken for a cross between Gilles de 
Rais and a sort of international exchange in young mammals, but I draw the line 
somewhere."
All the tormented emotion, the anger and fear and vexed and mauled spirit of the 
unfortunate Scott sprang affronted from his lips.
"I can guess the kind of names you'd like to call me," he said with cold fury. 
"I betrayed you to Andrew Hunter; I tricked you into hiding in the convent; I 
used a knife on you-badly; my God, how ineptly-but at least I made you wince in 
some sort, once, however briefly. When my father delivers you to the law, I'll 
have paid the debts of the cheated dead and the warped living and the wrecked 
lives of four women. . . Can you deny it? Am I not right?"
"Right?" said Lymond. "You pathetic, maladroit nincompoop, you're never right; 
but this time you can squat in your misconceptions like duck's meat in a ditch, 
and let them choke you."
Scott, viciously, was on his feet. "Go on. Explain my own motives to me. Or if 
you won't explain yourself, shall I try? Someone once said you hated women, and 
you do, don't you? You despise everyone-.--even yourself-but above all you hold 
women cheap . .
He got no further. "You bloody, insalubrious little fool," said Lymond, and 
uncoiled like a whip, forcing Scott to retreat. "I'm not calling you names, my 
dear: I'm telling you facts. Today you murdered a friend of mine. You treat that 
very lightly. I hope his tolerance and his honesty and his infirmities break 
their way into your imagination and sphacelate in your insufferable vanity. That 
and another thing. To hell with your piddling vendetta: the bits you were 
bragging about never mattered, and the things that do matter you know nothing 
about. But what the hell," said Lymond with fury,



"what the hell do you mean by subjecting that girl to a public ordeal?"
Scott was stunned. "It was you who-" but Lymond swept on. "If I could keep my 
mouth shut, surely you could take the trifling trouble to keep her out of the 
courtyard? You don't care whom you sacrifice, do you, as long as you imagine it 
will damage me?"
"I didn't deceive her!"
"Do you think I did her any harm!" exclaimed the Master. "But for your meddling 
she was perfectly secure!"
"I remember," said Scott. "You don't like red hair."
The untamed face stared into his. "She was one of your four women, was she? Then 
it certainly seems that she lost security, reputation and peace of mind through 
one of us today. Who else?"
"The Countess of Lennox."
"Lady Margaret was responsible for the fiasco at Heriot which nearly cost your 
father his life. Who else?"
"Your brother's wife."
"You know the truth of that as well as I do."
"Do I?" said Scott. "I was stinking drunk on the floor of your room at the time, 
as I remember."
"All right. I leave you to work out why, having seduced my sister-in-law and 
slaughtered my nephew, I should keep coy silence while you shuffle downstairs at 
three in the morning with that bantlingbrained romantic done up in an oatsack?"
For one dumb moment, Scott sympathized with the man who disgorged a sponge into 
water and found his throat cut. He recovered. "Because you wanted rid of her, I 
expect. As with your young sister."
"As with my young sister," agreed Lymond. Like the sun in eclipse, the candle at 
his back rimmed his unregenerate head; he held himself lightly and easily, the 
poised Roc pitying the elephant. "I should have warned you. I can wrestle with 
one arm as well as with two."
The light in Scott's pale eyes was contemptuous. "It won't be necessary. I know 
enough about yoa. I don't want to know any more."
Lymond said delicately, "What are you afraid of?"
"Me? Nothing!" exclaimed Scott. "If you want to fight, I'll fight."
"But not with ideas? You're beating drums and brass kettles, Scott. Thick skin 
and prejudice won't keep the dragons away."
"I'm tired of a landscape with dragons," said Scott violently.


"What, then? Retreat underground into hebetude: retreat under water like a 
swallow: retreat into a shell like a mollusc: retreat into the firmament like 
some erroneous dew. . .
"I don't retreat."
"You don't progress much, either."
"I scotch the dragons."
"And how," said Lymond precisely, "do you know a dragon when you see it?"
Despite every endeavour, Scott was trembling. He said, "Because I'm a human 
being, not a toy, a familiar, a piece of unconsecrated wax to malign your 
enemies with. I know you. I didn't mean Turkey to die. I wouldn't intentionally 
have hurt the girl, but it's done, and if it had to be done again it would be 
worth it. You know all about the law of talion: you've hunted Harvey, poor 
devil, like a thing from beyond the grave. You're a master-my God, don't I know 
it- of the art of apposite punishment. I made damned sure you'd get a taste of 
both before you got out of my reach. You won't get over the Border to kill 
Harvey now."
"Teaching you to speechify is another thing I should have my throat cut for," 
said Lymond. "My appointment is broken; I may be said vaguely to be aware of 
that. Your intentions were majestic. To teach me to sing re, my fa, sol, and 
when I fail, to bob me on the noll. Only the field is now littered with other 
bobbed and blameless nolls and I am left, as it happens, singing ut to Johannes, 
which should delight you indeed. Why are you here?"
There was a pause. Scott said nothing, and the blue eyes suddenly narrowed. "Is 
this, by any chance, a modest silence? Good God!" Lymond sat down. "Have you 
been protecting your former colleagues?"
"I had no quarrel with them."
Continuing to stare at him, the Master gave a hoot of derisive laughter and sat 
back, nursing his injured arm. "My only success, and I was too damned 
preoccupied to watch it coming to the boil. Who locked you up here? Oh, your 
father, of course."
And, stretching like a cat, Lymond lay down. Mysteriously, the chill of animal 
danger had gone; mysteriously, there was an unwilling amusement about his mouth. 
"I have licked you like the cow Audhumbla from the salt of your atrocious 
upbringing, and am watching the outcome with a fearful joy. . . . Your father, 
as you no doubt REALIZE, will have to argue himself into fits to get you 
accepted at Court again: you should tell him that the dispatches which you 
copied for me so resentfully in your own illimitable hand will do precisely that 
for you, mentioned in the right quarters. They are all in Arran's possession. 
They got there, by the way, through a very wily gentleman called Patey Liddell, 
who should not be involved. He would in any case be deaf to questions-you've no 
idea how deaf."
There was a startled silence. Scott said, "Is that true?" And, quickly: "It's a 
trick of some sort."
"It's blackmail. I want something in return."
"What?"
"Undo some of the feckless damage you did today," said Lymond, and held his 
eyes. "Pull the girl clear. Drive it home to every gossiping fool that whatever 
Christian says, she didn't know what she was doing when she gave me refuge. 
Conjure up Shamanism and the Black Mass if you like. Anything. But get it about 
that she was not responsible for her actions. Understand?"
"I should do it in any case. It won't help you," said Scott.
"Nothing ever does. That's why I help myself so frequently."
There was another pause. "Those letters," said the boy. "Much good they'll do me 
when they find out we've been selling copies to England as well. In my writing."
"In that case it's lucky for you that we haven't."
"Haven't traded with England? For God's sake, I copied them myself!"
"And for God's sake, I tore them up."
"What!" Scott was halfway across to the other trestle when Lymond snapped at 
him. "Go back and lie down. I don't want your coddled features singing Kassidas 
over me. What the hell does it matter? You've done your job."
Scott walked back. He sat on the edge of the boards and repeated:
"You tore them up. If you tore them up, why did we trouble to capture them?"
"For sixty avid reasons. Mercenaries are exceedingly mercenary, you know. And 
suspicious. Also, curiosity on my part."
"But you tore them up. Why?"
"Because I'm on your side, you damned fool," said Lymond.
The cellar was very quiet. The Master's face, closed, offered nothing to Scott's 
strained scrutiny. After a moment the boy collected



his own limbs and stretched back slowly on the bed. "That would be your story in 
Edinburgh, of course," he said eventually. "Can you prove it?"
There was a brief pause. "From here?" asked Lymond sardonically. "No, Mr. Scott. 
I have no proof now, nor am I likely to have."
Out of the dark and disastrous muddle, a fragment of pattern asserted itself. 
Scott swallowed. "Harvey? Harvey had something to do with it?"
"I rather think so. Perhaps not. In any case, it's too late now, isn't it? Look 
at the stars." Lymond's eyes were on the high windows. "I offered them to you 
once before, on a celebrated occasion. Forth quenching go the starris, one by 
one; and now is left but Lucifer alone . . . And what can Lucifer do, with a 
bolt and a bar and over a hundred horseless miles between him and his 
illusions?-It's a sad world, and the candle is going; so unless like AI-Mokanna 
you can cause moons to issue from our well, we are destined to sorry together in 
the dark. Good night. You're a damned nuisance and a public danger, but so is 
your father. It's a thrawnness in the vitals of the body politic which will 
either kill it or save it yet."
The voice was resigned, but not unfriendly. The light from the candle, a weak 
conspirator, searched the face of Scott's celebrated prisoner, touching for a 
moment on its secretive ironies; and then went out.

* * *



W~ Scott had been right in thinking that the Master of Maxwell would move not an 
inch to help a man of the notoriety of Lymond. Maxwell and his wife were at one 
of their lodges, hunting, when Hunter's message arrived. Maxwell sent a 
congratulatory reply making Sir Andrew and Buccleuch free of his castle and its 
prisons until the following morning, and continued to hunt. He did, however, 
dispatch his wife home, as was fitting, to see that his guests, voluntary and 
involuntary, were comfortably housed.
At eleven o'clock that night, Agnes Herries stalked into the hail at Threave, 
making a dozing Buccleuch jump like a rabbit over a somnolent game of prime; and 
demanded to know whether he was out of his senses, locking up his son with a 
desperate man like the Master.


As was due to his hostess, he explained his reasons, succinctly. She questioned 
them. He explained, more fully. She contradicted him. At midnight Buccleuch, 
grousing, unbolted the trap door in the light of the torch held by Agnes Herries 
and called down. "Will! Are ye all right?"
"Of course!" replied his son's voice, rudely.
"Then ye might as well come up," said Sir Wat ungraciously, and abandoning the 
trap to Lady Herries, stumped off without waiting for the sight of his heir.
Will Scott crossed the cellar stiffly. Lymond's buried head did not stir. For a 
moment the boy stopped, looking down at him; then he turned and ran quickly up 
the wooden staircase.
At the top, the trap door was held open by Agnes Herries. Beyond her, he saw 
that three men still stood guard in the kitchen and passage, but that the guard 
had changed, and none of them was a Scott. He hesitated.
"Gracious!" said Lady Herries. "After all the trouble I've taken to get you out, 
can you not walk a little quicker than that? I want to go to bed." Her eyes 
under the heavy brows met his with a vigorous impatience, and as the young man 
set foot on the kitchen floor she dropped the trap with a thud that shook the 
pans on their shelves, and the bolts rattled. She straightened. "Well?"
"All right," said Scott, making up his mind, rather to his own surprise. "I'm 
half asleep, that's all. I'm sorry. Lead on. It was very good of you to .
And in ten minutes he was in bed, although it was a long time before he fell 
asleep.

* * *



Long before he woke, Christian Stewart left the castle with her retinue, riding 
as fast as Sym would allow her. It had taken her a good part of the night to 
accept the fact that she must leave; and Buccleuch, who had no liking for 
playing the jailer or the spy, was relieved tG see her go.
At six o'clock, a fist crashed on Scott's door, and a roar summoned him to fling 
on a robe and meet his father in the hail. He did so, and found a room full of 
cowed servitors, his hostess in a state of fluent resignation, a~d his father in 
a temper.



"Ho!" said Buccleuch, when his son appeared. "Ho! So it's come to it that ye 
canny even snib a bolt behind ye, now. Or didn't ye mean to snib it?"
With his new arts, Will Scott kept surmise and recollection out of his face. 
"What bolt?"
"What bolt!" snarled Sir Wat. "The wee snib on the back yett to the kennels. The 
trap door in the kitchen, ye gomerel. They found it this morning, as free as 
Hosea's wife, and yon three stookies littefed in the passages with their heads 
dunted."
Scott's mouth opened. "Then Lymond's gone?"
His sire was sarcastic. "Well, he didna pop out of the hole, bash three fellows 
on the head and pop back in again, just for the devil of it. Of course he's 
gone! There's half Threave out hunting him, but deil knows the start he's got. 
And it's your fault, ye damned fool!"
This was a surprise. Scott said indignantly, "How?"
Agnes Herries said severely, "I told you to bolt that trap properly. How you 
could be so careless!"
Scott stared at her. "You told me . . .
She stared back. "Sleepy you may have been, but not too sleepy to forget that, I 
hope. Even my three men remember it quite distinctly. So if the trap wasn't 
properly fastened, you have only yourself to blame."
It was no use protesting. Having turned the other cheek, Will Scott submitted, 
with as much tranquillity as he could muster, to having it slapped. He mounted 
with his father and spent the rest of the daylight hours scouring the 
countryside for the escaped man, without any success whatsoever.

* * *



At Midculter, Sybilla occupied herself that Friday and Saturday in turning out 
cupboards and making long and superfluous lists of her gold plate. Mariotta, who 
had been straying restlessly from room to room ever since Janet Buccleuch left, 
burst into rn-considered speech. "How can you sit there and do that?"
They had heard nothing since the news that Lymond was to be trapped: nothing of 
Will; nothing of Hunter; nothing of Sir Wat. Listening to Mariotta's hand-
wringing tirade Sybilla, who was rather pale, sat back on her heels and reached 
a decision. "Look," she said incisively. "I try not to interfere, but we may as 
well be honest with


one another. Whom are you afraid for? You've cast off Richard, and you find my 
other son detestable."
Mariotta said indistinguishably, "I don't want any harm to come to him."
"Who?" said the Dowager sharply. "Incidentally, if it interests you, my guess is 
that Lymond hardly knows you exist."
"I meant Richard," said the girl.
"I see. Well, Richard for all his fiummery, worships his wife. Unhappily, 
neither of you knows what the other is dreaming about half the time."
She said defensively, "He's not easy to understand."
"And yet you rather expected Richard to read your mind, didn't you? You thought 
he pictured you encysted forever with pots and pans- A woman is a worthy thing; 
they do the wash and do the wring. And so on. Whereas-"
"Of course I did. No other thought crossed his mind."
"Heaven forbid," said the Dowager crossly, "that I should tattle over other 
folks' errors like an unemployed midwife; but look. Wat Scott is like that. With 
Wat it's sew Tibet, knit Annot and spin Margerie and no nonsense. He'd think it 
a downright insult to his manhood to clatter of his affairs in the house."
Mariotta sat down, prepared to argue in spite of herself. "But Janet seems to me 
to know everything that's going on."
"Exactly. What's more, in her wrangling way, she makes sure that Wat knows her 
opinion on everything that matters. In other words, she uses her own methods of 
informing herself on everything Wat's interested in, and half the time he's 
acting exactly as Janet is making him act.
"You want Richard to be interested in the minutiae of your day:
it works both ways. Do you ever wonder what Richard is doing with these building 
experiments of his? Did you ever get him to tell you of the time he carried off 
all the prizes at Kilwinning? Did you know, for example, that he's probably the 
best swordsman in the country, and that he sometimes teaches, for Arran, when 
some of the nobler scions turn out to need a little polish?"
"If you mean," said Mariotta, red-faced, "that I should copy Janet, I hardly 
think-"
"I don't mean anything of the sort. I'm only doing a little dissecting work on 
adjacent marriages; you can draw your own conclusions. Look at the Maxwells, for 
instance."



"Agnes?"
"If you like. While thinking she was choosing, she was being chosen. While 
electing this man as hero of one of her appalling romances, she was marrying a 
hardheaded intelligent person who will be clever enough-and kind enough-to 
preserve the fantasy, or at least let her down pretty lightly."
"And Richard?"
The Dowager put a wandering hand to her white hair. "Richard. I can't tell you 
the path to take there. You'll have to find it for yourself. But I can tell you 
two things about him. One is that the most serious thing in his life is his 
country. The other is this. The only thing that could kill Richard is a lack of 
stability."
Mariotta's face darkened. "You mean inconstancy."
"I mean," said Sybilla gently, "the folly of allowing oneself to be attracted 
always by superficial glitter. I mean a craving for change and excitement-even 
the nasty excitement of waiting to be found out about those jewels."
Mariotta was silent. Then, unexpectedly, a tear appeared and made its way down 
one cheek. "But," said Mariotta miserably, "how can I change now?"
Sybilla rose and with an odd compound of a sigh and a smile, sat down in her own 
carved chair. "Time will do it for you, my infant, and much too quickly. Your 
tragedy was that the man you became involved with was the very person who 
created the flaw in Richard's maturing. And if that was anyone's fault, it was 
probably mine. . . . How prosy we are; drunk with the dear indulgences of 
synthesis and self-pity and criticizing other people's love affairs. Do you feel 
better or worse?"
"Better," said Mariotta; and crossing to sit on the arm of the Dowager's chair, 
bent to kiss one flawless cheek.

Tom Erskine was with them when, much later, Christian arrived from Threave. She 
was aching and dirty, with more than weariness in her eyes. Sybilla, watching 
the blind face, seated her quickly, and the girl wasted no time. Turning the 
fine eyes on the Dowager, she said simply, "They have Francis."
The reaction was curious. "Who?" demanded Erskine. And "Who?" said Sybilla in a 
tone so different that the blind girl gave a quick, rueful smile. Sybilla 
possessed herself of one of Christian's hands.



"So," she said. "We are coming into the open. Tell us." And she did so.
At the end, the Dowager spoke. "Richard knows nothing of this? Good. Tom-you're 
not to tell him, either. The longer we can keep them apart . . . I wonder .
"Stop wondering," said the girl. "It's my turn now."
"Go on," said Sybilla gently.
"I made a mess of things at Threave," said Christian bluntly. "There was some 
pretty dangerous horseplay going on, and by the time it was stopped they knew I 
wasn't quite-disinterested. After that I was guarded; Sym as well. But the point 
is this. He had great hopes, apparently, of an encounter with a man called 
Samuel Harvey: he was on his way to meet him at Wark when he was taken-I got 
that much out of Buccleuch's idiot son. Well, he's missed that meeting now. But 
maybe another could be arranged-for us. At any rate, George Douglas is mixed up 
in the business somehow, and I'm going to see him. If persuasion or threats can 
do anything, I'm going to make him help."
"Help? Help who?" demanded Tom Erskine, bemused.
There was a moment's silence. "My younger son," said Sybilla quietly. "We are a 
tenacious family, and you have a very kindhearted fiancee. Helping Lymond has 
been rather a concern of ours-am I right, Christian?-for some months now."
Christian opened her hands in mock despair. "How did you guess?"
"Nobody ever," said the Dowager sorrowfully, "credits me with normal thought 
processes. When a mysterious man creates a royal scandal on the banks of the 
Lake of Menteith with the keenest ears in Scotland strolling utterly oblivious-
by her own account-in the locality, I begin to wonder. I also wonder when a 
delicately reared child sends a court into fits with a riddle which I invented 
myself. And when Andrew Hunter and Richard both mention a name I have heard you 
repeat, and the name is connected with Lymond . .
"And then you probably noticed the gypsy."
"I noticed, certainly, that the gypsies who put in such a timely appearance 
before I lost all my silver were the same ones you were so anxious to speak to 
in Stirling-yes."
"Was that why you kept Johnnie Bulb beside you?"
"To begin with. I'm disappointed in Johnnie," said the Dowager with some 
severity. She opened a workbag, took out her embroidery,


and put the horn-rimmed spectacles on her nose. "Johnnie turned out to be rather 
much of an individualist. It would serve him right if someone taught him a 
lesson."
"Bulb . . . ?" said Mariotta. "But that's the man who I don't understand," she 
said despairingly.
"We're congratulating each other on how clever we've been," said Sybilla. "Quite 
without reason. For there is the dear man in prison at Threave, and here we are, 
doing very little about it."
"You've been helping Lymond?" said Mariotta, and stood up.
Sybilla looked up. She put down her needle, drew off her spectacles and gave 
Mariotta all her attention. "I'm sorry, my dear," she said. "Sit down. We're 
rushing a little ahead of you in our worries, that's all. You see, my son Lymond 
is not quite the drunken renegade of the legend."
"He didn't entice me to Crawfordmuir?" said Mariotta. "He didn't kill my baby? 
Insult me? Try to burn you out? Corrupt Will-kill Richard-take advantage of 
Christian? A moment ago you yourself called him superficial and glittering."
Gently, the Dowager replied. "I told you what attracted you to him. I didn't say 
there was no more to discover. He's caused no intentional harm to me or to you: 
you can't, I think, seriously accuse him of destroying your child; and I think 
he had his reasons for what happened afterward. He has a great deal, naturally, 
still to account for, but-"
"Don't let's be misled," said Tom Erskine suddenly. "You want to think the best 
of him, of course. But his aim all along has been to obliterate Richard. I can't 
presume to tell anyone to choose between their own children, but it seems to me 
that the danger to other people is something to take into account. Christian, I 
didn't know you even met this fellow."
For a moment, the girl was silent. Then she said, "I met him in September, but 
it would hardly have been fair to ask you, or anyone else, Tom, to share that 
particular secret."
Erskine said with a sudden anger, "But you might have been killed!"
"Perhaps," she said. "But I don't think so. In any case, I'm safe now, amn't I? 
And the truth can do none of us any harm. Sybilla, I'm calling at Boghall, and 
then going straight on to Dalkeith. I'll let you know what happens. Tom . .



He said heavily, "You're determined to go on with your chainpionship of this-
this-"
"Outlaw? I want to finish what I've started, Tom. Is that a bad thing? If I'm 
right, then I'll have prevented an injustice. If I'm wrong, then the popular 
point of view-and yours-is vindicated. In any case, you are the man I am 
contracted to marry. You don't suppose I have forgotten that?"
He had no words to meet that kind of attack.
Afterward, when Christian had gone, he came back and sat for a long time, sunk 
in thought, before the Dowager's parlour fire. Eventually he looked up, drawing 
Sybilla's kindly eye. "She isn't the sort of person to be easily deluded."

"Or stupidly bedazzled."

"And yet, beyond rhyme and reason . . . why?" demanded Tom of the air.
"Because she thinks one of her lame ducks is about to turn into a swan," said 
Sybilla. Her lenses flashed in the glare like scarlet lamps.
Searching, questioning, his eyes moved from Sybilla to her daughter-in-law. "The 
man's a saint?"
"No," said Sybilla. "Not a saint. An artist in the vivesection of the soul. But 
only because he has known the knife now for five years."
"It's damned nice of him," said Erskine, "to make sure we all suffer too."
"I told you he wasn't a saint," said the Dowager. "And there's a limit to 
everyone's endurance. I only hope-" Unexpectedly, she halted.
"What?" said Mariotta.
"That if he's going to break under it, he doesn't break too soon. He's probably 
the only person in the world now who can restore Richard to any sort of terms 
with his own future. If not indeed," said Sybilla, taking off her spectacles, 
"the only person who can send him back to you."

. * *



On Sunday, the third of June, the day alter this discussion, Francis Crawford of 
Lymond was sitting on the crumbling wall of a sheep



fank on the Scottish side of the River Tweed, throwing pebbles idly into the 
reaming waters.
It was a restful, a delicious scene. Plump clouds like amoretti hung in a blue 
sky; shining rooks cawed from among shining leaves and an otter with a half-
eaten fish shivered the bog orchis with his shoulder as he passed. Lymond 
watched him go, and tossed another pebble into the water.
Across the river, the green edge of England lurched upward into an uneven ridge 
and plunged behind into the hollow where lay the village of Wark. On top of the 
ridge, toe to toe with its own deliquescent outline, reared the English Border 
fortress of Wark, on whose tower walk stood Gideon Somerville, both hands 
shading his eyes.
"There, sir," said the soldier beside him.
"I see." Gideon scrutinized the seated figure, far across the water. The bent 
head was unmistakable. "He hasn't tried to cross the river?" There was a ford of 
sorts at that point.
"No, sir. But the river's a bit high."
"I see that. All right. Send a boat across for him and bring him to my room."
Downstairs, waiting at his desk, it seemed to Gideon a long time before the door 
opened. Someone said, "The Master of Culter, sir," and shut it again, and Gideon 
looked up.
It was the familiar, elegant presence, but quieter, less dynamic than he 
remembered. Lymond came only a few paces into the room; not far enough to catch 
the dying light from the windows, and Gideon saw only the pale gleam of his 
head, with indistinguishable, two-dimensional features, as if face and hands had 
blown like flock to their appointed places in the shadows. Lymond's voice was 
pleasant, unchanged. "Armageddon," he said.
"Hardly," answered Gideon dryly. "You got my message?"
"Admirably delivered. Yes. Mr. Harvey came?"
"And went. We waited for you all day yesterday."
"Then," said Lymond dispassionately, "I'm too late."
Gideon was annoyed. He said brusquely, "Mr. Harvey was in charge of a convoy 
urgently wanted at Haddington. I could hardly keep him indefinitely to suit your 
convenience. Our arrangement was quite clear."
"I know. My fault. I was detained," said Lymond. "The little squirrel, full of 
business. It was good of you to make the appointment at all."



"I set some store by keeping my word. The matter was not, it seems, of very 
great moment to you after all."
There was a pause. Then Lymond, rather helplessly, began to laugh. "Strike on, 
strike on, Glasg~rion. Propbete de malbeur, babillarde . . ." And as once 
before, was betrayed by the uncertain, wanton luxuriance of voice. "You're 
drunk," said Gideon, disgusted to the soul, and slammed back his chair.
"Drunk?" The voice was alight with sell-mockery. "O my God
(	. . Of Paradise ne can I not speak properly, for I am not there. Damnably, 
damnably sober, Mr. Somerville," said the Master
unsteadily.
Gideon crossed the room in three steps. Faultlessly erect, his clothing a bloody 
pulp, his eyes brilliant, Lymond spoke quietly. "-But sicker than Rudel. Don't 
be alarmed. It's merely the effects of insufficient transport over damnable 
country in inclement weather. I was locked up in Threave until yesterday 
morning."
Gideon said incredulously, "You came here on foot?"
"Most of the way. Running like a dog. And aquatics, too: hence the mess. I was 
sorry to give your boatman the trouble of fetching me, but nothing short of 
Buccleuch's bloodhounds would make me swim any more."
"I'm damned sorry." Gideon was uncomfortably shocked.
"It might have been worse. But it would be a courtesy," said Lymond with care, 
"if I could make myself presentable before we talk."
In ten minutes of Gideon at his most practical, the prisoner of Threave found 
himself, unresisting, in bed at Wark.

* * *



At his own request, Lymond came back to the study at nightfall, clean, bandaged, 
freshly dressed and anointed, as he pointed out, with delicate things of sweet 
smell. He seemed, if not exactly full of energy, at least perfectly composed.
"I warned you about Scott," said Gideon, who had opened by demanding an 
explanation of the Master's delay.
"It was my own fault for being so intent on the unfortunate Harvey. As to that-"
"You say," said Gideon, interrupting calmly, "that you have disbanded your men?"


"Cry and with many a piteous peep-by God, they hated it. Yes."
"And are now therefore entirely at my disposal?"
"The Scot, the Frencheman, the Pope and heresie, overcommed by Trothe have had a 
fall. Again yes."
"I wish to God," said Gideon with mild exasperation, "that you'd talk-just once-
in prose like other people."
"All right," said Lymond, and quoted with malice. "And as for Scottishe men and 
Englishe men be not enemyes by nature but by custome; not by our good wyll, but 
by theyre own follye: whiche shoulde take more honour in being coupled to 
Englande than we shulde take profite in being joyned to Scotlande . . . One God, 
one faythe, one compasse of the see, one lande and countrie, one tungue in 
speakynge, one maner and trade in lyvynge, lyke courage and stomake in war, lyke 
quicknesse of witte to learning, hath made Englande and Scotlande bathe one."
"Do you believe that?" asked Gideon.
The blue eyes were level. "What do you want to find out? Whether I profess the 
'damnable opinions of the great heretic Luther'?"
"You quoted Ascham. I wondered why."
"I also quoted the late King James the Fifth. I echo like a mynah, that's why. 
Sticking to birds: if I were a wren, I shouldn't want a crocodile's egg in my 
nest."
"Even to protect you from other crocodiles?"
"On the contrary. We are remarkably pest-free in our part of the world. It's 
England, I think, that needs this alliance."
"Well, of course," said Gideon impatiently. "Look at the mess at Boulogne. 
Between the Protector and the Emperor and the King of France, Europe's become a 
crocodiles' convention. I don't want to become part of the Holy Roman Empire, 
and it wouldn't do Scotland any good either. You're a threat to three million 
people out of all proportion to your size. You can't expect us to leave you 
alone, to watch you siphon up the dregs of Europe and inject them into our 
backside. Your Government agree~l to this miserable marriage, and then broke its 
word. It announces that it can't abide anti-Papists and it can't let down its 
dear old ally France. But your man Panter has been in Paris all the same, 
soliciting for a separate peace on behalf of Scotland with the Emperor."
"Chess," remarked Lymond. He spoke on equal terms, concisely, with little trace 
of the dilettante manner. "And France has been to London soliciting for a 
separate peace with England. All moves in


the game. And sometimes the feint turns into genuine play; sometimes not. France 
may sell us for Boulogne: I don't think so, but she may. Or she might simply use 
us as a temporary blind for her real attack. The Lutherans among us think so, 
and so does the noble faction in need of English money. Religion and cupidity 
are on your side.
"Against that, you haven't seen what your late king managed in the way of 
practical persuasion, with Somerset following. You haven't seen abbeys brought 
to the ground, villages annihilated by the hundred, a nobility decimated, a 
country brought to poverty which thirty years ago was graced above any other in 
Europe with the arts of living. That has bred hate, and hate is a factor like 
any other."
"If hate can be learned, it can be forgotten," Gideon said. "I know all about 
chess: I would rather have an honest emotion-even hatred. The Emperor presses us 
to help his Flemish subjects recover the money you owe them, since the poorer 
you are, the more easily you will fall to us, and the worse off the French will 
be. Nothing emotional about that. Or about the Scots Commissioners trying to 
reopen negotiations for the royal marriage at every threat of danger, while the 
Queen Dowager perfects her plans to bring the French in and keeps Arran quiet 
with a promise to marry the Queen to his son."
He sat forward in his chair.
"What if she succeeds? Where's your inde-independence then? You'll be a province 
of France, under an implacably Catholic King, with French in your key positions 
and your fortresses. I know all about Henry's claim to be King of Scotland. I 
know all about the broken promises on both sides-the reprisals, the sinkings, 
the Border raids and the rest of it. But will you be any better off under the 
French? Because you will be under the French. Mary of Guise will marry that 
child to the King of France if she possibly can. What has France ever done for 
Scotland? Look at Flodden."
"Look at Haddington," said Lymond. "Now you are conjuring up crocodiles. France 
has too many commitments to spare enough troops to rule Scotland. Good lord, if 
England can't do it, then France isn't likely to. That leaves Scotland under a 
regent in the Queen's absence-and if I were the Scottish Government, the Queen 
would become absent, damned quickly, from now on.
"Where are they worse off than they are now? And in the future, they can expect 
the Queen's children to rule France and Scotland



between them. Another royal line will put in an appearance and the two countries 
will probably fall apart again with little harm done. That's French diplomacy.
"The alternative is English force: reprisals and raids and counter-raids and 
broken promises, as you say. Of course you must try to secure this alliance. You 
might have achieved it in the last reign but for Henry. It was he who fostered 
the cult of the honest emotion, and you're still paying for the mistake."
He paused, his hand straying unconsciously to his bandaged shoulder. "Chess can 
be just about as brutalizing; I grant you that. You know about the Border raids 
last year, back and forth: you burn me and I'll dismember you. The one the Scots 
made in March, for instance-Lord Wharton made two reports on it; one for the 
Protector, and one with all the damage exaggerated to be passed to the King of 
France. The purpose was to justify your invasion in September. Were you at the 
battle of Pinkie?"

"I was. It was as precise an exhibition of honest emotion as you're likely to 
see. It won't be the last. I told you religion' was on your side, and that's the 
bloodiest emotion I know. If this develops into a religious war, then God help 
us."
Gideon, intensely 'interested, noticed that his own affairs had no place in 
Lymond's mind, and that he had dropped entirely most of his irritating 
mannerisms. 'The Englishman scratched his chin with his clasped thumbs. "What's 
your solution? Why not let the children marry?"
Lymond said slowly, "I haven't got a solution. But I'll give you a few 
objections, if you like. The Queen's five and the King's nine. If Mary's brought 
up in London, as Somerset is stipulating, she'll either lose or be accused of 
losing interest in Scotland long before she gets to marrying age. And that small 
excuse is enough to touch off a religious and baronial war up here that might 
make the Protector's efforts look silly. It only needs some fool to crown 
himself, and the whole process of expostulation and invasion begins again."
"But," said Gideon, "if she goes to France, won't the same thing happen?"
"Not quite. There'd be less religious friction. And Mary of Guise would have the 
power and the standing to keep the throne warm for a little time, at least."


Gideon said thoughtfully, "The alternative, I suppose, is to let you keep the 
Queen peacefully until she's of marriageable age. And then-"
"-To arrange a marriage with Edward as a good conduct prize on both sides. 
That's the unemotional solution. France would hate it; so would the Douglases. 
Would Somerset agree to such a wait?"
Their eyes met.
Gideon shook his head slowly and wryly. "It isn't any use getting intelligent 
about it. His Grace's own position is damned shaky. He needs action, and 
success, right away. There's always the Princess Mary, you see. He's bound to 
try and get hold of your Queen."
"In fact, stalemate."
Gideon studied him, over the rim of his hands. "Why aren't you at Edinburgh with 
your people?"
"They threw me out," said Lymond calmly.
"Why?"
"Youth, women and bad company. Nothing sentimental about that either. Or rather, 
not women. One woman."
Gideon said suddenly, "Could I make a guess? Someone connected with Samuel 
Harvey and Princess Mary's household? Someone like Margaret Lennox?"
Lymond replied, "Very like," and didn't add to it.
After a moment, Gideon probed. "You wouldn't care to . . .

Somerville got up. Looking at his feet, he walked to the door and back again, 
aware that the barrier of nationality had fallen between them, and the shutters 
closed again. He resumed his seat behind the desk. "About Harvey."
Lymond crossed his legs. "You're under no obligation in that respect. Similarly, 
I am in your power of disposal, even though the meeting was never held. That was 
the arrangement."
"I have given this some thought," said Gideon, rolling his pen between pink, 
clean fingers. "The convoy which passed through here to Haddington will be 
returning in a week or two's time. It might be possible for a second interview 
with Mr. Harvey to be arranged. Unfortunately-"
"I knew it," said Lymond with equanimity. "The sliding joy, the gladness short; 
the feigned love, the false comfort. Unfortunately-"
"Unfortunately." pursued Somerville, laying the pen down, "I've got to go and 
meet Lord Grey on his return at Berwick. I could



guarantee you a certain degree of safety here under my presence, but without me 
I'm afraid you would end fairly quickly at Carlisle."
"And so it might be quicker to take me to Carlisle in the first place."
"What!" said Gideon dryly. "Put such a singer in the soup? No. I hope to be back 
before Harvey returns. Until then, I am taking you to Flaw Valleys."
There was a pause. "To your house? I see. But will your wife, almighty Mohammet, 
whose laws tenderly I have to fulfil?"
Gideon rose. "You'll find nothing particularly pleasant about your stay. You 
will be under lock and key, and a regime as strict as my wife cares to make it. 
I shall return for you when I can."
Hand on door, Lymond had stopped, his face expressive of conflicting emotions. 
"I should dearly like to know why," he said.
But that was something Gideon did not even know clearly himself.


2.	Shah Mat

Sybilla heard nothing of her son's escape from Threave until the Wednesday of 
that week.
Arriving at the castle in a flurry of women, armed men and boxes, she heard the 
story piecemeal from Will Scott, who was monosyllabic, and Agnes, who was 
jubilant, and drew her own conclusions.
She was not, indeed, as impressed by the feat as Agnes expected, but asked 
sharply, "Have you looked for him?" Scott replied repressively that his father's 
men had scoured the countryside with dogs since Saturday without finding a 
trace. He filled an awkward pause by adding, "How is Mariotta?"
Sybilh~, though dressed with her usual ~clat, was less fantastic in her manner 
than usual, and a good deal more pointed. "Very well. Christian told us of 
Francis's capture, but she didn't know, naturally, of his escape. Did you hear," 
added the Dowager abruptly, "about the raid on Dalkeith?"
Will Scott, not at all sure what the Dowager thought of all this, followed her 
with some bewilderment. "Dalkeith? No!"
"It only happened on Sunday night," said Sybilla, seating herself. "Lord Grey 
sent out troops from Haddington. Some of them burned up the country all round 
Edinburgh, and the rest attacked Dalkeith.


George Douglas escaped, I hear, but his wife and all the rest of the household 
had to give themselves up."
"I thought Sir George and Grey were on good terms," said Scott. "Did you? Agnes, 
my dear," said the Dowager. "Bonnie has some new satin for you, if you can find 
the right box. Just the shade for your turquoises. Will and I shall be quite all 
right here."
Scott watched the girl go with a sinking feeling. He said, "I suppose you know 
my father isn't altogether pleased with me. I don't know what he expected. After 
what happened to Mariotta, no man could stand by and-"
"Rubbish," said Sybilla. "Mariotta is a silly child, who deserved a lesson, 
though not quite the one she got. At least you haven't told your father about 
Wark."
Scott flushed. "I don't believe Lymond went there. He was too late."
Sybilla smoothed her dress. "Did you know why he had to get there?"
"No." Scott hesitated under the blue gaze. "Not really."
"He didn't tell you-even when you were locked in together afterward?"
"It was some information he wanted," said Scott sulkily. "Something he expected 
to put him in a good light with the authorities. I didn't know. But I don't see 
that it could have done him any good now. Not after all he's done."
The Dowager made no reply, and the boy found himself overcome with exasperation. 
"Are you sorry I captured him? I can tell you his brother won't be."
"Sorry? Yes. Aren't you?" said the Dowager mildly.
Scott met her eyes squarely. "I don't know. I don't know what to believe. In any 
case, what could I do about it?"
"You could try and find him," said Sybilla. "You know where he might be. And you 
could try and trace Harvey. Then at least- don't you think?-we might get the 
truth."
"The truth?" said Scott harshly. "What good will the truth do to anybody? What 
good has it done Christian Stewart? The only thing that will help her now is a 
piece of good, solid lying." The memory of a promise came back to him. "And I've 
got the job of doing it
I suppose she's back at Boghall?"
"No," said Sybilla. "She takes her friendships a little more seriously



than that. The last time I saw her, she was on her way to visit Sir George 
Douglas at Dalkeith in an effort to neutralize the effects of your little plot 
here."
Scott shot to his feet. "Dalkeith!"
"Yes," said Sybilla pleasantly. "The place the English raided on Sunday. Not a 
very clever thing to do under the circumstances, was it?"


* * *




In delivering Lymond at Flaw Valleys and then returning himself to Berwick, 
Gideon faced a round trip of something like a hundred and forty miles. It was a 
measure of his interest that he took it without hesitation, and a measure of his 
speed that he and his retinue arrived, with the outlaw, in the early afternoon 
of Monday.
The inevitable skirmish took place as he was changing into fresh clothes, under 
the amazed brown eyes of his wife. "And where," said Kate Somerville 
expansively, "did you say you had put him?"
Her husband's expression, already wary, became turgid. "In the bedroom at the 
end of the top passage. Under lock and-"
"Tut!" said Kate. "What are you thinking of! No silk sheets! No goose-feather 
mattress! And two stairs and a nasty muddy yard to cross before he can even 
round up the livestock, unless he starts with the mice."
"Kate-"
"And then food. Is he choosy? We could manage stavesacre and dwale, with a 
little fool's parsley and half a thorn apple, stewed, with toadstools."
"Kate!"
"I think you're suffering from necrosis of the brain," said Kate, a little less 
passionately. "Have you told Philippa?"
Gideon nodded. "I told her he was here to be punished."
"Oh. In that case she's probably in the room at the end of the passage with a 
chabouk. Or is it locked?"
Gideon held out a key. "I must eat and go, sweet. Some of my men will take in 
his food and look after the room-("
"And here was I, preparing to recede into a gentle old age like Philomen and 
Baucis. Don't you think you should retire again? The first retiral seems to have 
got mislaid. No? Well, I shall have to look


after your nasty friend, but don't blame me if he isn't quite the same person 
when you get back," said Kate Somerville.

* * *



She put off no time. With Philippa out of the way and Gideon eating, Kate set 
off along the top passage and, leaving her bodyguard militantly outside, 
unlocked the end bedroom and went in.
The room seemed empty. Nobody at the window, or on the window seat: no one in 
the bed; nobody before the empty grate. That left the Legacy, a chair inherited 
from Gideon's family and carved by a failed student in zoomorphics. Snarling 
with oaken tooth and paw, the Legacy was drawn before the window, its back to 
the door. Kate walked firmly round it and found him.
Slack by the palsied Behemoths, hands open, head thrown back, Lymond slept. It 
was an uncommonly sound sleep. Stretching one finger, Kate drew aside the 
stained jerkin without rousing him. It was enough to tell her what she wanted to 
know.
Below, she confronted her husband. "Why, Gideon?"
He was obtuse. "Why what?"
"Invoke the maternal instinct precisely now. I should rather be rancorous too."
Somerville wiped his mouth. "Scourge away. That's what he's here for."
"Whatever he's here for, he's bleeding over Grandpa Gideon's oak chair like a 
Martinmas pig," said Kate bluntly.
There was a faint smile in Gideon's eyes. "Not my doing. But I admit to setting 
a fast pace this morning. He didn't complain."
"Then allow me to make up for it," said Kate. "The air is filling in a familiar 
way with hideous subtleties. All right. Instinct it shall be. After all, 
everybody always brings the old broken-down things for me to patch up: there's 
nothing actually new about it. When will you be back?"
"Soon, I hope." Gideon rose, and presently took leave of his wife, running 
lightly downstairs to the courtyard. Kate watched him go, observing with 
misgiving the bland assurance on the kind face.

The procession next time along the top corridor was formidable:
a kind of barmecide feast of invalid diet as well as jugs, bowls, bandages and 
clothes, towels, ointment and a small wooden bathtub



bound in brass. Walking through the assembled equipment, Kate unlocked the end 
door this time without ceremony, and went in.
He was not to be caught a second time unawares. Lounging in the window, Lymond 
viewed her acolytes with a faintly etched interest. "Coals of fire. No. I 
observe that's the only thing lacking: such a warm day. Was it you who came in 
just now?"
"It was," said Kate grimly. "And I had a good look at you, so you might as well 
sit down."
The blue eyes were cool. "Why? Are you going to bathe me?"
"Hold your tongue," said Kate. "Charles will do that. And then, for no 
gratification that it will afford me, I'll dress your shoulder. Who performed 
the public service of perforating it?"
"Oh . . . a worm that turned," said Crawford of Lymond. "A bait which refused to 
be hooked. A brandling which snatched itself from the burning. I am quite 
capable of washing and repairing myself, if your people will leave the 
wherewithal."
Kate paid no attention, but mustered her materials and ushered in Gideon's 
servant. "Charles. I'll be back in hail an hour," she said, and shut the door.
The noise of hammering brought her back before then. She found the man Charles, 
streaming with soapy water and pounding on the outside of the captive's room, 
which was ludicrously locked from inside. Kate pushed him aside and vibrated the 
handle. "What do you think you're doing? Let me in!"
Through the thickness of the door, his voice came, slow and flippant. "Mistress 
Somerville! The proprieties!" said Lymond; and though they banged and rattled 
and threatened, nothing more could they get out of him that day.

* * *



A week after this event, Lord Grey of Wilton crossed the Border back into 
England and put up at Berwick Castle, leaving behind his newly fortified 
Haddington under a captain. On arrival Lord Grey, who had had a very hard month, 
was told that the Countess of Lennox was waiting to see him.
He exploded to Gideon, there to smooth his lordship's first hours. "Margaret 
Lennox: what next? She got herself into a fine mess in February; and all her 
father did was laugh in her face and march over to the Scots. Well! I've taught 
that family a lesson!"


"I heard about the Dalkeith raid," said Gideon. "How did it go?" Grey looked 
pleased. "Splendidly, splendidly. I . hope everyone heard about it. I hope all 
friend Douglas's allies and sycophants noticed it and took a lesson from it. 
Sent Bowes and Gamboa out on Sunday night, and they burned around Edinburgh 
while Wilford and Wyndham went for Dalkeith. We undermined from the base-court 
and the white sheets were hanging out of the windows before we'd blunted a pick. 
Got the whole garrison-Douglas's wife, second son, lairds and Douglases in 
dozens, and cartloads of furnishings-I tell you, Gideon," said Lord Grey, 
flushed with recollection, "we came back from that day's work richer by three 
thousand pounds and two thousand head of cattle, and three thousand sheep, not 
to mention as notable a bunch of prisoners as you'd wish to get compensation 
for."
"But Sir George himself got away?"
Pleased reminiscence faded. "Damned coward," said Lord Grey. "Slipped out of a 
postern and fled to Edinburgh, leaving his own wife to be taken. Well, he's got 
little enough reward for it. I shouldn't be surprised if he's back on his knees 
by the end of the week. His wife thinks so. I sent her back to him."
"Sent Lady Douglas back?"
"Yes. She thought she could persuade him to be honest with us at last. But it 
doesn't matter," said Grey expansively. "We've got half his relations in custody 
here, including his two sons. And an odd creature-nice-looking, too-a blind girl 
called Stewart. Ward of the Fleming family and well thought of at Court. She'll 
be worth quite a bit. You'll see her in a moment-I've sent for her."
He bent down heavily for his shoes. "I could do with six months out to grass. 
I've got all this damned coming and going to Haddington
-convoys three times weekly; serpentine pouches, hackbuts, iron, matches, 
sickles, scythes, pickaxes, what have you. And the horses are being used too 
much. And the French fleet is here."
Gideon, whose attention had slackened, sat up sharply. "Are you sure?"
"Saw them myself," said his commander gloomily. "They're lying off Dunbar. A 
hundred and twenty sail, I should judge. A damned great navy."
Gideon said, "What about our fleet?" and saw Grey's lip curl. "What about it? 
Fitting out in the south. It's been fitting out since



it was launched, and it'll be fitting out at Christmas, I shouldn't wonder.
He was still talking when Christian Stewart was ushered in. After her came 
Grey's secretary Myles.
During the introductions, Gideon observed the blind girl curiously. She was 
sturdily built, by his standards, with good features and shining, dark red hair 
framing a surprisingly calm face. While Myles kept Grey's attention, Gideon 
spoke.
"Have we met before, I wonder? You seemed to recognize my name."
She had a splendid smile. "I've heard of you. Through a friend." Gideon made the 
commonplace answer. "Nothing too bad, I hope"; and the girl smiled again.
"Quite the reverse. He-we thought at one time you had had an injudicious past, 
but now we know better."
"Good," said Gideon, but the reply was mechanical. "But now we know better." Was 
it possible she was referring to . . .
He looked up, saw that Grey was still engaged, and took a chance. "Or perhaps . 
. . not so good for Mr. Harvey?" he said.
There was a little silence. Then the colour came back into the girl's fair skin. 
"Do you know him?" she said quietly.
"Who? Harvey?" He was disingenuous.

A friend of Lymond's. Well, well, thought Gideon. "I've met him," he said 
circumspecfly, aloud.
She was uncertain, obviously, of his standing; and doubtful also of being 
overheard. She made a small pause and then said, "As an antagonist?" Which made 
Gideon himself stop to think.
"At first; yes," he said. "Things are a little different now. Do you know him 
well?"
"Know who?" said Lord Grey, piling the last paper on Myles' outstretched arms. 
"Harvey? She probably met him at Haddington." He looked up accusingly. "You 
asked me about that man before. I told you. He's got this wound in the leg and 
he can't get back to Berwick yet-maybe not for weeks. It's damned awkward. I 
only put him into that convoy as an excuse for bringing him here, and now he 
isn't here, and that Lymond fellow has disappeared into smoke."
Neither Gideon nor the girl said anything.
"Anyway," said Lord Grey, calming down. "I've got a job for you, Gideon. Have to 
tear you away from our fair company here. Which


reminds me." He pinched a lip, staring with vague approval at the blind face. "I 
must get a proper chaperone for you. Wish my wife were here. Or-by God, that's 
it!" he exclaimed, struck by a brilliant idea. "The Countess of Lennox! Get the 
damned woman away from under our feet!"
There was no change in the girl's serene face. Gideon said without thinking too 
much, "But-Willie, I don't think that very suitable."
"Why not?"
Gideon couldn't think why not. He repeated, emphatically, "I don't think Lady 
Christian and Meg Douglas would have anything in common. Lady Lennox's dealings 
with her countrymen-some of them-haven't been particularly savoury," he said 
distinctly, and saw the girl's intelligent face turn questioningly toward him.
She said tentatively, "You mean the Countess might try to harm my friends 
through me?" and Gideon knew that although Grey might and did think it nonsense, 
the girl understood.
He gave her a friendly farewell a little later, and went off, in high good 
humour for no evident reason.

* * *



The interview between Lord Grey and Margaret, Countess of Lennox, was everything 
he was afraid it might be. It began with the lady's cool voice saying, "I'm 
afraid I have to convey to you the Lord Protector's displeasure, Lord Grey," and 
included some plain questions.
"And am I supposed to believe that 9f all the officers in London this person 
Harvey was the only one capable of leading a convoy to Haddington?"
"Harvey," said Lord Grey with an effort, "is a very able man. I'm sorry, since 
you take such an interest in him, that you can't meet him. A slight wound made 
it necessary for him to stay at Haddington."
The black eyes were sparkling. "1 do take an interest in him, as it happens. I 
came here expressly to make sure that he returned to London directly. I believe 
Mr. Palmer leaves you today?"
Lord Grey agreed that Harvey's cousin was due to leave Berwick for London.
"Then I hope he can take to His Grace the assurance that Mr. Harvey will follow 
directly he can travel?"




Lord Grey, with private reservations, agreed again.
"I am glad to hear it. I shall remain and see that he does," said the Countess 
and ruthlessly delivered the coup de grace. "You will have heard that your 
friend Lymond has been caught."
"Caught! By Wharton?"
"No. By the Scots. When," said Margaret, having applied the i~lack draught, "do 
you think Harvey will be able to travel?"
The Lord Lieutenant rested vague eyes on her. "What? Oh. I've no idea. I'll ask 
the girl."
Margaret stopped arranging her dress. "What girl?"
"There was a girl among the prisoners from George Douglas's who took an interest 
in him at Haddington. They were all kept there for a spell before coming here."
"Took an interest in Harvey!" exclaimed the Countess. "Who is she?"
Grey told her what he knew, and felt much better. "Lymond and she seem quite 
friendly," he concluded, and raking in his desk, found a letter. "We took that 
from Lady Douglas just before we released her. It's a letter to Sir George from 
the Stewart girl, written for her by her servant lad. She's blind, you see. See 
what it says."
"Blind!" Her face fixed in astonishment, Margaret Lennox read the paper once, 
then a second time. "Signed, Christian Stewart."
She looked up. "This assumes that the Master of Culter will be in touch with Sir 
George . . . 'or someone on his behalf.' He is to be told that all is well, and 
he need pursue his objective no longer, because she has done all that is 
necessary. What does that mean?"
Lord Grey shook his head. "I had the girl in today asking her about it. but 
she'd say nothing."
"Did Lady Douglas know what was in the letter? No? I should like to see this 
girl," said Lady Lennox with a ringing and unanswerable finality.

* * *



Since the shock and physical buffeting of her capture at Dailceith, Christian 
Stewart had stumbled unwillingly to Haddington, and then in a kind of stupor of 
relief and anxiety here to Berwick.
Miraculously, the key to the whole strange problem lay now in her hands. But to 
use it, she must be free. And whether Francis Crawford had been helped to 
escape, or whether he was still in prison, she



must prevent him from appearing on trial, or from risking his liberty again 
before she could find him.
Her letter to Sir George-a hopeless attempt to do just that- had failed. She had 
no other means of sending a message. She had tried to persuade them to release 
Sym, without success. She had even contemplated approaching the man Somerville, 
who had seemed friendly, and might perhaps be trusted. But he had left the 
castle, she had been told.
What next? All day she walked up and down, thinking: of Boghall; of Inchmahoine 
of Stirling; of Edinburgh. "If I told you i'd murdered my sister you'd feel hate 
and revulsion." "I haven't tried to kill anyone today, I give you my word." "A 
thief in the night is the phrase." And the bleak "The darts which make me suffer 
are my own.~'
She smashed her fists in sudden anger on the sill of her window. Oh, to get out! 
To get out of here!

To the Countess of Lennox, paying a regal prison visit, Christian was an 
astonishing, a calm, an impenetrable steel wall.
The name was soon spoken: Francis Crawford of Lymond. "I don't suppose you know 
him. It isn't thought patriotic to know him these days," said Margaret ruefully. 
"But we were once very good friends."
The blind girl answered serenely. "As a matter of fact, I do know him," and 
Margaret was softly eager. "You do? Is he the same? Where is he, these days?"
"In prison," said Christian prosaically. "I suppose he's the same. He talks a 
great deal."
"In prison!" echoed Margaret, her voice sharpening just too much. "In Scotland? 
But that means he'll hang! Is that true?"
"I believe so."
Lady Lennox said agitatedly, "But can't something be done? Is anyone helping 
him?"
"Who could help him?"
Margaret said, "You're his friend. I'm sure you are. If you were free, couldn't 
you do something?"
If she were free. . .
A crease appeared between the large, direct eyes. "I don't see what. I've done 
him a small service-I got him the home address of a man he wanted to see for 
some reason. But that won't be any good to him now, naturally."



So simple an explanation. Margaret, comforted, gave a sigh. "So sad. All that 
talent-but people, I suppose, make their own ruin, however much their friends 
try to help. Now," said the Countess cheerfully, "Is there anything I can bring 
that you would like?"
After she had gone, Christian sat alone for a long time in her own black world, 
conquering a rage which would have alarmed her visitor. Then, dismissing the 
incident with an effort, she spared a moment to thank the well-intentioned 
spirit of Gideon Somerville before resuming the furious pacing of her prison.

Gideon's errand for Grey took him to Norham, and he was forced to stay 
overnight. Making casual inquiries on his return, he found that the prisoners 
taken at Dalkeith had been dispatched that day to the Archbishop of York; and 
that, before she left, the blind girl had asked once or twice after himself.
He might, left to himself, have pursued the party; but Lord Grey had other 
ideas. With his best men scattered like caraway seed over the countryside from 
Roxburgh to Broughty, he needed an able officer at his side.
Gideon tolerated it, his desire to return home tempered by the discovery that 
Margaret Lennox was still at Berwick, and meant to stay there until the man 
Harvey was well enough to return. If the Countess could play a waiting game, 
then so could he, thought Gideon, and caught himself with a surprised grimace. 
One would think it was his affair.
The following Monday, he was ordered to Newcastle to discuss finance with the 
Treasurer. "By the time that's over, I shall probably be in Newcastle myself," 
said Lord Grey. "Probably see you there. You ought to be off, anyway, by the 
morning. Oh-you were interested in Sam Harvey?"
"Yes!" said Gideon, suddenly alert.
"That Stewart girl said he was slightly injured. Well, he isn't. He's got a ball 
in the thigh and it's damned dangerous. They're not sure if he'll live."
Gideon said quickly, "When did you hear?"
"Just now. Bad luck on the fellow. I feel a shade guilty," said Lord Grey 
peevishly. "I shouldn't have brought him up at all if I'd known that Lymond 
fellow was out of action."
"Yes. Bad luck," said Gideon. "Willie-d'you mind if I leave now instead of 
tomorrow? I could call in on Kate on my way."



"On your way?" said Grey indulgently. "Twenty miles out of it, I should have 
thought. But never mind. That's husbands for you:
I've done the same myself. All right. Give her my love."
"Yes, I will," said Gideon, and slipped out, calling for his man. He was on the 
road in less than an hour; and by next day, Tuesday, the nineteenth of June, he 
was home at Flaw Valleys.



2.

The Ultimate Check.

The corrouers and berars of lettres ought hastily and spedily do her viage that
comanded hem with oute taryenge. For
their taryenge might noyc and greve them
that sende hem forth, or ellis them to
whom they ben sent too. And tome hem to ryght grete domage or villonye.





1.	The Fast Moves


 LYMOND recovered from his wound with characteristic rapidity; from the 
beginning, in fact, he acted as if it did not exist, and Kate was perfectly 
willing to do the same.
A frangible and archaic courtesy reigned at Flaw Valleys. Katherine forbade none 
of its o~ces to her guest: he was under permanent escort, but free to wander 
where he chose. At her request, he shared her table and occasionally her 
parlour. His unspoken resistance to the situation delighted her, as did the way 
he dealt with it.
He set the tenor for their encounters the first morning after the incident with 
Charles. He unlocked his door, made some necessary apologies and conformed to 
the reigning atmosphere of frigid politeness.
Kate, however, was only choosing her weapons. By suppertime on Friday, and after 
four days of shrewd observation, she opened fire.


"I notice," she said, passing the salt, "that you were outside today. Did you 
meet Philippa?"
Lymond accepted the condiment, but not the challenge. "We had a few words," he 
said. "She is a-striking young person already."
Kate helped herself. "We think so. What did she say to you?"
"Her remarks were few and deflatory," he said. This was an understatement, as 
Kate knew very well. She observed, "I'm afraid she's being rather unresponsive. 
We've been trying to teach her to feel sorry for you. I do dislike personal 
hatreds in a child."
This time, after a moment, he called her bluff. "Perhaps Philippa and I should 
be thrown together a little more. She mi ht become attached to me if she knew me 
better." g
Kate, brightening visibly, ignored the gleam in his eye. "That would make her 
sorry for you?"
"It might. The object of any sort of clinical study deserves compassion, don't 
you think?"
"Snakes don't," said Katherine inconsequently. "I hate snakes."
"And yet you feed them on honey cakes and forbid them to defend themselves."
"Defencelessness is not a noted characteristic of serpents. Anyhow, I can't have 
them lying rattling about the house. It gets on the nerves."
"It does if you handle it by rattling back. I've no objection, you know, to 
practicing the social arts."
Kate viewed him suspiciously. "I don't see why I should abandon my entertainment 
because of your conscience.
"It isn't quite conscience so much as horrified admiration," said Lymond. "From 
cuticle to corium in four days."
"You have to be quick with them. They grow another skin. I thought it mightn't 
be conscience," said Kate, collecting platters.
He was gazing down at the table. "I really can't go on apologizing. It would be 
too monotonous."
Kate, taking a dish from the cupboard, halted beside him. "You don't owe me 
anything, except a little amusement. Why not bite back?"
"Because," said Lymond, lifting his eyes suddenly, "I'm a constant practitioner 
of the art and you are not."
"I don't mind," said Kate wistfully. "Won't you bite?"
"Like a shark. It's a habit. And habits are hell's own substitute for good 
intentions. Habits are the ruin of ambition, of initiative,




of imagination. They're the curse of marriage and the after-bane of death."
Katherine surveyed the indifferent face critically. "For an advocate of chaos, 
you're quite convincing. There is such a thing, you know, as habitual disorder-
as of course you know: few have had such a permanently unsettled regime as you 
have. Suppose you had a chance to lead a normal life?"
"Let's leave my sordid affairs out of this, shall we?" he said. "You've missed a 
point. There's a nice difference between rootless excitement and careful 
variety."
"If I can't be personal, I don't want to argue," said his hostess categorically. 
"I may be missing your points, but you're much too busy dodging mine."
"Yours aren't points, they're probangs. I don't see why I should help."
"I do. Because Gideon would help cook his father if the cannibal quoted poetry 
at him," said Kate.
"And I have drunk of Castalia as well as bathed in it."
"It was Charles who bathed in it, as I recall. I forgot," said Kate 
sardonically. "You like your privacy. My apologies for scrabbling round the 
edges in an undignified way. Pay no attention. Grimalkin goes quavering back to 
the chimney piece."
The long, slender fingers tightened about the salt cellar. "Leave it, can't 
you?" said Lymond softly.
There was flat challenge in Kate's rigid spine. "Is there any reason why I 
should? I want-"
He interrupted her, pushing away the heavy silver vessel so that it slid 
precisely, like a curling stone, into the centre of the board between them.
"What you want is very clear. You want my confidence. If you can't have that, 
you want to goad me into making admissions about myself. If you can't have that, 
you use moral pressure. I'm quite conscious of my obligations and misdemeanours 
toward the members of your family. I disagree about the mode of compensation, 
that's all."
Her cheeks were scarlet. "Mr. Crawford, I really doubt if you're in a position 
to agree or disagree about anything."
The impatient, ruthless gaze lifted to hers. "Nor do I need to be reminded. You 
may expose me; you may baulk me. I've no remedy."



"If you prize reticence more than your life," said Kate dryly, "then you're 
certainly beyond remedy."
"Reticence? No," he said. "But I prize freedom of the mind above freedom of the 
body. I claim the right to make my own mistakes and keep quiet about them. You 
have all the licence in the world to protect your husband. My life is at your 
disposal, but not my thoughts."
"Dear me," said Kate, rising. "I doubt if I could stomach your thoughts. It was 
just a few basic facts I was thinking of, such as whether you were one of these 
people who can eat goose eggs. The creatures keep laying them: an appalling 
habit, but we can't break it."
Untenable positions were not for Kate. His mouth relaxed, and he rose smoothly 
and opened the door for her, laughter lines gathering at the corners of the 
veiled eyes. "I thought the conversation was cutting an ovoid track. I wouldn't 
for the world deprive you of the last bite."
"Thank you," said Kate. "If we're referring to snakes. Not if you're talking 
about fish."
"Pythonissa," retorted Lymond, and unexpectedly smiled.

* * *



She conceded him his victory.
In the days that followed, she did no more probing; partly because she now saw 
that these ferretings had no relation to the level on which his mind worked; and 
partly because his wits were too sharp. She could tire him; she could anger him. 
Four days had taught her that she could nearly shake his self-control and that 
he was himself shaken and dismayed by his weakening grip of himself. But she 
could never override him, and she stopped attempting it.
He had tried, she knew, to come to terms with Philippa, but without success. On 
the last occasion he had entered the music room, roving as he often did to the 
window; and after a moment, idly picked up Philippa's lute which lay there.
He had forgotten, obviously, that Kate's room opened from this one. She had been 
resting; and although during these last ten days she had found him civilized and 
undemanding company, she stayed where she was to avoid embarrassing them both. 
Thus she was able to hear the sweet, preoccupied roulades of the lute, and the 
crash



of Philippa's eruption into the room. The child stopped just inside the door, as 
her mother, opening her own door a judicious half inch, was able to see.
"That's mine!" said Philippa. "That's my lute you're playing!" Lymond laid the 
instrument gently down, and sat himself before Gideon's harpsichord. "Lute and 
harpsichord?" he said. "That's pretty erudite of you."
The child pi~shed back her long hair. It was uncombed, and the hem of her gown, 
Kate was sorry to see, was grey with dust. Philippa said belligerently, "I can 
play the rebec as well."
"Oh?"
"And the recorder."
Philippa! Philippa! said Kate to herself, grinning. Lymond turned to the 
harpsichord. "Then you're the person I want to see. Which d'you like playing 
best?"
"The lute." The voice of ownership.
"Then," said Lymond, rousing the keyboard to delicate life, "tell me how this 
finishes. I never could find out."
It was only L'homme arms; a tune Philippa had certainly heard in her cradle and 
was bound to know every note of. She sauntered across the room.
"It's L'homme arms."
"I know. But how does it go on?"
She sidled past. "I don't know."
The harpsichord rang with jubilation. "Try."
Kate could~see the pull of the music in her daughter's eyes; she could imagine 
the fascination of those magic fingers. Philippa's arm shot out. She trapped the 
lute like an insect-eater trapping a fly, and flew to the door, panting.
"That's my father's instrument," she shouted. "You're not to touch it! Leave my 
father and my mother alone. Nobody wants you here!"
Kate was afraid for her. Her hand tightened on the door, but the music didn't 
stop, although it fell to a murmur. Lymond's voice said quietly, "Don't you want 
me to play?" There sail be mirth, said the harpsichord. There saIl be mirth at 
our meeting.
Philippa looked at him with her mother's eyes. "No!" she cried. "I hate you!" 
And clutching her lute, she did indeed run from the room.
The music stopped, and there was a long silence. After a time, Kate slipped 
through the door.


He was still there, looking unseeing downward, his head on one hand. Then, 
politely rueful, he saw her. "You see! I'm out of practice, I know; but the 
effect must be worse than I thought."
She sat down, her eyes on him. "Who taught you?"
"My mother, first. My father thought that not only did music make men mad, but 
that only madmen indulged in it in the first place."
"Then you inherit your military talents from him, perhaps?" said Kate idly. "Not 
many musicians contrive to be the toast of the Wapenshaws as well."
"Some do: witness Jamie's drummer who whipped the English off the butts. I never 
achieved a,nything spectacular of that sort; I never cared for it." He ran one 
hand down the keyboard. "My brother is the athlete."
"He's an archer?"
"Sword or bow. He excels at both."
So there was a brother. "There is such a thing as a born eye for athletics," 
observed Kate. "Two of a kind in one family would be a bit trying. It's probably 
just as well for the sake of peace that you were differently gifted."
He agreed with her amiably, returning to his playing. Watching him, Kate found 
herself thinking of something Gideon had said after his short stay at 
Crawfordmuir. "It isn't all done with words either; he makes damned sure of 
that. He can outshoot them and outfight them and outplay them: he's got a co-
ordination that a hunting tiger would give its hind legs for."
She drew a little breath and Lymond looked up. After a moment he observed, still 
playing, "Versatility is one of the few human traits which are universally 
intolerable. You may be good at Greek and good at painting and be popular. You 
may be good at Greek and good at sport, and be wildly popular. But try all three 
and you're a mountebank. Nothing arouses suspicion quicker than genuine, all-
round proficiency."
Kate thought. "It needs an extra gift for human relationships, of course; but 
that can be developed. It's got to be, because stultified talent is surely the 
ultimate crime against mankind. Tell your paragons to develop it: with all those 
gifts it's only right they should have one hurdle to cross."
"But that kind of thing needs co-operation from the other side," said Lymond 
pleasantly. "No. Like Paris, they have three choices."








And he struck a gently derisive chord between each. "To be accomplished but 
ingratiating. To be accomplished but resented. Or to hide behind the more outr~ 
of their pursuits and be considered erratic but harmless."
"As you did," said Kate shrewdly. "Committing the ultimate crime."
"No," said Francis Crawford, watching his own fingers slipping down the keys. 
"Man's ultimate crimes are always against his brother. Mine, in my competence, 
my versatility and my sell-important, self-imposed embargoes, was against my 
sister. . . . For God's sake," said Lymond, "don't speak."
In the sudden silence she did as he wished, sitting still in her low chair. Then 
he swore aloud and she looked up, heartened by these expressions of honest rage.
Standing by the window, Lymond regarded her crookedly. "Your fault," he said. 
"These were some of the things you wanted to know, weren't they? And as soon as 
the pressure was lifted, I started talking about them. . . . I don't as a rule 
inflict my more tawdry reminiscences on people, you must believe me. I'm sorry. 
It's one of the penalties of being incommunicado for five years, but I can 
usually control it better than that."
She stood up also. "You think a lot of your self-possession, don't you?"
"I did, when I had any. One can't, obviously, control other people unless-"
"And you want to control other people?"
He grinned. "I take your point. I have none now to control. But all the same-"
"You would want it in normal life. Are you ever," said Kate, driven by her own 
feelings into asking one of the dangerous questions, "are you ever likely to 
have a normal life?"
Lymond grinned again, slightly, walking to the door. "That depends on Samuel 
Harvey. There is, of course, another thing. I might be able to gull the law. But 
as soon as I appear in public, my brother is likely to get himself hanged for 
killing me. . . . We're devils for complications on our side of the Border."
Kate accompanied him to the door. She said bluntly, "How much more of it can you 
stand?"
"Don't worry," he said, answering what he took to be her anxiety. "If it's going 
to happen, it won't happen here."





Gideon arrived next day, and had Crawford brought to the parlour, where he was 
standing with Kate. After greeting his prisoner he said without preamble, "The 
man Harvey is in Haddington; he's seriously wounded and it's possible he won't 
survive. I came here to tell you."
"Oh," said Lymond. After a moment he added, "Then that appears to dispose of my 
problem."
Gideon had had a talk with his wife. He said abruptly, "I can't help you to get 
into Haddington."
"I know that, of course."
"But," said Gideon, "if you think there is any possibility of doing so yourself 
and coming out alive, I'm willing to lend you a horse to try."
There was a pause. Lymond drew a steady breath. "I see you mean it," he said. "I 
shan't sicken you with protestations of gratitude. But it means a great deal."
"I know. What will you do?" asked Gideon.
"Go to George Douglas," said Lymond slowly. "I can influence him a little, I 
think . . . And try and get Harvey out. Or if that fails, to get in myself."
"But-" said Kate involuntarily, and Lymond's eyes moved quickly to hers.
"There really is no other choice," he said, and she was silent.
Gideon had opened the door. "Come then," he said. "I came as fast as I could, 
but there's no saying how long he'll live. You'll need all the speed you can 
make. Quickly. Kate-"
She was already through the door. "I'll collect what he needs."
In a very short time he was mounted, and they watched him canter down the 
avenue, turning with raised hand at the gates. "The fools!" Gideon said. "Those 
damned fools at Edinburgh! What a waste of a man."
And they turned and went about their business while Gideon's stallion, stretched 
flat with extended rein and curbless mouth, printed with sharp cloisonn~ the 
baked green sides of the hills and glens leading to Scotland.

* * *




While Lymond was in Northumberland, Will Scott was scouring the Lowlands for 
him. He stayed in the vicinity of Wark Castle until he was sure the Master was 
no longer near the original rendezvous. He visited the farmyard where he had 
first joined the troop, and the lairs he had learned to know since.
Only twice did he come across any of the men he had fought with for nine months. 
The Long Cleg, horse-coping placidly with a string of broken-winded hacks, waved 
a friendly arm and asked mildly if it was right that he and the Master had had a 
fight over the money and he'd broken Lyniond's head for him. Scott muttered 
something and got away as soon as possible. The other encounter took the form of 
a narrowly averted arrow which met him at one of the biggins where they used to 
keep fodder. He never found out who it was: he didn't want to know.
Fourteen days after his uncomfortable meeting with Sybilla at Threave, Scott 
returned to Branxholm empty-handed and full of misgivings, and Lord Culter, 
calling that day on Buccleuch, found him there, alone in the hall.
"Will Scott!"
The boy looked up. The square, powerful figure, the direct grey eyes, the flat 
hair, were like phantasmagoria from the bolting, glittering winter: a wood on 
the way to Annan, and Lymond's voice saying, "Richard! A challenge!"
He got up slowly, and was unprepared for Richard's hand chop.. ping masterfully 
and painfully on his shoulder. "You damned puppy:
where is he?"
He reacted as he had been taught: with one smooth violent movement he was out of 
the other's grasp and viewing him from a useful distance. "I didn't come home to 
be handled," said Will Scott pleasantly. "My father is outside, I believe."
"You've learned manners to fit your morals, I see. Have you brought your master 
with you or not?"
"What, again?" said Scott insolently. "I've already brought him to Threave at 
the beginning of the month-did nobody tell you? How often am I supposed to 
repeat the service?"
Lord Culter wouldn't show excitement again. "I've already asked you. Where is 
he?"
Scott shrugged. "Who knows? Linlithgow? London? Midculter? He escaped."
"From Threave!" said Richard.



"Aye, from Threave," blared a new voice. Buccleuch, sweating, came into the room 
in his shirt sleeves, sneezed in the cooler air, and bawled for something to 
drink. "Lifted the latch and walked out. You'd think the damned place was a 
sieve. Ye see Will's back?" said Sir Wat unnecessarily. "It was Will got your 
lassie away from Lymond, you know."
"A Herculean task, I feel sure," said Lord Culter. It struck Sir Wat too late 
that it was no use trying to ingratiate with his lordship any man who had 
witnessed his wife and his brother together. He dropped the attempt and said, 
"You've come for me? Sit down; sit down. I'm ready packit. I've got to take this 
damned fool anyway to Edinburgh to get a formal pardon for him. What's 
happening?"
The answer was brief. "We're to muster on Monday to attack the English garrison 
at Haddington."
Sir Wat put down his beer, and the seamed skin about his eyes puckered 
alarmingly. "Walt a minute. Have the French promised to attack?"
"On the obvious conditions. You'll hear them tomorrow. They want the main forts, 
of course-Dunbar, Edinburgh, Stirling. They have Dumbarton already."
"By kind permission of her French Majesty. Uh-huh. Well, they might get Dunbar, 
but I'm damned if I'd let them sniff the threshold of the other two. What else 
do they want?"
"What they've always wanted," said Lord Culter. "But I think that's a matter for 
discussion elsewhere."
So absorbed was Buccleuch in his calculations that he missed the implication. 
His son didn't. Rising, Will said flatly, "Naturally. Any associate of Lymond's 
is suspect. I'll go."
The door banged, as Buccleuch rounded on his neighbour with a bellow. "There was 
no need for that! Dod, are ye wandered! It was the laddie who led us to capture 
Lymond in the first place!"
Richard's expression did not vary. "I'm not trying to offend you, Wat. But this 
is one secret nobody dare take risks with. There's a good chance the country is 
going to agree to France's main stipulation, which is-"
"-To send the young Queen to France.~~
"Yes. To be brought up at the French court, and to be married in due course as 
her mother and the French King decide. If we and Parliament agree. Otherwise the 
French fleet lifts anchor and sails back home without a fight."



He studied the wayward eyebrows, the falcate nose and the stubborn chin. "Would 
you agree, Wat? Which side are you for?"
Buccleuch, slapping a hand on the table, heaved himself up. "The same as 
yourself: what's the alternative? The Protector's black face bobbing up the 
Canongate and France in a huff and making dainty wee steps in the direction of 
the Emperor? No. We're stuck like a toggle in a bite, and we've got to put up 
with it. . . Are ye in lodgings in town?"
"I've taken a house," said Richard. "In the High Street."
"And Sybilla?" demanded Sir Wat, with a brilliant lack of tact.
"I've no idea what my mother's movements are," said Richard. "I haven't seen her 
for some time."
"She's got your wife back at Midculter," offered Buccleuch, and pursed his 
cracked lips so that the whiskers leaped. He said, "Have ye ever thought that 
your brother might be driving a wedge deliberately between you and your family? 
Because if so, he's finding you easy meat."
"I must ask him when I find him," said Lord Culter.
"Dod," said Buccleuch caustically, "I'm glad to hear he'll survive long enough 
to listen to ye.
"Oh . . . he'll survive," said Richard. "For a long time, after he's caught. I'm 
in no hurry. None at all."
"Poor devil," said 'Buccleuch perfunctorily, and finished his beer.

* * *



Next day, behind closed doors in Edinburgh, it was agreed that the young Queen 
Mary should be sent to France as soon and as secretly as possible.
The plan was both simple and brilliant. In eight days' time, four galleys would 
lift anchor in the Forth and sail not south, but around the north coast of 
Scotland, stopping at Dumbarton on the west, where the Queen would embark. So, 
while Lord Grey and the English fleet rubbed and fretted at an empty mousehole, 
the galleys of France would be sailing safely home.
The meeting broke up quietly. Lord Culter, leaving Holyrood with Buccleuch, 
crossed first to Tom Erskine and, making a rare gesture, put a hand on his 
shoulder. "Any news yet about Christian?"
Tom's eyes flickered from Culter to Buccleuch and back. "She's at Berwick," he 
said slowly.



"Safe? Dod, you're a lucky man," said Sir Wat bracingly. "It'll drain your purse 
to buy her, maybe, but at least ye'll have her back before ye get that meagre 
that ye slip down the town stank."
There was no answering smile. Erskine said wearily, "We've just had a message 
from Lord Grey. They won't ransom her. They want an exchange."
"What?" barked Buccleuch. "An exchange? Who? Who? We haven't taken any captives 
that matter since they came north."
"They think we have," said Erskine dryly. "They want Lymond."


* * *



Sir George Douglas's lodging was in the Lawnniarket. He walked back there from 
Holyrood in a pleased frame of mind. In his treasury was a large sum of French 
money which was the price D'Ess~ had paid for his and Angus's continuing 
interest. In his purse was a safe-conduct allowing a messenger to pass freely to 
England, in order to convey to the Earl of Lennox and to his niece, the 
Countess, his anguished request for the kindly treatment and quick return of his 
younger son. He swung into his house, and found there waiting the Master of 
Culter.
Lymond was very tired. It was clear in his face, and in the steel undisguised 
through the velvet of his voice. He wanted Samuel Harvey. He made it perfectly 
understood that it was a matter of blackmail, and that he had no services but 
only silence to sell in return.
The Douglas brain moved smoothly behind the statesman's brow. Sir George walked 
to a cupboard, and as he had done once before, poured two glasses of wine and 
moved one across. "You look as if you've ridden a long way, and to no purpose. 
I'm afraid neither you nor I nor anyone else will have the privilege of speaking 
to Samuel Harvey in this world, Mr. Crawford. Harvey is dead."
The other man did not touch his drink; but neither did his precious control fail 
him. After a pause, Lymond raised his glass in a steady hand. "Can you prove 
it?" he asked.
It so happened that Douglas could, and the proof was convincing because, rare 
among Sir George's fantasies, the story was true. At the end, when the last 
servant had left and the man had come to light the tapers, Sir George addressed 
the Master's cogitating back. "What will you do?"



Lymond replied without emotion. "Eat, sleep and spend money, I expect. What else 
does anyone do?"
There was a little silence. Then Douglas, tilting his glass so that the wine 
caught the light, said gently, "You know Grey is bartering the Stewart girl's 
life for yours?"
The reaction this time was instant. Lymond spun around, stopped himself, and put 
his empty glass on the table. "No. I hadn't heard." He stood waiting, his eyes 
open and unwavering on Sir George while the Douglas, gazing back, extended to 
these fresh fields his style of gentle apology.
Ironic, in a way, Mr. Crawford. lf you hadn't been quite so clever at Heriot, 
Dalkeith would never have been attacked."
Lymond heard him without interruption. Sir George, who was enjoying a malicious 
sense of power, ended. "Perhaps a life imprisonment in England is the best thing 
that could happen to her. . . . I assume you have no romantic urge to offer 
yourself at Holyrood so that they can send you in her place."
Lymond's face was quite blank. "If it suits me, I shall approach the Court, 
however uneasy it makes you."
"And make a killer of your brother and a life prisoner of your benefactress? Not 
a very economical programme," said Douglas blandly. "Suppose we are practical. 
Are you going to surrender to Lord Grey?"
"Why? Do you want the privilege of sending me?"
For once in his life, Sir George was completely frank. "Yes. I do. I need Grey's 
favour, and I have the perfect arrangement ready. A messenger of mine leaves at 
dawn for Berwick with letters from me to my niece and nephew. I can arrange it 
so that his safe-conduct allows for one accompanying soldier-at-arms." He knew 
the type, knew the gesture would be irresistible; and was disconcerted to find 
in Lymond's gaze the mocking reflection of his thought.
"The war horse's answer to death by old age and pink-eye. How can I refuse?" 
said Lymond.
Sir George got up with some deliberation. "You'll go? You'll go to Berwick 
tomorrow with my man and exchange yourself for this girl?"
"Do-to the book; quench the candle; ring the bell. Of course I shall go. Why 
else was I born?" said Lyinond with bitter finality.



2.	The Tragic Moves.


Next morning Lymond, swordless, left Edinburgh's Bristo Port with a courier 
carrying Sir George's letters and Sir George's safe-conduct.
The day was breathless with promise; the cobbles shining like milk glass in the 
quiet; the gables asleep in blanket rolls of mist. In the streets there was no 
sign of the grumbling, scraped-up army of men who were preparing to face battle 
in the warm summer weather.
As the first sun fed on the early haze there was a stirring in the houses. Smoke 
rose from new fires, and a man with water plodded along the High Street 
alongside a creaking cart, leaving a trail of splashes like silver shillings on 
the cobbles. Then he leaped to his horse as a small company in Erskine colours 
plunged past him and drew rein outside Lord Culter's door. Tom Erskine, in its 
lead, dismounted and hammered on the knocker until it opened.
He was inside for less than ten minutes. Richard, hail out of his tumbled bed, 
listened to the beginning of the story, and jumped for his clothes.
The Palace had found a spy, cleverly concealed: a man who had heard not only the 
Council in session but all the subsequent orders for the Queen's escape to 
France. They had uncovered him, and chased him, and lost him; then captured him 
finally after rousing hail the town in the middle of the night.
Erskine rattled on, pacing the room. "The hell of it is, he'd already passed on 
what he heard. They know that. They're still trying to get him to say whom he 
told."
"And if the information has left Edinburgh?" Standing up, Richard stamped 
himself into his boots, fastening the buckle of his sword belt.
"It's our job to trace it. Quickly . . ." And followed by Lord Culter, Erskine 
made for the door.
At the Castle, their methods of persuasion were not subtle. By the time Tom 
Erskine and Culter got there, the spy had Qonfessed. All the plans discussed the 
previous night had been committed to paper and had been sent to Lord Grey that 
morning by a special messenger
-by a messenger who happened to be going to England under safeconduct with 
letters from Sir George Douglas.
"Douglas!" said Culter at this point, and got a nervously irritable


glance from the Governor, grey and sleepless in wrinkled day clothes. "Purely 
fortuitous, so I'm told. We'll see. Meantime, Erskine- Culter-it's your job to 
catch that man. He's an hour at least ahead of you. By the Bristo Port. You know 
what it means if these papers get to Grey."
"They won't," said Tom Erskine briefly.

* * *



Adam Acheson, driving his neat, fast mare as quickly as he dared along the 
Berwick road with Sir George's letters in his pocket, was a man with no ties and 
no home. But he had drinking cronies in every inn between Aberdeen and Hull, and 
he kept them and himself in luxuries by ceaseless industry, a willingness to 
ride twelve hours at a stretch if need be, and a reticence like a warden oyster.
If he had been surprised to be saddled at the last moment with a companion, he 
had no special objection. He pronounced at the outset: "I've orders to deliver 
as fast as possible, and to Lord Grey personally. If he's not at Berwick, we 
ride on until we get him. I hope you're ready for a hard trip."
The fellow made no difficulty. "Ride as fast or as far as you like. I'll stay 
with you." And side by side Adam Acheson and Lymond cantered in silence under 
the hot sun.

* * *



The same sun, grilling the steel jackets of Erskine's troop, added sting and 
exasperation to the anxious morning as, without pennants or insignia, Culter and 
Erskine with a dozen men at their heels galloped south.
The porters at Bristo had given them their first inkling that they were chasing 
two men: "a black, brosy yin on a nice bay, and a swack, smert yin on a 
chestnut." The first answered the colouring of the man they knew to carry the 
papers.
At Linton Brig they- stopped again and were lucky enough to find someone who had 
been up early with a calving. "Aye, sir: a good while ago, and riding like the 
hammers. .
At Dunbar they ate on horseback and refilled their flasks, and from a packman, 
got one more detail. "It stuck in my heid; they were that different: corbie and 
doo on the ane twig."


Richard remounted rather quickly and started off; Erskine looked at him sharply 
but followed, saying nothing.
At Innerwick the description was confirmed; at Cockbumspath the description was 
specific. Tom Erskine, listening, watched his companion's face for a moment and 
then glanced away. Beneath the cold sweat Lord Culter was white, and in his eyes 
and the set of his mouth lay an exultant and frightened savagery. Smiling, he 
raised his right arm, and smiling, brought the whip precisely across the heaving 
rump of his horse.
"I thought so," he said. "The man on the chestnut is my brother."

* * *



As the two hunted men raced south, followed by their pursuers, a third retinue 
set out, this time from Berwick: a leisurely caravan, jewelled with flags and 
fringes. Margaret Lennox was travelling south, and taking the Stewart girl with 
her.
Since yesterday, and a stormy interview with Lord Grey, Lady Lennox had known 
that Harvey was dead. And further, that Lady Christian Stewart, now back in 
Berick awaiting her ransom, had spent much more time with Samuel Harvey than she 
had allowed to appear. It was then that, with Grey's reluctant permission, 
Margaret decided to take Christian Stewart to her own home of Temple Newsam.
So it happened that while Lymond and his brother neared the Border, Christian, 
moving away from them, arrived at Warkworth Castle on the first stage of her 
weary journey south. There, high above the looped and shining Croquet she lay 
safely behind dusty curtains, listening to the dandling of moored boats and 
breathing the savour of the sea-and wondering if she had given anything away 
under the ceaseless questioning of the day.
She had told of her encounter with Lymond at Boghail, accounting thus for her 
interest in securing Harvey's address for him. She had shown mild alarm when 
told of the dissipations of her prot~g~. She had even, with a bitter effort, 
hidden her rage and fear when Margaret told her that Francis Crawford was being 
demanded as the price of her own freedom.
Had he escaped from Threave? If he had, these people knew nothing of it. If he 
hadn't, then the Queen Dowager, spurred by Erskine and Lady Fleming, would 
certainly agree to the exchange and Lymond, for nothing, would throw away his 
life.


Or worse, if he escaped and heard of her plight, he would come of his own 
accord. She was realist enough to recognize that his code of conduct would 
demand it, and that he would do no less for Will Scott, or for Johnnie Bulb, or 
for any dependent of his in the same position.
Next day they reached Newcastle in the late afternoon, and the first voice she 
heard in her new quarters was that of Gideon Somerville.

* * *


In Berwickshire by the same evening the hounds were very nearly up with the 
hares when the scent ran suddenly cold, and, casting about, Tom Erskine and 
Culter found traces of a considerable company of horse recently passed through 
to the north.
It was Richard who turned about in the tracks of the convoy and, cutting off the 
first straggler he could find, made him talk. At dusk he rejoined Tom Erskine, 
his face ridged with weariness. "It was a convoy for Haddington. Their scouts 
took in the two men we're after
-Wylstropp honoured the safe-conduct and let them go-but they haven't gone to 
Berwick."
"They haven't!"
"No. Grey is at Newcastle, and he's leaving there for Hexham to pick up 
reinforcements from Lord Wharton. Our men are making cross-country for Hexham. 
One other thing."
"What?" said Tom Erskine with the flatness of apprehension. They should have 
caught these men before they reached Berwickshire. Now they were adrift on the 
Lammermoors, with the reel of their journey suddenly doubled in length.
"They know we're behind them. Wylstropp's forward scouts had already spotted us 
and decided not to interfere.~~
Erskine said sharply, "Well, what of it? They'll expect us to make for Berwick, 
not for Hexham."
Lord Culter spoke savagely. "You don't know my brother. He's no fool. In all 
Britain, Grey couldn't have picked a better man to help him." And whipped up his 
tired horse.

* * *


Arriving at Newcastle that same Friday, Gideon Somerville discovered that Lord 
Grey had gone to Hexham and was expecting him


there. At the same time he found that the Countess of Lennox was in town with 
the girl Stewart in her train. Gideon, who had mentally made every plan to avoid 
her ladyship, changed his mind.
He had five minutes alone with Christian Stewart: no more, but enough to learn 
of the bargain made for her life.
She had trusted him; he could do no less in his turn. "Lymond is free," said 
Gideon briefly. "He went to George Douglas to try and get access to Harvey.''
She arrested a sudden movement. "But Harvey is dead. He's been dead since 
Tuesday."
He understood her dismay. "Crawford left to go to Douglas on Tuesday. I suppose 
there's no doubt Sir George will know of Lord Grey's demand and will tell him. 
It's damnable . . . but it seems to be your life or his, you know."
"Do you think they'd dare touch me?" said Christian with contemptuous rage. "And 
even if they did, that it would matter? He must be stopped," she said. "He must 
be stopped. But how?"

"But how?" was still unanswered next morning, when he found with mixed feelings 
that he was to have company to Hexham. Grey's meeting with Wharton was to be 
graced with the presence of the Earl of Lennox, and the Countess, on hearing 
that only twenty miles separated her from her husband, decided to join him 
instead of going direct to her home. Lady Christian, her women, her men-at-arms- 
and Gideon-went with her.
Without any very high hopes Somerville had spent part of the night making his 
own limited dispositions. He had posted a man north of Newcastle in case Lymond 
tried to trace the girl so far, and sent a small party of his own household in a 
belated effort to watch the other hill routes which a man crossing from Scotland 
to Hexham might take.
It was more of a gesture than a plan. It seemed likelier that Lymond would make 
straight for Berwick and there be captured, voluntarily or involuntarily. As his 
party rode out west through the green water meadows of the Tyne that morning 
Gideon, sunk in thought, rode in the rear and left Margaret Lennox and Christian 
to their own devices in front: a small lapse, but one that afterward he found 
hard to forgive himself.

On the night before Lady Lennox and her party left Newcastle, two parties of men 
slept in exhaustion on the Redesdale hills, closer



than they knew, until, sensing the coming dawn, the most hardened of them all 
raised himself on his elbow.
Acheson was furiously regretting his errand. He had bargained neither for 
pursuit nor for a difficult cross-country ride. Not only that, but he had been 
forced to put off hours, so close was the pursuit, in covering his tracks and 
dodging about these damned, dry hills, so that the message he expected to 
deliver on Thursday night was still in his pocket.
That brought him to something he had been considering all the previous day. 
Making sure that the man at his side was sleeping, he drew out a third letter-
the letter he had to deliver personally to Lord Grey-and broke the seal.
Shortly afterward he roused his companion and, collecting their tired horses, 
the two men resumed the last lap of their journey. It was Saturday, the twenty-
third of June, and a glorious day.
In less than an hour, Mr. Acheson's odyssey of frustration had come to a 
surprising end. They were waylaid.
Acheson had his sword half drawn to deal with the strangers when his silent 
colleague stopped him, his eyes on their badge. "Wait!" said Lymond. "Were you 
looking for me?" They were Somerville men.
Acheson let them talk. The man Lymond might look inconsiderable, but he had 
proved a master of ingenuity in a tight corner. Besides, they had made ground 
that morning, and he was thirsty. He dismounted, fanning himself with a dock 
leaf, and was unprepared for the sheer cutting quality of the man who turned 
back to him.
"What a pity. It seems I'm not coming with you after all," said Lymond.
Acheson put a hand on his sword, then took it off quickly. It was none of his 
affair, but he liked to keep on the right side of his employers. "What about 
this exchange business?"
"Later," said Lymond airily. "First of all, we are making a small detour by the 
house of a friend."
"Then," said Acheson sensibly, "I'll go on alone."
"And tell the others I'm in the neighbourhood? I'm afraid we can't have that 
either," said Lymond pleasantly, and closed in. The blackhaired one snarled and 
lunged, but a crack on the knuckles and another on the head cooled his ardour, 
if not his rage.
He was blindfolded, disarmed, mounted, and led at a smart trot over the 
remaining moors to Flaw Valleys.





Christian had noticed a moroseness about Simon Bogle very soon after her retinue 
set out for Hexham. He rode in silence, her long reins in his hands, and didn't 
even bid her good morning until she had addressed him twice. The deficiency was 
made up by the Countess of Lennox, who unrolled mellow conversation through the 
small dales like a Turkey carpet.
By the afternoon, some little sharpnesses and corners began to show through. The 
conversation took an unexpected turn toward Christian's fiance.
"So different in appearance, of course: poor Tom; I shan't disillusion you. 
After all, you are affianced to him," said Lady Lennox. "Although you must have 
a soft spot for our naughty friend to do what you did for him at Haddington."
"I like to think," said Christian steadily, "that I'd do as much for anyone in 
trouble."
Margaret laughed. "What an extraordinary person you are! To spend days by the 
bedside of a dying man, just to ask his address!"
Christian was silent.
"Or was it just his address?" asked Lady Lennox, and the black eyes were 
sparkling. "Sym didn't think so, last night. I like your young bodyguard, my 
dear; but he hasn't a strong head, has he?"
"Sym!" said Christian sharply. "Damn it . . .
The boy's voice wailed in her ear. "I was drunk. I didna know what I was 
saying!"
"He was certainly drunk," said Margaret's cool voice.
Christian said again, "Sym-" and checked herself. He was gabbling. "I couldna 
help it. Ye ken I canna hud up under beer. . .
She made an effort. "It doesn't matter. Lady Lennox: I depend on Sym for a great 
many things. There's nothing to stop you from associating with my servants if 
you want to, but I'd prefer not to have the younger ones reduced to a state of 
crapulence for your purposes."
Irresistible but impolitic. Margaret said blandly, "Am I worrying you? I'm 
sorry. But there's nothing wrong in listening to a dying man's confession; or 
even in getting it recorded and signed by a priest and thereafter hiding it-
where have you hidden it, I wonder? Never mind. There'll be plenty of time to 
look, at Hexham."
There was a little silence. Then the blind girl said slowly, "You're quite safe, 
you know. Harvey confessed to a lot of things, but they



had nothing to do with me. If he signed anything, it's probably on its way to 
his relatives in the south. Why on earth should I want it? If you don't believe 
me, I'm quite willing to be searched."
"That's very sensible of you," said Margaret Douglas cheerfully. "Because I 
don't believe you, and although I'm sure you've been most ingenious, I was 
proposing to search you very thoroughly in-deed."
Sym, coming out of a cloud of misery, suddenly took her up. "Search her! Just 
try and touch her, ye bitch! Try and touch either of us!"
"You misunderstand me," said Lady Lennox. "I wouldn't soil my fingers. On you or 
your complaisant little mistress."
Sym cried out. "What have I done? She means ye harm: what have I done? I didna 
mean-it was just the drink-and she asked me-"
"Never mind, Sym," said Christian. "I'm afraid it was a mistake. She's no friend 
of ours-or of our friends."
She could hear him swallow. He said in a low voice, "The Master of Culter? She 
wants to hurt you and the Master of Culter?"
"Yes."
"Then she willna!" said Sym, and hurled himself at Christian's horse.
The impact of his body jarred her forward, breathless. She felt him settle 
behind her, the brush of the reins as he gathered them tight; the firm clasp of 
his arm around her waist. The horse drew himself in, quivered, and answering 
Sym's heels swerved, spun, and drove like an arrow through the cavalcade.
Burst asunder, rearing, scattered, speechless, they looked after the flying 
horse; then, streaming up from the green Tyneside meadows, scrambling and 
pecking and hubooing over the little hills, they followed in full cry.
Christian had no breath. Crushed in the boy's grip, thought was driven from her 
by the speed of the animal; her hair buffeted and flew about her face, and her 
skirts tugged and twisted. The clasp at her waist shifted, and she managed a 
gasp. "Sym, you fool, go back! We'll be overtaken and it'll be-all the worse for 
us both."
For answer Sym drove his spurs again. "I started the trouble, and I'll get you 
out of it, if it's only to find a place for those papers . .
could ye get them leady, now?"



She couldn't. Samuel Harvey's statement-the paper she had denied to Margaret 
Douglas-was sewn very thoroughly in her saddlecloth. Nor were they likely, 
doubly burdened, to make enough ground to retrieve and hide it unseen. She said 
forcibly, "Simon: stop this horse and turn around. It's no good!"
He didn't answer her. Instead, above the thud and jangle and creak of the 
galloping horse there came an odd, rustling noise. It stopped suddenly with a 
bump, and Sym gave a little grunt. The arms about her slackened and the pressure 
at her back shifted. Christian cried once, "Simon!" and then with a clatter the 
whole body behind her shook itself loose and, rolling over the gelding's 
haunches, thudded on the heather.
The horse, already overexcited, entered a glory of self-induced fright and, the 
reins swaying against its knees, took the bit between its teeth.
The lifeless weight had nearly pulled the girl off too. But, barely realizing 
what had happened, Christian closed her knees instinctively and gripped the 
uncut mane with one hand, groping for the fallen reins. They eluded her: the 
horse was galloping wildly, shoulders and haunches lurching on the uneven 
ground; scrambling up slopes and down them, reaching higher and higher ground. 
Bushes clawed at her and once, a whipping branch stung her cheek.
She was holding now with both hands deep in the coarse hair. What kind of 
country? Not the homely paths between Boghall and Culter, or Stirling, or 
Dumbarton, or the High Street in Edinburgh with Simon, or Tom, or Jenny fleming 
chatting placidly, describing the way to her.
A foreign land. Enemy country, where the earth existed to foster her rn-wishers, 
and trees to shelter them, and bushes to hide them. She who already carried in 
her eyes her own enemy.
Pursuit sounded now far distant. Ahead, the soft air of her passing pressed 
freely against her and the sound of birdsong came from great distances, as if 
spread sparkling through the warm air: a singing dust. Singing sand. . . . Would 
she ever visit the islands again? Or be with the children? Or Sybilla. Or Wicket 
Wat. Or the man for whom she was now flying blind, on an uncontrolled horse 
through the small hills of Redesdale?
Behind, swooning on the air, rose a great shout. It rolled, remote and hollow, 
over the moor, and sank whispering among the flags.



Her pursuers saw, as she did not, the stalking, gem-cut line of the Wall ahead; 
the clustering gorse bushes and the debris of fifteen centuries which hid the 
brink of its twenty-foot ditch. Long before that warning cry faded, Christian's 
horse had taken those deceptive bushes in its stride; had hurtled into the fossa 
beyond, trundling, rolling and threshing its broken limbs in agony as the girl, 
a flash of white arms and dusty skirts and dark red hair, tumbled with him.
Margaret Douglas stood and watched Gideon's gentle, bloody hands lift Christian 
Stewart, the red hair drifting in his face. Then Lady Lennox stooped in turn by 
the dead horse and with nimble fingers and a sharp knife ripped open first the 
girl's pack, and then the trappings.
The cloth gave up its secret immediately. She pulled out a small bundle of 
papers, separated them, glanced on both sides, and made a curious sound, so 
close to a laugh that Gideon turned sharply on her. She was refolding the same 
papers and stuffing them back into the lining where they had been hidden. She 
did it quite carefully and then stood up, dusting her hands.
One of Gideon's own men had already helped him lift the quiet figure into the 
saddle in front of him: there was hardly any pulse. Margaret looked curiously at 
the unconscious face. "Is there a house nearby where you can take her?"
Kate wouldn't have recognized the look in Gideon's eyes. He said levelly, "My 
home isn't far away. She may as well die among friends."
The black eyes raged at him: Margaret also had had a shock. "It's hardly my 
fault if my bowman tries to stop a prisoner from escaping. That's what he's paid 
for." She kicked the saddle and its furniture. "You'd better take that, too. Her 
family might want it."
"Is that all you have to say?" said Gideon.
"She was blind. It's too great a handicap. She's better out of it," said 
Margaret in a staccato voice, and mounted her horse.
"Was that her sin?" said Gideon, watching the cavalcade move off. "I had come to 
fancy it might be something quite different."



3.	The Last Move

When Lymond set foot for the third time in Flaw Valleys, Gideon went downstairs 
to greet him slowly, and found his upturned face



abounding with an electric vigour which quite overlaid the marks of his journey.
"I'm sorry," he remarked ebulliently when his host was halfway down. "Adhesive 
as St. Anthony's pig. Qu'on lui ferme la porte au nez, il reviendra par les 
fen&res. Thank you for your messages: your name will fly tetragrammaton round 
the world, and this fair blind Fortune will be made immortal. I've asked your 
henchmen to lock up an indignant gentleman who was leading me to Lord Grey and 
here I am. Where is she? How can we free her?-and what, my God what, did she 
learn from Samuel Harvey?"
It was worse than Somerville expected: it was frankly damnable. After just too 
long a space, as Lymond's face already began to alter, Gideon said bluntly, 
"She's freed herself. There's nothing to do. I wish to God you'd never got my 
message." And added, regaining proper hold of his tongue, "There's been an 
accident."
As he expected, Lymond took the news undemonstratively, in answer to his 
training; however much the flesh might shrink and melt, the sarcophagus was 
decently void of temperament. "Where is she?"
"Kate is with her upstairs. She hasn't much time. I'll take you to her."
"Thank you." An automatic reply, and an automatic climbing of the stairs. As 
they went, Gideon told his story, shooting curious side glances at the youngcr 
man. The blond face was lightly sheened with perspiration, but it was a warm 
day; there was no tremor of sentiment in it.
The music room was filled with sunlight and the smells of warmed wood and fruity 
earth from Kate's pot plants. They passed the lute and rebec and the fiddle and 
harpsichord sealed in silent jubilee, and crossed to the inner room.

Kate had also heard the story, attacking the situation with her mind and 
squashing emotion and surmise with a prompt if temporary thumb.
She did what was necessary out of the bounty which suffering naturally 
commanded, and out of a sharp reaction to the courage of the injured girl. 
Conjecture firmly dismissed, she sat down beside her own bed, when every service 
of comfort had been performed, and took quiet and efficient note of the quiet 
and efficient messages enumerated from the pillows.



Christian's mind was perfectly clear. Her chief anguish, clearly, was the death 
of the boy Simon. Beyond that she wasted no time on regrets or self-pity, except 
perhaps when she had said all that was vital to say, and after lying silent for 
a moment observed: "You know, life has so many ridiculous hazards when one is 
blind-and yet I never expected somehow to die so far from home, without anyone 
of my own." She smiled quite successfully and added, "I don't suppose it 
matters. We're all pretty solitary anyhow, aren't we? Is someone else coming 
in?"
Kate hadn't heard Lymond enter. Across the bed she saw him tweak a strand of 
dark red hair gently between finger and thumb, and then slip into a chair beside 
the pillow. "Don't be so superior. Someone of your own is here," he said.
The girl's control was weaker than his. Her brow creased and tears sprang into 
her opened eyes. She shut them and said shakily, "It's witchcraft. You are about 
to babble like magpies and herring gulls."
"But not about the ruin of charity: in Flaw Valleys it multiplies like rhubarb. 
. . . What in God's name must you think of me after all the drivel I had to talk 
at Threave?"
There was an undeniable smile on the white face. "That you expected to be 
hanged. And didn't want me to be pointed out solely as the girl with a strong 
attachment for her dependents. It was all right. I understood."
"It wasn't all right," said Lymond flatly. "It's been all of a piece. I've been 
a joyless jeweller up to the last, exquisite drop from the crucible."
"There aren't any dregs in my cup," said Christian. "You're the only person who 
could make me swallow them. I'd do what I did over again. I never cared for old 
age, or the idea of outliving my friends and being a chattel to my relatives. I 
mourned a little because nobody would ever point to a page of history and say, 
'The stream turned there to the right, or to the left, because of Christian 
Stewart.' You could make that come true for me, if you think you owe me 
anything. And you could promise me not to retreat to a wine barrel and reduce 
what we've both done to a few artificial bubbles of regrets and self-blame. You 
prophesied yourself that I should have all I wanted from life, did you not? And 
I think I have," she said.
He answered her like the lash of a whip. "There seems no doubt I've been 
reserved for great things-


"Jo son lana da Dio, sua merce, tale
I am the chosen of God. He will see
That your suffering does me no harm
That the flames of this fire never touch me."

The impact of the words was almost physical. Kate flinched and the girl in the 
bed cried out, "No!"
He broke off of his own accord. "No," he agreed after a moment. "God knows why 
you think it's worth it, but I wouldn't have the puny effrontery to waste what 
you've done. When I think of my brilliant pose of anonymity
A smile twitched her lips again. "I knew you'd be much too high-minded to come 
back if you suspected I knew. That's why I stopped you at Inchmahome."
Lymond's face was as white as the girl he was talking to, but his voice hardly 
varied.
"I am grovelling. I also owe you one or two stinging innuendoes for those 
letters. If Agnes Herries ever stumbles on a glossa interlinearis there -will be 
civil war."
"Erskine made her burn them. . . . Is that your hand? It's colder than mine. I 
told you not to worry."
Christian blinked suddenly and roused herself. "My mind's wandering. Listen: I 
have something for you. It's sewn in my saddlecloth. Mr. Somerville will show 
you. Hurry!" Her face, framed in the strewn hair, was as matronly as a nurse 
commanding a treat for a child.
For the first time, Lymond's eyes met Kate's. He rose slowly and walked to the 
door. Kate heard her husband speak in the corridor, and then both men's 
footsteps receding. After no more than a few minutes, Lymond returned.
This time, his eyes never left the girl in the bed. Sitting beside her, he 
raised her hand and put under it a crumpled fold of small papers bloodstained-as 
Kate saw-in one corner.
Christian's face was alight. "You've read them? They're all there?"
"I've read them. But how . . . ?" Lymond was saying in a kind of lunatic daze. 
"How the devil-how the devil could you do it? To have it in black and white at 
the eleventh hour . . . Did you threaten him? Cut off his ears and souse them in 
vinegar? Propose to confine him in a locked room with Lord Grey for six months?"
The girl gave the ghost of a laugh. "It was on his conscience.



He dictated the whole story and signed it. The priest was there too- that's the 
second signature. Is it what you'd hoped?"
There was the fraction of a pause. Then Lymond picked up Christian's hand and 
carried it to his lips, holding it afterward folded in both his own. "More than 
I ever dreamed of," he said-and like the serpent she had once called him, 
snarled voicelessly into Kate's eyes as she looked up, horror-struck, from what 
the girl's lifted band had left revealed.
For the sheets of creased paper which Christian had brought with such pains from 
Haddington, which Margaret had found not worth her attention, and which Lymond 
had at last received, were quite blank.

Kate gave nothing away. Christian, it appeared, wanted her company. Since she 
couldn't go, she was forced to sit and watch, listening to the murmur of their 
voices. They were talking of things and people Kate knew nothing about, but she 
knew contentment when she saw it, and didn't interrupt even when the girl's 
voice began to lapse and the air to falter at last in her lungs.
Christian did what was necessary herself, turning her head painfully toward 
Kate. "I was never much good at waiting," she said. "It's a sign of immaturity, 
or something. I wonder if maybe music would be soothing? If someone would play . 
. . Not you," she added quickly, as Kate rose. "If you don't mind. It's 
comforting to have you sitting so close."
"Of course I'll stay," said Kate, her mind racing. "Would you like Mr. Crawford 
to play for you? The music room is only through a door by your bed."
She had, obviously, guessed right. The smile this time was one of relief. "He 
still has to finish a song he played for me once. Do you remember?"
"The unfortunate frog. Of course," said Lymond, straightening. Kate met his eyes 
and nodded: she thought he looked almost at the end of his endurance,, but he 
could be relied on to make no mistakes. He bent quickly and taking both 
Christian's hands, kissed her on th'~ brow. "The frog was a pretty poor 
creature. This time you shall have music to sound in a high tower-"
"-So merrily that it was a joy fo~ to hear, and no man should see the craft 
thereof. . . . You give me such pleasure," said Christian.


A moment later the music began, and Kate shrank beneath the onslaught of its 
message: the fury of hope and joy that towered in the notes, outburning the 
sunlight and outpouring the volumes of the sea. All that was bold and noble and 
happy in created sound burst from the metempirical quills, and it was a 
blasphemy not to rejoice.
Christian died in its midst, purposeful and successful; the last struggle unseen 
by anyone but Kate, and laying no bridle on the living. Kate drew the bright 
curtains around the bed.

Jouissance vous donneray
Mon amy, et vous meneray
L~ oi~ pr~tend
Votre esp~rance
Vivante ne vous laisseray
Encores quand morte seray
L'esprit en aura souvenance.

Her eyes were closed with tears: strangers-foreigners--what were they to her? 
The man was playing still, his eyes resting on the windows as they had done all 
along. Through the glass she saw that a column of mounted men had come over the 
moor and up to her lodge gates: like squirrels their faces were pricked at her 
windows; like Ulysses perhaps their ears were tingling with the music of the 
sirens. She dried her cheeks and walked forward a little, and Lymond, seeing her 
reflection in the panes, raised his hands.
The horseman in the lead was bending down, addressing someone very young or very 
small. Kate saw the white flash of a face, and one bare arm waving toward the 
house. She was infinitely more afraid of the immobile man at the keyboard. She 
rested her hands, as in prayer, on the instrument. "It happened peacefully."
"Did it?" said Lymond.
The entire file had moved forward to the gatehouse. There seemed to be a moment 
of confusion, then the doors opened and the horsemen came through, rather fast.
"I believe she meant what she said," said Kate. "About being contented."
She wasn't sure if he heard her. After a moment he stirred, and lifting a hand 
to the keys again, picked out some slow chords. "It was the Frogge on the wall, 
Humble-dum; humble-dum."
"You didn't finish it for her, after all," said Kate.


The house was alive with noise. He said nothing and did nothing; and at length 
even Kate's resolution gave way. "Who are they? What do they want? Who is it?"
He had watched the long file of horsemen sweep over the moor:
while he loosed his fierce elegies he had watched them sense the music on the 
wind and point to him like hounds. He had promised Christian music for her 
minion and outrider, and he kept his promise.
"What is it?" cried Kate, and Lymond turned with grim finality from the keys. 
"What is it? The end of the song. Where Dickie our Drake, Mrs. Somerville, takes 
the Frog."
And on the last word, the stark and pitiful peace of his~ anthems had gone. With 
a crash of bruised post and split panels and an assault which sent gut and 
sounding board screaming, the door of the music room opened.
"-Richard, my brother," ended Lymond.
It was Culter, his search over.
Broad, powerful, shivering within the frame of smashed wood, he was a primitive 
figure, of pantheistic and dreadful force. Standing still, all his mind and his 
passions embraced the two silent people by the window, allowing the texture, the 
luxury, the exquisite savour of the prize to drive him to ecstasy. A little 
sound, involuntary and wordless, broke from him.
For a moment, she thought it was going to strike an answer from Lymond. Another 
person might have screamed at him, or at the intruders; but Kate did neither: 
she literally held her breath, watching pressures she could only guess at being 
licked by this vengeful fire. She obeyed an instinct to keep quiet, and by 
lending Lymond the support of her calmness, to avert the thing that would 
destroy them all.
He succeeded. In the teeth of unleashed hatred and on the heels of tragedy he 
shackled human reaction and, rising smoothly and quickly, addressed his brother 
as men poured into the room.
"I know. Aha, Oho, and every other bloody ejaculation. Let's take it as read. 
You're delirious at the idea of manhandling me and can't wait to start. I in 
turn may say I find your arrival offensive and your presence blasphemous, thus 
concluding the exchange of civilities and letting us get out of here. If there's 
anything novel or extra you want to add, you can think of it on the way home."
The words struck and fell dead to the ground. Richard made not the slightest 
movement, his grey eyes wetly shining; the fat veins


visible on his temple and neck. "He's in a hurry, isn't he? It's a love nest, as 
I live. Who's the wench?"
"The wench is a lady, and mistress of this house," said Lymond in the same 
controlled and insulting voice. "Erskine: take him downstairs. Something's 
happened."
Lord Culter grinned lecherously. "I'm sure it has."
"Later, Richard. You can have all the sport you want. Erskine-" Tom Erskine 
said, "Come on, Richard. We've got him: there's no point in wasting time."
Lord Culter ignored him. He was wandering around the room, touching things and 
still smiling. Kate moving quickly before him shut the door to her bedroom and 
returned to Lymond's side. "There has been-"
"Be quiet," said Richard pleasantly. "And you, little brother. How would five 
years of this sort of thing appeal to you, Tom? Where's the bed, I wonder? 
Behind the door they're not looking at? With another wench in it, maybe?"
He had an unbooked-for agility. He reached the bedroom door a second before 
Lymond and got it open. The Master's hard shoulder crashed into him and he 
hurtled back with the shuddering wood, but already half-braced and with a 
purchase on his brother's arm which brought Lymond stumbling with him. Then 
there was a rush to help, and the Master went down under six others.
They pulled him to his feet as Richard, rising, was confronted by the young 
woman who had first shut the door. "Get out of this room and listen to me, you 
uncivilized lout!" said Kate.
Richard struck her to her knees with the hardened flat of his hand, the first 
blow he had ever aimed at a woman, and wrenched back the yellow silk curtains.
Over their tawdrinesses grieved the benign detachment of death. At Richard's 
blanched rigidity, Lymond fell silent, unstruggling, by the door; Kate rose and 
found her way obstinately to a chair, one hand to her face; and Tom Erskine, 
struck by the silence, moved from the doorway. Lymond's long fingers shot out 
and halted him.
"There's bad news. We tried to tell you. It's Christian." Erskine broke from his 
grasp without a sound.
Presently, Lord Culter moved from the bedside, leaving Tom where he knelt. Back 
in the music room where his men waited, silent and uneasy, he picked out one 
with a glance. "Send for the man- Somerville, is it? I want him here." Then he 
turned to his brother,



his face as hard as the bones of the earth. "I'd neither foul a cage by 
capturing you nor offend justice by taking you to Court. Covet the sunshine: you 
are dying."
"No!" exclaimed Kate Somerville from the doorway. She had dropped her hand from 
her bruised face. "No, you're wrong. The girl met with her accident while 
travelling in English company to Hexham. When Mr. Crawford arrived she was 
already dying. He did all he could for her."
"Concluding with jigs and hornpipes over her deathbed. I know. My God, we heard 
him!"
"What my wife says is true." Gideon had arrived in the doorway. Richard didn't 
turn his head. "Exposing her to public obloquy at Threave-that's another fact. 
Cheating her about his identity. Making this blind girl an accomplice traitor, 
an accomplice murderer, adulterer .
Lymond's voice cut sharply across. "We've all had as much as we can stand, 
Culter. You know perfectly well you can't kill me here unless I resist capture: 
it needs one busybody to pipe up in Parliament and you'll be arrested yourself. 
Let the fools argue it out in Edinburgh: I'll go quietly. Come along. Half the 
English army's at Hexham. I don't want to meet Grey, even if you do. And for 
God's sake get Erskine out of that room for a start."
Lord Culter paid not the slightest attention. He was issuing quiet, concise 
orders to his men, and to Somerville, who listened tight-lipped. When he had 
quite finished, he turned back to Lymond.
"I don't murder anybody. I'm offering you a proper trial-trial by combat. 
Observing all the rules. You may even think you have a chance of killing me. If 
you do, you are free, of course."
Gideon's eyes met his wife's. He said quietly, "Take him to Edinburgh as he 
asks. He's quite right-Grey and Wharton are at Hexham. If anyone calls, you 
haven't a chance. And," added Gideon with some bluntness, "you haven't seen his 
swordplay."
A heretical insolence had found its way back to Lymond. "Why worry, children? 
I'm not going to fight."
"I thought we'd have that," said Richard calmly. Somerville, after hesitating, 
left, pushed by two soldiers. "You'd prefer to be skewered like a sheep?"
"I'd prefer to take a nice, quiet journey to Edinburgh and stand my trial. Think 
how deliciously prolonged it would all be."
The fiat grey eyes were unmoved. "You'll fight," said Richard with-



out emotion, and Jerked his head. Preceded by Lymond and the rest of his men, he 
left the room.
Kate saw them go, her brown face stiff with trouble, and then turned back into 
her bedroom. For a moment she watched the kneeling man, and then bending over 
him, touched his shoulder. "Mr. Erskine. Please come away."
For a moment nothing happened. Then he raised a face curiously blurred, as if 
the subcutaneous fat had melted and recongealed in his grief. He said thickly, 
"It's all right. . . . How did it happen?"
She pulled a chair toward him and he sat, while she told her story. At the end 
there was a pause, and then he said with difficulty, "I wondered . . . I 
couldn't quite understand why she did it."
Kate said with care, "She would help anybody, I think: wasn't that so? And then-
you've all condemned him pretty thoroughly as a blackguard, haven't you?"
"What else is he?"
"Well," said Kate. "I'm not one of the simple kind who spend a jolly time 
romping on Olympus with the object of becoming a little, leering star at the 
end. I never met the girl before today: I don't know what their past relations 
have been. But I can say that he spoke of your Lady Christian with nothing but 
respect. By her desire I was with them both till she died, and I should be 
ashamed to think of guilt or offence in anything they said. And more than that. 
It was you I was to tell of her regrets, and to you I was to give her love."
He got up slowly, a man not incapable of a moment of insight. But he said only, 
"Thank you. I'm glad you were with her," and walked out, without looking back.
Kate smoothed the crumpled sheet~ with gentle fingers, and spoke aloud. "He was 
very nearly good enough for you, that one," she said; and drawing the yellow 
curtains, shut out the sun.

* * *



Since he was quite a young man, Gideon Somerville had grown used to the role of 
bystander. Other men-less intelligent, shallower men-plunged into a tidal race 
of action, conflict, argument and sinewy bravado. But within Gideon something 
shrank from pressing his intangible opinions, his doubt-ridden intellect and 
humane heart on the destinies of others as helpless as himself. He knew the ache 
of indecision too well.



Today, brought to disturbing acquaintance with new minds, he weighed them up, 
watching with his, clear eyes, and tacitly stepped aside. There was no tangle 
here that he or any stranger could undo. Flaw Valleys was no prison. His staff 
could break out if he incited them: he could send a man to Hexham for help if he 
tried; but he had no wish to try. He asked quietly that his wife shouldn't be 
asked to be present; he made sure that Philippa wasn't left unwatched or 
frightened; and he brought to Lord Culter a pair of matched rapiers and two 
daggers.
As the weapons arrived, Tom Erskine came into the hail and took charge.
The fact that he did so sobered them all. In a year he had become used to 
command: his father, after all, was within the most intimate circle of the 
Court; his grandfather was Archibald, second Duke of Argyll; his grandmother and 
his sister had borne sons to two kings. He came now into the room, collected 
everyone's attention and said quietly, "Richard: this is a warning. This man is 
a prisoner of the Crown and has to answer to the Crown for his crimes. To do 
what you mean to do demands strong cause. Do you have it?"
"You ask me that? Yes. Of course I have."
"To kill this man in a private house for a private quarrel in foreign territory 
may lead you to be charged with his murder. Could you refute that?"
"Yes," said Richard. "As you very well know. At this moment he's carrying papers 
that'd mean the end of us as a nation and very likely the death of the Queen if 
they reached Hexham."
Lymond, who had been staring out of one of the tall windows and drumming with 
his finger tips on the shutter, came to life and spun around. "That isn't true!"
Erskine kicked something at his feet. "Is that your baggage roll?"
"Yes."
"And this, which was in it, is your letter?"
Without speaking, Lymond accepted the papers Erskine held out- papers which, as 
Erskine and Culter both knew, gave in detail the plans for the Queen's escape to 
France.
He took a long time over the pages, his eyes staying a moment. unseeing at the 
foot; then he returned them. "Well?" said Erskine.
"The man with me: Acheson. Have you questioned him about these?" asked Lymond. 
"He's locked up belowstairs."
"Yes," said Erskine. "We've seen him. He was carrying two letters


from George Douglas about the safety of his sons. That's all he's got, and 
that's all he knows about."
"I see," said Lymond slowly. "The obvious answer, of course. The classic escape 
from this kind of situation, as you know, is for each party to blame the other. 
In which case, I assume for safety's sake that you'll take him back home with 
you? I should strongly advise you not to let him out of your sight."
"He put the papers in your baggage?" said Richard helpfully.
"Something like that. But let's put it at its lowest. He knows the contents of 
the papers. So for God's sake don't admit him to your social circle just because 
you're happy he's given you a hold over me."
"And has he?" asked Erskine-and misinterpreting the ensuing pause added, "Well?"
"Well enough for everybody's purpose," said Lymond without passion. "One crime 
more or less isn't going to deter Richard now."
It was treated as an admission; there was a murmur of abuse and contempt, 
irresistibly, and someone spat. Erskine turned his back on the younger man and 
addressed Richard again. "That being so, you have a public reason for bringing 
this man to trial here and now. You also have private reasons?"
"Yes."
"What are they?"
Richard was silent, his jaw doggedly set.
"State them," said Erskine sharply. "If this is to be trial by combat, the 
defendant has a right to hear your complaint."
Lord Culter said, speaking very fast in a low voice, "He has degraded our family 
name . . . committed theft and arson and attacked a guest beneath my roof. He 
has, tried to take my life repeatedly."
Lymond made a sudden movement, apparently involuntarily, and the gesture 
restored Richard's voice. He said quite clearly, "He has dishonoured my wife and 
killed my only son."
Nobody spoke. Between man and man the sunlight hesitated, sparkling, and sank to 
the floor with the languishing dust. Gideon bit his lip. "What have you to 
reply?" asked Erskine.
Lymond's voice was undramatic and his face unreadable. "Your choice is between 
executing me here or in Edinburgh. I will not fight."
Erskine had begun to say, "Do you admit, then . . ." when Richard interrupted. 
"Wait a moment. Let us all have it clear. If one of


us fails to fight, it means he admits he has no honour to defend?"
"That is the usual interpretation."
"In other words, that he admits the truth of the charges against him. Do you 
freely admit to treason, brother? To murder and rape? Fratricide as near as may 
be?"
"I admit none of it."
"Yet you won't fight. You admit your-connection with my wile?"
"No!"
"And yet you won't fight. You admit that you deceived that girl upstairs into 
becoming your blind and complaisant mistress, and then killed her when you tired 
of it?"
Erskine's voice clashed harshiy with Lymond's. The Master's prevailed through 
sheer bite. "You uncivilized maniac: that's a damnable lever to use."
"If you won't defend your story, we must assume it's true."
"You can assume," said Lymond, stirred at last into straight speaking, "that I'm 
trying to prevent you from getting your bloody throat cut; that's all."
"You imagine," said Richard, his voice rocketing between prayerful hope and 
excitement, "that you could fight me and survive?"
"I could see you drop dead this minute from paralysis of the brain cells and 
burst into uninhibited applause. I had nothing to do with Christian Stewart's 
death, nor did I touch her when she was alive. I'll defend that, damn you, 
against anybody. Set up your tin-foil trial and try and prove otherwise if you 
can."
Richard, flexing the fingers of his right hand, raised his eyebrows at Tom 
Erskine. "You heard? He's going to fight," he said gently.

Set below the music room, the hall at Flaw Valleys was lit by the same pattern 
of tall windows along one of its long sides; on the other, double doors at its 
centre made the only entrance. The shining wood floor had been cleared of 
furniture and the spectators stood behind rope at either end: Gideon to the 
right, with six of his own men, and Erskine and Culter's men to the left. Within 
the arena, Lymond had resumed his stance by one of the window seats. Both Culter 
and Tom Erskine were missing.
Conversation was low. Gideon wondered what his wife was doing. He thought of the 
music he had heard that afternoon, and of his conversations with Lymond, and of 
something Lymond had said to


Kate. "If it's going to happen, it won't happen here." But how much, indeed, 
could flesh and blood stand?
A table was put in the centre of the room. On it, Gideon could see the four 
weapons, four slots of blue; and beside them a heavy book:
a volume of the Four Gospels impressed with tarnished gold leaf, which had 
belonged to Kate's mother. Culter came in and stood by it; then Erskine, and the 
doors were shut.
Erskine stood just in front of the carved oak. He was still without colour, but 
composed and firmly in authority. He looked at his audience to the right and 
left extremities of the room, to Lymond by the window and to Richard in front of 
him and said quietly, "You know the purpose of this gathering. We are about to 
hold trial by combat between these two men here before you, and I take to myself 
the authority to regulate and to take oath as if this were done in Scotland, in 
champ cbs. Will you both abide by that?" He waited for their assent, and then in 
a grave, clear voice began to administer the oath.
"You, Richard, third Baron Crawford of Culter, laying your right hand upon this 
Book, must swear the truth of your complaint in all its points, from the first 
to the last charge in it, and that it is your intent to prove the contents to be 
true, so aid you God."
"So aid me God."
Culter's voice was steady. Erskine proffered the book again. "Richard Crawford, 
third Baron Culter, laying your hand on the Book this second time, you must 
swear that you stand no otherwise appointed than by me, with a rapier and a 
dagger; that you have not any other pointed instrument or engine, small or 
great; no stone or herb of virtue, no charm, experiment or other enchantment by 
whose power you believe you may the easier overcome your adversary who here 
shall oppose you in his defence; and that you trust not in anything more than in 
God, your body, and the merits of your quarrel; so God you help."
Richard's voice, quietly taking the oath, and the pad of his stockinged feet as 
he stepped back broke the silence. There was a tightening of the figure by the 
window and Erskine's even voice, slightly raised.
"Francis Crawford of Lymond, Master of Culter," After the briefest hesitation, 
the man came to him. "Laying your right hand on this Book
Erskine's eyes this time were intent. He read the oath still with his voice a 
little raised, like a challenge. At the words, "So aid me


God," repeated without emphasis, a ripple of comment made itself heard in the 
quiet room. Erskine ignored it. "Lord Culter. Please come forward."
Richard moved this time after a distinct pause and took his place before Erskine 
at his brother's side. Erskine captured his eyes and held them. "Take ye each 
other by the right hand, laying the left on the Book."
"He won't. Damned if I blame him," said the man next to Gideon. Richard was 
grinning. "I have no right hand, Mr. Erskine."
His temporary Constable neither argued nor pleaded. He simply observed, "I have 
the power to make that true, as you should know. Face your opponent and take him 
by the right hand."
It was Lyniond who made the move. Richard touched the proffered hand with the 
tips of his fingers, his left hand on the book between them so that their joined 
arms made the required cross, and his eyes were anarchists in the community of 
his hands. "I charge you," began Erskine solemnly:
"I charge you by your faith and your right hand, which is enclosed in the hand 
of your adversary, that you use your power and make use of all advantages to 
make good your appeal, to force him to a rendering of himself unto your hands, 
or with your own hand to kill him before you part from this room, and so God you 
help."
They swore, and the blades were lifted from the table: the thin tempered rapiers 
with steel quillons and counterguard; the daggers with their thick, double-edged 
blades, twelve inches long. Richard received his weapons: sword for the right 
hand and dagger for the left; and then Lymond. The Gospel was removed; the table 
taken away. Erskine, his eyes travelling over every face, Scots and English, 
gave the familiar address.
"We charge and command every man that he approach not nor that he speak, make 
any noise, give any sign nor by his countenance or otherwise direct either of 
these parties to take any advantages the one upon the other, upon pain of life 
and member."
He paused, looking up at the brilliant windows and Kate's bright chestnuts 
beyond. A goose, frowning, marched across the grass. Inside, the sun pinked and 
patterned the floor, aureoled the two whiteshirted men, standing widely 
separated, and fell upon itself, reflected in the steel, with redoubled kisses.
"The day is far passed," said Erskine, making the herald's formal pronouncement. 
"Let them go, let them go, to do their endeavour."



To do his endeavour, Lymond waited in the hall of Flaw Valleys, a slender, feral 
figure, limbs relaxed, eyes wide awake and steel in either scarred hand; and 
watched his brother advance. "Quicker, Richard. We're meant to explode into 
action." The voice was ribald.
Face to face with him, Lord Culter answered softly. "There's no hurry." And 
there was a fficker of movement and a click, as Lymond parried~ sliding sideways 
to miss the twinkle of the short blade. Richard waited. He was indeed in no 
hurry.
"Since we are here," said Lymond conversationally, "why not pronounce something 
appropriate? 'Eh bien, dansez maintenant'? Or, 'We c~rne both out of one tomb: 
so shall we lie both in one pit'? And there's 'Brother, whi art thou so to me in 
ire?'-the killing of Abel, my dear: a mine of suitable commentary. . . . Come 
along," said the playful, savage voice. "Let us fight with sugar in our mouths 
like the litigating tailors of V-" And he ducked.
"Oh, no. No, no, no," said Lymond. "Nature works in the . shortest way possible. 
If you really want to reach my guts . .
The sun was on his face. "I do," said Richard. "But not immediately." And this 
time he thrust, traversed and lunged again, the dagger poised and intent, 
waiting for Lymond to duck out of the sunlight.
He did exactly that. Richard, smiling faintly, whipped up his left arm and 
halted, blinded in the act by the light from his brother's blade. ". . . try 
lunging in a straight line," ended Lymond, serene and safe. "Useful thing, 
sunlight. Play up, master swordman. You're rolling about like a pear in a 
pottle." They drifted apart again.
His intention was obvious. Gideon was not inspired to laugh, but some of his men 
were, and he saw that Culter was aware of it. Lymond was of course behaving 
atrociously: he seemed prepared to make any sort of fool of himself rather than 
allow his brother near. Culter, by no means playing seriously himself as yet, 
was testing the other man's strength, or trying to. The Master eddied around the 
floor, talking.
If Richard had meant to make his power felt gradually, he was forced to drop the 
idea. Unless he was to be a laughingstock, he must force Lymond to fight; and 
his brother, as well as Erskine and Gideon and the waiting men, read the sudden 
purpose in his face. But Lymond got in first.
"Bloodthirsty, Richard?" he asked. "Husband your humours. Think of the fair ones 
at home. His heart was light as leaf on tree, when that he thought on his-"



It was one quotation he never did finish. There was a growl from Richard, an 
unconscious yelp from the spectators, and the fighting had begun in earnest.
In all the length of the bare room, no one spoke. The long blades exploded 
together, cracked, chimed and clattered; the stockinged feet slid and shuffled 
and the two men breathed in gasps, quickly, traversing and gyrating, slipping in 
and out of sword-length, each in a cocoon of whirring light. A blizzard of suns 
on walls and ceiling enclosed them.
Culter was a master, worth seeing on any terms: worth seeing even when wrought 
up with anger. His brain directed; his eyes and feet, shoulders and wrists 
answered, and the result was sure and powerful swordplay. Lymond said once, in a 
breathless voice curiously close to laughter, "He's twice the size of common 
men, wi' thewes and sinewes strong," and then retired into silence. The daggers, 
sparkling over and under the swords, darted like serpents.
Within the first three minutes Richard's sword touched his brother's shoulder. 
Gideon, with the rest, said "Oh!" and then smiled. There was no harm done: the 
shoulder was already protected by the old bandage of Scott's thrust. The lids 
veiled Lymond's eyes as they disengaged. "Reaping the eddish. Try the other side 
next time."
There was no next time. They fought themselves across, to and against the ropes 
on the Master's side, the watching men pressing back against the wall; and then 
slowly moved back to the centre. Culter was attacking fast and brutally and his 
brother was displaying, one after the other, every trick at his command in a 
prodigious effort to defend himself.
He succeeded at the cost of being whipped forward and then back again across the 
floor, his parrying arm taking again and again the jar of the meeting blades. He 
showed surprising mastery with the dagger hand, and his excellence with that was 
something Richard clearly had to allow for consistently: again and again it 
baulked his follow-through and his feint.
The cost to both men was a growing tiredness, magnified by the long chase and by 
the emotional battle upstairs. After his first violence Richard's speed dropped, 
but he fought like a textbook, missing nothing and giving nothing away. Lymond, 
his shirt soaked with perspiration, recoiled incessantly.
Ten minutes later, they were still fighting, and the watching room



was quite silent. At Gideon's elbow, Tom Erskine said suddenly, "I tell you: no 
man has ever stood against Culter's sword for so long."
There was trouble in Somerville's eyes. "I could have warned him," he said.
Erskine's breath hissed. "If one of them isn't fighting, I shall stop

"It won't be necessary," said Gideon quietly. "I think Lord Culter has 
realized."
It was true. Fighting against a sword so weak as to be incapable of riposte or 
counterthrust or attack of any sword, he had still failed to penetrate Lymond's 
guard. With grim fortitude, Richard put a monstrous theory to the test. In the 
middle of an imbroccata he dropped his left hand, exposing his whole flank 
momentarily to Lymond's right blade.
Lymond parried and withdrew, the blue eyes quite impersonal.
Lord Culter disengaged. He did more: he drew back his arm and hurled his sword 
quivering on the floor, his eyes bitter as squill. "Damn you to hell. You're not 
fighting?"
A man's voice called through the silence of the room. "He's escaped!" Lymond, 
breathing quickly, stood without speaking.
"I'm to be your buffoon here, as everywhere else. .
The shouting voice was nearer. It said, "Mr. Erskine, sir! The black fellow: 
he's got a horse and escaped!"
Richard didn't even pause. "You bloody-minded little vampire- how in God's name 
can I hurt you enough?"
Lymond said briefly, "Don't underrate yourself. . . . Erskine: if Acheson has 
got loose, he'll go to Hexham. Do you know it?"
"No, but don't worry," said Erskine grimly. "We'll get him before he arrives 
there. Richard-"
"Do what you like. I've business to finish here," said Culter.
"Oh, for God's sake, Richard," said Lymond harshly. "Erskine: I can take you 
straight to where that man is going. How the hell do you expect to stop him 
otherwise, if you don't know the road? Give me a horse and all the escort you 
like but be quick about it. I don't give a damn who you think carried the 
dispatch, but Acheson knows its contents."
Calmly Richard, picking up his sword, moved between his brother and the door. 
"You won't wriggle out of it that way."
"Richard-"



"Don't be a fool. He'll lead you straight to Lord Grey."
"Then it's a risk we must take," said Erskine steadily. "He's right, Culter. Let 
him go."
"Not until we have finished this."
Erskine was trying desperately hard to keep his temper. "Listen. If that message 
gets through . .
Richard rounded on him. "Are you relying on Lymond to stop it? Then you're a 
simpleton. Go if you want to. I'm not holding you back. But you're not taking 
him: I'll kill the first man who comes near him." And he turned, his eyes 
sparkling in his white face, to his brother.
"You were too superior to attack? Then you can damned well attack now." His 
sword was in his hand, a fine instrument of latent death, sparkling largo to 
larghetto with his dagger. "The way to that door is through me. Take it, 
brother, if you can."
There was a pause. Erskine said sharply, "Hob, Jamie: take your horses and try 
and pick up the tracks. We'll follow as soon as we can."
Lymond stirred. Sleek, cold, finely polished as his own steel, there was an air 
about him now that none of them had ever seen. "Very well," said the voice that 
sixty outlaws had known. "Since you offer, I'll take it."
And he moved in straight to the attack.

It was as if some flawed and clouded screen had slid from the air, leaving it 
thin and bright; informing the white figures and pale heads, fair and brown, 
with an engraver's beauty of exact and flexible outline, and lending a 
weightlessness and authority to their art.
For the brothers were natural swordsmen. The slipping and tapping of the fine 
blades, the unfurling movements growing smokelike one within the other, showed 
no trace of the grim and gritty striving of a moment before. It was classic 
swordplay, precious as a jewel, beyond any sort of price to the men watching, 
and concealing in its graces an exquisite and esoteric death.
They had always known Richard for a master. They now saw Crawford of Lymond grow 
before their eyes, the tutored power entering behind the elegance, the shoulders 
straight, the wrists of the temper which had withstood all the force of 
Richard's long aggression and which now adventured, strong and pliant, with 
every trained sinew in his body.


To the two men, existence was in the end the flicker of the other man's steel; 
his brown arms and wrists; a blur of white shirt and white face and the live, 
directing brain betraying itself through grey eyes or blue. The men watching, 
unable to breathe, heard the click and clash and slither of contes, froiss&s, 
beating and binding: saw first one man and then the other bring his art to the 
pitch of freeing his blade for the ultimate perfection, only to bow before the 
other's defence.
Lymond fought consistently within measure, intensely fast, with an attacking 
dagger: Erskine, his heart frozen by his eyes, saw him beating constantly on 
Richard's blade, moving it out of his way; out of line; pressing it down and 
opening the way for a lunge.
Tap, tap went the compound riposte, the soft feet slithered-and then Richard's 
blade moved, Lymond's right arm whipped stiff, and the fiat of his blade adhered 
to the flat of his opponent's. There was a glottal whine. The point, glittering, 
slithered down and down to Culter's counterguard until Richard, with all his 
compact strength. wrenched it free, slipping and flicking aside the automatic 
flight of his brother's dagger. He moved forward himself, and attacked.
He was possessed by one instinct: to wipe out the insult ot the last twenty 
minutes. In this soil there flowered a strength which lapsed sometimes, but 
never seriously, and which gained leisure, more and more often, to answer the 
astonishments of Lymond's attack. For here, perhaps for the first time in his 
life, Lymond also was stretched to the limit, his breathing raucous, his 
concentration a tangible and frightening thing.
Very soon after Richard, he made his error. He was at the end of a thrust, his 
right arm rigid and his bright point nearly level, when Culter caught the blade 
flat with his own, pressing on the steel and then dropping his own point.
Circling his brother's blade, Richard's sword adhered to it gratingly, the forte 
of his foil acting on the foible of Lymond's; and the intent blue eyes narrowed. 
This was the first step toward disarming and the Master knew it. His attention 
was for a second wholly concentrated on disengaging from the danger point and 
Richard with a single movement, took his slender chance.
He gave way suddenly with his right hand, moved quickly with his left and then 
with his supporting rapier; and trapping Lymond's dagger, whipped it from his 
hand to the floor.
With an answering, animal-like twist the Master leaped back out of close range, 
the sweat running down his face and into the hollow



above the collarbone, and covered himself with his single blade against the 
unleashed power of Richard's following attack.
The force of it drove Lymond the full length of the room; that, and the need to 
keep out of measure, out of the range of Richard's left hand. Corps ~ corps 
fighting was death to the Master now. Richard knew it and rose to his full, 
triumphant stature as a swordsman, the blades in his hands swooping like the 
many scythes of Chronos, driving the other diagonally back, into the rope and 
into the corner of the rectangle.
There was, throughout the room, the soft hiss of an intaken breath. Somerville, 
unconsciously looking away, found the palms of his hands were wet. Lymond, his 
back to the rope, allowed himself one fleeting glance to his side. As the 
skilled, tempted blade rushed toward him he dropped like a stone, left palm to 
the ground in a perfect stop thrust. Richard overshot, stumbled and whipped 
around: Lymond was already rising, his recovered dagger in his hand.
Lord Culter was shaken. Like his brother, he was breathing in retching gasps, 
his hair soaked, his wrists numb with the vibration of the blows. There was, for 
the first time, a moment of loose play. The men about them sighed, as if in an 
hour's suffocation they had purchased a little precious air, and Richard's eyes 
kept for a moment their look of bewilderment and appraisal. Then his head came 
up; beneath the thin shirt his muscles spoke a fresh conviction, and he turned 
on the fair, fastidious presence of his brother with a mighty and flagellant 
hand.
Lymond had recovered no such resurgence of energy. He was tired, the shadow of 
it dragging at his brilliance; but he fought like a fiend when Culter sought to 
drive him again across the length of the room. Somerville, watching, saw that he 
was fully aware of the ropes behind; of the small traps devised for him. But 
what he should fear and did not was the long wall of windows with their hard 
girdle of seats, and below them, the rough opened pack from which Erskine had 
taken the damning letter betraying the Queen.
Richard was aware of it; had had it burning behind the grey eyes for five long 
minutes; was beyond now considering the laws of the sword and the shallow 
lessons of courtesy and fair play. He drove Lymond like wind whipped by rain 
back from the ropes, back across the room, back to the windows, and finally back 
across the soft, shadowed litter of the pack.
Lymond stepped back into the trap. The cloth caught him; he stum


bled, and Richard, with all the power of his shoulder, brought three feet of 
accurate death to cleave the fair, unsettled head.
It fell on a crucifix of steel.
Fully aware, stumbling with precision to the exact place he must occupy, Lymond 
had already launched his two blades on high. Fiery with light, they caught Lord 
Culter's sword between their crossed hilts and wrenched it from his grasp. There 
was one, sweet, invisible turn, an impact on the fine bones of Richard's dagger 
wrist, and the short blade in its turn jerked free, dropped, and followed the 
longer to the ground.
In a matter of seconds, astonishing to him as anything that had ever happened in 
his life, Lord Culter was disarmed.
To stop was almost to faint, such was the strain. They stood very close, face to 
face, the breath shaking their ribs; and the rapier flared in one of Lymond's 
hands, the dagger in the other.
He raised them slightly, the blue eyes haggard and wanton.
"My victory, brother Richard. My chance. My choice, to sheath either or both in 
fat, brotherly flesh." The long fingers whitened on the two hilts as he held 
them out. "Handy Dandy prickly prandy, Richard . . . Which hand will you have?"
No one spoke. Culter's gaze, at this ultimate moment, was steady and unafraid.
Lymond laughed. And laughing, hurled the rapier to the floor and leaped to the 
window seat, the baggage roll scooped in his arms. For a moment he was poised 
there, collected, elegant and fleetingly analytical. Then-"If you won't lead, 
try following!" said the Master; and in a storm of contemptuous glass swept the 
pack through the window and followed it himself. They heard, as they ran 
forward, the thud, the pause, and the quick recovery as he rolled on the soft 
grass below. From there, as they knew, it was a step to the horses.
And so they had to follow.

Gideon found Kate in the music room, her eyes on the road south. He put two 
hands on her shoulders. "How good an Englishwoman are you?"
He felt her shiver. "I don't know. Not very good, I'm afraid. It was Philippa 
who told them."
"I know."
There was a long silence. "Did they fight?" asked Kate at length.
"Quite brilliantly," said Gideon. And he took her below where the



air blew soft through the tall panes, and where the fallen rapier, like the 
Master's discarded victory, lay unmarred among the glass on the floor.

They were riding into the yellow, grit-blasted socket of the sun, following the 
wisp of dust which was Lymond.
Somewhere ahead, presumably, was the man Acheson. Somewhere ahead, certainly, 
was the English army. A little down the road the two men Erskine had sent ahead 
joined them at a tangent from the moors, with no news except of a baked, and 
unprinted crust of hills, and it became certain that their only hope, as well as 
their greatest danger, lay in following the incalculable figure ahead.
Lymond flew before them like a honey guide seducing a vespiary, sparing them 
nothing: they jumped ditches and peat pits, scrambled up banks and old diggings 
and crossed streams where the shallow mud embraced pastern and coffin bone and 
left some horse shoeless. The dust of whin and seeding grass, of baked earth and 
broken pollen attacked and burned them until the freshest of their horses 
stumbled. The gilded head in front never dropped from their sight.
Richard was sitting heavily in the saddle. Erskine, watching him drop back from 
the lead, recognized that Culter was worn out, riding on will power alone, much 
as the man in front must be. It struck him that today's disastrous encounter 
between the two had done nothing so much as reveal how brilliantly alike the 
brothers were. It further struck him that if they did approach any closer to 
Lymond, his job was to prevent Osiris from being destroyed by brother Set. 
Until, at least, he had shown them the way to Acheson. He singled out Stokes, 
his best man, and edged him out of Culter's hearing as they galloped.
"If Lymond gets to Hexham first, I'm going alone after him: one man might just 
bluff his way through. Th~ rest of you will have to wait for me. Give me an hour 
or two, and then make your own way home. . . . And Stokes."
"Yes, sir?"
"Stop Lord Culter from following me."
The other man met his eye. "Yes, sir."
They were riding uphill, over high ground: a cavalcade of asses after a bizarre 
and amorphous carrot. Then the rider ahead slipped out of sight down the other 
side of the hill. Erskine swept up after him and drew rein.
They were on the verge of a long and stony escarpment which ran



as far west as he could see. Below the cliff, a track led through flat meadows 
to the broad and tranquil banks of the Tyne, crossed it by a humped bridge and 
after traversing a narrower strip, shot precipitously into the Alpine bosom of 
Hexham.
The town smoked morosely on its hill. Tom could see the Abbey tower, the prison, 
the tall houses of the church offices and the solid town gates, halfway up the 
hill. The streets seemed to be crammed with people. He dropped his eyes, and 
witnessed a small drama nearer at hand: a man, spurring his horse without mercy, 
was approaching the bridge from this, the north side. As he reached it, another 
rider galloped toward him across the turf, calling something: the sun glinted on 
fair hair, and Erskine held his breath.
He saw the man at the bridge look around for a second and even hesitate; then he 
raised his arm and with a slap of his hand, sent the rowelled horse bounding 
over the river. Erskine saw Lymond's horse leap forward also, and then race flat 
out for the bridge; but there were two hundred yards between the two men, and 
Lymond was not closing it. Erskine swore under his breath.
Behind him, his men were arriving on the crest and halting, arrested by his arm. 
Culter was nearly last. He rode to Erskine's side, his eyes, reddened and 
painful with dust, searching the new landscape; and suddenly pointed. "There 
they are!"
"Yes. I'm going after them," said Erskine. "Stokes!"
"Then I'm coming. . .
"You're staying here," said Erskine sharply. "So are the men. Stokes: there was 
a building of some kind back there; a burned-out one. See what shelter you can 
get there for yourselves and the horses. Not more than two hours." And he put 
his horse down the cliff.
The last thing he saw, as he held the mare's neck high and felt her haunches 
slither among the scree of rough sandstone, was Stokes' hand on Richard's rein, 
and Richard trying to fight off three of his men. It came to Tom, wryly, that 
the round, blackened building he had seen was a dovecote.

* * *



Adam Acheson, arriving at last at his destination, found the whole of Hexham in 
the street and in the market at the top of it, bent on commercial prey, and 
squeezing a quick fortune from Wharton's menat-arms.



While taking no risks in open country, Acheson had no political reason for 
distrusting Lymond. On the contrary, his relationships vis ~ vis his own 
countrymen and the English were from Acheson's point of view perfectly 
satisfactory. The attempt to delay him was Ache-son's main grievance, and he was 
willing to overlook it if the fellow, abandoning this irrelevance, had arrived 
at Hexham after all.
So, when the porter at the gate looked at his safe-conduct and read laboriously, 
"And bodyguard?" Acheson jerked his head down the i'oad, and waited while the 
porter, after argument, found an escort for him to the Abbey. Acheson was ready 
to grant that Lymond's presence was conclusive guarantee of his good faith. 
Still, there was the matter of the opened dispatch he had slipped into the other 
man's baggage. He wanted the credit of delivering the fellow, but without undue 
personal risk.
But the Master, it seemed, bore him no ffi-will. He rode up as Acheson, 
dismounted, was chatting with the three men of his guard. He looked a little 
wild-eyed, perhaps, but with nothing threatening in his face.
Admitted through the gate, he guided his horse toward Acheson, smiling, and 
drawing abreast, bent down to address him.
Only one of the four men standing around them saw the twelve inches of steel in 
Lymond's hand, and he shouted too late. Acheson took the stab full in the chest, 
propelled backward with the force of the blow; then the blank amazement in his 
face gave place to vindictive fury. He straightened. The dagger, falling from 
the rent cloth over his breast, betrayed the sparlde of chain mail beneath. 
Acheson was unhurt, and five men leaped at Lymond.
There was one weapon left to him. Driving his feet hard into the mare's flanks, 
Lymond dragged her soft mouth back and guided her plunging hoofs. Acheson, 
isolated under the iron soffit of the rearing horse, screamed once, the blood 
leaping from a great cut on the temple, before he was kicked to the ground.
There was just time for Lymond to see as much before he, too, was overpowered.

Erskine heard the story five minutes later when he in turn arrived at the gate. 
Affairs at the wicket were in some disorder, but he made hectoring play with the 
vacant cover of Acheson's dispatch, and was admitted immediately and directed to 
Lord Grey.
Having asked as many questions as he dared, Erskine hesitated.



Both Acheson and his assailant, he now knew, had been taken to the Abbey, where 
the conunanders were in conference. No one knew how seriously the messenger was 
hurt. But if the two men possessing this secret were in the Abbey, then there, 
clearly, he must go.
He pressed his horse slowly through the crowds and up the steep hill. His 
chances of coming down it again were something, he thought fleetingly, he 
wouldn't care to wager money on. And the decisive factor was whether he had to 
assassinate one man, or two.

Through several centuries, predecessors of Tom Erskine had found a morbid 
attraction in the fat cows and silver plate of Hexham, with damaging results to 
the fabric. It cost Erskine some bluffing, some skin off his knuckles and a 
btuised shin, but he got inside, unseen and unmolested, and was violently 
relieved to find his end of the church plunged in gloom.
He was in the west nave; and while cleaving to the White Canons, he gave a 
passing nod to the Augustinian sense of proportion, material and intangible. 
About thirty yards ahead there were lights, of a sort, and the murmur of voices: 
the meeting, or gathering, or conference seemed to be taking place in one of the 
transepts. As his eyes grew used to the dark, he looked about him.
On his right, a flight of steps rose into the wall, presumably leading to the 
west offices of the cloister and therefore of no immediate use. But above his 
head, a row of lancets ran along the south wall of the nave, supporting the 
upper part of the wall, and with their feet firmly planted on a ledge a full 
yard wide.
Where staging went, a man could go. Erskine made a silent dash for the stairs, 
and after two twists debouched through an open door onto a dark and dizzy ledge 
high above the nave. Moving silently from group to group of its pillars he 
slipped toward the heart of the church, flattening himself against the wall as 
the candlelight grew stronger.
Another doorway appeared ahead. Through it, he found the wall turned at right 
angles. The ledge continued, and the supporting pillars, but instead of looking 
down into the church, the open side was sealed. Before him instead was a long, 
narrow tunnel, completely dark, with a glimmering of light at the end. Then he 
realized what was happening: the wall here turned to run along the west wall of 
the south transept, and the space between the columns had been hung with 
tapestries.



He edged his way a little along, feeling the cold stone on his right and 
touching the hangings on his other side with the tips of his left hand. The dim 
light at the end came from a stairway which spiralled both up and down. 
Investigating, he found that a short descent led to the corner of a broad 
gallery filling the end of the transept. A flight of wide, shallow steps led 
from the gallery to the floor of the church. He retreated up the staircase and 
halfway back along his ledge.
His best hiding place was here, and here probably his best view of the transept. 
Judging his distance, he halted and with careful fingers made a gap in the 
tapestried wall of his tunnel. Candlelight fell on his fingers, and animated 
conversation sprang to his ears with a paralyzing vigour.
Then a known voice, Lymond's voice, beating home some fragment of rhetoric, said 
startlingly, "I can give you one name that you can't give me: cuckold, Lord 
Lennox!"


* * *




Within the Abbey, this singular and unbooked-for capture slipped like a 
midsummer halcyon upon the sour and surly waters of incompatability.
Lord Wharton, exhausted with the effort of being civil to Grey, irritated by 
Lennox and stricken at the prospect of parting with a company of excellent 
horsemen whom he would probably never see again, was sunk in highly secular 
gloom at one end of the long, polished table.
The Earl of Lennox, bored and more than a little put out by a cool reception 
from his wife, fiddled with the inventories and bills lying in front of him, and 
crossed his long legs under the table in such a way that neither Grey nor 
Margaret could sit in comfort.
Lord Grey, missing Gideon and worried as well as annoyed by this tale of 
Margaret Douglas's, was unfolding a long and complicated saga of his Treasurer's 
shortcomings and Lady Lennox, who was pale, was sitting upright in an 
uncomfortable chair and frowning abstractedly at the floor.
Then Mr. Myles came in and whispered; an officer from the gate came in and made 
a statement; and the guard helped to carry in and deposit the recumbent and 
unconscious form of Mr. Acheson on a convenient tomb, while two other pleased-
looking stalwarts filed in


and closed the door. Between them was Lymond. At the unlikeliest moment, the 
fish had swallowed the hook.
He wore no jacket and no boots; he was dishevelled, as might be expected, and 
looked tired and disreputable. He also looked, thought Lord Grey with a pang of 
fury, roughly as humble as Shishman, Emperor of the Slays: Bralima finding pest 
in the henhouse might have worn such a look. "Did you do that?" snapped the Lord 
Lieutenant, and jerked a finger toward Acheson's prostrate body.
Lymond turned his head. "Gushing Hippocrenes at every joint. No. Strictly 
speaking, the blame belongs to a strawberry roan. The gentleman carries two 
letters for the Lennoxes, and I have come with him in answer to your ultimatum. 
If you are wondering, Margaret, whether I know that the ultimatum is void and 
why; I do. Mr. Ache-son was rash enough to tell me just inside the gates."
A severe and brilliant triumph illuminated Meg Douglas's face. She didn't ask 
how Acheson knew. "Your little redheaded friend was unintelligent but 
persevering. She forgot there are rules in war as well as in love. . . . Kill 
him, Matthew."
"In your experience they are the same rules, aren't they? Slay those who are 
great in heart, for they are blind. Matthew can't in decency kill me, Margaret, 
until Lord Grey has spoken, and by then I shall have said a great deal myself."
"Will you? I doubt it. By God," said Lord Grey, "there isn't a man here, I 
should think, who wouldn't be happy to slit-"
"I should certainly like-as a major sufferer-to lay claim to the body," said 
Lord Wharton. "What happened at Annan is very freshly in my mind, and so is the 
disruption of my courier service and your several and inventive actions when 
under my command."
"As I observed," said Lord Grey impatiently, "this miserable man is evilly 
disposed to us all. I have not forgotten Hume and Heriot nor has Lennox, I 
imagine~ dismissed the events at Dumbarton. We are not, I suppose, going to 
terminate this remarkable history by squabbling over the manner of his death. 
No. We are pressed for time. This is war, and this man is of the rubbish thrust 
to the surface by war. Let the guards take him to the market place and hang him 
for a treacherous Scot."
Four voices broke upon his ears with exclamatory advice; and were in turn 
defeated by the single, carrying voice of the prisoner.
"One at a time," said Lymond. "Remember your English unity, for God's sake, or 
we are all lost. Think hard; don't let the principle



escape you. What are you? A great and godly nation speaking with the voices of 
corporate right: one brain, one heart; a thousand members drawing life from 
each. A nation of loving lambs dutiful to the bellwether: chickens of the world-
egg following the hen-figure gladly into the eye of the cannon. Unity, 
solidarity and brotherhood. Brotherhood! My God."
Grey shut the ledger before him with a snap. "At least this is a nation, with a 
religion, a head, a status, a policy. Not a damned Noah's Ark: a chicken here, a 
lamb there, a family of wolves in the next field. I suppose you are proud of 
your French Queen, playing dice with Scots knucklebones for the greater glory of 
her native land? Of Arran, the fool, bending like a springal toward the 
weightiest pocket? Of your Douglases and your-"
"Lennoxes?" Smoothly, unhurriedly, the Master was playing for time. "They serve 
their turn: why not? A Lennox pressed is a Dead Sea apple, held by London 
instead of by Paris; and for the richest, not the fairest. Fairness has nothing 
whatever to do with the Douglases."
"I think," said the Earl of Lennox, white with emotion, "that my wife and I have 
heard enough insults. And I can dispense with a dissertation about our national 
characteristics. Knock him down! Hang him!"
Lymond turned suddenly. "'Our' characteristics? Whose? Whose are yours? Brought 
up in France; feted in Scotland; would-be bridegroom of Mary of Guise; would-be 
ruler; would-be conspirator; full of terrestrial appetites and an eagerness to 
feed your kindred flesh to all the feared and threatening raptors at your heels 
.
"What are you? A citizen of Europe or of the life of the shore: a thief, a 
renegade, a liar and a coward, as you have named me? But I can give you one name 
you can't give me: cuckold, Lord Lennox!"
The Earl had risen slowly to his feet. As Lymond flung the word at him Lennox's 
voice rang out, high-pitched as a bird's. "My God, you stopped me once, Wharton, 
but not this time Not again! Clear the way-move aside-"
His path to Lymond was unexpectedly blocked. "Who the devil are you?" said 
Lennox hysterically. "Get out of my way!"
Henry, Lord Wharton's son, shut the door behind him and blinked at the white and 
angry face. His gaze, mildly surprised, sought his father at the table and then, 
roving, fell on the Master of Culter. "Him!"



Ignoring Lennox totally, Henry Wharton flung his arms in a wide gesture of 
exultation, divesting himself with a twist of bow, quiver, helmet and pack. They 
fell on the table with a crash. "Lymond! You've got him?"
Repressively, Lymond himself answered. "I dislike being discussed as if I were a 
disease. Nobody 'got' me," he said. "And where have you been, my billy: to the 
devil and back to have your beard combed?"
Before Grey's astonished gaze, the scene of a moment before began to repeat 
itself. They had to hold the young man, struggling, away from the Master. Grey 
shoved him into his father's grasp and said sharply, "You control him. What's so 
inflammatory about . . .
Wharton answered curtly. "Made a fool of himself at Durisdeer in February. 
Milked like a cow tree."
"How?"
Lymond, irrepressible, answered. "It was a wonderful beard he had, a magnificent 
pelt. He was bearded like a Dammar pine, of the fashion of prophets and pards, 
one hair sitting here, another there.
But was it fitting? Was it well-considered? I asked myself: peach or nectarine, 
clingstone or freestone, bald or-forgive me-downy
which?"
"What," said Lord Grey impatiently, "did he do to Henry?"
"Shaved and cropped him with his own knife," replied Lord Wharton shortly, and 
the angry faces around the table, with the furious exception of Harry's, broke 
into ill-repressed smiles.
"A picture," observed Lymond. "It isn't considered proper to shout in church. 
Besides, Lord Lennox is talking."
He had cour.age, or a singular rashness. Tom Erskine, his hands gripping the 
tapestry, wondered also, jaw set, if Lymond had observed what he himself had 
just seen: the smallest stirring in the inert body of the messenger Acheson, 
lying stunned on the marble face of a tomb.
It forced Erskine himself to a decision. With infinite care he edged along the 
narrow passage behind the tapestry, reached the spiral stair, and slipping down 
it, stepped out on the wide, stone-flagged balcony which overhung the south 
transept where Lymond stood. Bending low, Erskine crossed the flags and lying 
still beneath the stone balustrade, raised his head cautiously and peered below.
From his low and castellated rampart he caught a glimpse of a yellow head. He 
raised himself higher. At the same moment Lymond


stepped back two paces before Lennox, who was shouting abuse: this brought him 
halfway along the table with his right side to the balcony and the catafalque 
with Acheson on his left.
He was, then, keeping the messenger under his eye. A moment later the Master 
turned his head to speak to the Countess of Lennox and raised his eyes a 
fraction, searching the stilted lancets and then, briefly, the wide Midnight 
Stairs and the gallery at their head. Erskine was by then almost certain the 
quick blue glance had identified him.
Someone was saying vehemently, "That's a lie!"
Lymond seemed undisturbed. "Don't be simple. Didn't you know that Margaret spent 
her sojourn in Scotland with me?"
The woman raised her brows. "Haven't we had enough of this? When I was captured, 
I was taken to Lanark. Matthew knows that. The offer of exchange came from 
Lanark, not from you."
Lymond replied gently. "I naturally covered my mediator by giving him good 
credentials, but he did not, I'm afraid, come from Lanark. How deceitful of you 
not to have told your spouse. I wrote my offer of exchange, I remember, on the 
back of a letter from Lord Lennox to his wife which in itself was a thing of 
joy. I recall, for example .
Lord Lennox shot a pale glance at his wife. "There is no need to go on with this 
nonsense."
I recall, for example, a good many things, but don't excite yourselves. I shan't 
embarrass the dynasty. Didn't you know she was using the war as a fulcrum for 
her fishing line with myself as the prey? I was to be driven into the nets 
since, unlike the beaver, my self-defence stops short of unserviceable gestures. 
Do you find that objectionable? Pitiful? Even a little ludicrous, perhaps? A 
self-interest so insanely exclusive that it includes even murder?"
Now Margaret as well was on her feet, her eyes burning. Lennox was pale; around 
the table the others looked angry and uncomfortable, as if mesmerized into 
allowing the intolerable scene to go on.
The man Acheson stirred again.
"Murder?" repeated Lord Grey. "Oh: the Stewart girl? She was killed riding."
"She was killed riding, by an arrow. She was threatened, pursued, her young 
guide killed, and done to death herself as surely as if the arrow had been 
directed at her.
"If your eyes burned from their sockets now you would be lost and terrified and 
appalled as she was-and you are men. You're not in



enemy country, in the hands of a cruel and bitter woman; or galloping blind on a 
frightened horse over unknown fields with a dead body behind you and a pack of 
the hounds who killed him baying at your heels. That isn't only murder: it's 
murder of a very special and damning kind, and there is a name for those who 
engage in it . . .
The admirable voice was stripped, as was Lymond's whole bearing, of his normal 
pleasant negligence. He went on.
"I have no very gratifying memories of Crawfordmuir. I offered myself for sale, 
as I remember, in exchange for the truth. Your wife was eager to buy, Lord 
Lennox; but she also deals in adulterated coinage. She told me something was 
unprovable which I knew could be proved, and she told me a man had been killed 
whom I knew to be alive-so I withdrew my offer. But to save Christian Stewart 
from these attentions, believe me, I should have honoured it at any cost."
There was a grandeur in Margaret Douglas's fury. "Stop your foul tongue! You 
paltry, conceited liar!"
"Did Christian Stewart die? How did she die?"
Lady Lennox stepped before him, shaken with rage. "She died of a fall from her 
horse. It was no fault of mine. She's better off than she ever was as a mistress 
of yours! Only you won't blacken my name from revenge in front of these people!"
The answer was implacably hard. "Look at your husband's face. Look at Lord Grey. 
Blacken your name! Are you known, do you imagine, as Zenobia?"
She whirled on Grey. "Take him away! Can't you stop this?"
"And al was conscience and tendre herte," said the clear, forbidding voice. Grey 
cleared his throat. Wharton's eyes were fixed on the roof corbels and their 
coats of arms; his son, standing sulkily by Grey, was biting his lip. The Earl 
of Lennox looked hard at his wife, his eyes glancing white like pale, sea-washed 
pebbles. Lymond addressed him, not looking anywhere near Acheson; not allowing 
anyone's attention to stray to the white marble and the uneasily stirring body.
"Oh, you haven't been chcated. You are one with Black Douglas and Royal Tudor, 
and through her with any man from the highest to the most humble whom she wants 
to dominate. Any man. The rotten apple, Lennox, hangs lowest. There's more 
ambition in one of those tears of fury than in the whole of your Godforsaken 
career. You must let her push you; you can't rest any more; you can't fail her 
or she'll destroy you. Won't you, Margaret?"
Acheson groaned.


With sharp distaste Lord Grey said to Lymond's guards, "Take him away!" but 
Margaret was already advancing on her tormentor. With all her considerable 
strength she struck at his mouth with the back-driving flat of her hand and 
Erskine, his heart in his teeth, saw the Master call smoothly on his reserves.
The woman's wrist was caught and pulled to him. Then, behind the shield of her 
body, he side-stepped and snatched. With young Wharton's bow and quiver in his 
free hand he backed to the stairs, dragging Margaret, wildly struggling, with 
him.
He held her, one-handed, until he reached the foot of the steps; then hurling 
her from him an instant before she fought quite free he turned and raced up the 
wide, shallow treads.
Erskine was ready. As Lymond crashed breathless beside him in the shelter of the 
balustrade his sword was out, ready to cut back the expected rush; but the other 
man was already on his feet again with the bow strung. There was omy one arrow. 
He said under his breath, "Keep down, damn you!" and as Erskine knelt, Lymond 
took aim below.
Wharton and his son, hallway up the stairs, halted.
"Get back!" said the Master.
There was a long pause. Lennox, at the foot of the steps, was bent over his 
wife. Grey, still at the head of the table, hadn't moved; the two guards stood 
helplessly beside him.
Against a bow and a fine marksman, their swords might be unbarrelIed shooks. The 
Whartons recoiled down the stairs and the tilt of the bow followed them. Behind, 
the gallery was empty, a hall-open door leading to the deserted monks' 
dormitory, the day stairs, the cloisters, the refectory, the storehouses: a 
thousand hiding places and a thousand exits.
They held the hour in their fingers, like a day lily. They had merely to destroy 
Acheson and go.
The bow in his hands, Lymond stood motionless. Erskine was turning on him, riven 
with urgency, when he saw the movement above his head. On the narrow ledge to 
the right, the twin of his own former stance, a man stood with a hackbut.
From that ledge there was no turnpike down to the gallery, but the arquebusier 
had no need to come closer to Lymond to have him fully in range. Erskine turned, 
frantic exhortations in his mouth, and saw, at last, why Lymond had made no 
effort to shoot.
For Acheson had moved. Sitting up, hands on marble, he was attempting weakly to 
stand. Until he did so, he was totally screened by the parapet. And there was 
only one arrow.
The loading of an arquebus is a protracted affair. Hidden under the low wall, 
Erskine had a terrible leisure to watch this man's quick fingers. He saw the 
glimmer of the manipulated barrel and knew from the tightening of Lymond's 
fingers on the bow that he also had seen.
The Master gave it no other attention. He was talking, the limpid, carrying 
voice penetrating the transept below as Acheson, disgruntled and bloody, rubbed 
his black head and muttered.
"Keep your voices down," said Lymond. "Don't move. Don't shout for help. I can 
kill any one of you from here." His eyes were tranquil, of a clearheaded 
strength: there was no hint in them of the day's exhaustions and disasters. 
Talking, he moved slowly along the wall, trying to uncover Acheson. The 
hackbutter, in his haste, dropped something with a small bump and picked it up 
again.
teach you a lesson with some ex cathedra observations," Lymond was continuing. 
"You may feel a little foolish; you don't appear so to me. Wharton is a master 
of his profession: it's a profession where one cannot stay detached, and he has 
paid that penalty. But he knows very well that corrective pressure and armed 
coercion are two of the longest, least successful and most offensive ways of 
waging a war."
He paused, his eyes flickering to the obscured figure of Acheson and back to the 
upraised, angry faces. "Every war has the man on the balcony, the man in the 
tree, the man in the doorway. He stings; he frightens; he causes loss of face; 
but he is always caught in the end. Turn aside to hunt for him if you must, Lord 
Grey; but don't ever unleash your vanity on his track. Today .
In the heavy eyes, new life suddenly blazed. "Today," said Lymond, "such an 
error has cost you a war."
"Lord Grey?" said an uncertain voice: Acheson's voice. "Take me to Lord Grey? 
I've a dispatch . . . about the Scottish Queen."
Grey said "What?" as the glimmer of a slow match swept through the dark transept 
like a firefly. The black mouth of the hackbut, steady as a wand, inexorable as 
Melpomene, turned like a dark flower to its killing, and Erskine cried softly, 
"Oh, God!"
Adam Acheson repeated, dizzily, "It's about the Queen"; and walked out into the 
centre of the floor.
The fine bow drifted in Lymond's hands like the frail, side-slipping glide of a 
heron; the steel tip steadied, sparkling, and his knuckles



whitened. In the darkness opposite, the hackbutter's arm jerked. Lymond smiled 
once, with a kind of surprised pleasure, and releasing the deadly, unerring 
arrow, shot Acheson through the heart.
The explosion of the hackbut drowned Margaret's scream. Aiming for Lymond's 
body, given the brilliant, unmoving target of his white shirt, the marksman made 
no mistake. He was defter, indeed, than he meant to be; because the shot, raking 
the stone coping of the balcony, acquired missiles and satellites of its own and 
struck home not once but several times.
Lymond flung up his head, turned half around with the force of the explosion. 
The bow fell. For one second-two--he held fast to the broken coping, defying the 
heralds of agony and an easy darkness. Below, Erskine caught a glimpse of the 
circle of white, upturned faces about the fallen body of Acheson.
Then the riven flesh and burst vessels made their protest, the freed blood 
springing liberal and scarlet through the fragments of Lymond's shirt. Erskine 
saw the long hands loosen, the sudden, uncontrolled sway; but was not prepared 
for the drowned, revealing blue gaze meeting his like a blow.
"And died stinkingly martyred," said Lymond. with painful derision; and losing 
hold bit by bit, slipped into Erskine's gentle grasp.



3.

Knight Adversary

And also hit behoveth . . . that they first have the cure
of themself, and they ought to purge themself fro
alle apostumes and alle vices . . and that they
shewe hem hole and pure and redy for to hele other.






1.	Strange Refuge


THE bell of Hexham Abbey opening its lips to the pagan moon, sent its voice 
across the river: Vice mea viva depello cuncta novica; and the men waiting 
across the water in a blackened and doorless dovecote heard it; and heard also 
the rattle of approaching hoofs.
Somebody-a hospital, a manor, a priory-had once owned five hundred fat pigeons 
here, and had housed them fittingly with four. teen tiers of holes and ledges, a 
bathing tub ifiled by a spring, a stone table and a tall and creaking potence, 
its revolving arms scanning the circles of tiered nests so that two men on its 
wheeling perches could pocket the warm squabs.
Now the broken doorway admitted rats. But rock doves had found a way through the 
glover to the safest, topmost nests; and when Erskine's men went in, birds arose 
with the sudden rattle of an emptied topsail. Waiting for Tom to return, they 
could see shocked golden eyes darting from the lantern edge high above.
The sudden inaction, agitating to Erskine's men, was dreadful for Richard, 
bereft of his prey and of any part in the climax of this









hideous marathon. He would have been at the gates of Hexham fifty times if 
Stokes had let him. If Erskine could get in, then why not himself? If Erskine 
failed, wasn't it his duty to replace him? And who gave Erskine the right to 
annex another man's quarrel?
Stokes, luckily, was gifted with patience. As the light faded he returned his 
decent, sensible answers, without pointing out that but for Lord Culter himself, 
they would all have been safely on the Edinburgh road hours since. Eventually, 
even Richard relapsed into silence, and occupied himself with an explosive 
pacing of the dusty floor.
The hoofbeats, like harried spirits, followed the tolling of the bell. Stokes, 
signalling silence, went himself to the miniature door and then fell back, the 
grin on his face red-lit by the low fire. It was Tom Erskine.
He was barely inside when Richard's hands seized his shoulders. "Well, damn you: 
well?"
Erskine, looking queerly, jerked free. "We've stopped the message being 
delivered. Acheson was carrying it in his head."
"And Lymond?"
Nothing else and no one else mattered. Erskine's own gaze, newly fierce, newly 
level, beat down Richard's to the floor before he answered curtly. "They loathed 
and feared Lymond. If you believed he was England's secret insurrectionist, 
you're wrong. He killed Acheson himself."
There was no real change in the fanatical grey eyes. Richard said, "Where is 
he?"
Someone had already unloaded Erskine's horse. The heavy roll lay near the fire: 
bending, Erskine turned back the blankets.
Devoid of mischief or anger; silent; defenceless; Richard's brother lay at his 
feet. Erskine knelt by the plastic body, clothed and clotted with blood, and 
touched Lymond's hand.
"Is he dead?" They stared, like men mesmerized. Erskine said abruptly, "Stokes: 
collect the horses and get the men out. The job's done. We can't risk staying 
any longer. Quickly."
The exodus began against Lord Culter's unmoving figure. He repeated himself, 
without raising his voice. "Is he dead?"
Erskine's face was as hard as his own. "He won't survive an hour on horseback. 
We must leave him."
Richard swore coldly. "Damn it, how can we? He knows all Acheson knew."



"Then he can tell it to the pigeons," said Erskine harshly, and flung wide the 
rugs. "How long d'you think he'll live like that?"
"Someone might find him."
"All right. Someone might find him. That's your concern: he's your brother. 
That's why I brought him back. This is one decision I'm not making. I saw him 
risk his life to kill that fellow today."
There was no softening in Richard's face. "He had to choose between Grey and 
you, and he plumped for the likelier prospect, that's all. . . . Justifiably: 
you rescued him, didn't you?" His fingers slid up and down the quillons of his 
sword. There was a pause; then he pulled them away. "No. I'm damned if I do. I 
want him killed publicly and lawfully and painfully and fully conscious, at 
least. Take your men and get on the road. I'll stay and get him home later."
They were alone; they could hear the trampling as the horses were brought up 
outside. Erskine said, "You've fought him once already:
isn't that enough?"
The firelight glinted in Richard's eyes. "Do you think he's innocent? I'm 
willing to save his life: what's wrong about that? And if he's guiltless he'll 
have a chance to prove it: what's fairer?"
Someone called to them through the doorway. Erskine stepped outside and 
returning, threw at Richard's feet his baggage roll and cloak. "You'll need 
these."
He added abruptly, "Come with us, Richard. Let him alone. You can't seal him 
alive in the larder like a bloody wasp with a fly."
There was no answer.
Erskine had to go. But in the dovecote doorway he glanced back, once. Richard 
had stooped over his brother and, with excited face, was scanning the engrossing 
tally of his wounds.


* * *




Long after, Richard himself stood in the doorway, gazing out at the quiet night. 
Then, moving noiselessly, he collected the wood he needed and stacked it inside.
It was late. The fire, rebuilt under the overhung ledges, glimmered on his 
brother's face: the artless, sleeping face of his childhood.
But Lymond was now in the cold sleep close to death. Experienced soldier and 
countryman, Lord Culter had faced the spilled blood, the spoiled muscle, the 
split bone with no qualms; and had washed,



cleaned and bandaged with steady hands, missing nothing: the scarred hands, the 
old whippings; the last degradation of the brand.
There was no more he could do now. The door cloth secure, he stretched at length 
by the fire, his saddle for pillow, and waited side by side with the silenced 
tongue which had mocked him so long. The cushats had long since returned sidling 
to their roosts. As stillness fell, they settled too, with frilled feathers and 
the rasp of dry feet. Then it was quiet, and the only sound in all the warm June 
night was Lymond's faint, gasping breath.
Through the darkest hours of the short night Richard slept, wrenched by sheer 
exhaustion from his vigil; and woke stupid, forgetting.
Then his bemused eyes picked out the pale, dawn-lit arches of the lantern above 
him and the wintry skeleton of the potence, and the dark, enclosing walls with 
their hundred upon hundred of empty sockets, black and salaciously flickering 
with the dying glimmer of the fire. And the wide, fathomless eyes of his 
brother, resting on him.
In that crude second, neither spoke. Culter rose, and stooping to the fire, 
rebuilt it with unhurried care. In its spreading light, pale hair gleamed beside 
him, and whitened cheekbones and white lips, all tinged to health by the flames. 
Roseate and sardonic in extremis, Lymond spoke with the least possible expense 
of sound.
"You still snore like a frog. Did Tom Erskine get me out?"
Richard was building a cathedral of boughs. "Who else? He brought you here and 
then took his men home. We're just outside Hexham."
There was a difficult pause. Then Lymond said clearly, "If you're waiting to 
preach in articulo mortis, don't put it off for my sake."
The oblique inquiry gave Richard the metal he needed. He said with a grim 
pleasure, "I don't mind waiting."
Something-hardly laughter-glimmered in the heavy eyes. "Neither do I. But the 
fenestration seems fairly extensive."
Richard had hung a can of water over the new fire, and his fresh bandages were 
waiting. "Not if you have a good surgeon."
The careful voice was resigned. "Two chapters of Anatontia Porci and they think 
they're Avicenna. Don't trouble. No wriggling and no recantations from this 
quarter."
"You're surprised?" Richard tested the water with a broad finger. "What did you 
expect? That I'd curse you, kill you and drop you in the Billy Mire?"


"Yes. You tell me why not: I can't help you. Overtures of friendship from me 
would sound damned silly at this point . . . I can't drink any more."
Richard took away the flask. "You said no recantations."
"That doesn't rule out the plain, freestanding explanation."
"Make it later," said Richard equably, unwinding bits of torn sheet. "You'll 
have plenty of time." He knelt, and the incalculable eyes dropped.
It was not a pretty business: a grim, forbidding task even had there been proper 
gear and the skilled treatment of the doctor he was not. The bowls of water 
became scarlet and the makeshift wads reeked.
Explanations. What explained the killing of one's son? The seduction of one's 
wife? And these were the hands that Mariotta knew better than he did: this the 
mouth; this the marked body.
Lymond took too long to recover when the dressing was done. But in the end his 
eyes opened, and after a time he spoke. "All right. I love sadism too," he said. 
"But try that too often, Master Haly Abbas Cat, and you won't have a mouse left 
to play with. . . . Your move."
Richard was careful. "Not yet," he said. "When I make it, I want your undivided 
attention. All you have to do is get well."

* * *



That day Lord Culter spent some time looking for a fresh harbour for his 
patient: one that would give some shelter, and be sufficiently remote from both 
houses and paths.
Late in the afternoon, on his last sally, his arms full of moss for dressings, 
he found the ideal spot. A small stream running through sandstone had created a 
toy gorge within which for perhaps twenty yards the bottom widened on each side 
of the water into a secluded and grassy meadow. There was room there, and in 
other and more distant bays, to graze his horse, and better still, a place where 
the rocky sides of the banks steeply overhung and enclosed the grass, forming a 
shallow cave within. There he could safely light fires, and there too they would 
be dry in bad weather.
He explored it thoroughly, and it was inter than it should have been when he 
returned.
Lymond watched him pack with bright eyes. "Hub! Are we setting up house 
elsewhere? Far away?"



"A short ride. I'll strap you to Bryony."
There was a pause. Then, detached, the Master observed, "Richard. You can't 
seriously picture me pursuing a healthy career as a sieve. Time isn't on your 
side either. Stop toying with the prey and let's get this thing over with. Say 
what you have to say to me."
"We didn't," observed Richard, "take long to get to the wriggling."
"No. I'm only trying to find a knee-high viewpoint that'll interest you. Before 
one of us bores the other to death I have to talk to you about Mariotta."
Lord Culter straightened, the two packs under his arms. "Not to me."
"To you, here and now. After which you can make your own conversation in 
whatever damned draughty hole you've picked for yourself, and put your own 
bloody feet over your bottom like the Romans when it rains. Mariotta-"
"You're not dying," said Richard. "Keep your pitiful confessions for someone 
else."
"Whose guts are they?" demanded Lymond, offended. His hair was dark with sweat 
and his fingers cramped, resisting the oncoming tides. "I'm going to tell you 
what happened, brother mine. You'll have to execute me, leave me, or listen to 
me."
"Or remove your tongue."
"Happy are the cicadas' lives. Go ahead. But then you'll never know the truth."
"I know all I need to know."
"What do you know? How to match, but not how to marry. How to choose, but not 
how to husband. Grand Amour should be received royally, Richard, as a harsh and 
noble art. You idiot. . . . You nearly lost her. But not to me."
The sword was in Culter's hand. The thoughtful eyes of his brother and even the 
shadowed walls of the dovecote disappeared. With the last rags of self-
possession, Richard drove himself out of the door.
And bathe my son in morning milk, said the doves. And other voices, too, 
hammered in his ears. Here, reeking and blubbering over the green fields, were 
the resurrected deaths he had died because of Lymond. "You haven't packed the 
ladies off to Stirling, have you?"- An arrow, tearing ignominiously into one's 
shoulder, before a shouting crowd-a drunken glover and a frozen ride-the prison 
at Dumbarton and the walk across the ballroom floor-the failure at Heriot;




the trickery with Scott; and monstrously, Mariotta, Mariotta, Mariotta, blazing 
with jewels.
"Believe, if you like, that the child is Lymond's." . . . "He is with Mariotta 
now." . . . "ft would have been a boy."
The grass at his feet, the blue sky, the short purple shadows of the trees, came 
into focus again. He unbuckled his dagger, and laying it together with his sword 
within the doorway, walked back and seated himself on the edge of the stone 
table. "Go on. We have five minutes to spare. Discourse on the seductive arts. I 
want to quote you to Mariotta."
"I," said Lymond plaintively, "am the octogenarian who planted. In my marrows 
are my monument; and your wife, thank God, is no marrow of mine. I was gallant 
at Midculter, God save me, through being most damnably drunk: but never again."
"You didn't approach her, or she you?"
"My dear ass, I ran like a corncrake. You can ask leading questions till you're 
cross-eyed as Strabo: that's what happened. Unfortunately, becoming tired of 
home life, she ran too; and got herself taken by the Englisn. I had her 
redeemed, like a fool, and my poor morons brought her to me when she fell ill on 
the road instead of running like hell when at least she'd have arrived at 
Midculter unsullied, if dead."
Richard said quietly, "I hope she thanked you for the trinkets, since she had 
the chance."
"She did. It was a little embarrassing," said Lymond. "Because I didn't send 
them."
"Oh. You haven't any idea who did, I suppose? Buccleuch, for example?"
He bent suddenly to enclose Lymond's wrist, his eyes intent, as the Master's 
weakened voice said, "I don't see why I should spoil another man's fun. . . . 
Although he must have been damned annoyed to find me getting the credit for it 
all. . . . If you're curious, you could try asking Mother."
Richard laid down the scarred hand. "I don't mean to exact retribution from all 
my wife's lovers. Just those actually related to me. Although you'll be glad to 
hear that Sybilla is still your infatuated devotee."
His brother's gaze was unexpectedly severe, with a marked line between the 
brows. He said, "But Mariotta is not. She made it quite


clear before she left that she thought my existence unnecessary, and that the 
third baron was her only patron. What you did when she got back God knows, but 
it didn't sound very intelligent in the fourth-hand version I got, and if she 
agrees in the end to come back to you it'll be a miracle of constant vapidity 
over assiduous obstinacy. . . ." Prone on the spread rug, he studied Richard's 
expression of harsh amusement. "Not very convincing?"
'"'Jo."
"No, I suppose not. I could enact you Phoenissae-like tragedies and you'd 
believe them, but the truth, as I once said to someone-"
"What?"
"Is a queer thing to meddle with," said Lymond rapidly. "Must we go? Accord me a 
niche. I don't mind being calx in a columbarium:
the doves will feed me and I shall rise and found Nineveh.
Hic turtur gemit, drowning the groans of the Britons. . . . Must we go? An 
elephant's head riding on a rat-the symbol of prudence, Richard. Are you 
listening?"
Richard was already kneeling, hands gripped as if physical force could hammer 
back the shutters closing on life and consciousness. "You aren't going to die. 
Not until I'm ready for you."
"Don't be silly, Richard," said Lymond, coming from a great distance. For a 
moment his quick mind cleared; he squinted at the darkening cupola with clouded 
eyes, and then closed them with a wisp of a grin. "God, I forgot. You don't like 
glovers."

He fought for Lymond's life for two days: thorough, methodical, intelligent; 
mending with dedicated skill like a man cleaning and mending an engine of war. 
He longed for his brother, desperately ill as he was, to know what was being 
done for him, and to savour this devoted nursing at his hands.
On the second night in their new home, sitting in the mellow darkness with the 
stream bubbling companionably beside him and the odours of warm, fresh turf and 
flowers and quenched mosses breathing into the withered air, he thought of that 
coming moment with pleasure.
Lymond was steadier; the pulse a fraction stronger; the sound of his breathing 
more settled. Assume he survived. Assume a convalescence of weeks-two or three, 
perhaps, before they could move north . .
This was a man who prized	his self-control. This was the contaminating mind 
whose presence in daily life was insupportable. Three weeks-or even two-should 
be enough.

* * *



"Is this fraternali charitie
Or furious lolie, quhat say ye?"

Since Lymond was alone, the question was pointlessly rhetorical. After a moment 
he removed a grave blue stare from the clouds and closed his eyes again.
Two days of fever: two of infantile helplessness. The stream, a strip of grass, 
the rug, the makeshift pillow, and immobility under the hot sun. He stirred in a 
difficult, indistinct way, the light beating on his closed lids, and then lay 
painfully silent.
A pebble dropped.
Richard, approaching downstream with a bouquet of fish, watched the effect of 
it, smiling. Lymond, instantly a wake, gave no answering smile as his brother 
strolled up to him.
Richard's skin, amenable to the sun, was smooth and brown, and his hair bleached 
from umber to something near straw colour where it stood ruffled around his 
head. After five days of foraging, neither his shirt nor his hose were 
particularly respectable: he wore light shoes from his baggage which were 
already much the worse for wear, and his brother was wearing his only spare 
shirt.
These sartorial deficiencies were clearly not weighing on him. He cast down the 
fish, bestowed an effervescent twinkle on the Master and said, "Comfortable?"
"Acutely so.''
"You don't look very comfortable," said Richard, arrested.
"How odd of me. More delightful little fish. Where are you hatching them?"
There was an uncomfortable pause. "I'm doing my best," said Richard gently. "I 
haven't your touch for killing birds." He walked around, and grasping the edges 
of his brother's makeshift pallet, pulled it two or three yards into the shade. 
"Has Patey Liddell ever been publicly whipped before?"
The change brought such physical relief that Lymond closed his eyes. He opened 
them again and said, "He only does what he's told.


I	thought you'd enjoy a trip to Perth. Good for the olefactory senses." 
Culter shook his head over the fish. "Crawfordmuir gold and
Liddell:	how dull of us not to connect the two."
"How dull of some of you. What a delicious smell. You nurse; you cook. Do you 
sew?"
"I reap. Who was the exception? Mother?"
"And getting quicker, too," said Lymond's light voice admiringly. "The country 
must miss you on the frequent occasions when you are absent. How long were you 
in prison for?"
Richard rubbed the palm of his hand on his seat, and then held it up, square, 
clean and unmarked, for Lymond to see. "I was lucky. No one could tell, could 
they?"
"The point is registered. Pannage, my dear brother. You're a butterfly as much 
as I am. You failed Arran, you defaulted at Dumbarton, you walked out on your 
wife and mother, you engaged Janet Beaton in a charming little conspiracy behind 
her husband's back and displayed a remarkable incapacity on the rare occasions 
when you did set foot on a battlefield. If you contrived to nip the enthusiasms 
of young Harry a bit quicker at Durisdeer, to mention only one, you might have 
had Lords Wharton and Lennox behind bars for the asking."
"And stopped your income?" asked Richard, laying the cleaned fish neatly on his 
baking stone. "Not when you must have needed every penny to cajole your rabble 
of thieves into obedience. Or does one simply glut them with women and drugs?"
"One uses force of character. Wo worth your tedyus synne of lechery. That's a 
damned silly way to bake fish."
"It works. You know," said Richard, rubbing his fingers on a handful of grass, 
"considering who you are, you choose intriguing subjects for invective. Are you 
still quite comfortable?"
"In this line of country," said Lymond, "I have a phenomenal staying power. 
Probe on, if you want to."
"Thank you. I thought an exchange of civilized opinion might help pass the time. 
Until you can travel."
There was a pause. "All right," said the Master at length. "That was quite 
artistically done. Behold me in a state of suitably agitated inquiry. What 
then?"
"Guess," said Richard amicably.
"Oh, try somebody else's sudorific. This really is too damned childish." 
Lymond's eyes were black with fatigue. Richard observed



it, as he observed everything about him, eagerly and with a clinical 
thoroughness.
"Nothing childish about having a respect for the law," said Culter cheerfully. 
"Once up on your feet; once up on your horse; and it's Edinburgh for you. Prison 
and chains and a series of unpleasant questions. You're going to stand trial 
before Parliament as indicted, brother mine."
No recoil, but a temper as taut as a fishing line. "There's nothing juvenile 
either about having a care for one's family. You know what kind of sensation 
this will make."
"Beautiful," said Richard. "You'll enjoy it. You know how you like extravagant 
gestures. Have some fish."
His brother ignored the outstretched hand. "Look: suspend the godlike poking for 
a moment. I thought you'd make a clean end of it, at least, even if it was 
pretty dirty going in the middle- You wouldn't come to any harm: no one expected 
me to live.
"The scandal of five years ago will be nothing compared to what they'll raise in 
open court. You know damned well I'll be found guilty: nobody has any illusions 
about that. But you've got the rest of your life to live, and what's more 
important, so has Mother and so has your wife. Do you want your sons to have 
that sort of nauseating exhibition cast up to them?"
"Don't get excited," said Richard. "Knowii~g Mariotta, I should never be 
perfectly sure that they were my sons anyway."
"That's what I mean," said the Master slowly. "Your sense of values has broken 
down, and you won't face it. I had some sympathy
-some-for this idiotic pursuit of yours: I was labelled cur, and in the end I 
had to bark. Not entirely your fault.
"But what the hell are you doing out of Edinburgh now? What reason had you to 
deprive Erskine of the support he had a right to expect at Flaw Valleys? What 
sort of a lead have you given anybody in the last six months? And now more 
intelligent, reasonable people are to be thrown into the circus so that you can 
continue to view your prejudices through a thick, green eyeglass. A long, fancy 
humiliation is to flatten your circle into conformity and your soul into grace. 
Well, it won't do, Richard."
Lord Culter wore an expression of astonishment. "I suppose that's the most 
eloquent protest I shall ever hear against professional justice. I've just told 
you. I'm not going to touch you."
A smile touching his mouth, he saw Lymond's will defeated yet








again by his weakness. His eyes closed, peremptory in exhaustion; and Richard 
flicked a pebble into the stream.
The heavy lids lifted.
Hospitably, Richard closed in. "Have some fish?"

Lymond would not break. As one day and then another went by, Richard, 
insistently present and persistently gibing, began to find his own nerves 
betraying him, and sentence by sentence, Lymond fought back.
It was a tragic and annihilating war, in which intellect fought naked with 
intellect, and the blows fell not upon the mind but upon the soul.
At times, the longing to kill became so overpowering that Richard had to blunder 
off, to get away from the sound of his brother's voice, his hands murderers at 
his sides. He knew, none better, what Lymond was driving him to do; and he 
guessed why. Indeed, the desperate savagery of these attacks gave him his only 
encouragement.
On the sixth day he became careless.
All week the weather had held. Dty stones were born in the stream and wagtails 
trembled on them; the grass was full of fledglings and flowers of disparate 
build.
On Saturday the dawn sky was poppied with high cloud and there was a welcome 
freshness in the air. Late in the afternoon, Richard found a rabbit in his traps 
and was cleaning it when he heard, very distantly, the sound of cantering hoofs. 
It was not coming near, and it seemed innocuous, but all the same he slipped 
through the stream to the next bay and laid a precautionary hand over Bryony's 
nose. She jerked disgustedly, her ears pricked, but stayed quiet until the sound 
died away. He gave her a clap on the back, checked her rope, and splashed around 
the grassy arm of the cliff.
Lymond was no longer propped up on rugs, where he had left him, but sat on a 
convenient boulder halfway between his bed and Richard's improvised kitchen. The 
bold light defined the untidy fair hair, the bruises and hollows of illness and 
the brilliant, heavy eyes:
he looked high-strung to a shocking degree.
Curious and eager, Richard studied him; then his eyes travelled to the cooking 
stone and the rabbit. His knife had gone.
Lord Culter made no attempt to cross the clearing. Instead, hitching himself on 
the nearest ledge, he spoke mildly. "Fine weather for travelling. The prickmadam 
chasing you?"


There was a little pause. "No," said Lymond. "I was getting tired of the John-
go-to-bed-at-noon era."
"I find it quite pleasant," said Richard. "This peculiar mental agility of yours 
has been no friend to you, has it? Without it, you might have survived, 
harmless, in a lukewarm limbo of drink and drugs and insipid women-"
"Do you want me to pursue the subject?" said Lymond. "I don't think I can bring 
myself to pant all over your morals, or lack of them."
"I wondered," said Richard idly, "now that you have leisure to think again, what 
you are missing most. You've no money, of course; and that has been very 
important to you. And you must, of course, miss the illusion of command. The ant 
milking the aphid. How pathetic: those simple men and broken criminals hailing 
you as their mighty Lar: how easy and exciting to gain ascendancy over them, to 
play at inverted Robin Hood, and become besotted with the vicarious thrill of 
defying nations. . . . You got a lot of attention that way
Impaled shrikewise on his boulder, Lymond had no reserves of strength to make 
the half-crippled journey back to couch and clear thought. Knowing, surely, that 
the last, bowelless assault was upon him, he spoke under his breath. "Nay, 
brother," said Lymond, "I wyll not daunce."
Richard's voice, too, was soft. "And the love of young boys, of course: you must 
miss that. Someone to relax with, in a gracious way, to twist and indoctrinate 
and shatter with the wild, delightful mutability of your moods. You must miss 
Will Scott. And your women."
Lymond spoke without dropping his eyes. "Suppose we leave out the women."
"Christian Stewart, for example?"
Suppose we leave out Christian Stewart and everything to do with her?" It was so 
quiet that his breathing was quite audible.
"Wouldn't you like it," said Richard, "if she were here with us now? A 
kindhearted girl, Christian: she wouldn't mind. She would help, without asking 
questions. She was used to that-a ittle too trusting, one would say, but after 
all, in God's world, we must trust somebody?" His gaze never left Lymond: 
inexorable, ruthless, dissecting, hygienic as burin or scalpel. And there was a 
change in his brother's face: the fissure; the first break.
A great pain of joy seized Richard's heart. My God: my God, was




it coming . . . ? "Yes," he said calmly, and got up. "A little adulatory company 
would be pleasant. That fellow who promised you all his gold, Turkey something: 
he tried to help you as well, and died, poor fellow. Blaming Will Scott for it, 
I'm told. Would you like his support now? I'm afraid you'll never enjoy his 
cottage in Appin. .
The level denunciation gave the words a power that rolled like the thunder of 
Gotterdammerung through the meadow. And Lymond cried out, "Stop it, Richard!" 
and at last, violently swaying, forced himself to his feet.
Culter watched him; watched the hands groping at the cliff face behind for 
support; watched the death of all the characteristic, cultivated graces and 
spoke again, quite close now, a stony and judging shadow.
"Or if you hadn't killed her, would you be comforted by Eloise?"
Lymond made no sound.
"The only daughter, and the finest child. The most vivid, the most eager, the 
most intelligent. By now, cherished by her own lover, with her own children in 
her arms. Once, late at night when you were away, she told me . .
"No!" said Lymond. "Oh, damn you, no."
"No? You wanted her burned alive, and she was," said Richard with a terrible 
impartiality. "Why should you cringe over it now?"
The guard was down. There was the face he yearned to see.: never again 
inscrutable; never again would he need to wonder what lay behind the smiling 
mouth and the delicate, malicious wit. Skull, flesh and muscle, every fluent 
line and practised shade of Lymond's face betrayed him explicitly, and Richard, 
swept into a major, a foreign dimension, was suddenly dumb.
Behind clenched hands, face to the rock, Lymond spoke at last.
"Why? I made one mistake. Who doesn't? But I despised men who accepted their 
fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands. Of 
course it left me deformed and unserviceable, defective and dangerous to 
associate with. . . . But what in God's name has happened to charity? . . . 
Self-interest guides me like the next man but not invariably; not all the time. 
I use compassion more than you do; I have loyalties and I keep by them; I serve 
honesty in a crooked way, but as best I can; and I don't plague my debtors or 
even make them aware of their debt. . .
Why is it so impossible to trust me?"
"You shut the door yourself." Richard spoke harshly. Now that


it had come he recoiled from it: recoiled as Lymond turned and baring his face 
to the light went on, his voice exhausted, dogged, unsteady.
"Why should you think so? Why assume me to be of such different stuff? We have 
the same blood, the same upbringing. What else is there, at the end of the day, 
that we can call our own? We're our father's prejudices and our swordmaster's 
dead men; our mother's palate and our nurse's habit of speech. We're the books 
unwritten by our tutor, and our groom's convictions and the courage of our first 
horse. I share all that. Five years-even five such as these-can't tear me drop 
by drop from your blood."
Numb, appalled, Richard flung back, reflecting horror with horror:
"And who made you a murderer?"
With the last offering of his strength, Lymond answered. "Pull your hands away, 
Richard. Get out: get free. I have enough to answer for. If I've shut one door, 
you have barred and locked all the others against yourself."
"Do you think my life," said Richard violently, "is a matter for your tarnished 
and paltry conscience?"
There was a silence. Then the Master said at last, "Why else should I say what I 
have done?"
"Because," said Richard cruelly, "you're afraid of the rope. Because I'm the 
first victim you've failed to enchant. Because you're wriggling as you made 
others wriggle, and broken piecemeal as you've dissected others. Because you're 
crumbling and disintegrating and whimpering beneath the gut-sucking evil on your 
back; and since there was no one else to whine to; no one alive to listen; no 
one to help, you dropped on your belly and crawled and writhed and crept whining 
to me!"
Because his eyes had never left Lymond's hands he saw the flash of steel, and 
was launched already as the Master snatched out the bright stolen blade. He 
grasped the driving elbow and wrist- "No:
not that way, you poor, canting bastard!"-and was pulled up short by the 
strength of the thrust.
Lymond didn't drop the knife. Instead he bore downward, drawing strength from 
the hysteria of necessity: with his body braced against rock he withstood 
Richard's tug, made a leverage with the locked arms and, without a word, 
silently and inhumanly forced the point down.
It was uncanny. Richard found it terrible: it froze his blood, the slow descent 
of his brother's arm, prevailing heavily and inexorably




against Richard's whole weight; forcing the bright, two-edged blade inward, 
between the locked bodies.
He damned the passion which had made him wait, instead of seizing the weapon at 
once; he damned the possessed body and the bent head and the transcendent will 
guiding the knife. He exerted all the strength he had. Lymond said something, on 
a gasp, and then bent forward, using his dead weight to help him, and the knife 
moved again, duly, along the path he designed for it; and an astonishing light 
broke on Richard.
In that second, Lymond looked up. Blue eyes met grey, and Richard read in them a 
power and a determination that he suddenly knew were unassailable. Anger left 
him. He framed the word "No" with his lips; read his rejection in the dedicated 
eyes, and with all his strength drove first his knee and then his foot through 
the stained bandaging and deep into the other's hurt body. The knife dropped 
like a discarded straw. Lymond screamed once with agony, and then screamed and 
screamed again.

Within a dumb and breathless nature the sound exploded, addressing the arbour 
from its banks and gradients; bouncing; sticky-fingered; callowly mocking. 
Culter, white as paper, picked up the knife and backed.
Lymond had stopped the noise with his hands. The long, cramped fingers hid his 
face as he crouched, the breath sobbing in his lungs and the blood flamboyant 
through the crushed bandages, welling between his rigid elbows, soaking into the 
trampled grass.
"Francis!" Excoriated by the shuddering, raucous sound, Richard spoke harshly. 
"I can't let you take your own life."
Lymond took his hands from his face. The blood was everywhere now; his torment 
of grief public, uncaring. "Must I plead?" He stopped in extremity, beaten, 
shaken by pulses, and then struggled on. "You claim your right of execution. . . 
. May I not exercise mine? Could all the chains of Threave outweigh what I 
already bear, do you think? Or all the Tolbooth's pains be worse than this? .
You can't relieve me of your weight, or help me, or free me . . except in one 
way."
Richard, his memory taken by the throat, was mute. With a bitter courage, Lymond 
raised his head.
''I beg you.~~



I will bring him to you on his knees, and weeping, and begging aloud to be 
killed.
Richard, rising, turned on his heel and walked over the meadow without looking 
back. Around the next spur of cliff was Bryony. She blew softly at him, pleased 
to have compan.y, and while he waited, he smoothed down her lustrous neck.
When he went back, the clearing was empty. It was no longer a sanctuary, he 
knew, but the antechamber to a solitary, a desperately wanted death.

* * *



Beneath the cocked blue sky of summer, in the jostling towns and highways, in 
the forts hissing with tar and hot iron, the friaries and keeps, the foreshores 
where salt timber rolled ashore and oxen sprayed sand into wainloads of coal and 
cables and cannon shot and powder; in granaries rustling with early threshing 
and the unlacing of tents and the graithing of blades and the polishing of 
gorgets; and the intent of three European nations fastened to these small acres 
between Berwick and the Forth-with all that, it occurred to nobody in all this 
busy month that history was being made.
It didn't enter the head of Sir James Wilford, captain of English-held 
Haddington, that in twenty-five years someone would call his defence the most 
brilliant of the century. He was aware only that he was just seventeen miles 
from Edinburgh, and had forty-odd more and only two lines of communication 
between himself and the Borders; and that he had to keep in heart and health 
and, if possible, a state of truce-not only English but Spaniards, Germans and 
Italians against the malefic glitter of French arms and the shiftless shuffle of 
the neighbourly Scot on his patellas.
It was not in the mind of Lord Grey, riding his bones loose between town and 
town, insifflating the precious troops and horses, the pikes and powder and 
footmen, the rolls and matches and demilances and oil and flour and money, the 
working tools and men, men, and more men into the feverish maw of the fort. Or 
to Wharton, angrily denuded of the men sent to Grey, guarding a weak city and 
studying, whally-eyed, the ambiguous movements of the western Scots.
To the French, dropping like canescent frost on the discreet slopes about 
Haddington it was a small, acute campaign ordered by His



Most Christian Majesty out of a fine warm regard for Scotland and a need to spit 
in the Protector's other eye.
To the Germans, the Swiss, the Italians and the Spaniards who were paid in ~cus 
and knifed each other when drunk and fished in the thin streams and picked lice 
out of their pallets, it was money to take home or to gamble away, some easy 
love and some more difficult; and leisure for boasting. To the Scots it was 
pride and fright, a wish to break the will of England and a need to smoke the 
vermin from one's little shoots and to pay the price with a hauteur that might 
make surrender a virtue.
The price was plain, and the Crown was ready to pay it. The Crown made its move 
on the day that Tom Erskine, altered and withdrawn, came back to Edinburgh from 
Hexham. Messengers slipped unobtrusively back and forth; Villegagne quietly left 
Court, and one evening four galleys of the French fleet slipped anchor at dusk 
and moved with ductile grace out of the Firth of Forth. The alert Dickered, as 
it was conditioned to do, from point to point down the east coast of England; 
the skiffs fled about the English great ships of war and the stiff sails lay 
heavy on the decks, and men in the rigging strained at the recalcitrant block 
and the sullen, bearded ropes.
In vain. The four ships never came. They lifted their airy linen before a 
southwest wind and sailed out across the dark North Sea; then with four 
peacocks' tails at their keels they lay over, gathering the wind from port, the 
boom hammering to starboard, and hissed on their way north. Then having sailed 
over the roof of Scotland, turned south again, on her western shore, making with 
mischievous triumph for Dumbarton, where the Queen of Scotland, if she so 
wished, could safely step aboard.
The Crown had given evidence of its good faith. The last word lay with the 
people; and on a brilliant, wind-filled Saturday in July, the Scottish 
Parliament met in the Abbey outside English-occupied Haddington and gave their 
consent to the marriage of the Queen's Grace their Sovereign Lady and the 
Dauphin of France-"provided always that the King of France keep and defend this 
realm and the laws and liberties thereof as his own realm, lieges and laws of 
the same; and as has been kept in all kings' times of Scotland bypast."
Will Scott was there. As soon as the processions had left and the aisles were 
clearing, he slipped out to the churchyard where Tom Erskine stood talking, the 
short fur blowing on his hat. The moment he was free, Scott caught his arm. "Any 
news?"


Erskine, nervously rubbing his face, gave him a nonplussed stare. "What? . . . 
Oh. No-there's no news of either of them."
Scott said suddenly, "I met Lady Douglas yesterday: George Douglas's wife. She 
said-"
He broke off as a peer, his black hat at a rakish angle, jabbed Erskine in the 
back. "My God, old Slovenly Thomas interpreting:
who'd have thought it? I said, if his French hasn't improved since the Rome 
embassy, I said, we're just as likely voting on a proposal to crown Archie 
Douglas. Eh? . . See your friend Culter didn't turn up to this one either. 
What's the holdup, eh? Buried himself instead of his brother?"
Erskine said, "Looking after his own affairs, I expect," and detached himself. 
To Scott he said, "What about Lady Douglas?"
The boy was watching their hilarious neighbour take himself off. "It doesn't 
matter. But I thought you should know my father is going to try and trace them."
"Buccleuch? Why not you?"
Scott flushed. "I'm supposed to stay with the army. Probation, of a sort. It 
would only make trouble." He lifted his eyes to Erskine's noncommittal face. 
"Damn it: why did you leave them together?"
Someone brought Erskine's horse. He pinned the flapping foot mantle with his 
glove, put his foot in the stirrup and mounted. Gathering the reins, he looked 
down for a moment at Scott's upturned face. "Because my name isn't Crawford," he 
said sharply. "Any more than yours is."

* * *



It was the cavorting and immalleable wind, boiling through the rowans and 
sifting the junipers and baying eagerly through lutelike caves and chasms, that 
chivvied Lord Culter into proper thought again that night.
A snatch of spray touched his hand, and he lifted his head from his arms and was 
vaguely surprised by the darkness and the noise. He rolled to his knees and 
stood up, automatically anchoring rugs and collecting his scattered belongings. 
Moving stiffly he crossed to the neighbouring arbour and found and checked 
Bryony's tethering and pulled her reproachful forelock. It occurred to him, the 
first positive thought in a wilderness of dead emotions, that there was nothing 
to stop him from going home.



The thought, staring at him, divided and became twenty. He hooked one arm over 
the mare's neck and defied them for thirty seconds before recognizing the 
childishness of the impulse. Facts. He was bred to respect them: what were they?
The graceless, the dissolute, the debauched, the insolent, the exquisite Lymond 
was obliterated. As he intended, he had broken his brother. He had, indeed, been 
more merciful than he had intended.
The wind buffeted his shirt. Home. A hundred and twenty miles with the double 
packs behind him; a cold house in Edinburgh; his mother's face. Midculter, and 
an estranged wife. Erskine, with a sharp and speculative gaze; Buccleuch's 
uninhibited stare. The Court, where he would already be under censure.
The mare's skin was warm; his fingers tightened on her rough mane. God, Francis 
had screamed.
Something unused and ritual at the back of Richard's conscious mind stirred, and 
he stared into the buffeting darkness, quickly denymg it. He assembled a chain 
of thought about provisions, about his route home, and about an imminent issue 
of jacks for his men. He thought seriously about the water problem at Midculter 
and began to plan, in elaborate detail, a discussion with Gilbert about new 
spearheads. And all the time the stiff-jointed thing at the back of his mind was 
flexing its subconscious limbs and shaking its aged neck and rearing nearer and 
nearer his waking mind.
The wind sprang among the young trees: persecuted beyond reason an ash high 
above them lurched heaving to its feet and crashed beside Bryony and the mare 
leaped, whinnying and shaking under Richard's idle hand.
The block of sensation, held so insecurely in check, broke its bar and blundered 
into the forefront of his mind. It gripped him as he pulled down and soothed the 
mare, beyond proper analysis: man's infant fear of the irretrievable; a starved 
yearning for warmth; a childlish speck of uncluttered vision; a tight and 
tangled warp of reason and emotion become suddenly an obsessive compulsion.
Abandoning sense, revenge, and the role of complacent dempster and letting 
reason fly like a hag through the night wind, Richard Crawford struck off 
through the darkness, plunging over myrtle and bracken and torn boughs and 
boulders, between thorn and furze and blurred trees and low thickets, in the 
direction last taken by his brother.





Instinct, in belated command on this ultimate journey, had led Lymond into the 
shelter of the thickest undergrowth and the wildest bushes and the closest 
trees.
Using them as crutches he had gone farther than seemed humanly possible for a 
man in his state. Richard, after two fruitless attempts, set out a third time 
with a flaring brand from his fire, regardless of who might see it, and in the 
end found him, in a deep and unlikely forme at the foot of a meagre willow.
It was not a heroic picture. Bracken obscured it, with botched and scrabbling 
hands; the wind whined and ran blenching through the long grass, split by dim 
breakwaters of burdock and furze. Lymond himself lay in a tangled abandonment of 
blood and bruised greenery and torn cloth: unruly; filthy; and emphatically 
severed from society.
Culter rose, extinguished the light, and gathering the derelict hands, lifted 
his brother and carried him back to the camp.
He had worked once before, impatiently, to succour the Master. This time he 
brought his will to bear as well as his strength. By daylight a thin and 
stammering pulse was his reward. By afternoon he was able, temporarily, to let 
go and rest, his tired shoulders propped against the overhang and his legs 
splayed before him in a yellow carpet of silverweed. He watched his brother.
A remarkable face. Like the sea, it promised monts Ct merveilies:
you might resent its graces and yet long to unclose its secrets. He began to 
look forward to the moment-the graphic, revealing moment, when a man opening his 
eyes on the lentils and salt, found himself greeting the living.
He was there when Lymond woke, and saw neither surprise nor relief, but a 
dissolving horror, altering the other's already altered face and fading in 
ineffectual recoil. Richard exclaimed then, and put out a hand; and Lymond 
flinched as if he had been struck.
Throughout the day, it continued. Throughout the day, Lymond lay motionless, the 
eyes opaque and open, the mind incurious, inanimate, unaware; except for the 
terror which sprang into being when Richard appeared.
By nightfall Richard knew that the only thing living within the other man was 
the memory of a fear. You choose to play God, and the Deity points out that the 
post is already adequately filled. During an outburst of besotted philanthropy 
he had redeemed Lymond, but







Lymond quite simply was not prepared to be rescued; and least of all by his 
brother.
Lord Culter was a strong, an honest and a stubborn man. He made his decision, 
and laying a finger on the one thread anchoring Lymond to reality, proceeded to 
twist it into a rope.
He talked. As his brother lay, reflecting the vacant sun in his eyes, Richard 
moved about him, chopping wood, cooking, cleaning, tending with steady hands. 
Moving and working he talked about the Midculter of his childhood; about school 
lessons and games and books and sporting excitements; about visits to Edinburgh 
and Linlithgow and Stirling and his own days in Paris; about the land and their 
tenants; about nurses and tutors and servants and relatives they had both known.
The empty calyx he was attacking made infinitesimal efforts to avoid him; to 
refuse his services; to deny his proximity; but he persevered. Hatred was life; 
shame was life; humiliation was life; the trivial movements Lymond was making in 
his extremity were life.
Richard Crawford was a very stubborn man.
He went to bed that night hoarse but refusing to be depressed, although the next 
day, confronted by the same eyes and the same rejection, he was sometimes very 
near to giving it up.
He was unused to sustained talking: his mind balked; topics forsook him. Recent 
events he had forbidden himself: everything to do with the Master's own adult 
life; all political and national affairs. That left only the half-forgotten, 
virgin tracts of their common childhood. He dug, obstinately, into those sealed 
mines and shuttered bondhouses and in doing so dragged out days and weeks of his 
life hitherto quite forgotten.
That he should mention his father at all was accidental: it was years since the 
second baron had died, and he had hardly thought of him since. And that was 
surprising too, considering the part he had played in his boyhood.
"I don't fancy," said Richard, thinking aloud, "that he was fond of children, or 
even of marriage, much. But he wanted us to reflect his own physical 
superiority-in hunting, riding, shooting, swordplay, swimming and all the rest 
of it. My God, I used to lie like a Gothamite fisherman sometimes about my 
scores. And yet"- he paused, hands locked around knees, eyes unseeing as he 
groped after a new idea- "and yet it wasn't altogether a good thing. He hadn't 
any other interests, and couldn't tolerate anyone who had. I remember Mother 
once


got a case of new books from the stationer's, and he burned .
No. That was one incident better forgotten. At the back of his mind he could 
hear the two voices, his brother and his father, shouting at one another: or 
rather, his father shouting and Francis retorting, using the very twin of the 
voice, he suddenly realized, that Lymond had used to himself in an obscure wood 
near Annan.
Memory, once jogged, showed him other pictures. A born athlete, at ease with 
every kind of sport, Richard had been human enough to enjoy his father's delight 
in him. He was adolescent before he suspected that his younger brother was less 
of an effete brat than his father made out; that although he was aggressively 
scholarly he also moved like an acrobat. He had eloquence. He had charm. He 
submerged himself and his filthy tongue in music and books, and Sybilla abetted 
him. Why?
The answer to that had been easy, too. Apple of the baron's alcoholic eye, 
Richard was cut out for a mockery, a figurehead, a substitute leaking straw 
inconspicuously at the joints and accepting the respectful plaudits of the 
tenants. The steeples were being cut down so that the chimney could aspire. And 
Francis, of the sardonic blue eye, was without doubt a party to it.
It was a bitter discovery, and one that he had never questioned till now. It had 
never struck him that his brother, seeing their father with a clearer eye than 
his, might purposefully have turned aside from all that he stood for; might have 
taken a satirical pleasure in avoiding their father's approval. With Sybilla and 
the brilliant, worldly shadow of their grandfather behind him, he could afford 
to go his own way uncaring, and allow Richard his arena. Was that what had 
happened?
Was it? He looked with sudden, searching eyes at Lymond. The hypersensitive face 
gave him no answer, but there was a change of some sort: the eyes no longer 
reflected the sky but were half hidden by his lashes, as though there existed a 
thought to conceal. Richard lifted the fresh bandages he had prepared and 
kneeling, unfastened the old ones. The Master's mouth tightened, but he didn't 
recoil.
Slowly, it came. As well as instinct, there was somewhere a fragment of 
conscious will: Lymond's eyes recorded what they saw; and he was listening. 
Richard, talking like a mechanical corucrake, knew that he was listening, and 
yet he refused to come openly into the living world. He was refusing to fight; 
refusing the goad even


when now at the eleventh hour admitting its pricks. Having come so far, Culter 
took a risk. He leaned over, closed both hands on the light tissue and bone of 
the Master's shoulders, and shook him like a puppy.
"All right: listen!" said Richard. "I'm scunnered at washing bandages. I'm sick 
of cooking; I'm tired of hunting; I'm fed up washing your ears and combing your 
hair like a bloody nursery maid. Suppose you make the effort now."
It brought him his answer. A frail and passionate anger flickered through the 
other man's eyes; and weakly but distinctly Lymond spoke. "You can't force me to 
live."
"No. But I can force you to think."

"You fought for Christian Stewart's good name. Why won't you fight for your 
own?"
His brother's voice made a mockery of the words. "My good name?"
"Or Mariotta's, then?"
The fficker of animation died. Lymond said helplessly, "No! You won't get me to 
Edinburgh .. . even for that. I won't go; I can't
Oh, God! I can't, now.
To his surprise, Richard found himself shouting. "Edinburgh! Who mentioned 
Edinburgh? If I object to playing apothecary in private, I'm damned sure I'm not 
going to trip about with hot towels in public."
Lymond said something, from which only the word "trial" emerged clearly. Lord 
Culter used three adjectives to qualify the same word, and pronounced flatly: 
"You're not going for trial. You'll travel to Leith, and from there get out of 
the country. All you have to do is to work at your renovation until you can 
trust your feet on either side of a horse.~~
It was much too sudden, he saw, for a tired mind to grasp. Richard leaned 
forward, one hand on either side of his brother's young, irresolute face, and 
said slowly and clearly, "Listen. You're not going to Edinburgh. You're not 
going to prison, or the gallows. I'm here to help you. You're going to be free."


For the second time in a few days, Richard Crawford had made a momentous 
decision purely on impulse. It made him feel uneasy,


the prey of dark and atavistic caprice. But on thinking it over, more or less 
all night, he found that he regretted nothing.
The odd thing was that Lymond believed him without question. The next day, 
although catastrophically weak, he replied slowly and sensibly to Richard's 
necessary questions. Moved for the first time to imagine how it felt to exchange 
an oblivion so passionately wanted for such an extremity of defencelessness, 
Culter dealt with him wisely.
As the days passed, his sense of time perished. Lymond, however spent, was never 
less than scrupulous, unaffected, undemanding. Avoiding only the recent past, 
they ranged in their talk over the widest ~elds. Richard was impressed by his 
brother's grasp of affairs. He was well-informed, not at the level of 
ambassadorial junketings and court lev&s, but as the product of shrewd 
observation over the battlefields and spyholds of half Europe.
He spoke without embarrassment of such episodes in his life, but with 
discretion. Once, when Richard, seizing on a point, began to develop it with 
uncharacteristic excitement, Lymond himself interrupted with an anecdote so 
helplessly funny as well as so ribald that Culter was surprised into a shout of 
laughter and forgot, until afterward, the original issue.
Later, staring up into the night sky, Culter said, "If only you'd come to us 
after you left Lennox, instead of . . ." Instead of foundering in self-pity. He 
could hardly say that.
Lymond flushed. "Instead of surviving to bellow like a barghest?" It was his 
only reference to the other night, and Richard was caught without a rejoinder, 
but after the briefest pause, Lymond himself w~.nt on. "But I did come back. To 
my kinsmen I will truly, praying them to help me in my necessity. . . . I 
thought you knew. I came to Midculter from Dumbarton in '44-fully au prodigal 
son, puffing excuses like smoke from a chimney head-" A trace of the old mockery 
sharpened the light voice.
"What happened?" asked Richard quickly.
"I was shown the door. By our honoured father. He tried to enforce the 
suggestion with a whip."
There was a short silence. Then Culter said, "He must have told nobody. I 
wouldn't touch you: you know that. Until the-the Midculter affair."
"I know, you damned fool," said Lymond mildly. "That's why I had to attack 
Midculter."
Lord Culter sat up. After a moment he pushed a hand through




I
his flat brown hair and said bluntly, "What about the setting fire to the 
castle"
"Green boughs. Good God, Richard: I've mastered the art of making timber burn 
better than that by this time."
"And the silver?"
This time there was a little pause. Then Lymond said, "You're going to be 
annoyed about that. She didn't tell you, I expect, because she knows what a 
filthy bad actor you are. Mother got it all back the next day.~~
Richard's stare was embarrassingly concentrated. "And Janet Beaton?"
"Oh. That," said Lymond bitterly. "That was because I had to drink the whole 
bloody night through to get enough courage to visit the castle at all. One more 
skirl and one of my pets was going to slit the lady's larynx for her. So I did 
something first. Unfortunately, I was too damned drunk to do it properly. That 
and the passage with Mariotta: the kind of lunatic blunders that always blemish 
the high romantic in grim reality. . . Come, my friend, my brother most enteere; 
for thee I offered my blood in sacrifice; and all that. Except that it was Janet 
Beaton's blood."
Richard said mildly, "It wasn't anyone else's blood at Hexham," and saw his 
brother redden again. "The climax to a series of sordid private fights. Don't 
get excited. Erskine got the idea he was carrying out the Third Crusade, but all 
he carried out was me, the lord be thankit. God, I've whined for ten minutes. 
Bury me at Leibethra, where the nightingale sings."
As Lymond grew stronger, his brother forced the pace of their discussions and 
once, out of an obscure train of thought, said, "Francis. Did you ever tell Will 
Scott how old you actually are?"
Lymond looked blank. "No. Should I?" and Richard grinned. "Probably not. You 
appear to be immeasurable in his view, like God and the Devil."
"A year with Will Scott would make a dayfly feel like Enoch," said the Master. 
"Whose side is he on now?"
"Yours, by all accounts," said Richard dryly. "Buccleuch got him accepted back 
at Court and Will has taken to advertising your peculiar talents from the four 
walls in a voice like a Gadwall duck."
"Don't be deceived," said Lymond with equal dryness. "That's only remorse 
because he bit me and I didn't bite back. He'll settle in time into a decent, 
douce Buccleuch."



If Richard thought it unlikely, after a year of Lymond's company, he said 
nothing; and was not to know that his brother was watching him. A moment later 
the Master said equably, "Nobody's going to hold you to a promise that needs 
this amount of nursing, Richard. I don't want my life at the price of anyone's 
outraged instincts. It has a rudimentary value in that you were moved to 
preserve it, but don't let's labour the point."
He was not, clearly, interested in a superficial reassurance; also, his reading 
was correct. If he produced facts a yard a day like a guinea-worm, Richard 
didn't want them. He had promised to free Lymond, and he had no desire to regret 
it. He said at length, "My instincts are very accommodating."
"All right, but remember, although you've bought the rights of fuel, feal and 
divot, I shan't be lying here like an upset sheep forever."
Richard said, "You think I'll discard in the perpendicular what I favour in the 
prone?"
"Not if you talk like that: you'll want an audience at any price."
Culter laughed, and it was the end of that particular discussion.
But although Richard forgot it, Lymond apparently did not. Next day he put his 
theory to the test, dispassionately and with the kind of calculated resolution 
that still startled his brother. Richard knew nothing until he came back from 
his traps to find the clearing empty and his horse gone, and one of the 
saddlepacks with it.
One by one, his first conjectures were discarded. No one had captured Lymond: 
there was no trace of struggle, and only their own footprints and the tracks of 
one horse in the soft grass. Nor could it be some flamboyant gesture to relieve 
him of his decision: horseless, Richard had little chance of reaching Scotland 
alive.
He looked again at the tracks. They were very recent, and not hurried. Lymond 
was unable, of course, to ride fast. With sudden decision Culter stooped again, 
and snatching bow and quiver followed the mare's hoofmarks out of the clearing. 
They led him along the banks of the stream, then up a shallow cliff to open 
grass. He picked them up, running lightly, as they swung out in a wide circle, 
and alternately studied the ground and the gentle, tree-scattered slopes in 
front of him. There was no trace of Bryony there. Driving back every apoplectic 
emotion which might distract him, he concentrated on the ground.
The hoofprints brought him, in a gentle arc, back to his own clearing. He 
stopped when he realized it, breathing tightly and fast,



and waited, resting, his free hand smoothing back his hair. When he had control 
both of his breathing and of the curious conflict within himself, he went on.
Lymond, lying face down beside the gently cropping Bryony, turned his head and 
produced a sick, placating grin. Richard exploded.
'This bloody mania for juggling with other people's guts. You lunatic, if I'd 
overtaken you back there, I'd have killed you."
"I thought," said the Master pacifically, "that it was time to get used to the 
saddle again. We ought to start north."
"Quite. And that was only part of what you thought," said Lord Culter. He tied 
up the mare and stalked back again with a cup of water, which he dumped at his 
brother's elbow. "You like to be sure of your relationships-who doesn't? But no 
one else does it by making themselves into a clearing nut for other people's 
emotions. If my sentiments are in a muddle," said Richard angrily, "I damned 
well prefer them to stay in a muddle, without any interference from you.
Propping himself on one elbow, Lymond lifted the cup, spilled it badly and set 
it down again without drinking. He said, "It seems I can now stick on a horse. 
Therefore we can get back north, beginning tonight if possible. And since, as 
soon as we move into Scotland, my company will compromise you, we ought to have 
some issues clear."
He stopped. Richard said nothing; and his brother went on grimly. "You offered 
me a reprieve knowing only hail the story. You mentioned Mariotta, and what I 
told you about her was true. You haven't mentioned Eloise."
Richard sat down, removed the fallen cup, and set it straight. Then he said, 
"Look. I don't share your passion for self-immolation. I don't want to hear 
about Eloise, and I don't want issues made any clearer than they now are. 
Whatever your conscience has on it, I intend to take you back to Scotland and 
see you aboard ship. If you can ride, we leave tonight."
"God,~~ said Francis with amiable rudeness, between his hands. "What price now 
the mighty Lar?"
A day later, with Lymond mounted and Richard walking at his side, the two men 
began the slow journey north.



Dinner in Lord Grey's house was served at two o'clock, and he had invited 
company: Sir Thomas Palmer, his fortifications expert from London, and Gideon 
Somerville and his young wife Kate.
Katherine, neat as a peach and spruce in grey satin, was not impressed by 
Berwick, by the meal, or by Willie Grey. With a thoughtful brown eye she watched 
the salt cellar whisking past her nose-"There you are: Bowes, Brende and Palmer 
with the horse, leaving tonight and lying at Coldingham"-the ale jug: "Holcroft 
with the foot, leaving tomorrow and joining the two of you with the horse at 
Pease Burn"-and the salt cellar again: "Monday, early, Palmer makes contact with 
Haddington and they give cover while all of you put fresh men into the fort and 
come back."
Some of the salt had spilt. Kate threw it over her left shoulder and remarked, 
"How simple it sounds in English! Just imagine Sir James drawing diagrams on the 
walls to convey his orders in Haddington. A quick course of Udall would work 
wonders with this army."
Gold wire twinkled. "Why Udall?" asked Palmer.
"Or any other nimble Latinist you can think of. Don't you think they need a 
lingua franca, poor things?" said Kate. "And if your two thousand Germans are 
coming by sea, and Lord Shrewsbury with eleven thousand Englishmen from all the 
shires are exchanging dialects at York, and the Swiss and the Spanish and the 
Germans want to communicate from Haddington, throwing in a few Italian engineers 
for luck, you'll have a dear little Babel all of your own."
Lord Grey's face was gloomy. "So will the Scots," he said. "By all accounts. If 
Henry sends forty thousand more Frenchmen and the King of Denmark throws in-"
"All the more reason for linguistic action. Buchanan against Eton. You've been 
to Haddington, Sir Thomas?" asked Kate.
Palmer grinned. "We all went the day they held Parliament, and popped a good few 
bags of powder in while they were busy. Bowes took young Wharton under his wing: 
he did rather well. Between Lord Grey here and his father he was a bit low to 
begin with."
"Incompetent young fellow," said Grey vaguely; and remembered something. "By the 
way, sincere apologies: Gideon having to bring you that girl who escaped. Nasty 
business, but unavoidable. Lady Lennox could do nothing with her, I believe."
Katherine said, "You never caught up with the other, did you?



The man who killed the messenger at Hexham?" and Grey stared moodily at Palmer. 
"That damned fool Wharton. The father's worse than the son. Five minutes after 
the shot he sends a man to collect the body- No body. The fellow had an 
accomplice. One? The kind of guard my Lord Wharton had on that church, he might 
have had ten."
Palmer said cheerfully, "Enterprising fellow. Was that the one who tweaked Ned 
Dudley's nose at Hume?" Warned by the silence that he had only hail the story he 
added quickly, "Look out for him if you like, my lord. Never know what you'll 
come across, jogging post back and forth through the country like this."
"I should be obliged if you would," said Lord Grey. "But the task on hand is to 
get all these men safely into the fort at Haddington tomorrow. Monday the what?-
the sixteenth. That's our job."
The point was made. Sir Thomas, butter-tooth veiled, seized a pigeon and said no 
more until the end of the meal.
Afterward, Gideon took Kate up to the castle ramparts, and with the Tweed 
running tousled and low beneath them, they studied the green fields to the 
north, where Palmer's men would travel that night.
Gideon said, "It's a dangerous subject, Kate. Better forget it. Whatever 
happened, we'll never know now."
"It doesn't matter what happened," said Kate. She turned and looked across the 
river where the grass, identical, flower-ridden and boisterous, was English 
grass.
She said angrily, "I don't like this war. I don't like the cold-blooded scheming 
at the beginning and the carnage at the end and the grumbling and the jealousies 
and the pettishness in the middle. I hate the lack of gallantry and grace; the 
self-seeking; the destruction of valuable people and things. I believe in danger 
and endeavour as a form of tempering but I reject it if this is the only shape 
it can take."
There was a brightness in the flat, clean plane between her short nose and the 
cornea and brown cheek. Gideon, who had hardly ever seen his wife in tears, was 
moved and disturbed, his intuitive mind groping for the reason and the right 
reply. He said, gripping her shoulders, "Philippa will be all right. She'll 
learn. We can explain to her."
Katherine turned instantly and impulsively and put her own warm hands on 
Gideon's. "Don't mind me. I want to put right the world's sorrows in a night, 
and it might take a night and a day. But three stout people like us can afford 
to bide our time."



"If need be," said Gideon. He looked tired, she thought; but he smiled at her. 
"Trust me."

* * *



That night, the fine mid-July weather broke at last; clouds piling spinel-red in 
the west surged over all the sky by morning and brought small showers, with a 
minor, tugging wind.
Palmer, cheerful red face under a perfectly polished helmet and enormous 
shoulders tucked into steel mesh, was not the man to bother if the skies spouted 
venom like Loki's serpent. He and Bowes made their scheduled rendezvous with the 
foot soldiers on Monday morning and marched north to Haddington. At Linton 
Bridge, five miles away, he sent word to Sir James Wilford, captain of 
Haddington, that a fresh army was waiting to relieve the English garrison.
Forty Spanish horsemen from the fort came back with Wilford's answer. It was too 
dangerous. Although he needed the men, he distrusted the present quiet, and 
advised Sir Thomas to postpone his plan.
Palmer read it, swore lightheartedly, and took the Spaniards with him to have a 
closer look at the French and Scottish camps. It continued to be quiet until 
they reached the slopes north of Haddington. Then, against the bald, 
uncompromising sky, Bowes spotted movement. The lilies of France, whipping in 
the wind, were pouring downhill toward them in the van of a hundred and fifty 
armed horsemen.
Peace and sylvan propriety exploded. Gamboa wheeled and shot off with the 
hackbutters to hold the French; Palmer and Bowes interweaving behind him got the 
horse and foot into position and stopped, halted by trumpets. Long-sighted, 
Palmer saw new colours flying toward him, this time from Haddington. His face 
crimsoned with delight.
"Ellerkar, by God! Ellerkar and damned nearly half a thousand light horse from 
the fort. . . . Now let's pick off the smirks with your goose feathers, boys!"
Ellerkar was not called on to charge. The French had no wish to argue with four 
hundred fresh horsemen. Disentangling at speed, they shot up the hill and out of 
sight, leaving the English and Spanish to greet each other, re-form, and set off 
in jubilation for Haddington, led by Palmer and Bowes.


None of them reached it. The French simply waited behind the nearest hill until 
the tail of the force was riding past them, and then slid down and cut them off. 
Then, having taken some smart bites at Ellerkar, they retreated hastily but in 
order around the hill, with the whole combined English force at their heels. Sir 
Thomas, furious at the destruction in his rear, had almost closed with them when 
the cutting edge of the little manoeuvre became horribly clear.
Round the shoulder of the hill on which the French were retreating was a solid 
quadrant of French foot soldiers and hackbutters, patiently waiting; patently 
armoured in a ready-made aura of rude success.
Driven headlong by their own impetus, Palmer and Bowes skidded and smashed into 
this impenetrable front. The Spanish leader Gamboa, coming up behind, was 
drowned in the recoil. Holcroft's footmen, faced with nose-to-nose fighting 
against an opponent of the first quality, wavered, crumbled and fled. For half 
an hour the fighting continued, and then Palmer's men broke too.
There was nothing to be done. Pursued by Gallic language and Gallic joy, English 
and Spanish streamed from the valley of the Tyne, and the French horsemen hunted 
them all afternoon like a coursing. Behind them, the Protector's army left eight 
hundred English and Spanish dead or captured, the major part of their horse, and 
a Haddington not only lacking the new forces intended for it, but disastrously 
bled of Ellerkar, Gamboa and the horsemen who had issued to help.
Thus, read the subsequent dispatch to the Protector: Thus with victory in our 
hand, this mischance has altered things. Our principal horsemen and chief 
footmen are consumed; our powder wasted. Wherefore it is not good to venture 
anything by land, except by a royal force.
Eventually, the royal force did come. Like Palmer's, it was tough and 
cnthusiastic. Unlike Palmer's, although it made mistakes, it was not routed. But 
neither did it prevail.

* * *



Sir Thomas Palmer, riding hard, nearly reached the bridge at East Linton. With 
three of his own men and a Spaniard at his heels, he had broken loose from two 
skirmishes, and it was just beginning to seem possible that he had shaken off 
pursuit, when out of the ground before him rose a small, wicked, steel-bound 
phalanx of horsemen.


They were Scots. He didn't know the emblem, but he could recognize defeat: he 
let them encircle the five of them and waited in silence as the leader trotted 
forward. Grey, healthy whiskers sprouted from a pugnacious, sweaty face. "Dod," 
said the victor, peering at Sir Thomas. "Don't tell me: it's on the nether side 
of my back teeth. Palmer! Am I right?"
"You are, sir, dammit," said Sir Thomas with a polite snarl.
The whiskers twitched. "Just so. Man, you're a devil for getting yourself hud by 
the neb. Ye were nippit in France as well, were ye not?"
Sir Thomas got redder.
"And had to pay your own way out?"
Sir Thomas swore, politely.
"I'm Wat Scott of Buccleuch," said his captor courteously. "Just so as your 
friends'll know where to send the siller to. Man: you'll like Edinburgh. It's a 
fine town to be in jail in."
Buccleuch detached half of his men to march Palmer and his companions to 
Edinburgh, and continued his ride with the rest, whistling.
Sir Wat was pleased with life; so pleased that he ignored the signs of ffight 
all about him, and wished luck to the horse bands, both French and Scottish, who 
appeared and vanished like flying ants all through the blustering afternoon. 
After a while, disturbances became less frequent, and he was alone with his own 
dozen men, crossing rough moorland with no cover and chastened by a small, 
chilly wind.
Ahead on his right, a bird rose suddenly, vivid black and white, piping above 
the rustle of foxtail and club rush, and a moment later he saw two horsemen 
treading slowly where it had been, their faces to the north. He stopped and 
watched.
One of the figures, cloaked and hooded, he could make nothing of. The other, 
coatless, solid, unmistakable, was Richard Crawford of Culter.
Buccleuch rode over circumspectly, leaving his men behind without explanation, 
and brushing a thoughtful hand through his whiskers as he went. Culter turned, 
and deserting the other rider, trotted gently to meet him, his face brown and 
watchful above a dirty and ruinous white shirt. He spoke immediately they were 
within hearing. "Well, Wat. Still intent on appearing at the wrong time in the 
right place."
He sounded temperately amused, but Wat's experienced eye read the tilt of his 
right arm with accuracy. He cleared his throat. "Glad to



see you, my boy. Damned good job you all did at Hexham. Arran likes you again: 
that ought to make you cheery. They're going to make the fool a Duke: did ye 
hear?"
"No. Erskine got back, then?"
"Dod, aye. He said you were taking your own time at his back, but we were 
beginning to think they'd jumped on you. The plan went off fine: just fine." He 
paused again. The second horse was cropping grass, hocks nearest, and the rider, 
head bent, was sitting badly.
Culter didn't move, so Wat said bluntly, "Are ye for Edinburgh?"
Richard shook his head.
"Oh." A curious look came over Buccleuch's face. He rubbed his nose, spat 
inelegantly and .said, "It's a sharp wind for July. I won't say you're wrong, 
either. That brat of mine's a fool, but he's not bad company now, at that." He 
caught the guarded grey eye and cleared his throat again. "Well. I'm for the 
south. I hope you have a quiet trip. There's a damned wheen of horsemen clipping 
about today. Some stramash up the way, I believe."
"Thank you," said Lord Culter, and hesitated. "Your men . . .
"None of their business. Dod, Sybilla will be desperate glad to see you.~~
Richard said suddenly, "Tell her . . ." and broke off and swore, angry alarm 
displacing the subdued and wary mask. Buccleuch, wheeling, had his own hand on 
his sword an instant later and then pushed it back, gesturing ferociously at 
Culter. "Ride, man, ride!"
On the hill behind, a party of Scots came whooping toward them. A second later, 
and they called Culter's name. Richard, his horse already moving, twisted, saw 
the cock pennants and cursed again. "The Cockburns of Skirling. Devil take it. 
Wat: can you hold them while we run?"
They were too close. Buccleuch saw Culter's choice only too clearly: either to 
hand over his companion, or to label himself accomplice by trying an ineffectual 
escape.
As once before, Buccleuch filled the notorious lungs, and bellowed. Long before 
Richard reached him, Lymond turned and saw what was happening. He straightened 
and shook the hood from his face, exposing wffled fair hair and Culter's stained 
jacket below. Then he gathered his horse and stampeded artlessly across the 
moor, regardless of the slick, united hoofbeats of Sir William Cockburn's troop 
overtaking, surrounding and closing in on him. He made no resistance.


Buccleuch, riding after with Culter, arrived to find himself the butt of a 
number of bad jokes and some friendly wrangling over whether he had forfeited 
his prisoner by allowing him to escape. Since Richard had relapsed into utter 
silence, Sir Wat dealt with it brusquely, neither admitting nor denying the 
credit Lymond seemed to have given him; and after a bit they stopped pestering 
him with questions and offered pleasantly enough to travel back to Edinburgh 
together.
After his own men had joined him, Buccleuch asked to look at the prisoner and 
was directed to the rear, where Lymond was lashed flat to a horse-stretcher. He 
was not conscious.
Sir Wat studied him in silence before making his way back to the Cockburn 
brothers. He jerked his head. "What'll happen now?"
"Oh. Well, he's at the horn, isn't he? It'll be the Castle then, I dare say, for 
a week or two; and then a sweet short trial and a swing in New Bigging Street. 
Nothing surer than that."
And so Richard, after all, escorted his young brother to Edinburgh.



2.	One Loss is Made Good

"Quant corn paignons s'en vont juer us n'ont pointe tou dis essou per
Cras connins ne capons rostis
Fors le terme qu'ils ont argent .

It was so long since the Dowager had broken into song that Mariotta and her two 
guests were surprised. Janet grinned, and Agnes Herries, who was hail asleep, 
blinked and said, "Is it time yet?"
"Not quite," said Sybilla. The smallest flush under the white skin was the only 
sign that she was excited: she was beautifully dressed and not at all frayed in 
manner as was Mariotta, who showed the effects of the three newsless weeks since 
Tom Erskine's return from Hexham.
At midnight, in their presence, Johunie Bulb was to turn a pound of lead into 
gold. Of the four women, Janet Buccleuch was deeply interested in Sybilla's 
experiment. Propping her large green velvet slippers on a footstool, she said, 
"Did the gypsy want a lot of gold off you for this? I hope you were careful."
The Dowager raised candid eyes over the rims of her glasses.


"Of course, dear. But the gold will have reached him only ten minutes before we 
do, which is just"- glancing at her enormous German clock-"about now. Shall we 
go?"
Mariotta, leaning over, touched Agnes Herries awake. She opened her eyes with a 
jerk, followed the others vaguely to the door, and then seized Mariotta in a 
vicelike grip. "What if he raises the devil ?"
Mariotta laughed, and withdrawing her arm, put it reassuringly around the 
bride's shoulders. "What if he does? Sybilla would simply exchange recipes for 
sulphur ointment and give him a bone for the dog. Come along . .
Outside it was cool and very dark. A wisp of straw, rolling over the cobbles in 
the light wind, caught the beam from the doorway and scuttled, spider-fashion, 
into the night; nothing else moved. Sybilla shut the big doors and in the 
darkness they walked over to where the small window of Johnnie Bulb's laboratory 
glowed like a malign and bloodshot eye. The Dowager rapped on the pane; there 
was a pause; a stealthy rattle of heavy bolts, and the door to the laboratory 
swung open.
The heat buffeted their faces. The low, square building was lined with scarlet 
from the glow of the furnace, snoring hoarsely as the wind sucked at its funnel.
From floor to cbiling rose vessels and retorts and bottles, jars, pots and 
crucibles, matrasses and pelicans, balloons, serpents and mortars, aludels, 
funnels and beakers. The walls bobbed and winked and glimmered with vermilion 
eyes as if wattled with bloated and striking serpents, swaying with the flames.
There was a wooden bench, littered with tongs and iron ffiings and dirty dishes 
and knives and heaps of flour and sand for the lutes; an old athanors, unused; 
sundry pots, chipped and blackened, on the floor; and two different sizes of 
bellows hanging on nails beside an outburst of chalked inscriptions in some sign 
language firmly based on triangles. There was an old carpet on the stone floor 
and two wooden stools, beside which stood Johnnie.
Johnnie's eyeballs shone like red glass. His face, swarthy and flushed, was 
running with perspiration and his short, wiry frame writhed darkly over the 
bottles and knives, coiling and disappearing in the leaping red light. He bowed 
without speaking and indicated the stools. The Dowager sat quickly on one and 
Janet on the other, with the two girls standing behind. Johnnie waited until 
they were settled


and then foliowing his shadow to the door, shot the bolt. The furnace flared up.
"Let us begin," said Johnnie and stood, in an odd, prayerful attitude by his 
bench, his brown, long-lashed eyes fiery and grave.
"Tonight we follow where only the greatest have led. Tonight we invoke the aid 
of those who have allowed us to penetrate to the Chamaman, the Tan, the great 
mystery. We honour Yeber-AbouMoussah-Djafar-al-Sofi, the Master of Masters; 
Zosimus and Synesius; Trismegistus the Thrice Great; Olympiodorus, Philosopher 
to Petasius, King of Armenia; Nagarjuna who discovered distillation; and the 
blind Abu-Bakr-Muhammad-Ibn-Zakariyya-al-Razi himself.
"We ask them to lend power to our Stone, that the imperfect metal, the crude 
substance of Saturn, shall fall into corruption and in the flames of its passing 
generate the moisture of mercury and the smoke of sulphur until, refined, 
purified, perfected, the substance in our crucible will no longer have the 
attributes, the vices, the weakness of lead, but instead will be transmuted to 
perfect gold."
He touched gently one of the bellied pots at his feet, swathed in cloths and 
with an iron clamp about its neck. "The gold is here; the chains and coins given 
me by Lady Culter, already melted down and ready to begin the reaction which 
compels the transformation to begin. Here"-he lifted a grey brick from the 
table-"is a pound of lead. Will you test it for me?"
Janet took it from him and examined it closely. It passed from hand to hand and 
returned to Bulb, who held it so that they could all see quite clearly, and 
placed it in the retort. "So. And now the Stone."
He bent over his bench for a moment, and turned. In his tough brown palm lay a 
box, beautifully made in silver, with Arabic characters on the lid and a small 
mirror inset in the bottom. He opened it, holding it for them to see.
Inside, on a bed of white velvet, lay a dirty grey stone, flaked and powdery in 
texture and uneven in shape. Johnnie spoke gently. "The Stone of the Wise. The 
Magisterium. The Universal Essence." He lifted it delicately and, opening 
another, clean box on his desk, he scraped gently at the soft skin of the stone. 
A little white dust, flushed in the rosy light, slipped into the box, and Bulb 
replaced the stone, keeping the box of dust in his hand.
"My lady. What we are doing is not without danger-to me. You



are quite safe. But I must ask you not to speak, and not to move, until the 
mystery is over.
"For myself, I confide my safety to the alchemists and the philosophers who 
watch us, and speak the words of the Emerald Table:
True it is, without falsehood: certain most true. That which is above is like to 
that which is below; and that which is below is like to that which is above, to 
accomplish the miracles of one thing. And as in all things whereby contemplation 
of one, so in all things arose from this one thing by a single act of adoption. 
The father thereof is the Sun; the mother, the Moon. The wind carries it in its 
womb: the earth is the source thereof. it is the father of all works of wonder 
throughout the world. The power thereof is perfect. Thus thou wilt possess the 
brightness of the world, and all obscurity will fly far from thee . .
With steady hands, he lifted the great jar and set it to its resting place over 
the fire. Next, withdrawing the clamp, he tilted the little box of powder so 
that its contents drifted within the neck of the crucible to join the metal 
inside.
For the space of a heartbeat there was silence.
Then with a waft and a roar, blue smoke lipped like cream from the mouth of the 
retort, folded, arched and rolled servilely through the hut. It thickened, 
dropping languid fingers to the floor and flattening itself against the wooden 
roof; it became dense, black and choking with the stink of sulphur; it yawned 
blindly in the senses and the fire, leaping as if freed of some monstrous birth, 
rent its thinnest layers with tongues of yellow and crimson.
Agnes screamed. Mariotta, after a single alarmed cry, held the girl tightly and 
stood still. Janet, gripping her stool, watched the Dowager until she could 
barely see her, close as she was, for the swirling fumes. They were enclosed, 
hot and foul and black as charcoal, they were defying panic when, sweet as a 
summer dawn, the smoke bloomed, and bright gold rising living from its roots 
flooded the dark curtain and turned it into the pure yellow of Easter sunshine.
The veil hung, fresh and precious for the space of ten seconds, and then, 
breaking like floss, melting, separating, sifting and dwindling through the air, 
it slowly vanished. Behind it, Johnnie Bulb appeared, a shadow, a monochrome, a 
flat and coloured impasto, and finally the vivid man, standing beside the 
furnace. In one hand was the clamp, and he was raising from the fire the heavy, 
blackened jar.
There was an iron plate on the floor in front of the Dowager. Bulb


set the crucible there, and the heat from it made them draw back. They watched 
in silence as Johnnie stepped up, an iron bar in his hands. He swung it, an~ the 
neck of the jar broke at its base.
In. silence he proffered the Dowager his tongs. She bent, groping within the 
crucible. The instrument gripped; she raised it and lowered what it held to the 
floor. It was a small block of dull metal, unmistakably gold. There was nothing 
else in the jar at all.
Words could not contain their triumph and amazement. The bottles and jars 
chattered and clinked and the walls wept tears of strange emotion. Where there 
had been a block of lead, there was a block of gold. The Stone of the Wise was 
powerful indeed.
When she could hear herself speak, the Dowager, scarlet with pleasure, was also 
urgently pressing. "May we see it again? May we see the Stone again? Now we know 
it is the true Stone."
She had been less than tactful, and he demurred at first; but both Mariotta and 
Agnes added their voices, and finally he brought out the silver box. Sybilla 
opened it lovingly.
"Lilt it," said Janet. "Is it heavy?"
The Dowager inserted a delicate finger and thumb. "Not very. So small, and so 
powerful. If one scraping does all this, whaL mightn't the whole Stone do?"
The white teeth flashed. Jobnnie, royally confident, was in carefree mood. "It 
would burn as the sun in your hand would burn, my lady. But you will wish to use 
it sparingly and make it last long."
"Not particularly," said Sybilla. She weighed the precious thing a moment in her 
hand, a calculating look in the blue eye, and then pitched it wholesale into the 
heart of the furnace.
Everybody screamed at once, and Johnnie's shout was the loudest of all.
The roar and belch of black smoke this time pounced on them like the black 
underbelly of the ancient Chaos himself, snarling and surging about them with 
inhuman venom. It grew dark: far darker than before. Their eyes became blind as 
the eyes of the dead and the unborn; their senses thickened and stifled beneath 
the blanket of sulphur and their skins grew heavy and clogged with the rushing 
filth. The furnace roared. The last thing Janet saw was Sybilia's head, like 
eidelweiss on some black, mirrored tarn. She took two strides and, embedding her 
powerful grasp in Sybilla's long sleeves, hung on. Then they were all lost to 
each other.
There was no yellow flare. The sightless nightmare engulfed them




and the seconds passed, and then minutes, of black choler, livid and briefly 
guttering with the surge of the furnace. Light came reluctantly, clearing the 
blackness in misty circles, like clean water running white and graining over the 
blackened face of a drawing.
The floor became visible to them; then the stools; the lower part of the bench, 
and the five persons in the laboratory, three of them in much altered positions. 
Instead of commanding the furnace, Johnnie Bulb was standing hard by the door, 
looking out of the corners of his eyes at Sybilla. The Dowager had reseated 
herself and with Janet peering beside her, was poking energetically inside a 
large crucible, the twin of the one which stood shattered on the iron plate 
still in front of her.
"Such a useful thing, smoke," said Sybilla. "Now what have we here? Yes. I 
thought so."
She plunged her arm inside the jar and lifted something out, displaying it to 
them all. "One pound of lead, untouched. From the first crucible, stealthily 
hidden beneath the bench. Leading us to the second crucible, now broken, and 
containing one block of lead (at a guess) thinly coated with gold. Leading us to 
the further matter of my chains and coins which were supposed to be in the first 
jar but are (at a guess) inside the bench drawer instead. Yes, here they are.
"Dear me. Having supplied me with my coated brick and my Stone, Mr. Bulb meant I 
suppose to pocket the gold intended for the experiment and to stimulate a small 
regular income of gold with which to repeat his initial success. I do call that 
a little grasping, when I seemed to have housed and fed and paid him practically 
all winter.
I shouldn't try it, my dear man. The door wouldn't open for a very good reason: 
half my servants are outside with pikestaffs. Didn't you know that Dame Janet 
dabbled in alchemy too? She has been a most valued adviser."
Standing against the door, Johnnie Bulb showed his teeth; and there was 
something of the occult still about his smile, although he was unarmed and 
rather dirty, as they all were, and his hair was curling over his eyes. "At 
least, as you say, I had a winter's lodging for it," he said impudently. The 
brown eyes were limpid. "Have I made an error? I was under the impression you 
were buying my services.
The blue eyes were equally seraphic. "Your services proved a little expensive."
He shrugged a little. "I did all I could be expected to do, barring


manufacture fresh time. You feel," and he jerked his head toward the door, "you 
have no further need of me?"
"On the contrary," said Sybilla, and gathering her stained clothes carefully, 
she sat down again on her blackened stool. "On the contrary: I wished it to be 
very clear to you that you need my good offices much more than I need yours. If 
these men outside take you to a sheriff with this tale, you'll hang."
Romanies, having no use for confessions and excuses, likewise prefer to reach a 
crooked point quickly. Johnnie Bulb moved away from the door, strolled to the 
bench, turned, and regarded the Dowager with resignation and some misgiving.
"All right. What must I do?" he inquired.

* * *



On that same evening, as the small, gusty wind blew heather off the fuel stacks 
and straw from the roofs and goffered the gutter mud in the High Street, Lord 
Culter left Edinburgh for home.
It was five months since he had seen Midculter; five months since he had ridden 
around the estate, or seen to his fishings and his warrens and his peats. He had 
watched his stock coming to market outside the city walls; had met and 
corresponded with Gilbert over the shipments of wool and hides and the ordering 
of the farms and the affairs of his dependents; his wright and his mason, his 
tailor and amourer and falconer and carpenter and smith and gardeners; the men 
who supplied his oats, meal and barley, herded his pigs and sheep and cattle, 
grew his peas and beans, brewed his beer and bred his horses and cared for his 
wealth, infield and outfield.
He had missed the lambing and the finishing of his new barns and outbuildings; 
the shearing; the new plantings he had decided on for the spring. For five 
months he had carried a sleepless sword and husbanded other, corrupt intentions.
Now he was going home. Against the red western sky the outline of the Pentland 
hills, each shape familiar to him, moved and fell behind him on his right. The 
road, climbing up into Lanarkshire, reached the high moors as the wind 
freshened. The sky above him, changing from turquoise to Chinese blue, drew over 
him the inconspicuous film of night. The horizon, lingering apple green before 
him, breathed out its colour scrupulously after the prostrate sun.
He had said to Buccleuch, and Dandy Hunter, seeing him off, "I'll



7
be at Midculter before morning"; and Buccleuch had pummelled him briskly on the 
shoulder and said, "Good lad. I hope it comes right for you. Kittle cattle, 
women, kittle cattle: but it's wersh and wae without them."
Bryony's hoofs drummed in sympathy. Kittle cattle: kittle cattle. Would it come 
right? God knew, thought Richard-and closed his thighs like iron on the mare.
Like a wet and turgid emergence from a pool, the night became peopled with 
figures. Someone spoke harshly; there was a rush of soft feet and a chinldng of 
metal against buckles. Bryony plunged, and trickling, wirelike fingers over nose 
and bridle secured her and then tugged and twisted at Richard himself.
Culter, kicking with his spurred boot still in the stirrup, freed his right hand 
and laid it on his sword, cursing himself under his breath. It was always a bad 
road to travel alone: it meant riding fast and staying alert, and he had been 
doing neither. Hell. They still had Bryony fast. There were two of them-no, 
three. He saw the shadow of a cudgel just in time, ducked, cut and heard a 
scream as he dodged and cut again.
The hands began again, twisted in his belt and pulling his leathers. The saddle 
became loose and he knew the girth had been slit. He slashed at the dim faces, 
feeling the numbness of a blow on his arm; fighting to free his sword arm from 
the clinging hands. The saddle was swinging, bringing him down with it. Below 
him, the unseen men grunted and swore; then the blade was suddenly wrenched from 
his grip and they leaped at him, bringing him successfully down, driving with 
his fists, knees and elbows into the tangie of hard bodies and then on to the 
road.
There was a gleam of steel: a solitary, agonized, breathless moment in which the 
irony of the thing struck him like a cannon ball, and then the circle of dark 
heads above him opened out like girasol to the sun. A brown pony, dark with 
perspiration, shot into the circle and decanted a thunderbolt: a dark figure 
which skirled and spat like a being demented.
The men about Lord Culter froze. The newcomer raged, in a language which was not 
English. The leader of the assassins answered, sullenly, in the same tongue and 
was treated to another shrivelling outburst. The other two, making an attempt to 
speak, were cut off by a storm of abuse. Under it, the three moved off sulkily, 
mounted and, without a word, disappeared as they had come into the darkness.



The owner of the brown pony remounted. Richard, shaking his head, rolled over, 
groped for and found his sword, and got to his feet. "I trust," said the rider 
in clear but sibilant English, "that you are not hurt?" His expression, so far 
as it could be seen, was one of resignation rather than triumph.
Richard got back his breath. "Not at all. I would be suitably grateful if I 
didn't know they were your men."
"You have the Romany?" asked his rescuer, and there was a dim flash of white 
teeth. "Or only a little? Then I must explain that they attacked you through no 
orders of mine. We are a wayward people, my lord."
Richard flexed his arm thoughtfully, studying the immobile, spare figure. Vivid 
in his mind was the firelit room at Stirling, and the stained arrows on the 
table. He had unfastened his jacket and, pulling out one of the points, laced 
his broken girth with it. "I believe I could put a name to you," he said.
The white teeth flashed again. "I hope you won't. My people tell
me, when I come home, of the little commissions they are offered. I
seldom interfere. If it were not that I am at the mercy of the
shrewdest of your relatives .
Richard straightened suddenly. "My brother?"
The other was already wheeling his pony to the EdiAburgh road; he laughed as he 
went and shook his head. "No, no. Not at all. Devil take it, not at all." The 
pony's hoofs, gently pattering, dropped into rhythm and faded, leaving the echo 
of wry laughter on the air.
Richard slowly gathered Bryony's reins and put his left hand on her neck. A 
half-smile lifted his mouth, so that for a moment he looked astonishingly like 
the Master.
"Mother! What now?" he said, and lifting himself into the saddle put the mare, 
fast, along the Midculter road.

* * *



Patrick opened the gates to Lord Culter long past midnight, with incoherent 
words of welcome. He sent his chamberlain back to bed without rousing the 
household, and taking a candle, went alone up the main staircase and along the 
dimly lit corridor to his wife's room.
There he hesitated. He had removed all traces of his adventure:
he had no idea of posing as a brave but battered warrior. Was it equally unfair 
to take her unaware like this? He wished he had kept







Patrick. He could have roused Mariotta's maid; have sent her in to ask if she 
would receive him. . . . And if she refused? What a scene for the women, that.
He pulled himself together. If she didn't want him she should say so, directly, 
to him. He hesitated only a moment longer, and then put out his hand and 
knocked.
Through a welter of necromantic, smoke-ridden dreams Mariotta became aware of 
the light tap. When after a moment it was repeated, she sat up, fencing with the 
supernatural, and called, "Yes? Who is it?" The answer took her by the throat.
Silence had fallen again. Her breathing had become erratic. Unable to talk with 
this chaos in her lungs she was quiet, trying to control the disorder.
"Mariotta?" He was speaking again, very low. "May I come in?" It didn't occur to 
her to refuse. She pulled a bedgown over her ruIned linen, gave a despairing 
thought to her hair, and called to him levelly. "Come in if you wish."
She was paralysed by the change in him; because she had expected time to have 
stood still for him, as it had done for her. He was brown-skinned and light-
haired with the sun, the corner of his eyes seamed with white. He was thinner 
and harder, and his quietness had a quality of power and repose in it which was 
new to him.
Coming no nearer than the foot of the bed he said, "I wakened you. I'm sorry. I 
couldn't leave until sunset, and I thought it might be better to speak now, in 
private."
Mariotta's eyes were unchanging violet in the glimmer of the can-die. "What is 
there to say?"
You may know the devil by the inverted image in his eyes. The candle flame in 
her husband's showed her, sanely, herself twice over. He dropped abruptly on the 
low chest below her bed and taking the fringe of her coverlet in his fingers, 
twisted and plied it with his eyes on his hands.
He said, "I was brought up to distrust talkers. A foolish thing which recoiled, 
naturally, on my own head. I was taught to judge people by their actions, and I 
do-and it works-except sometimes, when it matters most. I probably haven't 
learned much, but I've learned that people don't always say what they mean, for 
good reasons as well as bad."
"People don't always say what they mean for no reason at ~ said Mariotta 
lightly. "Especially feminine people." She saw he was


troubled by this vein and watched him, her chin cushioned on her updrawn knees. 
She went on in the same deceptive'voice. "But you accused me of being Lymond's 
lover before I claimed I was."
The trouble in his eyes deepened as she brought out, irresponsibly, the 
difficult thing he had to discuss. He rolled the tortured fringe in his hands 
and she went on, before he could speak. "You're trying to tell me you know there 
was nothing between us. But I think you must tell me how you know. You didn't 
believe me. Whom did you find to believe?"
It was hard, but she meant to be hard. She watched him as he groped painfully 
for an honest and lucid answer; trying with all his strength to satisfy her and 
win through to her without invoking the shadows of the last five months, and of 
the last three weeks. It couldn't be done, and she made it clear to him that he 
mustn't try. "Richard? What have you done?"
He didn't look up, or call his brother by name. "Nothing. He's alive. This isn't 
an act of expiation."
"Did he tell you what passed between us?"
Richard's face was buried in his hands. "Some of it."
"He told you he had never laid hands on me?"
"Yes."
"And you believed him?"
"Yes. I don't know. Not when he told me. But later on-I've had a long time to 
think."
"And when he took me to Crawfordmuir?"
"It was an accident: he intended you to be taken straight home. He did what he 
could for you. I know about that."
"Then either Will Scott or myself is a liar," said Mariotta gently. "Because 
Lymond told me face to face that he meant all the time to bring me to 
Crawfordmuir; that he took me there to dishonour you and disrupt the 
inheritance. It was to save myself and you that I escaped."
Richard's hands dropped from his face, and his wife said, "So which story will 
you favour this time? His or mine?"
There was a long silence. Then slowly Richard got up from the chest. He looked 
very tired. "Are you sure . . .
"He spoke very plainly indeed. Will Scott can tell you."
Her husband walked to the window. Faintly, in the courtyard, the dying glow of 
Johnnie Bulb's embers searched through the open door, were cut off, gleamed and 
disappeared as it swung in the wind.



Mariotta said, "Well?" and he turned, making a gesture of despair. "1 have lived 
with him for three weeks. He's tormented, perverted, dangerous, ruthless, but-"
The candielight lit her soot-black hair and the soft wool on her shoulders, as 
if a silver quill had embellished the air about her. Her face, resting on her 
knees, was shadowed and unreadable. "But you believe him. It's another impasse 
then, isn't it, Richard?"
"I'm damned if it is," said Lord Culter suddenly, and swung around. "My dear: 
listen. We've been married less than a year. Because of circumstances and 
foolishnesses and my mistakes and shortcomings we've been parted for nearly half 
that time. We've each in our own way been through a number of minor hells; and 
we've had a great loss.
"A mistake is something you build on: it's the irritant that makes the pearl; 
the flaw that creates the geyser-but a mistake made twice is a folly. It's cost 
something in terms of thought and sacrifice and even suffering to bring us 
tonight to speak with each other. We have a moral duty at least not to toss it 
away."
"And Lymond?"
Richard said steadily. "You had no right to ask me that question, and no right 
to expect me to make that choice."
"I knew you wouldn't make it," she said. "I knew if you had made it, even in 
your owA mind, that Lymond would be dead. I was only-"
"-Frightening me for the good of my soul," said Richard, and suddenly smiled. 
"As Francis rejoices in doing. I've spoken to Will Scott too, you know. But 
won't you believe me? I've been frightened enough already."
He was standing looking down at her. "Perhaps you've married the wrong brother. 
And that would be a pity. Because Francis lives in a passionless vacuum and 
keeps his love for abstract things. And in the second place, I should never let 
you go."
She had longed so much to hear it that she was beyond speech; but there was a 
quality in her face that drove him suddenly toward violence.
"I love you," said Richard to his wife. "You have dominion of life and death 
over me. I am asking nothing except to prove it without being turned away. Or"-
his eyes on her lifted arms-"being taken out of pity."
Her outstretched hands did not waver, and the candlelight on her



face found an expression unsought even in his dreams. He came carefully to her 
side, and knelt under her light touch.
"Out of pity?" said Mariotta. "My dear fool, why am I fighting you and denying 
you and hurting you except that I am so afraid of you, and of myself; because I 
love you far too well for peace and gentle harmonies.
"It's all right. My dear, it's all right. I am here: I love you: I wrn not leave 
you. None shall take it from us now."
He had dropped head and shoulders to the bed, one hand gripping the silk and the 
other holding her outstretched hand as if it were his hope of eternity. Mariotta 
brought her other arm to encircle his shoulders and comforted him.

* * *



Roused very early next morning by Tibet, in tears, Sybilla received her son in 
her room.
She had risen and put on a vast brocade bedgown. With its stiff silk puckered 
about her, she sat in her high chair like Demeter about to breakfast on Pelops, 
her face in shadow from the paling windows. Richard bent over and kissed her.
She surveyed him, silently absorbing the pleasing, tranquil assurance of him and 
the woollen robe he wore. Her own mouth relaxed, and she touched his cheek as he 
dropped to a stool at her feet and hugged his knees. "You've made your peace. 
What odd children I have! I'm so glad," she said.
"Could I have leave to stay, do you think?" asked Richard. "What you've done 
about the steadings I hate to think. Salted all the sheep and given away the 
pigs and allowed the salmon to be poached .
I didn't kill him.~~
"I know. You wouldn't have kissed me, would you?" said Sybila coolly.
Richard flushed. "He's-Francis is in Edinburgh. Tom would tell you, he was badly 
hurt in England. Then he was taken-gave himself up-as we were coming north. I'd 
planned to get a ship for him and help him to leave.~~
Some of the natural colour had returned to Sybilla's fine skin. She drew a 
finger down his cheek and said, "That was remarkably well done, no matter what 
came of it. You won't regret it, either. What will they do?"



'F

"The warrant is out for letters relaxing him from the horn. That lets them bring 
him to trial before Parliament. In two weeks' time, probably." His eyes searched 
her face. "There isn't much hope, you know. But to be honest, I don't think he 
greatly cares."
For the the first time, he saw a spark of fear in her eyes. "Why? Because of 
Christian?"
"A number of things, I think . . ." He waited, and then said, "Will you go and 
see him? Soon?"
"No. I should only weaken him now," said Sybilla curtly. "And in any case, I 
have a little travelling to do, and I must be back in good time."
"Travelling?" Never in this world would he understand her. "Yes, my darling," 
said Sybilla. "And someone, as Buccleuch would say, is going to loathe my guts 
before I've finished with them."


Iv

Baring

Wherefore the nobles and the peples ben sette in their proper places.
They that ben sette on the other syde kepe the Quene.
And thus kepe they alle the strength and fermete
of the royaume.





1. Remiss


THAT year, as in other years, death was not man's ultimate terror and chief 
source of his disquiet. Death was cheap and quick, indiscriminating and often 
friendly. You could die in a day, from the pest. You could die in a second in 
the innocent hub of a brawl. Children in thousands never came to life, or lived 
only hours. You could die in battle, and you could die at the minor instance of 
the law, for cheating and stealing and concealing disease. Death was better, 
often, than pain, mutilation and deformity; than starvation in banishment; than 
the intangible evils of sorcery and enchantment. People died suddenly, from week 
to week and month to month, and their disappearance had to be accepted. Death 
was cheap and quick.
In time of siege and foreign occupation, the doom and death of a traitor might 
go unnoticed. But many in Edinburgh lost fathers or brothers at Solway Moss, and 
had heard Carrick Pursuivant at the Cross six years before charging and warning 
the traitor to appear.
Twice they had summoned the absent Lymond to the diet of his libel, and twice 
the record book had noted, The ajoresaid being sum-



moned did not appear. For this contemptuous failure in his duty to his Sovereign 
and this rebellion against the law of his country, sentence of fugitation was 
passed, making him rebel and outlaw.
Now, six years later, triumphant officialdom spoke. Francis Crawford of Lymond, 
Master of Culter, being in ward in Her Majesty's Castle of Edinburgh, was 
summoned to appear on the eighth day of the month of August in the year of Our 
Lord 1548, to answer charges of treason, of revealing and showing to our ancient 
enemies of England the secrets of the Queen; of treasonable intercommuning and 
rendering of aid and comfort to our said enemies; of murder, assault, abduction 
and robbery, and crimes against the Estate and Church as set forth in the 
indictment.
The news reached Will Scott where he hung about in a frenzy of inactivity in 
Edinburgh. He tried and failed to get access to the Castle. Buccleuch, already 
aware of the event, left his son alone and got back to the siege of Haddington. 
Richard, with a lot to do at Midculter and a strong unwillingness to leave it, 
stayed with his wife and made quiet preparations to return before the eighth. 
Sybilla, having got rid of all her encumbrances, collected a small, well-armed 
retinue and left for parts unknown.

* * *



The Dowager reached Ballaggan on the first of August, carrying the date in her 
breast like an aposteme.
She was brought into the hall and made welcome, under the vacant survey of 
alabaster and murrhine. Crossing the little Turkey carpets which cost so much, 
Dandy Hunter took her to his study as she asked, and poured her wine and made 
her comfortable, without pressing her for news of either of her sons. She smiled 
at him very gently and took from her purse a little box, which she laid on the 
table between them. "I came to return this," she said.
Smiling, a little puzzled, he took it. His sleeves were caught with embroidered 
bands and the stuff of his jerkin, as fine as her own, was lined with tissue. 
Smiling at her again, he unwrapped, fastidiously, what lay inside the box; and 
then, with the smile lingering forgotten on his lips, drew out and laid before 
him the contents.
It was a hexagonal brooch, set in ebony and diamonds and shaped like a heart set 
about with crystal plaques, each bearing an angel's head in onyx.


The silence stretched out. Then Sir Andrew stirred and lifted his eyes. "But 
this isn't mine."
"No?" said Sybilla. "But Patey Liddell altered it for you: I saw it in his shop. 
Your mother might remember."
Remembrance brightened his face. "Ah!" he said. "Now I have it. Yes, indeed-I 
bought it for Mother, and lost it again the same day." He gave her a rueful 
smile. "I'm sorry, but your son was the culprit. The brooch lay by the bed when 
he broke into the house, and when he had gone, it had vanished too. I'm afraid I 
was so angry and concerned about Mother that I dismissed it . . . I'd forgotten 
it altogether. Wherever did you find it?"
"But," said Sybilla, "you handed it to Patey after Francis's visit."
"Patey must be mistaken."
"I'm not mistaken," retorted Sybilla serenely. "I overheard you." She paused, 
and then went on. "I got it from Agnes Herries: did it puzzle you to find her 
wearing it? Before that, it belonged to Mariotta. They took the rest of the 
rubbish from her at Annan. It very nearly did what you meant it to do."
He touched his head with his hand and sat back, smiling again. "Wait a moment-
what I wanted it to do? I'm sorry, but hasn't Mariotta explained? It was Lymond 
who sent her all the jewellery. Blame me if you like for not telling Richard, 
but your poor daughter-in-law put me in an appalling position. But I swear I did 
my best to persuade her to confide in Culter."
"I'm sure you did," said Sybilla placidly. "With results we all know. Of course 
Mariotta thought they were from Francis: she was infatuated with the idea of 
him. That must have been a little disconcerting for you. But when she didn't 
automatically attribute them to you, you must have realized she wasn't, after 
all, going to fall into your arms as you planned she should. So you adapted your 
scheme accordingly and it worked quite well. Mariotta thought they came from 
Lymond, and that was enough to break her marriage and nearly to kill her."
The thin-boned, high-nosed face was flushed with emotion. Dandy said quickly in 
a troubled voice, "Lady Culter. You can't know what you're saying. Mariotta was 
young enough and troubled enough to turn to me. I couldn't deny her help." He 
stood up suddenly, anxiety in his face. "Is this how she is explaining it to 
Richard? To whitewash Lymond and put the blame on me?"
Sybilla, neatly swathed in gauze and laces, was the calm within the


hurricane. She stretched out a slender hand and retrieving brooch and box, 
returned them to her purse. "Mariotta still thinks the jewels came from Lymond," 
she observed, fixing the distrait man with candid, cornflower eyes. "But I think 
she ought to know that you have now tried to kill her husband four times."
There was a little, breathless hush; and then Sir Andrew said, "Good God, Lady 
Culter," and sat down unbecomingly. "But this is nonsense. Do you mean to accuse 
me of . . .
He stared at her, breathing quickly, and then slapped one hand on his desk. "No! 
No. I'm damned if I'm going to be scapegoat. I've a very soft spot for you all, 
Lady Culter, and for Mariotta especially, but I can't let you twist and pervert 
facts to get your beloved son off the gallows. Give some thought to my mother, 
at least. . . . The only person who has tried to kill Richard is his own 
brother."
"Facts?" said Sybilla. "At the Papingo Shoot Francis aimed twice:
once to cut the cord and the second time to kill the bird. Then he dropped the 
bow and quiver and left the glove. You were the person first on the spot: you 
had already tried and failed to free yourself of Mariotta and Agnes."
Sir Andrew's flush had paled. "It's still nonsense," he said steadily. "You know 
I can't shoot. Everyone knows that."
"You can't shoot at a Papingo target," said Sybilla, "but you are an excellent 
marksman on the flat. Everyone knows that, too."
"It's Lymond's word, in that case, against mine. Do you suppose for a moment-"
"Oh, of course. You've no evidence against you," she said, "any more than you 
had when you led Richard and Agnes Herries over a part of the Nith notorious for 
its potholes. Happily, Richard is a very strong swimmer. And there were, I 
suppose, too many witnesses."
"I pulled him out myself," exclaimed Hunter. "Lady Culter-"
"But the third and fourth times," said the Dowager, "there was evidence."
She had effectively stopped his protest. He made a little gesture of 
resignation. "You'd better tell me."
"Do you need to be told? I had some simple tests made with the herbal drink you 
brought from your mother for Richard's use. They tell me Mariotta would have 
been a wealthy and marriageable widow very quickly if he had drunk it."
He said quietly, "Go on. And the fourth occasion?"
For the first time, Sybilla lost a little of her self-command. She said,


"Do you know, if you had succeeded then, I think you would have had to answer 
for it yourself to those same gypsy gentlemen and not to me today. He was on his 
way to Mariotta when they attacked him
but you knew that, of course. It must have seemed quite foolproof at last: 
Romanies can only be controlled by their King. Unluckily for you, their King at 
the moment is controlled by me. He learned of your commission and stopped it 
just in time. Richard isn't dead, Sir Andrew; and I have three men who will 
swear to having been paid by you to assassinate him."
Hunter's manner didn't alter: only his eyes, meeting hers, were curiously bright 
and impersonal. He said carefully, "You are evidently bribing whoever you can to 
save your son. Forgive me, but if you take this any further I shall have to take 
steps legally to protect myself."
This time Sybilla herself got up, moving away from the table with a rustle of 
petticoats. She said over her shoulder, "I haven't taken it any further-yet. But 
don't be misled. The fact that I am here doesn't mean there is the least 
uncertainty; the least hope for you. There isn't any. The only doubt is in my 
own mind and is because of your mother."
"Mother!" said Hunter's voice, half aloud behind her.
There was the briefest pause, and then her quick brain, suddenly showing her his 
mind, made her twist around. His sword was already half lifted, light stuttering 
from the blade.
She said rapidly, "I may look simple, but I'm not precisely moonstruck yet. If I 
don't come back, you won't even have a chance to hang, my friend."
He continued to come. The sword, still half raised, was aimed almost casually at 
her heart, and his face was quite detached, like a dreamer's. She drew one quick 
breath and stood still, her hands open at her sides, her head a little tilted 
and her lips parted. He walked until he was so close to her that he had to meet 
her eyes; had to make the small decision that would force the point onward.
Something of the message of the steady blue eyes must have penetrated; something 
of her unexpected stillness surprised him into a moment's pause; and Sybilla 
said quietly in that instant, "I have your charter chest at Midculter."
She thought she had misjudged it. The sword point wavered and approached and his 
eyes remained flatly purposeful. Then they came alive again, startled and 
disbelieving; the sword dropped and he said



-and had difficulty in saying-"That isn't true. I keep my chest in the 
strongroom of this house. No one-"
"Your mother keeps her recipes there: remember? And I have a very talented 
Romany on my side, Sir Andrew. . . . You've had dealings with the English, 
haven't you, for a very long time? Your visits to the Ostrich put you in no 
danger-you were already well known in Carlisle. How else did you know Jonathan 
Crouch was George Douglas's prisoner? Why did Sir George trouble with you unless 
he had a fairly good idea you were in the same sweet trade as himself?"
She turned, and walking past where he stood frozen in mid-room, she paused by 
the window, looking out on the ochre and viridian and sage green of the dusty 
summer treetops.
"Such a mean, thieving little trade: a dealing in secrets; in hissings and 
winkings and the selling of men's bodies, back and forth. And even then, they 
didn't pay you well enough. Maybe they realized that you weren't greatly 
intimate at Court; that you only touched the edge of what they could already get 
from Glencairn and Douglas and Brunton and Ormiston and Cockburn and the rest. . 
. . So you turned your eyes on my family. Wealth; a pretty heiress; a family 
feud- who'd be surprised if it had fatal results? And the widow, in due time, 
would naturally turn to the gentle family friend. Or at the very worst, Francis 
was worth a thousand crowns to Wharton. . .
He said, "You needn't elaborate. I know what I've done. You've told, then. The 
papers in that chest-"
"Not yet," said Sybilla, and turned to meet his white face. "The chest will be 
opened if I don't come back."
Tremors were beginning to shake him. He sat again, abruptly, at the table, his 
eyes fixed on her like stones. "What are you going to do?" Seeing the expression 
on her face he gave a sort of laugh and bit his lip, stilling the shaking. "What 
do you suppose my wonderful brother would have done now?"
He was too helplessly self-centred, too rotten, for her to pity him now. She 
said sharply,. "Your mother has a lot to answer for, but if you had the heart of 
a rabbit, you would have made a man's life for yourself and let her make the 
best of it."
He had some pride left. He said, making no excuses, "Mother knows nothing of 
this. It will kill her. What-what are you going to do?"
The cool blue eyes rested on his trembling hands. The Dowager


said slowly, "Your mother is a sick old woman, and an unhappy one. I don't envy 
you the life you've led with her, but she need never have become the sort of 
person she is now.
"Never mind that. She's going to suffer, but not as much as she might have done. 
I should like to see you hanged. Because of you, I nearly lost every child I 
have left: I did lose my grandchild. But that would be an insult to all the 
magnificent, vicious criminals we already have living freely among us.
"You are not of that kind. You did what you did at second and third hand, as you 
could, and sweetened over with a glaze of hysterical necessity. Once the need is 
removed, you won't kill again. A reason for living may be hard to find, too: but 
that is your problem."
She walked to the desk and drawing a paper in front of him, laid a pen beside 
it. "I want one thing," she said. "And that is a statement exonerating Francis 
from the things you have done." And as he hesitated, she said sharply, "Come 
along! Beside the other things you have done, what do these matter?"
He looked at her with dull eyes, and then, bending, took up the pen and wrote. 
She read it, sealed it, and put it away. "Yes. It won't save him, as you may 
guess . . . but it will perhaps undo a little of the damage. And now you'd 
better leave. I'm going to talk to your mother, and then leave for my home. The 
chest will be opened and its contents published within two days. By then," said 
Sybilla, "you should be out of this land."
He raised his head vaguely, only half understanding. "I may go?"
"Yes. And I wish you well of it," she said, her eyes hard as sapphires.
She waited until she heard the sound of his horse on the cobbles, and then 
rising quietly, climbed the stair to his mother's room.

The terrier had died in the spring, overcome with fat and lack of air.
Since then, Dame Catherine had had no distractions: her son had hardly been at 
home, and even her books and her paintings and precious pieces of ivory and jade 
had begun to pall. Longing for company, she welcomed it by releasing the barbs 
of months of lonely selftorture. Sybilla, sitting quietly by the taffeta-spread 
bedside, near the heaped-up delicate pillows, listened to Catherine Hunter's 
spiced invective against her son, her servants, her surroundings, her illness 
and finally, as the icy flood reached its spring heights, against her Maker.



The Dowager's voice cut lightly through the flow. "Why don't you get them to 
carry you downstairs?"
The black eyes sneered. "That would be delightful," said the old woman. 
"Unfortunately, I am part paralysed, you know."
"I don't wonder," said Sybilla pleasantly. "And if you never try to help 
yourself you'll be wholly paralysed soon, and you will enjoy that. I've brought 
you a litter. Two of my men are coming up in half an hour to lift you down."
A tiny spark of alarm showed in the black eyes, but the grey, crumpled face 
remained contemptuous. "Money has given you a fine, arrogant manner, Sybilla, 
but I should prefer you to keep it for Midculter. I hear your son has left his 
wile."
"He hasn't, but you won't change the subject by being rude," said the Dowager. 
"There's warm fire and a comfortable couch in the hall. You'll like it very 
much."
"Sybilla. I am neither a child nor an imbecile. I dislike being humoured and I 
particularly dislike being managed. Because of my disability I am unable to 
leave this room. You can hardly expect me to undermine for your benefit the 
little health I have left me."
The Dowager said coolly, "There's no need to be frightened. Your surgeon has 
given me full permission."
The black eyes snapped. "The child is dead, I hear."
"Yes."
"Did your younger boy kill it, or did she get rid of it herself?"
"Neither. Don't be silly, Catherine. You don't really want me to go."
"I didn't say I did. Don't be too clever, Sybilla."
The Dowager said, "The child was nobody's fault, if you really want to know. 
Mariotta and Richard are together and very happy. Francis is in ward in 
Edinburgh. He is to appear before Parliament in a week, and we hope very much he 
will be acquitted."
The little figure on the pillows looked pityingly at Sybilla. "Acquitted! My 
dear woman, even the Culters haven't quite enough money for that."
"Then we shall have to use our beaux yeux," said Sybilla placidly. "Perhaps if I 
made appropriate advances to all Her Majesty's lords of the Session . . . Or do 
you think I should hardly get through them all in a week?"
The quality of the black stare was changing. There was a tiny


silence, and then Lady Hunter said in her cutting voice, "This is a
little overdetermined, even for you, Sybilla. Something is wrong, I
take it. Nobody visits me unless something is wrong."
The Dowager didn't prevaricate. "A little. It concerns Dandy."
The thin lips compressed themselves. "Of course. What stupidity has he committed 
now?"
Sybilla said, "Any-stupidity he has committed, he did for your sake. You've been 
a very hard mistress to serve, Catherine."
"The boy needs hardness," said the old woman. Her breathing had quickened. 
"Toughness. Other people run estates and make a success of them-get on at Court-
become popular-bring home heiresses. My other son-"
"Dandy did his best for you," said the Dowager. "That's what I have to tell you. 
He felt he could never succeed in-orthodox-ways, so he tried some which were 
outside the law. Too far outside."
"He's in trouble?"
"Serious trouble. If he's caught."
"You came to warn him. Is that it?"
"Yes," said Sybilla. "That's it."
There was a long pause. Then, with an effort, the invalid pulled herself up in 
bed and spoke in her normal voice. "Well!" she snapped. "I suppose he'd better 
get out of the country. Tell him to come here and I'll give him money. And he'd 
better not show his face here again until it's safe." She did not ask what he 
had done.
Sybilla stretched out her two fine hands and took the small, limp, puffed one in 
them. "He has money. He has gone," she said. "There was no time to see you. He 
sent you his love."
The small hand lay inert in hers; the black eyes were without visible emotion. 
"Inept!" said Dame Catherine. "Disorganized, as usual. Good riddance. Now 
perhaps I can get a good paid factor to make the place profitable."
Sybilla released her hand and rose. "I'm sure you will. You'll enjoy arranging 
it. Now, here's the litter and your maid to help them move you. Slowly and 
carefully . . . and you'll do very well."
Lady Hunter made no protest at all as, wrapping her in her own soft blankets, 
they transferred her gently from bed to litter, and laid pillows beneath her 
head. With a manservant carrying each end the invalid moved for the first time 
in years across the blue tiles of her bedroom and toward the open door. As they 
carried her, the sun


caught the shimmering cap, the jewels and the bright black eyes and flashed for 
a moment, before the door closed behind her, on the tears lying silently in the 
bitter troughs and seams of her face.

* * *



At Midculter, Mariotta and Richard heard the story in silence. As Sybilla ended, 
her son drew a long breath and said, "The charter chest. Is it really here?"
"Yes," said the Dowager. There were circles under her eyes and her back, 
although she held it straight, was tired and aching. "Jolinnie Bulb got it for 
me. It has all the papers on Sir Andrew's transactions with Carlisle."
Richard's eyes met hers. "What are you going to do with them?"
"That is for you and Mariotta to decide. You are the person most injured by him. 
It's only fair you should take what redress you can."
"I don't want revenge," said Richard shortly. "I only want to forget about it."
"You don't want to publish them?"
"No. Only the paper that affects Francis."
"Mariotta?"
The girl's eyes were fixed on Richard. "Oh, no. No. It's as much my fault as 
his."
"Rubbish, child," said Sybilla. "But I'm glad, all the same. He's not worth it. 
We'll keep them as surety for his good conduct abroad, and I hope we never hear 
of him again."
Richard suddenly dropped beside his mother and tilted her chin. "I don't think 
you've told us everything. You had no right to attempt a thing like that on your 
own."
"Attempt!" said Sybilla indignantly. "It was a tour de force!" They smiled at 
one another, and then the Dowager's expression changed. "Only five days!" 
exclaimed his mother. "How could I be hard on her?"

* * *



Only five days. Will Scott, sitting bleakly in his father's empty lodging, could 
think of nothing more to do. How could he rescue Lymond, even if he were well? 
Even if he were rescued, how could he force him again into this death within 
life?


Four days. Sybilla, Mariotta and Richard moved their household to Edinburgh, and 
a surprising number of their friends came visiting, with an echo of Lady 
Hunter's tart "good riddance" on their lips.
Three days, and the Lord Justice General issued an order and let loose a 
thunderbolt. On the instructions of the Crown, he desired the prisoner, if his 
state permitted, to appear for questioning before a Judicial Committee of 
Parliament on the day before his trial.
Regardless of the tenor of their previous meeting, the boy Scott burst in on 
Lord Culter with the news. The brisk red hair was wild.
"It isn't legal!" said Scott. "They can't have an Assize without a jury, and it 
isn't a meeting of the Estates. They can't condemn him without a technical 
court: they can't!"
"They won't," said Richard briefly. "They won't pass sentence, but they'll 
examine, and make up their minds, and force the result through Parliament the 
day after. You ought to be able to guess why. Lymond knows too much. He could 
shatter half the Government at a public hearing."
Scott brightened. "He should insist on it. Either they let him off, or else-" At 
the expression on Culter's face he broke off. "No."
"No, indeed," said Richard. "I really can't think of any surer way of signing 
his own death warrant. . . . And does it matter, anyway? They'll be out of their 
minds if they don't conDemn him."


2.	The Queen Moves to Her Beginning

Rumour of the hurried Assize had reached the streets by midday, and by two 
o'clock the Lawnmarket from the Butter Tron to St. Giles was thick with people.
By midafternoon, a further rumour spread that the prisoner, taken out through 
the Castle postern, was aiready in the Tolbooth. As this became known there wa3 
a good deal of shouting, and someone with no religious intent started up the 
109th Psalm: the grave words, used ceremonially at a degradation for treason, 
yammered on the wind up to St. Giles' sunny crown:
"Deus laudem meam ne tacueris.
Sybilla at her window in the High Street heard it and rattled on, without 
pausing, with what she was saying to Janet Buccleuch.
Inside the Tolbooth, the sun piped in through the coloured glass of the windows. 
The Assize was preparing, in a narrow room above



the hail where Parliament .would sit tomorrow. Twelve Assessors, drawn from each 
of the Three Estates and embracing the President and half the Court of Sessions, 
sat on three sides of a long board at one end. In the centre presided the noble 
and patent lord Archibald, Earl of Argyll, Lord Justice-General; the Campbell 
arms on his chair and the Royal arms above it.
On either side of the room, the sun striped red and blue and green the papers 
littering the desks of the Clerks: short Crawford and big Foulis and Lauder of 
St. Germains, Lord Advocate to the Queen's Grace and member of the Governor's 
Council, with his long blue chin and shrewd eyes and interminable black-hosed 
legs folded beneath his chair with the blunt-knuckled inconsequence of a roe 
deer.
The Lord Advocate had made a wager before starting with Jamie Foulis on whether 
Argyll was still on speaking terms with the President. He had won, and was 
watching the golden louis Jamie had thrown him spinning like a sequin against 
the black rafters when the Justiciar cleared his throat, making him take his eye 
off the coin so that it dropped unseen into the straw on the floor.
Lauder, catching the Clerk-Register's ecstatic grin across the room, snorted 
aloud and assumed his legal face. He was, although he gave little sign of it, 
one of the astutest lawyers in Scotland.
Gathering," Argyll was saying, skipping briefly and almost unintelligibly 
through the routine, "at the instance of Parliament .
delated and defamed for . . imprison his body and try and seek out the verity of 
the matter by examinations and inquisitions before the Justice . . . report to 
the Lords Commissioners of Parliament on this and on the indictment for 
subsequent crimes as follows . .
Henry Lauder scratched his head, running his eye over the gaily dressed twelve. 
Argyll. Glencairn and George Douglas, both notorious for their dealings with the 
English. Buccleuch. Herries, or John Maxwell as he used to be. Gladstanes the 
judge and Keith, the Earl Marischal, of the same faction as Douglas and 
Glencairn. A couple of Abbots; Methven, Queen Margaret's withered widower; 
Marjoribanks; Hugo Rig and the President of the Court of Session, Bishop Reid of 
Orkney with his deaf ear.
Lauder wondered if anyone had hinted to the prisoner about that deaf ear. It was 
responsible for more executions, whippings and tongue borings than even its 
owner realized. The junior clerks, usher, macers and witnesses filled the rest 
of the room: they were going to


need some air soon. He had taken the precaution of wearing his thinnest jerkin 
under his robes.
Lord Culter . . . the Scott boy . the Master of Ersldne, without his father. 
That should be interesting: it was already interesting. One or two unknown 
faces, and some at the back he couldn't see. He ran a bony finger over his chin 
and felt his usual rueful irritation that the hair which surged so cheerfully on 
his face should colonize his crown so feebly.
There was a hum of voices and a shuffle of feet: the initial procedure was over. 
They had put a chair in the centre of the floor for the panel: he remembered 
hearing that the fellow had been shot. Francis Crawford of Lymond, Master of 
Culter. They had called him. The name reverberated through the rafters: Lymond
Lymond . . . Master . . Master. The boy Scott jumped and the brother, Culter, 
moved also. The rest simply looked stoic.
Everybody stared at the door. Two guards came in, and someone fair, of a vague 
distinction who walked steadily through the benches to the clear space in the 
middle, declined the chair and turned to face the Tribunal.
And this was a surprise. Unobtrusive, beautiful clothes; fine hands; a burnished 
head with a long, firm mouth and heavy blue eyes, spaciously set. He had been 
ill all right: the signs were all there. But his face was beautifully 
controlled, giving nothing away.
The guards withdrew. Orkney cupped his left ear in his hand and then took it 
away again. The answers to Argyll's questions were professionally pitched; 
clear, pleasant and effortlessly audible.
Henry Lauder, Prosecutor for the Crown, guardian and administrator for all its 
people of the laws which secure their tranquillity and welfare, sat back in his 
seat and gave an urilegal twitch of sheer pleasure. He was, he felt, going to 
enjoy his day.


* * *



"This is not a trial," Argyll had announced. "This is a preliminary examination 
conducted by us through Mr. Lauder, to lessen the burden on tomorrow's meeting 
of the Estates. A number of questions will be put to you, and your replies will 
be noted. You will be given every chance to put your point of view, and a report 
based on these proceedings will be drawn up and placed before Parliament


In other words, Parliament is busy with weightier matters than treason. Beware, 
for you are being judged.
And so, as a result of these productions," the Lord Advocate was saying, swaying 
gently to and fro on his heels, "the above charges are dismissed. The Crown does 
not accuse you of the attempted murder of your brother, Richard Lord Culter, or 
of wilful and malicious fire-raising, robbery and attempted murder at your own 
home of Mideulter, or"-he put out a bony finger and moved a paper in front of 
him-"or of the abduction of your brother's wife and the slaughter of her child. 
These charges, as I have said, are not being pursued."
Henry Lauder broke off, took away the spectacles resting on the bridge of his 
nose and said, "You don't look very pleased about it. Do you understand what I 
am saying?"
"I was considering its legal implications," said Crawford of Lymond, without 
raising his eyes.
The Lord Advocate sensed the grin on Foulis's face while schooling his own. Of 
course, he had no right to recapitulate, but he didn't expect to be told so.
He said, watching the prisoner under his lids, "I am glad you are following us. 
I am aware that you have not been in good health since a misunderstanding with 
your . . . force in June. We have no wish to unman you. It is, I think, unique 
in our time to encounter a plea of innocence against such a formidable list of 
charges." He glanced up, getting no response.
Argyll said, "It's after two, Lauder. Let's get rid of the new charges first. 
Dealings with Wharton." He addressed the prisoner direct. "You're accused of 
consistently giving help and selling information to Lord Wharton, the English 
Warden. Notably . . . When, Lauder?"
Lauder said agreeably, "We are informed that you were a member of Lord Wharton's 
force for a period in 1545, and that while there you acted under his orders in a 
number of raids and other activities directly detrimental to Scotland. Have you 
any answer?"
The sure voice said laconically, "Yes: but no proof. I offered my services to 
Lord Wharton over a period of four months and won his confidence by taking part 
in three small raids. On the fourth, major raid I misled him so that the English 
force was seriously damaged. I left him the same night."



"I am sure you were wise. As an experienced soldier and tactician the throwing 
away of a troop-even a deliberate throwing away- must have been an ordeal for 
you. A
"Not at all," said the prisoner briefly. "I had never commanded a force before.
"Ah!" said Harry Lauder, who was perfectly aware of that fact.
"-But I've studied geography and I know my chess."
"Indeed." There was a rustle of amusement. "Excellent qualifications in 
themselves, but . .
Lymond said mildly, "The one shows you where to go, and the other what to do 
when you get there. A man so fortified would be unique in Scottish arms, don't 
you think?"
"Since, as you say, you have no proof," said Lauder, "we must leave it to 
Parliament to decide how far your overthrow was deliberate and how much of your 
motive was selfless, against the tenor of your general character and behaviour. 
You are further charged," said Lauder mildly, "with conspiring to lay misleading 
information about the intentions of the English army during the western invasion 
of September last year; of attacking a Scottish force under Lord Culter and the 
Master of Erskine, and of taking from their possession an English messenger 
bearing a valuable dispatch."
He smiled up at the beams. "Doubtless the-misunderstanding- of 1545 between 
yourself and Lord Wharton had by that time cleared up, that you took such pains 
to help his invasion, Mr. Crawford?"
"Until the present moment, my lord, there was no misunderstanding over what 
happened in 1545. Lord Wharton had placed the sum of a thousand crowns on my 
head."
"And yet you passed freely enough in and out of England, we hear. You offered to 
spy for him if he appeared to reject you?"

"What fee did you receive from him for the services you did render?"
"After 1545 I received no voluntary payment from Lord Wharton." The Bishop, 
leaning forward, missed the significant word. He tapped the copy of the 
indictment before him. "That, Mr. Crawford, is untrue. According to several 
witnesses, you agreed to a suggestion by your brother that Lord Wharton was 
paying you."
"I beg Your Grace's pardon. What I said, more precisely, is that



my money came from Lord Wharton," said the Master coolly. "It did. I had just 
extracted it by force. Mr. Scott will perhaps confirm it if you wish."
Scott was already on his feet, but Lauder conceded the point without calling on 
him. "Very well. I am prepared to accept the fact that a personal enmity had 
been established between yourself and Lord Wharton for reasons we shall not 
specify. You were not however freeing his messenger from purely humanitarian 
reasons?"
"Not precisely. He was a very silly man," said the Master reminiscently. "I 
thought perhaps he would irritate the English less than he irritated me."
"And for that profound reason you engineered a vicious attack on your brother's 
force, from which he was only saved by Mr. Erskine?"
For the first time Lymond was momentarily silent. Then he said, "I was not on 
good terms with my brother. To such an extent that he would disbelieve 
automatically any statement which came from me."
"We are all familiar with the sensation," said Lauder blandly. "Go on."
Lymond said evenly, "I had earlier encountered the messenger and after reading 
his, dispatch put him on the right road to reach Lord Wharton. When my men found 
him in Lord Culter's grasp he had destroyed his message and my brother was 
naturally bent on preventing him from delivering it verbally."
"But you thought he should be permitted to do so?"
"Yes. Isn't it obvious? The message was from Lord Grey ordering Lennox and 
Wharton to retreat immediately."
The whirl of ensuing comment gave Lauder time to savour annoyance. Gladstanes 
said, "And did they? Does anyone know?" and someone called, "Aye, Jock: my boy 
was in it. He told me the English pulled out of Annan that night, though the 
previous evening they'd every look of long roots."
"In that case," said the Lord Advocate, caressing his blue chin lovingly, "why, 
I wonder, did Mr. Crawford tell his brother the English were coming north?"
"Because I knew he would assume the opposite and take his men south to attack," 
said the Master promptly. "Which he did. I believe they were chasing Wharton 
south of Annan all night."
The Lord Justice-General cut across the hubbub. "If we grant



your enmity toward Wharton-and I see you are prepared to cite witnesses for 
this-I still think you have to answer the charge of serving the English on the 
West March-whether Wharton, Lennox or another-for your own ends," he said. 
"There are witnesses, it says here, to your activities during the invasion of 
six months ago, when you opened the way of escape for Lord Lennox while 
appropriating for yourself some of the cattle used as decoys."
The face turned toward him was quite composed. "Most of the English who could 
still move had escaped by that time. The cattle were not for my own use: I 
returned them to their original owners, an English family to whom a number of 
Scots besides myself owe a great deal. For my part in the raid, Baron Herries 
can speak better than I can."
This time the noise took much longer to die down. When it did, John Maxwell 
leaned back in his carved chair and astonishingly raised his deep voice, the 
impersonal yellow eyes fixed on the panel.
"The plan for the cattle raid was Mr. Crawford's, made in a chance encounter 
when I was ignorant of his identity. I could take little active part. But he and 
his band drove all the livestock from the south side of the Border and succeeded 
in taking them to the right place at the appointed time in spite of very bad 
conditions: a quite remarkable feat of leadership. The Whartons detest him. The 
young one did his best to slit his throat a month or two later at Durisdeer."
He stopped speaking as suddenly as he had begun and restored the front legs of 
his chair to the ground, ignoring the commotion on either side. First blood, 
miraculously, to the panel.
Licensed by the moment's suspended excitement, Lymond stirred, and moving back a 
little, sat down in the chair provided for him. Lord Culter, watching, leaned 
back suddenly in his own seat and the Lord Advocate, who missed nothing, ran his 
eye quickly over the remaining charges and caught Argyll's attention.
The Chief Justice thumped on the table. "Quiet, gentlemen! We have a great deal 
to get through. . . Mr. Crawford, your explanations so far have been plausible 
if not entirely, as you will admit, supported by tangible proof. We now wish to 
examine your relationship with Lord Grey de Wilton, the Lord Lieutenant of the 
English army in the north. On the occasion of Lord Grey's invasion of Scotland 
on the twenty-first of April last, you were the author of a message, purporting 
to come from a member of your


Ii

band, which had the result of bringing the Laird of Buccleuch and Lord Culter, 
with their respective forces, in dangerous proximity to the English army?"
"It brought them, as I thought, within easy reach of Lord Grey himself," said 
Lymond briefly. "The approach of Lord Grey's troops at the same time was 
unfortunate and unforeseen."
"You claim," said the Lord Advocate, "that this was done purely to enable your 
brother, with whom you were not on good terms, and Sir Walter Scott, whose son 
you had corrupted-"
"Hud your tongue, ye sacco, socco, ferrum, dwellum, legalizing cricket-"
"-whose son you had enticed from the family hearth, purely to enable these two 
men to make an advantageous capture?"
"Not at all. I had a transaction of my own to complete. I was hoping to do so 
under cover of the ensuing melAe."
"A transaction with Lord Grey?"
"So far as his abhorrence of me would admit. I wished to meet a member of the 
English force, for private reasons. I had induced Lord Grey to arrange the 
meeting by promising him Will Scott."
"Thus Sir Walter, Lord Culter and Mr. Scott were all invited into this 
commodious trap by you at the instance of Lord Grey?" asked Lauder. "In that 
case you certainly hoped to bring them within easy reach of the Lord 
Lieutenant." Out of the corner of his eye he saw their lordships shuffling. He 
paid no attention, but kept his voice as unvarying as the panel's. The man was 
an actor all right. But so was Henry Lauder.
Crawford of Lymond said, "Mr. Scott was invited in such a fashion that he could 
not possibly arrive in time to be in danger. The message to Sir Walter and my 
brother was sent without Lord Grey's knowledge." Someone at the table shifted, 
and Lauder turned instantly. "Yes, Sir Wat?"
Buccleuch hesitated, looking across the hall at his son. "That's likely to be 
right," he said at length. "At least, they ran like the hammers when they saw us 
coming."
"And you followed, I gather, into the jaws of half the English army?"
Buccleuch said shrewdly, "What's your argument? D'you think that after the 
showing-up he got at Hume Castle, Grey would stand by and allow the man to 
invite half the Scottish army to Heriot? I'm damned sure Grey didn't know Culter 
and I were coming."


The Lord Advocate stretched his legs. "Are you, Sir Wat? To my mind, all the 
signs point to an astonishing trust by Lord Grey in the Master of Culter. He 
made an appoint?nent with him, we are told, without the support of more than a 
few armed men in a particularly deserted spot in the middle of enemy country. I 
fail to understand your reference to Hume Castle."
The Earl Marischal stirred. "Wat means the attack on Hume led by a Spaniard last 
October," he said. "They captured most of a supply train and wrecked half the 
fortifications. Mr. Crawford claims to have organized it."
"Oh? Dear me, I see this is another point on which Mr. Scott is anxious to 
speak," said Lauder. The redheaded boy, angrily on his feet, began, "I can vouch 
. . ." and was smiled down by the Queen's Advocate.
"Later, Mr. Scott. It makes very little difference to the argument, you know. 
Lord Grey's animosity, on Mr. Crawford's own showing, was mainly directed 
against yourself and not against the Master of Culter. We have already proved 
that the Lord Lieutenant trusted him sufficiently-or was certain enough of his 
loyalty-to allow him prior information of Lord Grey's own movements."
Scott was still on his feet. He said angrily, drowning Tom Erskine's voice, 
"Grey didn't even keep his part of the bargain. He didn't even bring up the man 
the Master expected to meet."
"Then there was a bargain," said Lauder placidly. "Mr. Erskine?" Tom said 
quietly, "I can vouch for Lord Grey's feelings toward the Master of Culter as 
demonstrated at Hexham. There was no question of his being on any but the worst 
terms with both Wharton and Grey."
Lauder looked unimpressed. "We have already proved, surely, that this is a man 
who sells himself to the highest bidder. If Lord Grey indeed failed to pay him 
in whatever coin had been agreed for his betrayal at Heriot, it was inevitable, 
surely, that such a man should bite the hand which failed to feed him. It does 
not alter the fact that the message inviting Sir Wat and Lord Culter to Heriot 
was sent off before his encounter with Lord Grey, and therefore before he could 
have known that Lord Grey was not keeping his side of the bargain.
"And remember," the Lord Advocate added agreeably, "that at that time both Lord 
Culter and Sir Walter were publicly committed to seize Mr. Crawford. You are 
being asked to believe that Crawford



would first antagonize Lord Grey by failing to produce the person of
Will Scott, and then risk immediate capture by his brother and
Buccleuch. It does not seem very reasonable to me; and I note that
Mr. Crawford himself has very little to say."
"I'm sorry," said Lymond. Passionless devil, thought Lauder. He isn't sorry. But 
then, neither am I. I'm trying to hang him, and he's trying to save his strength 
so that there won't have to be an adjournment before he's ready for it.
Lymond said, "I was carried away by the strange charm of your reasoning. The 
unhappy Lord Lieutenant seems to be credited with a fearful grudge against the 
Bucclcuch family. I thought perhaps you had found a dark plot to seize his wife 
and junior attachments as well."
The Queen's Advocate replied without looking up. "But we have been assured that 
Mr. Scott could not possibly have arrived in time to come to any harm. If he 
will forgive me, he was presumably merely the bait for his father."
"Non minime ex parte, Mr. Lauder. The boy would have been ten times simpler and 
ten times safer to capture as well as being a much more telling weapon. If we 
may separate the facts from the faculae we seem to have this.
"One, both before (at Hume) as I think I can prove, and after (at Hexham) as Mr. 
Erskine has proved, Lord Grey and I were enemies. Two, by failing to keep his 
part of the bargain at Heriot, Lord Grey had clearly no plans for collaborating 
with me in the future. Three, some of your prisoners, whose names I shall give 
you, will tell you that the English army had no orders to support Lord Grey in 
his supposed ambush, and that the dispatch of a troop was an afterthought due to 
their suspicions of me.
"Four, as Sir Wat has already stated, the men left by Lord Grey made no effort 
to capture him or my brother, but fled before them. Five, far from being caught 
between two fires, I had hoped my promised interview would enable me to 
reinstate myself with my brother and his friends, in which case I had nothing to 
fear from them. And lastly, Sir George Douglas, who was detained by Lord Grey 
during one of his embassies to England at that time, was present at Heriot, and 
if he will do so, can vouch for the fact that the only bait in the trap was 
myself."
Henry Lauder pushed a hand through his sparse hair. Open your mouth too far and 
someone will fill it with rubbish. He wondered


briefly what hold the man had on Sir George to risk citing him as a witness, and 
cynically applauded the tactics. Everyone knew Douglas played on both sides. By 
preserving his fictitious character Lymond had made it easy for him to co-
operate.
He did. After the briefest silence Sir George leaned back in his chair, ruby 
flashing, and said, "That is quite true. Mr. Crawford was actually tied up as a 
prisoner all the time he was with Lord Grey. Bowes, who led the ambush, appeared 
to be genuinely startled by Buccleuch's appearance and might well have been 
captured but for the arrival of other troops." He paused and added mildly, "I 
can also confirm the attack on Hume. Mr. Crawford is a fluent Spanish speaker 
and was identified by Lord Grey in my presence as the leader of the raid."
It was too risky to take him up on it. The Advocate to the Crown swallowed 
defeat gracefully. He bore no grudges: the exercise of his wits against a quick 
and able man was the finest excitement he knew. He said, "Well, Mr. Crawford: we 
must concede that you seem to have an answer for everything. It will be a 
pleasure to see what you make of the more serious charges on the list which of 
course we have still to deal with. In the meantime, I should like to hear about 
the matter of the Earl of Lennox."
This time the accusation was simple. In 1544, prior to the Eari's defection to 
England, the Master of Culter had been on the friendliest terms with him, had 
stayed with him at Dumbarton and thus shared, it was alleged, in his treason. 
What had Mr. Crawford to say?
Time, precious and proffigate, was wasting before their eyes.
The heat, girdered with tension, crept like wadding into the interstices of the 
brain and muffled the starving air. Lymond was sitting up and forward a little, 
elbows on the arms of his chair, with his hands clasped and his head bent. 
Richard, familiar with the small signs of fatigue, wondered how he managed to 
keep it out of his voice. He saw that Lauder was watching his brother narrowly.
In the clear, unemphatic voice he had used throughout, the Master said, "In 1542 
I became a prisoner in France, and from then until 1544 was employed on travaux 
forces in the French galleys. In March, 1543, I rowed in the ship which took the 
Earl of Lennox from France to Scotland, and was seen there by him. In September 
of that year I was also on the galley which conveyed gold and arms from France 
for the Queen Dowager. I escaped and applied for protection to Lennox, who I had 
reason to believe was preparing to defect from


his Scottish friends and would therefore receive me. As you know, he sold his 
loyalty to Henry of England in return for marriage with Margaret Douglas, and 
left Scotland for England in May of the following year, having appropriated for 
himself the gold delivered to his keeping from France.
"Between those dates I stayed with him as secretary and general amanuensis, 
leaving rather suddenly with a good deal of information and a good part of the 
gold. I returned some of it by devious ways to Edinburgh; the rest I used as 
best I could in the Queen's interests. I also established and armed my own force 
until by our services elsewhere in Europe we became more than self-supporting.
I am conscious, of course, that there is no proof of these events, except that I 
can in some cases give you the dates on which part of the French money was 
returned."
It was audacious, all right. The eyes of the room, like sucking fish, were 
flatly attached to him, building up eager pressures which slopped over as soon 
as he halted.
Buccleuch gave a yelp. "Lennox's money! Dod, he's never been known by man to 
pook a penny before now. I'd like to have seen the colour of him when he found 
out."
The Lord Advocate said, projecting his voice, "This troop you mention is of 
cours~ the subject of a civil crime action also raised against you on the 
grounds of robbery and extortion-"
"Protection," corrected the Master. "In these lawless times we private forces 
must help the State to ward its citizens where we can."
Lauder said dryly, "The forces in question seem to have mixed opinions on the 
subject; but that is by the way. Your motives throughout in your dealings with 
Lord Lennox were again, we are to take it, completely altruistic throughout?"
There was a faint smile in the experienced eyes. "Only to a human and limited 
extent. If I hadn't cultivated Lord Lennox's company I should be rowing up and 
down the Irish Sea yet, instead of being presently charmed by your society."
"I see," said Henry Lauder. "And by the same token: when you presented Lord Grey 
with a secret of some national importance about our shipping, you were merely 
ingratiating yourself with his lordship?"
Because all his attention was on Lymond, he missed George Douglas's faint 
movement. He had brought out, underhand, one of the vital issues, and his 
opponent was fully aware of it. Come along, my boy! said Mr. Lauder happily to 
himself. Fight rAe!


He did. This was not a matter of doubtful history, four years old; but a 
question of treason freshly committed and subject to minute examination. The 
Hexham episode was eviscerated.
The dispatch was being taken to Lord Grey by a courier called Acheson. I knew 
nothing of it until it was shown me on the way to Hexham."
"Mr. Erskine? You can corroborate that?-Come along. Did Mr. Crawford know 
nothing of the dispatch?"
''He .
"Will you speak up?"
"He denied it at first, but when we showed it to him-"
"Showed it to him? Where had you found it?"
"In his packroll."
"And did he continue to protest his ignorance even then? Well?"

"He admitted it?"
"I think it's unlikely he knew about it. He prevented the message from being 
delivered at great personal risk."
"Ah, yes," said Henry Lauder. "Ah, yes," and stretched himself like a long, 
disjointed cat. "We've all heard a great deal about the dramatic scenes at 
Hexham. How our friend escaped from his brother's thrashing; how he rejoined his 
ally Mr. Acheson and had the misfortune to be spurned by the English friends he 
was trying hard to conciliate. So, using a woman as his shield-it has a familiar 
ring, hasn't it?-he chose the discreeter part; a positive act which would bring 
him at last under the cloak of the Scottish side at least. He shot the courier 
in full view of Mr. Erskine and relied on Mr. Erskine's notoriously kind heart 
to extract him from the muddle. Unfortunately, he himself was attacked in the 
process-undoubtedly not part of the plan."
Erskine said forcibly, "He knew when he made the shot that he hadn't a chance."
"He knew that if he didn't shoot, he hadn't got a chance either," said the 
Queen's Advocate placidly.
There was a brief silence. Bishop Reid said, "Well, Mr. Crawford?"
Good. He was going to attempt it. Lymond said briefly, "If I hadn't used the 
protection of an English lady, as Mr. Lauder so kindly mentions, the secret of 
the ships' departure would be a secret




no longer. I haven't any evidence that Acheson's message was unknown to me. I 
can only refer you to some probabilities."
Argyll said sharply, "Go on!"
Lymond raised his eyes.
"Am I not an unlikely messenger? To anyone in English pay in Scotland I should 
be known as an enemy of Lord Grey and Lord Wharton and of the Earl of Lennox; 
and also the object of a
well-publicized pursuit by my brother. And even if I were approached, would I 
risk it for a moment, my relationship with these three men being what it was?
"But the man Acheson was a carrier of dispatches by trade, and an unscrupulous 
one. We know from what Mr. Erskine has said that Mr. Acheson knew the contents 
of this message; knew that it was a matter of delivering more than two perfectly 
legitimate messages from Sir George.
"How did he know? There was no provision originally for Acheson to have a 
companion. The safe-conduct was widened by Sir George himself to admit me, in 
order to promote an exchange of prisoners. There is no question, naturally, of 
accusing Sir George of complicity in treason, therefore you have to believe 
either that, being provided with this innocent means of getting myself safely to 
England, I confided my dreadful secret to this perfect stranger; or that when I 
joined him Acheson was already carrying the dispatch, in which case he was 
unlikely, surely, to talk about it to me."
Plausible again. The Lord Advocate saw the eyebrows raised around the table and 
heard the muttered exchanges.
Reid leaned forward. "What then was the object of going to England? Oh: I 
recall. The Stewart girl."
It was what Lauder was waiting for. He hurled his pen from him so far that it 
cracked on the oak, and flung up an arm like a semaphore to flatten his hair.
"So-o, Mr. Crawford. Your sole reason for going to England, your lonely and 
chivalrous reason for giving yourself up, for flinging yourself on the mercy of 
these gentlemen who, as you have so laboriously proved, wished nothing better 
than to see you dead, was to arrange that the Lady Christian Stewart might go 
free?"
"Yes."
At last. Now, by God, you're hating it, thought Lauder. And I'm going to thrash 
you until you hate me as well. And then, my lad, you're going to lose that cool 
temper and the Bishop had better



look out. "Yes," he repeated aloud. "This is the girl, young, blind, wealthy, in 
close touch with the Court, whom you encouraged to obtain secret information for 
you-"
"That is untrue."
"-while posing as a mysterious and illicit lover?"
"Both these accusations are untrue. Confine your attacks to me, Mr. Lauder." The 
controlled voice clashed with Buccleuch's:
"Dammit, we can't have that, Lauder. The girl was no light o' love." The Lord 
Advocate said sombrely, "If you will listen, Sir Wat,
you will hear that I am implying the reverse. I am saying that this was an 
honest, gentle and virtuous girl, a young girl of open and innocent years, 
betrothed to a fine man, who fell into the power of a practiced and powerful 
seducer, appearing to her in a guise both insinuating and irresistibly 
romantic."
Buccleuch growled. "She knew who he was. I don't see what bearing this has on 
the thing."
"She claimed to know, finally, when she thought it would save him. Did you 
reveal your identity to her when you met, Mr. Crawford?"
"No," said Lymond, and his hands closed.
"Why not?"
There was a pause. "It relieved her of what I felt to be . . . too cruel a 
quandary. I didn't expect to see her again."
"No quandary for a girl as upright as we know this one was, surely. Or do you 
mean she was already in love with you?"
"I mean nothing of the sort. We had been childhood neighbours, and she was a-
kindly person."
"I see. And having all these scruples, no doubt you went out of your way to 
avoid further meetings. Or did you see her again?" added Lauder suddenly.
There was another pause. Then the Master said evenly, "Several times. Shall we 
save some tedious questions and answers?-After the first and second, the 
meetings were not unavoidable. I allowed her to help me with my private affairs 
although I knew that by doing so I should make her virtue suspect, at least, if 
it became known. It was through pursuing my affairs that she was captured at 
Dalkeith. It was directly because of that that she came into the power of the 
Countess of Lennox. These were unprincipled and unpardonable acts, and you can't 
possibly blame me as much as I blame myself.


"But in all of them, Lady Christian was the innocent and deceived party. She did 
nothing dishonest, even in her efforts to help me; and, 22 unpleasing as it may 
seem to Mr. Lauder's active imagination, there was nothing but friendship 
between us. Under the circumstances no doubt you will find it ludicrous that I 
should cast myself into Lord Grey's lap simply to free her; but that was what I 
did."
The Lord Advocate might have been annoyed at having his effects spoiled, but he 
gave not the slightest sign. "It certainly has its ~ suspicious side. 
Particularly when linked with the fact that Lady Christian died suddenly and 
violently immediately after you traced I her to England."
Erskine's voice said harshly, "Wait a moment. Lady Christian died from a fail 
from her horse."
Lauder said simply, "How do you know?"
There was real anger in Erskine's brusque voice. "I knew Chris better than any 
of you-I was to have married her-and if we weren't in a court of law I would 
shove down your damned throat the implication you've just been making. I saw 
Crawford of Lymond immediately after her death and heard what he said and saw 
how he acted. If I'd thought for a moment that he'd killed her, I wouldn't have 
let Culter have the pleasure of fighting him."
The Lord Advocate let this poignantly confident rebuttal wreak its own doom; and 
then said gently, "What then are you suggesting? That Mr. Crawford went to her 
rescue after all in a fit of erratic gallantry?" and was much surprised to hear 
Sir George Douglas's smooth voice.
"Suppose, since they worry you, we dismiss the romantic gestures in favour of 
another fact? Mr. Crawford had been disappointed in his efforts to exculpate 
himself, as he thought, from the older crimes we have not yet discussed: he had 
just heard from me that the man who might do so was dead. He had already 
disbanded his force in expectation of a satisfactory meeting with this man and 
had suffered the considerable shock of being handed over to us by his own 
prot~g& He might well, under the circumstances, have decided on a course of 
despair such as this."
The Lord Advocate bowed without the least shade of irony. "A point well made. 
Particularly as it puts before us another fact. Mr. Crawford, it appears, had 
just been cheated of his hopes of reinstating himself in our midst-by whatever 
means-as an honest, loyal and worthy servant of the Crown.




"What then remained, one might ask, but to fly to England; to get rid of this 
awkward girl, who was in England and who knew so much of his activities, and at 
the same time to present information which he might hope at least would buy him 
a little leniency from Lord Grey? If not, how was he worse off?" Lauder let his 
gaze rove over the twelve diverse faces, shining with warmth and concentration; 
shrewd; passive; perceptive; wary.
"You are not dealing with a simple man. The accusations against him are 
astonishing in their variety. We have dealt with all but the most serious, and 
it would take a bold man to say 'This is true' and 'This is untrue.' His past 
connections with Lord Wharton were deliberate and innocent, he claims. There is 
no proof either way. His actions at Annan may have sprung from well-intentioned, 
if obscure motives. That again we shall never know.
"Whether for his own benefit or not, he appears to have given a certain amount 
of aid to the Crown during the famous cattle raid on the western march. In the 
same way he rendered us all a service at Hume-this time entirely for his own 
benefit. At Heriot he played a dangerous game-again for his own ends-in which 
his own brother and the Buccleuch family were pawns though it appears, generous 
ones, in the way they have spoken for him. His connection with the Earl of 
Lennox again is a matter unproven either way-guilty or innocent-but again 
material reward enters the picture, and it seems likely that what was done was 
done for this reason.
"We are left with Hexham, and what happened immediately before. So complex is 
the picture this time, so various the possibilities, that we can isolate the 
truth, it seems to me, in one way only.
"To know what was in his brain as he drew back that bow at Hex-ham we must look 
at the record of his actions i~ the past for his real ambitions, his real mind 
on issues moral and ethical and all those intangible things which dictate 
whether a man conducts his body for the profit of his body, or for the greater 
renown and comfort of his country, or in the service of his God.
"We have not found out these things this afternoon; and we shall not find them 
in those things I have mentioned. For this we must go further back, to the 
dreadful and deadly crimes of which Francis Crawford was accused six years ago, 
and for which he has still to answer. These are the matters I am proposing to 
bring before you now."
A macer, hurrying from Lord Culter's side, bent and said some-



thing to Argyll. The Justiciar's voice said, "What? Oh. . . . Certainly. No 
purpose in endangering-" And wriggling back his sleeves, the Earl whacked the 
table. "Adjournment for an hour. Break off meantime, Mr. Lauder."
The Lord Advocate followed his eyes, then turned back, bowed and sat down as Sir 
James Foulis appeared at his elbow. "The old fool: it's been coming for half an 
hour. Hasn't he got eyes?" said Lauder comfortably. Through the curtain of 
officials and guards he could see that Lymond had lowered his head on crossed 
arms, exposing nothing but the nape of his neck and the admirable lace of his 
shirt.
The room was clangorous with conversation. Most of them, Committee and 
witnesses, were on their feet with a flopping and Un-puckering of robes, a 
stretching and a crackling of paper. They gathered in half-prepared knots, 
mesmerized still by the rigours and tensions of the day, and unwilling to leave 
while the play was not yet done.
After less than two minutes Lymond gripped the arms of his chair, and then rose. 
The moment's collapse, Lauder guessed, had been a bitter humiliation: he had not 
yet regained any colour. Nevertheless he made a deep and impeccable bow to 
Argyll and walked out through the door without pausing.
"That," said Henry Lauder, closing his spectacles and throwing his pen in the 
wastepaper basket, "is a brain. If I were ten years younger and a lassie, I'd 
woo him myself."
Foulis of Colinton caught Oxengang's eye and grinned; to Lauder he said, "Well, 
he timed that little episode neatly enough."
"He timed it?" The Lord Advocate, peeling off his soaking robe, was making for 
the cool air outside. "He timed it? Don't be a bloody fool, Jamie."

Will Scott was among the last to move. As he made to get up, a heavy hand cuffed 
his head and he looked around and up to see his father.
"Are your teeth sewn up?" demanded Buccleuch. "You've been busy enough 
chattering all around Edinburgh up till now."
Will said resentfully, "Lauder stopped me twice, but he won't again. I'll damn 
well . .
"Dod, d'ye need a dub and whistle? Bawl it out, man, and he canna stop ye." He 
grinned reminiscently. "Your man has George


Douglas's measure, anyway. There's no proof one way, but thanks to Douglas 
there's no proof the other, either."
Scott said grimly, "Does it matter? They'll have him nailed down with the 
original indictment. All the evidence is on their side this time."
Buccleuch grunted, observing his son's expression. "I've seen Henry Lauder up to 
the oxters in evidence and still lose a case," he said mendaciously. "I'm off to 
the house for a dish of eggs. If you're staying with Culter, find out about that 
little mare of his. If I get some siller for this fellow Palmer I'll think about 
buying her after all."
Scott had already nodded and moved away when the sense of this penetrated. 
"Palmer?"
Buccleuch grinned. "High and mighty Sir Thomas Palmer, the engineer. Did ye not 
know? I took him after the raid last month."
"Where is he?"
"In the Castle with the rest of them. A wild lot, I'm told. Why?"
"Nothing," said Scott, and made for the street so fast that he jammed himself in 
the doorway with his sword.

* * *


Big Tommy Palmer, former captain of the Old Man at Boulogne, former knight-
porter of Calais, former overseer of petty customs, former gentleman-usher and 
popular companion of King Henry VIII, had been a prisoner of war once before, in 
France, and although financially unembarrassed by this second mishap was 
spiritually much discomfited and in need of cheering up.
At his request, he and a dozen of his own men had been put together in one 
medium-sized room in the Castle. They were all men of good standing and of 
reasonable value in cash, so the room was pleasant, with carved oak panelling, 
slightly chipped; a small-paned window looking sheer down the Castle rock into 
the loch, and a low, thick door with an adequate guard outside it.
Will Scott found it less easy than he had expected to get in. He finally managed 
it only with the help of Tom Erskine, and then on the pretext of discussing with 
Palmer his father's plans for his ransom.
Since in fact he had nothing to discuss, the business aspect of his talk with 
Sir Thomas came to an early end, and Tom Erskine moved to go. But captivity by 
this time was boring Palmer; he was willing to go on talking, and Scott was in 
no hurry to leave.



They exchanged politely some of the current gossip of both courts and touched 
chastely and with mutual interest on the characters of some of the less powerful 
but more public figures in each. One or two of Palmer's companions joined in.
Erskine, aware that it was nearly time to make for the Tolbooth and taking only 
a detached interest in the talk, found the engineer rather likable: a man in his 
late fifties with grey beard and bright curling hair. Between hair and moustache 
the skin was red-brown with the sun; his much-wired front tooth sparkled like a 
trout rising in still water when he laughed, which was often.
Tom was so busy watching Palmer that he missed Scott's move to open his purse. 
When they brought a small table and put it between the two men, Erskine was 
surprised. He was more surprised to see Palmer gaze on it as a mother elephant 
on the prize of some interminable gestation.
On the table lay a small pack of playing cards. "Hold me hand," said Tommy 
Palmer. "If you'd offered me the throne of China and Helen of Troy thrown in, 
I'd still choose the tarots. You'll not miss them?"
"Not at all. Glad to leave them," said Scott politely. And to Erskine's 
astonishment he added, "I'll start you off with a game, if you like," and sat 
down to hearty expressions of Palmer's glee. Erskine tapped the boy on the arm. 
"The time, Scott. We ought to be going."
The carroty head turned vaguely. "There's time for one game, surely. You go on 
if you want to. I'll follow." He was already shuffling the cards. Tom eyed him 
sharply; and then, twitching up a chair, sat astride it, watching the play.
He had seen these tarots several times in Scott's possession since he had come 
to Edinburgh. They were gruesome, Gothic, and graced with a kind of lithless 
malevolence all their own. The four suits were commonplace enough: the artist 
had reserved his fantastic brushes for the figured cards. The Bateleur, the 
Empress, the Pope, l'Amoureux and le Pendu, Death and Fortitude, the Traitor, 
the Last Judgment itself, all shared a grotesque camaraderie of the paintpot.
He admired the set. He enjoyed tarocco himself, but he was uneasily aware that 
there was not, in fact, time for a game. He said again, "Listen, Scott"; but the 
cards were already dealt and Will was hesitating over his discard. Erskine gave 
up, and resigned himself to waiting.


Scott played not one, but two games. He lost them both, but so narrowly that it 
was not until the last trick of the outplay that Palmer's evident brain and 
experience gave him the day. Both games were played in an atmosphere of jocular 
excitement, and Erskine gathered that to have opposed Palmer at all was 
something unusual; and to have run him so close something unique.
At the end of the second game, Palmer leaned back with a kind of anguished roar. 
"Damn it, I don't know when I've had two better games. Why the pest must you go? 
I can't settle: you can't settle: it isn't fair to the game."
Scott got up and stretched himself, grinning. "You've got troubles enough. You 
don't want to risk being beaten by me."
"Beaten!" It was a chorus. Someone said, "Hey, my boy. You're speaking of the 
best card player in England."
"I still say beaten," said Scott.
There was an unholy light in Thomas Palmer's eye. "Is that a challenge?"
"Not particularly," said Scott. "Sine lucro friget ludus is a family motto. Not 
much point in playing for love."
"Hell, we can do better than that," said Palmer. Their packs were stuffed into 
an armory let into the panelling: he tossed out parcels until he came to the one 
he wanted. Then he had another look and, bringing out a second roll, flung them 
both at Scott's feet.
"A change of good clothes there, and some money and a silver cup and a good pair 
of boots. And there's more still in the other: it's another man's stuff that 
belongs to me now. Will that do for a start?"
Scott drew out his own heavy purse and tossed it once in the air. "I'm sure it 
will; but we're a gey practical nation. Will you open them both so that we can 
see?"
Palmer, unoffended, glinted the butter-tooth in his direction, and slit open the 
packs with Will's knife. In his own the contents were exactly as he had said. 
The other roll was less well-kept: the clothes were soiled and there was no 
money at all. Scott bent and turned over a long, narrow rectangle of folded 
papers, sealed with red wax. "What's this? Deeds of ownership?"
Palmer, shuffling the tarots, glanced at it and shrugged. "Sam didn't own a 
rabbit, poor devil. Perhaps a letter to his lady friend."
Scott turned it over. There was an inscription on the other side, and he held it 
so that Erskine also could read. The neat writing said, Haddington, June, 1548. 
Statement. And underneath in a different



writing, presumably Wilford's: Samuel Harvey. Put with things for P. That was as 
far as they got before it was whipped from Scott's
fingers.
"Interested?" asked Palmer in the same good-tempered voice. "I thought there was 
something fishy in the air. Perhaps I'd better keep this."
For a moment, Erskine thought that Scott would attack the big man. Instead he 
turned and, opening his purse, upended it on the table by the cards. The crowns 
rolled and clanked among the little nightmarish drawings and rose in a winking, 
lunar pile. "I could easily get it by calling the guard," said Will. "But I'll 
buy it from you instead."
Palmer grinned. "I don't want to sell."
The freckles marched cinnamonlike over Scott's pale face. "Name your price."
Sir Thomas Palmer got up, the folded papers still in his hands. At the fireplace 
he turned, and still surveying them both quite pleasantly, broke the seal. 
"Perhaps I should see first what all the fuss is about. After all, he was my 
cousin, you know."
They waited as the pages flicked over. He went through them all, folded the 
papers and handed them with an inaudible remark to the Englishman, Frank, who 
was nearest. Then he returned to the table. "You want these papers?"
"Yes," said Scott shortly. "It's a matter of life and death."
"Jesus. Whose life? A Scotsman's?"
Yes."
Palmer grinned more widely. "That's all right: I'm not the vindictive sort. Sine 
lucro friget ludus, eh? You want this, you say. Then play me for it."
"I'm offering you any price you ask," said Scott.
"I don't want money."
"Then I'll give you what you do want. Your freedom. Your immediate release, Sir 
Thomas, in exchange for these papers."
Palmer sat down with a thump, still grinning. "I like Edinburgh. I like the 
Castle. I like the company. I can get my freedom any time, for a little cash, 
and a damned bore it is, with Willie Grey in both ears and the Protector under 
my hat. Give me the man who can stretch me at tarocco and you can keep Berwick 
~and every bumbling Northerner in it."
Scott sat down himself rather suddenly. "For God's sake, I'll play



cards with you all night, if that's all you want. I'll play every day for a 
month without the sniff of a win. But not to gamble on this kind of stake. What 
do you take me for?"
The big man was shuffling the cards. "A member of a practical nation. I don't 
want bad play and a sure win: I get enough of it. I don't want a game that's a 
duty or an imposition or a debt or any other damned, dreary penance. I don't 
like it and the tarots don't like it. Look at themi" With a flip of his thick 
fingers he sent the cards reeling across the polished wood, convulsed, mouthing 
and snarling. "Nobody's going to fob them off with paltry wagers of three louis 
a game. They want flesh, do the tarots."
Scott and Erskine were standing shoulder to shoulder. "Get the guard," said the 
boy without turning his head. "Quickly. Christian Stewart was killed for these 
papers."
Erskine didn't go for the guard: he took action. The dive he made for the 
fireplace was nearly quick enough, but not quite. By the time his outstretched 
hand had reached the man Frank, the papers were already curling in the smoke a 
foot above the little fire.
"Call the guard-or try that again-and Frank'll throw the whole thing in the 
fire," said Palmer agreeably. He settled comfortably in his chair. "God! I was 
bored. Come along, laddie. I've plenty of time. I'll play you tarocco, my boy, 
for all the money and every stitch each of us possesses in this room, and these 
papers go into the rest on my side last of all."
There was a short silence. Then Scott said, "Let me see the papers."

The boy bit his lip, staring at Palmer's cheerful face. "It might take all 
night."
The tooth winked and wagged. "It might take a good deal longer. Are you in a 
hurry?"-and continued to wink as Scott argued. At the end of it he picked up the 
cards and started to ruffle them through his big hands. "It's no concern of mine 
what you want them for. I've told you the conditions." He looked up. "Why're you 
worrying? You might win the lot in an hour."
Scott sat down. In silence he untied and pulled off his jerkin and in silence he 
pushed up his shirt sleeves and laid his hands flat on the table. "Very well," 
he said flatly. "For God's sake let's start."



The hour of recess had, .inevitably, nearly doubled before the Committee was 
harried together again; and even so, the interrogation had been under way for 
some time when Tom Erskine finally slid into his seat, passing on the way a face 
he knew: Mylne, the Queen's surgeon. But Lymond seemed perfectly composed in his 
chair: the abuses to his body were perhaps visible, but not those to his 
intellect, which showed fresh and sinewy still under the sharp and thickening 
barbs from Lauder. The Lord Advocate was beginning to concentrate his attack: 
the darts glanced in the silence and were returned, with unfailing felicity.
Erskine said in Lord Culter's ear, "What's happening?" and Richard replied 
without taking his eyes from the high table. "He's got Orkney on the raw, the 
fool. The nearer the Committee gets to Eloise, the harder he's hitting them. 
They don't like it, and it isn't doing him any good. . . . Where've you been?"
Erskine said uninformatively, "At the Castle," and glanced at the top table. 
Buecleuch's face was turned toward him and the black circle of the mouth shaped 
the words "Where's Will?"
Having no desire to answer that either, Tom stabbed a finger several times in 
the air due west, and as Sir Wat continued to look expressively at him, mouthed 
the word "Later" and turned overtly to the centre of the floor.
"You arrived in London," the Queen's Counsel was saying, "along with a thousand 
others taken prisoner in 1542 after the battle of Solway Moss. At that time, as 
we all know, the late Henry VIII of England had declared war on our King his 
nephew and was attempting to prove his title to Scotland by force. Unlike others 
of your own rank you were immediately given preferential treatment in being 
lodged in a private English house."
"After three days in the Tower. Not very preferential."
Lauder looked at his notes. "We have that point quite clear. All but yourself 
were noblemen of the first rank, and all those with whom you say you had contact 
are now unfortunately bearing witness in higher courts than these. The Earl of 
Glencairn died last year; Lord Maxwell two years ago; Lord fleming and Mr. 
Robert Erskine at Pinkiecleugh."
"The nation's subsequent failures in the field," said Lymond gently, "are my 
misfortune, not my fault. Sir George has already told you that I stayed at his 
brother's London house under no special concession.



The Bishop of Orkney cleared his throat. "And why, Mr. Crawford, did you not 
then return to Scotland ten days later as did the great majority of such boarded 
prisoners? Were your scruples such that even tongue in cheek you could not bring 
yourself to sign the necessary oath of allegiance to King Henry, as your 
compatriots did? Men of honour, it seems to me, must be prepared like them to 
sell that honour for their country's good. Why did you not sign?"
"I wasn't asked," said Lymond, and a fleeting regret slipped through the 
pleasant voice. "Only prelates and barons were thought to have sufficient tongue 
and sufficient cheek."
Richard swore. It was Lord Herries who saved the situation with a brusque and 
bass inquiry. "Since he's a younger son, there would be little point, surely, in 
asking Mr. Crawford to sign a bond to serve the King in Scotland?"
The Bishop said, breathing heavily, "I disagree. He was, in sort, his brother's 
heir. If he were innocent he would have contrived, surely, to return on some 
pretext."
"The thing reeks of ineptitude, doesn't it?" said Lymond. "If I were a spy, it 
was shockingly careless of the English to capture me in the first place. And if 
I were a spy, my first thought would have been to return to Scotland as fast as 
I could. According to the Bishop, my treason lay in not promising to work 
secretly in Scotland against the Queen. If that's treason then let's make an 
end. I admit it."
Lauder was undisturbed. "You made King Henry no promise to serve him?"

"You had in the past performed no service for him?"
"I had not."
The Lord Advocate looked mildly regretful. "And the presentation to Francis 
Crawford, Scottish gentleman, of the manor of Gardington, Bucks, was an 
elaborate ruse to make us believe you had done these things? King Henry must 
have thought you very important to us, Mr. Crawford. You did, I suppose, receive 
the deeds of this lordship and manor?"
"Yes. I did."
"And can you suggest why, if it was not in gratitude for favours received?"
"Europe's most Christian Bachelor and I had nothing in common," said Lymond. "He 
had a fancy to control my tongue. And also to restrain his niece."



"Ah, yes. The Lady Margaret Douglas, now the Countess of Lennox. Are we to take 
it that, seduced by your charms, the lady asked for Gardington as her dot?" 
George Douglas, he saw, was watching the prisoner like a predator.
"Not precisely. She is, shall we say, a person of violent but practical 
enthusiasms. She has already been imprisoned twice for endangering the 
succession, and one of her lovers, as you may recall, died in the Tower from a 
surfeit of Scottish heart and English briar. No. At a guess, she wanted . . . a 
new stimulus and a new experiment. And encouraged her uncle to leash me 
permanently by telling him what I had found out; and even perhaps some things I 
hadn't."
Methven's silly voice cut through the tactful silence. "And what had you found 
out?"
The Master's gaze neither looked at nor avoided Sir George. "Something of his 
immediate plans, which later became common knowledge. I had access to rooms 
which should normally have been closed to me, and found them out by chance."
"Bedrooms?" inquired the Queen's Counsel.
The veiled eyes lifted. "Not every legal document is framed in a bedroom, my 
lord." The Justice-Clerk laughed aloud.
"Well," said Henry Lauder. "You have an estate and a beautiful lady in prospect, 
and her wicked uncle allows you to enjoy neither. The gift of the estate has 
already made your fellow Scots suspicious; your return to Scotland is finally 
made impossible by spreading the news among your countrymen that you were 
responsible not only for the disaster of Solway Moss, but for a long career of 
previous spying and intrigue. . . . Why trouble with all this fearsome plotting, 
Mr. Crawford? If King Henry didn't like you, weren't there simpler and more 
obvious means of getting rid of you?"
Argyll, surprisingly, said, "I can see the point of some of it. His Majesty 
learned just after our prisoners reached London that our King had died and 
Scotland was accordingly under a regency, and he was immediately bent on winning 
over as many leading Scots families as possible to his interests. Hence all the 
prisoners being taken from the Tower to better lodgings, and the offer to let 
the most important go free if they signed an oath of allegiance to England. It 
wasn't the time for the sudden murder of a prisoner of war in his hands-even a 
less important one."
"Also," said Lymond, continuing the argument with an unbounded scholarly 
detachment, "he probably wanted to protect the


real purveyor of secrets. If Edinburgh was becoming suspicious, he was calling 
off the hunt by making me scapegoat. Then, having discredited me at home and 
with the prisoners still remaining in London, he could dispose of me in safety."
"And yet you survived?"
"I was taken to Calais and allowed to fall into the hands of the French. 
Perfectly simple."
"And after that, the galleys?"
"Yes," said Lymond with no trace of expression in his voice.
"Now we're coming to it," said Buccleuch, and shifted his bulk in his seat. 
"Lawyers! Dod, look at him: his een glinting like a coo with the yellows."
The Lord Advocate's tone was mild and of a grave delicacy.
"How can we stay indifferent to such misfortune? We have before us a man unhappy 
and deceived; duped by the best brains of the kingdom; enticed by an immoral 
woman of royal birth; kidnapped; maltreated; shackled to the starving heathen at 
the galley oar and beaten through the seas for two undeserving summers.
"Look at him! Weak-from the knife of his own underling; but that has no bearing. 
Innocent-his admitted betrayal and corruption of this young, blind woman has 
clearly left no stain. Dismiss from your minds the robbing and thieving and 
murdering of those whom until recently he led-he is virtuous. Dismiss the 
ruthless plotting, the devious schemes for battle and gain which we have heard 
about this afternoon-he is simple and vulnerable. Think, last of all, of how he 
has conducted himself today; of the fluent and malicious tongue from which you, 
as lords of the highest court in the land, have not been exempt. Does it seem to 
you that this drunkard, this outlaw, this wastrel son of an ffi-staned family, 
is the man of this pitiful history? Or do you think, as I do, that it is all a 
pack of lies?"
The echoes died. The Lord Advocate removed his spectacles, and spoke gently. 
"But we are asked for proof. What proof have we? Nearly all the people concerned 
are dead. It is not the sort of transaction likely to leave a record; and those 
persons who still remember the event are in enemy country.
"But-we have one piece of evidence in writing. The notes which were picked up in 
Scotland and attributed to Mr. Crawford; the document he says was the work of an 
unknown English spy; and which was attributed to him, he says, to ensure his 
disgrace with us. If that is a forgery; if Mr. Crawford can prove that this 
paper is none of his;



that it was compiled without his knowledge; then the case against him 
immediately loses its mainstay. Mr. Crawford!"
Like the face of many-eyed Indra, the corporate head of the Committee turned on 
the exposed chair. Douglas's lips were tight, his stare thoughtful; Herries wore 
a look of fastidious concern; Buccleuch was craning forward. Among the benches 
Lord Culter had made a tent of his hands, and his face was invisible.
The strain on the Master was sufficiently clear now. He sat still, a thin, deep 
line between his eyes, watching and anticipating Lauder as light might thrust 
and linger on a falling blade. Their eyes locked. "Mr. Crawford," said the 
advocate softly. "This document before me was taken from the pocket of an 
English soldier after the raid which destroyed the convent of Lymond. It 
includes these words:
"'The convent is on my land six miles east of that, and we hid the gunpowder 
there just before being taken at Solway. If you go immediately, you should be 
able to reach it before it is discovered:
no one else knows of its presence. There is an underground passage to the cellar 
where the powder is stored, reached in the following way. If it is difficult to 
move, I suggest you blow up thb convent.'"
There was a long silence. Culter did not look up and Erskine, beside him, folded 
his arms suddenly and gazed at the floor. The Lord Advocate said flatly, "Mr. 
Crawford. Do you admit that these words are in your handwriting, and were 
written by you?"
The tyranny of pride and the tyranny of intelligence, however pitilessly forced, 
could not protect Lymond from this. His eyes, terribly, answered before his 
voice. "Yes. They were."
"Do you admit," asked the lawyer, "that the signature on the last page of this 
document is yours?"
"It is mine."
A contraction passed over the Lord Advocate's face and was gone.
"I see. And," said Henry Lauder with no levity at all in his voice, "since the 
English did follow these directions, did find the passage and, when attacked, 
exploded the convent as you suggested-since these things happened, the deaths of 
four nuns and ten girls within the convent, including the death of Eloise Ann 
Crawford, your sister, are your responsibility?"
Flagging and infinite silence.
"Yes. I am responsible," said Lymond, ashen to the roots of his sun-bleached 
hair.


The room in David's Tower was suffocatingly crowded; chiefly be-cause not only 
prisoners but all the guards off duty had managed to squeeze in as well. The 
hottest man there was Frank, sitting by the fire with Samuel Harvey's statement 
hovering near the blaze.
If he had expired in a paste of perspiration, nobody would have noticed. The 
colletic stare of guards and Englishmen alike was on the sweating, subsaltive 
hands and on the grinning tarots: the impious Papess, the lascivious Lover, the 
jeering Fool. The two baggage rolls still lay on the floor, but their contents 
had changed: beside Palmer's chair lay some of Scott's money, and some of 
Palmer's minor possessions lay at Scott's hand. Both men were in shirt sleeves.
In the evening light, Will's face was the paler of the two. The older man was 
playing with a careless, sure hand: leading, luring, discarding with persistent 
ingenuity, and had caught Scott out badly several times. None the less Scott 
won, not once but reasonably often; and when he lost, it was not by an 
irretrievable margin.
He had a healthy respect by that time for Palmer's card playing. Watching him 
seated opposite, massive and smooth as a tree, Scott recognized also his 
toughness, and grew more and more afraid that through sheer fatigue he himself 
would stop thinking clearly. As if to drive home the point, Palmer tapped an 
elemental finger on the table between them. "And the Fool, Mr. Scott. Fool and 
three Kings:
fifteen points-that right? Yes. And my game, I think."
He was right, and the grin he exchanged with his audience did nothing to help. 
"Mine, boys! Any more beer, while I choose me prize? That's a good belt, Mr. 
Scott?"
Scott's chest tightened. Until one or other of them had nothing more to barter . 
. . that was the length of the game; and they were so evenly matched that their 
damned belongings might be passing to and fro for weeks-unless he succumbed and 
lost all. And the stipulation was that Samuel Harvey's papers were to be 
Palmer's final stake.
The thought of it sickened him with wrath and frustration. After all they'd gone 
throixgh-after what the Dowager had suffered-after Christian's death-after the 
fool he had made of himself twenty times over-no one should present this prize 
under his nose and snatch it back like a toy from a kitten. He stopped shuffling 
and flung down the cards with a crack. "My deal."
Palmer winked. "He thinks he's going to win this one."
"I'm going to win them all," said Will Scott. "I'm going to have the 521


nails out of your boots before I've done with you, and if you've any pins 
holding up your breeks you'd best watch them, because I'll have them skint off 
the superior Sassenach dowp o' ye before another day dawns."
And he began to deal.

* * *



"So here," said the Lord Advocate, "is the truth at last. I cannot say I 
expected it. Your confession does you credit, Mr. Crawford. Quum infirmi sumus, 
optimi sumus, I see." Lauder was aware, blissfully, beyond doubt, of the success 
of his onslaught. He was within Lymond's guard, and the passport was the name of 
Lymond's sister.
So he quoted Latin and Lymond, breaking painfully from his numb cataphract, 
retaliated. "The credit is entirely yours. Quod purpura non potest, saccus 
potest, Mr. Lauder. But I prefer my truth flat and not concamerate, even with 
the most dulcet spring of famous rhetoric in spate beneath. The notes were mine. 
But they were written for Scots, not Englishmen to read. Not for a manor or a 
woman or the combined keys of Tucker and Schertz's treasure houses, in spite of 
your character reading, would I-"
"Harm a woman?" suggested the lawyer gently.
Buccleuch's grunt reached them all. "You can be a damned fool over women without 
wanting to blow up fourteen lassies."
Lauder said, "Mr. Crawford's tamperings with Christian Stewart were more than 
those of a damned fool, I should have thought. She also died, remember."
Argyll contributed. "In any case, Sir Walter, the information about the convent 
in this document was prefaced by three pages of detailed news about Scottish 
plans and some explicit references to previous reports to the English Privy 
Council. It is clearly absurd to imply that any of this was intended for 
Scotland and not for England."
"I have been trying," said Lyniond with a deep breath, "to explain. The first 
three pages of that letter are a forgery, based no doubt on the genuine spy's 
report sent to Henry. The letter about the gunpowder is real enough. I hid the 
powder in my sister's convent when it was partly wrecked and abandoned after an 
earlier raid. The man who helped me was killed at Solway: no one else knew of 
it, and it looked as if I might be kept in London for some time.


"I knew the Government needed the powder, and I was nervous in case the nuns 
might come to harm if they returned. So I wrote a letter in London and had it 
taken to the Master of Erskine who was being released to go back to Scotland. I 
was allowed no personal contact with other prisoners."
At the high table, Buccleuch's eyes met those of Tom Erskine. He said, "Robert 
died at Pinkie."
"In any case, he never received it," said Lymond quietly. "I discovered that 
later. It was intercepted, the superscription cut off and the whole made a 
tailpiece of the other report, which was rewritten in my kind of hand. The next 
raiding party to cross the Border located the convent, was surprised into 
igniting the powder, and took care to leave behind the paper incriminating me."
Sir Wat said, "Ye gomerel: if that's right, why the devil didn't you watch that 
first letter? You could guess what'd happen to it in the wrong hands, even if 
you didn't know the lassies had gone back?"
"The thought isn't new to me," said Lymond, his voice empty of expression. "I 
took all the precautions I could at the time."
"But not enough."
"Obviously. If you're anxious to analyse my feelings on that occasion," said 
Lymond with sudden savagery, "you can measure them against my lapses from 
temperance according to the gospel of Mr. Lauder."
"Bloody fool," said Buccleuch briefly. "Wait a bit, Henry. If the report was in 
two hands there should be some difference in the writing, eh?"
But the advocate shook his head and, getting up, stretched across to the 
Committee's table. "Look for yourselves."
The paper crackled as it passed from hand to hand: the sun, much lower, was 
climbing up one wall, forcing Erskine to shield his eyes against the heraldic 
dazzle of it. Culter sat without moving, his eyes on his hands.
From the benches opposite, Mylne suddenly got up, and crossing to the prisoner's 
side, bent and spoke. The Master shook his head just as Lauder sat down, the 
restored paper in his hands, and observed them. "Well, doctor?"
The elderly figure straightened. "If ye want to hang him, ye'd best watch your 
step."
"Would you like a rest, Mr. Crawford? You mustn't swoon." 



Buccleuch growled. "I wouldna say yes to a drink of water on the lip of Gehenna, 
put like that. Lauder's on top and he knows it. Look at him! He's a mouth like 
the smirk on a pig."
The smile was certainly there, widening at Lymond's sardonic reply. "So near the 
climax? I can surely hold together for the peroration, Mr. Lauder." And the 
surgeon, shrugged away, disappeared.
The Lord Advocate waited for the rustle of adjustment to die down, and then 
stood up.
"There is no need, I think, to prolong this inquiry much further. We have heard 
Mr. Crawford's explanation of what happened in London, and in Lymond, in 1542: 
we have seen that there is no obvious difference in the handwriting in any part 
of the document which he claims is only partly his: we have heard him 
acknowledge responsibility for the appalling and cold-blooded crime whose 
results we know.
"On the one side, we have an explanation of these events which, if dreadful in 
its violence and its story of degeneration, is both straightforward and likely, 
and is supported both by documentary evidence and by part of the proofs supplied 
by Mr. Crawford himself. On the other, there is the history of what must appear 
an incredible twist of fate, which placed the defendant helpless at the mercy of 
powerful forces in London.
"We are asked to believe that he incurred the sympathetic interest of one of the 
highest ladies of the land, but that she could do nothing to help him: that 
while fervently supporting the Scottish cause he was feckless enough to allow a 
dangerous secret to fall into enemy hands: that there existed, as there exists 
in romances, some terrible English plot of which he happened to gain knowledge. 
Do all these things seem likely?"
The pause was for effect, but Gledstanes, meticulous and canny, broke in. "It 
doesn't seem to me to be incontrovertible that the two halves of this letter are 
in the same hand. Also the suggestion about blowing up the convent seems 
gratuitous, if intended for English readers. Seems unnecessary and argues a 
callousness I find hard to believe. Particularly since-assuming he was a spy-the 
man surely expected when he wrote it to be sent back to Scotland in due course."
Bishop Reid barely waited for him to end. "The answer to that surely lies as 
Lauder has already said in proof of character. The man's led a life of abandon 
and profligacy-he hasn't denied it. There's the blind girl. The sister-in-law. 
The Scott boy-" He paused as Sir Walter shot up and was pressed down again by a 
neighbour. "A


young boy who, we know, vacillated wildly in his attitude to his new protector. 
Disgust-Or self-disgust-at one point, as we know, forced him to take the 
honourable course. His affections, it seems, have since altered again. We do not 
know what happened in the year he was with the panel, but one can hardly wonder 
at these signs of an extreme and unhealthy emotional instability. I for one 
would have found it hard to place any reliance on his support of Mr. Crawford, 
and I am glad to see he is not here this afternoon to perjure himself."
It was beyond human strength to restrain Buccleuch any longer. "Perjure 
himself!" roared Sir Wat. "Unhealthy emotions! Self-disgust! Are you calling my 
son a debauchee?"
"I merely pointed out-"
"That boy," bellowed Sir Wat, "was a shilpit, shiftless, shilly-shallying 
gomerel before he met up with Francis Crawford. And now, by God-he still maybe 
makes up his mind three times in the time a normal man would do it once, but I'd 
sooner have him back of me in an argument or a fight than any finnicking ninny 
that stayed at home and got wed at St. Cuthbert's before he stopped talking like 
the squeak off a tumbler!"
"I don't deny," said the Bishop loudly, "that your son is now an exceedingly 
efficient fighting man: witness his unprecedented attack on yourself. I am only 
seeking to prove-"
"It seems to me you were only seeking to prove six other things as well," said 
Sir Wat threateningly. "And all of them damned insulting."
"-In any case," said Henry Lauder quickly, "the point is made. We may be 
forgiven for believing that associations natural and unnatural come easily to 
Mr. Crawford. And that brings us, distasteful as it may be, to a popular report 
very widely current in the months after the disaster at Lymond. I must remind 
you, Sir Wat, that Mr. Crawford may have had reasons-very cogent reasons of his 
own- for encouraging and even inciting the attack at the convent."
The violence with which Lymond propelled himself to his feet was such that his 
monumental chair rocked behind him. In the flicker of an eye he must have seen 
his brother half-rise in the same moment, and must have guessed what lay behind 
the furious anxiety in the grey eyes, and behind the avid expectancy of the 
Tribunal.
Lauder, waiting, breathed thanks for the instant's pause before the attack. A 
storm of emotion might have coalesced all the liking and sympathy which existed 
already for Lord Culter, and the less than neutral curiosity of people like 
Herries and Buccleuch. But this fellow



fought with his head, not his heart, and the Tribunal would never warm to him. 
Henry Lauder was not a cynic: he was simply very good indeed at his job.
But Lymond addressed the Committee and not the Queen's Advocate when he began to 
speak. The carrying, escharotic voice was thick with sheer cold fury for half a 
dozen words, and then he had it controlled.
"I see this idea is not new to you. Some lawyers believe that dirt will do as 
well as evidence any day; but Mr. Lauder, all heat and no light, like hell-fire, 
is not like that. He is simply being provocative; without of course making 
concessions to the feelings of either the laird of Buccleuch or of other members 
of my family."
Lymond paused, and his voice, rock-steady, dropped a little. "Like Mr. Lauder, I 
have played on this stage before. [know the value of the stagger, the swoon, the 
vein swollen with ire and outrage. Mr. Lauder was a little afraid of all these; 
but instead he counted on me to wreck your amour propre as you had wrecked mine, 
with sad results for my case.
"That is why you heard the accusation you heard just now, grafted skilfully to 
the Bishop's preceding statements about Will Scott of Buccleuch." He paused.
"There is no foundation whatever for either suggestion. Will Scott is a normal, 
lively youngster: he left me when he did because he thought I was planning to 
give him up to the English, among other misconceptions. If you discount his 
father's denial, you might also remember his moderation in the Tribunal today. 
Sir Walter is not a man to hide his feelings. My sister . .
His voice roughened suddenly. "Who will speak for her? The rest of my family, 
perhaps: will you believe them? Who makes it necessary to speak for her; for 
either of these young people? Are you so short of rods that you must despoil 
young trees: so short of stones that you need to walk the very graveyards for 
them . . .
"My lords, my Lord Advocate: I suggest that you have surely material enough 
before you now to suggest a verdict to you; that nothing more of value can come 
from this inquiry; and particularly nothing of value from the path Mr. Lauder 
would have you tread. I do beg you to remember that I, and I alone, am the 
person whose acts you are judging today."
He sat down, leaving behind him the uneasy silence of those who have watched a 
keg of gunpowder explode without a sound. Tom



Erskine said in a whisper, "God Almighty!" glanced once at Culter's face, and 
wiped his own brow. Lauder rose.
"Are you withdrawing from further questioning, Mr. Crawford?"
"I am not. But-"
"But you would like us to close this inquiry for the sake of your health," said 
the advocate comfortably, and watched out of the corner of his eye a note 
passing hurriedly to the top table. Buccleuch, crumpling it in his hand, said, 
"I don't much fancy the line the questioning has been taking either, Lauder; 
but-by his Grace's leave-I don't think we should close the business without 
hearing Will again. I understand the damned limmer's got stuck somewhere, but he 
ought to be here at any moment."
Argyll consulted his immediate neighbours and leaned forward. "We are satisfied 
to leave our preliminary investigation at this point, Mr. Lauder. I cannot 
imagine, Sir Walter, that your son will have anything of great moment to add to 
what we know, but if he appears before these proceedings are finished we shall 
of course admit his evidence, although we cannot, I think, prolong this diet to 
wait for him. First, we should like you, my Lord Advocate, to gather together 
the facts which have been revealed so far and correlate them for us. Then, if he 
so wishes the prisoner may speak."
Erskine sprang to his feet. "My lords, I beg you not to close without hearing 
Mr. Scott. There is evidence of the first importance involved."
"What?" said Reid. His ear was cupped in his hand and his face hot and 
irritable. "It is irregular to speak now, Mr. Erskine. Sit down."
Argyll was more patient. "You have knowledge of this evidence?"
"Only that it may be vital."
"You have no idea what it is?"
Erskine flushed. "No. But-"
The Justiciar's voice was final. "In that case, I am afraid you must abide by my 
decision. If it arrives before this Assize ends, we shall admit it. Mr. Lauder-" 
He paused. "Mr. Erskine, you may sit down."
Tom said briefly, "I was to give evidence in support of the prisoner's actions 
at Hexham. May I do so now?"
Argyll's tolerance this time was not so evident. He leaned forward. "We know 
what happened there, Mr. Erskine, and accept that you can confirm it. We don't 
need to know any more at present, I believe. Now, Mr. Lauder?"



The Lord Advocate was amused and intrigued-intrigued to such an extent that he 
took a hand in the game. He said, "There is one further thing, my lord, which we 
might have clear. We have heard no comment from Lord Culter for or against his 
brother. Although we all realize the matter is painful to him, he might be able 
to throw some light on the unhappy affair at the convent."
Argyll began, "I think we have heard enough-" and paused as the lawyer's face 
became concerned.
Lauder said, "It was Lord Culter who spared himself least in the past year in 
running his brother to earth, and who in fact brought him back in the end. 
Should we not ask him to give us his reasons?"
It was a justifiable slip; and it happened so late that the Crown suffered less 
than it might have done. The Justiciar waved a cursory hand, and Lord Culter 
rose, purposeful and solid as Ebenezer. "It is true that I spent many weeks 
pursuing my brother," he began, and Lauder, already warned by his voice, swore 
quietly under his breath. "I did so under a complete misapprehension," said 
Richard calmly. "I believe him innocent of the charges against him; and I want 
to say that when intercepted-"
"Don't labour the point, Richard." It was the defendant's voice, quick and 
caustic.
"-When intercepted, I was about to help my brother leave the country."
Sensation. Lymond gave a curious grimace and stayed quiet; the Lord Justice-
General sat up. "You realize, Lord Culter, that if this man is found guilty you 
have made yourself an accomplice to his crimes?"
Richard said briefly, "He is not guilty."
The Lord Advocate was looking at him very hard. "Your lordship has thoroughly 
surprised us. I do not propose to question you about your sister, but I must ask 
this: as to the other accusations on this sheet-do you have any proof that they 
are false?"
Culter stirred uneasily. Lymond's malicious voice spoke before he could open his 
mouth. "No, he hasn't. I'm sorry to disperse the gentle and evangelical light, 
but even Richard can't achieve a complete volteface as quickly as that. All this 
whitewashing is intended, I gather, to protect my sister's reputation: that's 
all."
The Lord Advocate said nothing; he simply lay back in his chair, the blue chin 
dropped on his chest, and stared thoughtfully at Lymond, who stared thoughtfully 
back. It was Argyll who said, "We



really must have this clear. Do I understand Lord Culter is romancing? That he 
didn't help you to escape?"
"Imagination reels," said Lymond, "before the improbable delights of such an 
event. No. He was bringing me here to have me hanged, having just failed to kill 
me in formal combat in England. Mr. Erskine will confirm."
Mr. Erskine, in a dour voice, confirmed, without looking at Culter, who was on 
his feet and choked with protests. "I think," said the panel kindly, "that you 
should sit down. It makes no odds now, you know." And after a moment, Richard 
did so.
An odd silence had fallen. It was late: long past time for the evening meal. 
They were exhausted with argument and heat and concentration and the concealed 
ravages of fear.
No darts had been thrown; no mines exploded; no reputations peeled of their 
tactful patches and splints. All was righteousness and decorum; and the rich, 
pliant voice of the Lord Advocate, beginning in the stillness and unreeling 
delicately the case against Francis Crawford.
He was clever enough not to brush again through the harsh Orcadian pastures of 
Bishop Reid's imagining. He kept to his indictment
-kept concisely and damningly to its seventies, and made no appeal to the heart: 
the time for that was past. Instead, he bent his mind to weaving a fabric of 
steel: a case so massive, so intellectually secure, so lockfast that no man, 
however fluent and however gifted, should break it. Of these bright phrases, 
forged and concatenated, would emerge the gyves which tomorrow would snap into 
place. He ended very calmly.
"And so I present to you a trespasser of a kind which the law in its grace and 
impartiality has scarcely knowledge to deal with: a man who has plunged his 
kindred men into untimely death; has rent blood and limb from them; has forced 
apart mother and son and scythed sheer to the stubble a meadow of children, for 
a handful of tainted and murderous coins. A man who, nourished in this generous 
womb, can turn upon his mother land and hack her, deface her and betray her, 
deny her and spit upon her as an empty waste, a name upon a map, a race of 
strangers and a source of wanton exercise and plunder.
"Such a man is Crawford of Lymond: such a man this land may pray never to see 
again in the difficult ways of her history. I say:
busy yourself no longer about him, for he is better condemned, and most harshly 
dead."


The silence of his careful making followed him and lay upon the Tribunal for a 
stricken and pulsing space. Then at the long table Argyll moved, and the twelve 
Assessors stirred and sighed.
Erskine, lifting his stunned head, saw that Richard's eyes were wide and full on 
his brother; but Lymond looked at nobody, the queer cornflower gaze concentrated 
in space. The Lord Justice-General began to speak, and had to clear his throat.
"We have heard and understood you, Mr. Lauder, and have been well served by your 
skill and your clarity in this most distressing task today. The panel has also 
heard you. We now invite him to address us in his own defence on the charges so 
preferred against him. Mr. Crawford."
From Lymond's pale hair to his finger tips no uncomprehending muscle moved. "I 
have nothing to add," he said.
In the crowded room the atmosphere tightened as if he had shouted. "Nothing?" 
exclaimed Argyll. "You are accused of treason, sir: you have heard the gravest 
accusations and the gravest doubts expressed about your evidence. Have yau no 
excuse?"
Bare of irony, Lymond's eyes left the Justiciar and rested on his own immobile 
and flatly crossed hands. "The margin is so small," he said, "between life and 
no life, fact and lie, treason and patriotism, civilization and savagery . . . 
If Mr. Lauder can see it, he is lucky; if you can comprehend it you have a 
better right to judge than I have to plead. I have nothing to add."
"If you can't tell the difference between loyalty and treason, Mr. Crawford," 
said the Bishop, "then you are certainly safer hanged."
The Master's eyes studied him. "Why, can you?"
"As long," said Orkney broadly, "as I know the difference between right and 
wrong."
"Yes. The position is very similar. Patriotism," said Lymond, "like honesty is a 
luxury with a very high face value which is quickly pricing itself out of the 
spiritual market altogether."
"Feeling for one's country," said the Lord Advocate softly, "is not usually 
considered as a freestanding riddle in ethics. . .
The easy voice lifted the comment and the topic, and carried them to deeper 
waters. "No. It is an emotion as well, and of course the emotion comes first. A 
child's home and the ways of its life are sacrosanct, perfect, inviolate to the 
child. Add age; add security; add experience. In time we all admit our relatives 
and our neighbours, our


fellow townsmen and even, perhaps, at last our fellow nationals to the threshold 
of tolerance. But the man living one inch beyond the boundary is an inveterate 
foe."
He laced his long fingers and raised them, his gaze resting on the exposed 
palms. "Patriotism is a fine hothouse for maggots. It breeds intolerance; it 
forces a spindle-legged, spurious riot of colour.
A man of only moderate powers enjoys the special sanction of purpose, the sense 
of ceremony; the echo of mysterious, lost and royal things; a trace of the 
broad, plain childish virtues of myth and legend and ballad. He wants 
advancement-what simpler way is there? He's tired of the little seasons and 
looks for movement and change and an edge of peril and excitement; he enjoys the 
flowering of small talents lost in the dry courses of daily life. For all these 
reasons, men at least once in their lives move the finger which will take them 
to battle for their country. .
"Patriotism," said Lymond again. "It's an opulent word, a mighty key to a royal 
Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. Patriotism; loyalty; a true conviction that of all the 
troubled and striving world, the soil of one's fathers is noblest and best. A 
celestial competition for the best breed of man; a vehicle for shedding boredom 
and exercising surplos power or surplus talents or surplus money; an immature 
and bigoted intolerance which becomes the coin of barter in the markets of 
power-"
Into the silence, the Master spoke gently. "These are not patriots but martyrs, 
dying in cheerful self-interest as the Christians died in the pleasant 
conviction of grace, leaving their example by chance to brood beneath the water 
and rise, miraculously, to refresh the centuries. The cry is raised: Our land is 
glorious under the sun. I have a need to believe it, they say. It is a virtue to 
believe it; and therefore I shall wring from this unassuming clod a passion and 
a power and a selflessness that otherwise would be laid unquickened in the 
grave."
With the unfettered freedom of his voice, with the disciplined and friendly 
ardours of his mind, he made it plain where he was leading them.
"And who shall say they are wrong?" said Lymond. "There are those who will 
always cleave to the living country, and who with their uprooted imaginations 
might well make of it an instrument for good. Is it quite beyond us in this 
land? Is there no one will take up this priceless thing and say, Here is a 
nation, with such a soul; with such talents; with these failings and this native 
worth? In what fashion



can this one people be brought to live in full vigour and serenity, and who, in 
their compassion and wisdom, will take it and lead it into the path?"
For two, for three, for four seconds, the silence continued. Then Lauder, an 
expression of pure joy on his face, let out a long sigh; Argyll himself drew a 
deep breath, and Erskine, dragging his eyes from the quiet chair, found Richard 
staring at his brother with the privacies of his stubborn spirit exposed, 
unheeding, on his face.
For a mighty moment Argyll faced Lymond, conjecture and curiosity and a certain 
sharp respect informing the pallid Campbell features. Then he said, "I 
understand that you have said something you felt required saying at this time, 
and that you are not moved to argue and dispute over the complexities of the 
personal charges which have been put before us today. I am not sure that you are 
wrong; but this is not the place nor the time to reply to you, nor am I sure 
that I or any man present could do so-" He paused.
"We have been shown the public interpretation of a remarkable case: a series of 
events borne forcibly to their close by a strong and unusual personality. Mr. 
Lauder has given us one reading of its character. He would, I think, be the 
first to admit that he has not, patently, shown us the whole man and that, 
whatever the true reading may be, Mr. Crawford, we may know that it is not 
simple, or obvious, or in any way commonplace.
"We have listened to the evidence most carefully. Most of the charges referring 
to crimes since 1542 are to my mind much weakened by what we have heard, and 
would be difficult to sustain. The original accusation however still stands, and 
the evidence has in no way been shaken by any argument or proof offered by the 
panel.
"We shall consider these things, however, and tomorrow this court will make its 
recommendation to the Three Estates, before whom you shall appear. It is this 
decision you must fear and face, and I warn you now to prepare yourself for it."
It was as near a warning of doom as the Assize could achieve. Lymond was already 
standing to receive it, and there was no doubt that he understood what he was 
being told: the stamp of the day's assault lay in the very bones of his face. He 
bowed once, to the Assessors, and again, surprisingly, to the benches which held 
Erskine and his brother; then, flanked by his guards, he moved quietly to the 
door.
Neither Lauder nor the judges, nor the silent ranks of the witnesses remembered 
Will Scott.





A pretence of quiet had fallen on the night.
About the basin of the Tyne, small fires ringed Haddington: the boots of men 
clicked on the walls of the besieged town and padded in the trenches outside; 
and the unobtrusive gnawing of pick and mattock betrayed the pioneers still at 
work.
The river wound its way dimly to the coast; and the estuary, flat and moon-
bright, with small ships black as buttons on its surface, lay at the bottom of 
the sky and rolled in the east-by-east wind which with spare and racking fingers 
was withdrawing the coasts from the English fleet.
Edinburgh, grimly warded, lay inside her walls, bedevilled by the shadows of her 
hills, her crag and tail a black and fishy emblem above the apologetic stench of 
the Nor' Loch. The moon copied on the cobbles the profile of all the new, high 
houses: the thatched gables and uncertain slates and the dancett~ roofs; and the 
gutters ran in and Out of the shadows like pied and silvery eels.
As always, there were lights at the ports; and tonight there were lights as well 
at Holyrood, and at Mary of Guise's palace on Castle Hill. Farther down the 
slope another candle shone in an upper window at the Tolbooth: behind it Lymond 
lay, drugged into sleep, with a guard outside his locked door until the night 
should pass and Parliament meet to pronounce his doom. In the Culters' house in 
the High Street his family also waited, and the tapers burned all night.
They burned also at the Castle, where light and heat reeled in mortal embrace in 
the prisoners' room. The ceiling, low and plastered, pressed down the strata of 
exhausted air, stale with old beer and sweating bodies. There was no room left 
to stand and no air to inhale, but the light beat down on a swaying corymb of 
heads, and shone on necks craning with a nervous, avid tension like beasts at a 
water hole.
At the centre sat Will Scott and Sir Thomas Palmer, hall-naked:
sunburnt thews glistening under multiple lights and sweat slithering down the 
tough cord of their spines.
For maybe an hour now, Palmer's string of jocularities and pithy memoirs had 
stopped, and he was breathing hoarsely into the cards, eyes intent and chin set 
in three trim folds against his chest. Beside his chair, topped by a bundle of 
clothes, lay a good half of Scott's belongings. Beside Scott, kicked into a 
disorderly tangle by the eager feet



of the onlookers, was every article presently owned by Tommy Palmer except one: 
his cousin's statement.
Scott was too tired to think. Often before he had played the night through, 
ending wild-eyed and unshaven and ravenously hungry and going on to perform 
prodigies of nuisance-making in his father's wake. But against Palmer he needed 
more than a flair: he needed nerve and watchfulness and weblike concentration, 
with an instinct for bluff, and an inspiration to know when to call it.
He ignored the chaffing of his enthusiastic audience; he refused to be upset by 
the games he lost and by Palmer's unworried bonhomie. He played on doggedly with 
his red hair sticking in cowlicks to his brow and stared at the tarots until 
they glimmered in his eyeballs like invitation cards to hell. He knew that it 
was dark, that the inquiry was over and, from Erskine standing now at his side, 
that it had gone against Lymond. He had no idea of the time.
Palmer was preparing his sequences. He did it slowly, as if the feel of the 
cards gave him pleasure. "My pretty atous," he said, and admired them, his broad 
fingers sprawled across the painted backs.
Scott looked at his own hand, and the tarots' sleek, Egyptian heads with ancient 
divination in their eyes stared back, warming their painted hands at a world of 
flesh. His feet were on le chemin royal de Ia vie and the thin travesties in his 
hands this time were real: the traitor and the hanged man, death and the fool. 
Their avid fingers were real, and the scent of an evil nostalgia. He closed the 
cards abruptly and held them closed until his brain cleared.
He had a good hand, but not a first-class one; and he suspected Palmer's was 
better. There was one way he might improve on it: by calling on luck. He had the 
World and the Bateleur in his hand. He could challenge Palmer for the Fool; if 
he didn't have it, his two tarrochi nobili would bring him five points extra and 
almost certainly the game. It had to. Each article redeemed by Palmer cost him 
another game to win it back. If he lost this game he had to play a minimum of 
two more and win both. And he doubted if he had a reserve of mental energy for 
even one.
It was very quiet. Scott looked at the cards again. Palmer, breathing heavily, 
had the beginning of a smile compressing his stubbled chins.
"Qui ne l'a," said Scott, and Palmer's gaze, arrested, narrowed and shot to meet 
his. "Qui ne l'a? Well? Have you got one?"



Palmer scratched his nose. He grunted, and the silence moved down on the bruised 
and foundered men like a wine press.
For as long as he dared, Palmer tested Scott's nerve. Then slowly he shook his 
big head. "No. Damn it to hell: I have not."
Will moved his hands very slowly: red hands like Buccleuch's. The tarots, 
throttled and limp, dropped to their places on the table: sullen; maudlin; 
sulkily protesting the laughterless starvation of a paper world. There was a 
moment's pause, then Palmer moved, and his tarots ran like butter from corner to 
corner of the table.
It was a losing hand. "My game, I think," said Will Scott.
The welter of congratulations, of back-slapping and draughts of flat beer and 
mounting noise hardly penetrated his brain; even when Palmer himself, after 
upending a pint of ale over his own head and shoulders with thunderous curses, 
broke into an equal percussion of laughter and embraced him like a son. Scott 
sat like a marmorean and gently smiling Buddha, the disputed paper safely 
clutched in his hand, and when he could be heard, spoke mildly. "You can have 
back all your other stuff if you like. This is all I wanted."
Surging up, Palmer elbowed his way forcefully to the window and stood with his 
back to it, flexing his beefy shoulders till the muscles flowed. "What a game. 
God! What a game. I've played in every county in England and up and down France 
and in and out of Clinton's boats, but I've never met the man who could read my 
mind like you did. Never. I sat like a bloody plant and you read me as if my 
brains were thumbing signals from my ears. Where'd you pick it up?"
Scott was hauling on his shirt. "I was taught," he said invisibly, ''by . .
Palmer swept up a fistful of linen and jerked. "What?"
Like the rising sun, Scott's head reappeared, still talking. "I was taught by a 
fellow called Jonathan Crouch."
Sir Thomas's arms dropped like felled boughs. "An Englishman?"
"Yes."
"With a wife called Ellen and a tongue with the perishing shakes?"
"Yes."
"I taught that man to play tarocco!" yelled Sir Thomas.
"Yes, I know," said Will Scott.

* * *

An hour later he was in Lymond's room.
The Master was difficult to waken. Under the boy's insistent fingers



w




he stirred at length, and his weighted lids lifted a little. After a moment he 
recognized him and said "Scott!" in a voice thickened with opiates. Then his eye 
caught a movement behind the boy and he turned his head. ". . . And Mr. Lauder 
too, I see."
The lawyer, his clothes rumpled and his hair on end, bowed and shut the door on 
inquisitive guards. Scott didn't look around. Instead, he held out the paper 
with Samuel Harvey's statement, the superscription lit by the bedside tallow. 
"It's Samuel Harvey's confession," the boy said. "He made it to Christian at 
Haddington when he was dying, and it was taken down by their priest. It frees 
you from every taint of treason."
The Master's fingers touched the folded papers, lingering on the broken seal, 
and delicately flattened them. Scott, watching his downcast eyes, visualized the 
pages as he had seen them an hour ago, when before his witnesses he had studied 
his prize.

summoned from the Princess Mary's household and taken before the King. Essential 
to mislead the enemy as to the identity of the spy . . . Convenient presence of 
the Scotchman Crawford
Letter to his friends in Scotland already purloined . . . Forgery affixed and 
taken north with me .

And the last sentences.

I learned afterwards that, ironically enough, the spy for whom all this trouble 
was taken died on his next visit to London. Of the others implicated, I have 
given my word not to mention them, and I do not see that I need do so, since it 
does not affect the substance of what happened. I am not ashamed of what I did: 
I obeyed orders in a justifiable act against the enemy.

Although he had reached the last page, the Master did not immediately look up. 
Scott was glad when at length he spoke. "So she did get her proofs."
"No one knows what went wrong," said the boy. "Either she was given the 
unwritten sheets franked and folded by mistake, or it was a deliberate 
deception: perhaps Harvey came to regret what he had done. The priest doesn't 
know."
Lymond turned his head, searching the bright, sea-blue eyes under the gaudy 
thatch. "And you: where did you get it?"
"Sir Thomas Palmer is Harvey's cousin. I found that out from Lady Douglas after 
she was released from Haddington. She told me


as well that they were keeping Harvey's belongings for Palmer when he next came 
north."
(	. And?"
"And when he did come north, Father captured him," said Scott, assailed with 
unforeseen embarrassments. "Palmer's at the Castle now, and they also have the 
friar who wrote it out-I found that out later. I made them all witness the 
contents too, so that they could . .
"Your young catachumen played tarocco all night with Palmer to get possession of 
it," said the Lord Advocate's most sumptuous voice. He had found a chair and was 
lying back in it, grinning benevolently at the ceiling. "By God, I wish you'd 
take me in hand for six months in that troop of yours. Anyone who can beat 
Buskin's brother-"
"Not my doing: we imported a trainer for that," said Lymond gravely, his skin 
faltering between red and white, his eyes brilliant. "I don't think we could 
teach you much, Mr. Lauder."
The legal gaze, leaving the rafters, swooped down to the pillows. "Who stole 
your letter, Mr. Crawford? That damned Douglas woman, I take it." He paused. 
"You were very gentle with our friends today."
Lymond's thoughts were clearly a thousand-a hundred-miles away. "Our friends . . 
.
Wiser than Scott, Henry Lauder ignored the boy's scowl and talked on. "The 
Douglases. The Earl of Angus undertook, I believe, to set the crown of Scotland 
on Henry VIII's head by midsummer of that year. There was also talk of a secret 
bond signed by both Sir George and his brother in London, promising all their 
help to make Scotland Henry's. The King wouldn't want that noised abroad at the 
time."
"No." Lymond's hands still lay on the folded pages of the confession. He lifted 
the packet, a speculative, balancing finger at each end, and said, "Nothing 
about the Douglases is news any more. The unpleasant truth is that, being a 
long-sighted family, they will attach themselves to the winning side, and not 
necessarily to the side that pays them most.
"When Douglas goes to Berwick as spokesman for the Scottish court, when he comes 
to Edinburgh sworn to promote the English marriage, both the Protector and Arran 
know very well he is putting his own words to the song he was taught. Perhaps 
even words which appear to be his own are sometimes not. These are stormy 
petrels:
they show where the heavy seas are coming from and are to that



extent useful. Their transactions shelter under sham diplomacy and they can 
truly be influenced in one way only, by personal shame. The side which succumbs 
to the temptation to strip the Douglases naked will lose them, and the 
considerable power of their men with them. Grey knew that: that is why he 
handled Sir George so tenderly in spite of the Protector and Wharton."
Scott said defensively, "My father also got permission to negotiate with the 
English. To protect his own interests."
The Lord Advocate smiled involuntarily. "Buccleuch has been driven to doing a 
lot of queer things to protect his own interests, but no one would ever confuse 
him with the Douglases. Mr. Crawford is right. The undiscrinilnating vulture is 
not our real danger: open scandal would simply drive him into profitless exile 
again, and would be of no possible advantage to us. Neither should we fear our 
sturdy patriots who, like your father, are busy with their loyalties in queer 
and crooked ways. Our danger lies with the men who want to take this country by 
trunk and limb and wreak it into such a shape that it will fit them and their 
children for hose and jerkin in their old age."
"Some of them are sincere," said Lymond.
"I know: and such men will wreck us yet. Preserve us above all from the honest 
clod and the ambitious fanatic."
"There doesn't seem to be a bewilderment of types left to choose from."
"The Culters, for example?"
Scott caught up Lauder with angry eyes. "This rn-starred family with a wastrel 
son?"
The lawyer smiled. "My business is with words, my boy; and the best ones grow 
like mushrooms on a good bedding-down of law. Your friend used some fairly 
choice expressions himself. . . . I admire your gift for commanding loyalty in 
spite of your tongue, Mr. Crawford. What will you do now?"
"I was going to ask you the same thing," said Lymond; and it was clear that he 
had used the breathing space Lauder had given him to good effect.
The Lord Advocate rose. "I think there are some people who should be shown this 
statement, and without much more delay," he said. "If you'll trust me with it."
Lymond's voice saying "Of course" clashed with Scott's "No!" His hands lingered 
a moment longer on the papers, then he ran finger and thumb along the fold and 
held the document out. Lauder took it.


"I should advise you to dress, if you can. Mr. Scott will help, perhaps. It may 
be necessary to send for you."
The door shut behind him. Lymond said, his long mouth twitching at the sight of 
Scott's face, "You must trust somebody, Will in spite of any repeated advice to 
the contrary you may hear."
Scott muttered, avoiding his eyes, "You must have thought me the qualified king 
of the simple-minded."
"If I did, I should never have allowed you to join me. Your father said as much 
to the Tribunal today-God, yesterday; and I can endorse it."
"In spite of my hellish mistakes?"
"I was thinking of tonight. You made no mistake with that." With an enslaved 
eagerness, Scott asked the question Lauder had put in vain. "What will you do 
now?" But Lymond, stretching, caught him by the arm and forced him into a chair 
beside him.
"Wait a moment. It is gradually forcing itself on my consciousness that I am not 
to be divided into four pieces tomorrow. No appointment with Apollyon. You 
appear to have made a decision about my life far more arbitrary than any I made 
about yours."
Scott's voice was uncertain. "I owed you that much, at least."
"You didn't owe me anything," said the Master. 'There's an unnatural conspiracy 
to keep me alive, that's all. I hope to God you don't regret it. I hope to God I 
don't regret it. How the hell did you manage to thrash Palmer at cards?"
Delight rose within Scott's soul. Not expecting Lymond to say more, and not 
knowing that he dared not say more, the young Buccleuch explained, while the 
Master dressed.

* * *



The Culters' house in Bruce's Close had a red roof and a motto over every 
window; but inside it was comfortable and convenient, with two separate bedrooms 
and a parlour with a wide, light window above the garden for Sybilla's sewing.
At midnight the Dowager ordered her son and daughter-in-law to bed, promising 
firmly to retire. But she sat on at her window, a still shadow on the bright 
square of rosebushes outside, and every separate nerve in her body trembled and 
ached.
For five days Sybilla had launched herself and all her bountiful possessions-her 
brains, her charm and her money-in a single-minded bombardment of authority. Her 
friends and contemporaries of church and nobility, the suitors of the Court of 
Session, the power.. ful of both sexes at Court, had all felt the impact of the 
Dowager's fear, and many of them tried to help because she was Sybilla, and 
people would lend her a needle to cobble the moon to her gates if she asked for 
it.
To no avail. From the start she had known that nothing could save this son's 
life for her: the law recognized proof, and there was no proof. On his return 
from the Committee Richard had been made to repeat again and again the pattern 
of question and answer. They had thrashed the case out, the three of them, until 
they were exhausted; and she had sent her son and Mariotta to bed.
She moved, and the dark roses shivered. There was an Ewe had three lambs, and 
one of them was black. What of it? Sheep are commonly white: does that make 
white unassailable, any more than the pure light of the sun before the prism? 
How may a breed freshen except under mutation? How improve its whiteness except 
by admitting a rogue cobalt to its candid meadows? . . . Not that the misery had 
been lived through quite in vain. In all her life she had never heard Richard 
speak as, distressed and vehement, he had spoken to them that evening.
Sybilla looked out of the dark window. To the east, Moultrie's
Hill and the Dow Craig, with Greenside on its farther slopes; where
for nine hours she had once sat and watched Davie Lindsay mock the
Three Estates before the Three Estates and the Crown before the
Crown. That was a tolerance fast slipping from them.
The Lang Gait and Gabriel's road, unlit; and few and distant lights from 
Broughton and Silver Mills and Kirkbraehead and Canon Mills. Below, her garden 
plunged and rolled to the turgid waters of the loch, and the tall lands on 
either side shifted their shadows with the shifting moon.
There was an Ewe had three lambs; and one of them was black. The one was hanged, 
the other drowned; the third was lost, and never found. . . . Sybilla's hands 
closed hard on each other.
It was then that Tom Erskine, riding lightly and alone, came sweeping to the 
door.

Half an hour went by. In Mary de Guise's palace the tapers took fire from room 
to room, as the Queen Dowager moved with her



maids to the audience chamber, turning her head as she walked to speak to 
Richard, on her right, and Henry Lauder, behind her.
They stood beside her as she settled on the dais. The Lord Chancellor was 
already there, his clothes wrinkled and dusty as the Queen's; and Argyll came in 
quickly, bowed, and sat with Huntly and Erskine and the secretaries along the 
wall of the short, elaborate room.
It was very hot, and the lights rebuffed their tired eyes. Because of the hour 
and the perpetual, malignant circumstance of crisis, the Queen demanded no 
ceremony. She spoke a little longer to the Lord Advocate, and next to Argyll; 
and then one of the secretaries answered her nod by opening the door. The Queen 
Dowager sat and watched Lord Culter, and Henry Lauder watched the Queen.
Richard smiled. Crawford of Lymond, standing just inside the doorway, smiled 
back, bowed, and remained where he was, in himself a novelty and a force to the 
considering gaze lifted to him. Chin sunk on her chains, starched gauze thinly 
shadowing the bridge of her nose, the Queen moved a hand and watched the man 
advance to her chair. She said, in her heavily accented English, "I was 
curious."
The Master replied in his own rapid French. "It is I, Madame, who am curious, or 
I should not have manufactured myself a silly predicament."
"The Justiciar cannot follow you," observed Mary de Guise. "We shall speak in 
English, in which he cannot follow me. There is no precedent, Mr. Crawford, for 
addressing a man who has been done an injustice by the State. We had, I thought, 
reached the safe haven of corruption where we need never fear to misjudge 
anybody. I am astounded to find myself wrong."
A nasty one. Too shrewd by far to answer, Lymond only inclined his fair head: he 
had the knack of seeming to have been delivered in his garments, observed 
Lauder, irritably aware of sitting on rucked linen and surrounded by half-awake 
and unvaleted statesmen.
The matronly, autocratic voice continued. "Through Will Scott of Kincurd, we 
have had constant information of your providing about enemy movements and enemy 
affairs. We know now that we owe to you other gifts of money and of secrets over 
the years, and that we have had ignorantly the use of your talents and your 
abilities at Hume and at Heriot, at Carlisle and Dumbarton. All these services 
performed beneath the edge of our sword and below the heel of our boot: 
performed with vigour and wit and independence.



"You have amazed me, Mr. Crawford. You see in me a misery of rage which should 
compensate you a little for your suffering. Bequeathed a shabby and ransacked 
armoury, I have thrown away tempered steel. My God, M. le maitre, you have done 
us an injury:
you should have held us by the neck and shouted your wrongs into our lungs. What 
redress can language give you? A polite apology, and Mr. Lauder's regrets?"
"Modified regrets," said the Lord Advocate. "I love Mr. Crawford like a son, but 
I wouldn't have missed that examination."
"If you mislay your notes," said Lymond, "you will find them engraved on my 
liver. La reine douairi~re is generous. My impression is that I made several 
mistakes for every one of the State's. The thing is best forgotten."
"My dear Mr. Crawford," said the Queen Dowager. "How can I forget, when my 
daughter recites scurrilous poetry, and holds you still dear to her heart . . .
Huntly moved. Mary of Guise folded her hands without looking at him, but a fibre 
entered her voice which was not there before, and her gaze hardened over them 
all.
"I am aware," she said, "that to most of you-to most of the people who fight for 
me and against me, and for and against the Protector-the royal line is a 
certificate of birth, and a circlet of metal; a pawn astray on her own board and 
more used to domination and a ruthless handling than the weakest of her 
subjects.
"To me, it is a little girl, fresh and warm, holding surprises and knowledge and 
happy years in her palms. When armed invaders come and men die and are captured 
and plot and betray, she is still a small girl, crying because she has wakened 
in the night." Her eyes dropped for a moment to her hands and her lip trembled 
for a moment, and then became firm.
"By all your efforts this year you have kept the Scottish crown safe from 
capture-yes, of course. What I remember, I, is that you have won me a year of my 
daughter's company.
"The last year, perhaps. She is safe. You, sir, with courage, kept the secret 
that allowed her ships to sail. Yesterday the wind moved from the south: autumn 
is coming, and a colder season perhaps than we have known yet. Yesterday my 
daughter set sail from Dumbarton:
with Lord Livingstone and Lord Erskine, with her brother, with fleming, Beaton, 
Seaton and Livingstone and Lady fleming, she set sail for France, to live there 
and, in time, to marry the Dauphin.



Some will say, we should have admitted England, this importunate bridegroom; and 
kept unspilled blood ~and whole hearths for our dowry. I think not. I hope that 
we are choosing wisdom as well as pride, and a long peace as well as a quick 
harbour."
"And England?" It was Lord Culter's voice.
"The King of France has taken this kingdom in perpetual shelter. He will demand 
of England peace between our three nations; and that all enmity between England 
and Scotland should cease."
Outside, dawn had come, pale and wind-torn, with stars set tardily in its 
brightness. In the yellow glare of the lights, Lymond's gaze had turned to his 
brother. "So they lose, after all," he said. "All the King's knights. Lord Grey 
and Lord Wharton, Lennox and Somerset, Wilford and Dudley, Sir George Douglas, 
Angus and Drumlanrig. Such plotting and striving and discomfort and distress; so 
much gold spent; so many peoples moved across the face of Europe to confront us. 
It's a sad thing to woo with cannon and to lose."
Mary de Guise had her mind as well as her eyes bent on the intent, fair face 
below her. "I wonder, are you with me?" she said.
The guarded eyes lifted instantly. "Yes . . . I think so. There is a divine 
solution, but we are only human, and Scots at that. Which means we dote on every 
complexity."
"And what award shall we give you," said Mary de Guise gravely, "for all you 
have done for us? Apart from the unqualified love of my daughter?"
Lymond's charming smile entered his blue eyes as he stood, experienced and 
passive, before her. "I have no other desires, and can imagine none."
"No?" said the Queen Dowager, and rising, swept Francis Crawford out of the 
room, ignoring her statesmen stumbling in surprise to their feet; leaving 
Richard faintly smiling and Lauder cursing with determination. "No other 
desires? Au contraire. There are some that I shall expect to find out and one, 
assuredly, that I know," said the Queen with decision; and opened a door.
In a lifetime of empty rooms, this was another.
Then there was a whisper of silk, a perfume half remembered, a humane, 
quizzical, intuitive presence; and a wild relief that deluged the tired and 
passionate mind.
Sybilla was there. She saw her son's eyes, and flung open her arms.