The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett

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 I,” 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. “Ah, 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 lacunae to the effects of a blow on the head. I am but ane mad man that thou hast