The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett Page A

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 père, qui chante sur le ramée el plus haut boscage
    La seraine, ele est ma mère, qui chante en la mer salée, 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 self-conceit.”
    “If anyone so described it to you, I hope you impeached him for a pompous liar.”
    “My dear man, would you have me excommunicate? 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 anywhere,” 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