The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett Page B

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 nurse-maid-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 wall, 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
,
Oi soz un arbroisel

Chanter le rosignolet
.
Saderala don!

Tant fet bon

Dormir lez le buissonet.”
    He paused, and evidently accepting her smile,