Queens' Play (49 page)

And that, clearly, his opponent did not relish. An excellent parry suddenly appeared, to defend those thick lashes from a cut which would have sliced the bridge of his nose. Then Lymond’s blade swept low to save himself from being hamstrung. In dumb and desperate battle, Robin Stewart realized elatedly, the golden voice was silent.

It was silent, had he known it, because in the midst of these very real difficulties, Francis Crawford was also wrestling with an urgent desire to laugh.

Swordplay in a wooded clearing at night has its own special hazards: you must turn your eyes up as well as forwards, or the annihilating blade may sink deep in some curtseying bough. Creeper and rabbit hole await you; a shocked bird blunders, and the hair springs cold on your skin.

As it was, they pranced knee-deep like player-goblins, their breath in the silence like saws, the soft palate registering each truncated, tight-mouthed gasp. Stewart’s blade had touched once, near the beginning, and a thread of black showed from a scratch under Lymond’s bright hair. Stewart himself was unharmed.

Fern and knotted root pulling at their feet, they tired quickly. Between Stewart, with the boar’s marks on his skin and Lymond with his illness behind him, there was physically not much to choose. The ear became as important as the straining eye: where the enemy’s glance delivered no warning, you gleaned news instead from the rustling shift of his weight.

To Stewart, his body slippery inside his doublet, it seemed that his opponent was becoming unnecessarily nimble, but he felt no inclination to laugh. High, low, to one side or the other, the flat blades cracked and crashed, wringing his arm. With grim exaltation he aimed the deliberate, maiming blows, and made the other man hop. The sparks blossomed, bright as smithy-work suddenly, as he
touched the chain mail and very nearly the neck; Lymond drew a short breath and disengaged. Stewart fell back, his eyes joyous, his dedication a holy thing; and a girl’s voice, high, shaky and French, said from beyond the clearing,
‘Georges! Qu’est-ce que c’est? Ah, non, ne me laisses pas!’

There was a shocking pause. Then the bushes parted. Through them bounced a half-dressed, half-drunk and wholly belligerent young man whom Stewart recognized in a single, hate-filled glance as one of those sharing Lymond’s tent. ‘What in the name’s going on here … Crawford!’

For Lymond in three dancing steps had moved into the moonlight from under the lee of Stewart’s high, arrested blade and said, almost stripped of breath, ‘Thank God, George. Did you see him? He ran past over there.’ And pointed, with his sword, to the trees directly opposite the shadows which hid Robin Stewart.

Stewart, girded with muscle and sick resolution which somehow were to help him fight and kill two men instead of one, stood, his chest heaving, stopped on the verge. The young man said short-temperedly, ‘Who?’ and Lymond answered: ‘One of the venturieri—a robber. Or so I suppose. When he heard you, he ran.’

‘Aïe! Bertrand!’
The girl’s voice scraped through the silence.
‘C’aurait dû être Bertrand!’
She had appeared at the edge of the clearing, Stewart saw; a local girl obviously, her hair in a mess. The long gown was kirtled, country style; otherwise, unlike the lady who by tight-lacing bought hell very dear, she was singularly untrammelled. Neither she nor anyone else had glanced behind Lymond’s back, where the bushes were comfortingly thick. The Archer hesitated, then stepped softly among them.

‘Was he a stout man?’ The enquiries of the hasty lover had suddenly become a good deal more cogent. ‘Black-bearded, with a stinking jerkin half-cured?’

‘Christ, yes,’ said Lymond, after the briefest possible pause. His voice sounded odd. ‘Not as the fragrance of him who walks according to the precepts. Her brother?’

‘Mon mari,’ said the girl, and moaned. ‘He will follow you, Georges. He will kill you. Quickly!’ She tugged at him. ‘You must run!’

‘Try that way,’ said Lymond, and indicated the way they had come. ‘It’ll take you back quickest.’ He paused. ‘You fool, you haven’t a sword?’

George, swaying very slightly, fired up. ‘I’ll kill him with my bare—’

‘You won’t get a chance. Here, take mine.’

The young ensign held out his hand, then drew it back. ‘But what about—’

‘He won’t trouble me again. He’s had a taste of the steel. Besides, he knows by now he had made a mistake. Hurry, you imbecile. Good luck.’

Pulled by the lady of his heart, George hesitated no longer. Seizing the weapon and the girl, one in each hand, he disappeared into the undergrowth, and Lymond, alone in the moonlight, collapsed breathless on to the ferns, helpless with laughter. ‘… The next lesson,’ said Francis Crawford, sitting up at length, ‘will be some Quick and Merry Dialogues. Before you cut my throat, dear Robin, may we talk?’

Much later, Stewart realized that fate had improved on some original plan. At the time he only knew, fumbling to recover the blind paths of his wrath, that Lymond had seized the chance neither to betray him nor to escape; but had made instead the one unanswerable affirmation of neutrality: he had disarmed himself.

But for themselves, the wood was empty. You could sense it, vacant around you after the running footsteps died away. Even the wild life, flinching from the metal and the angry voices, had abandoned the arena to Lymond and him. Shakily, cold with overstrain and post-battle nausea, Stewart walked out sword in hand to where his enemy was sitting.

Looking down at the long, exposed throat, ‘What did you do that for?’ said the Archer angrily, ‘Something you want off me, eh? Something you couldna survive, just, without. I hope so. For you’ll lack it and life both before I get out of this wood.’

‘Hanged in irons within the floodmarks of thy pride. I know it. How did Lord d’Aubigny contrive your escape?’

‘Lord d’Aubigny!’
After a second, flummoxed both by the suggestion and the unexpectedness of the subject, Stewart exclaimed, ‘I escaped with no man’s help, thank you. Are ye wud? His lordship as you well know has more reason to want me executed than anyone.’

‘Why? Your cannon misfired last time, my dear. Free, you can do him nothing but good.’

‘How?’ It was guttural in its contempt.

‘By killing me, for one thing,’ said Lymond gently. ‘And when he kills the Queen, by taking the blame. Afterwards, your body will be found.’ He paused. ‘Someone in the escort was sympathetic, wasn’t he? And made sure that after you had escaped, you would know how to reach him? Someone rather clever, by the way; for a man of mine who was following you quite closely saw nothing at all.’

No one had helped him escape. He said as much again, blasphemously, with André Spens’s address burning in his pouch, and André Spens’s bow lying back there in the wood. The man had been friendly, yes. But as to conniving at his escape …

His expression, as he worked it out from that point, must have told its own story, for Lymond said quietly, ‘I thought you might prefer to know. Mary’s death might make of d’Aubigny a very exalted person indeed. Do you want him to kill her?’

Success for that aesthetic gentleman was the last thing he wanted. But how, anyway, to prevent it? Stewart said coarsely, ‘I forgot—you were raised in a coven. A bit juggle here and a puff of smoke there, and his lordship vanishes into a bottle—if I spare you.’

‘I’m not indispensable,’ said Lymond surprisingly. ‘Not to you, anyway. If you want to kill me, I should find you hard to stop. No. The only certain way of embarrassing d’Aubigny—surely—is for you to give yourself up.’ And, as Stewart’s snort of disbelief grew into a single, outraged laugh, Lymond added coolly, ‘Why not? What else in God’s name did you escape for? You claim you don’t want to live.’

But the Archer’s mind was busy. ‘Why didn’t you have yon silly loon come and help take me, then? Ah, of course! For greed, come ben! Witness wanted against his lordship! Ye thought out of gratitude I’d help you trace my escape back to him!’

‘Perhaps,’ said Francis Crawford. During all this exchange he had remained seated, his weight thrown back on his hands, his expression obliterated by the dark, like a face seen through gauze. ‘It seems likely that the man suborned for your escape might well have been used, or might be used yet on an actual murder attempt. You could injure d’Aubigny to my benefit by telling me who. The only way you can injure us both is by killing me now, and by giving yourself instantly up to the Constable, throwing in the facts about your escape for good measure. With you once more in prison, d’Aubigny really dare not try; and in the meantime, proof may appear against him through your helper.’

And having stated his premise, Lymond took out a square of linen, unfolded it, and removed neatly, by touch, the trace of blood on his face.

Stewart, staring at him in the milky light, the mild leaves still and undemanding about them, listened to the exposition of logic which, half an hour ago, in his blood fever, would have meant nothing at all. You had to admire the skill which had brought this about; you had to say, however unwillingly, ‘If you’d taken me between you, just now, I’d still have overthrown Lord d’Aubigny, very likely, by telling the facts, as you call it, of my escape.’ His first conclusions, obviously, needed amending. ‘Why then do as you did?’

‘I owe you a little free will,’ said Lymond shortly. ‘The crossroads may not be of your seeking, but at least the road you choose will be your own.’

Stewart advanced. It was impossible to see the other man’s face.
Standing so that the sword threw its shadow across the white gullet, the Archer said, ‘Take off that mail shirt of yours, then.’

The silence lengthened. Then Lymond, without speaking, untied and dragged off his doublet, and pulled off the mail. It rustled tinnily, a far-off tambourine, a far-off anchor chain spilling sweet in the locker: which last anchor had been raised? Lymond said, ‘It’s off. Are you happy?’

Commonplace words, to achieve what they did. But, straining, Stewart at last had made out his enemy’s features. There was no fear in Lymond’s face. The thin, long bones of it were set in thought, and there was a line between the shadowy eyes. It all said, plainly enough, that Francis Crawford did not know what he, Stewart, would do; and that patiently he was giving Stewart himself time to decide.

The sheer weight of the blade in his hand reminded the Archer. Tightening his grip, he lifted it afresh. The soft light, like strung sequins, spilled off its edge. Lymond said impersonally, ‘Are you happy?’ and the leaden tangle between Stewart’s ribs, where every bearing rein of his body was whipped hard and knotted, grew until his thin throat with its coarse tendons and its comic Adam’s apple shut tight. He dropped to his knees, the sword falling flat and unheeded on the dark grass, and clapping his two bony hands to his beaten face, wept.

Francis Crawford, who had his own laws, did not move. ‘
Je t’en ferai si grant venjance Qu’on le savra par tote France,
’ someone had once written. ‘I shall wreak such a vengeance that all France shall know it.’ It had a noble ring.

There was nothing noble about the dishevelled head snivelling harshly at his feet. After this show of cleansing emotion, Stewart would doubtless feel much restored. Already, wiping his smeared face with his hand, he had opened his eyes, glaring, on the earth and was catching his breath to speak.

It was going to be sentimental; the very cast of the mouth foretold it. The bloody fool could not realize, even yet, that anyone trained as Lymond was could have outplayed him, disarmed him and manhandled him back to camp shirtless, swordless and without intervention from half-naked young idiots with their mistresses or anybody else.

The Archer lifted his furrowed face to speak, and Lymond said, ‘But really, bastardy is no excuse for all this. Look at Bayard. And who was
your
father? The last lord of Aubigny? Old Robert?’

The other man’s face stayed upturned, the mouth half opened. The resemblance to d’Aubigny was not striking, but that would explain it. The great-uncle had been a vigorous old man. Stewart swallowed. Then he said hesitantly, ‘I canna prove it. Anyway, she was out of the bakehouse; they didna marry. Had they married—’

‘You would have been Lord d’Aubigny. Not, I suppose, an uncommon trouble really. Would you have made a good seigneur, do you think?’

Stewart, who had been caught on all fours, crept to a log and sat down. He said roughly, ‘As good as him, then.’

‘Do you think so?’ said Lymond idly. ‘You might have harried your Protestants—yes—but would you have cherished your beautiful buildings and dressed them with works of art? Would you have spent your money on jewels and fine clothes, on music and tapestries? Neither of you can lead. Neither of you has made a wild success of the profession of arms. If you are not going to be practical, you must perfect the lusty arts of leisure.’

‘Living on what?’ With the tingling resurgence of anger and prejudice the Archer stiffened like a hog. ‘John Stewart of Aubigny will live on manchets and muscatel all his days, out of his parents’ marriage lines. The same as you did. You treat life, all of you, as if the world was a tilting ground.
The lusty arts of leisure!
When you’re born to a mean spoon and a worn thread, when the only food in your mouth and the only clothes on your back and the only turf on your roof is your own bloody sweat, you get good heart out of all your braw hours of leisure, I can tell you!’

‘In other words,’ said the voice in the darkness, profoundly unimpressed, ‘your enforced métier was to be practical. Very well. When you ran that roof race with me you started with one stocking marked, a loose row of bullion on your hoqueton, and your hair needing a cut. Your manners, social and personal, derive directly from the bakehouse; your living quarters, any time I have seen them, have been untidy and ill-cleaned. In the swordplay just now you cut consistently to the left, a habit so remarkable that you must have been warned time and again; and you cannot parry a coup de Jarnac. I tried you with the same feint for it three times tonight.… These are professional matters, Robin. To succeed as you want, you have to be precise; you have to have polish; you have to carry polish and precision into everything you do. You have no time to sigh over seigneuries and begrudge other people their gifts. Lack of genius never held anyone back,’ said Lymond. ‘Only time wasted on resentment and daydreaming can do that. You never did work with your whole brain and your whole body at being an Archer; and you ended neither soldier nor seigneur, but a dried-out huddle of grudges strung cheek to cheek on a withy.’