Free The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett Page A

“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: thebarber-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 postern. 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.”
    “No.”
    “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,