Free The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett Page B

“we can just hand him over to Hugh.”
    “In which event,” said Christian, “he will certainly become nobody in record time. All right. I agree.”
    *  *  *
    To carry the prisoner within, to strip, wash and bed him, to surround him with hot bricks in socks and light a fire to heat cock-a-leeky and milk and honey sneaked from the buttery took Sym, borne on the wings of simple cupidity, less time than bedding a child.
    Christian, pulled by outside necessity, set aside ten minutes to examine his handiwork and used the time to relax, hands clasped, on a chair by the bedside while Sym, a cudgel beside him, bestowed himself hopefully on the window seat.
    Blessed silence, and the slow dissolving of the nagging images of the day into something near dreams. Flurried movements of the big fire, to her left. Silk, pricking her right hand as the bed curtains stirred in an eddy. A rustle from Sym’s feet in the rushes. A voice far below in the courtyard, crying something she could not quite catch. A creak from the bed.
    Another.
    A languid stir of the bedclothes.
    It was, thought Christian, fully awake and gripped with laughter, like attending a birth. Were they wrong and he was Scottish, a purebred orthodox achievement with full honours: all well?
    There was a thin crackle of pillow-feather; a stifled expletive; then a voice said resignedly, “God: my skull’s split.”
    It was a cultured voice, with no inflection which would have seemed out of place at any point north of the Tyne. Like the jewelled aiglettes it announced consequence, character and money. Considering it, she spoke reassuringly. “Better not move. There’s a bump on your head like the Old Man of Storr.” And to save him time and breath she added, “I’m Christian Stewart of Boghall. My lad over there picked you up off the moor.”
    There was a long pause; then he spoke, clearly with his head turned toward her. “Bog—Bog … ?”
    “Boghall. Yes. You were thoroughly cold and damp, and here’s Sym with some broth for you.”
    Unexpectedly, underneath shock and weakness there was the accent of laughter. “Think of the Cauldron of Hell,” remarked their prisoner, “and you have my inside arrangements. But I’ll try. Like the spider, I’ll try. That lightlie comes will lightlie ga … steady … That’s it. I can feed myself—or can I? I’m so sorry. The counterpane is not improved by spilt broth.”
    He ate, and much intrigued, Christian waited. At the end, he spoke again. “I was not, I hope, wearing a nightshirt when discovered?”
    An artless gentleman. Christian followed the lead. “Your clothes are drying, sir. Your weapons were impounded when we found you were English.”
    “English! Lucifer, Lord of Hell!” (Here was passion.) “Do I look like an Englishman?”
    “I,” said Christian with wicked simplicity, “am blind. How should I know?”
    Used rarely and with reluctance this was, she had found, the infallible test. Braced, she waited: for remorse, embarrassment, dismay, pity, forced sympathy, naked fear.
    “Oh, are you? I’m sorry. You hide it extremely well. Then what,” he asked anxiously, “made your friends think I was English?”
    Exquisitely done, my young man, thought Christian. She said aloud, “Well, to begin with, you were wearing an English cloak. We’ve disposed of that for your own sake. Feeling in Boghall about the Englishhas been running gallows high since Lord Fleming was killed. You’re safe in this room with Sym and myself, but I shouldn’t advise you to attract the attention of anyone else in the castle.”
    “I see. Or I shall meet my fate. Without pitie, hanged to be, and waver with the wind. My beard, if I had one—Lord, I nearly have—is full young yet to make a purfle of it, even to replace the one I’ve stained. And why, Mistress Stewart, should you and your henchman trouble to defend me from death and horrible maims?”
    “What a suspicious mind you have.” Blandly, Christian matched metre