"Dunnett, Dorothy - The Game of Kings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunnett Dorothy)

and cracked; the fine eyes slackly lidded; the mouth insolent and self-
indulgent. He returned the scrutiny without rancour.
"What had you expected? A viper, or a devil, or a ravening idiot; Milo with the
ox on his shoulders, Angra-Mainyo prepared to do battle with Zoroaster, or the
Golden Ass? Or didn't you know the family colouring? Richard hasn't got it. Poor
Richard is merely Brown and fit to break bread with . .
"The poem I know at least," exclaimed Mariotta, chafing her wrist. "Red wise;
Brown trusty; Pale envious-"
"And Black lusty. What a quantity of traps you've dropped into today. . . . If
you wish, you may run ahead screaming. It makes no difference now, although five
minutes ago we were in something of a hurry . . . the servants to be tied up . .
. the silver to collect .
Richard's personal hoard to recover from its usual cache. A man of iron habit,
Richard."
He had wandered absently past her and ahead up the stair when Mariotta, fully
alert and aghast, started after him. "What do you want?"
He considered. "Amusement, principally. Don't you think it's time
21



my family shared in my misfortunes, as Christians should? Then, vice is so
costly: May dew or none, my brown and tender diamonds don't engender, they
dissolve. Immoderation, Mariotta, is a thief of money and intestinal joy, but
who'd check it? Not I. Here I am, weeping soft tears of myrrh, to prove it."
They had reached the door to the Hall. One hand on the stand-post, he turned,
and the kitten's eyes were bright blue. "Watch carefully. In forty formidable
bosoms we are about to create a climacteric of emotion. In one short speech-or
maybe two-I propose to steer your women through excitement, superiority,
contempt and anger:
we shall have a little drama; just, awful and poetic, spread with uncials and
full, as the poet said, of fruit and seriosity. Will they thank me, I wonder?"
Mariotta, collecting her wits, produced the only deterrent she could think of.
"Your mother is in there."
He received this with tranquil pleasure. "Then one person at least should
recognize me," Crawford of Lymond said, and pushed the door gently open for her
to walk through.
. * *



Meanwhile Sir Wat Scott of Buccleuch was riding westward from Edinburgh, free at
last of the Governor's councils, and leaving be-hind him his good friend Tom
Erskine, a distraught smuggler, and a depressed pig.
Buccleuch was accustomed to war. Since the golden age before Flodden of a
dynamic kingship and culture, it seemed that he had been governed by children,
or by their elders and so-called protectors locked in civil struggle for power.
And always the nobles who fell out of power were able to look for help to
England's Henry VIII, who as a matter of personal pride and pressing European
politics meant to conquer Scotland for himself, and to take the child Queen Mary