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negligently to the wall. ‘Was Monsieur armed?’ he asked.
    ‘No.’ Lymond used the same tongue. ‘Or the captain would not have admitted me to his horse.’
    There was a pause. ‘Where there is a simple man,’ said the Chevalier thoughtfully, ‘the apt punishment is sometimes not death but shame.’
    Cleansed of paint, Lymond’s fair-skinned face was mildly forbearing. ‘It is understood. We preferred not to expose those foresworn fools living round Roxburgh to the kind of retribution London would make if their captain were killed. Instead, we made a fool of him.’
    ‘But Sir Ralph Bullmer, from what I hear, is not a fool.’ M. de Villegagnon could flatter as well.
    ‘Luckily, or he would have charged us. As it was, Nell of Cessford was the only person they hurt—’
    ‘They killed her,’ broke in Tom Erskine bluntly.
    The eyes of the man Lymond and Sir William Scott met. Lymond said nothing. M. de Villegagnon, watching, saw the young knight flush; then Erskine, who in his own country preferred forthrightness to finesse said, ‘She was a Kerr. Francis told you not to let Hough Isa bring her.’
    Will Scott said angrily, ‘Will the Kerrs take revenge for their whores as well?’
    ‘Let us hope,’ said Lymond, ‘that they will look on you as her would-be protector, and that Grizel never hears of it with a blunt instrument to hand. If someone would introduce me to M. de Villegagnon I could sit down.…’
*
    Late that night with Tom Erskine (they drew spills for it) quietly asleep on the camp bed, and Will Scott’s red head buried in his saddle while his soft palate buzzed and rattled with his dreams, Nicholas Durand de Villegagnon rose, and crossing the small crowded room the four shared, noiselessly paused at the hearth. In the glimmering red of the fire, the only light in the room, his height seemed inhuman, his bulk measureless, his silence uncanny, like the nesting owl with raked eyeballs pat to her claws. ‘This play acting today, it entertains you?’ he said.
    In the depths of the carved chair where he had chosen to sleep,Lymond’s breathing did not change, nor in the toneless flood of red light did his face alter. He said briefly, ‘It served its purpose. We are not all children of destiny.’
    The solid body of the French knight was motionless also. ‘I have heard a man whose lover has been killed speak like that,’ he said.
    Lymond’s voice repeated drily, ‘A man ?’ and in the buried red light, the Chevalier’s face creased, as if he smiled. ‘Perhaps not,’ he said. ‘But my premise remains. Not for all of us, the common dynastic toil. You, for example, have all the comfort you need at home and need seek no gentler company.’
    ‘I am a great respecter of comfort,’ said Lymond, and at the edge on his voice the Chevalier began to be satisfied. ‘I meant merely,’ he said, speaking always softly, ‘that having none of the duties of an older brother, I saw a noble future before you at the Queen Dowager’s side.’
    ‘… And men of religion are not,’ stated Lymond, as if he had not spoken. ‘Furthermore, at each of the Queen Dowager’s many sides, she already has a brother de Guise.’
    Beside Lymond’s chair stood a rush stool, warm from the fire. De Villegagnon bent and sat on it, his broad back to the dark room, and began at leisure to untie his fine shirt. He said, ‘I know, of course, that a good many Scotsmen fear to become provincials of France. The Queen Dowager is not the Regent for her daughter, and yet she and the French Ambassador seem to make all the decisions that matter. Also, she and the King of France are of the Old Religion, and those of you who lean towards the reformed church would deliver Scotland to her old enemy England, with earth and stone and the clappers of her mills, rather than risk religious martyrdom with France.’
    ‘You flatter us,’ said Francis Crawford; and leaning forward to grasp the long poker, lifted the structure of the fire.