Lymond reading notes 7 – Game of Kings – The Play for Jonathan Crouch
Dalkeith and George Douglas
Dorothy uses the spreading news and humour about the events of Hume to follow it to Dalkeith and the home of Sir George Douglas where he receives it thoughtfully – a word which is repeated twice more as he climbs to his study to meet a messenger, supposedly bringing a message from the English Protector.
The man is wearing a close cap which completely covers his hair – immediately raising suspicions among readers. His manner and speech soon amplify that suspicion and we realise this is Lymond in disguise.
‘Today the palace, tomorrow the oubliette and the elegiac distich.’
An oubliette is a secret room in a dungeon. An elegiac distich is a funeral lament. This attracts Douglas’ full attention.
‘Je suis oiseau: voyez mes ailes…Je suis souris; vivent les rats.’
‘I am a bird, see my wings. I am a mouse: long live the rats.’
This is part of a fable – The Bat and the Two Weasels:
The bat is twice captured by different weasels, but convinces one weasel that he’s a bird rather than a rat, and the other one that he’s a mouse rather than a bird. Both let him go for opposite reasons.
The moral of the story: Look and see which way the wind blows before you commit yourself.
Lymond reads out part of a dispatch from Lord Grey to the Protector, which mentions Douglas and that he has pledged to help put Queen Mary in English hands, and he then implies there is more in a postscript which he has left with friends to ensure his safety, and Douglas immediately and calmly supposes this to be an attempt at blackmail. After some verbal sparring Lymond says that the postscript and a copy of it does indeed exist:
‘I’m King of the Fidlers and swear ‘tis a truth.’
This is from a ballad about Robin Hood, who is an interesting character to invoke in the circumstances regarding Lymond.
Lymond offers the full dispatch for a nominal sum, which turns out to be Jonathan Crouch.
Douglas wants to make sure that Mary of Guise doesn’t hear about the dispatch, and attempts to bribe him, first with a ruby ring, and then by suggesting he could make money from the flow of information if they were to cooperate.
‘Fools make news, and wise men carry it. You could become a rich man.’
‘I am a rich man,’ said his visitor.
Which is an interesting thing to say given his Scottish lands are confiscated. He may have funds overseas or he may just be saying it to dismiss the bribe or suggested plan.
Sir George then has to admit that he no longer has Crouch but offers to tell who does and to engineer a way to enter the house where he is being kept.
‘Oh Douglas, oh Douglas, Tender and true…’
A very appropriate line from The Buke of Howlat, though it refers to an earlier Douglas when they were supporters of Robert the Bruce.
Sir George gives him Andrew Hunter’s name and says he will send a secretary to tell him of the enquiry about Crouch, as he had agreed, but that it would be easy to slip an extra person to the party.
Feeling a degree of kinship with his sharp-witted opponent he suggests they drink claret, to which Lymond agrees, but adds that he’s left a barrel of beer for him “a little stirred up” – a clear hint of where it has come from and also a hint as to his identity.
Ballaggan and Catherine Hunter
Catherine, Andrew’s mother is described as ”the spirit of Ballaggan Keep – imperious, impervious, implacable, brooding over its fastness like a tribal mascot”.
We find that Andrew had a “brilliant” older brother who died not long after their father, and it’s clear that Catherine favoured him.
We get a description of the contents of the house:
Spanish tiles on the floor (even Midculter uses rushes), Aldine folios, rugs from Turkey and the Levant. The beds were wrought and gilded, and hung with heavy taffetas; chests and tables in marble and scented woods. It is lavishly decorated.
Aldine folios are from the Aldine Press of Venice – a famous Renaissance printer whose publications were highly desirable. Amongst other things they introduced the use of italics.
Clearly these are more than the estate can support:
Lamentably aware that – even if gold mines sprang beneath his feet, like Olwen’s trefoils – his mother’s fancy would still outpace him, Sir Andrew was sometimes reduced to a state of nervous irritation very close to rebellion. That he invariably spared her either complaint or reproach labelled him a soft mark among his fellow knights and earned him a solid revenue of womanly sympathy.
Dorothy spends quite a bit of time on Catherine Hunter, which makes one wonder why. What role could a bed-ridden old woman play in this swashbuckling story?
Crouch, and Dorothy’s humour
Crouch is immediately described in a memorable section, beloved of many readers:
With Mr Crouch came his tongue, his teeth, his lips, his hard and soft palate, his maxillary muscles, larynx, epiglottis and lungs: all the apparatus which enabled him, ne plus ultra, to talk. Like the enchanted garden of Jannes, tenanted by daemons, the keep of Ballaggan encased the ceaseless drone of Mr Crouch’s voice. He droned through September until it and his captors were exhausted; then pounced on October with undimmed vigour and worried the blameless days for a fortnight.
This is quickly followed by a delightful second description that gives a perfect visual impression.
Mr Crouch, wittily obese like a middle-aged titmouse, sat enthroned on his stomach, giving tongue. Incidents of his boyhood surged to cataclysmic peaks of pointlessness. Episodes from his career in the Princess Mary’s household explored tedium to its petrified core.
Crouch is thus made a figure of fun but it’s done gently, and he’s also described as a kind man with a wife and 5 children (all girls) – who of course he promises to talk about!
So it seems unlikely that he is the one of the three that Lymond thinks may have betrayed him.
In the subsequent talk Andrew Hunter is also seen quite sympathetically – we start to feel sorry for him with Crouch’s wittering, and his mother constant carping criticism. Why do we think Dorothy does this?
Yet she also slips in subtle hints about his character via Catherine – that he’s never been injured in battle for instance.
What are we to make of him?
We discover that Crouch does successfully return to his wife via a mention of him telling her of the encounter – another hint that he is not the guilty party.
Hunter then produces a gift for his mother, though she takes her time opening it:
A vast, hexagonal brooch set in ebony and diamonds shouted into the sunshine in a cacophony of light.
Crouch is impressed – it’s the most expensive jewel he’s ever seen – and remarks that the letters written on it in diamonds must stand for Henri and Diane de Poitiers. (Though why it’s not still in her possession is not explained.)
Catherine is not impressed:
‘A remarkable piece of vulgarity,’ she said. ‘I fear, Andrew, that a stronger woman might have been able to do more than I to educate your taste a little. It is a great grief to me that I cannot help you more. However, there is no need for you to waste your purchase. I am sure there is some good burgess’s daughter whom you have a kindness for, who would be perfectly satisfied with it.
which, amongst other things, infers that Andrew has no fiancé and no likely consort from the nobility. This is unusual for an estate owner with a title.
As Andrew goes downstairs to welcome arriving visitors, Crouch suggests the brooch will have been expensive and not easy to resell. Catherine responds with a classic line:
‘The price of aesthetic education, Mr Crouch,’ she said, ‘is never small.’
Mr Crouch (for once) did not feel competent to answer.
The (for once) is a lovely touch that’s bound to raise a smile.
The Fight
Andrew returns to find Crouch and Catherine tied up, and before he can take it in he’s hit from behind by a black-masked man, who then applies a wrestler’s lock to his knee, and says:
‘The Common Thick-knee,’ he said breathlessly, ‘is a bird … capable of running at great speed.’ He increased his leverage, grinning. ‘Now here, Dandy mine, we have a specimen of the Uncommon –’
alerting us, if we hadn’t already guessed, that this is Lymond. Hunter, out of sheer anger at the joke, fights back. We get some unusual descriptions slipped in during the struggle:
“…a fine stool splintered, its prowling leopards bifurcated, and a row of medicine bottles fell from the bedside table with a tympanitic crash.
Bifurcated and tympanitic are not exactly typical words to find in the middle of a fight scene!
Hunter seems to get on top and his opponent momentarily seems to go limp, but it’s a ruse and he kicks Hunter in a tender area before hitting him with a fire iron and then throwing him across the room and hitting his head off the floor. The rich Spanish tiles are referred to in a sarcastic aside:
‘Who … falls upon rushes, falls soft; beware of … vain pride in terrestrial treasure, Sir Andrew. And … doused lights … and fireirons … and wrestling in slippers.’
before Hunter loses consciousness, leaving Lymond to escape with Crouch.
While some may query the level of violence used against Andrew Hunter, the fact that Lymond is alone and needs to get out, with Crouch doubtless slowing things down, means that he has to incapacitate Hunter otherwise he will alert his men and will be able to track Lymond down. So I think it can be forgiven in the circumstances.