"Sir Graham, I understand, is coming back merely to see his sister and rest. I," said Lymond, "am going to settle down at St Mary's and raise a little army."
"A little army of what?" said Richard ironically, but his eyes were very wary indeed.
"Of masters in the art of war," said Francis Crawford. "Of trained engineers and pioneers and masters of ordnance. Sappers, billmen, pikemen, arquebusiers, strategists with horse and with foot. A virtuous little warband, highly trained and highly mobile, and nine-tenths of it officers."
Once Lymond, with Will Scott at his side, had led a roving company in southern Scotland. Then there had been sixty of them, broken men and outlawed for the most part, because Lymond himself was outside the law. A camp such as Lymond now contemplated, on the other hand, could turn itself in two weeks of easy recruiting into an international force.
There was a respectful silence, broken by Lord Culter's agreeable voice. "How exciting," he said. "And are we witnessing the foundation of the Order of St Francis, or is the Queen Dowager getting her standing army at last?"
"Not at all. You are witnessing the younger branch of the family being severely practical," said Lymond, his blue eyes guileless in his tanned face. "Brute force is the most saleable commodity in Europe today. In six months mine shall be in the market, washed, sorted and trimmed, and priced accordingly."
"Strictly mercenary?" said Will Scott thoughtfully. "My God, you'll be playing with fire."
"No principles and no philosophy. For financial gain only," said Francis Crawford. "This year, I am travelling light." And removing his gaze from his mother's frankly owlish regard, "Now, dear Antony of Padua inform me, why should Mariotta be lugging about the Martinmas hog?"
For the door had opened on his sister-in-law, her black hair pulled curling out of its caul round her radiant face, and in her arms an animated bolster in a white, cock-eyed cap whose fat hand was wound throttlingly into its mother's agates and pearls. Its face was a pneumatic version of Mariotta's, but bountifully male.
Lymond, still talking, rose and went over. "Don't tell me: the Master of Culter?" And he took the baby from her as he might have lifted a piglet, securely and casually, leaving her empty-handed, her gaze on Sybilla. The baby laughed and drooled, two milk-teeth shining in the wet. Lymond examined it, and it chuckled again. "By all means," he said. "Born into this rout of robbers and hurly-burly of Lanarkshire vagabonds, you'd damned well better learn to spit or to giggle, or both."
Until this child was born, the Master of Culter had been his own title. Mariotta did not forget: in four years she had matured. "Thank you, M. le Comte," she said gravely; and smiling, he threw the child in the air and returned it, fizzing with aerated mirth. Its eyes, coins of dark-blue iris, rolled round to follow him and Sybilla, felled by an unlooked-for discovery about this, her intellectual son, sat grinning back at a view of the door which was uncommonly blurred.
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Richard Crawford himself took part briefly in the archery and then retired, rather silent, to watch the doctor and Adam Blacklock shoot it out. Only Jerott, perched on a piece of fencing behind, heard him stroll up to his brother and say, abruptly, "Not for the first time, you frighten me silly."Lymond, who had been watching the mercenaries and not the shooting, turned quickly. "Why? You still shoot a good deal better than that."
"Thank you," said Richard drily. "I hear you sent the Queen Dowager's gifts back."
"Where did you hear that? It doesn't matter. I merely thought it might be inconvenient to have to pay for them some day," said Lymond. "So what frightens you?" And there was, Jerott noted, the slightest possible stress on the word 'you'.
His elder brother, grey eyes level, held his gaze. "Perfection frightens me," he said. "They're too good, Francis. What do you want this axe-edge for?"
"To cut with," said Lymond, his voice mild. For a moment longer they considered one another without speaking, then, abandoning the contest, Richard began to talk of other things.
from The Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett
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