"...o che gabbato t'ha, o che gabbar' te voule. I am sure," said Philippa, "that not even the Russians could deceive the commander of St Mary's and the Tsar's own private envoy to England..."
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"I am studying with Ascham," Philippa said. "The Queen's Latin secretary."
"I noticed you capped all my best quotations," said Lymond absently.
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Then she cried protesting aloud and Austin Grey, waiting anxiously and restlessly at the end of the passage outside heard the sound, and other sounds of Philippa in distress, and drawing his sword, blundered the narrow corridor and flung open the door. Philippa choked. Lymond, his face perfectly stark, said, "Oh, God in heaven, Tristram Trusty..." and moved quickly back as the sword flashed towards him. Philippa yelped.
It held the stuff of both climates: the tragic and the childish. Lymond was quite unarmed. The room, crowded with bric a brac, was no more fit for a tournament than a woodshed. As Austin Grey came pursuing towards him, Lymond slid back between stool and box and bed until, glancing sideways, he was able to snatch up a baton, left stuck under the buckle of a round leather chest. He used it, parrying, just as Austin's first sword-stroke descended and said, breathlessly, "What are you doing here? It isn't your quarrel!"
Philippa, joining her voice to his, said wetly, "Stop it!"
"She says, Stop it," said Lymond.
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Philippa, lifting her skirts, plunged from the wall and thrust her way to the scene of the action. "Austin. You are fighting an unarmed man with a sword."
Austin pushed her out of the way and, taking a sudden stride forward, nearly managed to pin his opponent between the window and the bed, dodging the lute which Lymond flung at him as he did so. "It will perhaps teach him," he said, breathing hard, "not to force his presumptuous manners on women."
"Oh, don't be a fool, Tristram Trusty," said Lymond. And making three precise movements: a step by the stool, a feint by the chair and a swinging stride to the bed, kicked Austin Grey's sword neatly clean out of his hand.
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And a capable feminine voice, directed past Austin Grey's ear to his opponent, said baldly, "Hit him."
Lymond, already balanced on the upswing to hurl himself forward, dropped his arm and said, with dawning reproof, "I was going to."
"I know," said Philippa. "And it'll take half an hour and end with an audience. Hit him."
Under her hands, Austin Grey suddenly struggled.
"Hit him!" said Philippa sharply. "It's the only way he can stop now, with honour."
Which was not only perceptive, but practical. So Lymond hit him.
The Marquis of Allendale fell very neatly and was caught and lowered to the ground, quite insensible, by Francis Crawford of Lymond and his wife.
Lymond was laughing, with not quite enough breath to do it with. Straightening from Austin Grey's body, he was gurgling still with breathlessness and hilarity: he sat on a box for a while, with his hands nearly touching the floor and his tangled head dropping between them, gasping at intervals. Philippa said, "Now, I'll stay with him. You go along to the others and take your leave."
Lymond pulled his head up. "As if nothing happened."
"Well. Nobody knows," Philippa said. Poor Austin was moaning a little.
"Except you and me," Lymond said rising abruptly. He walked to the door. "You were going to give me a promise."
From where she knelt by her knight, Philippa looked up at the other man, graceful, facile and worldly. "You are thinking of someone else," she said bluntly. "I don't change from minute to minute. I don't change at all."
"I don't think you have changed since you were ten years old," Lymond said. "How fortunate we all are, in some ways."
from The Ringed Castle by Dorothy Dunnett
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