Queens' Play by Dorothy Dunnett
Outside his own room he rested for a moment, his palm on the door, and for a moment looked neither brutal nor romantic nor indifferent. Then he heaved the door open and went in.
Inside, the storm was waiting for him; but it was not of O’LiamRoe’s making. The candles were burning, the fire was lit, but the room was empty except for Piedar Dooly, his black eyes venomous, the rawhide flanks of his face blotched with passion and prickled with the onset of his overnight beard. Thady Boy shut the door, and the fumes of strong wine from his clothes, stiff with spilled drink and dried sweat, filled the room. ‘Where’s His Highness?’
O’LiamRoe’s indifference to his ollave’s double identity had never been shared by his little Firbolg retainer. Dooly’s Wicklow accent was silky. ‘Isn’t it troubles enough you have without bothering yourself over O’LiamRoe? I hear you and the great gentlemen have been walking the length of the stars in your woollen stockings, and came back with the universe set in a ring.’ He broke off.
Thady, moving swiftly, stood over him. ‘Where is he?’
Between double lids, the Irishman’s eyes were full of hate. ‘You had wrestlers at Court this evening, I heard tell. A power of strong lads they must have been, and a terror for horseplay.… They jumped on O’LiamRoe, on his way home from Mistress O’Dwyer’s.’
‘And you were there?’ said Thady Boy.
‘Just behind. He’d been asked to stay at the house, Master Scotsman. He only left to discuss a certain thing with yourself.’ Again he stopped.
Thady Boy, leaning hands clasped over the back of a chair, said quietly, ‘There is no mark on you. So I have a fair idea, you see, that O’LiamRoe is not much hurt. But I think you should tell me.’
The colour high in his face, Piedar Dooly said, ‘There was a party of men in the next alley who heard us, and turned back to help. Two of the wrestlers were killed and one ran away—the Cornishman, we thought, but no one could swear to it. O’LiamRoe himself took a slash on the arm, and it pouring blood more than was correct for it; so he walked back to Mistress O’Dwyer’s.’ He paused. ‘I left him there. She has asked him back to Neuvy, tomorrow. I was to tell you that in the course of a piece maybe, he’ll be back.’
‘It would be better,’ said Thady Boy, ‘if he stayed at Blois.’
The Firbolg’s face had resumed the impassivity of leather. ‘He assumed you would say that. I was to tell you that, after looking at it this way and that, he preferred to go tomorrow to Neuvy. And the lady sent to tell you the same.’
Thady Boy’s voice was soft. ‘How did the lady put it precisely?’
‘Mistress O’Dwyer? She sent to say there was a welcome for you, the kind you might expect, at Neuvy; but did you prefer to stay with the Queens, she would look after himself for you. So she said.’
Finishing, he was aware of being subjected again to that dispiriting blue scrutiny. Then Ballagh said, ‘Is she fond of him? How fond?’
The irony on Piedar Dooly’s hollow-boned red face eased into contempt. ‘What call have I to discover a fondness between ladies and gentlemen? Yourself she don’t fancy at all. That I can swear to; but that will be no news to your lordship. God save us, ’Tis a highroad at your front door this night. Someone is scratching.’
Lymond had heard it. He got to the door, unlocked it, and had already made up his mind when young Lord Fleming, entering and shutting it, asked permission with his eyebrows to deliver his message.
‘Go on,’ said Lymond. He had returned to the fireplace and put his elbows on the stone, his grazed and battered hands hanging limp. Tell all. The ineffectiveness of my measures is no news to Piedar Dooly.’
Jenny’s son, wooden-faced and straight, made his report. ‘The dog is dead, sir.’
‘I see.’ Lymond did not stir. ‘So a hundred grains of arsenic would have been taken by the Queen before she left Blois. Who do you think did it, James?’
Lord Fleming avoided looking at Dooly. ‘Anyone could have. There was no guard.’ He hesitated, and then went on doggedly, ‘I was to say: she is exceedingly upset. She is, sir. And to ask you what to do.’
Lymond’s uncomfortable manner slackened, and straightening, he dropped his arms. ‘I know she must be upset. Tell her to burn the cotignac and the boxes, that’s all. I’ll do the rest.’
‘What will you do, sir?’
His eyes were shining. Francis Crawford turned his head away, letting his gaze dwell instead on the saturnine Irish face at his elbow. ‘Tell The O’LiamRoe from me, friend Piedar, that I wish him Godspeed at Neuvy, for what it is worth.…’
Dooly had risen to go. Fleming, lingering, was hoping still for an answer. Lymond rubbed his strained eyes with the back of one filthy hand, and measured the distance between the fireplace and the bed. ‘As for me: there have been enough scapegoats, and a damned nuisance they are. From this time on, God help me, I shall be my own bait.’
They left; and as dawn lit the scuffed, the tileless, the broken and well-trodden rooftops of Blois and pricked at the eyelids of its weary sleep-ridden citizens, Francis Crawford of Lymond at last rolled into bed.
VI
Blois: The Forfeited Feast
There are three banquets: godly banquets, human banquets and demon feasts; i.e. banquets given to the sons of death and bad men; i.e. the lewd persons and satirists and jesters and buffoons and mountebanks and outlaws and heathens and harlots and bad people in general; which is not given for earthly obligation and is not given for heavenly reward. Such a feast is forfeited to the demon.
AT Neuvy, O’LiamRoe’s arm healed. He stayed there longer than he had intended; rode, hunted, argued and played chess with Mistress Boyle, with Oonagh and their friends, and was not further molested. When Cormac O’Connor did not arrive as expected, he was far from disappointed, but wise enough not to take undue advantage of the vacancy. He sent word, by a fellow house-guest, that he would come back to Blois within the week.
The message was brought to Blois by George Paris, a rangy Irishman gifted with considerable powers of intrigue, who happened to be on his way home to Ireland. But first he had an interview with the Constable; and another with the King, accompanied by the Duke de Guise, who charged him with errands of a diplomatic sort, and promised him Robin Stewart as escort.
For some time, Stewart was ignorant of this. He had not carried out his threats to leave the Court and now knew that as long as Thady Boy was there he was unlikely to do so. But the decayed brilliance that had infected the Court since the moonlight steeplechase that night was beginning to frighten the Archer, as it had already frightened Margaret Erskine. Tom, returning fresh from the Low Countries with a peace treaty signed and a six years’ war ended, had been disquieted, though he did not say so, by the disciplined strain on his wife’s face; and when he spoke lightheartedly: ‘I’ve brought you herbs, as you wanted, for your fiend-sick patient,’ she said, with a grimness new to her, ‘Have you brought enough for the whole Court of France?’
At Court, everything halted for Christmas. Financial worries might be pressing, but at least both the season and the threat of penury made it unnecessary to think of war. Honour could be sought in other fields: in wrestling, in leaping, in tilting at the ring, in jousting and casting the bar, in hunting and hawking, in shooting at rounds and at rovers, in tennis and pall-mall and bear fighting and dancing, in dressing as gypsies and Greeks and Arabian knights.
They gambled and sang and made love lightly and expertly. In all they did, they were experts. The men about the King were chosen for their grace and gifts in the arts of sport and chivalry as well as for diplomacy and war; and the King used them as touchstones for his own manifold skills.
Henri of France was a moderate man, but short of disrespect for the throne, licence at this feast time was nearly boundless. Copied, encouraged, cosseted by the younger Court, Thady Boy had now the amused applause of the royal family; and on the King’s orders someone, generally Stewart, was always at hand at midnight, at dawn, or whenever the wayward day end
The Scottish Court watched him do it. The Erskines and Jenny, a little subdued, observed in silence. The Queen Mother, retreating gratefully from her state discussions, continued to smile superbly at her hosts, in a bold effort to deny the billowing and tramping behind the curtains, where the ambitious, half-bribed lords of her retinue were quarrelling like henwives. And Sir George Douglas took time to write an anonymous letter to the Queen of France, suggesting that one Richard, Lord Culter, should be invited to Court. Catherine de Médicis received it next day.
It was the day, chilly with sleet and early dark, that they danced a pavane on horseback in the Gran’ Salle, weaving between the bright pillars, fire sparking from the chipped tiles. The clatter of hooves drowned the music as they moved, laughing, through their paces, and Thady Boy, threading sideways, plucked the candles from their brackets one by one and threw them, juggling, to his scorch-fingered partners, swearing, laughing and plunging, until hysteria and ultimate darkness crowned the exercise.
Leaning watching on the fretted balustrade, the King read the letter his wife had given him, while the large, shallow Médicis eyes marshalled the scene. ‘Does this wildness distress you?’
Glancing up from the letter, he followed her gaze. ‘Art roots in mouldering soils. I suppose that is always the answer.’
‘He is of a fresh and original talent, even when outside himself, certainly,’ said the Queen. ‘But I had thought lately that even the bloom was becoming a little tainted. What do you make of the letter?’
Henri scanned the paper. ‘The name is a famous one. But who exactly is Richard Crawford of Culter?’
Catherine’s lashes lay discreetly on her coarse-grained, powdered cheek. ‘I enquired of Madame the Queen Dowager. He is the third baron of the name, with considerable power and money in Scotland, and a supporter of the young Queen. The story runs that he has remained behind until his wife should be brought to bed of an heir.… By now the child will have been born. Since he is free, we might well suggest to Madame the Queen Dowager that it would delight us to see him.’
She was right. France had promised to do all in her power to install Mary of Guise as Regent of her daughter’s kingdom. It was only common sense, given the hint, to inspect whatever influence, for good or for evil, she had found it politic to leave behind her at home.
Below, sleeves flying, fringes swaying, the riders streamed past. The King, leaning down, snapped his fingers; and Thady Boy, lifting his eyes, sent a torch flying with a flick of his wrist. Henri caught it, raising it a little in salute; and turning, held the flame thoughtfully to the edge of Sir George Douglas’s letter.
Three weeks after that, Robin Stewart heard that he was to travel once more to Ireland, this time with an agent, to bring back Cormac O’Connor. It precipitated one of the great crises of his life: the day he stood up to John Stewart of Aubigny.
Robin Stewart had been seconded to his lordship in order to help with the O’LiamRoe visit. For his extra work with the Irishman, and for all the special services he had rendered Lord d’Aubigny for far longer than that, Stewart had expected one day to receive an appropriate reward: a minor household post, perhaps with the promise of advancement; maybe even a captaincy later on … something at least, which would lead him at last towards the inner sphere of influence and the high life.
All these were in d’Aubigny’s power to give, but all Stewart had received so far was money, and that sparingly. And now the conceited fool seemed to be indicating—but could not be indicating—that he had no further use for Stewart’s special services, and that he was turning him off to some routine duty abroad.
Lantern jaw jutting, Stewart stated his case. ‘I’ve already been to Ireland, your lordship. I understood I was to assist you for the whole of the Irishmen’s visit. I believe that so far I’ve given satisfaction.’
A buckle of his cuirass had come undone, and his hair needed cutting. Noting these things irritably, ‘Do you?’ said d’Aubigny. You botched their arrival at Dieppe. You botched one of them at Rouen. You let O’LiamRoe’s dog run wild for some petty purpose of your own, and made a thorough fool of yourself falling off your horse like a fisherman and bolting next down a rabbit hole.’ He yawned. The couchée had been long and boring last night. ‘It’s my own fault ultimately, I suppose. For this kind of work you need a touch of breeding, a little finesse. You will feel happier, I’m sure, with more familiar tasks. When O’Connor comes, I shall see to him myself. One of the men—perhaps Cholet—will help.’
He was turning him off. And Stewart suddenly thought he saw why. In ugly patches, the angry blood stained the Archer’s gaunt face and neck, and turned his ears scarlet. ‘I’ve noticed you can hardly bear to be civil since we won yon night steeplechase. It’s hardly my fault he chose me to run.… And remember this, my lord. The name Robin Stewart means something to the King and his courtiers now.’
Opposite, the handsome, thick-skinned face was merely contemptuous. ‘More than d’Aubigny, do you think? One more word out of turn, Stewart, and I’ll be the first, believe me, to put it to the test. Threats to a friend of the King in this land come very near treason, you know.’
It was not the insubordination that made d’Aubigny’s hand shake on the onyx inkwell before him; it was the crude mirror held up to his bright-eyed stalking of Thady Boy Ballagh. That Stewart should regard himself as a rival had never entered his head, and he resented the intrusion of brutish feet in the precious gardens of his conoisseurship.
He stood up, shuddering a little in his displeasure. ‘There is no point in searching out your weaknesses, Stewart; we are both, I am sure, quite aware of them. You have done the best that you can, and I am grateful. But you should be content now with the duties laid upon you. You will not find me ungenerous.’ Bending, he drew from his desk a hide bag and laid it, clinking, between them. ‘That will, perhaps, enable you to buy some aqua vitae or pleasant evenings with your friends in Ireland.’
Years of training, of poverty and repression had stolen the secret of spontaneous anger from Stewart, leaving him without the courage even now to fling his career in the other man’s face. But something newly nurtured within him baulked at walking to the table and picking up that limp rawhide bag. ‘Keep it,’ he said shortly. ‘And buy a new inkwell with it for yourself. You’ve gey near cracked yon one in two, playing Almighty God in your fancy new necklaces. I’ll go to Ireland. Cock’s blood, I will. And,’ said Robin Stewart furiously, producing the worst threat he could think of, and hitting with the the only weapon he possessed at Lord d’Aubigny’s indifference and complacency, ‘And I’ll take Ballagh back with me.’
It was a boast he had hardly hoped to realize. But Thady Boy had looked at him, as narrowly as he could out of eyes that did not focus very well, and said that he was beginning to think the Court of France was overrated, himself, and that he would consider it.
He had had, it was clear, no breakfast apart from some strong wine before the day’s sport; and was unlikely to bother with supper. Stewart, bitterly aware of the amusement roused by his missionary zeal, stopped himself in the midst of an angry and solicitous tirade. Whether Thady came with him or not, they had only one more week of each other’s company left here in France.
That day, Thady Boy hunted three-quarters drunk and came back with a slashed hand. It was Stewart, who, off duty, crossed the gardens to the postern and called at the house of Dame Pillonne to beg some balm from the keepers.
Abernaci was away. In his place, one of his friends in the trade sat in the jar-laden room above the brown bears, and returned Stewart’s greetings, and added, at the sound of his accent, a genuine welcome in the broad chanting vowels of Aberdeen. Detached from his donkey, Thomas Ouschart was a gentlemanly little man, with small bones and a pa
Tosh, a good-humoured man, answered plainly but was not in the least backward with a negative when the Archer touched on matters best left private. They got on well together; and the Aberdeen man, who had turned his hand to many things other than tightropes, mixed a very competent ointment from Abernaci’s store for Thady Boy’s hand, and then went rummaging neat-fingered for an empty jar in the piles of papers, bottles and wood shavings which covered every available surface.
Stewart, rising to help, said, ‘Mind, if there’s a scar on Thady Boy’s lute finger, you’ll have to answer for it to three Queens. So put the best you know into it, for God’s sake.’ He found a jar, cleared a space with a sweep of his arm, and sat down again.
Tosh, filling it, laughed. ‘If you believe Abernaci, there’s hardly room on him for a fresh-made scar anyway. You’ve seen his hands. And the galleys fairly made a show of his back.’
Robin Stewart sat still, his hands on his knees, his feet planted apart on the littered floor. After a pause he said, ‘I never heard he was on the galleys.’
‘I don’t suppose he’d go about describing it,’ said Tosh with passing irony. ‘But he’s got the brand on him. The cowardie saw it at Rouen, for one.’ He glanced at Stewart’s frowning face and grinned. ‘A queer customer, Thady Boy Ballagh. But aren’t we all? You’ll need to get him into a rowboat and see if he’ll show you his paces.’ He finished packing the balm jar in linen and turning, studied the Archer, lost in meditation. ‘It’s likely no secret. The fancy bitches up yonder’d find it thrilling, I shouldn’t wonder.’
He had no need to put Thady Boy in a rowing boat. Crisp in Stewart’s ears rang that decisive ‘On va faire voile’ which had commanded the struggling half-wreck of La Sauvée four months ago. He said, making his voice pleasant, ‘What else do you know about our Irish friend?’