Queens' Play by Dorothy Dunnett
It was delicious, the climax of the evening. You could sense their satisfaction and their lack of surprise as the exaggerated laughter and bravas filled the room. They had assumed that their blissful sluggard would pay for his drink in good coin. Rimed and sparkling with sugar, the wrestler lay like some child’s flaccid sweetmeat in death, and the dogs licked his eyelids.
The evening was soon over. The King and his suite left, and then the Queen; but Thady Boy Ballagh, full of spirits, scraped precariously through his obeisances and stayed on with his flask and his admirers. Then Mary of Guise rose to go, and at the same moment Thady got to his feet and went pattering unsteadily towards the Scottish Court.
Unbelieving, Margaret Erskine saw him approach, saw him favour her with a tipsy smile, and then pass by to tug at Lord Culter’s fine sleeve. Richard Crawford, his face rigid, found himself looking straight into his brother’s blue gaze, the stink of sweat and wine and drunken humanity rising to his nostrils.
Thady Boy’s sibilants were precocious, but his sentiments were candidly warm. ‘Come and see me, if you want to, my dear. One day soon, before you leave us for Amboise.’
Margaret saw Richard’s grey eyes flicker, checking. No one else within earshot; but the exchange was obvious, of course, to all who cared to look. Richard said, carefully, ‘The sieur d’Enghien is watching you.’
‘He’s jealous,’ said Thady Boy, and giggling archly, showed signs of moving off.
Smiling, speaking quietly in the same even voice, Culter said, ‘People will talk. How can I come?’
A long, unclean finger caressed him under the chin. ‘How prudent you are,’ said Thady Boy plaintively. ‘The only people who matter know now exactly who I am. But you may show me and them marvellous stratagems, if you like. Sleep well, my sweet, and have modest dreams …’
He drifted away none too soon, for Madame Marguerite had come to claim him, and then d’Enghien brought him more drink. Margaret Erskine did not see with whom he went home.
Next morning, as the Scottish Court of Queen Mary of Guise was preparing to shift to fresh quarters at Amboise, Thady Boy, under pressure, moved to occupy more accessible rooms in the vacated wing.
He was half-packed by midmorning when Lord Culter arrived at his door. On the threshold he stood still. Lymond, left to speak first, said agreeably, ‘Quite so. I, King of Flesh, flourishing in my flowers. Come in. I am sensible, sober, and have no designs on your virtue.’
Richard’s reserve, so swiftly noted, broke and vanished. Smiling in return, he shut the door and came forward to give Francis his embrace. Beneath his hands he felt the extra flesh and was sorry. And as his eyes took in the dry, blackened hair, the unresilient skin, the shortened focus of far-seeing eyes, reduced and reddened by late nights and smoke—‘You are a devil, Francis,’ he said.
He had expected to find this difficult, but in fact talk came quite easily. He gave the family tidings, answered some light questions and noted that Lymond was in reality much less interested in the new building at Midculter than he was in the political news.
They talked of Scottish affairs. Outside, a black winter’s rain had been falling all morning. The dismantled room was untidy and dark, and hardly cheered by a new fire full of whimsy and smoke. The open box at his feet caught Lymond’s attention. Rising, he disappeared into the little cabinet next door and returned, after a space, with a towel and his baggage straps. He added them to the general litter, then shutting the empty coffer and sitting on it, said, ‘What about the Morton inheritance? George Douglas is ready to be bought if she needs him. He wants ambassadorial power, but that would be madness.’
There were three claimants to the earldom of Morton, and Lord Maxwell and George Douglas’s son were the only two that mattered. Richard said, ‘I hear he has threatened to expose you,’ and regretted it, for his brother looked surprised and said, ‘Oh, Lord, that was nothing. Mischief. He’s the ingenious conspirator who had you sent for, I should be fairly sure. He always appears to be maintaining great structures of intrigue, but half the time if you subtracted George Douglas the erection would stand just as before. Stronger, probably. But he would come to her for Morton and she needn’t lose Maxwell. He has power enough. He’d be perfectly happy with money. She’ll need all the support she can get to cancel the crass stupidity … You’ve heard of Jenny’s little exercise?’
Richard’s mouth twitched. ‘Scotland is ringing with it. It must have caused quite a stir.’
Lymond got to his feet, tardier in his movements than once he had been. ‘Oh, it did. Fair Diana, the lantern of the night, became dim and pale. The Constable has retracted, and so has the King. And Catherine, of course, is simply waiting her chance to send Jenny home. All most desirable, of course.’
‘Tom and Margaret did their best to put a stop to it. I know you did, too.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Lymond mildly. ‘She was flattered. I had to fight, positively, for my reputation.’
He again began to pack, talking intermittently as he did so. Richard listened to a quiet and dispassionate analysis of leading members of King Henri’s court. It was exceedingly funny and tearingly precise; it rang true, alarmingly, as if the wax tablets of the Recording Angel were being leafed through on a lectern. They had not touched at all on the business which had brought Lymond to France. In the middle of it Lymond said, without a break, in the same conversational tone, ‘Wait a moment, will you?’ and went off, swiftly, through the same door as before.
The lack of fuss for a moment deceived even Richard. Then he saw the unpacked litter and realized that for five minutes he had been watching a private rearguard action of Francis’s own. In two strides he was out of his chair and across to the other room.
The attack this time had been a bad one. There had been no real hope of disguising it, as Lymond must have known. Even Culter, who had hardly led a sheltered life, had seldom seen a man so mercilessly sick. His breath coming hard, Richard dropped to his knees at his brother’s side and supported him until it was over. Then, smoothly powerful, he lifted Francis in his arms and carried him expertly through to the fancy tortoise-shell bed.
Lymond’s eyes were shut; the dead man’s pinches, like freckles, blue on the skin. His face, in the clearing light, was as Margaret Erskine had said. Last night, in the kind glow of the candles, it had been possible to recall, comfortably, his impudent talent for acting. When presently he stirred, Richard hanging over his bed spoke with something near malevolence. ‘You damned young fool. I know you, remember? I suppose that was just something you ate; or are you bloody well pregnant as well?’
Lymond waited a long time, apparently unwilling to take a breath, and then said, ‘Richard. Rescues on the hour, like one of Purves’s clocks. Would you bring me—?’
‘No.’ Richard, pitiless, answered him.
‘—Only a twopenny pint of claret?’ For an instant, his driving need was visible behind the coolly brazening eyes. Then he resigned from Richard’s grey stare and drank, without further comment, the water which was all Richard brought.
Presently he sat up, with caution, embracing one string-gartered knee. ‘Forgive me. My guts are unmantled and my sinews unmanned. God knows, it’s an offence against decent living; but it will go.’
‘When,’ said Richard, face and voice quite unaltered, ‘did you last taste solid food?’
‘Liquids,’ said Lymond. ‘I thrive best on strong fermented liquids. Saffron milk, like the fairies.’ He laughed a little, and then sobered. ‘I don’t starve, I promise you. If Nicholas the hermit could do it, so can I. It isn’t for long.’
‘How long?’ Ruthlessly, Richard was coursing evasions. ‘The Erskines believe you want proof of Stewart’s guilt in case he comes back.’
Lymond’s stained hands were still. ‘Partly true. The proof I have would be quite hopeless at law. A prostitute from Dieppe. A Scotsman posing as an Indian. Another Scotsman passing for Irish. We need something better than that. But as for Stewart … I don’t think he
‘In that case—’ With some trouble, Richard controlled his temper. ‘Getting evidence is a simple matter. Leave Erskine to do it. I’ll help. There is no need whatever for you to stay. If you are perfectly sure, we can deal with him, if need be, without a trial.’
‘A plain killing? No, I won’t have that, Richard. He was born into gall like a fly in an oak tree. He tried quite hard to get free.’
Richard was sarcastic. ‘Like the Cornishman?’
There was silence from the bed. Then Lymond said, ‘O’LiamRoe was in danger most of the time he was here, largely because someone took him for me. You know about Abernaci. He has friends, a man called Tosh among them. Wherever O’LiamRoe went, Tosh or someone else or several of them followed. They were only needed once, in an ambush one night at Blois here. The Cornishman was one of the band who attacked O’LiamRoe. He killed two of Tosh’s men.’
Richard said carefully, ‘A little dangerous then, surely, for the Cornish wrestler to show himself here again?’
‘The only person who saw him was a man who later died. He came last night to rid himself of me, too. I didn’t challenge him.’
For a second, Richard didn’t see it. Then he said sharply, looking into Francis’s quiet face, ‘How could he know that you were concerned?’
His brother smiled. ‘Because Robin Stewart knows who I am. Obviously. Why else should he poison me?’
Obviously. Richard said evenly, ‘How did he find out?’
‘Stewart? It’s a long story. We had to make it easy for him, in the end. He isn’t very clever, you know. If you are interested, we sent Stewart on a pretext to the Keeper’s lodging, where Tosh shattered his simple faith by revealing that Thady Boy had been in the galleys. This was not only suspicious and alarming, but it linked up with an incident at Aubigny where his lordship had made a graceful reference to the Master of Culter as a provincial ex-galley slave. Don’t let it disturb you. It is, after all, true. That; and we let Stewart pick up a wood block Abernaci had made with the Culter arms on it. I hope friend Robin assumes it is a commission.… The block has a certain rough vigour, by the way. You should get Abernaci to sell it to you.’
It had been a long journey from Scotland, and he had not slept very well last night. Raising a hand, Richard rubbed his tired eyes. Then he dropped it and said, ‘You wanted Stewart to find out who you were?’
‘I thought I did,’ said Lymond, a tinge of irony in his voice, and paused. After a moment he went on. ‘I knew, you see, that he was trying to kill Mary, and he had to be stopped. The supposition was that he would come to me. Or lead us to any accomplice he had. Or at worst, leave the country. In fact, what he did was go straight back to the Keeper’s lodging, steal some poison, and attempt to rescue his self-respect by dosing my hippocras … I must say I hadn’t quite bargained for deadly nightshade. An error of judgment. Sown east and west at the wrong time of the moon. Although to be fair, Stewart did come to me before administering the poison, but O’LiamRoe came in at the wrong moment and matters went astray. Not O’LiamRoe’s fault either. I didn’t have my wits about me, or I should have expected it.’
Solid, intent, Richard did not lift his eyes from his brother’s face. ‘You say you knew that Stewart was attempting to injure the Queen?’
‘Oh, well,’ said Lymond slowly, ‘it had been a strong possibility for a long time. Margaret Erskine may have told you about the poisoned cotignac. During Jenny’s little weekly escapades, she dismissed her own guard on that door. Anyone could have got in during the six weeks or so the stuff was there, and smothered it in arsenic. But no one easier than an Archer of the King’s own personal Bodyguard. The arsenic for that, Richard, was stolen at St. Germain. Apart from the Queen and the Dauphin, whom we can exclude, and Pellaquin, whom Abernaci trusts absolutely, only six people were admitted to the menagerie that morning before the theft—Condé, St. André and his wife, Jenny and her son and Sir George Douglas. And—Abernaci forgot in his reckoning—Robin Stewart, who had of course called earlier to warn Abernaci of our visit.
‘Now, the next real attempt was at the cheetah hunt … I assume they have also told you about that. The Queen’s pet hare was carried to the field and released by someone travelling with the hunt, during a pause before the final run. Of all the people I’ve mentioned, only Stewart and St. André were both at the menagerie and at the hunt; and St. André was in full view adjusting a girth during the entire wait. Besides, neither St. André nor his wife has any real motive. He is doing better under the present régime than he could hope to do anywhere else; he has nothing to gain.
‘But Stewart could have organized the fire-raising at the first inn we stayed at. He could have stolen the arsenic. Only Madame de Valentinois and a few huntsmen and he knew before the hunt that the cheetah would be brought—I made enquiries and found that, as indeed he hinted, the silly fellow, he had suggested the cat. So who else could have known to arrange for the hare on that day too? And finally, he was exactly the man I should have looked for: hard-working, friendless, restless, miserable; longing for Elysian fields of power and admiration, and getting very little return from his present duties and masters. The news we gave him the other day at the Keeper’s lodging through Tosh would have meant nothing to Stewart unless he already knew that a man called Francis Crawford was here secretly, and why. So that by stealing that poison from Tosh, he actually gave us the final proof of his guilt.… Anyway, he has gone.’
The conclusion was unavoidable. Richard had felt it in his bones all along. ‘Therefore,’ he said slowly, ‘if the Cornishman really meant to kill you … someone else must have sent him?’
Lymond had both elbows on his updrawn knees, his forehead on his wrists. Studying the mattress, he said, ‘Robin Stewart isn’t a leader, he’s a web looking for a spider. He found one. A man who wants to kill Queen Mary and who thought O’LiamRoe was me. He knows differently now. What’s more, with any luck, he knows that the Cornishman spoke to me before he died.’
There was a pause. ‘He spoke all right,’ said Lymond shortly. ‘He had to. He thought his breastbone was going. He told me all he knew so that I would spare his life.’
In Richard’s ears there sounded again the click, the dry snapping of bone, as the Cornishman’s neck was broken. ‘Clumsy fellow that I am,’ his brother had said, and laughed. Flatly, Lord Culter asked, ‘And what did you learn?’
‘Nothing,’ said Lymond, and laughed unguardedly, lifting his head. ‘Oh, God, I’m going to be sick again. Nothing. That’s why I had to kill him.’
There followed a silence. The man in the bed was holding his breath, his head averted on his crossed arms, his muscles hard. He had always been able to drink without showing it: the whole furnishing of his body must be in rags. Richard waited grimly, keeping perfectly still. How often did this kind of thing happen? And how could he possibly take his place at Court in this state?
Answering the unspoken thought, Lymond spoke without moving. ‘It’s mostly only at night. Then the soles of my feet come up like Empedocles’ sandals. Guts six shillings the dozen.’ He had apparently got himself under control. Richard waited a moment, then said, ‘You were telling me that Robin Stewart had an employer, and that the employer thinks you learned something that matters from the Cornishman. Therefore he will try to kill you again. And that is why you are waiting in France. The turtle dove bound in the ivy. Your favourite role.’ In spite of himself, his helpless anger was showing.
The Queen Dowager’s eminent observer replied reasonably, as he had done throughout. ‘Tell me another way.’
There was a handkerchief rolled tightly in Lymond’s left hand, which he had used to stifle the coughing. With a brusque movement, his brother pulled it away, and wordlessly flattened it between his brown, capable fingers. In streaks and patches, the linen was stiff with fresh blood. ‘Dear God, Francis,’ said Richard Crawford, his voice suddenly stifled by the agony in his throat. ‘—Dear God, dear God, what do you want of me? Mu
He stopped. The silence stretched on. After the first moment of shock, Lymond’s face was unreadable. But his voice when he spoke was deliberate and undramatic. ‘I have promised to ride in the Mardi Gras procession two weeks from now. On the following day, I shall go home. Will that do?’
Richard did not at first reply. Whatever he had expected, it was not a surrender, clean and complete, of this sort. In three sentences, Francis had abandoned his mission, his hopes of trapping a murderer, his justification for killing a man waiting for mercy. It was a brutal gift, and one which, without compunction, Lord Culter meant to accept.
Considering Lymond, flat now on the bed in wordless communion with the ceiling, Richard spoke. ‘My dear, you are only a boy. You have all your life still before you.’
On the tortoise-shell bed, his brother did not move. But there was no irony for once in his voice when he answered. ‘Oh, yes, I know. The popular question is, For what?’
Mardi Gras was two weeks away. Next day, the Queen Dowager and all her train moved off to Amboise. Shortly afterwards Thady Boy, a little less noisy than usual, crossed the bridge too, to call on Mistress Boyle and her niece Oonagh at Neuvy. The aunt was away, but relatives and house guests, as usual, filled the rooms. After laying before them, like cherries, all the gossip of Blois, entering into a satisfactory, hard-drinking argument with a party of guests and skilfully avoiding a meal, Thady got Oonagh O’Dwyer to himself; or she got him.
‘Well?’ They were in the little oratory, their voices echoing from the cut stone, their clothing coloured by the handsome windows. There was an organ he had to see.
‘A pet of a lady,’ said Thady gratifyingly, of the organ. ‘See you to the bellows, now, while I try her.’
Oonagh O’Dwyer did not stir. She had ridden that afternoon, letting the wind whip her coiling black hair, and had left it to hang free, silky-swinging on her furred brocade. She said, ‘And so Phelim O’LiamRoe has gone. You had better luck with that fellow than I had.’