Queens' Play by Dorothy Dunnett
Thady Boy’s face, looking up from the keys, was innocently clear. ‘He disliked me more,’ he said gravely. ‘A stout child, O’LiamRoe. Between us, maybe, we did him a little good. Is there any message you have I should tell to him?’
Her lips parted, but she did not speak. Instead, she stepped up on the platform and taking the bellows, glanced at him through the glittering pipes. ‘You are going home, then?’
‘By Shrove Tuesday. I haven’t put my two hands round my mouth with the news as yet. Indeed, formal leave-taking is a thing I don’t care for. Explanations are far better left unsaid. Faix, girl, it’s a positive organ. Your blowing would be just fine for a standpipe of mice.’ And as, irritated, she gave the two bellows a sudden, bad-tempered beating, he put one finger hard on the keys.
An acute, tinny buzz, mercilessly sustained, seared at her nerves. She sat back on her heels, bellows loosed, as the sound drily expired. They eyed one another. Thady, hatless in a soiled concoction of yellow, performed a silent arpeggio up and down the dumb keys, and launched into a memorable parody of the chapel organist’s politely faded technique. After watching judicially for a while, she gave him air for it. The organ sang out, filling the church, while she looked down at his hands on the keys and the sliders.
She had known he could play. She knew also, or guessed, how much of his mind it occupied. As, abandoning parody, he wandered abstractedly through quiet passages, some familiar, some not, Oonagh, facing him beyond the lead barrier of the pipes, her hands ceaselessly working, said, ‘Do you imagine, now, that Robin Stewart will ever come back?’
Unhurried, Thady Boy played two bars of a lament. ‘I do not, the silly creature that he is. I told him myself he had every reason to get out of France.’ Two used blue eyes looked at her over the smallest pipes. ‘Is it pining you are?’
The air died on him. A silence fell, explicit of impatience and anger; then, whistling an air of supplication under his breath, Ballagh changed his fingering and accompanied himself on the silent keys until, relenting, she pumped again. ‘I thought,’ he said above it, ‘that with O’LiamRoe gone, there might be hope for me.’
The melody hesitated, then acquired such volume that the silver candlesticks rang. ‘Where you’re concerned,’ said Oonagh O’Dwyer, ‘O’LiamRoe gone makes no difference at all.’
‘Does it not, so?’ Thady Boy was unperturbed. ‘Strange news, my dear. You are moving in high circles, it seems.’
She did not answer. For a time, he played and she pumped in the thought-filled silence. The little, arched room was empty; though beyond the robing room and out in the passages the normal stir of the household could be heard. The quick notes of the organ ran about the oratory, over the white stone and the Ghent tapestries and the polished wood, then vanished all at once. She had the bellows still working automatically in her fists, but Thady Boy had taken his hands from the keys and was watching her in the wheezing silence.
Her arms were aching, and she knew that the red showed, rising, under her thin skin. She rose, standing over him from the advantage of the table. ‘And we are to lose all this steaming banquet of wit? Why so set on leaving us now?’
Thady Boy, sideways on his stool, was hugging his knees. ‘As the song says, “A grey eye looks back towards Erin; a grey eye full of tears.” ’Tis a queer thing, for a creature so silly, but there’s a craving on me that won’t be gainsaid, to set eyes once again on Robin Stewart. On Ash Wednesday I go; and between now and then is all the time left for this great land to produce its best to impress me. Would you say,’ said Thady, his eyes bright, ‘that I have a chance of being impressed?’
Her hands on either side of the gilded posts, she looked at him with a closed face. ‘I cannot say.’
‘Can you not?’ said Thady Boy, and reaching up, freed her wrist-lace from a beading. ‘It’s no manner of use, is it? What a pity.’
She snatched her boy’s hand away, and unaided sprang down from the platform. He rose. ‘I told you. O’LiamRoe made no difference,’ said Oonagh. Facing him, she was breathing fast from the jump. ‘Do you think I haven’t escorts enough? That I can’t take my pick, then? I hear there’s a fine lord come to Court now, rich as they are made, to take his young brother back home. Nursemaids must come dear in Scotland these days.’
Thady’s hand on the keyboard didn’t move. ‘He will succeed, no doubt,’ he said, a small thread of amusement barely kept out of his voice. ‘’Tis a dour race for certain sure, but his lordship is a tolerable specimen, with a taste for Irishwomen, withal. You might do worse than trust yourself to that one.’
If he had expected to bring her into the open, he failed. Her eyes were contemptuous. ‘That’s a futile custom if you like. Lord Dunghill’s heir is never plain Billy Dunghill, but the Master of this, or the Master of that. Lord Culter’s heir, I believe, is called the Master of Culter, who cannot even master himself.’
Francis Crawford, once Master of Culter, pondered a moment on this piece of sarcasm. At length, gravely—‘A pity,’ he agreed. ‘But people do make allowances. And after all, the Master of Culter, my darling, is lying there in his cradle at Midculter, just seven weeks old.’
He had risen as he spoke, and lingered, smiling angelically at the arched door, now opened. ‘So whatever you do,’ Thady Boy said, carefully explanatory, his smile sweeter than ever, ‘it makes no odds to the Culters, you see.’ And turning, he went.
The door closed. Tight-faced, Oonagh O’Dwyer watched it; and heard nothing until a blow took her, like the clap of a shovel, first on her right cheek and then her left, rocking her back among the spindly gilt stools. ‘You greedy, beef-witted slut,’ said Theresa Boyle from behind her, her face blotched, her hair wild. ‘Did I bring you here to come jolly into your season at the first taste of a man?’ The loud, able, jocular figure of the Porc-épic at Dieppe had quite gone. But in Mistress Boyle’s face, with its vizored teeth, its reddened, weather-glazed skin, its staring eyes, its grey spiky hair about the strong jaws, there was visible the brisk malice of the cheetah hunt on the day that the little hare died.
It was, obviously, a foray in what had been a long battle, with sores on each side. Oonagh, recovering with a twist of her body, laid her hand to the altar and would have retorted, violently, with one of the candlesticks had not her aunt caught her wrist. Oonagh said, in a strange voice like thin foil, ‘I should be careful.’ Then, after a moment ‘You have the mind of a cockroach. If anything pulls us down in the mire, it will be you. I told that fellow nothing. You would hear that, devil mend you, since you were listening.’
‘I was watching also,’ said Theresa Boyle. ‘And my two eyes gave me news. It was a fine welcome, that, after the journey I have had.’
Released, the younger woman sat down; then, finding the candlestick still in her hands, replaced it. ‘You went to see our honourable friend?’
‘I did.’
‘And he knows that Ballagh is Crawford of Lymond?’
‘Naturally he knows. He sent a message for you.’
Oonagh’s eyes, frowning, were on the strong, embattled mouth. ‘Why for me?’
Mistress Boyle laughed, a familiar, wholehearted screech. ‘Did you get comfortable with the notion that I would take all the blame? “Oonagh O’Dwyer deceived me,” he says. “Oonagh O’Dwyer let me believe that Lymond and Phelim O’LiamRoe were one and the same man. She deceived me unwittingly, she says. Then let her prove it, by God.” ’
There was a short silence. Oonagh said, ‘How?’
Smiling, Theresa Boyle turned, and with a broad, horsewoman’s hand, slapped the wood of the organ. An uneasy sound, muffled and metallic, answered back. ‘Thady Boy Ballagh will be dead in two sennights.’
‘The plan is to go on?’ The oval, pale-skinned face showed nothing now.
‘The plan to deal with your musical friend is to go on. And if you warn Master Ballagh, or divert him, or if he escapes in any way, whether with your help or not, you and our cause, Oonagh O’Dwyer, are both lost.?
The broad, brown fingers with their grained nails were lying spread on the keys. Oonagh glanced at them; then rising, turned to the door. ‘What are we now?’ she said bitterly, opening it to the warm bustling world just outside. ‘We and our cause?’
II
Amboise:
An Accident Happens
If a sensible adult brings a horse to the structure and an accident happens, a fine according to the nature of the case is due from the sensible adult.
CHARACTERISTICALLY, the plan to brush Lymond finally from the path was so expensive, so wasteful and so baroque that no one guessed it or anticipated it, and Francis Crawford himself was neither warned nor, certainly, diverted.
He had not, patently, told his brother all he knew, and Richard did not press it, trusting to his promise that in two weeks he would be gone. In Scotland Lord Culter was known, with cause, as a good man to find beside you in trouble. He took from the Erskines’ willing shoulders the burden of safeguarding the Queen and set a watch on all Lymond’s movements.
Of this last, Lymond was ignorant. They met once, on the eve of Richard’s departure for Amboise, long enough for the ollave to observe, in passing, ‘You may relax, my dear, No elixir à successions as yet in my soup.’ He looked magnificently lightheaded, trapped in his own image like a fighting fish attacking a mirror. After that, they did not meet for two weeks.
The Scottish Queen Dowager’s sojourn at Amboise, together with her son and daughter and their attendants and all her seething parcel of nobles, was an expedient hit upon largely by the Queen of France and the Constable for several excellent reasons, the first being the anomalous and burgeoning presence of Jenny Fleming at court. This removed her from the physical presence of the royal household, if not from its delighted thoughts. Catherine was sleeping for Maecenas, and nobody else.
A second consideration had to do directly with George Paris’s errand to fetch Cormac O’Connor, and with a little uneasiness growing in Blois over the less disciplined of the Scottish Dowager’s noblemen. And lastly, having interviewed Richard Crawford and found him uncompromising, uncomplicated and personally likable, Catherine de Médicis had been content to dismiss him to Amboise with his Queen and a discreet observer to hand. Anonymous advice was always better investigated, but Lord Culter’s presence in France seemed unlikely to bring either profit or anxiety to the crown, and the letter which inspired it came, no doubt, from some private malice.
In this Queen Catherine was right. She was also right in guessing the incident closed, although she could hardly know why. For motives all her own, the Queen Dowager had forestalled Lymond’s suggestion and had granted Sir George Douglas what he wanted: the earldom of Morton for his son. Sir George had enjoyed thanking her in suitable terms, but had not so far made the decision public, even to his closest relative in France, since he took pleasure in encouraging Lord d’Aubigny’s occasional mild hysteria on the ingratitude of princes. It amused him to listen to his lordship comparing with acrimony the rewards brought him by a life of devotion to the arts, and the attention being showered by the Court of France on the head of Thady Boy Ballagh.
Sir George, too, had noted how, during all those wild weeks of festivities that lasted from Candlemas up to Shrove—the revels, the pageants, the masques and the balls, the baiting and tournaments and battles of oranges—the gay, crude libidinous life of the private parlour and supper table began to lick at the stiff, sugary edges of etiquette.
The Vidame de Chartres arrived, fresh from conquests in London, where he had spent half a year, along with d’Enghien among others, as nominal hostages for France’s final payments on Boulogne. D’Enghien and d’Aumale had put in a formal few months, made the most of the festivities, and had come home. The Vidame had stayed, to charm the young King, to entice the Marquis of Northampton’s handsome wife, to attend weddings, give banquets and visit Scotland, as he pleased.
The Vidame, an ally of Mary of Guise, called on her at Amboise and Châteaudun, and entertained the rest of the Court with tales of his boudoir. He also cast his large, practised brown eyes on d’Enghien’s new ami, and gently made himself known to Master Ballagh.
However tumultuous the ungartered life of the Court, the old King had never allowed vulgarity to penetrate the Throne Room. Now, under the debilitating impact of Thady Boy and the relaxations of the season, affairs were being made to wait which could not wait, or were going by default. The historic half-cast of political frivolity in the fine eye of France had become something like blindness.
It was a bad February. Although never doubting that Lymond would keep his word, Richard had said nothing of it to the Erskines, to Lady Fleming or to the Queen Mother. This was a promise undertaken to his brother. With Lymond gone, and the Special Ambassador due home very shortly, the mantle of protector would have to fall on himself, and he knew well that the Queen Mother was as anxious for him to go back to Scotland as he was to return. It would go badly against the grain to keep him here in France to look after young Mary. But whom else could she trust? Moreover, he had no illusions about the danger. The assassin, if he still remained, knew quite well who Thady Boy was. All he had to do was transfer the attack to Thady Boy’s brother.
Richard understood that all this would be even clearer to Francis. Hence the guard. His flourish of renunciation notwithstanding, Lymond would, his brother knew, use every means in his power to provoke an attack during these two weeks, keeping silent, even to his patrons, about his impending departure. And until Lymond was out of the way, the small Queen was probably safe.
In fact, the days passed and no attack was made on Queen or ollave. Marguerite, the two Bourbons, St. André, the Vidame, the young de Guises and their wives and the bright fraternity of the Archers nursed, scolded, and encouraged to fresh excesses the fuelless blaze which was Thady Boy Ballagh, living tumour-sick on his nerves. Then, without warning, came the message he was waiting for.
It reached him at eight o’clock on a raw night on the Saturday before Shrove, when dressed in John Stewart of Aubigny’s mask and a cloak of green feathers, he rode with a party of twenty Aztecs and as many Turks led by his lordship to the inn on the Isle d’Or, outside Amboise.
That day, the jousting had ended early because the King had an attack of toothache. It was the only ailment which ever troubled him, and he met it as always with the frightened anger of the robust. The afternoon’s revels were cancelled, and the Court was left disguised in turban and feathers with a collective explosion of unused energy to let off.
The day had been reasonably fair. Mounted on their heterogeneous coursers and cobs, robes flapping, feathers streaming, gourds rattling aloft, the two jousting teams, Turks and Aztecs, flew calling along the Amboise road, jumping, chasing, belabouring one another, ducking the discourteous in the flat Loire and drying them with gold pieces. It was dusk when they came to the first leg of the double bridge over the Loire, and crossing to the little island in the middle, stormed into the Sainte Barbe for hot food and wine. Astounded by the costumes but flattered by the presence of all these young lords, the staff fled to obey. Thady Boy threw his mask on a table, drank a solid tankard of strong wine straight off, and led the rendering of a new song he had just devised. Then, the pain not deadening at all, he waited until all eyes were on the Vidame, in feathers, attempting a clog dance, and wandered restlessly outside.
It was a still night and very dark, with a thin, wet mist rising grey from the river and turning yellow in the window lights from the two bridges to right and to left. Behind, the roof of St. Sauveur showed black, and there were lights in the cottages grouped round the inn, showing fitfully the strip of white beach and the water parting, smooth, oily and black, round the creaming shoal of the isle.
The mist hid the far shore. He could see only the spires of St. Florentin and St. Denis, the tops of the town wall, its towers and the belfry, with all the huddled chimneys within. The outline of tiled roofs slid down into the misty cleft of the River Amasse, then em
It was cold. Lymond wondered prosaically if he were going to faint; and again, with clinical interest, whether his health would give out before either the term of his promise or the assassin completed the task.
The shiver of metal, striking sweet on the ear, revived him like cold water. He wore his sword, as usual, on his skin dress. Drawing it, he slid from the white wall and felt the stable hard at his back as another chink, this time of spurs, sounded to one side. He had his hand on the stable door when the crack of swordplay shatteringly broke out in front.
Lymond stopped breathing. Somewhere in the dark, the spurred unknown, abandoning silence, drew his sword with a whine and thrust past, his footsteps sharp and light on the small cobbles. A man shouted, then bit it off, and in the inn someone opened a shutter, solving the problem instantly with a latticed trapeze of bright light. In a corner of the stableyard a small man, heavily muffled and splashed to the hatbrim, fought for his life against two others, one of whom wore spurs.
The same light fell on Thady Boy. As the inn door banged open and his shadow sprang black on the loosebox door, the small man cried again. They had him by the collar by then, his sword gone when Lymond reached them, his skin boots making no sound, and threw the spurred man off with a twist to the shoulder that made him gasp. The other turned too; and in the second of grace, the beleaguered traveller ducked, twisted and ran.
The attackers took one step to follow, and then halted as Lymond just above the threshold of sound, requested them searingly to stand still. Voices came from the inn door. Someone shouted, and someone else answered. There was a pause, as the silent night was consulted. Then, without troubling to hunt unduly for trouble, the speakers went in. The door banged, and shortly after the shutters closed, plunging the yard into darkness.