Queens' Play (18 page)

They were moving out of the paddock. She turned back, pulled François to his feet, and returned, holding his hand. ‘Anything. A new one.’

Jenny Fleming had come forward. She laid a hand on Mary’s shoulder, a glint of mischief on her face. ‘Don’t bother folk, child. You know all the riddles there are.’

True for you, lady,’ said Thady Boy Ballagh, ‘but there is no woman so great that she knows all the answers there are. There is the one on the monks and the pears, now, what about the like of that? The answer you must work out for yourself.’

It was new to Stewart as well.

Later, without success, he tried to get the solution out of the ollave; it annoyed him to be left out. He became irritatedly aware that he had to add the royal children to the list of his rivals. If O’LiamRoe had not been there, Stewart would have tried to quarrel with Ballagh again.

But Thady Boy was extraordinarily forbearing; and O’LiamRoe was silent all the way back to the castle, pricked for the first time in his life by the terrible innocence of childhood.

The next day they resumed their journey, and Thady and his patrons were restored to adult pursuits. They raced. They shot. At Fontainebleau they set fire to a birch grove and hurled their mounts through it. At Corbeil they paid the boatmen to exchange clothes and in blue caps and wide breeches towed the women’s dress boxes to a side stream and held them to ransom.

By that time, the gaming was at a fairly high level. Between Melun and Gien, Thady lost Piedar Dooly as his last stake at the tables; and stark sober and hissing the little Firbolg was in pledge for ten days, eating black bread and beans. None of the others was approaching sober, except O’LiamRoe. Surprised and interested, and gifted by nature with no compelling urge to join in, he understood that this, in an unfettered form, was what Lymond meant by taking a holiday. When shortly before Gien, the all-night escapades on strong wine bowled the last of them over, O’LiamRoe captured a donkey, loaded his ollave into a pannier, and paid a boy two silver carlins to see him on to a boat. There Lymond, who was by no means incapable, curled up peacefully and slept.

S
AFE and untouched, Queen Mary also reached Blois, with a fresh piece of bandage and the monkeys. The household staff and O’LiamRoe were already in, with some of the courtiers. The Queen Dowager and her Scotsmen arrived in the same fleet of barges, and the Duke de Guise and Madame de Valentinois came later. Only the royal suite and the Constable had not yet travelled south.

Home and birthplace of kings, Blois was rich; Scotland had nothing so precious. Robin Stewart had watched, along the waterway from Gien, as the blue roofs and white towers slid by at every turn of the Loire, and the flaming swords of Charles, the porcupine of Louis, the cord and ermines of Anne, the salamander of Francis and the double crescents of Henri franked every stone. Then landing, he climbed with the rest to the basse-cour of the castle and saw the familiar château before him diced red and white, the dormers high as rose mallows, and through the deep arch the inner court, through which every man but the King must walk on foot.

Round the hollow square inside, Charles of Orléans, Louis and Francis had each built a wing, each the best of its day. Everywhere the eye was beguiled by griffins and crockets, puttis and niches; by the strange crested staircase, and the stone worked like brocade.

To most of the Scots there, it was too familiar for comment. They entered, and after the usual interval of chaos, settled into their quarters. The Queen Dowager of Scotland used the suite set aside for the de Guises, in the Louis XII wing, overlooking the basse-cour. Her brothers, who were at the castle most of the day, slept in the Rue Chemonton and her lords were farmed out, among hosts willing and
unwilling, throughout the town. In the opposite wing, the old Charles of Orléans block, were the Irishmen.

Finding them was no trouble. Setting off some days later, Jenny Fleming simply followed the far sound of music across the inner courtyard. Her hood held tight over her traitorous hair, she picked her way across the paving and up the staircase on its southwestern side, and her excellent hearing led her from there.

The thick door, carved and painted, opened into a comfortable room. The maître d’hôtel, in the end, had been generous to O’LiamRoe and his entourage. The floor was tiled, the white walls pinned with tapestries, and the pillared bed, Lady Fleming was charmed to see, envisaging Thady Boy and O’LiamRoe side by side on the feathered bolster, was of tortoiseshell and ivory. There were several coffers and a secretaire; two benches and a heavy chair, several stools and a prie-dieu; a balcony; and a cabinet off, where Piedar Dooly sat and slept.

There was also a spinet, bearing Diane de Poitiers’s monogram, at which she could see Thady Boy’s back, a split across the main seam. He was playing steadily and correctly, his mind clearly elsewhere. When the latch clicked he said, unmoving, ‘Go away.’

Jenny, Lady Fleming, shut the door, alive to a ravishing situation. ‘You don’t know who it is.’

Still he made no effort to turn. ‘I do. Go away, Lady Fleming.’

She smiled, and swinging her little cosmetic case on one finger, moved in and tapped him with it. ‘Do you know that you are alone? Soul as the turtil that hath lost hir make.’ And still smiling, Jenny Fleming walked round him, rested her arms on the spinet, and, holding the open case between her two hands, communed with her reflection inside. ‘My sweet ollave, you have lost O’LiamRoe again.’

‘Plan, plan, ta ti ta, ta ti ta, tou, touf, touf; boute selle
.… He can go to hell.’ One finger parodied the drums for alarm. ‘I’m tired,’ said Lymond, ‘of playing cache-cache with O’LiamRoe.’

Leaning there, she studied him. Last night’s stubble was still there, and the faint slackness of high living. The uncombed, dyed hair, tumbling forward, had robbed the face of any distinction. ‘You look a little overdrawn on sleep,’ she said.

‘I could sleep in a candle mould.’

‘I thought you were supposed to be at O’LiamRoe’s hip, booted to the groin, whenever he moved.’

One long finger remained pressed silently on the last key. ‘Then you would lose the pleasure of telling me where he is.’

‘In the kennels.’

‘Dripping like a clepsydra with useless information. Ollaves’ powers are unconscionably limited. I could recite an aér before
breakfast and he should break out in bolga by dinnertime. But get him to remain in one room I cannot.’

‘Is he nervous?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

‘Then he ought to be, my dear, if only of you.… You thought I was d’Enghien, didn’t you?’

‘No. He uses a different scent. I think you should go.’

He had curbed his tongue, always, when dealing with Lady Fleming; and she was far too expert to court the unforgivable. Instead, she turned the mirror towards him, so that he faced the dregs of his elegance; then closed the little case with a click. ‘There is no need to be nervous,’ she said.

He waited until she had gone, and then laughed at the sheer effrontery of it.

That same afternoon, O’LiamRoe lay on his back in the grass, fending off a loosely upholstered, unkempt mat of a deerhound called Luadhas.

It was a sweet, well-nourished day with a ruddy sun and crisp air and an early shower of rain which had soaked the Prince’s breeches and shoulder blades black from the grass. He was alone. The dogs were out, rolling, yapping, scampering in the paddock: tumblers and lurchers; spaniels for hawking and fowling; the hare-hounds, light and nervy; the mastiffs with their flop ears for boar; the flat-headed, vicious allaunts and the white, fleet children of Souillard, the famous Royal White Hounds, which never gave tongue without cause. With them were the wolfhounds, Luadhas and her brother, each three feet high; 120 pounds of big-boned, brindled dog with thin muzzles and arched loins and mild flat-browed noble heads, who could catch and slaughter a wolf.

Tuned to the din, O’LiamRoe and his deerhound heard the footfalls at once. Shaggy brindle next to hispid gold, the two Irish heads turned as Thady Boy Ballagh strolled over the grass. Mildly and inaudibly, O’LiamRoe swore. For Luadhas, he had found, was for sale, at a price. And he had just bought her as a present for Oonagh O’Dwyer.

When his secretary was near enough therefore, the Prince spoke softly, a glint in his gentle blue eye. ‘Busy child, you’ve been a middling long while finding me this time. I could be killed, dried and folded flat in a drawer like Callimachus’ corpse and no one the wiser.’

‘A little co-operation would help,’ said Thady Boy, and dropping on his haunches, picked up Luadhas’s big paw, with its strong, curving nails. He spoke without heat. It was his self imposed task
to keep O’LiamRoe in sight. O’LiamRoe was free to put whatever value on his own life he chose.

‘My grief,’ said that person with interest. ‘ ’Tis a hard time you have, with those delicate interests besides. Modify your enthusiams, busy child. France is a dangerous tutor. What joy? What laughter? Let us recall the everlasting burnings.’

Lymond said, smiling down at the grass, ‘Their arguments get more heated than yours do, that’s all.’

Beguiled as ever by the sweet pipe of a theory, O’LiamRoe pondered. ‘True. There is one thing that you Scots and this kindle of latter-day Romans have got that the angry lads back home with the hatchets will miss sorely if they break out against England. And that’s Royalty to lead you: the divine vessel of kings that cannot err. Bring on the Vice-Gerent of God, and you’ve enlisted a nation. Bring on Sean O’Grady from Cork, and you’ve merely got Cork.’

Thady Boy, careless also of the wet grass, was flat on his back, taking leisurely soundings. ‘And what about the cult of the full man? How do you fancy life lived in the round?’

‘Forty-one million livres’ worth of coats from Italy and the rest? Ah, ’Tis as old as the world,’ said O’LiamRoe. ‘From the Celtic Kings downwards you have it: high power and high living; art and sculpture and music; strong campaigns, hard sport, splendid talk. Three of the fine lords good at it; or maybe four; and all the others worked up to look very creditable, unless you get them to yourself for too long on a wet day; and then all the artists start cutting their throats. Half of them,’ said O’LiamRoe mildly, ‘could do with a dirty big scrub on the flat before they lay a hand on the round.’

‘Stewart thinks it’s perfect,’ said Thady Boy idly. ‘The joy unspeakable, the comfort inestimable, the pleasure without murmuring, the hilarity without care. He can’t get into it—that’s his only complaint.’

‘He could have my room.…’ The former owner of Luadhas came round the corner of the paddock, a promised leash in his hand. ‘I’m after buying the Irish wolfhound there,’ added O’LiamRoe quickly.

‘Why in God’s name,’ said Lymond, ‘do you want a dog?’

And, studying O’LiamRoe’s pink face, answered himself instantly. ‘Of course,’ said Thady Boy. ‘To corrupt a lady of gentle bearing, vide Frère Lubin.… A formidable wooing, my dear. I’m willing to wager the O’Dwyer kennels are awash with wolfhounds; but please yourself. Does the creature run well? You’d better let Piedar try her for you tomorrow.’

The wolfhound Luadhas rose, lifting her long, Byzantine face. Shoulders bunched, forelegs taut, flanks shuddering, she stretched; and collapsing, shook herself. O’LiamRoe sneezed. There was a peal of laughter from Thady Boy. The great bony mat of a dog, stalking
forward, gazed anxiously at the Prince of Barrow and licked his hand. O’LiamRoe was pleased, and rather touched, and not a whit embarrassed, now the story was out.

Robin Stewart, who was viewing the progress of O’LiamRoe’s glacierlike wooing with some private pleasure, also derived some entertainment from the news of the purchase. It was he who, passing Neuvy, mentioned to Mistress Boyle that the Irishman and his intended gift would be on display at the chase the next morning. The girl he found unstirred to the point of impatience; but not Theresa Boyle, who, ablaze with jolly malice, made instant plans for herself and Oonagh O’Dwyer to be invited to hunt the king of venery, the melancholy hare, next morning from Blois.

The chase was launched from a little wood, white with dawn frost, threaded with rimed oak and hornbeam, and one or two wide-girthed chestnuts.

It had been a sharp night; but now the early sun, glaring cross-grained through the branches, laid fresh black contours, thinly prowling, over the people below.

They wore grey velvet under the pewter trees; and they laughed, dismounted, and warmed themselves at the braziers patched red like salamanders here and there in the white dusk. Grooms, pages, kennelmen, muleteers, wheeled and whisked through the throng; low tables appeared under the trees, and crested hampers began to yield up their patties and wine while the dogs, tongues lolling, tails swaying, were chased off the cloths.

Margaret Erskine was late, as was all the little Queen’s entourage. Mary had been sick and Janet Sinclair and she had been up half the night until, hot-eyed, they had seen her drop into slumber. Rising at five this morning, seeing that James and Agnes were awake, soothing Janet, getting a sleepy child dressed and out to the courtyard, and finally collecting Tom’s brothers and their grooms, together with their own equerries and pages, had been a formidable task, made no sweeter by the thought that Jenny, retiring radiant for the night in clouds of musk and lynx trimmings, had planned to sleep late and avoid the hunt. Whatever fascination Lymond held for her mother, it had no power at five in the morning.

Francis, Duke de Guise, young, splendid, finely bearded, with his pleasant, full-lipped smile and long nose, was master of the day’s hunt. A jewel mine of courtesies and a living casket of diplomacy, he would in any case have paid tribute to the King’s mistress by asking her advice. Today, by mutual consent, both Diane and the Duke treated the small Queen as their patron. Kneeling, her uncle gravely discussed where the formes were, which hares to chase, and where to
establish the stables where the berners released the fresh hounds should the prey come their way. Then Margaret saw the little girl mounted, unmarked by the night’s languors, and went off herself to her Brittany hackney, arranging her looped grey skirt with both feet on the board.