Queens' Play (44 page)

There was no smile on O’LiamRoe’s likable face. ‘Of course.’

‘He and Paris, I am told, have asked for an army of 5,000 men to rouse all Ireland and even Wales. The Queen Dowager and my friend the Vidame think he should get them. The Constable is not so sure.’

‘The Queen Dowager is still in France?’

Lymond was examining his delicate fingers. ‘Her departure from Amboise is delayed, it is rumoured, by the King’s fancy for one in her train. The first hints about Stewart have got to the Loire. The Dowaager will stay at least until that is settled. In fact, I fancy she is in trouble of another kind, too; but that is by the way. We shall arrive, my dear Phelim, in the vanguard of a large embassy from England coming to invest our good and gracious King Henri for his sins and ours with the knightly insignia of the Garter.’

‘Good God!’ said O’LiamRoe, taken unawares.

‘Quite. At the head of it will be our good Marquis of Northampton. And in the large and glittering train will travel the Earl and Countess of Lennox. They are due at Châteaubriant on the 19th of June; and before the end of their stay, they will request the hand of Mary of Scotland for their King.

‘… But since,’ the light voice continued, forestalling O’LiamRoe’s openmouthed intervention, ‘since Queen Mary is affianced to the Dauphin of France, and no French party has so far appeared strong enough to break the betrothal, the King of France will with sorrow refuse and will offer his daughter Elizabeth instead. It is as well,’ said Lymond, ‘to have all this quite clear. Because the murder of Mary with a hint even of English backing would burst asunder all these beautiful overtures of friendship between England and France. You might even expect France, if sufficiently piqued, to be ready to stir up trouble in Ireland again. In which case Cormac will probably get his 5,000 men and a French blessing to kick the English out of his country.’

O’LiamRoe sat down. ‘Meanwhile,’ continued Lymond, ignoring him, ‘Robin Stewart has confessed to Warwick, and Warwick has repeated to de Chémault, the names of the other men in the conspiracy. One of them is Lennox: a fact which Lennox has most strenuously denied. The other is the man we are after. I knew it,
every sign pointed to it, but I must have Stewart’s confirmation. It isn’t in writing yet; but once in France …’

Lymond paused, eying the ceiling. ‘The last thing Stewart wants is to afford Thady Boy Ballagh the chance of covering himself or anyone associated with him with glory. Once in France, he has plans, I take it, for the direst sort of retribution. Hence the scattering of these passing favours. Lennox will warn him, of course. Stewart’s probably laying wagers, the bastard,’ said Lymond, laughter aflame in his eyes, ‘on who’s going to kill whom. Is that fair?’

O’LiamRoe cleared his throat. ‘You go too fast for me. Stewart named two men. One was Lennox, and he’s denied it. Who was the other?’

Lymond rose, and O’LiamRoe watched him come, walking like a cat over the polished floor, his hands clasped, his fair head tilted, his face grave. There was no trace of a limp, and a world of malice in his eye. ‘Oh, come, Phelim,’ he said. ‘You’ve spoken to Stewart. If he’s going to France for your sake, he’s surely bequeathed you some of his handsomer secrets.’

And the Prince of Barrow was silent, for Lymond was perfectly right. He knew, and had known since leaving the Tower, that the man behind the conspiracy was John Stewart, Lord d’Aubigny, Robin Stewart’s own captain—the foolish sybarite who was thrown into prison and then inadequately soothed; the man with whom Robin Stewart had quarrelled, and through whose wiser, subtler, clever English relatives the whole wasteful business had probably started.

O
N FRIDAY the 14th of May, Francis Crawford and Phelim O’LiamRoe, Prince of Barrow, took ship for Dieppe, France, for the second time together. Under the fond grey-green wind of the west, the sea set to hissing like silk, the timbers dipped, and the wheaten canvas ripe in the pod spilled cold air into the poop, where O’LiamRoe sat and sneezed.

Intimations of doom had attended the Prince of Barrow at last. There was a woman he did not intend to see; a hypocrite he meant to see chastened; an autocratic courtier he wished to chastise. Grimly bolstered by these evidences of his caprice, O’LiamRoe was being hard pushed in private to deny he was going to France because, like sawteeth on a crown wheel, his destiny was locked hard in theirs.

Lymond, ranging the boat, his neat head stirred by the wind, tended rather to song.
(‘Les Dames de Dieppe font Confiâmes qui belles sont.’)
Presumably, he knew perfectly what was before him. Nothing of violence; d’Aubigny’s guilt would take care of that. But a fine ripping of masks and shredding of tinsel: the awful denunciation of the elegant herald as none other than their old drinking crony Thady Boy.

He would be able, in his own defence, to quote all that he had done to capture Stewart and expose d’Aubigny. A waste of breath. The embarrassed rage of his lords and lovers would rise to him in his safe place, thought O’LiamRoe lyrically, and tarnish every shallow spur of pseudo-gold.

From Portsmouth to Dieppe, no responsible word passed between O’LiamRoe and his former ollave. In the city of limes, the Prince
of Barrow and Piedar Dooly would take horse for the Loire, there to enjoy the hospitality of Scottish Queens and French King alike until Robin Stewart should arrive for his reckoning.

Francis Crawford was not travelling with them. Lymond, it seemed, had business first in Dieppe. He paused once to explain that the name of his business was Martine.

‘Busy child,’ said Phelim O’LiamRoe, and in his voice was the sharp derision of their earliest acquaintance. ‘Do you not be plotting too hard, or the strings of your charm will fall down.’

They parted, with dry exactitude, on the quay; and by afternoon O’LiamRoe was on his way south.

La Belle Veuve, whose other name was Martine, took an open breath, the two dimples like fingermarks in her cheeks, and half shut the door on the princely dark blue silk on the threshold. ‘Wait, monsieur. Do I remember you?’

‘Let us see,’ said Lymond helpfully. She had forgotten how quickly he moved. ‘You remember me now. The travelling gleeman.’

The demonstration was brief and rather savagely efficient. Wrenching free, composed, bright-eyed, to lead him into her parlour she said, ‘Well, Dionysius. You are yourself again.’

He was uninformative. ‘Bathed overnight in a pan of new milk. And you needn’t think I am here because of the manifest comforts. My mind is purely on commerce.’

‘Mine also,’ said La Belle Veuve placidly. She was a slender, clever woman, no longer young, who had been salaried
gouvernante
to the
filles publiques
in the old King’s day, when a travelling army of young and distinguished prostitutes was by no means easy to rule. ‘But pray be seated, none the less. We thought you had been roasted to death.’

‘Singed a little, I must admit,’ said Lymond. ‘But you should have seen the Druid.… Has she come in?’

‘A week ahead of time.’

He did not need to explain. The Flemish galliasse of that September attack on
La Sauvée
, repaired at her home port and dispatched then abroad, had been a care of Martine’s for many months, and it was she who had found the one jettisoned matelot who had told them all they so far knew. She listened now to the particular oath Lymond used and said, ‘Is it now of such moment?’

He laughed, his annoyance gone, and examined the fine rings on her hand. ‘Have you seen the Three Queens and the Three Dead Men? You will, if this doesn’t succeed. Did Mathhias come to you?’

Mathhias was captain of the
Gouden Roos
, which had had orders, all these months ago, to ram and drown O’LiamRoe. La Belle Veuve
watched Lymond from under her long lashes. ‘I went to him,’ she said. He would not, and did not, think it necessary to comment on the magnitude of the service. She added, ‘The
Roos
was financed by Antonius Beck of Rouen.’

‘A French merchant controlling a Flemish trading ship?’

‘His father came from Bruges. He has made a fortune in illegal trading and a second fortune out of piracy. That is Mathhias’s work. The Spanish treasure ships don’t begin to run until they see the cannon mounted. This is where he stays in Rouen.… Why are you laughing? Francis,’ said Martine, who in her own way was a great and powerful woman, ‘You are Hell’s own Apollo.’

‘Quetzalcoatl,’ said Lymond, and shutting his eyes, crowed like a fiend. ‘Ma belle, ma belle, you have rebuilt the walls of Rome.’ And setting himself, lightly, to please her, he would explain nothing else.

From Rouen he sent her a little barrel, plated with gold, with a string of twelve-carat pearls in it, from which she guessed he had discovered the warehouses of M. Antonius Beck.

The presses were silent and the house empty of society when Lymond called at the Hôtel Hérisson, Rouen; for the sculptor was working, the chisel sweet as a dulcimer over the rumbling ground-bass of oaths.

The name Crawford of Lymond meant nothing to him. The chime of the chisel stopped and, waiting outside the cellar door, his visitor listened with amusement to a profane exchange between Michel Hérisson and the steward sent to announce him. After a moment, Lymond pushed open the door and wandered down the steps by himself.

The statue was of the giant Tityus, felled and twisted, with the vulture sitting on his chest. Lymond had seen it, hewn into half-detailed torment when gout, in classical retribution, had forced the sculptor to break off. The gout, you could see, had not left him. He was working in spite of it, his thick forearms knotted in his white fustian gown, an old dust-cap buttoned under his chin, the grooves in his broad, high-coloured face wet and silted with dust. Round his neck, as he turned, was visible a sad rag half stuffed into his collar. Lymond recognized it, shrunken and sweaty, as Brice Harisson’s smart, braided doublet. He said quietly, ‘I have a message from the Prince of Barrow, M. Hérisson. I shall not take up much of your time.’

Below tufted brows like his brother’s, Michel Hérisson’s hot, round eyes ran over his visitor, from the brushed yellow hair to the dark jewels and the thoughtful clothes. He said, ‘My god, a Fatimite!’ without undue force, and dismissed the steward with a thumb.
Francis Crawford’s eyes were on the Tityus. There in the dust-filled cavity of the mouth, the arched ribs and splayed hands, the stony gougings of gut was all one needed to know of the mind of Michel Hérisson, whose late brother Brice had so gallantly served his country by exposing Robin Stewart’s perfidy to the French.

‘Damn you,’ said Lymond pleasantly. ‘I’m working like a horse treadle in an iron furnace. Look again.’

The big, dirty face glared, suddenly impatient. ‘Christ—’

Through the haze their eyes met, and held.
‘Christ.’
repeated the sculptor with an intonation totally different.
‘It’s Thady Boy Ballagh!’
And with a roar of joyous recognition, Michel Hérisson leaped to embrace him.

Unconstitutional activity was Hérisson’s life-force. It was enough for him to be told Lymond’s purpose in France and to shriek at his assorted escapades and at the whole inspired lunacy of his masquerade without requiring to know for whom, if anybody, he was doing these things. The visit had been worth the risk. Michel Hérisson’s kind of morality was highly personal and was based on fierce and passionately defended convictions. He would have hounded to death for bowelless principles and shoddy thinking any man setting out to murder a child from some sort of distorted crusading zeal. For Robin Stewart and his hurried, muddle-minded expediencies, he had nothing but careless contempt, tempered by a fairly accurate understanding. In the fallen giant and the vulture were all that the sculptor would ever say of the sword stroke with which Robin Stewart had killed his brother.

Rumour had told Michel Hérisson what all France knew, that the Archer was on his way now to Court; the sad embassy from London with Brice’s effects had told him part of that story. He now heard for the first time of Lord d’Aubigny’s share, and his own hurt exploded into fury against Robin Stewart’s corrupt master. Lymond nursed it, delicately, and introduced the name of Antonius Beck.

‘Yon raddled neep-end!’ said Michel Hérisson, overflowing joyfully into the doric. ‘Keeps his lordship supplied with stolen silver at half the market price. Used to buy off me, too, till I found what he was up to. By God, I could tell you—’

‘Do,’ said Lymond; and at the end of a vitriolic recital, related what he knew of him. ‘I want proof from him, Michel, that it was for d’Aubigny that he arranged to wreck
La Sauvée
last year.’

The sculptor, spread on a box with his swollen feet on a bracket, looked from under his eyebrows at the other man. ‘Stewart will tell everything about d’Aubigny, won’t he? D’ye think his lordship will wriggle out of it?’

‘Yes,’ said Lymond placidly.

The round eyes continued to stare. ‘I see. Have you seen Beck?’

‘He’s not at home. I haven’t managed to trace him in three somewhat rigorous days. And I can’t afford to stay any longer.’

‘Have you any other source of proof, man?’

‘One. A last resort, only.’

‘With that lamentable mess,’ said Michel Hérisson tartly, ‘nothing should be a last resort. If it’s proof, use it. I’ll look after Beck. I know enough about him to bring his scalp out in quills. He’ll confess … once I find him. But if I were you, man, I would go and make sure of your witness.’

‘With a bloody great chisel,’ said Lymond.

At the tone, the sculptor’s light lashes flickered. ‘A woman, is it? Why get dainty over that? The alchemy’s different, but the claws are the same.’

‘Not my property,’ said Lymond pleasantly. ‘The alchemy, at least. I’ve had a taste of the claws. Right so came an adder out of a little heath bush, and it stung the knight on the foot. You confine yourself to tearing the God’s truth in handfuls out of the elusive M. Beck.’

Hérisson got to his feet. ‘Christ, I’m going to enjoy it. Let’s go and eat. Man, I wouldn’t have known you. You’ve—’

‘—Sinned against my brother the ass. I trust the rulers of France are going to be equally deceived. My brother is at Orléans, waiting for me with the Court news. O’LiamRoe was to arrange that.’

‘You think you can fool them a second time?’ Michel Hérisson, his gaze critical, helped himself, limping, to Lymond’s near shoulder. ‘… God, I’m glad I’m not your brother. If they find out you’re Thady Boy and d’Aubigny’s still in favour, then—’

‘Then how happy we shall be,’ said Lymond gently, ‘to have the confession of M. Beck.’