Queens' Play (45 page)

In Orléans Richard Lord Culter, whom Michel Hérisson did not envy, awaited his brother in the inn called the Little God of Love; a choice on Lymond’s part reassuring in its felicity. Elsewhere in the inn also awaited the main portion of Vervassal’s considerable luggage, his page, his valet, his trumpet, his three men at arms and his groom, as supplied by the Queen Dowager, dispatched directly to await their master’s arrival.

Richard, admitted late to the Queen Mother’s confidence and owing the better part of his new information to O’LiamRoe, could find nothing either chastened or repentant in the image Phelim had drawn for him—an account in which O’LiamRoe had not seen fit to include any mention of Oonagh O’Dwyer.

With mild curiosity therefore, and no more, Richard from the
Dowager’s side had noted the coming of another Irishman brought by George Paris to the hospitable Court of France: a burly man of great height, with filbert cheeks, black brows and a round calyx of satin-black hair trimmed just above. After his initial reception at Court, Cormac O’Connor stayed at Neuvy, with the Irishwoman Richard had already met: a retiral advised because he proved greatly given to fighting, a pastime which also appealed to the Queen Dowager’s disgruntled Scotsmen.

The Queen Dowager approved of Cormac O’Connor; the Prince of Barrow did not. In his mind’s eye Richard cherished a picture of the only occasion, to his knowledge, when O’LiamRoe and Cormac O’Connor had so far come face to face. O’Connor, from his meaty eminence, tanned shiny as horn, had turned narrow eyes on the washed and rose-pink person below him, and had said, ‘My faith, but the Slieve Bloom have been hard put to it, surely, to pick up a prince. Did they feed you well, now, in London?’

‘Nearly as well,’ said O’LiamRoe mildly, ‘as in the Slieve Bloom, in the one year in six that some bodach isn’t making his hero’s mark battle-marching across it.’

‘Fair weather after you,’ the big man had said, with something approaching a laugh. ‘If slavery with a full belly appeals to you. You will excuse me if Cormac O’Connor is not in it.’

‘Ah, the silly fellow you are,’ had replied O’LiamRoe, opening his pale eyes wide, the growing hair silky over his brow. ‘What for would I be wanting Cormac O’Connor any time of my life, or any possession of Cormac O’Connor’s, or any ambition of Cormac O’Connor’s, or any thing which he thinks he has and he does not have at all?’

And the big man, at that, had raised the glazed brown back of his hand as if to strike the other; but Richard had moved forward and Cormac, wheeling, had marched without speaking away.

‘Ah, ’tis a Crawford,’ the Prince of Barrow had said, an odd, breathless look on his tender-skinned face. ‘Gallant champions all. If you catch sight of a girl called Martine, you might tell her to make short work of it; for the steam is fairly beginning to come off the darling situation here.’

Then Francis arrived, exactly on time. In the private room he had hired, sparing comment on either illness or recovery, ‘You incredible liar,’ said Lord Culter calmly. ‘You promised to be out of the country by Lent.’

‘Always excepting a
damnum fatale
. I had a
damnum fatale,’
said Lymond, settling luxuriously in a doublet as soft as a glove. ‘I’ll take you to Sevigny some day. Nick Applegarth looks after it for me—he left a leg on one of our common battlefields. And how is Robin Stewart, by nature privily mixed?’

‘On his way to Angers, I understand,’ said Richard. ‘Throwing
off confessions like a fire stick. His best so far was at Calais, so they tell me. A copy is on its way to the King now.’

Recently Lymond had acquired a direct gaze which his brother found vaguely disquieting. ‘So O’LiamRoe’s testimony will not be required,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘And where is the Prince of Barrow now studying the hazels of scientific composition?’

‘He’s going to Angers as well. He got an informal welcome, but not unfriendly,’ said Richard. ‘He and Dooly are in lodgings, but come to Court quite a lot,’ And he related the tale of the great confrontation.

‘Oh, God,’ said Lymond. ‘O’Connor will toss him one-handed from Neuvy straight into Tír-Tairngiri. And the Queen? D’Aubigny won’t attempt anything now, of course. He must be sitting at home in quite a ferment wondering whether Robin Stewart will denounce him.’

Lord Culter said sharply, ‘I thought he had already.’

‘He has hinted to Warwick. But he’s unlikely to amplify the hint. It makes no difference to him; he’s going to die anyway. And where his dear John Stewart is concerned, the King as you know would believe nothing without proof; and probably nothing with it either. And proof is what I have come back to find.… Other people have been working for d’Aubigny, after all,’ said Lord Culter’s brother, his gaze limpid. ‘I have hopes of tracing one of them already. Someone in Dieppe has found out for me a connection between d’Aubigny and the owner of the galliasse which nearly sank O’LiamRoe and myself on arrival—a man called Antonius Beck, who has probably done a good deal, one way or another, for d’Aubigny. I have a friend in Rouen who seems to think he can trace Master Beck without any trouble, and who is quite certain he can make him confess. And in addition,’ said Lymond, doing his work thoroughly, ‘there is a woman who knows at least as much as Robin Stewart about what has been going on. I shall deal with her myself.’

Answering amusement lit Richard’s eyes. ‘Rumours of the new herald have come from London already. From the de Chémaults, I believe,’ Lord Culter said maliciously. ‘Don’t disappoint them. And for God’s sake don’t slip into the Coiniud, or the One-horned Cow, or they’ll quarter you,’

Lymond smiled. He said, ‘I have something for you to take home. You
are
going back now, I suppose?’

Richard’s sense of complacency increased. He had already told himself that, with Francis back, and obviously better, his tour of duty could be concluded. The Queen Dowager, he knew, needed his steadying presence in Scotland. And he wanted to go back.

Thinking therefore of ships and packhorses, he took the box Lymond held out. On the lid was written
Kevin
. Margaret Erskine,
he remembered, had chaffed him about that. ‘An Irish name for a Crawford! What says Sybilla to that?’

What Sybilla had said, in fact, was a flat negative to his first choice: No to Francis and No to Gavin. ‘He’s black amber, child. Name him after Mariotta’s people,’ she had said. And Kevin Crawford his heir had become. Richard, his head bent, opened the box.

Inside was a silver rosebush, just six inches high; and on its stark, leafy stem bloomed a single, night-black rose, carved half-open in jet. Their crest, in blue and silver, was set in the base. Lymond spoke, as he sat staring at it. ‘I hope you like it. Send him to me when he is eighteen and needs the money; and I shall direct him to a man called Gaultier who will give him a good price for it.’

They took leave of each other that evening—a definitive parting, because Richard suddenly decided that he could not leave France too soon. Lymond was to join the Court Richard himself had just left, on its way to Châteaubriant for the visit of the English Embassy. Lord Culter himself would ride on north.

In the hour or two they had left together they avoided matters of moment, and Lymond applied himself otherwise to marking the day. The Little God of Love, which had never before witnessed a dice game conducted on a forfeit system connected with clothing, nearly had to call in the watch. There was a good deal of verse making and some singing in the public rooms. And then Lymond, perfectly sober and dangerously playful, collected his grinning train and set off, declaiming.

His brother’s voice, mournfully receding, rang in Richard Crawford’s ears long after the irrepressible party had gone. Turning from the vanished shadows and the misty river, he walked indoors quietly and sat down, the silver rose tree in his palm.

“A
NOTHER
Scot!
Tête Dieu
, they’re spreading like mildew,’ Louis de Bourbon, first Prince of Condé was remarking; and baring his white teeth he enunciated grotesquely. ‘A haile Karolus, man—what’s it worth? It’s worth five pennies, nae mair, in Scotland this day; and a hauf Karolus tuppence ha’penny. Corruption and thievery, man! Sinful corruption and illegal thievery off the Queen’s puir hapless childer the Scots!’

He and his decorative brother, passing the time with backgammon in the Gran’ Salle at Chinon, both laughed excessively, and a large, healthy man with black hair, hanging restlessly behind d’Enghien’s gilt stool, exclaimed, ‘Ah, wait you until we beat at the gates of England, you and I, with thirty thousand Irish at our backs, and the True Church rises and kicks her tormentors in the face. Then the snivelling Scots in their backyards nursing their bent swords can look at heroes and chew on their shame.… Is he the old Queen’s man? I thought the woman was due long since back home.’

Disposing swiftly of an excellent move, d’Enghien reached up absently and patted the big Irishman’s hand. ‘How improvident you are! Do you need money? Don’t malign the Dowager, mon cher. She is a staunch supporter of your designs. She will stay merely to see the assassin Stewart hanged at Angers and the English Embassy safely over without any surreptitious pact concerning herself and the child. Then you may be sure she will hurry home. Thrones speedily cool. Twenty crowns?’

‘Faith,’ said the big man, laying a broad hand on Jean de Bourbon’s satin shoulder. ‘There is no finer gentleman on Irish soil or under it than the like of yourself. If you had thirty in your purse, it would clear my honour of a sore offence of a debt. And he is with the Constable, you say?’

‘Who?’ said Condé, who was losing, and willing to beguile his brother’s attention from the game.

‘The herald. Crawford of Lymond. The Scot you were discussing.’

‘Oh.’ D’Enghien was examining the contents of his purse. ‘He carries London dispatches.—I believe so, yes.’

The Prince of Condé, sitting in the only chair with a back to it, leaned back and laughed. ‘Ask him for forty, my dear. Then ask him what de Chémault’s secretary scribbled under the report he sent the other week.
C’est une belle, mais frigide
. Une belle, vois-tu!’

For a second, the third man’s narrow eyes, their contempt undisguised, ranged over the two careless, painted faces. Then, his voice flattened with effort, he said, ‘A smooth-skinned bag of curds, brought up by an Edinburgh dominie and turned silly on a cup of pear juice. The red blood is all run out of the Lowlands, they say.’

‘My brother,’ said the Prince of Condé maliciously, ‘has had a sufficiency, I believe, of red blood. Better make it fifty crowns, my dear.’ The game was his, after all.

‘—No dissensions, my lords, I pray you,’ said an unannounced voice, of serenest reproach. ‘Mother Church has enough to bear.
Faut-il que Père Éternel gagne Pater Noster, et Haile Carolus suit Ave Maria quandmême?’

In the doorway, an elegant gentleman smiled at d’Enghien, and d’Enghien, to his own delight, blushed. Mr. Crawford, Vervassal Herald, had arrived.

Fate and Francis Crawford, in wary collaboration, had arranged that the re-entry of Thady Boy Ballagh should take place in two steps.

First, he was to deliver de Chémault’s dispatches at Chinon, rocky fortress south of the Loire where King Henri and his favourite gentlemen were plunging through the forests and vineyards of the Chinonais in pursuit of venery. Thus in new dress, new colouring, new name and new accent, he would meet the King and the Constable, the Vidame and St. André, Condé, d’Enghien and the rest in a new setting also.

Then he would accompany the Court west along the Loire to Angers, where the Scottish Court and the rest of the French courtiers waited with the Queen. For Angers was the last station in the Court’s pilgrimage to meet the English Embassy next month near Nantes. It was also the prison where Robin Stewart, nearing the end of his own abject journey from London, was being purposefully brought. Which meant that The O’LiamRoe would be there too.

Arriving at Chinon, its Plantagenet masonry thick on the sky, Lymond showed no apprehension, and his followers, unaware of past reincarnations, certainly expected none. Scaling the steep streets to the escarpment, he was received with courtesy at the castle, and
taken presently to the Grand Logis, where the Constable awaited him. The King was out hunting.

The roebuck season had opened at Easter; so had the season for evaluating the current shifting of power, ecclesiastical and temporal, in the wealthier regions of Europe, and the chances of benefiting thereby. It was approaching the time when the well-fed, well-rested and well-exercised in the kingdom with ambitions to satisfy began looking for trouble; and old men turned up old antagonisms like truffles, and dressed them in valorous tinsel to lure on the brash.

It was approaching the time too when, sniffing cautiously, the old war dogs of England and France should cease their circling and approach. The Ambassage Extraordinary now setting out from London was to do much more than invest the French King with the highest English Order of Chivalry; and a similar embassy soon to leave the Loire for London under the Marshal de St. André would carry more than the St. Michael to England. A pact of friendship was afoot, a political and military alliance, and a tacit understanding that should my lord of Warwick, Earl Marshal of England, find it necessary to deal firmly with the Duke of Somerset, the English King’s appointed Protector, Henri of France, would be in no way abashed.

On Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France, lay the weight of sustaining this relationship. Alone with Mr. Crawford and a secretary, the Constable broke the seal and read Raoul de Chémault’s edited account, addressed to the King, of all that had happened in London. He then accepted with a shrewd glance and read a second report from de Chémault. This was addressed expressly to the Constable himself, and contained, for the Constable’s ear alone, Stewart’s hint that the Earl of Lennox and Lord d’Aubigny his brother were involved.

In his report, as de Chémault and Lymond both knew, lay the explosive crux of the affair. For the seigneur of Aubigny, high-born, florid, aesthetic, unstrung, was in the enchanted brotherhood of Henri II’s cronies, whom another crony might touch at his peril. The Constable read the dispatch through, picking his nose, and then laying it down, spread his broad, swordsman’s hand flat on the page.

‘Yes. M. de Chémault did well. Such an accusation should not reach the ears of the King until better substantiated. Unfortunately, M. de Chémault’s precaution was unnecessary. The charge against Lord d’Aubigny has already been made public. The Archer Stewart was questioned at Calais, and has made a full written confession implicating his lordship, which was sent on by courier ahead. The King knows of the accusation against his lordship.’

From beyond the desk, the herald showed no surprise. ‘Can monseigneur say whether Lord d’Aubigny has replied to the charge?’

The Constable of France used, absently, a brief and forceful expression. ‘As you might expect, M. Crawford, Lord d’Aubigny flatly denies it, and his highness the King fully believes him. Unless the man Stewart brings concrete proof of Lord d’Aubigny’s guilt, the seigneur will not be touched.’

‘If Mr. Stewart had such testimony he would have produced it, I feel, before now,’ said the herald. ‘Should my mistress the Queen Dowager obtain proof against his lordship, either independently or in communion with the Archer, would she have monseigneur’s aid and support?’

To this, the Constable’s reply was most cordial. Nothing in the well-anointed precision before him recalled a battered figure on the roadside at Rouen. As for Lymond, chatting in the Constable’s company just outside the Gran’ Salle door, he yet found time to register, in the docketed stream of his thoughts, that the Prince of Condé and his brother d’Enghien and someone else were having an interesting discussion inside. Presently, it was obvious from the brogue that the third speaker must be Cormac O’Connor. It was then that he prevailed on the Constable to open the door.

Throughout the introductions, d’Enghien’s gaze did not leave him: moving slowly over the burnished head, the indolent face, the beguiling limbs. For a long time after that, without quite realizing it, he stared at Mr. Crawford’s polished features until something the herald said, by the very fluency of its delivery, broke his train of thought.

‘M. O’Cluricaun, you said?’

‘Mr. O’Connor.’ The Constable, who was taking a good deal of trouble over Lymond, wondered why the big Irishman had flushed. ‘—Cormac O’Connor. Offaly’s son.’

The herald was apologetic. ‘Of course—I have it. The Cluricaun is the fairy, is it not? Who makes himself drunk in gentlemen’s cellars? On pear juice, perhaps?’

There was a light in d’Enghien’s lustrous eyes; a familiar light, a light which the Prince of Condé noticed and understood.

‘Une belle!’
said Jean de Bourbon to the air, in sotto-voce delight.
‘Une belle, mais pas frigide! Pas frigide du tout!’

That evening, Lymond met the King and discussed de Chémault’s report without incident. Lord d’Aubigny’s name was not mentioned, and there was no flicker on the royal, black-bearded face of anything other than doggedly upheld hauteur. To every question the herald’s response was detached, graceful and proper; and remained so throughout the stay at Chinon, at Montpensier’s palace of Champigny, at Saumur and during the arrival, to trumpets, at Angers.

Within the feudal fortress with its seventeen hooped drum towers, tunnelled out of black Trélazé, were Queen Catherine and her guests the two Queens of Scotland, with Margaret Erskine in their train. In the stony cells of the western tower was Robin Stewart. And living in the crowded, painted town, all florid with stone and appled wood and sliced and medal-packed slate, were the Scottish nobles, among whom was Sir George Douglas; the humble lodging of the Prince of Barrow and his servant Dooly; and the pied à terre of the lively Mistress Boyle and her fine niece Oonagh.

All this Lymond knew from the Vidame and from the Bourbons’ merciless chatter. And riding with his silken banner and his servants and his own blazing livery of red and blue and tasselled gold over the River Maine and past the monolithic bastions, tower after black tower rising two hundred feet high over his head, Lymond nearly allowed Cormac O’Connor to succeed in picking a quarrel with him at last. For his main emotion, approaching his friends, the Scottish Court, all those knowledgeable eyes which knew him for the former Thady Boy Ballagh, was one of anger: sheer, helpless anger because, prinked like a cake baker at a ball, he had condemned himself to a tawdry transformation which would label him juvenile, would label him apostate, as surely as The O’LiamRoe’s silk suits and shaved chin had done.

Riding, then, across the north bridge into the castle of Angers, Lymond addressed his absent friends bitterly under his breath. ‘Don’t show your satisfaction too much. Don’t smile; don’t signal your congratulations. Or by God, ladies and gentlemen, you shall have Thady Boy Ballagh back for life.’

It was Saturday, the 6th of June, and on the 19th the English were due. That afternoon, Robin Stewart was examined before the King’s Grand Council at Angers. Lymond, who was having a briefly momentous interview with the Queen Dowager, was not present, but The O’LiamRoe and his lordship of Aubigny were. All that emerged, and all that the attendant flock of lawyers and clerks were able to reduce from it, was proof after damning proof of Robin Stewart’s confessed guilt, together with an utterly unsubstantiated accusation against Lord d’Aubigny which his lordship, high-coloured and angry, coldly denied.