Queens' Play

  She stared at the blur of his face in the twinkling dark, her rage bursting its self-imposed locks. ‘Then there are two of us,’ she said hardily. ‘A man of smaller vanity would have killed him before she had need.’

  ‘Thinking death the only division. I could not imagine,’ said Lymond, ‘ever so insulting you. In any case, you are committed to your cause, are you not? You would need only another Messiah. The Prince of Barrow, perhaps.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Under the heavy damask the sweat was cold on her skin; her eyes, open in the scented darkness, ached with the strain of the fight; her lashes dragged like fire from their roots.

  For it was a struggle. She was under no illusions. He meant to have the help she could give. His moderation was a debt he owed to other women, not to her, and eventually it would break.… Placed between these steely levers, face to face with her own mind, she must use what weapons she had. Choosing her words, she said, ‘… But that you would frighten him out of it. No matter. Ambitious princes in Ireland are as thick as the sands of the sea. Any one of them will do.’

  Deeply she had planned this inevitable duel of theirs; her blood heavy in her veins she waited to hear him reply. The silence went on, drowning the shallow murmurs of talk and laughter, the remote beat and pipe of music outside. Then Lymond said, ‘So you have never loved.’

  Oonagh said, ‘Have you?’

  He did not answer. Instead he said, his voice attuned to a deeper breath, so that her hands closed suddenly, ‘There is a man already half-awake in O’LiamRoe. I should not prevent you. How could I?’

  She let him hear the contempt in her voice. ‘And in the loving leaf-beds of France I should let drop the starved skull of a nation, and watch it roll into the weeds? Show me the man, awake or half-awake, whose lips could teach me to do that!’

  Her own words chimed in her head. They sounded unconvincing, the words that were meant to persuade as the spade persuades the deep earth. Standing in that dark room, gambling mind and body against this silken, disembodied voice, she had begun, strong as she had made herself to be, to tremble. She had to wrench from him her secret, her identity, her pride all intact, and to buy security for Cormac in the future. Oh, God … she thought furiously, shaking. How frigid was he? Mary Mother, how much wooing must she do?

  She had thought herself open as a sounding board to every move of his body; she had killed her sight on his dim, jewelled dress. But blind with stress she missed the move when at last it was quietly made; was aware only of his perfume behind, and of two peaceful hands lying under her throat. His voice in her ear said, ‘I gave you my word, a while back, that I proposed to be continent … but are you and your song, my green-haired morrow, attempting by any chance to seduce me?’

  Before her, his shadow lay superimposed on her own upon the empty tiles; his breath was sweet; his smiling lips in her hair. Her chin lifted. Staring open-eyed before her, ‘Are you afraid?’ she said. And raising her hands, slid apart his light ones and turned.

  She had studied his sleeping face, exposed under the dye. Lymond asserting his full powers she had never met at close quarters before. Without touching her, he was so near she could feel the warmth of his skin; the lamps from the garden struck a sudden, dense blue from under his lashes. In the broken light, the short hair clasped his head like lit silver. He spoke again, his voice steady; but she could hear that, at last, he was controlling his breath.

  ‘The star of Gormluba was fair. White were the rows within her lips, and like the down of the mountain under her new robe was her skin. Circle on circle formed her fairest neck. Like hills beneath their soft snowy fleeces rose her two breasts of love. The melody of music was in her voice. The rose beside her lip was not red: nor white beside her hand the foam of the streams. Her eyes were bright as sunbeams; and altogether perfect was the form of the fair.… Maid of Gormluba, who can describe thy beauty!’

  In the timbre of the Gaelic, you remembered his gifts, his hands on the strings and his thoughts in them. She answered him in the same tongue and kind, her body graced by his voice, her glimmering face and shoulders and breasts small and deep in his eyes.

  Without looking, he put out his hand and drew the great shutter slowly closed. Behind her, the lit square dwindled on the fine tiles and was gone; in his eyes the last spark of light, reflected from her own, flamed and was extinct. In the soft darkness, smoothly, he found her two hands and brought them high under his own before gathering her for his kiss.

  Within the boy’s frame and the armoured violence of her soul came a response stronger than her will: a surge of triumph so great that she would have stopped him, if she had been strong enough, in that moment before the glory could be dimmed. Then she was held fast in a sudden turbulence as suddenly leashed, as if an iron door had closed on a fire. Attentively, his lips visited her skin, exploring the way to her dry mouth, and found it.

  He spoke, in the end, lifting his lips from hers; but she did not hear. Consumed like a spar in the flame she had incited, born like some parched changeling on the white bed of its heat, she was sealed by that spare kiss from words. When she came to herself she found him kneeling, and herself taut in his hands. ‘My dear, you are weeping,’ he said. ‘Welcome with hautbois, clarions and trumpets, noble lady. Welcome to the company of those who can be hurt.’

  She had guessed, and she had gambled on one fact: that Francis Crawford’s ultimate stake in this war between them, unsought by either, would be the same as her own. And in this one thing she was his equal, and thought to find herself even his peer. She had almost loved O’LiamRoe for his innocence. She had come tonight, sure that Lymond would try to assail her mind in the end, in the long run, by trying to captivate her body. And grimly, icily, she had come prepared to show a conceited trifler ten years her junior a glimpse of what he had never known. She had come ready to serve him well, her anger cloaked, so that by morning, wordless, he would know that he had nothing of this coin with which to bid. And then, perhaps, he would let her and Cormac go.

  Her plan was ashes. Braced for the torrid and the fanciful, she had met instead a strength steady and firm, easy in its ways and controlled—a mhuire, why had she not expected it? She had known it when his hands touched her, long before that blinding, terrible kiss—controlled as any other instrument he used, his hands subtle on the keys. It was little she knew of him, after all, and less of herself; and the slow tears felt their way down her skin as she said, ‘My heart is scalded.’

  He had become very still; the warmth from him was like the smell of a meal on a frosty day, at the end of a hard ride. He said, ‘Yours is not to lead now: we go side by side. Rest from your travels.’ Then the soft silk of his shoulder closed her eyes. He caressed her, smoothing laces and clasps from his way so that her body, unimpeded learned his hands; speaking softly, until her mind sank back numb, the pressures in the room, in herself, in him, stealing her breath.

  His hands searched her, touching her passions one by one and shaping with his musician’s fingers the growing, thunderous chord. The darkness shook, like the bursting crust of the earth, fissured red with the wildfire within. Under a discipline she could not bear to contemplate he drew together in her and united in a single, raging anthem, all the craving strands of her sleepless years. With all the life in her between his two palms, he slid wide his hands and quickly lifting her, swaying, like warm wine in too tender a lapping, took and laid her on the dark bed where, crudely, she had always meant to surrender.

  Outside, the dancing had stopped. For a while, the voices scratched the night air, coalescing, thinning, joining again in wine-eased laughter. Then they dispersed, and you heard only the pad of servants’ feet, aching for bed, the chink of cup on tray, the pang of moved lutes and the hiss of brushes, and finally, in the dark Château Neuf and Château Vieux, only the harp-fall of the fountains, and silence.

  Behind more than one window the satins lay strewn in the moonlight, and the night passed sleepless, playing at love. For one person only the musi
c stayed all night long, losing no magnificence, demanding more sometimes than she could support. She knew neither where she was nor whom she was with; for Lymond had given her the greatest gift in his possession. For one night he had severed Oonagh O’Dwyer’s soul from her mind; for one single night, she was free.

  It was the first time; and the last. They did not know each other when it began, and when it was over they knew nothing still, for they embraced visions and not flesh; his eyes lifted, considering, to wider horizons, and her soul, a stranger to warm earth and harvests, bent on snatching its hour.

  Oonagh woke soon after dawn, the blackbirds loud in the orange trees and turned her head, not remembering, against the black swathes of her hair. It was not Cormac’s head, pillowed and assuaged, lying beside her. Francis Crawford was watching her, the sheet pushed back from his shoulders, his chin on his folded arms. He looked as if he had lain a long time, quietly thinking without sleep. He smiled now instantly, a brilliant, fleeting smile of mischief and friendship, and said in her own tongue, ‘It is superb you are, my lady; and a gallant night we made, you and I. But if you would have me lay stress on any syllable at all, I shall have to pray God for the strength.’

  She saw the long-nailed hand, lying at ease under the tilted chin, the pale, ruffled hair, the thinly timbered face with its inbred austerity giving the lie to his words; and through the dawnlight and the peace and the unturned memories, like drowned jewels, of the night, she remembered why it was done.

  She had meant to show him that he had nothing to barter. He had given her instead the price of her secret, her pride, herself twenty times over. And defying all the great laws, the laws of hospitality, the laws of humanity, the laws of her own people, being what she was, she must fling it back in his face. She looked at him, and for a long moment he answered the look, before turning away. He buried his elbows in the down, and cradling his brow in his laced hands, closed his eyes. ‘Well, Oonagh?’

  With bitter smoothness, she sat up, the heavy silk of her hair falling straight by her straight arms, and answered. ‘There was a King called Cormac,’ she said flatly, ‘who knew women. Forgetful in love, he called them. Not to be trusted with secrets; ever ready with an excuse. Scampers of work; feeble in contests; termagants in strife; deaf to instruction; futile in society; dumb on useful matters; eloquent on trifles. To be feared as wild beasts. Better to be whipped than humoured, he said; better to be crushed than cherished.’ She paused; then went on evenly. ‘They are true words, and better in my mouth than yours. It is not well, so. It will not be well until Temair is the habitation of heroes once more.’

  His disordered head did not move, but the profile fretted, as if his closed eyes had suddenly clenched. It was the expected answer, made no sweeter for being defiantly florid; never tender with words, she was dragging them at her wanton plough tail anyhow. Without condemning anything she had said or done, he said only, ‘I have failed, then. I thought so.’ His voice was dry.

  She said, turning to clasp her knees, her voice low. ‘We are both traders in snow. It is our kind, Francis.’ His mother had used these words to her once: she did not tell him. Nor did she tell him the other thing he did not know. With a quick movement he slid on to his back. His face looked merely thoughtful; she could see on his brown skin the scars of the Tour des Minimes. He said, ‘I do not feel like Diogenes.’

  ‘Nor I like—’ She broke off, her voice failed. And then a moment later, whipping herself for the weakness, she said baldly, her voice vacant of colour, ‘I will sell you the information you want for five thousand Frenchmen out of Scotland.’

  He took so long that she thought he would not reply at all. Then he said, not quite in his usual register, ‘And if I discredit you and Cormac by exposing d’Aubigny, who will lead your wonderful army?’

  ‘Be at ease. I would not ask O’LiamRoe to destroy himself on the bare rocks of my little liking. I should find some man else.’ She turned. ‘Would the Dowager not contrive it, to save her daughter? The whole of Scotland and half France wishes the French occupation ended. Or is your heart set on being one of the Dowager’s new pensioned pups?’

  ‘Be still,’ he said; and putting his two hands on her arms, brought her to lie on the pillow, white and quick-breathing, the circles dark under her eyes. ‘Be still. I owe no allegiance; I have no ambition; but what you ask is impossible. The throne is too insecure. Without the Queen Mother’s good credit here and in Scotland it would topple, and the child might as well die.’

  Sharply she turned her head, and caught the wry amusement still in his eyes. He did not hide it. ‘Stop tormenting the morning; lie with me and be still,’ he said. ‘My bed is not a market place, whatever you may think. I had nothing, ever, but a little self-knowledge to offer you. If you will not tell me for that, I have nothing more I can sell.’

  And it was then, strangely, in the face of this calm and undramatic statement of truth, that Oonagh O’Dwyer’s composure broke down. Turning her black, weary head into his arm, she closed her green eyes and wept, and he lent her his comfort for, like Luadhas, she had been pitched against something too fierce for her race.

  He had one more hurdle for her to cross. On her way home, by back stair and postern, planned with practised adroitness to arouse, at another time, her ironical smile, he stopped before a stout door and turning, said, ‘I have no wish to distress you. But you owe it to your crusade to see clearly the bodies on which you build. Will you come with me?’

  Then she knew he was taking her to Mary. The helpless child Queen was to be his final weapon. And the very triteness of it made her look at him afresh. She did not understand him: she had assumed he understood her surprisingly well.

  There were three doors to pass, and an attendant before each, unobtrusively armed. The last, she saw, was young Fleming himself, with the page Melville beside him. Inside, Margaret Erskine admitted them, her manner quiet, her intuition busy. The early light on Lymond’s face left her with an impression of swift assurance; his voice and his bearing had an exceptional clarity. The Irishwoman with him she remembered most clearly at the start of the cheetah hunt, snapping her fingers at O’LiamRoe’s lovely dog. And she, on the other hand, was quite different. Under the long cloak she wore you could see last night’s damask. Defiantly, on entering, she had flung back the hood from her heavy, undressed black hair. Within it, her eyes looked half-dazed. Margaret’s own eyes dropped, hiding her exasperation, while Lymond was speaking. You fools, why do you let him? Another lesson; another experiment; another flawed vessel that would break.

  He was saying, ‘During the night she is safe, and part of the day. We cannot guard her fully in public. Today she need not go out at all until afternoon; she is safe therefore until then. In the afternoon she goes with her retinue and her mother’s to watch the Breton sports and the jousting in the tilting-field. All the people we can trust will be about her, but she will be in public, and therefore exposed. At night she will be unwell. In that way the torchlight hunt will be avoided, and the alfresco supper later on. Tomorrow—’

  ‘Tomorrow she will be on view all day as a courtesy to the English. The King has just ordered it. You can do nothing about it,’ said Margaret wearily, ‘without drawing attention. Do you want to see her now?’

  ‘If Janet will allow,’ said Lymond. Oonagh, behind, thought, Now it comes. The curving cheek, the nestling hand, the red-gold hair on the pillow. The charming snap at the heartstrings …

  ‘Wait.’ It was Lymond’s voice again, edged. ‘She isn’t asleep?’ And as Margaret nodded, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake … is the girl a turnip? We haven’t come to dote on her levée.’

  And he meant what he said. When presently they came face to face with the child Mary, she was nearly dressed, sitting grousing like a harridan at having her tangled red hair combed. Janet Sinclair, annoyed at the interruption, sagged in a brief curtsey and stood back. Two maids of honour, one of them Margaret’s own sister, were put outside the door with a groom. Lymond said, ‘Y
our grace, this is Mistress Oonagh O’Dwyer of Ireland, whom you may have met. My lady your royal mother knows her quite well.’

  Below the enraged brow, the hazel eyes had become quite clear; between the child Queen and the herald was seen to exist an amiable affinity with a faintly ecclesiastical air. Disbelieving, Oonagh heard him address his monarch again. ‘The lady wishes to drive out the English from Ireland, and suggests that your noble grace might assist by transferring all the Frenchmen from Scotland to an Irish rebel command. Do you agree?’

  Oonagh thought, impatiently, The child is eight, God help us. He has already told me—and heaven knows I knew it before—that the Dowager would never want it. The young face, she saw, had gone scarlet; head up, the child confronted her. ‘My Frenchmen are protecting my domains from the English.’

  ‘I don’t see the force of that,’ said Oonagh, ‘when you’re at peace with the English.’ There was no point in making much of this. ‘The treaty itself was due to be signed a week ago, and England is the weaker party now. There is no threat under Lord Warwick.’

  ‘You are at peace also, are you not? And my Frenchmen keep the law between lord and lord, for many jealous nobles weaken a nation.’

  ‘We are occupied,’ said Oonagh. The sense of the ridiculous faded a little. ‘We are wanting to drive the usurpers out. So should you wish the foreigners to leave your soil.’

  ‘They are my mother’s people. And mine,’ said the girl.

  ‘True enough,’ said Lymond judicially, speaking for the first time. ‘Your Norman lords went native enough, Oonagh, and gave the English their thorniest problem in the end. Just wait and see what our Norman-Scotsmen will do.’

  Over the child’s head, Oonagh’s grey-green eyes met his. ‘Children are dying; freedom is failed, while this child on a foreign soil clings to luxury like two cold crow’s feet on the back of a ewe.’