Queens' Play

  He had discarded the bright tunic on returning. Now, as he moved to a chair, de Chémault noticed that the hesitation in his walk was after all quite a serious limp. The Ambassador said, ‘It would have served well to have this confession, but no great harm will come of it. It needs only a hint to Warwick that we are aware of the plot. We have no evidence, true, except at second hand, but a hint would deter him. Of that I am sure.’

  ‘Oh, God, so am I,’ said the man Crawford with the first hint of impatience de Chémault had seen. ‘Even Harisson might have guessed as much if he had had control of his wits for two minutes. The loathsome little muck-worm can confess or hold his tongue, as he likes. I just want to lay hands on Robin Stewart before anyone else does; that is all.’

  Brice Harisson did not send for Vervassal. But when two days later Lymond went as he had promised for his answer, Harisson greeted him with smooth affability, and ran on, light as stucco, sparkling with handfuls of Spanish and German, to inform the herald that on second thoughts he had confessed.

  And to prove it, he confessed again to the herald, to the sheriff, and to anyone who would listen, the complete tale of his plot with Stewart, his association with Warwick, and of his attempt to sell out Stewart to France. He told it firmly, bravely, and with a masochistic enjoyment which clearly baffled the sheriff, who could hardly understand this sudden eagerness to brand himself traitor. There was a glibness indeed about the whole thing which confirmed Lymond’s own suspicions. In the end he had five minutes only alone with the delicately contrite predicant. He had no need to speak. Harisson did all the talking.

  ‘I fear,’ said Brice Harisson, ‘that you must think me very stupid. The sense in what you said struck me directly you had gone.’ He gave his unexpected, high laugh. ‘I think the poor sheriff was quite startled when I began to tell him. It has gone to Warwick already, and now they will know, of course, that I have told you. It will all be very simple. Now I was to tell you about Stewart?’

  ‘Yes.’ His left arm always had to bear the weight of his stick; he moved a little, so that the wall took some of the strain.

  ‘He’s at the brickworks in Islington. You go to a certain place, and whistle and a boy will fetch him.’ Graphically, Harisson described the place. There was nothing to do but note it, and leave.

  Lymond went alone to Islington, and on horseback—something not easy for him yet; but though he whistled, no boy arrived; and though he searched, Robin Stewart had gone.

  The bare fields, the lime kilns, the mud and the rubble of Islington had fitted Robin Stewart for all these weeks as an ancient landscape frames and nurtures its fossils.

  Flung in grating revulsion from Thady Boy’s perfidy back into the caustic stewardship of his lordship of Aubigny, Stewart had accepted the hated commission to travel to Ireland, and had reached with his lordship the tacit understanding that on his return, he would be tolerated in his lordship’s vicinity.

  On board ship, this arrangement lost most of its attraction. Stewart suffered George Paris’s bland self-confidence all the way to Ireland. There was no future with Lord d’Aubigny. There was no future with any of the gentlemen whom he served and envied and criticized so bitterly. What he had to sell, he would market in England.

  The violence of the decision was in itself a deliverance. He held to it through all the difficulty of getting to London: the curricle; the fishing boat up to Scotland; the horse bought with the gold provided by the Kingdom of France to pay for the journey of Cormac O’Connor.

  Once in London, he had found Harisson, and he was no longer alone. The plotting he had enjoyed. He had always found it satisfying, since his earliest efforts in France, quite apart from the rewards he hoped it would bring him. When, stepping ashore at Dieppe, Destaiz had brought him the news that O’LiamRoe was a danger to them and was to be removed, he had decided on a casual gesture, as flamboyant as Thady Boy’s ascent of the rigging, and with Destaiz had arranged for the fire at the inn.

  That had failed. Someone else had got O’LiamRoe into trouble over the tennis court meeting with the King, and he had kept out of the affair with the elephants. But he had found the hunting of the Queen’s hare exhilarating. He could still picture O’LiamRoe’s face when the woman O’Dwyer had arrived and he had been forced to present her with the dog. And when he saw the cheetah arrive. That had not been difficult to arrange: a respectful suggestion just beforehand to the old mistress had been enough.

  So there he was, with a very good chance of involving both O’LiamRoe and the child Mary before the day was over; his only worry, to keep the scent of the leveret he carried from the dogs. How was he to know that O’LiamRoe’s bitch would actually tackle the cat?

  After that, he had begun to think that he might do better on his own. He had the arsenic he had stolen at St. Germain—he had told Harisson about that. He had mentioned also that the way was open, now and then, into Mary’s anteroom, where the cotignac was. There was no harm in Harisson or Warwick being aware of his special chances, and also of his special ingenuity. He said nothing, discreetly, of having doctored the tablet already; nor of the discovery, made just before he left, that all the poisoned sweetmeat had gone. He was only beginning, in bloodshot snatches of retrospect, to realize the part Lymond had played.

  The name of Thady Boy Ballagh he could barely bring himself to mention. Nor, with belated wisdom, had he betrayed the fact that nearly all he had done had been done under direction. He wanted Harisson to admire his proficiency. And he felt, common sense struggling dimly through the smoking wreck of his ardours, that Brice, tender friend that he was, would be less likely to aid him find a new sponsor if he realized that, back in France, was an employer he had abandoned already.

  All that he put behind him. He might find it difficult to explain abandoning O’Connor in Ireland, of course. He might have to return anonymously, and work and bribe under cover. But that would be easy. He would have money from Warwick; he knew the weak links, the irresponsible guards, the kitchenmaids. And once the thing was done, he could leave France for good and find prestige, wealth and security at Warwick’s fine English Court.

  No one suspected him. Lymond might have come to it—sullenly, you have to recognize the man’s perverted skill. But Lymond was poisoned and dead. The arrival of O’LiamRoe, left safely in Ireland, had shaken him, disturbed his precarious confidence. But there had been in it nothing ominous: a typical piece of foolishness by a foolish man.

  Thrusting these thoughts behind him, Stewart smiled. Someone else might even attack the small Queen before him. And that would be even funnier. For Warwick would surely give him credit for it, just the same. No one else was likely to come forward; that was sure.

  In the weeks he spent alone, or during the rare, discreet visits to Harrisson, the image of Mary, the living child he was to murder, never took shape in Stewart’s mind. His half-set, vulnerable emotions, trodden underfoot too hard and too early, had become a cage lined with mirrors in which daily, nightly, he could examine the shrinking image of himself. And the people he met who spoke to him through the bars, and pushed him, and directed him, and exercised him, were his food.

  Much of this, in his queer way, Harisson must have understood. In Scotland, long ago, he had endured Stewart’s pricking aggression without riposte or impatience: on a creature as confined in his way as the Archer, Stewart’s shafts had simply missed their mark. Also, as a matter of vanity, Harisson happened to enjoy, from time to time, using his neat-fingered charm. Coming back to Harisson, for Stewart, had been like returning to a private, mossy plateau after wading rotting through the treachery of some infested swamp.

  When Harisson had concluded his interview with Warwick, he was to send for the Archer. The summons came: the rendezvous was not at Harisson’s house, but in Cheapside. Full of firm, purposeful efficiency, Stewart pulled his bonnet low over his long, bony face, and set off.

  Just past the High Cross of Cheap, next to the rich gables of Goldsmiths’ Row, the sun gay on its sin
ewy carvings, the painted balconies, the gilded statues, was the house Harisson had designated. Cheapside was thronged. Its sparkling conduits, its church spires, its inns, its calling apprentices (‘What d’ye lack?’), its thrusting bustle of men and women, cheerful, noisy, decently dressed, were all kindly to Stewart’s eyes: a fat token of promise for the leisure to come. He dismounted at the gate; a boy ran forward to take his horse, and he was conducted instantly to the sunny parlour overlooking the garden, where he found Brice Harisson waiting.

  Excitement, suspense, pleasure, had never altered the middle-aged smartness of Brice’s face. He was dressed as usual, with extreme care, his doublet braided and his cuffs showing, a slit of frill above the small hands. He wore a dark puffed cap on his brushed hair, and the flat of his cheeks and his thin nose shone.

  He represented success, amity, excitement, and a haven from the brickfields of Islington. Stewart grinned, his Adam’s apple moving untidily, before he noticed that Brice was not alone. Beside, him in black and scarlet robes and the gold chain of his office, was a sheriff of the City of London, with his usher and clerk.

  By God, thought the Archer, and paused, controlling his delight. By God, Warwick is with us. We’ve got a sheriff to deal with the affair. Next it’ll be the Mayor, Alderman and Recorder. But naturally he won’t risk getting the Council openly involved. An intermediary, this would be. And a very nice house, thought Robin Stewart, looking round appreciatively, to conspire in. There were two men standing at the door.

  ‘That is the man,’ said Brice, the pliant voice flat, not taking time to answer the grin. Stewart looked round, but no one had come in. Instead the sheriff, a stout man marbled in puce, unrolled a paper, depressed a firm pink underlip as overture, and read, ‘Robin Stewart, late of the Royal Guard of Scottish Archers in France and now in London and in no known abode: know ye that I, John Atkinson, Sheriff of the City of London, am bid and empowered to seize and hold you on the charge of conspiring against the body and person of the high and mighty Princess Mary, by the grace of God Queen of our dear sister kingdom of Scotland, while under the roof and domicile of the Most Christian King and our dear ally, Henry II of France. And until instruction be received from France or Scotland as to your disposal, I have here a warrant that you may be put under ward and guard, from this day onwards, in the King’s Tower of London. Take him.’

  There was a soldier at either of his elbows. Robin Stewart didn’t heed them. His long face yellow, the grain exposed by the sinking blood, he stared, unfocussed, at the sheriff. Then his ruffled head, on its long neck, swung round to Brice.

  No soldier stood at Brice’s elbow; nor did Brice, in any of his languages, utter a word.

  ‘I thank God,’ said Sir John Atkinson, rolling up his parchment and passing it to the clerk, ‘that a warning of this wicked plot was given by Master Harisson here to an emissary of the French Ambassador, so that the affair could be prevented in time. I have no doubt what your fate will be. The King of France will have a short way with intended murder and high treason.’

  Stewart heard the first half of this; then, with a conscious suspension of understanding, stood thinking of nothing at all. A distorted picture, slipping glutinously from nowhere into his vacant mind, showed him Tosh, chatting amiably among the wood shavings, and a pearwood block with the Culter arms.

  Then Tosh’s asthmatic face gave way to Brice’s, flat and white; and Brice’s voice, higher-pitched than usual, saying, ‘That’s all, then. That’s all, isn’t it? I assume he can go away now. He had better go before Crawford comes back.’

  Stewart missed it. Because understanding was only now coming dizzily into his brain, like the agony of blood refilling a limb long benumbed, he missed it and bleated, his own voice breathlessly tight, ‘You gave it away!’

  Harisson looked quickly at the sheriff and away again, saying nothing.

  This time Stewart’s voice was louder. ‘You went to the Ambassador! You told them what we were doing! You sent for me just now! You pretended to go to Warwick and help, and all the time … An impossible truth, a dreadful certainty, burst upon Robin Stewart, raking back wildly among Harisson’s recent affairs. ‘Ah, dear Christ send you to hell, you filthy tattle-bearing runt—you’re in league with O’LiamRoe!’

  ‘I really wish you would take him away,’ said Brice Harisson angrily. He faced Stewart, the veins of his dark, high forehead standing out, his hands clenched behind his flat back. ‘No one could have gone on with it, I tell you. My God, you might as well conspire with an elephant. Blundering in and out of boats in broad daylight, putting your horse in my stables. You never did one thing well in your life—Christ, not even killing that fellow you talked about. O’LiamRoe didn’t persuade me to make a clean breast of it, Stewart. Only one man did that—tried to force me to tell the French Ambassador the whole transaction, and begged me to betray you. Not O’LiamRoe, you fool, you stupid, long, witless fool. But your friend Crawford of Lymond.’

  There was a shocking silence. When you least expect it, the true, rending blow falls. ‘He’s dead,’ said Robin Stewart, his voice bleached of colour.

  ‘He was here in this room a few hours ago. Laughing,’ said Brice Harisson spitefully. ‘You and your vile plots and your deadly nightshade. They must be fair palsied with laughter in the Loire Valley by now. High treason! You poor, puking villain,’ said Harisson, carried back in his nervous hysteria to the frightened defiance of boyhood, ‘you couldna knock the head off a buttercup!’

  The numb nerves were alive now. The blood was boiling in his veins; his head and heart were full as the stiff core of the earth with hard-packed purpose and power. On either side, the two men still stood, but neither crowded him; carelessly, they had left him his sword. He did not even think. As Harisson spoke, the Archer drew his blade and took a step forward.

  Harisson backed, his voice choking off in mid-air. Stewart took another step. Harisson screamed, a dry, unexpected sound which continued for a long time; he was jammed, now, against the window, as far away as he could get. Through the window the apprentices’ calls floated, thinly, like gulls. The sheriff said, ‘Stop him!’ in a loud voice. The clerk and the usher hesitated, and the two guards ran uncertainly forward.

  They were far too late. Staring down into the sallow face, the grey hair wild, the braided epaulettes twisted—’It’s about time I practised then, isn’t it? Go to hell where you belong,’ said Robin Stewart, his eyes stiff, his breath noisy as a man under drugs. And raising both hands with the long sword between, he brought the blade, like an axe in a shambles, upon the quailing body beneath.

  That same Thursday night, Lymond returned from his fruitless journey to Islington, changed, and armed with de Chémault’s authority and his own powerful insignia of office, went straight to Warwick to express his formal concern at the plot which had come to light involving a Scot in his custody named Brice Harisson, to request that Harisson should be permitted to visit de Chémault for questioning, and to ask English help in tracing and capturing Harisson’s accomplice, the Scot Stewart.

  It was the routine opening in a game imposed now on both sides: every move must be made in public, and its predestined course was quite clear. The French Ambassador had no doubt that the man Vervassal would handle it competently.

  And aside from this competence, there was an understanding of the unseen balances of the situation which went deeper than de Chémault’s own. When, unguardedly, he had spoken of Stewart to his wife and she had exclaimed, ‘An assassin! Ah, not from John and Anne’s own company! How he will feel it!’—he had felt, without seeing it, the flick of Lymond’s attention. He knew that, convalescing from some injury, Crawford had been pressed into duty by the Queen Dowager in the absence of other accredited messenger—a thing not uncommon for a well-born younger son. He knew a little, even, of his past history, for Tom Erskine was an old friend. He would have liked to have known more. Jehanne, his wife, he guessed was afraid of the queer, catlike young man with the stick.

&n
bsp; They had begun supper when Lymond returned, served privately tonight in the Ambassador’s own quarters, the men moving quietly with the mutton and quail, their livery caps neatly laid on the buffet. On the tapestry cloth Jehanne’s silver sparkled in the late April sun.

  It was she who heard the step pass the door, and was driven by her housewifely instincts to rise and bring him in. He turned as she called after him, ‘M. Crawford, we have kept supper for you!’ and came in. But although he took his place courteously at their table and made conversation fluently, he crumbled his way absently through the meal, unimpressed by her cooking; clearly interested only in making an end so that he could inflict business on Raoul.

  He began, in fact, before they had finished, when she had barely ended her best story of the baby’s attack on the cat. Certainly he smiled at her, and said something she must try to recall next time she wrote to Maman. But the next instant he had turned to her husband and broached the subject of his interview with the Lord Great Master of the King’s Majesty’s most Honourable Household with no apology at all.

  She did not, of course, fully understand the details. She watched him instead play with a silver cup filled with their best wine, untouched, while he said, ‘Exactly the kind of story you would expect Warwick and his friends to concoct. According to him, three weeks ago Stewart came to them with an offer, but Lord Warwick was perfectly ignorant of what it might be until today. He is shocked, appalled, disgusted, and will do everything in his power to help us.’

  Raoul did not seem put out at having his favourite meal interrupted; indeed his voice was less testy than she had often heard it, at the end of a long day of work. ‘And Stewart and Harisson?’