Queens' Play

  ‘I didn’t hear,’ said Douglas, interested. ‘What did they do?’

  ‘Abstracted a holy image from the church,’ said Lord Lennox bluntly. ‘And carried it about the streets with a hat on its head.’

  Sir George laughed.

  ‘It was not, at the time, very mirth-provoking,’ said Lennox. ‘At Nantes they had to hide the statues in their houses from the Commissioners who have, of course, eaten flesh regularly throughout the whole trip. It is not,’ said Lord Lennox, a red spot on either dry cheek, ‘really the best of times to try how far French patience will stretch. Jokes about the Hollow Father do not always appeal.’

  ‘Then you must make jokes about my lord of Warwick instead. How fortunate,’ said Sir George, not at all to be put off, ‘that Robin Stewart is no longer with us, at least. Your brother has been looking out for you quite assiduously ever since you arrived. Have you seen him?’

  ‘No,’ said Matthew Stewart briefly. ‘I find John’s passions a little irksome.’

  ‘Do you now?’ said Sir George, his eyes opening in delighted surprise. ‘Not drawn to our dear d’Aubigny, are you? Then what about the Queen Mother? The lady doesn’t bear grudges. After all, she turned down Bothwell’s marriage offer as well as yours. And she has a charming Officer-at-Arms. Make a point of meeting him.’

  But long before that, as Sir George well knew, the faded blue eyes had made their exploration. The Earl of Lennox turned his back on the very presentable Court of Queen Mary of Scotland, in the middle of which winked the blue and red and gold tabard of Vervassal, now restored, and said thinly, ‘If you mean Lymond, I have met him already, in London. These men’s lives are very short. I should not pin my faith, Douglas, on a giddy gentleman who will carry a hod for anyone willing to pay.’

  ‘Usually, in my experience, to use in browbeating his would-be patron. And giddy?’ said Sir George. ‘We are all giddy, loitering here begging with a golden cup. But certainly, like Jack Straw, our friend is enflamed with presumption and pride; and I for one will applaud his first serious mistake. So, I am sure, will Margaret. I should even trust her to help him to make it.’

  The wandering gaze of Margaret’s husband, like a ball from a racquet, slapped back into Sir George’s bland face. ‘—In which case,’ Sir George added, smiling more broadly still, ‘I should say, more power to her elbow.’

  In this last speech, the hesitation between one word and the next was fractional. But it was enough to turn the Earl’s pale face paler, as he gazed after the retreating speaker; and to make the more informed of the bystanders wince.

  Sir George, whose son was married to the heiress of Morton, was undisturbed.

  After the receptions the banquet; after the banquet, the masque; after the masque, the ball, in the great courtyard where new fountains were filled with rosé wine and drowned insects, and the trellis between dancers and stars was hung with muscatel grapes.

  The formal music for the branle and galliard, the charconne and allemande and pavane and the Spanish minuet blew pattering like tinfoil through the peach trees, suffocated by the drawling French of English thoraxes and the polite, beautiful French of the most highly cultured courtiers in the world. In the long arcade adjoining the Château Neuf, Queen Catherine watched with her ladies, Margaret Lennox among them, and the pages glinted like rudd in between.

  Moving in the dance, pair by pair in their worked satins and Tardif velvet and their gem-embroidered silks, in silver lace and cloth of gold, the ostrich feathers tilting the grapes; with the men with their bleached hands, long-legged, broad-shouldered, smiling and negligent; the women with their jewelled breasts and high, plucked brows, the long oversleeves glinting, the train lifted to show an inch of stocking and Venice satin pump—the high blood of three nations bowed, swayed, paused, dispersed and re-formed as time dallied past.

  Cupids filled the cleared floor and danced a moresca with torches. Veiled ladies sang flattering verses and masked knights recited. There were tonight no gigantic pies, no lions, no living statues … fantasy would come another day. Instead, the pages brought garlands of flowers, and wine, and wicker baskets filled with cat masks.

  They were beautiful. Oonagh O’Dwyer, her black hair cauled and jewelled, her long limbs hidden under stiff damask, was masked in the ash-grey fur of a Persian, the emerald eyes drawing fire from her own. Below, the spare, smiling lips with their thumbnail soffit underneath, drawn in silver with sweat, were holding the attention of Black Tom Butler, tenth Earl of Ormond, one of the smooth boy Irishmen who had entertained O’LiamRoe in London, and a member of the English Ambassage. Ormond had been brought up with Edward of England, knew no other nation and, so far, desired to know none.

  Oonagh, watching him through her mask scrutinize her body at leisure, continued with the sly and slightly malicious story she had embarked on. As Aunt Theresa had said, he could be quickly attracted. And Cormac, his eyes sparkling with the sheer joy of planning, had said, ‘But can she keep him so? There’s the challenge, my cold, black darling from the sea. My cold, black, ageless darling, you will need a charm, and another charm, and all the spells there are to bind that soft, oiled puppy kicking from his English nest. But—’ And, lifting a lazy finger, he had drawn it round her fine jaw, where the skin was tight drawn at the edge, and under the heavy eyes, where lack of sleep had stepped like a bird. ‘But for love of me, you will do it. It will be hard, but you will do it, my heart.’

  So she had hidden the marks of his disapproval under her mask, and accepted a dance with the tenth Earl of Ormond, knowing that somewhere under this awning, in the warm, scented night, was the man who had come to France solely to challenge her. She was dancing, and for a moment she had forgotten that he might be there—among the dancers, in the spangled darkness of the gardens, in the mellow lights of the château and arcade. She did not even see him, as she and her partner moved up the line, until a voice of virgin honey spoke in her ear. Moved by the exigencies of the dance it died away, returned, shifted focus but remained always just audible through the music and talk.

  Then she turned, against her training, and saw him.

  He was not even masked, the man she last remembered as the drugged and bandaged prisoner at Blois. And of all the knowing eyes that looked at him, as on the ride to Angers he had foreseen, hers alone did not change. As she turned, the music stopped, the dance was stilled, and her partner, turning, came face to face with Francis Crawford, who continued speaking as if nothing had happened, his blue eyes lit with untrustworthy joy. ‘C’est Belaud, mon petit chat gris. C’est Belaud, la mort aux rats … Petit museau, petites dents.’

  Butler, who had no French, said now in his high, cold English lisp, ‘Pardon me. You are a herald, sir?’

  ‘To the Right High and Excellent Princess, the Dowager of Scotland’s Grace. My name, my lord, is Crawford, and I seek your permission to lead this lady to my Queen.’

  There was a little pause. The high voice was annoyed. ‘The Queen Dowager wishes to see Mistress O’Dwyer?’

  ‘If it please you—and her.’

  ‘Just now?’

  ‘As soon as I may lead her there.’

  Discontentedly the Irishman who had spent most of his life a page in London said, ‘It is not an opportune moment, but naturally …’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Lymond with tranquillity, and offered the lady his arm.

  She took it, not because she believed for a moment that the Queen Dowager wanted her, but because she could do nothing else. They moved off, the lovely woman and the fair-haired man at her side, leaving the Earl of Ormond irresolute in the middle of the floor, and Mistress Boyle starting out wildly from the distant arcade, where Margaret Lennox, blank-faced, sat and watched. Then the music struck up, the dancers linked hands, and fifty couples slowly weaving a pavane barred Aunt Theresa’s desperate way.

  By the time she had stumbled through the crowded grass of the gardens, Lymond and her niece had both gone.

  By whatever munificence of bribery,
the unlit room to which he brought her had no guard at the door, nor had it any signs of occupation at all, although its windows gave on to the latticed ballroom below. It was a bedchamber, small, orderly and smelling of some heavy and unidentifiable scent.

  Tomorrow, her arm would be bruised where he had held it, chatting, smiling, drawing her smoothly through the crowds. As they both knew, she could not afford a scene. She was trapped, and behind the soft mask was responding like an animal to the challenge, her eyes wide and dangerous, her breathing quick and hard. In the dark room in the Château Neuf, facing him silent at last, she was able to clear her mind of all but what she had long ago primed herself to do. His face, like hers, was obscured; his skin and sparkling clothes blemished by the fountain drops strewn on the panes. As soon as they had entered the room, he dropped his hands and stood still.

  She had moved instantly to the window. There, now, she looked out. Among the politely discoursing spectators, an eddy betrayed Mistress Boyle’s purposeful grey head, making for the château. She would not be permitted to enter; and even if she did, it was too big to search; and Lymond, moreover, had locked the door.

  Among the dancers, the Earl of Ormond had found another escort and was smiling again, his polished English smile. Her task for Cormac had had to be abandoned too. But she could handle Cormac. In the last resort he might use his fist, but that was because he had already conceded the case with his brain. Anyhow, she was prepared for this encounter, schooled like an athlete about to take the arena, the muscles of her mind firm and hard. She turned sideways in the faint glow of the window, and lifting her hands, she took the mask from her marked face.

  Dim in the shadows by the door, Lymond showed neither alarm nor surprise. Instead he said sardonically, ‘It’s quite a price to pay for being the Petite Pucelle of Ireland, my dear. There are worse things than passing from hand to sweaty hand, much as the prospect appalls you.’

  She did not make the woman’s answer: ‘Who told you so … Martine of Dieppe?’ Instead she said, ‘Before you spend yourself loosening my chains, you had better find out what they are. I never did anything yet out of fear … even fear of common harlotry, Francis Crawford. The O’LiamRoe, you must remember, is a sentimental man. If he told you I am tied to Cormac’s side by any fear of the future, he was wrong.’

  ‘Was he? What was Cormac like as a young nobleman, Oonagh, ablaze for Géraldine Ireland? The splendour there must have been.’

  ‘The young man is there in him yet,’ she said, and went on quickly. ‘What would you have him? A spectator, or a spy?’

  ‘A man,’ said the pleasant voice, undisturbed, ‘who does not need a woman to lead him.’

  Two of her fingers were at the bruise on her cheek; she did not know how they got there. Dropping them, she said with soft bitterness, ‘Do you think I want power?’

  ‘I think you have staked your life on Cormac O’Connor,’ said Lymond. ‘And have kept his young love and his young crusade green under the ice while the reality has rotted. He is not ambitious for Ireland, he is ambitious for Cormac O’Connor. He may still love your body, but he keeps you for your brain.’

  Her throat closed; but through the anger rising like thunder through her head she managed to speak. ‘And what would you keep me for? The graveyards and prisons of Europe are full enough of half-made souls created by Francis Crawford and loneliness and God.’

  When he spoke, his voice was dry. ‘I was not proposing, my dear, to support you for life, or even to seduce you in lieu of a fee. I am offering you a chance to define and revise your ideals. It is impossible that they should quire with mine?’

  ‘ ’Tis a lavish offer, if a trifle obscure,’ said Oonagh O’Dwyer. ‘If in my burning patriotism, I betray someone else’s scheming, you will refrain from the cruder gestures of appreciation. You return triumphant to Scotland, the golden stripling; Cormac languishes no doubt in a French prison for attempting the life of an Irish rival and I, with my eyes averted from this unworthy Messiah, am cast into a dull but healthier void.’

  ‘It is still an improvement,’ said Lymond, ‘on the Tour des Minimes. What aspect of Cormac’s homely charm made that experiment worth while? Lord d’Aubigny had found out, perhaps, that Francis Crawford was not O’LiamRoe, and began to suspect that you had been helping him kill the wrong man for your own ends? And as she moved suddenly, before she could stop herself—’Oh, yes,’ Lymond added calmly. ‘We know that d’Aubigny is the villain. Don’t let’s labour the point. So when Stewart told him who Thady Boy was, his lordship realized you had deceived him?’

  She said shortly, ‘Give me credit for sense. I had discovered long ago that Phelim O’LiamRoe was no rival that Cormac need fear.’ Then, as he was silent, she said, ‘I risked my safety to pull you free from the Tower that night. What more are you worth? It was Cormac or all of you.’

  ‘Cormac, or all of us,’ said the voice from the darkness, reflectively. ‘Cormac’s ambitions, Ireland’s future, to be bought at the price of our lives, and the life of Queen Mary as well.… You know that Lord d’Aubigny meant her to die? But of course you did. He had been in your confidence and your aunt’s for a long time, I suspect. He was trying to kill me because I had been induced to come and protect her … how did he know that, I wonder? From someone in Scotland who was haunting the Queen Dowager hoping for favours—and not receiving them; someone who has an excessive interest in the Culters and with relatives in both London and France … someone like d’Aubigny’s own relation, Sir George Douglas?’

  This time she did not move; and wondered afterwards if her very stillness had given her away, for he laughed and went on. ‘And you, of course, knew from George Paris that the Queen Dowager at just this moment had proposed the unknown O’LiamRoe’s visit to France. There was no time to attack him in Ireland, but it seemed easy to have an accident at sea. Then Robin Stewart encouraged Destaiz in his little piece of fire-raising at the Porc-épic: a foolish move, not at all easy to explain as an accident, for which d’Aubigny duly berated him. And the next attempt to get rid of him was yours, at Rouen, when you arranged for O’LiamRoe to make a fool of himself at the tennis court, when he was nearly sent home. But by then, of course, you had guessed the truth.… What gave away Thady Boy’s identity, I wonder? Bad acting or bad grammar, or a certain aura which is neither flesh nor fisshe?’

  ‘An Appin man taught you your Gaelic long since, and a Leinsterman has recently corrected you well; but you still forget to lay stress on the first syllable instead of the second, now and then. It is not a thing a Scotsman would notice.’

  ‘So Stewart and his lordship continued to believe that O’LiamRoe was their proper victim, and you allowed them to think so.… D’Aubigny took poor Jenny Fleming to the Croix d’Or and confronted them with each other. He must have had the highest opinion of their dissimulation. How foolish he must have felt when he learned the true facts. And how angry he will be, my dear, should he ever find out that you knew these all the time.’

  ‘My life is my own,’ she said, her voice thin in her own ears. ‘You asked me last time to leave you to deal with this man. What ails you? Deal with him!’

  ‘You know what I want,’ said the quiet voice. ‘Evidence against Lord d’Aubigny. Destaiz is dead. Someone besides Stewart must have helped him at times. He didn’t tie that rope at Amboise himself. One name would do.’

  She thought, her hands gripping the windowsill, the dim, merry lights on her grazed face. She thought of the organ at Neuvy, made to magnify her breath, her heartbeats, her fears, instead of the Almighty; of the humiliating serenade at the Hôtel Moûtier, so mercilessly timed for the one space when she had hoped to reach Lord d’Aubigny’s ear with the news of Cormac’s arrival. For two days she had waited at Blois for the Court to return, so that she could warn d’Aubigny that O’Connor was coming, and that it was time for him to keep his promise and influence the King in Cormac’s favour. And Lymond, she now realized, had waited too—had he had her watched?—to see if he
r sudden departure from Neuvy had to do with Cormac, and if so, whom she might meet when the Court came back to Blois, for she had to meet someone that night, if at all. Next day the Moûtiers would leave, and she must return to Neuvy.

  He had not only waited, damn him. He had taken half the Court to her. Transfixed on her balcony, full in the public eye, she had been forced to ask O’LiamRoe’s help. Piedar Dooly, unwatched, had slipped from the Hôtel Moûtier to the castle, and in response to her message, Robin Stewart had come to receive her news and bear it to d’Aubigny. And even that had played into Lymond’s hands, for it had brought the Archer to run with him on the rooftops and had nearly suborned him from his purpose. She wondered, briefly, if her borrowing of Piedar Dooly that night had been mentioned by O’LiamRoe; and then dismissed the thought from her mind. It was the hour for harshness and for strength: neither symptomatic of Phelim O’LiamRoe. She said, ‘There is nothing I can do.’

  The whole width of the room lay between them; there was no sound. Then Lymond said calmly, ‘Let us try a little sentiment, then. Queen Mary is eight years old.’

  ‘She is eight, and has food in her mouth and down in her bed, a nurse to dress her and a great chest for her jewels. The jewel of an Irish child is a handful of meal.’

  ‘And a rebellion under Cormac will bring plenty?’

  ‘It will bring freedom. The rest will come.’

  ‘You talk as if Mary were free,’ said Lymond. ‘Her death will set brother against brother in Scotland as it has already with you. Can you look no further than one nation and one man?’

  ‘You do not know me,’ she said.

  ‘I know your pride. As your lover shrunk in stature his cause had to grow. A humbler woman would have knifed him.’