Queens' Play

  He did not allow them to applaud him. As the notes died, he forced his thumb through the strings, then again, then again, hurling them into a fury of sound, and launched like an armed man into battle, into one of the paramount Irish epics, the greatest perhaps of all, which he had given them again and again unstinted from his extravagance. O’LiamRoe, drunk, had listened to Thady Boy, drunk, creating this passion and had wept, snorting unawares, the oval face caged with tears. Then he had wept for himself; for the human pain and valour and grief he knew and recognized in the song. This time he did not weep, but pressed his lips on his clenched hands with a stubborn pain in his throat, for he had never heard it as, cold sober, Lymond created it now. And about him, involuntarily, each listener tightened as if called into tune. The double pull on sense and intellect was final, exposing the small places of self to universal challenges. The Queen Dowager of Scotland looked away; George Douglas, his brows raised, studied his knees; and Margaret Lennox, her eyes wide on the singer, sunk her teeth in her lip.

  Lymond himself flung what he had made at John Stewart of Aubigny, standing broad and still by the King, ornamental as some Ionian pillar, perfect in column and capital, waiting.

  The paean ended, properly served, dying until the brush of the forest leaves hid it. There was a vacant quiet into which all their bruised emotions pooled and ran, filling it, splash by splash, with exclamations and the stir of revived movement, and the mounting dash and eddy of applause. From his stance behind the King, Lord d’Aubigny moved forward smiling and dropped on one knee. No one in the Scottish Court heard what he said, but it was cut short by the King’s own hand summoning the singer.

  Only Margaret Erskine, close to Lymond, saw that he was shivering. He waited a second until the fires of his own making left him; then with a minimum of gesture he rose, laid the lute neatly down and walked across the soft dunes of tapestry. The torchboys followed the tabard, bright as a wave breaking at night, their shadows chequered in the cross lighting. Lymond knelt.

  From Northampton’s circle, it looked merely like a called-for bestowal of praise. King Henri, keeping his voice level, preserved the illusion. ‘M. Vervassal. How are you called?’

  ‘My name is Francis Crawford of Lymond, your grace.’ The reply also was sober. ‘I commend me to your justice.’

  ‘Francis Crawford of Lymond. You are known also as Thady Boy Ballagh?’

  ‘I have been so,’ said Lymond. Beside the King, the sieur d’Enghien looked suddenly up and away again; the King’s sister had not removed her gaze throughout. D’Aubigny smiled.

  The bearded, fine-drawn face of the King studied the other man at his feet; and in Henri’s hardened muscles and pressed nostrils was plainly the temper he did not propose to unleash. ‘Here is a matter for judges,’ he said. ‘My Archers will bring you before me tonight. Go.’

  And Stewart of Aubigny, bending, raised the former Thady Boy Ballagh to his feet and drew him among the guard with a grip framed expressly to cripple. Lymond sustained it, his eyes alight, while the applause broke out again, and across the carpet someone held out his lute. But Henri, smiling briefly, indicated the interval closed. It was time to stir, to leave the night and prepare to return.

  Francis Crawford turned his fair head on Lord d’Aubigny’s shoulder and looked up at him, with his right arm hanging numb and the bog-gravel irony of Thady Boy plain in his face. ‘A bull for the cows in time of bulling; a stallion for the mares in time of covering; a boar for the sows in time of their heat. A foot for a foot; an eye for an eye; a life for a life,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘So says the Senchus Mor, my darling. And Robin Stewart is still free, and hot bent on revenge.’

  Piedar Dooly heard, and spat, grinning, as the yellow head in a huddle of Archers took to horse. Far through the forest, on the flank leading to Bére, Robin Stewart, he supposed, was waiting patiently for his fine guest tomorrow. O’LiamRoe heard too, his mind busy. As Thady Boy’s master, he would have some explaining to do. But not as much, Christ, as Lymond. With thought working, cold as acid, on the stately procession home, the King would not rest, nor would his lords, the perfect image of learning and chivalry, until this small and festering dart was removed from their side.

  It was done in the King’s cabinet at Châteaubriant that night.

  When they brought O’LiamRoe into the brightly lit room, lined with bitter night-faces, the Prince of Barrow’s tongue was creaming over with quip and insult to let fly at the master figures. It was for this that he had stayed.

  —Of course he knew Thady Boy was no ollave; what of it? he would say. Thady Boy only existed because the Queen Dowager of Scotland desired it. Lymond had risked his own safety to remain and protect the child and draw off her enemies so that the Franco-Scottish talks might proceed unimpaired, and no dire change of crown or impolitic accusation might destroy them.

  That in exposing himself, Francis Crawford had foundered—that, surely, they could understand. If he had no positive evidence of another’s guilt, he had indirect evidence of his innocence: the elephants at Rouen, the impressive performance in London, the injuries he had received in the Tower at Amboise. Jenny’s son could speak of the arsenic.… But no, Jenny’s son was perhaps better left out. And to summon Abernaci would destroy his livelihood; to call Tosh would be to endanger his safety. And Oonagh …

  Thought stopped, and restarted, freshly armoured. They would laugh at the old women, he and Lymond. He and Lymond, outside the fence together, shrugging off involvement and the poison all run out.

  Then Phelim O’LiamRoe, Prince of Barrow, was ushered into the little cabinet, through the heat and the drawling, arguing voices, to find Lymond standing tabardless, his hair in his eyes, his scraped hands lashed tight behind him; and saw foolishly that there are circumstances under which it is a little hard to sparkle with provocative wit. ‘Et dis-donc’, said the King, his voice flat with distaste. ‘Whom do you serve?’

  With a slow and studied exasperation, Crawford of Lymond shook his head. His eyes, brilliant in his pale face, passed over O’LiamRoe, ignoring him; rested for a second on the Queen Mother, and flickered back again. What message he had received or conveyed, O’LiamRoe could not tell. ‘I sell experience … and buy it; and pay due tax on the merchandise as you see. I serve my own whims, that is all.’

  ‘You are here,’ said the slow voice, ‘as an accredited herald to Madame ma bonne soeur, the Queen Dowager of Scotland. It would appear to us that Madame my sister is your mistress and that the Prince of Barrow was your knowing accomplice.’

  No one spoke. In the recesses of the silence crowded all the weary weeks of this sojourn in France; the gold almost promised, the marriage contract almost confirmed, the regency almost achieved. In it lay coiled the absent power of Cormac O’Connor, the beckoning fame and treasure of the Italian wars, the sweet compliance of England, balm to smooth minds overfretted by Scots.

  Lord d’Aubigny had less patience than the others. Stretching his well-kept hand, he removed the whip from the sergeant beside him, and with an easy snap, touched the flat back across and across, like a lion tamer.

  Lymond turned, so fast that he almost took the last lash in his face, and d’Aubigny, taken by surprise, stepped back.

  ‘If you have a case, make it. If you have a question, put it. It is interesting, I admit, but it would take more time than you can spare to thrash me into compliance.’

  A whip cracked again, a small whip, razor-sharp across the legs, and one of the Queen’s dwarfs, hopped back sniggering, ‘Keep a civil tongue in this gathering,’ said Catherine de Médicis coolly in the Italian-French she had had to learn so quickly after her marriage, together with the patience she had afterwards taken so long to master. ‘You cannot deceive us. The Queen your mistress is here.’

  Her long chin sunk on her chest, Mary of Guise shook out her sleeve smartly, and laying her wrist on her knee, engaged Catherine and then the King with her strongly marked brows. ‘The old women that are in it,’ said O’LiamRoe?
??s mind to him softly; and his memory said, ‘You’d better play tennis with them on Tír-nan-óg, my dear, if you’re going to call thirty-five old.’ And it added, ‘The Queen Mother isn’t going to stir a little finger in this affair … and I’m not at all sure that I want to meddle in hers.’ The whip cracked, thoughtfully.

  ‘I love a brave man,’ said the Queen Dowager of Scotland. ‘And the Crawfords are brave men who have served me well in the past. But a sly, high-stomached swaggering man I cannot abide. Had I known a Scot of mine was engaged in this mummery I should have sent you his tongue and his hands. As it is, you are welcome to pluck your restitution from him as you wish. I cannot believe him guilty of theft and prodigal of murder. I do find he has mocked both you and me, gentle brother, in deceiving us boldly not once, but twice in this fashion. Do as you wish with him.’

  She had repudiated him. The unspoken words filled O’LiamRoe’s mouth. In Lymond’s face there was no line of anger or surprise; even dusty and uncombed he contrived to look acidly collected. He gazed at Mary of Guise through half-shut, lazy lids and said, ‘Madame, what king should I sing to in Scotland? Even Lyon is old.’

  She had repudiated him and he had accepted it. Drawing breath, the Prince of Barrow felt the warning pressure on his arm. Margaret Erskine had moved up beside him. The Queen Dowager icily answered. ‘Had you come as Francis Crawford, you might have done your country honour. Instead of taking all Ireland in your mouth and spitting it at our feet.’

  ‘But Francis Crawford,’ Lymond said simply, ‘was not invited.’

  ‘And Francis Crawford is known,’ said Lord d’Aubigny. The late hour had made no hollows in his well-furnished face, but the spread of pink was uneven from cheek to brow; he was, after all, breaking a desirable vessel.

  ‘We are not forgetting the jewels he had ready to take, the rope in his room, the friendship with my wretched man Stewart. Robin saved his life, climbing—many of you saw that. They worked hand in glove over the pretended accident of the cheetah. Only because M. d’Enghien held the reins was he made to run in the forefront of that ride downhill in Amboise—he intended, I am sure, to be safe behind. And Crawford and his friend O’LiamRoe between them, I am told, rescued Stewart yet again from near death in the Tower and persuaded him that he should do better to live and return to France. And mysteriously, as soon as he reaches the Loire, Stewart escapes. If his Irish disguise was simply a discourteous and foolish masquerade,’ said Lord d’Aubigny, his voice shade high, ‘why did Lord Culter his brother, of that brave and so serviceable family, refrain from halting these excesses, or at least informing the Queen his mistress of Mr. Ballagh’s real name?’

  The prominent brown eyes of Queen Catherine, tight-rimmed in the sleepless white skin, moved to stare at the Dowager. ‘Why, indeed? Look to your lords, my sister. The family appears to be less reliable than you thought.’

  The old women! For the second time, O’LiamRoe opened his mouth. To his left, Piedar Dooly, his strained black eyes intent, stirred at his side. At his right, Margaret Erskine moved, her body blocking his view of the King, her eyes nearly level with his own. ‘He does not want it,’ she said, in a voice which carried only to him. ‘He does not want it. How can you help him unless you are free?’

  Lymond laughed. Shivering round the small room it sounded indelicate, like the rubbing of crystals over some robust Arabian couch. ‘The worthy Prince of Barrow left France on the day he discovered my identity, and has been trying to make amends for me ever since. Do you suppose any accomplice of mine would have risked total exile from France as he did within the first week of our stay? M. O’LiamRoe, as you have found for yourselves, despises diplomacy, laughs at statesmanship, pokes fun at pretension, ridicules wealth. You did not know what a jewel you had. A man who wanted nothing from you but fuel for his wit. Phelim is welcome, you should have said—’ The light voice indulged in cool parody:

  ‘Phelim is welcome

  Phelim son of Liam

  Place where dwells a champion

  Heart of ice

  Tail of a swan

  Strong chariot-warrior in battle

  Warlike ocean

  Lovely, eager bull

  Phelim son of Liam …

  ‘Lovely, eager bull,’ said Lymond lingeringly again, this time in Irish; and O’LiamRoe, the ducts of his brain half choked by the mud and gold Lymond had flung him together, said clearing his throat, ‘Bad scran to it. What about you? There is great music in you, I can tell you now. A new-made angel put beside you would sound like an old nail scraping on glass.… What call had you to name yourself an Irishman, and use the first chance to let drink and decadence murder your gifts?’

  The innocent, deceiving eyes turned to the Prince. ‘Art cannot live without licence.’

  There was a little silence. O’LiamRoe grasped that the barbarous spectacle of accusation and blow had somehow been replaced by a match of quite another kind, to which the Court was tacitly granting a hearing. He hesitated only a moment before letting his own worn-out theories slip for the last time through his hands. He said, ‘Ah yes, my fine gean-canach, but how much licence? A man’s art is only as good as his liver. Who decides when to stop?’

  ‘The artist?’ said Lymond, his voice grave, his eyes nakedly derisive.

  ‘He knows the inspiration he needs to begin, but after that you’d be hard set to halt his little indulgences. Death alive, you know that. Then you’ll have nothing out of him but bad art and worse manners, fit to be copied by every journeyman who can dip his brush in a paintpot or stitch together a tavern lampoon.’

  ‘Does that trouble you?’ said Lymond. ‘It won’t trouble posterity. Nous devons à la Mort et nous et nos ouvrages, you know. Both ourselves and our creations are a debt owed to Death. If you sober us and church us and rob us of our Bella Simonettas and our Vittoria Colonnas at this pace, there will be no inspiration and no works of art left to hand on.’

  ‘Not every artist that’s in it must find balance in drink or drugs or nameless indulgences.’

  ‘But those who do? Must they be stopped? Must posterity suffer in the cause of the corruptible present?’

  O’LiamRoe was silent. Here lay the core of the matter. The accusations of theft and treason Lord d’Aubigny had made were without real foundation; however eagerly the Court had seized on them to salve their raw pride, it was not on these counts that Lymond would be condemned.

  He would be crushed for the trick he had played on them, for the power he had held over them, and for the attentions he had forced them to pay him. To save his skin, since he would not call on either the Queen or O’LiamRoe, Lymond was salving their pride. For that, he had turned against O’LiamRoe just now every argument O’LiamRoe himself had used in order to show the French Court to itself in a new light: not as his companions, his victims in some deliberate essay in decadence, but as ministers to his art. And arguing against him, playing his part, O’LiamRoe heard his own philosophy in another man’s mouth, and found it lacking. ‘… Feeling,’ Lymond was saying, ending his exposition on the inspiring properties of drink, debauchery and general freedom from convention, ‘feeling needs a respite from thought, and thought returns refreshed after.’

  ‘Yes, M. Crawford.’ It was Catherine, her fine ankles crossed, her ringed hands still. ‘But example kills, and the example of genius kills quicker than any.’

  ‘And the artist with them,’ said O’LiamRoe. ‘The holocaust which nearly sieved your flesh through its bones at the Tour des Minimes was your salvation, and you know it. When you kicked out your self-control, your art walked out after it.’

  ‘I came to France to find freedom,’ said Lymond. About him, the Archers had fallen back, leaving him standing alone, his arms bent to the lashing. Impatience had gone; he looked alive and alert in the soft light.

  ‘You have found a prison, it seems,’ said the King, and let his eyes rest for a moment on the still face of the Constable, his old compère. Then he drew a long breath and let it hiss as
a sigh in the quiet room. ‘Is this not the truth then; that such a talent, working only when freed, must also be caged? From adversity, illness, poverty, persecution, comes the discipline necessary for perfect creation?… And yet,’ said the careful voice thoughtfully, ‘you do not appear a man lacking in self-control. This is, perhaps, a man who studies other men, and himself in relation to other men? An amateur of modulated conduct; a man who traps mutations, freakish properties of the soul and sets them in conflict; a keeper of menageries …’

  He paused. ‘You did this, intending theft or worse, for which your doom will be death; or you did this with no purpose other than mischief inspired by the devil. I should condemn you if you had meddled with potboys on these terms. It may please you to think that, had you not succumbed yourself, you might have pushed apart the fabric of a nation and turned our very greatness against us. I regret,’ said Henri of France, turning his dark eyes to the Dowager, upright and still in her chair, to his wife, the Constable, the silent faces of all his courtiers and the pale oval grimness of O’LiamRoe and addressing at length the contained presence of Thady Boy Ballagh, who had been their treasure, ‘I regret; but art without conscience is a hunting cat no mansuetarius alive should be expected to tame. At a place appointed you will be broken; and your music with you.’

  With no purpose other than mischief! ‘Mother of God!’ said O’LiamRoe furiously, and took three thrashing steps towards Mary of Guise. The big, passive face did not even turn.

  ‘My dear Phelim.’ It was Lymond who had moved, his voice prosaic, a shade of irritation and something else in his face. ‘I appear to be committed, even though you may not be. Since you cannot improve matters, at least allow me the fruits of my own husbanding. Go and get drunk.’

  It was said quite kindly. Phelim O’LiamRoe and his ollave stared at each other for a long moment, blue eyes meeting blue; then the Prince of Barrow turned and, uncaring whom he buffeted, strode headlong from the room.