Queens' Play

  And Lymond, his eyes sparkling, called clearly and cheerfully to the Keeper, ‘Here is a mate for your camel, friend.’

  It was Michel Hérisson who lost his head, because in this matter more than his head was engaged. As Lymond spoke, Abernaci played to his thought with the ease of old experience and, stepping forward, exposed the lion. The lion roared. The grip on Lymond slackened, and he might have taken his chance had not Hérisson also seized the moment to whip the sword from his neighbour’s scabbard and brandish it in Lord d’Aubigny’s face.

  ‘You mis-hacked boulder of butter rock, did I trap that man Cholet with my brain and my guts and my two gouty legs for you to kill off like pigmeat? I’ll split ye! I’ll smash that fine neb like a cup handle, if I have to seethe quick in a pot for it!’ And elbows flailing, he leaped, blind with fury, at his lordship.

  The guards dropped their grasp and started forward, but Lymond got there first, swiftly, from behind, wrenching the sword from the sculptor’s furious hand. ‘For God’s sake, Michel, in law he is right. It would suit him to kill.’

  He was too late in one way. Hérisson fell back, fuming, without drawing blood; but d’Aubigny, ready to fight for his life, was in no mind to let any man off so easily. As Lymond wrenched away the steel, John Stewart stepped forward, in all the avenging grandeur of his dress, and cut low, hard and deliberately at the sculptor’s legs.

  The sword was still in Lymond’s hand. He drove it straight between the sculptor and the oncoming blow, the blades meeting flat on flat like the hammer of a bell. Then, disengaging, he jumped back, the sword steady, a threat as plain in the blue eyes above. Lord d’Aubigny hesitated, halted, and before they could try to disarm him, Lymond raised his sword and threw it from him, rattling on the ground. Hérisson stood panting, O’LiamRoe’s hand on his arm, but no on touched him.

  Then they lashed Lymond’s arms, as they had once before; and the seigneur of Aubigny looked about. The crowd was increasing. So far, what had happened within the tight circle of the Archers had not been public; only the killing of Cholet had been seen by all, and that could be justified, to those who did not know, as d’Aubigny had known, that the man had no chance of escape.

  Likewise, it was reasonable to restore an escaped criminal to custody, whatever he had achieved, to await the King’s pleasure.

  But still, the fellow had achieved a dashing performance; men admired such things. ‘You,’ said Lord d’Aubigny to Abernaci. ‘Is there a tent here we can use?’

  The nutlike face cracked. The Keeper answered fully in Urdu; then led his lordship, his lordship’s Archers and the prisoner to the great tent where the elephants stood. ‘Good. We shall stay here,’ said Lord d’Aubigny, running his eye over the orderly, mountainous backs, ‘until the menagerie and lakeside have been cleared. Then, Crawford, you will be taken back to your cell.’

  Lymond’s eyes were direct; his voice unmoved. ‘Play it out,’ he said. ‘But we have Beck. It makes no matter now.’

  Hérisson had gone, hurried roughly by the guards. O’LiamRoe likewise had been forced to go; but first he had said something in Gaelic. ‘Leig leis. Do not answer provocation. He is in sore need of a chance to kill. I shall find Stewart.’

  And then only Abernaci was left, cross-legged in a corner in a freshly glorious coat, bent over a block of wood. Leaving Lymond deliberately to stand, Lord d’Aubigny sat on a stool specially provided, twisting his fingers, and his personal bodyguard patiently waited, the canvas hot at their backs.

  Then, obsessively as a man opening box within box who knows that, irrevocably, he has come to the last, and that the last will be empty; obsessively, he began to revile the man standing before him, because he had deceived him, because he had cheated him, and because he was a man and not made of ivory and gold. And also because, as O’LiamRoe had guessed, he intended to kill him if Lymond gave him one reasonable excuse.

  The outcome of that would depend on Lymond himself. The matter of Robin Stewart, Phelim O’LiamRoe had taken on his shoulders. And since there seemed no possible means of tracing, in this seething town, one furious man bent on mischief, O’LiamRoe concluded that his only hope of success was to make first for the cabin in the forest where Piedar Dooly had been taken, and try to trace him from there.

  The instructions Dooly had given were quite explicit, and they were written again on the handful of torn-up paper he had recovered from the near-unconscious Firbolg. Neither Abernaci nor Tosh had been gentle with Dooly. He himself, before they got all the truth out of him and after, had thrashed him until the stick broke. The thought of it curdled his stomach yet.

  For he was tired, more tired than he remembered being ever in his life. Even Lymond’s trained body, he guessed, after the double swim, the nervous work of the boats, the hard row, must be bone-weary by now.

  To find his horse and mount it, to shake off the well-meaning offers of Hérisson and Tosh, to jolt cantering through the park and into the village, and then beyond the village on to the forest road, was a triumph of unreasoning instinct over the sedate, ironic soul which had lounged in the Slieve Bloom commenting with some wit, every now and then, on just some such dramatic embassy.

  At one hour past midday, when at Châteaubriant the French Court and the English Embassy, both thickly robed, both smiling, both primed, in private, with the news of what had occurred and both ignoring it, were ending their banquet, O’LiamRoe rode through the vacant trees and saw the cabin before him.

  Dismounting, he tied his horse to a tree and paused. He was not, after all, armed; and Stewart was no crony of his. If not already in Châteaubriant, sharpening a knife for Lymond’s throat, Stewart could be here, bursting with understandable anger and waiting to show it.

  Circumspectly O’LiamRoe walked over the mounded grass, his shoes shivering last year’s oak leaves, rattling pebbles, snapping slivers of wood. The windows of the hovel, clear and glossy as jet, remained black; from the chimney rose a snatch of spangled grey ash. O’LiamRoe walked to the window and looked in. On the verge of cupping his eyes, boylike, to spy, he thought better of it, and turned at last to the door.

  It was a little ajar. He said ‘Stewart?’ and knocked, at the same time, on the wood.

  He was out. Or asleep. Or behind the door with a sword.

  ‘Oh, well,’ said O’LiamRoe, in speechless benediction to himself, to Stewart, and to the general situation at this ultimate moment. ‘God save all here.’ And pushing the door, he walked in.

  He had waited a long time, in his swept and mirror-bright cottage, with the food set out as best he could on the table, and his new life and his new resolutions waiting, painfully created and painfully offered, for his last, jealous trust; his last friend.

  He had waited a long time. The hours had passed, unmarked by the birds. The fire, raked out and raked out again, had begun to sink into ash; the fresh bread to stiffen; the wine to swim, greasily warm, in the jug.

  When the explosion came and the birds were silent, then left the trees in a calling cloud of alarm, he had received notice of his ultimate failure. Then indeed, Robin Stewart had taken out his knife and held it high in his fist; but not to use it against Lymond. To use, instead, conscientiously, doggedly, steadfastly, against the man even a Lymond could not befriend. He had killed himself.

  ‘Ma mie …’ said the Queen Dowager. It would not become her to run, even with her child’s life at stake. She had walked to the lake with her ladies unobtrusively, getting there just as the first fireworks went off. It was later, with the noise and then the explosion, that all the castle people who were free and many from the town, including her own Scottish lords, had crowded with her to the shore.

  By her side, as the long boat with her daughter pulled to the shore, Lady Lennox was standing, and beyond her, Sir George Douglas her uncle. Lady Lennox: half-Tudor, half-sister to Mary of Guise’s own late husband the King; Catholic, and dangerous. Without shifting, the Dowager took note.

  But Margaret was watching the flaming
boats, not the red head flying to safety: the boats, and the man who dived, like a gannet, just before the great white explosion came. Then—‘Ma mie!’ And the Dowager had bent to plant a soothing kiss on the child’s hot, splashed cheek, to receive Mary’s curtsey and to see her rush off to Janet Sinclair, waiting grimly behind. ‘Did you see? Did you see? The boats go bang, and all the fire darts are gone!’ And, true emotion suddenly tapped, the brittle excitement came all untied, and fatigue and fright bursting through, spent themselves on Janet’s broad chest.

  ‘Ma’am …’ There was nothing to say. Margaret Erskine faced the Dowager and curtsied, seeing in the big-boned fair face a strain at least as great as her own; but for different reasons. Behind, tight in her nurse’s embrace, Mary was being taken away. Margaret held her own little sisters by the hand. They had understood less, and they had James on their other side, his eyes sparkling.

  ‘You did excellently well. The assassin was caught, it seems.’

  ‘If not, he will be soon.’ Sir George’s voice, breaking in, was urbane. ‘Lord d’Aubigny and half a company of Archers went by a moment ago.’

  There was a little silence. Then—‘Indeed,’ said the Dowager. ‘In that case, events may be worth watching. We shall wait. Margaret, you may take the children.’

  What did she fear? Collecting Mary and Agnes, curtseying, walking over to James, Tom Erskine’s wife became aware of someone addressing her.

  ‘You are Margaret Fleming, otherwise Graham, otherwise Erskine? Is that right?’

  The woman she disliked above any other blocked her way smiling.

  ‘Yes. I am Margaret Fleming,’ she said.

  The tawny eyes which had studied her last night in the wood did so again, to the verge of impertinence. ‘Jenny’s daughter. One would never suspect it … I wondered,’ said the other Margaret. ‘… But you are a sensible woman, I can see.’

  The clear, unremarkable eyes turned up to hers. ‘We cannot all think of nothing but ourselves,’ said Margaret plainly and, curtseying, turned.

  ‘A sensible woman. Yes. And lucky, lucky for the man you were watching there that sensible is what I am,’ said Margaret Erskine to herself, angry tears in her eyes, as she marched to the Château Neuf, her sisters and brother at her side. ‘Or neither he nor the child Mary would be here this day.’

  Those who stayed by the lake had not long to wait. The news came, faster than Lord d’Aubigny would have liked, like an infection out of the empty blue sky.

  ‘The assassin—’

  ‘He is caught?’

  ‘He is dead.’

  The musicians were ashore. The loose boats, their squibs all spent, their deckwork flaked and blackened with sparks, were being collected and tied. In the middle, the burned-out galleys sagged, half-sunk, black on the satiny blue, smoke climbing sluggishly still over the sun. And beyond, from the menagerie, the press of many bodies, the glitter of pikes, the voices of a vociferous crowd, pierced by the small, sharp voices of command. Then, news again.

  Sir George collected it and brought it, together with his niece, to where the Queen Mother was sitting with her ladies in the gold-hung stand. Around her swarmed the workmen, already cutting, hanging, painting, repairing, removing traces of the fire. It was not for them to decide whether royalty would come after all to sit and stare at the empty boats. Arms on the fine cushions, she watched Douglas come. ‘Well, sir?’

  ‘My nephew has, happily, apprehended the assassin, but unhappily has also seen fit to kill him.’ He paused. ‘He has also seen fit to place Mr. Crawford under arrest. His friends, foolishly, even fear for Mr. Crawford’s safety.’

  Margaret spoke. ‘Whoever fears for Mr. Crawford’s safety is a fool.’

  ‘I have also heard,’ said Sir George tentatively, ‘that testimony of some kind has appeared which may even connect my nephew d’Aubigny with these attempts against her grace your daughter. If this is so, then Mr. Crawford is clearly innocent, and may indeed be in danger.’

  ‘If so, the King will see to it.’ It was Lady Lennox to whom this challenge was being directed, and it was she who spoke. The Dowager, understanding, waited her time.

  ‘The King is engaged. Action is necessary now.’

  ‘But who,’ said Mary of Guise, her hands helpless before her, ‘who can command his lordship of Aubigny? I have no powers.’

  ‘His brother,’ said Sir George, and in the long pause that ensued, gave an avuncular squeeze to Lady Lennox’s arm. ‘My dear, I know how hard you have struggled against Lord Warwick’s conviction that the Protector Somerset has all your loyalty. He knows your love for Mary Tudor, your loyal love for your Church. Since the Archer Stewart babbled in London he must have wondered—unreasonably, I know, but nevertheless wondered—if Matthew was by any chance involved.… How awkward if, at this very moment, while the amity of France and England is being sealed over a chivalrous capon, on this very day when an English embassy is to ask for Mary’s—or is it Elizabeth’s?—hand, it transpires that Lennox’s brother has attempted murder, and that Lord Lennox is by no means dissociated with the act.’

  Silence. The Queen Mother, watching, added nothing. Sir George’s suave voice, after a space, said only, ‘You must disown d’Aubigny, Margaret, quickly, publicly, now. Or your hopes … your most legitimate hopes … are as dust.’

  He knew those eyes. He had looked into them often before; the magnificent, formidable eyes of Henry of England. She waited to force his gaze down, and succeeded, before transferring her regard to the Dowager. ‘Mr. Crawford has performed a service for us all,’ she said directly. ‘My Lord of Northampton will certainly wish to congratulate him. I shall desire my husband to relieve Lord d’Aubigny of his … misapprehension.’

  ‘So kind.’ The Dowager’s eyes, of cold Lorraine blue, were the masters of anything a Douglas could offer. ‘And there is not the smallest need for you to leave us. As it happens, I sent to wait on Lord Lennox quite some time ago now … and here he is.’

  It was true that he was overtired; but even standing you could in some measure rest, if you knew how. And it took the edge off the other sort of strain and dulled the smell of decay.

  A mind responsive to beauty is a storehouse with many rooms; words, sounds, textures, all the nobler exercises of the senses leave some image filed and folded to be summoned at need.

  There, too, the brutal images are kept: the sights and smells and hurts, real and imagined, which the responsive mind accepts and has bedded deep.

  All these, the uglinesses that other men forget, were there waiting when Lord d’Aubigny turned the forbidden handle and, half-licensed by logic, opened the door. Upon Lymond, standing exposed before the Archers, the cowardies, before Abernaci crouched in his corner, this poured in a knocking downpour of insult, sneer and obscenity, noduled with bitter fact and relentless incident, thick with the combings of every rumour, gross and foul, which had ever played about Lymond’s habits and deeds.

  Facts were there: facts he recognized as half-true, built up out of the legend other people had created for him; facts he had never troubled to deny. Conjecture was there, and in this also, distorted, one could see the original image, the original flaw from which it sprang. He stood still, in the presence of other men, and heard applied to Sybilla his own mother a string of terms he had learned long ago in the galleys, but had rarely heard since.

  And still, he managed to keep his temper. He could not move, unless he wished to commit suicide. He could only speak, and hope to channel the dirt. He waited until the big man paused for breath, his face yellow with loathing, his fine-cut lips wet. ‘Don’t stop,’ said Lymond pleasantly. ‘You’ve my father, my brother, my late sister and a whole clecking of aunts to get through. Auntie May is a good one to start with. Fifteen stone, and every spring she goes broody; and we find her out in the hen run on a clutch of burst yolks; except the year mother got there first and hard-boiled them.’

  No one breathed; but under the bent mask of Abernaci’s face, something cracked
.

  Lord d’Aubigny said, ‘So they’re mad in the whorehouse as well, are they? And how many mad brats have you sired?’

  ‘Ask your sister-in-law,’ said Lymond. ‘Do they ever rule England, you can be proud.…’ But before he finished, he felt the silence alter, and turned. Framed in the doorway was Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, Lord d’Aubigny’s dear older brother, white hatred in his face. Behind him, shadows outside his tent, were his men. Slowly, unshackling his white hands, Lord d’Aubigny rose.

  They had been brought up as boys together in the long exile in France. Because of Matthew, three years of John’s life had passed in the Bastille. Nine years since, John had elected to stay, his great-uncle’s heir, and Matthew had gone to betray France, to betray Scotland, to marry England in his frantic search for a crown—a crown which had seemed within reach, but for one weak child’s body; a crown a younger brother, surely, could share.

  ‘I have come,’ said the Earl of Lennox, ignoring Lymond, staring straight at the bright-fleshed face of his brother, ‘to escort this man to receive the praise and thanks of all good citizens, whether of England, Scotland or France. It is plain that you serve no one in keeping him in custody, and I take upon myself the duty of release.’

  ‘The King has sent you?’ The cultured voice was harsh.

  ‘No one has sent me. The banquet continues. Sergeant, untie him.’

  Fast-moving in spite of his size, formidable in spite of his dress, John Stewart strode forward and placed himself, his hand on his hilt, between the man-at-arms and the prisoner. ‘Are you crazy? No one has sent you? Then, by God, you’ll have to use force first. You’ve no right to take this man!’

  ‘I am taking him by right,’ said Lennox coldly, ‘of the grave doubts now expressed about your own past conduct, and my judgment, as a citizen, of your unfitness to continue in this post. For God’s sake, are you tying or untying him?’