Queens' Play

  O’LiamRoe, who was well informed in his magpie way, needed little or no material briefing from the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber who had waited with remarkable patience for two hours to take him to the presence of the King. He received an unbelievable amount of information about etiquette; about bowing, about titles, about the gentlemen he might meet—for, as the interview would take place in the tennis courts, ladies were unlikely to be there. He listened with a thoughtful tolerance as he was handed through the guard posts into the Priory, pricked with golden fleurs-de-lis and busy as a Michaelmas market. Archers, steward, equerries, pages came at him in waves, and keeping him off the main corridors, channelled O’LiamRoe and his escort into a side room, a side door and a grassy courtyard where someone had hastily pinned up a net. The Gentleman of the Bedchamber, who was red in the face and sweating slightly under his satin, gripped O’LiamRoe’s sleeve with soft fingers and said, ‘Here you are. Wait. There is the King.’

  The square had a look of disuse. Built up on three sides, it was overhung by nothing but shuttered windows. Benches, hung with fine cloths, had been put up hastily on its paved edges with food and drink laid out, and there were stools and one or two chairs, with a doublet or a racquet left lying. Because of the height of the building, the sun was nearly off them, but the four or five men talking at the far end of the court were in shirt sleeves. In the centre a man, big, broad-shouldered and black-bearded, stood listening, with an arm on either shoulder of the flanking players. He was dressed entirely in white. ‘The King,’ repeated The O’LiamRoe’s guide; and pointed.

  The O’LiamRoe’s oval face craned forward. ‘Do you tell me,’ said the Chief, fascinated. ‘He’ll be at them for the scrofula.’ Two of the men in the group had been with d’Aubigny at Dieppe: the scent of them carried downwind.

  The Gentleman of the Bedchamber, whose English was not quite perfect, opened his mouth, thought better of it, and ended by saying, ‘He has seen us. Come forward, my lord prince, and I shall present you.’

  ‘Faith, he’s complete,’ was O’LiamRoe’s next remark, as they moved forward, ‘and as black as a crow. I heard he’d greyed early; does he dip it, now? There’s a fine receipt of my mother’s: two pottles of tar to a pottle of pitch. From the hour we put a brush to it, we lost never a sheep. And is this the King’s grace?’

  The two parties had met. In a loud voice, the escorting courtier made the introductions; and as his titles hung quaintly on the warm air—Monseigneur Auleammeaux, Prince de Barrault et Seigneur des Monts Salif Blum—O’LiamRoe stood like an amiable chaffbin, the day’s merciless noon on the dreadful nap on his frieze cloak and the dreadful lack of it on the saffron tunic below; like an exercise in the assembly of rubbish, to be dismantled shortly and given away to the poor. He stood at ease, without the shadow of a reverence, and when de Genstan of the Royal Guard of Scottish Archers, slipping forward, hissed in his ear, ‘Sir, it is customary to bow,’ he merely widened his disarming grin and said, ‘Do you tell me. And here am I born like the devil with my knees at the backs of my legs. What’s he blathering on about, the poor man?’

  M. de Genstan, with the faintest sign to his allies, slipped into the role of interpreter. ‘His Majesty is welcoming you to France, sir. He would have had you meet their graces the Duke and the Cardinal of Guise, and the Constable Montmorency as well, but they have pressing business to attend to.’

  ‘Ah, devil take it; and I had made up my mind that wee little one there was the Cardinal,’ said O’LiamRoe agreeably. ‘Will you tell the King’s grace he’s a happy man, surely, with the kingdom running itself while he can lep about after a ball. What’s he saying?’

  Speaking through an interpreter imposes its own languors and strains on an encounter, and this one was in any case, with astounding clarity, failing to take the course expected of it. The sieur de Genstan, his face flaming, was trying hard to prolong the interview by censoring his translations. The man in white, at least aware that some of the courtesies were lacking, was still a little at a loss. In a slow, carrying voice he addressed his interpreter. M. de Genstan said to O’LiamRoe, ‘His grace asks you to be seated and take wine with him.’

  ‘Ah, now,’ said O’LiamRoe comfortably. ‘Thank his grace, will you, and say I’d ten times sooner see him finish his fine game of ball. It’s plain to see he’s as nimble as a pea on a drumhead, and the nearest I’ve seen to it was a priest fighting-drunk with a censer.’

  To this, expurgated, the King replied with a question. ‘Will you play with him?’

  The blue eyes twinkled. ‘Dressed like this? God help us, I’d be mince-boiled in my sweat like a deer. At home we have the one dress, suitable for all occasions, and that is all.’

  The black-bearded man replied cautiously, through M. de Genstan. ‘You do not have this sport in Ireland?’

  Wholly at ease, O’LiamRoe sat down. Round the courtyard a sigh ran like the flight of a shuttlecock. Cheerfully aware of it, he went on ‘Sport, do you say? Pat-ball is not in it; no. But sport we have, surely and many a good man has died on the field of it with his honour bright, bright as the sun. Hurley for instance. Do you know it?’

  They did not.

  ‘It is played with a stick, then; and dress is no matter, for you have to trouble about the one thing only, and that is getting off the sports-field alive. And whatever dress you came on with, there will likely be none on you at the end. It’s a good way of filling in time if there are no wars. I don’t play it myself, being a peaceable man. But go to it; let me see you,’ said O’LiamRoe with unfeigned interest. ‘It is never a fault to see what other folk do.’

  Because they were at a loss, because they could not immediately see what had happened, because, finally, anything was better than continuing to talk, they took him at his word. As The O’LiamRoe lounged at ease, one elbow on the velvet table at his side and the speechless courtiers beside him, the bearded leader chose a single partner, without ceremony, and launched into a hard game.

  They were both excellent players; and being excellent, they took risks, and sometimes suffered from them. There was no netted ball, no fruitless leap, no dropped racquet, no lonely stance, mouth agape while the ball landed neatly behind, which escaped the soft undertone of O’LiamRoe’s commentary. Excruciating, unforgivable, fluent, unerring, pitched to the trembling octave of Straw Street irony, he noted the clouted thumb, the missed serve, the sweat, the split in the seam and the single, hissing, green-bottomed slide on the turf. He noted the uncurling hair, the throttling dive at the net; he observed and reported, serenely and without mercy until under the pressure of it de Genstan, who was listening and softly translating, laughed aloud, and the infection of it burst the decorum of the rest. There was a bellow of laughter. Already sensitive to the undercurrent of two voices, the players turned, their faces printed with anger; and with a glorious, earsplitting crack, the tennis ball shot through a window.

  The mild, Irish voice had at last ceased, but they were still laughing, in small helpless sobs, when the man in white, flinging down his racquet, seized his partner by the arm and strode over. The laughter stopped. O’LiamRoe, his fair brows raised, looked up at the sieur de Genstan, who from red had gone suddenly white. ‘And now,’ he said comfortably, ‘supposing after all that you get the fellow here, and we talk.’

  That they obeyed was the result of sheer self-protection. They had aligned themselves by their laughter on the wrong side of the fence. The players were clearly furious, and from a distance, M. de Genstan could be seen inventing explanations and excuses far more plausible than O’LiamRoe could have produced, if excuses had been anywhere in his remotest thoughts. He waited, rising, grinning as the black-bearded one, still flushed, left the crowd of men and approached him at last.

  ‘I’ll take that wine now, if it’s offered me,’ said O’LiamRoe cheerfully, ‘and give a word in your ear to go with it. For, God save us, you’re an insular lot, you Frenchmen; and it’s time you learned a thing or two about your more cultured neig
hbours such as the Irish. And translate it all, de Genstan me boy, this time; none of your three words to every three hundred, divina proportio and a wink and a shrug for the rest of it.’

  Crested cups were being filled. ‘His Majesty says,’ said the harassed interpreter from behind the bearded man’s chair: ‘He says that he would wish the differences between Ireland and France to be less.’

  ‘Ah, never mind the English in it,’ said O’LiamRoe. ‘We’ve had them lording it over us these three hundred years and swallowed them whole, same as you did, though the ones that came from Normandy were devils for taxes the same as yourself.’

  ‘His Majesty asks,’ said de Genstan, ‘if you are comparing his rule by any chance to that of England?’

  ‘Faith, would I do the like of that?’ said O’LiamRoe with his freckled smile. ‘And it so superior. There’s the Concordat, now. Why destroy yourself making out you’re the world’s head of the church when your Concordat lets you whistle up the abbeys and the bishops and the archbishops to your liking; all found money and a pet of a way to make friends?’

  There was a pause. ‘The King says,’ said M. de Genstan, ‘that these subjects are not a matter for discussion at this meeting, which is only meant—’

  O’LiamRoe’s smile had malice in it. ‘Not a matter for discussion! My dear boy, in Ireland the midwife uses one hand to hold the baby’s best fighting arm from the font water, and grips its jaws with the other lest the child goes to litigation about it.’ He put down the cup and rising, laid a commiserating hand on de Genstan’s shoulder. ‘Scrub off the civet and spit out the sugar plums and the next time choose an arguing, manly violent sort of king for yourselves. Sure, if that one’s hair were shaved off, like Bandinello’s Hercules, there’s not enough skull in it for his brains, so.’

  There was a deathly silence. The bearded man, rising also, glanced in turn at The O’LiamRoe and at the interpreter, who had gone even paler. De Genstan, appealing helplessly to the blank faces of his fellows, muttered something.

  The man in white drew a deep breath, curled his fist, and brought it down on the table with a thud that brought the cups cracking on their sides. A stream of red leaped on the velvet. ‘Traduisez!’ he exclaimed. And the young man, stumbling, began to translate.

  Listening, Blackbeard snapped his fingers. Pages ran. A surcoat was slipped on his shoulders, and fastened with gold knots. A chain was brought, and laid over his head. A pair of embroidered slippers was put on his feet in place of the plain shoes for tennis; and white leather gloves and a plumed hat were put in his hand.

  With the entwined crescents of his monogram leaping with his ill-compressed, angry breathing, Henri II, Elect of God and Most Christian Majesty of France and her peoples, heard O’LiamRoe’s translated words falter to a close. ‘If his hair were shaved off, there’s not enough skull in it for brains,’ said the sieur de Genstan; and looked anywhere but at O’LiamRoe.

  For a long moment, many things hung in the balance, and not the least of them O’LiamRoe’s life. But Henri was not quite committed to an alliance with England. His need of Ireland might return. And royal dignity, in the long run, mattered more than royal vanity. He prepared to speak.

  O’LiamRoe’s face, as realization struck him, went quite blank. Then he drew himself quietly together, his fair skin hotly red, his blue eyes steady; and by a visible effort of will, detachment, cynicism, amusement even flowed back into his bearing as, slow, heavy, measured, the King’s words proceeded, shadowed by the light, hurried English of de Genstan.

  ‘You claim a culture. You speak of a common ancestry. You call yourself the son of a king. You show scorn for our customs and make fun of our person.’

  ‘It was a mistake,’ said O’LiamRoe.

  The King’s hands were clasped behind him; his voice continued unchanged. ‘We are aware of your poverty. We are aware of your claims to learning. We are aware of the racial distinction of your people. But we had expected certain courtesies of the person and of the tongue. We were prepared to entertain you at our Court as an equal; and without offering you or dreaming of offering you the insult of our compassion. You had better, Prince of Barrow,’ said the King, and the gilded gloves in his hand were wrung like a rag, ‘you had better think well and invite that insult from us now.’

  O’LiamRoe looked round the circle. Shocked and shaken, they avoided his eye. The Prince’s fair face hardened. Rubbing his nose with one finger, he cast a mild blue eye on the controlled and angry figure before him. ‘Dear, dear,’ said O’LiamRoe in concern, in contrition and with, at the back of his eyes, the faintest unregenerate spark of joy. ‘Dear, dear. I have fallen into a small error of judgment. I thought the King here, you see, was a play-actor.’

  There was another silence. Then, with an explosion of disgust, Henri strode off, pacing the court, and de Genstan seized O’LiamRoe’s arm. ‘Go now. Quickly,’ he said.

  With a strength quite unlooked-for, the other man resisted. ‘Not at all, so. It will never do to be losing our heads.’

  ‘My God,’ said de Genstan, who had lost his a good time ago. ‘You’ll come to table tomorrow with an apple in your mouth.’

  ‘Not at all, now. Wait. Here he is,’ said O’LiamRoe, as the King swung to a halt before him. ‘Ah, bad cess to it, it’s a damned heathen language, the French. What’s all that about?’

  De Genstan translated. ‘Since you have proved your ignorance in these matters, it might please you to study the monarchy of France and her peoples in their great moment of accord. His grace desires you to stay in Rouen at his expense until and during the celebration of his Joyous Entry on Wednesday. On Thursday you and your party will be escorted to Dieppe and at the first fair wind a galley will be at your service to return immediately to Ireland. Between now and Wednesday, his grace expects to hold no further communication with you.’

  O’LiamRoe had flushed again; but beyond that, there was no trace of anger or of chagrin on the disingenuous face. ‘Tell him I agree so. Why would I not? The Emperor is the King of Kings, so they say; the Catholic King is the King of Men, and the King of France is King of Beasts, “therefore whatever he commands he is instantly obeyed.” And who am I, a mere gentleman, to deny him?’

  He waited, to do him justice, until it was translated; he bowed three times in the doorway like the unrolling of some primitive carpet, and he departed. Thus Phelim O’LiamRoe, Chief of the Name, Prince of Barrow and lord of the Slieve Bloom, left his audience with the King of France, his principles firmly unblemished amid the smoking shambles of his personal impact, and his deportation pending.

  The O’LiamRoe had no pressing wish to tell his henchmen of the event. As it turned out, he had no need. Profiting by his chief’s absence, Thady Boy had visited every alehouse in Rouen, picked up the rumour, and returned rocking slightly to hear the details.

  He bore these with more philosophy than Piedar Dooly, who, enthralled with his new role of bloodhound, could hardly wait, said O’LiamRoe, to see him half-assassinated another time. ‘But I doubt,’ he added, ‘that there will be no luck in it for him, for who’ll bother himself with me, now I’m leaving? Ochone, ochone,’ said the Prince of Barrow, who, to finish it off, had taken a good drink himself. ‘For it will be dull, dull in this town from now till Thursday, and with nothing happening and no one killing us at all, the spoiled souls.’

  IV

  Rouen: Fine, Scientific Works Without Warning

  In the case of all fine, scientific works which can be done without being seen or heard, it is required by law to apply the rule of notice and removal: warning is to be given to sensible adults; beasts and non-sensible persons are to be turned away, and sleepers are to be awakened; deaf and blind persons to be removed.

  THOUGH none of the King’s circle, naturally, would tell tales out of Court, the whole city of Rouen had the news of the royal baiting in the tennis court in an hour, and like Leo X, said O’LiamRoe, who came to power like a fox, reigned like a lion and died like a dog, the r
ise and demise of Ireland in the bosom of Father France was not without note.

  Very soon in the afternoon, a drift of small boys began to appear outside O’LiamRoe’s lodging, and to pass observations on the traffic therein. A man called Augrédé whose brother had died in the salt tax revolt called on the Chief, and had to be shown out incontinently. A Scotsman spoke to them in the street when, unwilling to lurk at home like a malefactor, O’LiamRoe had insisted on strolling out; and another one, young and speaking good French, had accosted Thady Boy in a tavern, and after a good deal of double talk, hinted that he could get O’LiamRoe an interview with the English Resident, Sir James Mason. Children followed them, and a man or two smiled discreetly, but no fellow Irishmen darkened the door.

  After some thought, O’LiamRoe sent a letter to Mistress Boyle with a lighthearted account of what had passed, forestalling visit or apology, and courteously taking his leave. They had, after all, to live in the country; Oonagh, after all, would marry a Frenchman.

  The Queen Dowager of Scotland sent for Tom Erskine. There was no idle laughter this afternoon in the Hôtel Prudhomme, where the Queen had lodged since her State Entry, waiting as the Irish party were doing, though in considerably more state, for the King’s own Royal Entry on Wednesday.

  It was only a week since Mary of Guise, the Queen Mother of Scotland, had re-entered her native France on her first visit for twelve years, and already she had lost weight, so that the long sleeves dragged on her large-boned, hollow shoulders. She was the Queen Mother of a sister kingdom which France had just helped to rescue from the hands of the English. She was the oldest member of the de Guise family, the most powerful in France and dearly cherished by the King. But she was also a twice-widowed woman who, in the space of a day, had been reunited with the son of her first marriage, the pale Duke de Longueville whom she had not seen for a decade; and with Mary, the seven-year-old Queen of Scotland and the only child of her second marriage, whom King Henri had brought to France two years since as the betrothed of his heir.