Queens'' Play

  ‘Why do that?’ said Oonagh. Her face was dry and grey as earthenware in the kiln, but the clear voice was cold. ‘You will save nothing and have the King at you, only.’

  Within touching distance, Cormac stopped. In the coloured rind of his skin, the red lips parted and smiled. In his hands the blade lifted and stilled. ‘Kill him,’ said Mistress Boyle from behind, and the grey plaits jerked, like bell ropes weaving an echo. ‘Kill him and the woman too. That is something the French will understand.’

  Oonagh had been leaning a little against the Prince of Barrow, her black hair caught in his shirt, the soft robe brushing his feet. At that, she flung up her arm, and then collecting herself, moved a step forward and faced the great black bull-shape of O’Connor, her pride, her king and her lover. ‘Leave troubling, Cormac. Let him go.’

  Her voice was sane and quiet. The stab of the sword cut across it like a battle cry, as Cormac raised the blade, high and true, and drove it at O’LiamRoe’s heart through hers.

  O’LiamRoe was made badly by unresented ill-luck—strung stiffly, knotted wrongly, animated faultily. But he had a brain; and he had seen that move coming. As the sword flashed, he gave Oonagh a great shove, and as she struck and rolled on the floor he threw himself to one side so that the missed blade pulled the swordsman staggering past his quarry and brought him up short beside Theresa Boyle. Then as O’LiamRoe recovered, Cormac O’Connor jumped forward again.

  O’LiamRoe fled. He did it hastily, and with a frantic lack of address which was its own grace. Chairs rocked and tumbled in O’Connor’s way. The bed curtains ripped, dropped and draped him as he followed the others over the counterpane; kicked pillows tripped him; the jogging end of O’LiamRoe’s own scabbard at one point caught the big man and nearly felled him. Oonagh, rising, was crouched hard in a corner; Mistress Boyle, eyes wild, had retreated to the parlour and watched from there. No one attempted to fetch help. If this was to be a crime passionnel, the fewer witnesses the better. And no servant, knowing Theresa Boyle and knowing O’Connor, would dare intervene.

  In the crowded space, the sword was not easy to use. It stuck, became impaled on the panelling, or impeded the wielder with its weight. O’LiamRoe, jumping on a fine marquetry table, had it knocked from under him by Cormac’s boot and falling, found a shield quite by accident as Cormac’s steel sank deep in the wood.

  Cormac left it there and jumped on the soft somersaulting body of the other man. As he hit him, O’LiamRoe’s arm shot out with the impact, found the poker laid in the nearly dead hearth, and swinging it over the big Irishman’s back, branded him like a heifer. With a screech O’Connor flung free, and in the stench of wool and hide his curses found habitat.

  O’LiamRoe got out his sword and scrambled to his feet as the other man, his fists opening and shutting, rose likewise and faced him. In the parlour there sounded, briefly, a sharp crash. O’Connor’s attention left his victim for a second; long enough to catch the broken-necked glass tossed to him diamond-bright by Mistress Boyle. Holding it queerly before him, flashing, pure as a bride’s bouquet, he feinted neatly and leaned to stroke the jagged glass down O’LiamRoe’s face.

  O’LiamRoe was not even looking. His kind face, printed with surprise and dislike, was turned to Theresa Boyle. He opened his mouth, shifted his weight, and with perfect simplicity sat down, just as the arched blow approached him. It passed over his head, stirring the marmalade hair, and Oonagh, moved beyond even her steely strength, let out a high sharp note of laughter.

  O’LiamRoe had dropped his sword. On all fours he was fumbling to lift it when with a rustle Mistress Boyle swept through the doorway and bent down to seize it.

  ‘Ah, no!’ said Oonagh O’Dwyer. ‘Ah, no, wild hag, we are not heeding you this night at all.’ And laying hands on the two wiry grey plaits, she made to drag the older woman like a drowned thing to her feet.

  In that moment, for the second time, the bright glass aimed at O’LiamRoe descended. Like the grey shears of Atropos, grim among the late flowers in Jean Ango’s garden, the needle edge dropped, cleaving the thick plait with a tug clean between hand and scalp; and falling, bit into Theresa Boyle’s neck.

  The scream, when it came, was like a man’s, gross and brutal, and all the folds of the bundled cabbage, screwed featureless on the floor, had become poured over with red. His mouth open, the up-wrenched bottle still fast in his hand, Cormac O’Connor bent over the woman while O’LiamRoe rising backed, his face sick.

  He turned and ran.

  He had reached the parlour door when Cormac came back to himself. O’Connor said nothing; the curses and threats all cut off by the weight of the shock. Then rage came. Like a man spiritually harmed, like one who has looked on the symbols of a diabolical Mass, he put out his hand and armed himself, lifting the heavy sword from its deep cut as if it were paper and presenting it, across the width of two rooms, at O’LiamRoe’s unarmed body.

  Oonagh saw it. Rising stony-faced from the fallen woman’s side she jumped at O’Connor, her two hands firm on his arm, and without looking he hurled her off like a cur. As she crashed clutching into the far wall, O’LiamRoe’s hands moved.

  It was only a small sling, and the stone was small too, round, silvery and warm from his pocket. But slinging was an ancient art, a lost custom, a piece of erudite and unnecessary knowledge which only O’LiamRoe would have bothered to gain, and an art which only O’LiamRoe would have thought it worth while practising. With the soft, craftless fingers which, right hand or left, could split a held hair, the Prince of Barrow fitted his little stone, lifted the sling and let fly.

  The first struck O’Connor in the mouth, breaking in the fleshy lip and like a wrecked forum razing his teeth. The second, stinging sharp in the middle of the round, suffused brow, felled him like a tree; slowly, buffeting shrub and sapling and undergrowth, flat to the ground. Holding hard to the wall, Oonagh watched him.

  Above the old woman’s harsh moaning, ‘Never fear,’ said O’LiamRoe breathlessly. He cleared his throat, gasped, and moving stiffly nearer, ran a dirty hand through his hair. ‘He won’t be dead.’

  In her white face the younger woman’s pale eyes looked almost black. ‘And if he were?’

  Still breathlessly, he spoke at a tangent. ‘The woman will need help.’

  Again she faced him without moving. ‘She is past helping.’

  He said, ‘It had to be done … and at this minute I do not know yet if it is done.’

  ‘It is done,’ said Oonagh O’Dwyer. The woman moaned, and was quiet.

  His oval face had no smile. ‘Twenty years of my thinking life have said their seven curses over him. He has won, too, in his way. It is a triumph of violence over culture, force over thought.… I have come to the crossroads you feared, and passed them. It may be a true road, or it may be the first step into all the kind, easy turnings of decay.’

  ‘Maybe. There is no knowing for either of us until judgment day.’ She passed him, remote as she had always been, dreamlike with her white face and her streaming black fall of hair, the stained robe dragging the floor; and opening the door, turned and faced him. ‘The back door is quiet to unlock, and not overlooked. Go quickly. The light is not far off.’

  He came beside her, but no nearer than that. ‘I will not leave you with them.’

  She turned her head. Raw, rumpled, stiff as an ox on the spit, Cormac lay in the smashed room, and at his feet the woman lay still, her thick hands at her neck. ‘It is time to go,’ she said. ‘I must take my road, too. From this out you will hear nothing of me, and will do nothing to search me out. That is my price.’

  He did not reply all at once. Then, ‘For what, mo chiall; a chiall mo chridhe?’ he said steadily.

  But he knew already what his ignorance was to buy: the name he had wanted, the name of the man serving Lord d’Aubigny which was to deliver both Lymond and the Queen.

  Telling him, her eyes were compassionate. ‘Leave me go kindly,’ she said. ‘My body will not want, and my though
ts you will have. There is a strong path before you, and a forced door you need not be ashamed of. Only violence could have sundered this man and myself, and the violence which parted us was the force that was born fresh in your mind, not the coarse work it has had to put its hand to tonight. It will find nobler tasks yet to do.’

  Her hands lay cold in his. Searching her empty face he said, ‘We shall meet?’

  ‘At the fall of night, on the far side of the north wind,’ she said.’ ‘Love me.’

  ‘All my days,’ said Phelim O’LiamRoe, Prince of Barrow, dropping into the tongue of his land. ‘Dear stranger, dear mate of my soul: all my days.’

  And walking quiet and blind, he let slip her two hands and left.

  ‘His name is Artus Cholet, Lord d’Aubigny’s other henchman,’ Oonagh O’Dwyer had said. ‘He is of the district, a master gunner who has fought for any well-paying captain in his day. He will not show himself at Châteaubriant, but if he has been given work to do, he won’t be far away. Take the. Angers road, and at the Auberge des Trois Mariés ask for Georges Gaultier, and tell him what you want.’

  Dark in the misty June morning, Châteaubriant was still. Dim through the painted shutters, the hoof beats of a single horse burst, applauding the cobbles, and were gone.

  No one saw O’LiamRoe go. He had not taken time to find Dooly, curled on the straw in his dark lodging, watching the lightening sky. In another street, handsomely lodged, Lord d’Aubigny slept, ready to wake fresh and serene to his harvest at last. The English, courtiers and servants, lay exhausted by heat and diplomacy in rooms and lodgings, hospices and barns all through Châteaubriant. At the Château Neuf Northampton slept, well bedded, well content, under the three flags of Scotland, England and France. The Court of France. King and Queen and Constable, de Guises, Diane, fulfilled the allotted hours of slumber, precisely as automata, as part of the long-learned, accustomed framework of rite.

  A heap of red hair in an immaculate bed, the Queen of Scotland slept; but in her mother’s room the candle burned and spluttered by the outflung arm of a sleeper who had counted most of the night hours away. Beyond, Margaret Erskine lay still with open eyes.

  In the Vieux Château, Lymond’s two warders, both Constable’s men, were having an unexpectedly tedium-free night. The tall one, rattling the dice box, was the more impressionable. ‘That’s a good song.’

  ‘This is a better,’ said Lymond; and sang it, while they listened to each bawdy verse, whimpering. At the end, sitting curled on his pallet, Francis Crawford spoke idly. ‘Anton, why does a man leave his mistress?’

  ‘He loves another,’ said the tall gaoler promptly, and threw.

  The short one chimed in. ‘Or she does. Or she grows fat and ugly, or pesters him for marriage.’

  ‘Or has too many children,’ said the tall gaoler gloomily.

  Lymond’s face remained grave. ‘And why, do you think, might a mistress part from her lover?’

  ‘Your case?’ asked the tall man, and laid down the dice.

  Lymond shook his head. ‘Another’s.’

  ‘She leaves him for a better lover,’ said the short one aggressively.

  ‘No,’ said Lymond gravely. ‘That has been tried.’

  Curiously, the eyes of the tall gaoler searched the cool face. ‘For money, then? Marriage? Position?’

  ‘That has been tried, too.’

  ‘She’s not a mistress, that one; she’s a leech,’ said the short gaoler, and he picked up the dice.

  ‘She suffers the child in man,’ said Lymond. ‘I would guess, because she thinks with his shoulders in the clouds, his head must see further than other men. But in time—’

  ‘She finds his eyes are shut,’ said the short man, and threw

  ‘Or that she has been invisible for so long that he has forgotten she is there. The clear skies above all that cloud no longer bewitch her. She looks for a man with a God-sent vocation, a brilliant vocation but a different vocation, who will either put her before it … or change it for her.’

  ‘And then she will leave her first lover. It sounds unlikely to me,’ said the tall man, and threw in his turn.

  ‘It is beginning to sound unlikely to me,’ said Francis Crawford after some thought. ‘What about another song?’

  Much later, when the short guard was asleep and Lymond, stretched prone on his face, lay open-eyed and abstracted in bed, the tall man swung his chair to the floor, saying, ‘But would she be happy with him?’

  The fair, bloody head jerked round. ‘What? Who happy with whom?’

  ‘With the other. If he altered his ideals, would the woman stay even with him?’

  ‘Christ,’ said Lymond. ‘Mild and eloquent Balder, the woman would never even think of him. His office is purely to sunder; neither he nor any man has power to do more than that.’

  ‘Then where is his reward?’ said the tall gaoler, and began to swing rhythmically again.

  ‘Round as Giotto’s “O”,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘His reward is nothing, nullity, negation, an absence, a lack. His golden reward, equal to its own weight of shaved beard, is this, that the lady did not accept him.’

  ‘She is ugly?’

  ‘She is beautiful as the tides of the sea,’ said the pleasant voice from the bed. ‘Warm, silken and fathomless; and familiar with mysteries.’

  ‘They all are, the bitches,’ said the tall man, and went on rocking, slowly, in silence.

  The Inn of the Trois Mariés, outside St. Julien-de-Vouvantes and nine miles from Châteaubriant, had brought Maître Gaultier as close to his clients at Court as the congested billeting situation would allow. He was not disturbed, confident in the belief that a needy gentleman will sniff out a usurer, as the mastiffs of Rhodes were said to distinguish Turk from Christian by the smell.

  The O’LiamRoe, launched upstairs with the first sunlight, was given audience without question; but Georges Gaultier’s listening face was vacant. He heard the Prince of Barrow through, hummed a line of some obscure monody, his patched eyebrows scaling his brow, then disappeared without excuse.

  Ten minutes later O’LiamRoe found himself greeting the tall, brooding figure and eaglet face of the Dame de Doubtance, seated at a little spinet and picking out with one thin, tight-cuffed claw the notes of an astonishingly bawdy song O’LiamRoe hoped she had never heard sung. Clearly Gaultier had conveyed all his news. The flat, downturned mouth tightened, then moved as she swung round for his bow. ‘The woman is a fool.’

  He faced her out, all his clothes whitened with dust, and dust in his wild golden hair. ‘You will never see a braver,’ he said.

  ‘And you are a fool,’ said the Lady harshly. ‘She has the gift, that black-haired woman, and she gave herself like carrion, to feed her own pride.’

  ‘She has left him.’ His face thinned with sleeplessness, O’LiamRoe kept his temper.

  ‘Left him? Dotard, schoolboy, unleavened bread, can you believe I speak of Cormac O’Connor?’

  Erect, drawn to her full height, she peered down at him from her archaic headdress, the golden plaits thonged on her breast. ‘Ah, you are pleasant,’ she said. ‘Many a starving man will come to you, seeing you starving and able to laugh. You appear pleasant, as drowning leaves in a pond.’

  Anger had gone. ‘He has shown me,’ said O’LiamRoe.

  ‘He has shown himself; that is all that matters,’ said the Dame de Doubtance. ‘Artus Cholet lives with the woman Berthe at St. Julien. The house is thatched; with St. John over the door.’ Still speaking, she reseated herself, the long robes shifting, and resumed at her spinet.

  Stiff-backed, O’LiamRoe stood and watched. ‘If man can do it, I shall save them both.’

  ‘Run, then,’ she said encouragingly. ‘And try hard. I would have told this sooner … I might have told this sooner, but Artus Cholet is my sister’s son, though a fool. You may kill him. He has come to the end.’

  He left her, predatory, frowning over her fingering hands. As he closed the door he heard her addr
ess them: ‘Sleep, mes enfants—but can you not sleep? This day you must wake fresh as a rosebud. Right hand, you have left hand to meet in the lists.’

  Out of the inn; through the stirring life of a country road, and past the unlocked door of a cottage with St. John over the threshold.

  Berthe, fat, frightened and wary, had been sleeping alone, but another head at some time had crumpled the pillow and, outside, a horse had recently been watered and fed. He threatened her, hoarseness and tension disguising his lack of skill, until she spoke.

  Artus had left early for Châteaubriant; where and for what purpose she did not know. She knew nothing of use, it appeared, but his description; and this, cringing, she gave.

  There was another mare in the littered stable. O’LiamRoe changed saddles and, freshly mounted, started back. He had had to beat her, in the end; but it was plain she knew nothing more. After all his efforts, after the agony at Mistress Boyle’s, after the ride to the inn and to St. Julien, he was no further on. The man he wanted had vanished into Châteaubriant, and by the time he came back to his Berthe, it might well be too late.

  Flying through the first heat of the morning, double-printing the track he had taken such a short time before, it came to O’LiamRoe that it was no longer one man’s work. Lord d’Aubigny notwithstanding, the English visitors notwithstanding, despite the Queen Dowager and the delicate balance of power she had betrayed Lymond to preserve, his share in all the bitter complexity of the day’s work was to beat the drum; to rouse the jungle; and to call friend and enemy alike into the open.

  His bones ached, under the sun; and when carters cursed him, he did not turn.

  On the new lake, the painted boats moved no more than a mirage, barring the satiny water with candy-bright troughs. Mary, solid and rosy with heat, was being dressed by a cat’s cradle of nurse, governess, maids of honour, femmes de chambre, valets, pages, grooms and a drum she had fallen in love with the previous evening and had demanded, screaming, to attend her at dawn. Quickly, and with tact, Margaret Erskine got rid of him before he passed the outermost door of the suite. Today, none but trusted faces were allowed in these rooms; no food or drink passed the child’s lips that one of them had not tasted; none but friends and servants would surround her when she walked abroad.