Queens'' Play

  For a motherly woman, which the Queen Dowager was not, a double meeting of distressing joy. For a politician, which she was, an extra agony of behaviour to confuse the already terrible complications of her visit. For she was not on good terms with all her late husband’s subjects. The war with England was over, but England was still giving shelter to disgruntled Scots; and reminding others with promises and pensions of her ancient claims to the Scottish crown. The Earl of Arran, ruling Scotland in the little Queen’s stead, was weak: half-wooed by England and the Reformed religion England stood for; easy game for the powerful families eager to oust him and control the Regency. And France, having poured men and money and munitions into Scotland to help her win the late war, was reaping a fury of wounded pride and growing resentment as her reward. Looking at their forts, their castles, their streets and their beds stuffed full of idle, boasting, quarrelsome French, the Scottish half of the Old Alliance was coming very close to a wholehearted upheaval which might send both the foreigners and their ancient religion flying out of the window.

  She had thought of all this. She had met that danger as best she could simply by removing the worst elements of danger and carrying them with her. But even so, before even she came to Dieppe, the powerful and violent men in her train were nipping and kicking and plunging at one another and at the ribbons which held them.

  And in the face of this she must move correctly, with haughtiness and with splendour through the excessive and appalling round of ceremony that had been prepared for her; must behave to the King and his Court, to her own family and their rivals and the ambassadors of every nation in Europe who came to pay court to her, as if she had come merely to visit her child, and as if, given her own way, she would not have smashed the gilded bubble of dance and laughter with a blow, so that these damned lackadaisical, self-important, rich, preening men would be hurled by circumstance round the conference table, where she would have them, to discuss with all the gifts in their power, the future policies of France and of Scotland.

  So she sat restless in the Hôtel Prudhomme after a morning of state receptions, with Lady Fleming and Margaret Erskine at her side; and said abruptly, ‘Madame Erskine. I wish to speak with your husband.’

  The page found him when he was paying his last calls before leaving, on Friday, for Flanders. The Chief Privy Councillor had also heard the rumours. As he hurried back to the Hôtel Prudhomme, Tom Erskine knew very well he was going to be asked about Lymond.

  It was hurled at him as he stepped over the threshold. ‘I hear the Irishmen are being sent home. What does this mean?’

  Since Dieppe, he had heard nothing. He wished he had not told her of Lymond’s identity. Now, in the presence of his wife and his wife’s mother, he attempted to reason with the Queen. With so much else, God knew, to harass them, she could not afford to pursue indefinitely this curious whim, or allow its failures to distract her. Lymond’s visit had no vital purpose; he was not her agent. His presence or his absence would make no difference.

  But the Queen Mother’s patience had run out. ‘For whom is he working?’

  ‘Himself. No one.’

  ‘And whom will he be working for in a year’s time?’

  There was a silence. Then Erskine said, ‘He won’t be committed. He told me himself.’

  Mary of Guise checked her temper, waited and then spoke in an even voice. ‘You call yourself his friend. Consider him then. He has now his reputation, his possessions, his wealth. Yet at home his future is uncertain. It is his elder brother Lord Culter who has the barony, and the child which Lady Culter is expecting will oust our friend Lymond from his inheritance and even from his title, if it is a son.… He is idle then; he has no attachments, no dependants, no followers; he is ready, my dear Chancellor, for the dedication. In one year’s time,’ said the Queen Dowager of Scotland explicitly, ‘I want his allegiance to be mine. I need it. But far more than that, the Queen will need it. This is the moment most critical in his life and ours. If I do not seize him now, we shall never have him. And now, now is the moment; for I mean to take this man in his failure, Master Erskine—in his failure, and not in his success.’

  As she spoke, the door had opened on a scratch, and a page entered, bending double in silence. ‘Bring him in,’ said the Queen Dowager, and turned her cold eyes on Tom Erskine and the two women. ‘I suspected there was only one way to find the truth; and so I sent for him,’ she said. ‘M. Crawford of Lymond is here.’

  The page scuttled; the door shut. The masked man in black, whom Tom Erskine had last seen at Dieppe in Jean Ango’s moonlit garden, stepped delicately from the shadows. He appeared to be quelling a strong impulse to laugh.

  ‘I must apologize for these damned entrances,’ said Francis Crawford of Lymond. ‘I feel Tom here never knows if he should send for a bishop or start a round of applause.’ And lifting finger and thumb, he slid the mask from his face, disclosing the intelligent, sardonic features of Thady Boy Ballagh.

  It was late when Lymond returned to his lodging, walking silently under the rocking lamps skeined sagging over the crooked streets. Behind him lay an interview remarkable for its courtesy, its cool vigour and, from the Dowager’s point of view, for its total lack of success.

  Tom Erskine might have warned her, had she given him time, that it was a mistake to allude to O’LiamRoe’s shortcomings. Personally he shared her doubts about Lymond’s choice of travelling companion. Whether or not the sinking of La Sauvée had been an attempt on O’LiamRoe’s life, O’LiamRoe’s present actions had certainly led to his and Lymond’s dismissal from France. About the Prince of Barrow’s innocence in all this Tom was perfectly confident: Lymond had not only studied the Chief in that preliminary week in the Slieve Bloom before sailing for France; he had set on foot an investigation of appalling thoroughness into O’LiamRoe’s character before ever O’LiamRoe was approached.

  And Lymond had been right. O’LiamRoe was the one man in ten who would look with amusement and even enthusiasm on the prospect of duping his royal hosts by passing off a foreigner as his Irish secretary and bard. Unhappily, it was this very irresponsibility which had brought the scheme to a halt.

  The Queen Dowager only got halfway towards speaking her mind about that, when Lymond stopped her. She turned next to the future, and to the prospect of closer cooperation, object unspecified, between the Master of Culter and herself. The Master of Culter simply reminded her, with unvarying deference, that what he did in France or out of it, by their mutual agreement, was his own affair and not hers. For Lymond, who could explode into fire and brimstone when he chose, could be equally formidable in the language of etiquette; and had already managed to give Jenny Fleming a chaste verbal trouncing for her morning’s work at the bridge, unnoticed by either Tom or the Dowager.

  It was at this point that the Queen Mother played her master card, and startled even her Chief Privy Councillor. ‘And what,’ she had said, ‘if the Queen my daughter’s safety were in question?’

  In the ensuing silence, ‘Is it, ma’am?’ had asked Lymond.

  But already, she was retreating. ‘Of course, we know of nothing. Where could the child have better care than among our dear friends in France? But if her life were threatened, by some madman, let us say …’

  ‘Then double your bodyguard, madam,’ he had coolly replied. ‘They are not in your confidence either, but they are in your service.’

  They let him go after that, with something like relief; and after he had gone, Margaret Erskine was very silent, counting up in her mind the frequent illnesses and the unexplained accidents that had befallen Mary Queen of Scots, during her sojourn in France. Her thought had reached her husband. Tom began a single, hazy question, ‘Does your grace suspect that …?’ and received the snub of his life for his pains. Her grace was visibly regretting that the subject had ever been raised.

  To Lymond, presumably, the interview meant no more than an irritation brushed aside. Retiring, exploring, the swinging lights as he walked lit a
n emotionless face.

  The streets were not empty. Light shone from most houses, seeping in slits round baffled shutters where shields were painted, swords burnished, jewels embroidered in the great, consuming fever of the Entry. A troop of the de Guise household went quickly by, banner held at thigh and wrist, and the lamps tripped and rocked afresh as the silver eaglets of Lorraine, the quartered lilies of Anjou and Sicily, the crimson bars of Hungary and the double cross of Jerusalem brushed by.

  A girl stepped back out of an open doorway, laughing, and Francis Crawford sidestepped softly and went on his way. More even than Lyons, than Avignon or Paris, Rouen’s women were notorious. A mocking voice called after him, and below the mask, momentarily was the twitch of a smile.

  Very soon after that, he vanished altogether for a moment; and when he took the cobbled crown of the street again, it was in the portly, potbellied, unmasked and alcoholic person of O’LiamRoe’s secretary.

  Robin Stewart saw him wander along the Rue St.-Lô, pass the Palace of Justice and stop looking up at the newly finished tower of St. André. The church lantern shone on the ollave’s Adam’s apple and upturned, stubbled chin and Stewart himself glanced up at the tower. He laid a hand on Thady Boy’s shoulder.

  His purpose, in a muddled way, was to give comfort; his need was to receive it. Thady Boy Ballagh turned round slowly, and said, ‘Well, well, Mr. Stewart. The Orcades flowed with Saxon gore this day, and Thule became warm with the blood of the Picts, and icy Erin wept for her heaps of slaughtered Scots. We’re to take the next boat home on Thursday, you’ll have heard.’

  ‘If I had my way of it, those dewy young madcaps at Court would hang like catkins on a willow tree. It’s plain to anyone the insolence was unintentional.’

  ‘And yet, do you know, I have an awful feeling that O’LiamRoe himself had a wee, little suspicion, a hint, a first trickle of a notion, that it was maybe the King he was facing after all,’ said Thady Boy placidly. ‘He wasn’t very sure of being courtly, but he knew he could make a smart success of being outrageous.—Were you going somewhere?’

  Robin Stewart recalled suddenly that he had been struck before with this man. ‘I was going just a step up the road,’ he said, ‘for a word and a drink in the back parlour of a friend of mine. Would it interest you?’ He grinned with sudden candour. ‘You’ll need to make the most of your days left in France.’

  Which was exactly the opinion of Francis Crawford of Lymond, accepting.

  The house to which he had been so impulsively invited was not far off: a handsome, dormered merchant’s mansion behind a high wall, entered by a door recently widened. Outside, Robin Stewart stopped dead in his bony, marionnette’s walk to discuss Master Ballagh’s religion. ‘Have you strong views, maybe, on Lutherism and all yon trash?’

  Thady Boy’s eyes were twin pools of maidenly blue. ‘I have strong views on nothing at all, a mhic, save women and drink, and maybe money. I can content me barefoot or bareheaded, and keep Lent or Ramadan, such little weedy views on religion do I have.’

  ‘Aye, well. The fellow we’re to visit is a sculptor. A retired sculptor. And an inventor. He whiles invents machines, you understand.’

  ‘Like Leonardo.’

  ‘Like Leonardo,’ agreed Robin Stewart with great promptitude, and knocked on the gates.

  They were not admitted at once. There was a whispered colloquy, and a short wait; then a man with a lantern appeared and led them through the inner courtyard and into the house, talking amicably in good English as they went. They passed, at his direction, up a narrow wooden staircase and at the top stood dazzled in the light of a door already open. Two powerful hands reached for them; two powerful arms hauled them inside; and a rolling bass voice intoned, treading strongly, like monks at a vintage, on the mangled accents of Paris and Perth: ‘Robin! My sweet conscience, my great buck in velvet, touch me at your peril. I’m all swelled like a foxglove with the gout, and damned glad to see you. Bring him in, whoever he is, and sit down.’

  Michel Hérisson was a big man, with loose white hair lit by the spare wax candles behind, and powerful hands rubbed by the hafts and handles, the wood and metal and stone of his profession into premature cracked monuments of themselves. Shouting cheerfully, he made them free of a comfortable, chair-scattered room with a fire at one end, where three or four Scots and French, already gathered, rose and offered their welcome.

  The room looked what it was: an unofficial club, where men of like mind and diverse background could meet away from the hubbub of public taverns. The greetings over, Stewart pulled Thady apart and seated him. ‘He’s a good fellow, Hérisson—a brilliant artist in his day, before the gout. His brother in London was one of the best friends I ever had.’ He picked up two tankards from the deep sill at his side and got up. ‘We help ourselves. Get your drouth in good order, Master Ballagh. It’s a grand wine Michel Hérisson serves, and he doesna measure your mou’.’ And he walked away, leaving behind him for five minutes the competent gaze of Crawford of Lymond.

  One of the group before the fire was a minor member of the Queen Dowager’s train; he was talking, in fluent French, about Tom Erskine’s present embassy. From the number of used tankards, the circle had recently been much bigger; and yet the fire was quite fresh, with no long-seated bed of ash. Also, below the talk and laughter, and the chink of wood and metal on stools, there existed a rhythm that was no sound, but a pressure on the soles of the feet. No sooner had it made itself felt than it stopped; and Robin Stewart came back.

  He spoke abruptly, after the first pledging draught. ‘Thank God O’LiamRoe isn’t to stay. I canna thole the man, Master Ballagh; and that’s the truth.’

  ‘It’s fairly dispiriting, I know,’ said Thady Boy, ‘when he makes a virtue of the very things that you would be after being sorry at him for.’

  Stewart’s voice slid, aggrieved, into its common note. ‘Shambling here and yon, looking at the Seven Wonders of the world as if they were pared from his toenails, and making such a parade of his poorness and silliness that no man of feeling could bring himself to discomfit him. And all the while you’ve got a gey queer feeling that he thinks you’re the fool and he’s the wise, tolerant fellow laughing up the holes in his sleeve.’

  ‘Whereas it’s yourself is the wise, tolerant fellow,’ said Thady Boy; and ignoring the Archer’s sudden flush, he stirred a wine ring on the table with a long slender finger. ‘Tell me, since he’s such a wise, scholarly fellow—and he is, make no doubt of that—why he’s brought an ollave to France?’

  ‘Oh, to add to the splendour of his train, surely,’ said Stewart sarcastically.

  ‘While parading his lack of polish and his poverty? O’LiamRoe brought a secretary although he is a fairly good humanist, my dear, because he was afraid he mightn’t be quite good enough. He brought his saffron and frieze—’

  ‘That I respect,’ said Stewart. ‘I can see that. It was a matter of principle because the English proscribed it.’

  ‘The English proscribed it, true for you; but devil a man, woman or child in the whole of Ireland is paying any regard to it. The O’LiamRoe himself has six silk suits in his wardrobe, but none so grand, let you see, as the gentlemen have in France. Detached irony about the world’s work is O’LiamRoe’s rule; and that is where he is to be pitied, if you are dead keen to be pitying us some way.’

  A calmness had come to Robin Stewart: a calmness wrought, had he recognized it, by a man used to dealing with men, who had taken time to feed the lions of envy, curiosity and aggression with these titbits and set them temporarily asleep. He said suddenly, watching the fat man’s dark face, ‘You’re a great one for dissecting, I can see. What do you make, I wonder, of the likes of me?’

  ‘Ah, the touch I have is only for Irishmen. You’ve no need of an outside opinion, surely. You know yourself, Robin Stewart.’

  ‘I know myself,’ said the Archer, and his bony hands tightened white on his tankard. ‘And I don’t need to like what I know. But, God, do we
know other people?’

  ‘Who is it—d’Aubigny?—that you dislike? You needn’t see much of him, surely?’

  ‘He knows the secret of a good life—’

  ‘Has he taught you it?’

  ‘I can learn,’ said Stewart with the same suppressed violence. ‘I haven’t a title—I haven’t money or education—I’ve not even a decent name. I’ve got to learn; and I tell you this: I’ll work like a dog for the man that’ll teach me.’

  ‘Teach you what? Success?’

  ‘Success—or how to do without it,’ said Robin Stewart bitterly.

  The ollave lay back. The waxlight shone on the black, lightless hair, the stained gown limp on his stomach and the hand, idly playing which still lay on the table. The trace of wine, like a jewel on the timber, was tremulous with a hundred wax lights. ‘And the best way to success—or the other thing—is an illegal printing press?’ said Thady.

  By speechless instinct, the Archer’s hand moved to his sword. Then his face relaxed; his hand dropped. Here was a decent, drunken crony who would be gone in three days. The presses were not normally used at this hour; he had never contemplated Mr. Ballagh detecting them. But Dod … what harm could a man do who would be thrown out on his ear if he so much as breathed on the King’s boots? Most of his thought lingering all too clearly on his face, he rescued the pause, just too late; saying, ‘How did you guess?’