Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [104]
He climbed the staircase to his own wing automatically and blundered once, blindly, crossing a passage. Robin Stewart had remembered it with pleassure; Jenny Fleming as yet knew nothing about it; but Lymond had lived that evening with the memory of Oonagh O’Dwyer’s serenade and the knowledge that there awaited him in his room neither sleep nor peace but the Prince of Barrow.
Outside his own room he rested for a moment, his palm on the door, and for a moment looked neither brutal nor romantic nor indifferent. Then he heaved the door open and went in.
Inside, the storm was waiting for him; but it was not of O’LiamRoe’s making. The candles were burning, the fire was lit, but the room was empty except for Piedar Dooly, his black eyes venomous, the rawhide flanks of his face blotched with passion and prickled with the onset of his overnight beard. Thady Boy shut the door, and the fumes of strong wine from his clothes, stiff with spilled drink and dried sweat, filled the room. ‘Where’s His Highness?’
O’LiamRoe’s indifference to his ollave’s double identity had never been shared by his little Firbolg retainer. Dooly’s Wicklow accent was silky. ‘Isn’t it troubles enough you have without bothering yourself over O’LiamRoe? I hear you and the great gentlemen have been walking the length of the stars in your woollen stockings, and came back with the universe set in a ring.’ He broke off.
Thady, moving swiftly, stood over him. ‘Where is he?’
Between double lids, the Irishman’s eyes were full of hate. ‘You had wrestlers at Court this evening, I heard tell. A power of strong lads they must have been, and a terror for horseplay.… They jumped on O’LiamRoe, on his way home from Mistress O’Dwyer’s.’
‘And you were there?’ said Thady Boy.
‘Just behind. He’d been asked to stay at the house, Master Scotsman. He only left to discuss a certain thing with yourself.’ Again he stopped.
Thady Boy, leaning hands clasped over the back of a chair, said quietly, ‘There is no mark on you. So I have a fair idea, you see, that O’LiamRoe is not much hurt. But I think you should tell me.’
The colour high in his face, Piedar Dooly said, ‘There was a party of men in the next alley who heard us, and turned back to help. Two of the wrestlers were killed and one ran away—the Cornishman, we thought, but no one could swear to it. O’LiamRoe himself took a slash on the arm, and it pouring blood more than was correct for it; so he walked back to Mistress O’Dwyer’s.’ He paused. ‘I left him there. She has asked him back to Neuvy, tomorrow. I was to tell you that in the course of a piece maybe, he’ll be back.’
‘It would be better,’ said Thady Boy, ‘if he stayed at Blois.’
The Firbolg’s face had resumed the impassivity of leather. ‘He assumed you would say that. I was to tell you that, after looking at it this way and that, he preferred to go tomorrow to Neuvy. And the lady sent to tell you the same.’
Thady Boy’s voice was soft. ‘How did the lady put it precisely?’
‘Mistress O’Dwyer? She sent to say there was a welcome for you, the kind you might expect, at Neuvy; but did you prefer to stay with the Queens, she would look after himself for you. So she said.’
Finishing, he was aware of being subjected again to that dispiriting blue scrutiny. Then Ballagh said, ‘Is she fond of him? How fond?’
The irony on Piedar Dooly’s hollow-boned red face eased into contempt. ‘What call have I to discover a fondness between ladies and gentlemen? Yourself she don’t fancy at all. That I can swear to; but that will be no news to your lordship. God save us, ’Tis a highroad at your front door this night. Someone is scratching.’
Lymond had heard it. He got to the door, unlocked it, and had already made up his mind when young Lord Fleming, entering and shutting it, asked permission with his eyebrows to deliver his message.
‘Go on,’ said Lymond. He had returned to the fireplace and put his elbows on the stone, his grazed and battered hands hanging limp. Tell