Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [11]
Slowly, Thady Boy approached the bed. O’LiamRoe leaned on one elbow, and for a moment his blue eyes studied the dark, self-contained face of his secretary. Then he said, ‘Regretting you took the post, is it?’
‘Not yet.’
‘You are so, Master Ballagh. A spruce, tender prince of a master the like of a dead sheep for quietness would suit your book better, would he not?’
The ollave did not move. ‘Are you turning me off?’ he said.
‘God save you, no,’ said O’LiamRoe hospitably. ‘Would I live with one eye? It’s no secret that I haven’t a word of French and my English sprains its elbow now and then in the rush. Stay by all means if you want.’
The ollave’s attentive face relaxed. He turned, and shying his coat neatly into a chair, continued to undress. ‘If Piedar Dooly has managed for twenty years, I can subsist, surely, for a matter of months,’ he said.
‘Piedar Dooly’s a born liar. Never look for a true word out of a man with his two front teeth crossed. It’s a poor omen when his very dentures are scandalized with the tales of him. Did you hear his latest?’
‘Was it worth hearing?’
‘It was, too. At the time of the fire, our Piedar heard someone open a window, and he cast about outside afterwards for traces. You know the false sea they’re putting up in the market-place?’
‘I remember.’
‘Our inflaming friend in a hurry did not. He fell into it, and left great muddy footprints all up the street until Dooly lost him.’
‘If he lost him, it was hardly worth telling.’
‘True for you, except for this thing: the footprints were of a man lacking the right heel.’
‘Or with his heel hurt?’
‘If you had set fire to the bedcurtains of a guest of the King of France and were running away, there would be a time or two when even a sore heel would hit the ground; and his did not. I wonder,’ said O’LiamRoe thoughtfully, ‘why he didn’t just stab me outright, now.’
‘Because you weren’t there?’ suggested the ollave, with a certain acidity.
‘I have a notion,’ said O’LiamRoe comfortably, ‘that it was a fright only they were hoping to give me,’ and turning over, he closed his eyes.
There was silence. Thady Boy brooded. Then he scratched his dusty curls, ran a soot-blackened hand over his chin; considered, clearly, having a wash and thought better of it; and then, lifting up the ball of his jerkin, delved into a recess and brought out a bottle of spirits. He glanced across at O’LiamRoe. O’LiamRoe was fast asleep.
‘And devil the splash of fright there is on you, you great marmalade puss,’ said he. ‘And for an Irishman, you have the sorrow’s own want of common sense. So.’
And he blew out the candles.
The next day at breakfast, they had flattering news. A Court dignitary was arriving that morning to escort them, with Stewart, to Rouen. O’LiamRoe was pleased and interested. He had already admired the inn, the food and the Archer, whose padded silver and white, with spotless collar, fine hose and soft riding boots filled out a figure far from robust.
No thought of his own attire, clearly, had crossed O’LiamRoe’s cloudless mind. The carpetbags, when pulled out to the linings, had produced one change of clothes; but though whole and clean, the Prince of Barrow’s dress was as bizarre as before; and Mr. Ballagh was in threadbare black and one or two smears from his breakfast. Only Robin Stewart appreciated that their appearance and manners constituted an emergency, and knew that Lord d’Aubigny had been called in to deal with it.
Before he arrived, O’LiamRoe was asking eager questions. Would his lordship, for example, have the English?
‘Yes. He’s a Scotsman by origin,’ had said Stewart painstakingly. ‘Of the same surname as myself.’ He wondered how much about John Stewart of Aubigny he could suitably tell. That he was a cultivated gentleman who had once captained the King’s Garde de Corps of a hundred Scottish men-at-arms, but was now a Gentleman in Ordinary of the King’s Chamber, with a company of sixty lances to his name?
John Stewart had once