Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [112]
The next day, Friday the 16th of January, opened quietly. Blois slept late these days, for the King, never privileged to share his own father’s council, gave his own the least possible regard; and during a season of sport or fêting abandoned it with relief to the de Guises, to the Constable, to the Marshals and the cool, overseeing glance of Diane, who never slept.
This year, the pleasure seeking hid more than the King’s ingrained resentment and his wish to please and renew the love of his friends. Beneath the surface were new tensions, no less disturbing for being petty. About this time rumour, unavoidably, had begun to play about the appearance of Lady Fleming. She, moving serenely about her daily adventures, was undisturbed; but the rift between the Constable and the Duchess de Valentinois was now perfectly patent.
It could be guessed also, without pretence of secrecy, that the Queen Dowager of Scotland was finding it harder to harness her unruly nobles. Honours, pensions, ready money in the purse, had done nothing but sharpen their hunger. Failing the bribery they were worth, their minds turned again to power and to their duty to their religion, belligerently recalled. Tom Erskine, lingering on his way back from Augsburg and cumbered with transactions to do with papal legations and bishoprics, and with arrangements for the French garrisons and armies at home, was still there, doing his best to doctor the mess, while waiting to leave in due time to complete his last treaty of peace back in England, and to return to Stirling and Margaret’s small son at their home.
The invitation to Richard Crawford, which it had been totally impossible not to send, was now a month old. Lymond had been told, with extreme circumspection, that his brother had been sent for, but it was hard to say if he either listened particularly or understood.
The entertainment for this evening had been designed by the Constable and Queen Catherine, not with a new guest in mind, but in an effort to rationalize the feverish gaiety in the castle, and to reduce the tension. It was to be a private festival held by the inner Court for itself, and the only guests apart from the two Irishmen would be less guests than pensioners: the professors and scholars and scientists and wits who came by invitation to Blois, and sitting at the King’s elbow, turned somersaults for him in the swept galleries of thought. From Paris, Toulouse, Angers, not all of them had heard of Thady Boy. The King, amused, did not enlighten them. The new toy, wound up, clicking and jumping, was to be set among the pedants unawares.
For this reason perhaps, Thady Boy was not much in evidence during the day. The O’LiamRoe saw him twice only. The first time, as the ollave was dressing, he had sat himself astride a chair and said mildly, ‘In my day, as I remember, it was customary to ask permission before leaving one’s employment—The Lord guard us, are these all the clothes you have?’ And flinching aside from the shirt and trunks and doublet the ollave was donning, Phelim had opened the clothes chest. Piled and screwed up within were the other costumes, jewelled, embroidered and beribboned, given Thady Boy by the King of France. They had all been handled like rags.
Lymond was ready, in a hurry, and not interested in O’LiamRoe. ‘You’ve no need to believe every tale I tell Robin Stewart. It was the only way at the time to get rid of him. He’s welcome to sail back to Ireland and stay there, if he wants to. I’ll go soon enough … in better company than that.’
He hadn’t mentioned, but Piedar Dooly had, the incident of the arsenic. Watching him now, lute in hand, hurrying off to Diane, or to d’Enghien, to St. André, to Marguerite, or any of a score of his acolytes, masters, or mistresses, O’LiamRoe was conscious of a sourness in his mouth which recalled suddenly the taste of other wretchedness