Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [127]
Thady Boy rocked on his hunkers and sat down, looking at once pleased, alarmed and vaguely apologetic. ‘Ah, clumsy fellow that I am. Would you think it: I’ve killed him stone dead.’
It was delicious, the climax of the evening. You could sense their satisfaction and their lack of surprise as the exaggerated laughter and bravas filled the room. They had assumed that their blissful sluggard would pay for his drink in good coin. Rimed and sparkling with sugar, the wrestler lay like some child’s flaccid sweetmeat in death, and the dogs licked his eyelids.
The evening was soon over. The King and his suite left, and then the Queen; but Thady Boy Ballagh, full of spirits, scraped precariously through his obeisances and stayed on with his flask and his admirers. Then Mary of Guise rose to go, and at the same moment Thady got to his feet and went pattering unsteadily towards the Scottish Court.
Unbelieving, Margaret Erskine saw him approach, saw him favour her with a tipsy smile, and then pass by to tug at Lord Culter’s fine sleeve. Richard Crawford, his face rigid, found himself looking straight into his brother’s blue gaze, the stink of sweat and wine and drunken humanity rising to his nostrils.
Thady Boy’s sibilants were precocious, but his sentiments were candidly warm. ‘Come and see me, if you want to, my dear. One day soon, before you leave us for Amboise.’
Margaret saw Richard’s grey eyes flicker, checking. No one else within earshot; but the exchange was obvious, of course, to all who cared to look. Richard said, carefully, ‘The sieur d’Enghien is watching you.’
‘He’s jealous,’ said Thady Boy, and giggling archly, showed signs of moving off.
Smiling, speaking quietly in the same even voice, Culter said, ‘People will talk. How can I come?’
A long, unclean finger caressed him under the chin. ‘How prudent you are,’ said Thady Boy plaintively. ‘The only people who matter know now exactly who I am. But you may show me and them marvellous stratagems, if you like. Sleep well, my sweet, and have modest dreams …’
He drifted away none too soon, for Madame Marguerite had come to claim him, and then d’Enghien brought him more drink. Margaret Erskine did not see with whom he went home.
Next morning, as the Scottish Court of Queen Mary of Guise was preparing to shift to fresh quarters at Amboise, Thady Boy, under pressure, moved to occupy more accessible rooms in the vacated wing.
He was half-packed by midmorning when Lord Culter arrived at his door. On the threshold he stood still. Lymond, left to speak first, said agreeably, ‘Quite so. I, King of Flesh, flourishing in my flowers. Come in. I am sensible, sober, and have no designs on your virtue.’
Richard’s reserve, so swiftly noted, broke and vanished. Smiling in return, he shut the door and came forward to give Francis his embrace. Beneath his hands he felt the extra flesh and was sorry. And as his eyes took in the dry, blackened hair, the unresilient skin, the shortened focus of far-seeing eyes, reduced and reddened by late nights and smoke—‘You are a devil, Francis,’ he said.
He had expected to find this difficult, but in fact talk came quite easily. He gave the family tidings, answered some light questions and noted that Lymond was in reality much less interested in the new building at Midculter than he was in the political news.
They talked of Scottish affairs. Outside, a black winter’s rain had been falling all morning. The dismantled room was untidy and dark, and hardly cheered by a new fire full of whimsy and smoke. The open box at his feet caught Lymond’s attention. Rising, he disappeared into the little cabinet next door and returned, after a space, with a towel and his baggage straps. He added them to the general litter, then shutting the empty coffer and sitting on it, said, ‘What about the Morton inheritance? George Douglas is ready to be bought