Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [131]
The Queen Dowager’s eminent observer replied reasonably, as he had done throughout. ‘Tell me another way.’
There was a handkerchief rolled tightly in Lymond’s left hand, which he had used to stifle the coughing. With a brusque movement, his brother pulled it away, and wordlessly flattened it between his brown, capable fingers. In streaks and patches, the linen was stiff with fresh blood. ‘Dear God, Francis,’ said Richard Crawford, his voice suddenly stifled by the agony in his throat. ‘—Dear God, dear God, what do you want of me? Must I choose between my own child and you?’
He stopped. The silence stretched on. After the first moment of shock, Lymond’s face was unreadable. But his voice when he spoke was deliberate and undramatic. ‘I have promised to ride in the Mardi Gras procession two weeks from now. On the following day, I shall go home. Will that do?’
Richard did not at first reply. Whatever he had expected, it was not a surrender, clean and complete, of this sort. In three sentences, Francis had abandoned his mission, his hopes of trapping a murderer, his justification for killing a man waiting for mercy. It was a brutal gift, and one which, without compunction, Lord Culter meant to accept.
Considering Lymond, flat now on the bed in wordless communion with the ceiling, Richard spoke. ‘My dear, you are only a boy. You have all your life still before you.’
On the tortoise-shell bed, his brother did not move. But there was no irony for once in his voice when he answered. ‘Oh, yes, I know. The popular question is, For what?’
Mardi Gras was two weeks away. Next day, the Queen Dowager and all her train moved off to Amboise. Shortly afterwards Thady Boy, a little less noisy than usual, crossed the bridge too, to call on Mistress Boyle and her niece Oonagh at Neuvy. The aunt was away, but relatives and house guests, as usual, filled the rooms. After laying before them, like cherries, all the gossip of Blois, entering into a satisfactory, hard-drinking argument with a party of guests and skilfully avoiding a meal, Thady got Oonagh O’Dwyer to himself; or she got him.
‘Well?’ They were in the little oratory, their voices echoing from the cut stone, their clothing coloured by the handsome windows. There was an organ he had to see.
‘A pet of a lady,’ said Thady gratifyingly, of the organ. ‘See you to the bellows, now, while I try her.’
Oonagh O’Dwyer did not stir. She had ridden that afternoon, letting the wind whip her coiling black hair, and had left it to hang free, silky-swinging on her furred brocade. She said, ‘And so Phelim O’LiamRoe has gone. You had better luck with that fellow than I had.’
Thady Boy’s face, looking up from the keys, was innocently clear. ‘He disliked me more,’ he said gravely. ‘A stout child, O’LiamRoe. Between us, maybe, we did him a little good. Is there any message you have I should tell to him?’
Her lips parted, but she did not speak. Instead, she stepped up on the platform and taking the bellows, glanced at him through the glittering pipes. ‘You are going home, then?’
‘By Shrove Tuesday. I haven’t put my two hands round my mouth with the news as yet. Indeed, formal leave-taking is a thing I don’t care for. Explanations are far better left unsaid. Faix, girl, it’s a positive organ. Your blowing would be just fine for a standpipe of mice.’ And as, irritated, she gave the two bellows a sudden, bad-tempered beating, he put one finger hard on the keys.
An acute, tinny buzz, mercilessly sustained, seared at her nerves. She sat back on her heels, bellows loosed, as the sound drily expired. They eyed one another. Thady, hatless in a soiled concoction of yellow, performed a silent arpeggio up and down the dumb keys, and launched into a memorable parody of the chapel organist’s politely faded technique. After watching judicially for a while, she gave him air for it. The organ sang out, filling the church, while she looked down at his hands on the keys and the sliders.
She had known he could play. She knew also, or guessed, how much of his mind it occupied. As,