Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [133]
The door closed. Tight-faced, Oonagh O’Dwyer watched it; and heard nothing until a blow took her, like the clap of a shovel, first on her right cheek and then her left, rocking her back among the spindly gilt stools. ‘You greedy, beef-witted slut,’ said Theresa Boyle from behind her, her face blotched, her hair wild. ‘Did I bring you here to come jolly into your season at the first taste of a man?’ The loud, able, jocular figure of the Porc-épic at Dieppe had quite gone. But in Mistress Boyle’s face, with its vizored teeth, its reddened, weather-glazed skin, its staring eyes, its grey spiky hair about the strong jaws, there was visible the brisk malice of the cheetah hunt on the day that the little hare died.
It was, obviously, a foray in what had been a long battle, with sores on each side. Oonagh, recovering with a twist of her body, laid her hand to the altar and would have retorted, violently, with one of the candlesticks had not her aunt caught her wrist. Oonagh said, in a strange voice like thin foil, ‘I should be careful.’ Then, after a moment ‘You have the mind of a cockroach. If anything pulls us down in the mire, it will be you. I told that fellow nothing. You would hear that, devil mend you, since you were listening.’
‘I was watching also,’ said Theresa Boyle. ‘And my two eyes gave me news. It was a fine welcome, that, after the journey I have had.’
Released, the younger woman sat down; then, finding the candlestick still in her hands, replaced it. ‘You went to see our honourable friend?’
‘I did.’
‘And he knows that Ballagh is Crawford of Lymond?’
‘Naturally he knows. He sent a message for you.’
Oonagh’s eyes, frowning, were on the strong, embattled mouth. ‘Why for me?’
Mistress Boyle laughed, a familiar, wholehearted screech. ‘Did you get comfortable with the notion that I would take all the blame? “Oonagh O’Dwyer deceived me,” he says. “Oonagh O’Dwyer let me believe that Lymond and Phelim O’LiamRoe were one and the same man. She deceived me unwittingly, she says. Then let her prove it, by God.” ’
There was a short silence. Oonagh said, ‘How?’
Smiling, Theresa Boyle turned, and with a broad, horsewoman’s hand, slapped the wood of the organ. An uneasy sound, muffled and metallic, answered back. ‘Thady Boy Ballagh will be dead in two sennights.’
‘The plan is to go on?’ The oval, pale-skinned face showed nothing now.
‘The plan to deal with your musical friend is to go on. And if you warn Master Ballagh, or divert him, or if he escapes in any way, whether with your help or not, you and our cause, Oonagh O’Dwyer, are both lost.’
The broad, brown fingers with their grained nails were lying spread on the keys. Oonagh glanced at them; then rising, turned to the door. ‘What are we now?’ she said bitterly, opening it to the warm bustling world just outside. ‘We and our cause?’
II
Amboise:
An Accident Happens
If a sensible adult brings a horse to the structure and an accident happens, a fine according to the nature of the case is due from the sensible adult.
CHARACTERISTICALLY, the plan to brush Lymond finally from the path was so expensive, so wasteful and so baroque that no one guessed it or anticipated it, and Francis Crawford himself was neither warned nor, certainly, diverted.
He had not, patently, told his brother all he knew, and Richard did not press it, trusting to his promise that in two weeks he would be gone. In Scotland Lord Culter was known, with cause, as a good man to find beside you in trouble. He took from the Erskines’ willing shoulders the burden of safeguarding the Queen and set a watch on all Lymond’s movements.
Of this last, Lymond was ignorant. They met once, on the eve of Richard’s departure for Amboise, long enough for the ollave to observe, in passing, ‘You may relax, my dear, No elixir à successions as yet in my soup.’ He looked magnificently lightheaded, trapped in his own image like a fighting fish attacking a mirror. After that, they did not meet for two weeks.
The Scottish Queen Dowager’s sojourn