Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [149]
Brice’s gift was an ear for languages. Able to mimic anything, he could remember dialect like music, idiom like the phrase of a tune. He had met Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, when the future Protector of England had been stationed with the English army on the north coast of France. And when Somerset returned to London, to lead England during the first years of the boy King Edward’s reign, Brice Harisson went with him, as interpreter and congenial, if junior, member of the Somerset secretarial staff.
Now Somerset’s power was in eclipse, and he had ceded control of the nation to the Earl of Warwick. So Harisson had leisure, a little money saved, a house not too far from Somerset’s palace and time to introduce the Prince of Barrow, O’LiamRoe hoped, to the more intimate circles of London life.
So, when the door opened and Brice Harisson came in, his brother’s letter of introduction in his hand, O’LiamRoe’s only concern, as he rose smiling, was whether to clasp hands or use the double embrace, as Michel habitually did. His host stood in the open doorway, small, dark, spare, dressed in thin-legged black with a high collar closely goffered to the ears—ears widely hinged, and for that reason covered on one side by a fall of thick, flat grey hair.
‘The Prince of Barrow, I understand?’ said Brice Harisson, in a voice in which disbelief struggled with boredom. ‘My brother, I fear, always rates too highly the time to spare in a busy Court such as ours. I have an appointment almost immediately. May I be of service to you first?’
Something had happened, clearly, to put him out of temper. O’LiamRoe had seen Michel, foiled in his plans, carry just this high colour, though with much less restraint. He said peaceably, ‘There is no reason to trouble you at all, at this minute. I will come back another time, surely, and we could settle down to a fine evening’s talk. There is a tavern up the street that could give a sup to us both.’
The door stood ajar, and the other man neither closed it nor made any move into the room. Impatience had added itself to the boredom; but even so O’LiamRoe was unprepared. Brice Harisson said, ‘If you will tell my steward precisely what you are selling, he will give you an answer to your lodgings. An introduction to the Duke, I am afraid I cannot contrive. He does not care for Irish hides and finds your cheeses a good deal too coarse. Roberts!’
There was a pause. Then, with the footsteps of the approaching steward in his ears, O’LiamRoe spoke, his vowels prodigiously round. ‘Isn’t that a Scot for you, now: never a new acquaintance but he looks for a bargain from it, as the mermaid said to the herring fisherman. I was here for friendship’s sake, and with news of your brother, that is all.’
The steward had reached Harisson’s elbow. He didn’t send him away. The brown eyes owl-like under high, brief tufted brows, he said, ‘I have no money to lend, either. Forgive me. My appointment is pressing. Roberts?’
At his side, the steward snapped fingers. Sword, cloak, gloves, were brought. He was booted already, and a flat hat, discreet and feathered, lay on his smooth head. Dressed, he stood aside so that O’LiamRoe had room to leave. ‘I shall get the case from the study, Roberts, myself. I am sorry, Prince, to disappoint you. I fear my brother and I parted company some time ago now and he outwore my patience before that with his procession of supplicants. I hope your stay in London is a profitable one.’
‘Ah, God save you, I make what profit I can out of the experiences that come my way,’ said O’LiamRoe. ‘That big boast of a man Michel would have knocked the head off me did I not sample the hospitality of his small, clever brother that has all the strange tongues so pat. And devil mend it, I would say you use your own tongue in the strangest way. The nearest I heard to it in nature was a retired streetwalker in Galway protecting her virtue.