Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [16]
Thankfully, Lord d’Aubigny left, taking O’LiamRoe with him, and the Irish accents rolled back along the passage, giving an untrammeled account of some fantasy-life of his horse harness. Mistress Boyle pulled in Robin Stewart and shut the door. ‘Come in, for the sake of God, and the two of you tell me something of that champion of the Slieve Bloom, that would fetch his price cut into two hairy hearthrugs and cured. I heard tell he was queer, but not as terrible queer as all that.’
She had poured them wine, and Thady Boy, working diligently, was almost restored to his normal condition. He relaxed. ‘You’ve seen him. What else is there? It was O’LiamRoe’s misfortune to be born a prince with a smart lot of followers instead of a little, mad-like professor with a wife and a pension and a shining day-long circle of pupil-philosophers; not a one over twelve. I met him at his castle, a great slab of wet rock with rats in it. He will talk you dry on any subject you wish; it’s all in his head. And, of course, he is the unhandiest thing in life. Not one finger of him is on speaking terms with the next.’
Stewart grinned. Thady Boy raised his wine in faltering salute to the girl, whose gaze had not moved from his face, and slammed it back on the chair arm as Mistress Boyle said, ‘You are nippy enough yourself, we were hearing, and a terrible smart fellow up a rope. Are they putting games on you, in the long training you have, now?’ And she shrieked with laughter. The girl did not smile.
‘And teaching us to run like the wind too; ’Tis fundamental’, said Thady Boy sourly. ‘And when serving such as the Prince of Barrow, it would be a great help and comfort to be invisible as well.’
Oonagh O’Dwyer got up. Silent as a cat, she walked over and removed from Thady Boy’s lax hands his dry cup. ‘Why come to France with him?’ she said. ‘To set your epigrams pimping for a little free drink?’
‘Free, is it?’ said Thady. ‘I thought I was paying for it.’
‘ ’Tis a little polished living the fellow is after,’ said Mistress Boyle comfortably.
‘Polished living! With The O’LiamRoe stuck on me, and the jaws of him going like the leper clappers?’
‘Ballagh’s here for asylum,’ said Robin Stewart, grinning. ‘He’ll tell you he’s come for the money, but it’s woman trouble, mark me.’
‘And O’LiamRoe, has he woman trouble too?’ asked Oonagh O’Dwyer of Thady.
Mr. Ballagh was exasperated. ‘Have I the second sight? I was one week at his castle, and there was no woman in it barring his ma and the kitchens; and two weeks at sea when he passed his time on his two knees splicing ropes like the wind in the barley fields. I never caught him so much as wink at the figurehead.’
The older woman sat back in her seat, chuckling; but Oonagh O’Dwyer spoke like an ancient goddess in her black hair. ‘He doesn’t mind being laughed at?’
‘Not if he can laugh first.’
‘Well, cock’s blood,’ said Robin Stewart with annoyance. ‘He was asked over to discuss ways and means of throwing the English out of Ireland. Is it a joke, just?’
‘Oh, he’s got a brain in him. He’ll talk all you want,’ said the ollave, wildly airy. ‘And maybe the King’ll get one or two good ideas off him, if he can stand him at all. But first and last and in the middle, The O’LiamRoe plans to treat himself to a small private survey on how the rich live … and it paid for by somebody else.’
Mistress Boyle shook with laughter and Robin Stewart was delighted. But the black-haired girl turned on her heel and walked out of the room.
III
Rouen: The Nut Without Fruit
Thou shall not bind anyone to pay in kine … who has not kine; thou shalt not bind anyone to pay in land, who is wandering;… thou shalt not bind a naked person to pay in clothes unless he has got raiment: it is as a nut without fruit to adjudicate