Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [160]
On board ship, this arrangement lost most of its attraction. Stewart suffered George Paris’s bland self-confidence all the way to Ireland. There was no future with Lord d’Aubigny. There was no future with any of the gentlemen whom he served and envied and criticized so bitterly. What he had to sell, he would market in England.
The violence of the decision was in itself a deliverance. He held to it through all the difficulty of getting to London: the curricle; the fishing boat up to Scotland; the horse bought with the gold provided by the Kingdom of France to pay for the journey of Cormac O’Connor.
Once in London, he had found Harisson, and he was no longer alone. The plotting he had enjoyed. He had always found it satisfying, since his earliest efforts in France, quite apart from the rewards he hoped it would bring him. When, stepping ashore at Dieppe, Destaiz had brought him the news that O’LiamRoe was a danger to them and was to be removed, he had decided on a casual gesture, as flamboyant as Thady Boy’s ascent of the rigging, and with Destaiz had arranged for the fire at the inn.
That had failed. Someone else had got O’LiamRoe into trouble over the tennis court meeting with the King, and he had kept out of the affair with the elephants. But he had found the hunting of the Queen’s hare exhilarating. He could still picture O’LiamRoe’s face when the woman O’Dwyer had arrived and he had been forced to present her with the dog. And when he saw the cheetah arrive. That had not been difficult to arrange: a respectful suggestion just beforehand to the old mistress had been enough.
So there he was, with a very good chance of involving both O’LiamRoe and the child Mary before the day was over; his only worry, to keep the scent of the leveret he carried from the dogs. How was he to know that O’LiamRoe’s bitch would actually tackle the cat?
After that, he had begun to think that he might do better on his own. He had the arsenic he had stolen at St. Germain—he had told Harisson about that. He had mentioned also that the way was open, now and then, into Mary’s anteroom, where the cotignac was. There was no harm in Harisson or Warwick being aware of his special chances, and also of his special ingenuity. He said nothing, discreetly, of having doctored the tablet already; nor of the discovery, made just before he left, that all the poisoned sweetmeat had gone. He was only beginning, in bloodshot snatches of retrospect, to realize the part Lymond had played.
The name of Thady Boy Ballagh he could barely bring himself to mention. Nor, with belated wisdom, had he betrayed the fact that nearly all he had done had been done under direction. He wanted Harisson to admire his proficiency. And he felt, common sense struggling dimly through the smoking wreck of his ardours, that Brice, tender friend that he was, would be less likely to aid him find a new sponsor if he realized that, back in France, was an employer he had abandoned already.
All that he put behind him. He might find it difficult to explain abandoning O’Connor in Ireland, of course. He might have to return anonymously, and work and bribe under cover. But that would be easy. He would have money from Warwick; he knew the weak links, the irresponsible guards, the kitchenmaids. And once the thing was done, he could leave France for good and find prestige, wealth and security at Warwick’s fine English Court.
No one suspected him. Lymond might have come to it—sullenly, you have to recognize the man’s perverted skill. But Lymond was poisoned and dead. The arrival of O’LiamRoe, left safely in Ireland, had shaken him, disturbed his precarious confidence. But there had been in it nothing ominous: a typical piece of foolishness by a foolish man.
Thrusting these thoughts behind him, Stewart smiled. Someone else might even attack the small Queen before him. And that would be even funnier. For Warwick would surely give him credit for it, just the same. No one