Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [163]
That same Thursday night, Lymond returned from his fruitless journey to Islington, changed, and armed with de Chémault’s authority and his own powerful insignia of office, went straight to Warwick to express his formal concern at the plot which had come to light involving a Scot in his custody named Brice Harisson, to request that Harisson should be permitted to visit de Chémault for questioning, and to ask English help in tracing and capturing Harisson’s accomplice, the Scot Stewart.
It was the routine opening in a game imposed now on both sides: every move must be made in public, and its predestined course was quite clear. The French Ambassador had no doubt that the man Vervassal would handle it competently.
And aside from this competence, there was an understanding of the unseen balances of the situation which went deeper than de Chémault’s own. When, unguardedly, he had spoken of Stewart to his wife and she had exclaimed, ‘An assassin! Ah, not from John and Anne’s own company! How he will feel it!’—he had felt, without seeing it, the flick of Lymond’s attention. He knew that, convalescing from some injury, Crawford had been pressed into duty by the Queen Dowager in the absence of other accredited messenger—a thing not uncommon for a well-born younger son. He knew a little, even, of his past history, for Tom Erskine was an old friend. He would have liked to have known more. Jehanne, his wife, he guessed was afraid of the queer, catlike young man with the stick.
They had begun supper when Lymond returned, served privately tonight in the Ambassador’s own quarters, the men moving quietly with the mutton and quail, their livery caps neatly laid on the buffet. On the tapestry cloth Jehanne’s silver sparkled in the late April sun.
It was she who heard the step pass the door, and was driven by her housewifely instincts to rise and bring him in. He turned as she called after him, ‘M. Crawford, we have kept supper for you!’ and came in. But although he took his place courteously at their table and made conversation fluently, he crumbled his way absently through the meal, unimpressed by her cooking; clearly interested only in making an end so that he could inflict business on Raoul.
He began, in fact, before they had finished, when she had barely ended her best story of the baby’s attack on the cat. Certainly he smiled at her, and said something she must try to recall next time she wrote to Maman. But the next instant he had turned to her husband and broached the subject of his interview with the Lord Great Master of the King’s Majesty’s most Honourable Household with no apology at all.
She did not, of course, fully understand the details. She watched him instead play with a silver cup filled with their best wine, untouched, while he said, ‘Exactly the kind of story you would expect Warwick and his friends to concoct. According to him, three weeks ago Stewart came to them with an offer, but Lord Warwick was perfectly ignorant of what it might be until today. He is shocked, appalled, disgusted, and will do everything in his power to help us.’
Raoul did not seem put out at having his favourite meal interrupted; indeed his voice was less testy than she had often heard it, at the end of a long day of work. ‘And Stewart and Harisson?’
‘Harrison was arrested, of course, for reasons quite unconnected with this affair. The letters to the Queen Dowager. That is their story, and they are bound to keep to it.’ The herald paused. The despised wine, beneath his spare fingers, rinsed the rim of the cup, and Jehanne tensed in her seat. The tapestry was expensive.
Then Vervassal said, ‘I had no need to ask them to help find Robin Stewart. My talk with Harisson evidently had some effect, even if it was not quite what I intended. In his rather tardy efforts to pacify Warwick, Harisson sold the Archer to him instead of to us. In other