Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [166]
Old King Henry hadn’t stood for it. The Viceroys came back, or the Lords Deputy as they were called, and after a cracking rebellion during which an O’Neill actually got himself crowned King at Tara, the whole drove of nobles had been killed, or had been deserted or been bribed over to England. The ten-year-old Gerald of Kildare, whose family’s claim to rule had wrecked the Kildares for good, had fled to Italy, and the uprising had almost expired.
Then the earldoms flew like henfeed. Forty chiefs and lords submitted and got their English titles, renounced the Pope and promised to help the Lord Deputy’s raids; got houses and land near Dublin for their horses and servants when they trooped into Parliament, and sent their sons to be educated in England, or in the Pale.
And now, as the whole upheaval began to settle, crumbling, only one name stood out among the unpardoned. Brian O’Connor, lord of Offaly, brother-in-law of Silken Thomas, done to death after the notorious Pardon of Maynooth, and the strongest supporter of young Gerald, had had all his lands confiscated and had been flung into the Tower, still defiant. But his son Cormac was free, landless, unpardoned, and swearing revenge.
O’LiamRoe thought of that; and he thought, too, of the oath sworn by the ex-rebel Conn O’Neill, once crowned King at Tara, as he knelt before the King of England to be elevated to the title of Earl of Tyrone. ‘That I may utterly forsake the name of O’Neill. That I and my heirs shall use English habits. That I shall be obedient to the King’s law; and shall not maintain or succour any of the King’s enemies, traitors or rebels.…’
And he thought of the dog Luadhas and did not mention to Margaret Douglas when she probed, sewing with her women one sunlit afternoon after that, that had the King of France offered him ten thousand men and the ring of Gyges, he would still have shaken his head, related the tale of the two dogs and the eggshell, and trotted obstinately back home.
He told her instead, when she asked, about the grand ollave he had had, that was called Thady Boy Ballagh; and the time he filled the quintain with hot water at St. Germain, and wrecked the river pageant at Rouen with a herd of elephants, and upset the tumblers and began a riot in a cellar and climbed the steeple of St. Lomer in a race after dark.
He was aware of his glib tongue checking here and there, for the story did not come lightly to him. But her questions went on for ever, and her women giggled. At the end she said, ‘And your splendid Thady Boy, what happened to him? You told me he was still in France when you left.’
The ready pink moved up into O’LiamRoe’s clean-shaven face. He absently pawed the short, silky hair that would not disarrange, patted his padded silk chest and said, ‘No.…’twas a sad tale. In fact, the poor soul is dead.’
For a moment her eyes widened; then the lashes fell. Her strong fingers, idle for the moment, drifted among the silks in her alabaster box. ‘You didn’t tell me this. Of what?’
‘I only learned of the thing recently.’ Again the ready flow had stopped. O’LiamRoe said angrily, ‘He was a crazy fellow, with a devil at him, and going the foolish way to his grave.’
There was an odd look on Lady Lennox’s face: a look of astonishment mixed with a kind of satisfaction, as if he had confirmed something she had already suspected. In the midst of O’LiamRoe’s uneasiness, a piece of information dropped suddenly into place. Once, Lymond and Margaret Lennox had been lovers, and she had betrayed him nearly to his death, to be tricked and mishandled in return when he redeemed himself. George Douglas was this woman’s uncle. And George Douglas knew that Thady Boy and Lymond were one. Lady Lennox