Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [168]
‘My dear, the shock is mine. De par cinq cens mille millions de charretées de diables.’ said Lymond; and catching the monkey on his knee by the hairs of its chin, gazed from it to O’LiamRoe with bland enquiry. ‘—Le cancre vous est venu aux moustaches. Your whiskers, Phelim! Did your revulsion impel you to a general lustration?’
The Countess’s voice was calm. She lifted her sewing and spread it flat on her knee. ‘Don’t work so hard, Francis. The Red Lion. He needed them off for his disguise.’
The only method of dealing with that was to look as if one had known the fact was public property all along. While doing this, O’LiamRoe, his senses raw as a burned man’s on the side where Francis Crawford was seated, realized that in some way Lady Lennox had scored. In the second’s pause before Lymond answered, the Prince of Barrow said apologetically, ‘I was hard-set to look like an Englishman; a fine race but not as much hair with it as would furnish a Meath man with eyelashes.’
‘God,’ said Lymond. ‘Would they want them? Any Meath man I knew had his eyes pickled like radishes; you could wipe your feet on them and never a blink. In any case. Tu ne fais pas miracles, mais merveilles.’
‘He doesn’t understand French,’ said Margaret Lennox, lifting the little, precious box with her silks. She had recovered all her serenity. ‘Don’t you remember? Although from what I hear of your behaviour in France, your whole recollection is presumably blank. Someone gave you a slender excuse, and you drank yourself raving into the ditch. Degraded to the point of stupidity when you neglected the simplest precautions. How like you, Francis. And then, rescued no doubt by someone else, at considerable risk, you dress in diamonds, promenade the sodden pieces of your brain and wear your pitiful bruises soulfully like a cross. Are you even injured? Or are you walking like that for a wager?’
From his chair, in absolute disbelief, O’LiamRoe saw the alabaster box coming, cast with casual accuracy to pitch against the limbs so exquisitely exposed by the high cut of the tabard. It was a right-handed catch, for a quick man. Lymond flung up his left hand to intercept the blow, but it was O’LiamRoe’s arm, shooting forward, which diverted the box. It brought him down on his knees, blundering unavoidably against Lymond’s chair as he fell. The heavy case, grazed by his hand, shot off sideways, half-opening its alabaster mouth, and struck the monkey hard on the neck.
The blow was mortal. Without a sound, the furry thing dropped; and O’LiamRoe, crouching, caught it loose in his hands and laid it down, the winking chain dangling. Above him Francis Crawford, his face like a mask, bent too, but looked at neither O’LiamRoe nor the monkey. Lingering helpfully, after one curious glance, the Prince of Barrow looked at the white and tawny beauty of Margaret Lennox and thought of another animal and another death.
‘He smelt,’ said the Countess, and sitting back, watched O’LiamRoe resume his seat. Lymond, scooping up the dead monkey, laid it on the table beside his chair. ‘But at least we have enjoyed, my dear, the harrowing display of your impotence. What do you wish of me? Money? Or work?’
‘… For to give good smell and odour to the Emperor, and to void away all wicked airs and corruptions? Margaret, this air of chaste reproof—you have joined the Reformed religion, I know it. No more transubstantiation and other naughtiness? Matthew has turned Lutheran?’
In some way, in his turn he had silenced her. He added chidingly, ‘No?’
‘No.’
‘Then I should advise,’ said Lymond gently, ‘that he should give it serious thought. Meantime, to save you the trouble of asking him to leave, I have come for The O’LiamRoe.’ And the Prince of Barrow, thinking fast, found his former