Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [18]
‘Governess’ as applied to Jenny Fleming was the most irrational of terms. Mary had her teachers for every art and science, and her faithful Janet Sinclair for nurse. Jenny, who could govern nothing, and least of all herself, was her companion in mischief. A king her father, an earl her grandfather, her dead husband a great and wealthy Scots baron, she had been born like a honeycomb moth into silk and soft living; and despite seven children, had preserved in her thirties the vivid, autocratic and expensive sparkle of her youth.
Now, leaving her escort by the bridge, she plunged down with her horse to the shore, her companion following. She waved to Robin Stewart as she passed and Stewart flushed and waved back, and wondered who the quiet, plump young girl behind her might be. He did not know Margaret Erskine.
‘A whale! Does it swim? Does it spout? May I look at it?’
The enormous creature lay in the shallow water. As its attendants grinned and chattered, an impossible jaw dropped and the whiskers of O’LiamRoe rose, tadpole-like, from the Leviathan depths. He bowed, and smiled like a sickle. ‘’Tis better still inside: the Eighth Wonder surely, but a small bit damp for the very Rose of Jericho like yourself.’
She laughed at him, her firm, dimpled face sparkling. ‘You’re the Irishman!’
‘One of them. The other’s behind you.’
She turned. The unkempt figure of Thady Boy Ballagh stood gloomily waiting. ‘He’s angry. What’s he angry about?’ she said.
‘He wants to get to Rouen and start his drinking. But there was a serious situation here, will you note, to be dealt with first.… You’re a Scotswoman, surely. Do you stay here?’
Jenny was alight with mischief; had been joyous with excitement from her flaming hair to her cork-soled shoes since she arrived. She opened her mouth, but Margaret Erskine’s quiet voice forestalled her. ‘We stay at Court. Perhaps we shall have the pleasure of seeing you there. Mother, we must go.’
‘Yes, but we must introduce ourselves first. You are O’LiamRoe—I can tell. And this? Aren’t there three of you?’
‘The richest soil,’ said Mr. Ballagh’s cutting voice from behind, ‘is known for its three weeds. An old Irish saying. You will excuse us. We are expecting an audience with the King.’
A square body; a quiet voice; brown eyes in a plain, country-woman’s face—Margaret Erskine, twice-married at twenty and with a son of her own, controlled her mother as no one had done since her father died. She drew her now from this dangerous amusement as she had done many another; and gave no hint, as she and Jenny remounted, and called greetings, and moved off, that she knew whom she was facing.
The O’LiamRoe barely watched them go. He turned, rubbing his hands, to Thady Boy. ‘Is it not like the Great Fair of Carman, which the forty-seven kings came to?’
‘Would it strike you that the kings now and then ate?’ said the ollave. ‘Here’s Master Stewart waiting for you like Job, and Piedar Dooly with the eyes in his face set with glassing bands. And where will you be if the King sends and you are not yet in your other frieze cloak?’
‘This is—’ began O’LiamRoe, and broke off, mildly annoyed. ‘There’s a powerful lot of fussing about the clothes on me.’
‘Faith, well,’ said Thady Boy patiently. ‘But it’s a prince he’s expecting, man; not a Water Sheerie.’ And they set off side by side to the horses, leaving the riverbank, the whale and the four men, one of whom, as any inquisitive passer-by might see, had no heel to one foot.
The party from Ireland, it was understood, was to be struck by the magnificence of the King of France, and by the wealth and loyalty of his subjects, as a prelude to any personal talks which might follow. So a bedroom and a parlour had been put at their disposal in the Croix d’Or, a large new inn off the Place du Marché; and that, as Robin Stewart remarked, was just about worth the monthly returns of Notre Dame, accommodation being