Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [185]
Within the feudal fortress with its seventeen hooped drum towers, tunnelled out of black Trélazé, were Queen Catherine and her guests the two Queens of Scotland, with Margaret Erskine in their train. In the stony cells of the western tower was Robin Stewart. And living in the crowded, painted town, all florid with stone and appled wood and sliced and medal-packed slate, were the Scottish nobles, among whom was Sir George Douglas; the humble lodging of the Prince of Barrow and his servant Dooly; and the pied à terre of the lively Mistress Boyle and her fine niece Oonagh.
All this Lymond knew from the Vidame and from the Bourbons’ merciless chatter. And riding with his silken banner and his servants and his own blazing livery of red and blue and tasselled gold over the River Maine and past the monolithic bastions, tower after black tower rising two hundred feet high over his head, Lymond nearly allowed Cormac O’Connor to succeed in picking a quarrel with him at last. For his main emotion, approaching his friends, the Scottish Court, all those knowledgeable eyes which knew him for the former Thady Boy Ballagh, was one of anger: sheer, helpless anger because, prinked like a cake baker at a ball, he had condemned himself to a tawdry transformation which would label him juvenile, would label him apostate, as surely as The O’LiamRoe’s silk suits and shaved chin had done.
Riding, then, across the north bridge into the castle of Angers, Lymond addressed his absent friends bitterly under his breath. ‘Don’t show your satisfaction too much. Don’t smile; don’t signal your congratulations. Or by God, ladies and gentlemen, you shall have Thady Boy Ballagh back for life.’
It was Saturday, the 6th of June, and on the 19th the English were due. That afternoon, Robin Stewart was examined before the King’s Grand Council at Angers. Lymond, who was having a briefly momentous interview with the Queen Dowager, was not present, but The O’LiamRoe and his lordship of Aubigny were. All that emerged, and all that the attendant flock of lawyers and clerks were able to reduce from it, was proof after damning proof of Robin Stewart’s confessed guilt, together with an utterly unsubstantiated accusation against Lord d’Aubigny which his lordship, high-coloured and angry, coldly denied.
O’LiamRoe, his evidence unwanted, was silent throughout. His most powerful memory of an unpleasant experience was the little silence after Stewart’s diatribe against his former captain, when the Archer’s eyes, passionate in his sunk, meagre face, had turned on him. The look had held a fearful triumph, and an accusation as well. Stewart had carried out his share of the bargain. It remained for O’LiamRoe to support him in the other half, when he chose to call on him to expose Francis Crawford of Lymond.
His other recollection came at the end, when sentence had been passed. It was not a quick or dainty death they had devised for Stewart; but he must have expected that. What he had not expected, clearly, was the smooth jettisoning of the entire case against Lord d’Aubigny. It was then that he began to shout, and they took him away. O’LiamRoe, his round face pale, wanted to leave, but had to wait until the King rose. The hearing had been short because of the bearbaiting in the moat. Stewart had not even had time, at the end, to mention Lymond. It came to O’LiamRoe that Stewart would only do that anyway, if humanly possible, in Lymond’s presence, and with the largest audience he could get.
It was at this moment that he heard Lord d’Aubigny, laughing, suggest to his grace that in view of the discomfort he personally had suffered, the Court was entitled to a little amusement, not to say revenge. He proposed that Robin Stewart should be exposed in the moat; and the suggestion, with some pleasantries,