Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [2]
THOMAS BUTLER, Earl of Ormond, an Irishman resident in England, also of the Mission
SIR GILBERT DETHICK, Garter King of Arms
SIR JOHN PERROT, illegitimate son of the late King Henry VIII
SIR JAMES MASON, retiring English Ambassador in France
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
The Lymond Chronicles
Characters
Part One
THE VULGAR LYRE
Part Two
DANGEROUS JUGGLES
Part Three
LONDON: THE EXCITEMENT OF BEING HUNTED
Part Four
THE LOAN AND THE LIMIT
Reader’s Guide
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
The chapter headings are taken from the Brehon Laws, the ancient laws and institutes of Ireland. The Senchus Mor itself was written in the 5th century, A.D.
Part One
THE VULGAR LYRE
My son, that thou mayest know when the head of a king is upon a plebeian, and the head of a plebeian upon a king.
The Fork Is Chosen
I: Silent in the Boat
II: Dieppe: The Pitfalls and the Deer
III: Rouen: The Nut Without Fruit
IV: Rouen: Fine, Scientific Works Without Warning
V: Rouen: Fast Drivings for the Purpose of Killing
VI: Rouen: The Difficult and the Impossible
The Fork Is Chosen
The cauldron is exempt from its boiling when the food, the fire and the cauldron are properly arranged, but that the attendant gives notice of his putting the fork into the cauldron. That is, but so he warns: ‘Take care,’ says he. ‘Here goes the fork into the cauldron.’
SHE wanted Crawford of Lymond. His nerves flinching from the first stir of disaster, the Chief Privy Councillor understood his mistress at last.
Regal, humourless, briskly prosaic, the Queen Dowager of Scotland had conducted the audience with her usual French competence and was bringing it to its usual racing conclusion. She was a big woman, boxed in quilting in spite of the weather, and Tom Erskine was limp with her approaching visit to France.
To the most extravagant, the most cultured, the most dissolute kingdom in Europe the Queen Mother was shortly to sail, and her barons, her bishops and her cavalry with her. And now, it appeared, she wanted one man besides.
The Queen Mother was a subtle woman, and not Scots. The thick oils of statesmanship ran in Mary of Guise’s veins, and she rarely handed through the door what she could throw in by the cat’s hole. So she talked of safe conducts and couriers, of precedents and programmes, of gifts and people to meet and to avoid before she added, ‘And I want intelligence, good intelligence, of French affairs. We had better place some sort of observer.’
Her Privy Councillor had never found her foolish before. From the Duke de Guise downwards, every member of that privileged family, with its quarterings of eight sovereign houses, its Cardinals, its Abbesses and its high and influential posts at the French Court, might be worldly, might be charming, would almost certainly be a congenital gambler; but would never be foolish.
These were the Queen Dowager’s brothers and sisters—good God, where better could she go for intimate news? Granted, it was now twelve years since, a young French widow, she had come to Scotland as King James V’s bride, and eight years since he died, leaving her with a war, a baby Queen and a parcel of rebellious nobles. True, again, that she would be watched, by her Scottish barons no less than by the enemies of her brothers in France. Only, for a French King, however friendly, to find an informer at Court would be disaster. Erskine said aloud, ‘Madam … you are supposed to be joining your daughter, nothing else.’
‘—Some sort of observer,’ she was repeating, quite unruffled. ‘Such as Crawford of Lymond.’
With an elegant yellow head in his mind’s eye, and in his ears a tongue like sword cutler’s emery, Tom Erskine said bluntly, ‘His name and face are known the length of France. And I’m damned sure he’ll not be persuaded.’ Notoriously, at some time, every faction in the kingdom had tried to buy Lymond’s services. Nor was the bidding restricted to Scotland, or