Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [20]
‘Thady Boy, you are right,’ said O’LiamRoe. ‘And you are maybe worth your hire to me after all, for all the expense you are. Let you go downstairs and have a sup with Piedar, and I shall see what cloth I can put on my back for a game with those bloodsucking clegs in their gold lace, bad cess to them. Is he good?’
‘Who?’
‘King Henri. Is he a fair man with a ball?’
‘Middling good. He’s the best athlete in the kingdom, or thereby,’ said Thady Boy cruelly, and went out.
He did his adequate best. Since he left the Slieve Bloom, O’LiamRoe had never looked so memorably neat. The saffron tunic abandoned, he had sent out for breech hose, brought in at Thady’s back, and a holland shirt, and a doublet of near fit and bold colour. Not to waste money on slippers, he had pulled his half boots on top, but cleaned, and had got a small cap with a feather which sat flatly on his combed yellow head. Only the beard, unregenerately floating, hinted at the rebel inside the silk cords.
When the latch rattled, he thought it was Ballagh. Cursing under his breath, his hat under his arm and cloak over it, he strode to open the door. He was very late, and the King’s Gentleman, back on the hour, had been waiting some time for him below.
On his threshold stood Oonagh O’Dwyer.
O’LiamRoe stood still without speaking, the latch in his hand. It was his visitor who showed her surprise, unexpected colour flooding her brown skin and revealing the light, limpid eyes. Then she said shortly, ‘It’s wonderfully grand you are this day. I feel enough of a prostitute as it is, without standing side by side with you on your doorstep. Will you let me pass?’
She was alone; something unheard of in a young woman of standing. He shut the door, stood still as she marched past, and made no comment until she turned to face him. ‘I am not in the habit of doing this,’ she said.
‘It is not a bad habit, now it’s started,’ he said. ‘If you confine it to one person.’
It was the worst line he could have taken; he recognized it instantly. Her lips went hard, her body tautened; and for a moment he expected a blow. It did not come, but when she spoke he realized that in her mind she had closed a human relationship and opened a business meeting.
‘I have just come from Bonne-Nouvelle. My aunt is there with a friend who is in the Queen’s train. I have a word from her.’
‘Have you so?’ He did not offer her a seat.
They were of a height and otherwise utterly in contrast: the handfuls of hair under her hood were wood-black where his were tortoise-shell to the pellicle. She looked him straight in the eye, and her small, round mouth curled. ‘They are an idle cageful of mockingbirds; always fresh for a new victim.’
He knew then. His bearing relaxed a little, and he leaned back against the painted panelling, his blue eyes attentive on hers. ‘Let them laugh till it sends the Adam’s apples on them up and down like cerbottana balls, my dear. It won’t hurt me.’
Her strong, soft brows stayed level. ‘However, you have spent some money on yourself, I see, this day?’
‘Yes,’ said O’LiamRoe calmly. ‘That was a mistake. I am thinking that I shall just change back to the saffron. Is there an ostrich of your acquaintance would like a tail feather?’
She ignored the flourish of his hat. ‘It does not affect me, O’LiamRoe, one way or the other. I came to tell you that the Household are having sport with you. You will get a summons that is not from the King.’
He smiled a little, among the flosslike whiskers. ‘The like of an appointment to meet his double?’
‘How did you know?’
He turned from her wide eyes, and gestured outside. ‘He stood there for a while to get our view. A dark man with a beard.