Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [203]
‘It depends,’ said Lymond evenly, ‘on what you call news. I saw him yesterday.… The interview was interesting but indeterminate.’
‘My faix,’ said O’LiamRoe a little blankly. ‘Did he speak to you?’ And added quickly, ‘Then how did it end? Where is he now, then? Did he get away again?’
Lymond did not answer at once. Then he said, looking consideringly at O’LiamRoe’s agitated face, ‘It ended in my knocking him unconscious and coming away. He’s free still, so far as I know.’
‘But—’ began O’LiamRoe loudly, and hurriedly modified his voice. ‘But that leaves the child exposed to Lord d’Aubigny … unless you’ve found real evidence against him?’
Lymond shook his fair head. ‘I have told you. Our mutual friend is proving hard to trace. Mistress Boyle’s doing, I should guess. But she will have to come to Court for the Great English Lupercalia.’
In the single moment he, O’LiamRoe, had had with her, Oonagh had flung her head up, a bruise yellow under the stretched white skin, and had said, ‘What comfort do you owe there, Phelim O’LiamRoe? Are you away in your head?’ And later, grimly, she had said, ‘All right. I tell you, he is safe from me. Were I to name him Thady Boy Ballagh I should have a question or two to answer myself. But let him try to lay his harness on me while better men are breaking their hearts and I will scorn him clean out of France.’
And now Lymond was telling him that he had spared the Archer at Oonagh’s expense. ‘This sudden tenderness for the unfortunate Robin,’ said O’LiamRoe, ‘would fairly bring you out in the purples. You prefer to sacrifice Oonagh?’
‘I hope,’ said Lymond precisely, ‘not to sacrifice anybody. As far as Stewart is concerned, I preferred not to deliver the log to the sawpit, that’s all.’
‘And Oonagh?’
‘My dear Phelim,’ said Lymond, moving away. ‘Cease to worry. You know my tenets. The mind is the origin of all that is; the mind is the master, the mind is the cause.’
‘Try telling that,’ said the Prince of Barrow grimly, ‘to Cormac O’Connor.’
The Court waited. During all this time, its manner to Lord d’Aubigny had never changed. Only the charges against him were mentally docketed against future indiscretions, and the suavest exchanges invisibly edged with black. D’Aubigny expected it. Despite the graceful attentions shown him by Henri, the added courtesies and warmth, Lord d’Aubigny travelled in childish fury from Angers to Châteaubriant, and on his first off-duty day, rode to Nantes and brought back some smoked crystal and an authenticated statue by Phidias, eighteen inches high.
Examining its dry ivory and gold, his fellow-courtiers were polite, but he was in need of a therapy deeper than that. It was Francis Crawford, Vervassal Herald, bending over the lovely carving, who said, ‘There is one like it in Rome. But I never saw a finer. This, and this, for example.’ And, his manner lyrical, Lymond expounded, while his lordship with angry reluctance feasted on these tainted sweets.
But then, neither now nor at any time could you have told that they were enemies. For a week now, the herald had attached himself to John Stewart of Aubigny and had sat at his feet, a fellow Scot and admirer. There were many times—at night, and when his lordship was on duty—when he and his acolyte were forced to part. But for the rest, it was surprising how often John Stewart looked up from cup or gem or manuscript to find the lazy, well-dressed person of the Queen Mother’s herald somewhere nearby. Even to Lord d’Aubigny, who had no keen sense of the ridiculous, this was trying, but he did his best to keep his manner both placid and cool. After all, it was not for long.
In the intervals when Lymond was free, Margaret Erskine sometimes saw him. From Richard, before he left, she had learned a little of what to expect. Francis himself, at their first encounter shortly after the episode of the boar, had described O’LiamRoe’s brief embrace of Saxon culture until she was speechless with laughter, and had been otherwise uninformative. His eyes were clear, his