Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [208]
She said shortly, ‘Give me credit for sense. I had discovered long ago that Phelim O’LiamRoe was no rival that Cormac need fear.’ Then, as he was silent, she said, ‘I risked my safety to pull you free from the Tower that night. What more are you worth? It was Cormac or all of you.’
‘Cormac, or all of us,’ said the voice from the darkness, reflectively. ‘Cormac’s ambitions, Ireland’s future, to be bought at the price of our lives, and the life of Queen Mary as well.… You know that Lord d’Aubigny meant her to die? But of course you did. He had been in your confidence and your aunt’s for a long time, I suspect. He was trying to kill me because I had been induced to come and protect her … how did he know that, I wonder? From someone in Scotland who was haunting the Queen Dowager hoping for favours—and not receiving them; someone who has an excessive interest in the Culters and with relatives in both London and France … someone like d’Aubigny’s own relation, Sir George Douglas?’
This time she did not move; and wondered afterwards if her very stillness had given her away, for he laughed and went on. ‘And you, of course, knew from George Paris that the Queen Dowager at just this moment had proposed the unknown O’LiamRoe’s visit to France. There was no time to attack him in Ireland, but it seemed easy to have an accident at sea. Then Robin Stewart encouraged Destaiz in his little piece of fire-raising at the Porc-épic: a foolish move, not at all easy to explain as an accident, for which d’Aubigny duly berated him. And the next attempt to get rid of him was yours, at Rouen, when you arranged for O’LiamRoe to make a fool of himself at the tennis court, when he was nearly sent home. But by then, of course, you had guessed the truth.… What gave away Thady Boy’s identity, I wonder? Bad acting or bad grammar, or a certain aura which is neither flesh nor fisshe?’
‘An Appin man taught you your Gaelic long since, and a Leinsterman has recently corrected you well; but you still forget to lay stress on the first syllable instead of the second, now and then. It is not a thing a Scotsman would notice.’
‘So Stewart and his lordship continued to believe that O’LiamRoe was their proper victim, and you allowed them to think so.… D’Aubigny took poor Jenny Fleming to the Croix d’Or and confronted them with each other. He must have had the highest opinion of their dissimulation. How foolish he must have felt when he learned the true facts. And how angry he will be, my dear, should he ever find out that you knew these all the time.’
‘My life is my own,’ she said, her voice thin in her own ears. ‘You asked me last time to leave you to deal with this man. What ails you? Deal with him!’
‘You know what I want,’ said the quiet voice. ‘Evidence against Lord d’Aubigny. Destaiz is dead. Someone besides Stewart must have helped him at times. He didn’t tie that rope at Amboise himself. One name would do.’
She thought, her hands gripping the windowsill, the dim, merry lights on her grazed face. She thought of the organ at Neuvy, made to magnify her breath, her heartbeats, her fears, instead of the Almighty; of the humiliating serenade at the Hôtel Moûtier, so mercilessly timed for the one space when she had hoped to reach Lord d’Aubigny’s ear with the news of Cormac’s arrival. For two days she had waited at Blois for the Court to return, so that she could warn d’Aubigny that O’Connor was coming, and that it was time for him to keep his promise and influence the King in Cormac’s favour. And Lymond, she now realized, had waited too—had he had her watched?—to see if her sudden departure from Neuvy had to do with Cormac, and if so, whom she might meet when the Court came back