Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [212]
His disordered head did not move, but the profile fretted, as if his closed eyes had suddenly clenched. It was the expected answer, made no sweeter for being defiantly florid; never tender with words, she was dragging them at her wanton plough tail anyhow. Without condemning anything she had said or done, he said only, ‘I have failed, then. I thought so.’ His voice was dry.
She said, turning to clasp her knees, her voice low. ‘We are both traders in snow. It is our kind, Francis.’ His mother had used these words to her once: she did not tell him. Nor did she tell him the other thing he did not know. With a quick movement he slid on to his back. His face looked merely thoughtful; she could see on his brown skin the scars of the Tour des Minimes. He said, ‘I do not feel like Diogenes.’
‘Nor I like—’ She broke off, her voice failed. And then a moment later, whipping herself for the weakness, she said baldly, her voice vacant of colour, ‘I will sell you the information you want for five thousand Frenchmen out of Scotland.’
He took so long that she thought he would not reply at all. Then he said, not quite in his usual register, ‘And if I discredit you and Cormac by exposing d’Aubigny, who will lead your wonderful army?’
‘Be at ease. I would not ask O’LiamRoe to destroy himself on the bare rocks of my little liking. I should find some man else.’ She turned. ‘Would the Dowager not contrive it, to save her daughter? The whole of Scotland and half France wishes the French occupation ended. Or is your heart set on being one of the Dowager’s new pensioned pups?’
‘Be still,’ he said; and putting his two hands on her arms, brought her to lie on the pillow, white and quick-breathing, the circles dark under her eyes. ‘Be still. I owe no allegiance; I have no ambition; but what you ask is impossible. The throne is too insecure. Without the Queen Mother’s good credit here and in Scotland it would topple, and the child might as well die.’
Sharply she turned her head, and caught the wry amusement still in his eyes. He did not hide it. ‘Stop tormenting the morning; lie with me and be still,’ he said. ‘My bed is not a market place, whatever you may think. I had nothing, ever, but a little self-knowledge to offer you. If you will not tell me for that, I have nothing more I can sell.’
And it was then, strangely, in the face of this calm and undramatic statement of truth, that Oonagh O’Dwyer’s composure broke down. Turning her black, weary head into his arm, she closed her green eyes and wept, and he lent her his comfort for, like Luadhas, she had been pitched against something too fierce for her race.
He had one more hurdle for her to cross. On her way home, by back stair and postern, planned with practised adroitness to arouse, at another time, her ironical smile, he stopped before a stout door and turning, said, ‘I have no wish to distress you. But you owe it to your crusade to see clearly the bodies on which you build. Will you come with me?’
Then she knew he was taking her to Mary. The helpless child Queen was to be his final weapon. And the very triteness of it made her look at him afresh. She did not understand him: she had assumed he understood her surprisingly well.
There were three doors to pass, and an attendant before each, unobtrusively armed. The last, she saw, was young Fleming himself, with the page Melville beside him. Inside, Margaret Erskine admitted them,