Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [213]
He was saying, ‘During the night she is safe, and part of the day. We cannot guard her fully in public. Today she need not go out at all until afternoon; she is safe therefore until then. In the afternoon she goes with her retinue and her mother’s to watch the Breton sports and the jousting in the tilting-field. All the people we can trust will be about her, but she will be in public, and therefore exposed. At night she will be unwell. In that way the torchlight hunt will be avoided, and the alfresco supper later on. Tomorrow—’
‘Tomorrow she will be on view all day as a courtesy to the English. The King has just ordered it. You can do nothing about it,’ said Margaret wearily, ‘without drawing attention. Do you want to see her now?’
‘If Janet will allow,’ said Lymond. Oonagh, behind, thought, Now it comes. The curving cheek, the nestling hand, the red-gold hair on the pillow. The charming snap at the heartstrings …
‘Wait.’ It was Lymond’s voice again, edged. ‘She isn’t asleep?’ And as Margaret nodded, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake … is the girl a turnip? We haven’t come to dote on her levée.’
And he meant what he said. When presently they came face to face with the child Mary, she was nearly dressed, sitting grousing like a harridan at having her tangled red hair combed. Janet Sinclair, annoyed at the interruption, sagged in a brief curtsey and stood back. Two maids of honour, one of them Margaret’s own sister, were put outside the door with a groom. Lymond said, ‘Your grace, this is Mistress Oonagh O’Dwyer of Ireland, whom you may have met. My lady your royal mother knows her quite well.’
Below the enraged brow, the hazel eyes had become quite clear; between the child Queen and the herald was seen to exist an amiable affinity with a faintly ecclesiastical air. Disbelieving, Oonagh heard him address his monarch again. ‘The lady wishes to drive out the English from Ireland, and suggests that your noble grace might assist by transferring all the Frenchmen from Scotland to an Irish rebel command. Do you agree?’
Oonagh thought, impatiently, The child is eight, God help us. He has already told me—and heaven knows I knew it before—that the Dowager would never want it. The young face, she saw, had gone scarlet; head up, the child confronted her. ‘My Frenchmen are protecting my domains from the English.’
‘I don’t see the force of that,’ said Oonagh, ‘when you’re at peace with the English.’ There was no point in making much of this. ‘The treaty itself was due to be signed a week ago, and England is the weaker party now. There is no threat under Lord Warwick.’
‘You are at peace also, are you not? And my Frenchmen keep the law between lord and lord, for many jealous nobles weaken a nation.’
‘We are occupied,’ said Oonagh. The sense of the ridiculous faded a little. ‘We are wanting to drive the usurpers out. So should you wish the foreigners to leave your soil.’
‘They are my mother’s people. And mine,’ said the girl.
‘True enough,’ said Lymond judicially, speaking for the first time. ‘Your Norman lords went native enough, Oonagh, and gave the English their thorniest problem in the end. Just wait and see what our Norman-Scotsmen will do.’
Over the child’s head, Oonagh’s grey-green eyes met his. ‘Children are dying; freedom is failed, while this child on a foreign soil clings to luxury like two cold crow’s