Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [214]
‘She is insolent,’ said the girl, and turned her straight back. ‘Tell her, M. Crawford, that I came here to find safety from the English.’
‘But Lord, child!’ said Oonagh, suddenly forgetting her state. ‘The English are here this minute, in solemn embassy, to ask your hand in marriage for their King.’
Mary swung round, the creamy skin hot, the eyes angry. ‘Because they cannot seize and wed me by force, as they so often tried! We are too strong, we and our Frenchmen!’
‘And we are weak,’ said Oonagh, and stopped short. How in five minutes had she passed from anger to appeal?
Mary was watching, clearly thinking hard. Her face was grave. ‘But my mother wishes you to have help. She constantly asks the King my father to help you. But not with soldiers from Scotland. That would be—’
‘Robbing a sea wall to build a byre,’ said the dry voice of Francis Crawford. ‘You won’t persuade the lady, your grace. She would hold even your life cheap.’
Docile in the dark gown, the tangled hair bright at her ears, Mary listened, her eyes on Oonagh. Then shatteringly she smiled, her cheeks round. ‘Did she tell you so?’
‘Yes.’
The sparkling smile became enormous. ‘Do you think she has a dagger there? Do you? Ask her, M. Francis? For,’ said the most noble and most powerful Princess Mary Stewart, Queen of Scotland, delving furiously under all the stiff red velvet, showing shift, hose and garters, shoes, knees and a long ribboned end of something recently torn loose, and emerging therefrom with a fist closed tight on an object short and hard and glittering, ‘for I have!’
And breathlessly, flinging back her head, with the little knife offered like a quill, ‘Try to stab me!’ she encouraged her visitor.
There was a queer silence, during which the eyes of Oonagh O’Dwyer and her love of one night met and locked like magnet and iron. The child, waiting a moment, offered again, the ringing, joyful defiance still in her voice. ‘Try to stab me! … Go on, and I’ll kill you all dead!’
Her throat dry, Oonagh spoke. ‘Save your steel for those you trust. They are the ones who will carry your bier; the men who cannot hate, nor can they know love. Send away the cold servants.’
The red mouth had opened a little; the knife hung forgotten in her hand. ‘I would,’ said Mary, surprised. ‘But I do not know any.’ And, anxiously demonstrating her point, she caught Lymond by the hand.
Between Oonagh’s closed lips was forced a sound—a cry, a sob, a laugh—no one present could tell. She stopped it herself, her teeth clenched, and turning swiftly left them, walking fast. The door opened and closed. She had gone.
‘Quoi?’ said Mary, her round brow wrinkled, peering upwards past their clasped hands to Lymond’s still face.
‘Excellent,’ said that comely person smoothly. ‘She becomes easily upset. But was it necessary, my Queen, to prove me warm-blooded on the spot?’
The cut, made in her forgetfulness, was small, but the child, all contrition, rushed for wrappings. Silently Margaret Erskine held open the door. Lymond’s eyebrows shot up. ‘My dear, have patience. My wounds are to be salved.’
‘Go away and bleed to death,’ said his onetime saviour sharply. ‘On behalf of the female sex I feel I may cheer every lesion.’
The laughter left his eyes. ‘It was necessary.’
‘But it failed,’ she said. ‘Didn’t it?—I sometimes think that dull, deformed or even wittingly vicious, you would be of more use to the Queen. Go.… Go. I don’t want you here.’
And as he followed after the Irishwoman, Margaret Erskine, most levelheaded of women, picked up a Palissy vase, looked at it earnestly and smashed it clean on the floor.
IV
Châteaubriant:
The Price of Satire
Is payment for praise, or satire, commanded in the laws? If according to the law of the divine house, there is no command but for the praise of God alone; and heaven is its price.
FROM then onwards, it was possible to trace the altering atmosphere, as Lymond caustically observed, by the periodic ringing of bells, and the deliquescence of O’LiamRoe.
Barred by conscience from denouncing Thady