Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [216]
‘Do you want to go home?’ said Stewart quickly. And as the little servant stopped, watching, Stewart went on. ‘He’s staying, isn’t he, because of the brat? Then he’ll want to know this. It’ll be all done by tomorrow. They’re to finish her on the lake, while they’re all in their flichtmafleathers getting the Garter in the morning.’
‘How?’ said Dooly, his black eyes sharp. ‘And did you learn of it in this world or the next?’
‘I got it from an Archer, a fellow who helped me escape. It turns out,’ said Robin Stewart reflectively, ‘that he’s Lord d’Aubigny’s man. Or was.’
‘Goodness be about us.’ It was a sneer. ‘Has the poor man told all and perished?’ It was not long after midday, but his beard was there already, black under the skin. Until May, like his master, he had been whiskered.
‘Unhappily. Knifed in the back, I think,’ said Stewart complacently. ‘At least, dead with a knife in his back, a long way from here. The girl will be killed by the man who arranged the accident at the Tour des Minimes. D’Aubigny is as good as condemned. The man can be caught in the act. The ceremony’s at ten; she’ll go out on the lake just after. D’Aubigny himself will see she gets the idea, and they won’t oppose it. Provided the boat’s safe—and it will be—and she’s surrounded by friends—and she will be—they’ll see no possible harm. It’ll look the safest retreat there can be: the Lake of Menteith all over again.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Piedar Dooly, ‘what you’re blathering about. If it’s that safe it is, how is she killed? There’s only little boats on the lake, with poppin’s in them, ready for tomorrow night.’
‘That’s right,’ said Stewart cheerfully. ‘Clods, squibs, fire darts, bombards, and a floating ordnance store of gunpowder, packed in a full day before. She’ll be sent off birling like a wheel at a fair; and no one to know there was powder in it at all. A wee thing wasteful, but bonny to watch. It’s got to have pigment in it, and plasterwork, and a Latin verse or two to set it off, before his lordship can get cosy with a murder.’
His cheeks brown as two uncured hides, his eyes hollow, his mouth thin as a twig, Piedar Dooly heard, repeated over and over for clarity, all Robin Stewart had to tell him. And as he spoke, Stewart thought of the news reaching Thady Boy-Lymond; of Lymond’s quick grasp, his private surprise, his recognition of something vital, well done. He doubted if Dooly would read English, but he had written it all out, too: the times, the places, the name. Only when he was satisfied that the Irishman had grasped it all, did he come to the point of the highest importance.
‘And you must say,’ he said carefully, ‘that in giving this information I trust Mr. Ballagh—Mr. Crawford—to see I take no skaith and no blame for it all. I shall need to give myself up, and before the explosion takes place. Mr. Crawford must come here, with a proper guard and officer, and I will put myself in their hands. Otherwise, he doesna need to be told, they’ll shoot me on sight.… I’ll wait here at nine tomorrow morning. Tell him I’ll expect him then, to share my bread. He won’t be disappointed in my table.’ He had written that, too, at the foot of his notes. And he had added, ‘I have been unfair no less than you; I can see it now. As one gentleman to another, I offer apologies with my meat.’
There was no understanding in Dooly’s fixed eyes, only contempt. ‘I’ll tell him,’ he said. ‘If he’s risen from his kissing couch yet.’
Suddenly Stewart was still. ‘The O’Dwyer woman? What did she tell?’
A chuckle, creaking and eerie, rose from the black Firbolg’s throat. ‘The darling devil that’s in her, she took all and gave nothing. She would not tell.’
The bony jaw-strings relaxed, the thin cheeks wrinkled, and Stewart smiled. ‘Women.… They’ll thin him like poor cloth, body and soul. Give him the message.’
‘There will be no trumpet in the country earning his shilling that will be equal to me,’ said Piedar Dooly, and spat.
When his servant got back