Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [217]
‘I must have slept in that damned inn for hours.—Holy Mother, my head. And do you tell me you sat beside me and made never a move? Did it never hit you to push me on a mattress, at least? I have the graining drawn on my haunches of every knot in the deal.’
‘ ’Twas a long, drouthy wait, and that’s no lie,’ admitted Piedar Dooly, his black eyes unwinking on the gold head. ‘But there’ll be a grand reward for my patience in heaven, since there’s no thanks for it here.… You will never take yourself to Court, then, in that state. Lie back, so, and sleep it off. I doubt will they miss you.’
‘No.’ Like a visitor at a sickbed, he had to be there, although he knew that under that caustic blue eye his detachment would become dense and dusty, like a stuffed owl foolishly glasseyed in its case. The birds of hell shall devour them with bitter breath; and the gall of the dragon shall be their drink, and the venom of the dragon their morsels … ‘No. The morning seems to be lost on us; let the devil do us good with the afternoon.’
Dooly did not try again to dissuade him. It would do no harm. By tomorrow the Scotch Queen would be dead and The O’LiamRoe on his way where he belonged, in the heather breasts of the purple Slieve Bloom, untroubled by all but the squirrel-hoarding of knowledge.
To Stewart and to Lymond he gave no further thought. He disliked them both, and found much stimulation in tearing up the Archer’s long message and sealing it inside his bags, in between attiring O’LiamRoe for Court. O’LiamRoe, noting a slight lift in the customary dourness, put it down to a willing wench at the Cher Saincte, and was aware, in passing, of a crabbed sliver of envy.
The French Court meanwhile was engaged, as ever, in a competition in courtesy, in etiquette and riches, in intelligence, accomplishments, in knightly prowess, in sport, and in the exercises of the mind. The King, carefree amid the hubbub of diplomacy, civil, legal, international, leaned as always on his dear confrères and amies the Constable, the de Guises, his distinguished mistress and his pregnant Queen, and his cherished sister of Scotland whose visit, surely, was drawing to a close.
He might, and did, feel impatience at times with them all; but he was a man whose love ran in deep channels. Not one of his dearest cronies would have seen a denouncement of Lord d’Aubigny or any other of that trusted circle as anything but suicide—social, financial and very likely actual as well.
Sir George Douglas, with whom the Lennoxes were staying, recognized the dilemma very well, and got a good deal of entertainment from it. The circle of the Queen Dowager did not.
Mary of Guise herself had had no interview with Lymond in recent days; so much Margaret Erskine knew. Of what went on in her mistress’s mind she had no inkling. More than ever she was missing the sane interpretations of Tom, now on his way to the English Border to conclude the formal peace between Scotland and England, with all the tangled and difficult issues this involved.
Tomorrow’s conference concerning Mary’s marriage appeared, of course, to be the crux of the stay; that and the money promised by the French treasury for the security of Scotland, over which daily haggling continued.
Once only, twisting the rings from her swollen fingers, the Dowager had said to her lady-in-waiting, ‘Why does that man believe the attack will be so soon? The guard for Sunday is prodigious.’ And then, hardly listening to Margaret’s answer, she had added suddenly, ‘If the child dies, every hour I have spent on French soil has been a folly, and every transaction a waste.’
In her carrying