Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [225]
Her long chin sunk on her chest, Mary of Guise shook out her sleeve smartly, and laying her wrist on her knee, engaged Catherine and then the King with her strongly marked brows. ‘The old women that are in it,’ said O’LiamRoe’s mind to him softly; and his memory said, ‘You’d better play tennis with them on Tír-nan-óg, my dear, if you’re going to call thirty-five old.’ And it added, ‘The Queen Mother isn’t going to stir a little finger in this affair … and I’m not at all sure that I want to meddle in hers.’ The whip cracked, thoughtfully.
‘I love a brave man,’ said the Queen Dowager of Scotland. ‘And the Crawfords are brave men who have served me well in the past. But a sly, high-stomached swaggering man I cannot abide. Had I known a Scot of mine was engaged in this mummery I should have sent you his tongue and his hands. As it is, you are welcome to pluck your restitution from him as you wish. I cannot believe him guilty of theft and prodigal of murder. I do find he has mocked both you and me, gentle brother, in deceiving us boldly not once, but twice in this fashion. Do as you wish with him.’
She had repudiated him. The unspoken words filled O’LiamRoe’s mouth. In Lymond’s face there was no line of anger or surprise; even dusty and uncombed he contrived to look acidly collected. He gazed at Mary of Guise through half-shut, lazy lids and said, ‘Madame, what king should I sing to in Scotland? Even Lyon is old.’
She had repudiated him and he had accepted it. Drawing breath, the Prince of Barrow felt the warning pressure on his arm. Margaret Erskine had moved up beside him. The Queen Dowager icily answered. ‘Had you come as Francis Crawford, you might have done your country honour. Instead of taking all Ireland in your mouth and spitting it at our feet.’
‘But Francis Crawford,’ Lymond said simply, ‘was not invited.’
‘And Francis Crawford is known,’ said Lord d’Aubigny. The late hour had made no hollows in his well-furnished face, but the spread of pink was uneven from cheek to brow; he was, after all, breaking a desirable vessel.
‘We are not forgetting the jewels he had ready to take, the rope in his room, the friendship with my wretched man Stewart. Robin saved his life, climbing—many of you saw that. They worked hand in glove over the pretended accident of the cheetah. Only because M. d’Enghien held the reins was he made to run in the forefront of that ride downhill in Amboise—he intended, I am sure, to be safe behind. And Crawford and his friend O’LiamRoe between them, I am told, rescued Stewart yet again from near death in the Tower and persuaded him that he should do better to live and return to France. And mysteriously, as soon as he reaches the Loire, Stewart escapes. If his Irish disguise was simply a discourteous and foolish masquerade,’ said Lord d’Aubigny, his voice shade high, ‘why did Lord Culter his brother, of that brave and so serviceable family, refrain from halting these excesses, or at least informing the Queen his mistress of Mr. Ballagh’s real name?’
The prominent brown eyes of Queen Catherine, tight-rimmed in the sleepless white skin, moved to stare at the Dowager. ‘Why, indeed? Look to your lords, my sister. The family appears to be less reliable than you thought.’
The old women! For the second time, O’LiamRoe opened his mouth. To his left, Piedar Dooly, his strained black eyes intent, stirred at his side. At his right, Margaret Erskine moved, her body blocking his view of the King, her eyes nearly level with his own. ‘He does not want it,’ she said, in a voice which carried only to him. ‘He does not want it. How can you help him unless you are free?’
Lymond laughed. Shivering round the small room it sounded indelicate, like the rubbing of crystals over some robust Arabian