Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [226]
‘Phelim is welcome
Phelim son of Liam
Place where dwells a champion
Heart of ice
Tail of a swan
Strong chariot-warrior in battle
Warlike ocean
Lovely, eager bull
Phelim son of Liam …
‘Lovely, eager bull,’ said Lymond lingeringly again, this time in Irish; and O’LiamRoe, the ducts of his brain half choked by the mud and gold Lymond had flung him together, said clearing his throat, ‘Bad scran to it. What about you? There is great music in you, I can tell you now. A new-made angel put beside you would sound like an old nail scraping on glass.… What call had you to name yourself an Irishman, and use the first chance to let drink and decadence murder your gifts?’
The innocent, deceiving eyes turned to the Prince. ‘Art cannot live without licence.’
There was a little silence. O’LiamRoe grasped that the barbarous spectacle of accusation and blow had somehow been replaced by a match of quite another kind, to which the Court was tacitly granting a hearing. He hesitated only a moment before letting his own worn-out theories slip for the last time through his hands. He said, ‘Ah yes, my fine gean-canach, but how much licence? A man’s art is only as good as his liver. Who decides when to stop?’
‘The artist?’ said Lymond, his voice grave, his eyes nakedly derisive.
‘He knows the inspiration he needs to begin, but after that you’d be hard set to halt his little indulgences. Death alive, you know that. Then you’ll have nothing out of him but bad art and worse manners, fit to be copied by every journeyman who can dip his brush in a paintpot or stitch together a tavern lampoon.’
‘Does that trouble you?’ said Lymond. ‘It won’t trouble posterity. Nous devons à la Mort et nous et nos ouvrages, you know. Both ourselves and our creations are a debt owed to Death. If you sober us and church us and rob us of our Bella Simonettas and our Vittoria Colonnas at this pace, there will be no inspiration and no works of art left to hand on.’
‘Not every artist that’s in it must find balance in drink or drugs or nameless indulgences.’
‘But those who do? Must they be stopped? Must posterity suffer in the cause of the corruptible present?’
O’LiamRoe was silent. Here lay the core of the matter. The accusations of theft and treason Lord d’Aubigny had made were without real foundation; however eagerly the Court had seized on them to salve their raw pride, it was not on these counts that Lymond would be condemned.
He would be crushed for the trick he had played on them, for the power he had held over them, and for the attentions he had forced them to pay him. To save his skin, since he would not call on either the Queen or O’LiamRoe, Lymond was salving their pride. For that, he had turned against O’LiamRoe just now every argument O’LiamRoe himself had used in order to show the French Court to itself in a new light: not as his companions, his victims in some deliberate essay in decadence, but as ministers to his art. And arguing against him, playing his part, O’LiamRoe heard his own philosophy in another man’s mouth, and found it lacking. ‘… Feeling,’ Lymond was saying, ending his exposition on the inspiring properties of drink, debauchery and general freedom from convention, ‘feeling needs a respite from thought, and thought returns refreshed after.’
‘Yes, M. Crawford.’ It was Catherine, her fine ankles crossed, her ringed hands still. ‘But example kills, and the example of genius kills quicker than any.’
‘And the artist with them,’ said O’LiamRoe. ‘The holocaust which