Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [232]
‘Maybe,’ said O’LiamRoe.
Standing full in front of him, her voice sounded oddly dry. ‘Francis Crawford depends on your help.’
‘No offence in life,’ said O’LiamRoe, ‘but he depends on you, not myself. I am at my extreme end. Will you move, now?’
Cormac took another step, smiling. ‘Yes, move now, me darling slut,’ he said. ‘God bless you kindly, my brave black bitch, with no sweet oasis in her white body she would not have ready to bless the thirsty traveller with. Move, my delicate whore, and let me kill him.’ The steel was out of his scabbard, but O’LiamRoe had not drawn his sword—the mishandled, miswielded blade which he had never mastered and never bothered to use.
‘Why do that?’ said Oonagh. Her face was dry and grey as earthenware in the kiln, but the clear voice was cold. ‘You will save nothing and have the King at you, only.’
Within touching distance, Cormac stopped. In the coloured rind of his skin, the red lips parted and smiled. In his hands the blade lifted and stilled. ‘Kill him,’ said Mistress Boyle from behind, and the grey plaits jerked, like bell ropes weaving an echo. ‘Kill him and the woman too. That is something the French will understand.’
Oonagh had been leaning a little against the Prince of Barrow, her black hair caught in his shirt, the soft robe brushing his feet. At that, she flung up her arm, and then collecting herself, moved a step forward and faced the great black bull-shape of O’Connor, her pride, her king and her lover. ‘Leave troubling, Cormac. Let him go.’
Her voice was sane and quiet. The stab of the sword cut across it like a battle cry, as Cormac raised the blade, high and true, and drove it at O’LiamRoe’s heart through hers.
O’LiamRoe was made badly by unresented ill-luck—strung stiffly, knotted wrongly, animated faultily. But he had a brain; and he had seen that move coming. As the sword flashed, he gave Oonagh a great shove, and as she struck and rolled on the floor he threw himself to one side so that the missed blade pulled the swordsman staggering past his quarry and brought him up short beside Theresa Boyle. Then as O’LiamRoe recovered, Cormac O’Connor jumped forward again.
O’LiamRoe fled. He did it hastily, and with a frantic lack of address which was its own grace. Chairs rocked and tumbled in O’Connor’s way. The bed curtains ripped, dropped and draped him as he followed the others over the counterpane; kicked pillows tripped him; the jogging end of O’LiamRoe’s own scabbard at one point caught the big man and nearly felled him. Oonagh, rising, was crouched hard in a corner; Mistress Boyle, eyes wild, had retreated to the parlour and watched from there. No one attempted to fetch help. If this was to be a crime passionnel, the fewer witnesses the better. And no servant, knowing Theresa Boyle and knowing O’Connor, would dare intervene.
In the crowded space, the sword was not easy to use. It stuck, became impaled on the panelling, or impeded the wielder with its weight. O’LiamRoe, jumping on a fine marquetry table, had it knocked from under him by Cormac’s boot and falling, found a shield quite by accident as Cormac’s steel sank deep in the wood.
Cormac left it there and jumped on the soft somersaulting body of the other man. As he hit him, O’LiamRoe’s arm shot out with the impact, found the poker laid in the nearly dead hearth, and swinging it over the big Irishman’s back, branded him like a heifer. With a screech O’Connor flung free, and in the stench of wool and hide his curses found habitat.
O’LiamRoe got out his sword and scrambled to his feet as the other man, his fists opening and shutting, rose likewise and faced him. In the parlour there sounded, briefly, a sharp crash. O’Connor’s attention left his victim for a second; long enough to catch the broken-necked glass tossed to him diamond-bright by Mistress Boyle. Holding it queerly before him, flashing, pure as a bride’s bouquet, he feinted neatly and leaned to stroke the jagged glass down O’LiamRoe’s face.
O’LiamRoe was not even looking. His kind face, printed with surprise and dislike, was turned to Theresa