Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [234]
She turned her head. Raw, rumpled, stiff as an ox on the spit, Cormac lay in the smashed room, and at his feet the woman lay still, her thick hands at her neck. ‘It is time to go,’ she said. ‘I must take my road, too. From this out you will hear nothing of me, and will do nothing to search me out. That is my price.’
He did not reply all at once. Then, ‘For what, mo chiall; a chiall mo chridhe?’ he said steadily.
But he knew already what his ignorance was to buy: the name he had wanted, the name of the man serving Lord d’Aubigny which was to deliver both Lymond and the Queen.
Telling him, her eyes were compassionate. ‘Leave me go kindly,’ she said. ‘My body will not want, and my thoughts you will have. There is a strong path before you, and a forced door you need not be ashamed of. Only violence could have sundered this man and myself, and the violence which parted us was the force that was born fresh in your mind, not the coarse work it has had to put its hand to tonight. It will find nobler tasks yet to do.’
Her hands lay cold in his. Searching her empty face he said, ‘We shall meet?’
‘At the fall of night, on the far side of the north wind,’ she said.’ ‘Love me.’
‘All my days,’ said Phelim O’LiamRoe, Prince of Barrow, dropping into the tongue of his land. ‘Dear stranger, dear mate of my soul: all my days.’
And walking quiet and blind, he let slip her two hands and left.
‘His name is Artus Cholet, Lord d’Aubigny’s other henchman,’ Oonagh O’Dwyer had said. ‘He is of the district, a master gunner who has fought for any well-paying captain in his day. He will not show himself at Châteaubriant, but if he has been given work to do, he won’t be far away. Take the. Angers road, and at the Auberge des Trois Mariés ask for Georges Gaultier, and tell him what you want.’
Dark in the misty June morning, Châteaubriant was still. Dim through the painted shutters, the hoof beats of a single horse burst, applauding the cobbles, and were gone.
No one saw O’LiamRoe go. He had not taken time to find Dooly, curled on the straw in his dark lodging, watching the lightening sky. In another street, handsomely lodged, Lord d’Aubigny slept, ready to wake fresh and serene to his harvest at last. The English, courtiers and servants, lay exhausted by heat and diplomacy in rooms and lodgings, hospices and barns all through Châteaubriant. At the Château Neuf Northampton slept, well bedded, well content, under the three flags of Scotland, England and France. The Court of France. King and Queen and Constable, de Guises, Diane, fulfilled the allotted hours of slumber, precisely as automata, as part of the long-learned, accustomed framework of rite.
A heap of red hair in an immaculate bed, the Queen of Scotland slept; but in her mother’s room the candle burned and spluttered by the outflung arm of a sleeper who had counted most of the night hours away. Beyond, Margaret Erskine lay still with open eyes.
In the Vieux Château, Lymond’s two warders, both Constable’s men, were having an unexpectedly tedium-free night. The tall one, rattling the dice box, was the more impressionable. ‘That’s a good song.’
‘This is a better,’ said Lymond; and sang it, while they listened to each bawdy verse, whimpering. At the end, sitting curled on his pallet, Francis Crawford spoke idly. ‘Anton, why does a man leave his mistress?’
‘He loves another,’ said the tall gaoler promptly, and threw.
The short one chimed in. ‘Or she does. Or she grows fat and ugly, or pesters him for marriage.’
‘Or has too many children,’ said the tall gaoler gloomily.
Lymond’s face remained grave. ‘And why, do you think, might a mistress part from her lover?’
‘Your case?’ asked the tall man, and laid down the dice.
Lymond shook his head. ‘Another’s.’
‘She leaves him for a better lover,’ said the short one aggressively.
‘No,’ said Lymond gravely. ‘That has been tried.’
Curiously, the eyes of the tall gaoler searched the cool face. ‘For money, then? Marriage? Position?’
‘That has been tried, too.’
‘She’s not a mistress, that one; she’s a leech,’ said the short