Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [240]
‘Paris. Lyons. Rouen. Dieppe. Amboise. Angers,’ said Abernaci. ‘There’s a kind of sameness. Only this time we’re untying our very own purse, so we’re a wee thing skimped as to hay. D’ye mind Hughie upsetting the—No. Ye werena at Rouen.’
‘They play at gods,’ said Piedar Dooly, and spat. ‘French and English alike. Gods out of hell would you say, harrowing green land for their tennis courts and dressing lapdogs in treasure that would keep half Ireland in bread for a year. The heroes of Tara would have put them face to schisty face and used them for millstones.’
Dropping back on the burned grass, Tosh stretched his arms under his head. ‘Ye needna miscall the French. They drove the English fairly out of their country.’
In two wiry steps, Dooly lowered over the funambulist. ‘With eight thousand Irishmen to help them!’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you saying that Ireland won’t send the English off her shores with a blow that will make these fat folk look seven ways at once—and the Scots too? Doesn’t every man know that the great Scottish nation has got so soft all out that France has to fight all her wars for her? Women ruled by women … and there’s the great war-lord chief of you all, in her petticoats, scarce off the breast of her nurse, come to preside at the weapon showing there.’
Tosh, an even-tempered man, caught Abernaci’s eye and rolled over. ‘Oh, aye, there’s great bullocks in Ireland,’ he said. ‘But they canna get them shipped for their long horns, they say.’ Abernaci, having observed that the child Queen had indeed come to the far edge of the lake, hopped to his feet and stood astride, shading his brown cracked face with his hand. ‘Christ. The governess. The Erskine woman. The Fleming boy. Two of the children, and six men-at-arms. They’re examining the boat the way it was a good case of beggar’s leprosy.… They’re getting in.’
‘They’ll be as safe in mid-water as anywhere, if the boat’s all right,’ said Tosh. ‘What’s the rest of the armada?’ In the middle of the lake, twelve little boats bobbed, roped to each other and then to a buoy: gondolas, brigantines, galleys in small.
‘Nothing to harm her,’ said Abernaci. ‘Brigantines and galleys for the mock fight, the state barge, and boats with squibs and canes of fire darts and clods and moulins à feu. Even were they all set off at once, they couldn’t hurt; and they can hardly be set off. There’s not a lit torch been allowed near the lake. You’ll have heard—Man,’ he broke off, turning on Piedar Dooly, craning at his elbow. ‘Are ye not for finding O’LiamRoe, now ye ken whaur he is?’
‘Ah, get comfortable,’ said the Irishman contemptuously, and turned his back on the water. ‘I was there when they threw the ollave into prison, and a better thing the fools never did. It’s no news to me.’
For the second time, the eyes of the other two met. ‘Nor to me,’ said Tosh briefly. ‘—I hear also that Cormac O’Connor is sick.’
Piedar Dooly dropped to the grass. ‘O’LiamRoe—would you know it?’ he said. ‘I tell you, were I not to let the wind out of him this while and that, we would never see the Slieve Bloom again.’ And he hugged his knees, his raw face complacent.
It was Abernaci, used to reading the speechless, who stood as if graven, receiving the first signals of danger; then, like a snake striking, flicked into the grass and came up with Piedar Dooly’s shoulder pinched flat in one hand. Tosh, jumping to his feet, took one look and gripped Dooly’s other arm, a question on his broad Aberdeen face. ‘Would you say,’ said Abernaci kindly, ‘that he was waiting