Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [35]
‘What did she say?’ asked O’LiamRoe, driven to being explicit.
Lymond paused. His black hair, damply curling, showed a tinge of gold at the roots; and only the dye ingrained in his skin disguised the gold stubble of his beard. In the slack-lidded eyes lived an echo of something hilarious and vital. O’LiamRoe felt a sudden obscure drag at his entrails. If he could, he would have withdrawn the question.
‘What did she say? “I have brought you to the ring—hop it if you can.” Quotation,’ said Lymond.
O’LiamRoe stood up. ‘My life for you, it’s another master you’re needing. Is there not a smart, orthodox rebel of an Irishman that would do? There’s young Gerald of Kildare now; but he’s in Rome and maybe a thought too small for the hire of an ollave. Or Cormac O’Connor, then. His father’s between four walls in the Tower of London and Cormac is wild, wild to kick the English out of Ireland; Henri would see that he came to Court and sat soft in the crook of his arm, and his ollave too. You would need only another name, and pink hair maybe.’
Lymond glanced at him, and picked up a towel. ‘What’ll you wager I can’t enter the royal circle as Thady Boy Ballagh?’
‘Before Wednesday?’ O’LiamRoe spoke sarcastically, the exaggerated ease out of his manner.
‘Or Thursday.’ Below the collarbone, Lymond’s skin was surprisingly brown, and the contouring was neat-muscled and shapely, despite the flawing of scars. He added, glancing up from his towelling, ‘If I achieved a foothold at Court, would you stay?’
O’LiamRoe’s freckled face gleamed as he enjoyed the idea. ‘As your ollave? Let you not be tempting me.’
Lymond flung a bedsheet round his shoulders and hugged his knees, his gaze on the hot charcoal, and this time gave his mind to it. ‘As O’LiamRoe. This nonsense will sort itself out. And after the pleasure of berating the King’s Majesty, it might be pleasant to spend the winter at his expense.’
‘Ah! The powerful old women there are in it,’ said O’LiamRoe. ‘This nonsense is to be sorted out, is it? And Francis Crawford of Lymond needs a sponsor, if that awkward clod of an Irishman will drop his pretensions to pride?’
Lymond was not drunk. But even taking a tenth of what he appeared to take, his head was not at its clearest to deal with O’LiamRoe in this mood, and he knew it. He said finally, ‘You’d better play tennis with them on Tír-nan-óg, my dear, if you’re going to call thirty-five old. 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. I suggested a sporting wager; but if you’re bored with France or with myself, no doubt you’ll take ship on Thursday.’
The marmalade head was cocked on one side. O’LiamRoe felt like being difficult. It was the other man who was in his debt. He had brought the fellow to France as his secretary to please his cousin Mariotta, who was also Lymond’s sister-in-law. He knew Lymond was Scots and not Irish, and he knew he was here with a mission. Indeed, it was out of a kind of schoolboy amusement that he had offered to help the deception. He therefore grinned, stretched, yawned an ear-cracking yawn and said, ‘Will I stay, now, if someone kindly gives me a chance? Who knows? Ask me after the King and yourself have had a talk about it.… And that puts me in mind of a thing. Piedar Dooly has a morsel of news. You recall our half-footed friend of the whale?’
This time he had the other man’s full attention. ‘Who fairly spoiled your one nightshirt? Yes.’
‘Well, now. He’s called Pierre Destaiz, it seems; and plaster whales are a passing concern. He’s one of the royal keepers at St. Germain. He’s an expert on elephants.’
Lymond’s eyes narrowed. His gaze, suddenly impersonal, rested thoughtfully on the accustomed idleness in O’LiamRoe’s soft face. Then he buried his face in his sheet, laughing noiselessly. His voice, muffled, came to Phelim. ‘And he’s come to Rouen