Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [59]
The Inexpugnable Drone
It is not easy for Brehons to decide concerning bees that have taken up their lodging in the trees of a noble dignitary; with respect to which it is not easy to cut the tree.
THE news of Thady Boy’s unlooked-for success was brought his employer the next morning by Robin Stewart, who had risen very early for this privilege. O’LiamRoe, listening, scratched his feathered golden head.
At the end, he looked pleased. ‘Ah, ’Tis a tearing fellow, a noble champion itself. To the devil with your pearldrops and your parroty manners. A filled mind and an apt wit will earn you all the respect any man has the means to deserve.’
‘Man, ye canna trust them. Look how choosy they were with you thon day at the tennis. And now they expect you to sit here on suffrance while the wee smart fat ones go about arm in arm with the dukes,’ said Robin Stewart, employing tact much as O’LiamRoe employed fine clothes as a blandishment.
His cheekbones grinding, the Irishman yawned. ‘If Thady Boy is desperate to squeeze kisses on to princesses, my dear, O’LiamRoe won’t begrudge it.’
‘You’ll scour France at his shirttails, and sit behind the closed door? They’ll have him at every supper like physic. I’ve seen a fancy take them before.’
‘I believe you. He’ll be clean worn down and fit to pass through a dog stirrup before he sees Ireland again. What of it? I’ll not lack entertainment.’
Quarrelling with the Prince of Barrow was like fighting a curtain. Robin Stewart gave up.
It was a busy day for O’LiamRoe. His next caller was d’Aubigny, bearing the King’s deferential request for the continued company at Blois of the Prince of Barrow’s gifted ollave, Thady Ballagh. No mention was made of O’LiamRoe’s mooted departure, but the letter implied, and Lord d’Aubigny confirmed, that he himself would be at O’LiamRoe’s service, and that on the journey south and beyond, he need have no worry about tolls, fares or fodder, or about his nights’ lodgings. O’LiamRoe was delighted. ‘Dhia! It’s like being cuckolded.’
With Lord d’Aubigny was the small, red-haired, pretty woman O’LiamRoe had first met at Rouen on the other side of a whale. Jenny Fleming had seized the excuse to survey him.
The Prince of Barrow’s interest in Lymond’s affairs was minuscule. But he knew wilful curiosity when he saw it. She and d’Aubigny seemed on good terms: he was, after all, also of royal Stewart descent; their forebears were the same. Her liveliness and her graces fitted elegantly into the fiddling pattern of her kinsman’s behaviour The reservoirs of his speech flowed freely for her entertainment; his voice mellowed. Listening, you could guess how he had impressed the gauche boy who became King.
O’LiamRoe amused her with Irish nonsense, let her tease him, and contrived one or two exchanges with his lordship which almost reached the dignity of serious conversation and probably startled both men. In fact, a shade of puzzlement occasionally crossed d’Aubigny’s face and once, unexpectedly, he addressed Lady Fleming less than civilly.
She had been talking of home; but at the tone she lifted her clear eyes to his lordship. ‘John, if you wish to leave so badly, you may wait for me below.’
And huffily, to O’LiamRoe’s mild astonishment, Lord d’Aubigny left. As the door closed behind him with unnecessary firmness, Jenny, triumphant, turned to the Irishman. ‘And what do you make of our darling?’
She had come, breaking every prohibition, to talk about Lymond. O’LiamRoe, amused, picked up her furred cloak and said, ‘Thady Boy? He’ll be in crumbs in a year, with all that scurrying about; but he makes a middling good Irishman.’
‘Then don’t show me a bad one. He came to my room and read me a lecture this morning—’ She broke off. It was no part of Jenny’s technique to destroy her own charming image.
Affairs of status meant nothing to O’LiamRoe. He hitched the cloak round her straight shoulders, and patted it, dispatching her. ‘He’s a quaint fellow, to be sure; but dead lucky with women.’
She must have realized then that no confidences would be forthcoming. He was