Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [60]
At the door, she paused. ‘Don’t tell him I came. Or he’ll do it again.’
O’LiamRoe, who knew a little more about Lymond than she bargained for, noted that occasionally Lady Fleming had a conscience. ‘I don’t need to,’ he said. ‘It’ll be all over Court by nightfall, surely.’
He was right. Tom Erskine was among the first to hear it, and the news added to a certain uneasiness which already tinged his confidence in Thady Boy Ballagh. The situation made him hesitate, but it was nearly time to leave on his embassy to Augsberg. He made his final calls, formal and informal, and at the end of them lost his escort and slipped unseen into the room where Thady Boy Ballagh as guest of the kingdom of France had spent his interrupted night.
Hindered by visits from the Constable, from Madame de Valentinois’s matron of honour, and from the Queen’s page, Lymond was preparing, among the ruins of an uneaten meal, to return to the Croix d’Or, where he and O’LiamRoe were to stay until the Court left. At the click of the latch he looked up.
‘Sacré chat d’Italie!’ said Francis Crawford. ‘The wife, the wife’s dam, and now the husband. Let’s have the Schawms of Maidstone in a pack on the doormat. Secrecy was your idea, wasn’t it?’
Erskine might bow to a superior brain, but he had no patience with temper. ‘The visit to Jenny, I understand, was initiated by you.’
‘My dear Thomas,’ said Lymond, ‘any man can visit Lady Fleming without comment. Unhappily she formed a low opinion of the night’s events, or lack of them, and took her complaints, I suspect, to O’LiamRoe. The much revered mother of your wife needs to be turned on her stomach and bladed on the back of a captured Bacchante.’
Erskine was sharp. ‘I’ve been taking formal leave of the King. And it was d’Aubigny who took Jenny to visit O’LiamRoe.’
‘Why?’
‘They get on well together.’
‘Well, get her away from him. Tell her it’s incest. And keep her apart from O’LiamRoe as well. She would have her work cut out anyway. He could thigh you a pigeon and disfigure a peacock and unlace a coney, but I’m damned sure he couldn’t undress a—’
‘—Particularly as he knows just who Jenny is, and no doubt, admires your restraint more than she does. This is rubbish. You’re talking as if she were someone from the Pont Truncat. We’ll interfere with you as little as possible; have no fear. Remember that you also have accepted an obligation.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Lymond. ‘Margaret worked very hard last night; you should be proud of her. I gather that if our deceased friends and lovers could see us, they would be proud of us. Even including, she seems to believe, Christian—’
Erskine’s face stopped him. For a moment their eyes met; then Lymond turned away, his lip curling. ‘All right. You’re leaving for Brussels and Augsburg and Margaret stays. You’ll be back when?’
‘After Christmas. Then home via England. Meanwhile, the little Queen, so far as we can manage it, will stay with the Queen Mother and not the royal children. All the safeguards you suggested will be applied. Everything she eats and everything she does will be watched; there will be a day and night guard. It can’t be complete, for above all, we must work invisibly. It mustn’t look as if we don’t trust her safety in France. That is our work. Yours is outside.’
Lymond said nothing. He had finished his sketchy packing and was lounging discouragingly by the door. Erskine wondered if he knew what was ahead of him. He said, ‘It’ll take God knows what time to get to Blois. You’ll go mostly by river, stopping off at lodges and palaces and staying exactly as long as the game lasts in each place. Nothing in this lunatic country matters as much as the hunt. Fifteen thousand people, this man’s father went about with, their beds, their clothes and their furniture on their backs, signing state papers on horseback and heralds running after him yearning in couples. They never stayed above fifteen days in one place, unless they were at war, and every ambassador in Europe hated hunting for life.’
It was a favourite subject; but something in Lymond