Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [62]
At the Croix d’Or, having shaken off the solicitous Stewart, Lymond arrived at last at the door of O’LiamRoe’s room and stepped inside, closing it quietly behind him. The silence, as the two men stared at one another, was fat with danger. Then a smile pulled at the corner of O’LiamRoe’s whiskered mouth and he gave tongue mellowly.
‘Busy child, if I read it right, there is the father and mother of all headaches on you which you surely deserve. Sit down. As you may have forgotten, in the long dereliction from your duty, I had better remind you that Phelim O’LiamRoe is the unnatural sort of fellow who has no need to be handled and who can even on occasion hold his tongue. I hear you are the finest lute player since Heremon. You can prove it to me tomorrow.’
’Thank God for that,’ said Lymond. He passed by, resting his hand for a moment on the other man’s shoulder, and dropped limply into a chair. In five minutes, he was asleep.
In the ten days still left in Rouen, they learned the rudiments of Court routine which would affect them both, willy-nilly, for four months. The King rose at dawn, held his levée, read his dispatches and talked them over with his Privy Council before ten o’clock Mass. Then the privileged traffic began: the secretaries and couriers and ambassadors and heralds and diplomats and soldiers and clergy with news and courtesies and gifts and complaints.
Routine reports came in: from the master masons on the King’s building work, or Madame Diane’s; from St. Germain about a valued bird fallen sick; a gentle reminder, routed through the Constable’s kind offices, that someone had been promised a present of wine, and someone’s butler had come for it; news of the children, with a painting. News of a death in Paris that left a benefice vacant; you could see by the new face lined up waiting who had already bought that titbit of news from the dying man’s doctor. Gossip about a new lawsuit in Toulouse, brought by an ambassador anxious to ingratiate himself; and you could tell by the needy face absent at supper who had borrowed enough money to go there and try to buy it.
Dinner was at noon. After it, the General Council might meet, but not now with the urgency of the days when France still had high hopes of Italy, and when, triumphant over England, they were engaged in tweaking Boulogne from her tail. Not that the prospects for next year were particularly serene, in spite of the nominal peace with England’s little King; the new Pope and the Emperor Charles, France’s traditional Hapsburg enemy, were too friendly for that.
At the beginning of his reign and his freedom, Henri had found it intoxicating to fondle his favourites. Diane, the Constable, St. André, d’Aubigny and the rest had half-emptied the treasury among them. But the proper exercise of the King’s divine power, obviously, was to encourage upheavals in Germany. By linking arms with Protestant and pagan—German princeling and Turkish infidel—he might defeat Charles. Unfortunately, the money was lacking. All the General Council could propose was prevarication—prevaricate with his dear sister Scotland; hold off his eager Irish friends; and make a cool social gesture or two in the direction of England, herself split in two with the old story, the struggle for baronial power during small Edward’s minority.
Henri of France could prevaricate without even thinking. He attended the Queen’s evening parties, gave large suppers, spent what time he could, which was quite a lot, with Diane; and in rare moments of privacy could be heard practising his lute. The rest of the waking hours, for these ten days at Rouen, were filled with ceremony.
The capital of Normandy, perfectly capable of turning down flat a Grand Sénéchal wanting an Entry on the eve of vacation, was prone by the same token to extract the last ounce from a really royal occasion, once they had set their minds to it; particularly with Lyons to outshine. There was the State Entry of Queen Catherine; the speech-girt presentation