Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [69]
SAFE and untouched, Queen Mary also reached Blois, with a fresh piece of bandage and the monkeys. The household staff and O’LiamRoe were already in, with some of the courtiers. The Queen Dowager and her Scotsmen arrived in the same fleet of barges, and the Duke de Guise and Madame de Valentinois came later. Only the royal suite and the Constable had not yet travelled south.
Home and birthplace of kings, Blois was rich; Scotland had nothing so precious. Robin Stewart had watched, along the waterway from Gien, as the blue roofs and white towers slid by at every turn of the Loire, and the flaming swords of Charles, the porcupine of Louis, the cord and ermines of Anne, the salamander of Francis and the double crescents of Henri franked every stone. Then landing, he climbed with the rest to the basse-cour of the castle and saw the familiar château before him diced red and white, the dormers high as rose mallows, and through the deep arch the inner court, through which every man but the King must walk on foot.
Round the hollow square inside, Charles of Orléans, Louis and Francis had each built a wing, each the best of its day. Everywhere the eye was beguiled by griffins and crockets, puttis and niches; by the strange crested staircase, and the stone worked like brocade.
To most of the Scots there, it was too familiar for comment. They entered, and after the usual interval of chaos, settled into their quarters. The Queen Dowager of Scotland used the suite set aside for the de Guises, in the Louis XII wing, overlooking the basse-cour. Her brothers, who were at the castle most of the day, slept in the Rue Chemonton and her lords were farmed out, among hosts willing and unwilling, throughout the town. In the opposite wing, the old Charles of Orléans block, were the Irishmen.
Finding them was no trouble. Setting off some days later, Jenny Fleming simply followed the far sound of music across the inner courtyard. Her hood held tight over her traitorous hair, she picked her way across the paving and up the staircase on its southwestern side, and her excellent hearing led her from there.
The thick door, carved and painted, opened into a comfortable room. The maître d’hôtel, in the end, had been generous to O’LiamRoe and his entourage. The floor was tiled, the white walls pinned with tapestries, and the pillared bed, Lady Fleming was charmed to see, envisaging Thady Boy and O’LiamRoe side by side on the feathered bolster, was of tortoiseshell and ivory. There were several coffers and a secretaire; two benches and a heavy chair, several stools and a prie-dieu; a balcony; and a cabinet off, where Piedar Dooly sat and slept.
There was also a spinet, bearing Diane de Poitiers’s monogram, at which she could see Thady Boy’s back, a split across the main seam. He was playing steadily and correctly, his mind clearly elsewhere. When the latch clicked he said, unmoving, ‘Go away.’
Jenny, Lady Fleming, shut the door, alive to a ravishing situation. ‘You don’t know who it is.’
Still he made no effort to turn. ‘I do. Go away, Lady Fleming.’
She smiled, and swinging her little cosmetic case on one finger, moved in and tapped him with it. ‘Do you know that you are alone? Soul as the turtil that hath lost hir make.’ And still smiling, Jenny Fleming walked round him, rested her arms on the spinet, and, holding the open case between her two hands, communed with her reflection inside. ‘My sweet ollave, you have lost O’LiamRoe again.’
‘Plan, plan, ta ti ta, ta ti ta, tou, touf, touf; boute selle.… He can go to hell.’ One finger parodied the drums for alarm. ‘I’m tired,’ said Lymond, ‘of playing cache-cache with O’LiamRoe.’
Leaning there, she studied him. Last night’s stubble was still there, and the faint slackness of high living. The uncombed, dyed hair, tumbling forward, had robbed the face of any distinction. ‘You look a little overdrawn