Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [70]
‘I could sleep in a candle mould.’
‘I thought you were supposed to be at O’LiamRoe’s hip, booted to the groin, whenever he moved.’
One long finger remained pressed silently on the last key. ‘Then you would lose the pleasure of telling me where he is.’
‘In the kennels.’
‘Dripping like a clepsydra with useless information. Ollaves’ powers are unconscionably limited. I could recite an aér before breakfast and he should break out in bolga by dinnertime. But get him to remain in one room I cannot.’
‘Is he nervous?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘Then he ought to be, my dear, if only of you.… You thought I was d’Enghien, didn’t you?’
‘No. He uses a different scent. I think you should go.’
He had curbed his tongue, always, when dealing with Lady Fleming; and she was far too expert to court the unforgivable. Instead, she turned the mirror towards him, so that he faced the dregs of his elegance; then closed the little case with a click. ‘There is no need to be nervous,’ she said.
He waited until she had gone, and then laughed at the sheer effrontery of it.
That same afternoon, O’LiamRoe lay on his back in the grass, fending off a loosely upholstered, unkempt mat of a deerhound called Luadhas.
It was a sweet, well-nourished day with a ruddy sun and crisp air and an early shower of rain which had soaked the Prince’s breeches and shoulder blades black from the grass. He was alone. The dogs were out, rolling, yapping, scampering in the paddock: tumblers and lurchers; spaniels for hawking and fowling; the hare-hounds, light and nervy; the mastiffs with their flop ears for boar; the flat-headed, vicious allaunts and the white, fleet children of Souillard, the famous Royal White Hounds, which never gave tongue without cause. With them were the wolfhounds, Luadhas and her brother, each three feet high; 120 pounds of big-boned, brindled dog with thin muzzles and arched loins and mild flat-browed noble heads, who could catch and slaughter a wolf.
Tuned to the din, O’LiamRoe and his deerhound heard the footfalls at once. Shaggy brindle next to hispid gold, the two Irish heads turned as Thady Boy Ballagh strolled over the grass. Mildly and inaudibly, O’LiamRoe swore. For Luadhas, he had found, was for sale, at a price. And he had just bought her as a present for Oonagh O’Dwyer.
When his secretary was near enough therefore, the Prince spoke softly, a glint in his gentle blue eye. ‘Busy child, you’ve been a middling long while finding me this time. I could be killed, dried and folded flat in a drawer like Callimachus’ corpse and no one the wiser.’
‘A little co-operation would help,’ said Thady Boy, and dropping on his haunches, picked up Luadhas’s big paw, with its strong, curving nails. He spoke without heat. It was his self imposed task to keep O’LiamRoe in sight. O’LiamRoe was free to put whatever value on his own life he chose.
‘My grief,’ said that person with interest. ‘ ’Tis a hard time you have, with those delicate interests besides. Modify your enthusiams, busy child. France is a dangerous tutor. What joy? What laughter? Let us recall the everlasting burnings.’
Lymond said, smiling down at the grass, ‘Their arguments get more heated than yours do, that’s all.’
Beguiled as ever by the sweet pipe of a theory, O’LiamRoe pondered. ‘True. There is one thing that you Scots and this kindle of latter-day Romans have got that the angry lads back home with the hatchets will miss sorely if they break out against England. And that’s Royalty to lead you: the divine vessel of kings that cannot err. Bring on the Vice-Gerent of God, and you’ve enlisted a nation. Bring on Sean O’Grady from Cork, and you’ve merely got Cork.’
Thady Boy, careless also of the wet grass, was flat on his back, taking leisurely soundings. ‘And what about the cult of the full man? How do you fancy life lived in the round?’
‘Forty-one million livres’ worth of coats from Italy and the rest? Ah, ’Tis as old as the world,’ said O’LiamRoe. ‘From the Celtic Kings downwards you have it: high power and high living; art and sculpture and music; strong