Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [72]
Despite herself, she looked for the Irishmen and found them, Thady long-stirruped on a jennet whose belly tickled the grass. Above him towered O’LiamRoe on a mouse-dun stallion. The Archer Stewart swung off to mount beside a pack of his colleagues. Bit by bit, the coursing dogs vanished to take their place in the relays. The picnic, dismantled, had gone. She saw O’LiamRoe bend down to speak to Dooly, who was moving off with two whining couples hardelled in his fists. Then a rustle of brushwood, a chime of metal and a scriech of greeting announced the Irishwomen from Neuvy.
Quilled like a porcupine, her hood leaking grey hair, and her strong, crowded teeth active in the leathery face, Mistress Boyle knew how to make her apologies to a de Guise. She soothed him, amused him and left him, pulling Oonagh’s horse with her own.
At O’LiamRoe’s side both horses stopped dead, under the idle, observant eyes of every waiting soul in the wood, while Theresa Boyle gazed at the mounted huddle of frieze and the matted, calf-high dog at his side. ‘Father in heaven. I’d not have believed it, though ’twas the buzz of the court. They did say that splendid great prince O’LiamRoe had bought a dog was the most handsome thing ever made; more beauteous than the sun in his wheels of fire, so they said. And whatever do you want with a fine thing like that, Prince of Barrow?’
The two pairs of eyes, dog and man, turned to Mistress Boyle and the young woman at her side. The waiting horses, impatient, trampled a little in the quiet; and far off you could hear the berners, speaking low to their greyhounds as they went. The lymhounds, trained to silence, sat and scratched.
Margaret Erskine, who knew O’LiamRoe from the river bank at Rouen, and from her mother’s sophisticated hilarity, felt her face harden with anger, and leaning over, spoke to the Queen, her back to the clear, expressionless profile of Thady Boy’s face.
Into the silence, only a little flushed, O’LiamRoe spoke evenly. ‘She is not Failnis itself, but she is sweet-mouthed and fleet, so they say. Her name is Luadhas, and she and I had great hopes that you and your lady niece would accept her.’
Like a tall sea goddess, stonelike on her horse sat Oonagh O’Dwyer, her black hair blowing a little, the only moving thing, on her trailing mantle. Mistress Boyle, releasing a thin scream, leaned over and dug her fingers in the girl’s quilted arm. ‘Is he not the darling knight of the kennels, and shy too, with the two little blushes on his cheeks? Thank him, Oonagh. Ná buail do choin gen chinaid, they say.’
It was doubtful whether any part of this speech reached Oonagh O’Dwyer. At the first words she had pulled off her glove, leaned down, and cracked her long, boy’s fingers once. The wolfhound turned its flat head and, trailed by a sullen Dooly, first walked and then trotted to her side. The long, hairless white arm caressed the dog briefly; then she straightened, drew on her glove and renewed her firm grasp of the reins.
‘A fair beast and a good purchase, Prince of Barrow,’ she said, straight-faced and straight-backed, and clear as a bell. ‘Now let us see how she runs.’ And with her movement, as at a signal, the company, circling, swinging, trampling, returned to its affairs. With the rustle and pad of perfect control, the Duke trotted past, and into the lead. With him went the Duchess and the Queen, their entourage following. Then they paused; the Duke turned, and they saw his arm raised, and heard the ululation of the horn.
Taut, merry, nervous, expertly mounted, exquisitely clothed, haughty in their bright youth, the chevaliers of France poured from the dishevelled clearing. Sunlit, all that morning, they spanned the glittering woods: diamond on diamond, grey on grey, riches on riches; bough and limb indistinguishable;