Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [80]
It was then that O’LiamRoe, coming back to his chamber now and then, found the door locked against him, and a woman’s voice, sweet and unrecognizable, spoke once when he rattled. ‘Non si puo: il signor è accompagnato.’ The next time the voice was a man’s; but it ceased as soon as O’LiamRoe rapped.
Only Robin Stewart upbraided Thady Boy, and then on the eve of their sole journey: a two-day visit by ceremonial invitation to Lord d’Aubigny’s home. Since Thady Boy’s first, carefree days in France, Lymond had kept his finger lightly on the pulse of Robin Stewart’s troubles, for little reason other than habit. Attention to weaker vessels had been for years a fighter’s necessity. It was also the sign of a born teacher, although this was not an aspect of Thady Boy which leaped to the eye.
On Stewart’s side through all this, a grudging admiration had succeeded distrust. Even before the hunt he had started to seek out Thady. After it, aggressively, he showed signs of haunting him, and Thady Boy, who by this time had his own reasons, did nothing to stop him. Faced now with one of the Archer’s more popular tirades, Thady Boy listened patiently, unrolling a doublet and beginning to put it on. Stewart’s lecture ended, and his bony hand rubbed over his face, stirring his already disordered hair and flicking his shirt collar awry. Unnoticing, he said suddenly, ‘Ballagh—why d’ye stay with O’LiamRoe? Any God’s number of dukes and lords here would be blithe to employ you, if it’s money you want.’
Thady Boy pulled shut the paned windows. ‘I thought you’d got O’LiamRoe out of your pate. What’s wrong with him now?’
The Archer said brusquely, ‘I don’t know.’ Then bending, he picked up his cloak and swung round, his face red. ‘It’s not worth speaking of. But … hell fry them … there they sit in their fancy clothes, with their lapdogs and their boy friends and the carbuncles bluff on their pinkies; and unless you’re Michael Scott or Michaelangelo, or Duns Scotus or Bayard, or a six-headed sow that can play prick-song on a jew’s harp, they’ve no use for you.’
Thady Boy, too, had slung his cloak over his shoulder and was standing, legs apart, hands clasped behind him, watching. ‘And which of O’LiamRoe’s spanking successes is irritating you?’ he asked. ‘Being turned off the tennis court or your cheetah clawing his wolfhound to death?—That hurt, by the way.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ said Stewart viciously. ‘You’d never know it. He’s mediocre, and he doesna care. He doesn’t even bother with—’ He stopped.
‘With what? Women? That remains to be seen. You may think you’ve endeared yourself to the Boyle family, my dear, but I doubt it. And is he mediocre?’ asked Thady Boy. ‘He upsets your philosophy by being happy; but I find him irritating for other reasons entirely.’
‘Then why stay with him?’ Blundering, Stewart renewed the attack. ‘Do you think you owe him loyalty? Do we owe any jack of them loyalty? If you made one slip yourself, they’d have your liver under their nails.’
His voice was thick; Thady’s, mellow and cool as the Liffey. ‘ ’Tis yourself, my fellow, who needs to leave this fine country. Quit off and go back to Scotland. Why not?’
Robin Stewart drew a deep breath. The waves of heat from the hearth oppressed them both, fully dressed for the journey. Stewart’s coarse skin was moist with heat; the brows indented, line upon line, where the fretful pressures of his spirit squeezed into his flesh day and night. ‘I’ll be sorry I said it,’ said the Archer suddenly. ‘But I’d liefer you knew. I would have left many a long week ago, if it wasn’t for you.’
Neither surprise nor pleasure showed