Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [82]
After the first second, Thady Boy’s right hand lay relaxed in his grip. The others all turned to look. O’LiamRoe grinned, but Stewart, forced to look at that elegant hand, found rising within him a profound and inexplicable annoyance. He said nastily, ‘They’re not so bonny on the other side, are they? I doubt Master Ballagh caught a few knives wrong end up when he was learning to juggle.… Yon’s the arcade his lordship was speaking of.’ Lord d’Aubigny cleared his throat; Sir George, smiling, loosed his hard grasp; and the little party, dismissing the scene, shuffled after.
And once, when Lord d’Aubigny touched with a certain wit on Stewart’s recent ordeal by fire, Sir George smiled. ‘Life at Court seems to be uncommonly risky. I hope, Stewart, both you and your rescuer had read your Pynson. You know it? The Art and Craft to Know Well to Dye:
The greater part of his audience looked amiably blank. O’LiamRoe picked up a piece of rock crystal and whistled. The book Douglas mentioned, he seemed to remember in the unfiled rubbish heap of his mind, dealt not with mortality but with tinting. A grin of pure joy lined the smooth, egg-round face; and the Prince of Barrow, returning the crystal, addressed his ollave over his shoulder. ‘Busy child, you have surely read that.’
‘Ah,’ said Thady. ‘The Douglases are expert on titles. I would never contradict them.’
And paid for it that same evening when, neatly noosed by courtesies and polite insistence, he was drawn alone into Sir George’s room and heard the door close crisply behind him.
‘And now,’ said the most intelligent of the Douglases, removing his superb cloak and smoothing his doublet, while watching the fat, sweep-headed creature before him. ‘And now, Francis Crawford of Lymond, let us talk.’
From his black head to his scuffed mockado shoes, Thady Boy was relaxed. A point of light from the fire danced under his lids. ‘You are speaking, maybe, to the fairies?’
Moving with grace, Douglas dropped into a tall tapestried chair and put his fingers together. ‘You forget. I know your face, my dear Crawford. I know it better than any of my colleagues do. I had the pleasure on several occasions of causing you trouble, and I bear you no grudge for having on occasion made use of me. At times, as I remember, we have even helped one another. For the future.… Who knows?’ His eyes rested thoughtfully on Thady Boy’s calm face. ‘I thought the Queen would have had you at today’s meeting. Doesn’t she trust you yet? Or is it the other way round?’
The room was exquisitely furnished. Detaching himself in all his bleary satin from the door, Thady Boy took from the wall an Aztec mask fiery with jewels, its nose and ears of beaten gold. He put it on. The bone teeth grinned, and his voice came hollow through the metal. ‘Quetzalcoatl, Lord of the Toltecs.’
Sir George waited, but the voice added nothing more. ‘Shall I spell it out, then?’ he said. ‘The Queen Dowager of Scotland and her brothers had a meeting with King Henri this morning. They reached an agreement, as a result of which our dear Scottish friend the Earl of Arran will be asked to give up the Governship of Scotland, on the promise that if little Mary dies childless, he will rule Scotland as King. And in Arran’s place the new Governor of Scotland in Mary’s minority will of course be that well-known Frenchwoman, the Queen Dowager Mary of Guise.… Interesting?’
‘Very.’ The mask had descended.
‘So that at all costs the little Queen must be kept alive so that her mother, during the minority, may run Scotland as she wishes; so that Mary in time may marry the heir to the French throne; and so that the Dauphin may in time become King of France, Ireland and Scotland, with the entire family of Guise at, if not on, his right hand. This conception of the future is not universally popular in the kingdom of France.’
‘Do you tell me?’
‘No.