Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [84]
‘It wouldn’t fall faint, I dare think, on the ears of King Henri,’ said Douglas comfortably. ‘As you are aware, the Queen Mother will disown you instantly.’
Thady Boy shook his head. ‘Logic, logic; why then should the lady ever agree to your wants?’
‘It wounds me to say it, but for quite a sound reason I believe,’ said Sir George Douglas. ‘She disapproves of me, I do believe; but she wants Lymond more.’
There was a thoughtful silence, filled with the hiss and crack of the fire. Thady Boy stirred. He rose to his feet, picked up the Aztec mask, and clapping it on, Janus-like, back to front, surveyed Sir George who also had risen, not quite so smoothly. ‘ ’Tis a neat, pretty scheme; but you overrate friend Quetzalcoatl here and underrate the Queen Mother. If his stock were as high as you think, he would have been at this meeting you speak of, surely. And to exert pressure and still be refused would be intolerable, would it not? So that it is lucky that there is no Quetzalcoatl, but only a Druimcli of the seven degrees with a simple negative in his mouth.’
He strolled away, replaced the mask, and turned to the door. Sir George Douglas followed him. They understood each other. Lymond knew that Sir George would take just as much as he could snatch, this side of danger; and Sir George knew that Lymond had quite cheerfully called his bluff. The situation, however, was still full of plums for the picking. He said mildly, ‘The seven degrees of self-confidence, I take it. You deserve to be made a little uncomfortable, my friend.’
‘Dhia, you are forestalled,’ said Thady Boy absently, his hand on the latch. ‘I will add, however, a true piece of advice.
‘The country is stronger than the lord, noble Douglas. Stronger than the lord and equal to the power of her songs—Do you sing, now?’
Sir George did not sing. He turned to Quetzalcoatl, empty-eyed on the wall, and as the door shut, exchanged a bald grin.
The Douglas was sufficiently piqued to retaliate next day, when maliciously he dragged the small talk to Scotland, the third baron Cutler and his Irish wife, and the third baron’s brother and heir, Francis Crawford of Lymond, Master of Culter.
The secret of Lymond’s identity, Sir George believed, was his own and O’LiamRoe’s. But surprisingly, O’LiamRoe with a flood of animated questions was his ally. Drumlanrig, who disliked the Culters, was typically gloomy and the Archer Stewart looked merely angry and bored. But Lord d’Aubigny, surely, knew that Lymond was a notorious enemy of Lennox, his brother in London, his name even having been linked with Margaret, Lennox’s wife.
Yet far from slandering the Culters and unwittingly giving help with the baiting, Lord d’Aubigny listened almost without comment, and only once contradicted. ‘The fellow’s yellow-headed, surely; the same as my brother. That’s why my dear Matthew found it infuriating when Margaret—’ He broke off. Margaret, he had perhaps remembered, was George Douglas’s niece.
It was what Douglas had been angling for. ‘Yellow hair can be dyed, John. They say the man is now somewhere in France.’
There was a dreary silence; to his irritation he felt the topic founder at his feet. Lord d’Aubigny said with surprise, ‘My dear George … must we pass the whole day talking about a provincial adventurer, a galley slave even at one time, I believe? The man Ouschart is coming, and I was hoping Master Ballagh here would play for us.’
‘Ah, tattheration. Any day of the week you can hear Thady Boy; there is nothing like a good, stout tale of a rogue.’ O’LiamRoe, elaborating, was not going to let his private entertainment lapse.
Prone on the window seat, his instrument on his stomach, Thady Boy took no part in the discussion. Later, after some brilliant rope dancing by Thomas Ouschart, whose other name was Tosh, Thady Boy beat O’LiamRoe unmercifully at backgammon, gave a brief and unquestionably fine recital for his host, and then in company with O’LiamRoe, Robin Stewart and Piedar Dooly took his departure for Blois, the visit ended.
They were to break their journey at