Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [85]
On the journey, Stewart edged up to Thady. ‘Your Prince was awful interested in this fellow Lymond.’
The ollave was patient. ‘Your Lord d’Aubigny is terrible interested in Italian silver. ’Tis the same thing; only O’LiamRoe collects useless facts.’ His eyes were on Stewart’s bony, tight face. ‘Don’t you agree?’
‘Italian silver! A small trifle by Primaticcio,’ mimicked Stewart viciously. They had all caught the edge of a flaming row conducted behind closed doors between Lord d’Aubigny and the Archer. ‘What would he do, faced with a hunting cat in the grass? Throw a bracelet at it?’
Then they came to Neuvy. Mistress Boyle’s modest, pretty château where they broke their journey that night was stretched to the jowls with relations and visitors and rocking these two days with the news that the great Cormac O’Connor himself was coming to stay with them. Francophiles and Anglophobes to a woman, the Boy les and the O’Dwyers would always worship a rebel. O’LiamRoe, ollave and servingman, stepping into the ferment, were welcomed with the bursting of kisses and passed a night there that never hinted at a pillow through midnight to dawn, so fierce were the arguments. Thady Boy shone; O’LiamRoe spoke fitfully. Oonagh was not at home. She had gone to Blois itself two days before, staying with a second cousin, to attend a function at Court.
Next morning, dressing, Thady Boy was unduly entertaining on the subject of O’LiamRoe’s reticence.
The Prince of Barrow, putting on his snubnosed boots, got up, stamped each foot with great care, and spoke with some deliberation to his ollave. ‘It would be a great saving for everyone, would it not, if you passed a little time on your own affairs, before you came interfering with mine.’
Shocked, Thady Boy looked round. ‘ ’Tis my affairs I am returning to Blois for, surely.’ And then, after a moment, added indulgently, ‘But to take heed to the luck of another, Prince of Barrow, ’Tis a true friend you are.’
‘I’m happy you think so,’ said O’LiamRoe dryly. Behind him, the eyes of his ollave were tenderly blank.
IV
Blois: All the Mean Arts
Musicians and sport-makers in general, viz. equestrians, and chariot-drivers, pilots and conjurers, and companies, and scarifiers, and jugglers, and buffoons, and podicicinists; and all the mean arts in like manner. It is on account of the person with whom they are—it is out of him they are paid: there is no nobility for them severally at all.
THEY returned to Blois to find the Court full of women. The King, together with Lord d’Aubigny and his officers, was boar-hunting at Chambord. To the ladies at home the arrival of Thady Boy, all pale acid and invention, was as welcome as the warty toad with his ruby.
Tired of walking in the frosty labyrinths and exchanging stale barbs round high fires of rosemary and juniper, tired of the tumblers, tired even of watching Tosh and Tosh’s donkey in their wooden harness skimming from steeple to steeple, they closed around him in clouds of patchouli, and peeled his brain like a walnut. O’LiamRoe found Oonagh at her friends’ house, riding, hawking, playing chess with her suitors, and attached himself, jocular and uncomplaining, to their number. He had bought her a new wolfhound. It was good, but not a Luadhas.
Just before the King returned, Queen Catherine invited O’LiamRoe to one of her afternoon entertainments. The offence of the tennis court, it was clear, had been nearly effaced by his ollave; soon the last ban might be lifted. He attended, pink, smiling, verbose. The tumult of luxury entertained him: the blasts of chypre from the birds, the hissing farthingales and Hainault lace, the net stockings and gem-stuck pumps, the headdresses starched and spangled and meshed and fluted, the plucked eyebrows and frizzled hair, the lynx, genet and Calabrian sable stinking in the wet, the gauzy cache-nez drawn over nose and chin in the gardens and referred