Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [89]
Even then the blandly sportive intent did not strike home until she saw Thady Boy himself, conducting his clangorous consort from a gatepost. Her furious plunge into the house was stopped short by Hélie Moûtier’s wise arm. ‘No, child. If it’s not meant as a compliment, it’s meant as a test. Either way, it calls for good nature. Stay and smile.’
‘Smile!’ She stared at him, cold outrage sleek in her eyes. ‘At that pack of incompetent sow-gelders?’
‘There is no need. I shall stop him,’ said O’Liam Roe.
‘And make us both the butt of the palace?’ Her voice rooted him to the floor. ‘If I need a champion, you fool, I’ll choose someone better than the fat, white-fronted cat of the Breasal Breac’ He fell back; and the music went on.
Brumel they played, and Certon, Goudimel and de Lassus, Willaert and Le Jeune—all badly. The watch put in an appearance and hurried away, gold in hand. A word, an appraising glance from d’Aumale, from St. André, from d’Enghien, were enough for the angriest sleeper. O’LiamRoe, from the shadows, watched Oonagh’s straight back as she stood on the balcony listening. Presently she turned to him and, without apology, asked him for a service. He complied gravely out of his wisdom, honouring the impulse as he had once seen Luadhas do. Embracing the gatepost down below, Thady Boy was carolling in Gaelic.
‘To whomsoever of women we arrived
Of Scotland and of Ireland
She is the goat-haired woman
She is the rambler among rocks.…’
Her eyes flickered then; and O’LiamRoe, silently watching, was filled again with his rare, slothful anger.
Shortly afterwards she left the balcony, and the gates of the Hôtel Moûtier swung open, with good grace, to admit the performers to the courtyard for soup and wine. With them came the thirstier servants, some men-at-arms and several hopeful passers-by. The courtiers, losing interest, had moved on.
Exposed to all that crowded, craning street, Oonagh walked through the courtyard, giving soup with her own hands, the steam white in the moonlight. So, with the veil coiling between them, she met Thady Boy.
Smiling, flickering in the lamplight, his face was Quetzalcoatl’s again, maliciously observant. She set the bowl in his palms and spoke evenly. ‘Thank you, Master Ballagh. I was wondering how to bring the great folk of France to take notice of me.’
He dipped a long finger in the soup and held it up. ‘Larks’ tongues, is it? Ah, ’twas a cultural triumph for Ireland this night. Three flutes we had, mark you, and a flute is not at all cheerful at being out of his bed after nine o’clock at all, I can tell you.… Was that a whisker of O’LiamRoe I had a sight of up there?’
‘It was.’
‘My own lord and master. He will be a proud man this night. Is he not for coming down?’
‘He is not; and it is better for you, I can tell you, that he is not. Do you think he is pleased?’ said Oonagh.
Thady Boy’s actor face was crestfallen. ‘Is he not?’
‘He is not,’ said O’LiamRoe’s curt voice at his elbow. The Prince of Barrow, his back squarely to his ollave, went on: ‘Your cousins kindly pressed me, but after all I’d liefer not stay. There are things to be done and said which are better done at the château.’
Oonagh took one step after him and then halted. Thady Boy did not even do so much. When she turned back he was buried, intoning, in a pack of drunken trumpeters, and two of St. Andre’s men, dispatched from the road end, were trying to hurry him into the street. The race was due to begin.
Oonagh heard of it from a viol player, morosely returning his instrument to its bag. He was cold, tired, and humourless, and had no intention of waiting to see young men run over housetops from the cathedral hill to the château in the dark. ‘They’re mad,’ he said. ‘They’re drunk,’ he added. ‘They’ll break their necks.’
‘That,’ said Oonagh O’Dwyer dryly, ‘would be an excellent idea.’
The bald, moonlit square above the Rue des Papegaults was heaped with people, sliding and darting like iron filings