Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [9]
‘Playing the spinet,’ said the Special Ambassador. ‘Too damned well.’
The neat and tingling flow of notes continued. ‘It will cover our voices. None of your friends realize how gifted you are.’
‘Practically all of my friends know I can’t play on that thing. What else do you want to know? You don’t need to be told what the French court is like. It’s the most—’
‘It’s a hand-set maggot mound,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘I could teach you more than you would want to know about it.’ His fingers running over the keys, he spoke without rancour. ‘The universities, the prisons, the boudoirs and the brothels, the palaces and the paintings, the serenades, the banquets, the love-making, the hoof and hair of a heretic frying. Bed-talk and knife-talk and whip-talk. I know where it breeds. If there’s danger, I’ll find it. —I must go.’
Rising at the same time, Erskine controlled his impulse to protest. Lymond had engaged to report his presence in France, and no more; and he had come promptly to his appointment. Tom said, ‘Have you been waiting long in Dieppe?’
He caught Lymond’s raised brows; but the answer was perfectly matter-of-fact. ‘Five hours, that’s all.’
Comprehension, like a searing stir in hot water, ran stinging over the skin. ‘Christ … you didn’t come in today with that boat with the hole?’
‘Come in?’ For a moment Lymond showed genuine feeling. ‘I damned nearly paddled in with the thing in my teeth. There was a catastrophic collision in the roads; the tavern flooded; nineteen dead and twenty-five injured; the master a ninny and the comite with enough bhang inside him to float an anvil.’
In his excitement, Erskine strode to the windows and back. ‘I saw it. Saw her come in on her ear with the cannon all to port and her anchors rigged abeam, dammit. Rammed by a galliasse, weren’t you? Nine-tenths bad seamanship, they said, and one-tenth filthy luck.’
‘The Gouden Roos thought it was bad luck, I should think,’ said Lymond, amused. ‘After all, she was paid off to sink us.’
Erskine sat down. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Has it occurred to anyone else?’
‘I doubt it. You’ve heard the accepted version of the crash.’
Roused, Tom Erskine’s verdict was blunt. ‘This Irish masquerade is madness. How can you work if you’re being assaulted before you’ve even begun? Do I take it you are using the name of an actual person?’
‘Yes, of course. But one whose appearance is little known. Credit us with a little intelligence.’
Lymond’s Irish sister-in-law Mariotta would have helped. Erskine exclaimed. ‘And so you are proceeding to the French Court to be indoctrinated by the French Crown on how to kick the English out of Ireland.’ He broke off. It was, he had always felt, the scheme of a power-drunk idiot. But he did not say so, and received the rare compliment of an explanation.
‘Yes. It remains,’ said Lymond, ‘a simple way of reaching the inner circle unidentified. My guess is that King Henri will allow O’LiamRoe a long, luxurious stay in which to savour the delights of an alliance with France. I hope so.’
Erskine’s voice was still sharper than he knew. ‘And what about this attack? You can’t ask French protection and have a bodyguard dogging your heels. Who’s behind it?’
Lymond’s voice was pure malice. ‘Won’t it be amusing to find out? What do you think the Queen Mother fears for most—her alliances or her life?’ He withdrew the bolt from the shuttered windows.
‘Without French troops and French money, she thinks Scotland will never fight free from the English.’
‘And there is a faction in France, they say, which disapproves of the de Guise family sending good French money abroad. I hope,’ said Lymond opening the window, ‘that nothing serious occurs. My intentions are purely frivolous.’
Standing beside him, Erskine put a blunt question. ‘Why did you come here? Not because the Queen Mother asked it?’
‘The Queen Mother,’ said Lymond, ‘as you and she are well aware, has suggested this entirely as a means of committing me to her party, and is going to be disappointed.