Queens' Play (7 page)

‘Ah, now,’ said O’LiamRoe comfortably. ‘Thank his grace, will you, and say I’d ten times sooner see him finish his fine game of ball. It’s plain to see he’s as nimble as a pea on a drumhead, and
the nearest I’ve seen to it was a priest fighting-drunk with a censer.’

To this, expurgated, the King replied with a question. ‘Will you play with him?’

The blue eyes twinkled. ‘Dressed like this? God help us, I’d be mince-boiled in my sweat like a deer. At home we have the one dress, suitable for all occasions, and that is all.’

The black-bearded man replied cautiously, through M. de Genstan. ‘You do not have this sport in Ireland?’

Wholly at ease, O’LiamRoe sat down. Round the courtyard a sigh ran like the flight of a shuttlecock. Cheerfully aware of it, he went on ‘Sport, do you say? Pat-ball is not in it; no. But sport we have, surely and many a good man has died on the field of it with his honour bright, bright as the sun. Hurley for instance. Do you know it?’

They did not.

‘It is played with a stick, then; and dress is no matter, for you have to trouble about the one thing only, and that is getting off the sports-field alive. And whatever dress you came on with, there will likely be none on you at the end. It’s a good way of filling in time if there are no wars. I don’t play it myself, being a peaceable man. But go to it; let me see you,’ said O’LiamRoe with unfeigned interest. ‘It is never a fault to see what other folk do.’

Because they were at a loss, because they could not immediately see what had happened, because, finally, anything was better than continuing to talk, they took him at his word. As The O’LiamRoe lounged at ease, one elbow on the velvet table at his side and the speechless courtiers beside him, the bearded leader chose a single partner, without ceremony, and launched into a hard game.

They were both excellent players; and being excellent, they took risks, and sometimes suffered from them. There was no netted ball, no fruitless leap, no dropped racquet, no lonely stance, mouth agape while the ball landed neatly behind, which escaped the soft undertone of O’LiamRoe’s commentary. Excruciating, unforgivable, fluent, unerring, pitched to the trembling octave of Straw Street irony, he noted the clouted thumb, the missed serve, the sweat, the split in the seam and the single, hissing, green-bottomed slide on the turf. He noted the uncurling hair, the throttling dive at the net; he observed and reported, serenely and without mercy until under the pressure of it de Genstan, who was listening and softly translating, laughed aloud, and the infection of it burst the decorum of the rest. There was a bellow of laughter. Already sensitive to the undercurrent of two voices, the players turned, their faces printed with anger; and with a glorious, earsplitting crack, the tennis ball shot through a window.

The mild, Irish voice had at last ceased, but they were still laughing, in small helpless sobs, when the man in white, flinging down his
racquet, seized his partner by the arm and strode over. The laughter stopped. O’LiamRoe, his fair brows raised, looked up at the sieur de Genstan, who from red had gone suddenly white. ‘And now,’ he said comfortably, ‘supposing after all that you get the fellow here, and we talk.’

That they obeyed was the result of sheer self-protection. They had aligned themselves by their laughter on the wrong side of the fence. The players were clearly furious, and from a distance, M. de Genstan could be seen inventing explanations and excuses far more plausible than O’LiamRoe could have produced, if excuses had been anywhere in his remotest thoughts. He waited, rising, grinning as the black-bearded one, still flushed, left the crowd of men and approached him at last.

‘I’ll take that wine now, if it’s offered me,’ said O’LiamRoe cheerfully, ‘and give a word in your ear to go with it. For, God save us, you’re an insular lot, you Frenchmen; and it’s time you learned a thing or two about your more cultured neighbours such as the Irish. And translate it all, de Genstan me boy, this time; none of your three words to every three hundred,
divina proportio
and a wink and a shrug for the rest of it.’

Crested cups were being filled. ‘His Majesty says,’ said the harassed interpreter from behind the bearded man’s chair: ‘He says that he would wish the differences between Ireland and France to be less.’

‘Ah, never mind the English in it,’ said O’LiamRoe. ‘We’ve had them lording it over us these three hundred years and swallowed them whole, same as you did, though the ones that came from Normandy were devils for taxes the same as yourself.’

‘His Majesty asks,’ said de Genstan, ‘if you are comparing his rule by any chance to that of England?’

‘Faith, would I do the like of that?’ said O’LiamRoe with his freckled smile. ‘And it so superior. There’s the Concordat, now. Why destroy yourself making out you’re the world’s head of the church when your Concordat lets you whistle up the abbeys and the bishops and the archbishops to your liking; all found money and a pet of a way to make friends?’

There was a pause. ‘The King says,’ said M. de Genstan, ‘that these subjects are not a matter for discussion at this meeting, which is only meant—’

O’LiamRoe’s smile had malice in it. ‘Not a matter for discussion! My dear boy, in Ireland the midwife uses one hand to hold the baby’s best fighting arm from the font water, and grips its jaws with the other lest the child goes to litigation about it.’ He put down the cup and rising, laid a commiserating hand on de Genstan’s shoulder. ‘Scrub off the civet and spit out the sugar plums and the next time choose an arguing, manly violent sort of king for yourselves. Sure, if
that one’s hair were shaved off, like Bandinello’s Hercules, there’s not enough skull in it for his brains, so.’

There was a deathly silence. The bearded man, rising also, glanced in turn at The O’LiamRoe and at the interpreter, who had gone even paler. De Genstan, appealing helplessly to the blank faces of his fellows, muttered something.

The man in white drew a deep breath, curled his fist, and brought it down on the table with a thud that brought the cups cracking on their sides. A stream of red leaped on the velvet.
‘Traduisez!’
he exclaimed. And the young man, stumbling, began to translate.

Listening, Blackbeard snapped his fingers. Pages ran. A surcoat was slipped on his shoulders, and fastened with gold knots. A chain was brought, and laid over his head. A pair of embroidered slippers was put on his feet in place of the plain shoes for tennis; and white leather gloves and a plumed hat were put in his hand.

With the entwined crescents of his monogram leaping with his ill-compressed, angry breathing, Henri II, Elect of God and Most Christian Majesty of France and her peoples, heard O’LiamRoe’s translated words falter to a close. ‘If his hair were shaved off, there’s not enough skull in it for brains,’ said the sieur de Genstan; and looked anywhere but at O’LiamRoe.

For a long moment, many things hung in the balance, and not the least of them O’LiamRoe’s life. But Henri was not quite committed to an alliance with England. His need of Ireland might return. And royal dignity, in the long run, mattered more than royal vanity. He prepared to speak.

O’LiamRoe’s face, as realization struck him, went quite blank. Then he drew himself quietly together, his fair skin hotly red, his blue eyes steady; and by a visible effort of will, detachment, cynicism, amusement even flowed back into his bearing as, slow, heavy, measured, the King’s words proceeded, shadowed by the light, hurried English of de Genstan.

‘You claim a culture. You speak of a common ancestry. You call yourself the son of a king. You show scorn for our customs and make fun of our person.’

‘It was a mistake,’ said O’LiamRoe.

The King’s hands were clasped behind him; his voice continued unchanged. ‘We are aware of your poverty. We are aware of your claims to learning. We are aware of the racial distinction of your people. But we had expected certain courtesies of the person and of the tongue. We were prepared to entertain you at our Court as an equal; and without offering you or dreaming of offering you the insult of our compassion. You had better, Prince of Barrow,’ said the King, and the gilded gloves in his hand were wrung like a rag, ‘you had better think well and invite that insult from us now.’

O’LiamRoe looked round the circle. Shocked and shaken, they avoided his eye. The Prince’s fair face hardened. Rubbing his nose with one finger, he cast a mild blue eye on the controlled and angry figure before him. ‘Dear, dear,’ said O’LiamRoe in concern, in contrition and with, at the back of his eyes, the faintest unregenerate spark of joy. ‘Dear, dear. I have fallen into a small error of judgment. I thought the King here, you see, was a play-actor.’

There was another silence. Then, with an explosion of disgust, Henri strode off, pacing the court, and de Genstan seized O’LiamRoe’s arm. ‘Go now. Quickly,’ he said.

With a strength quite unlooked-for, the other man resisted. ‘Not at all, so. It will never do to be losing our heads.’

‘My God,’ said de Genstan, who had lost his a good time ago. ‘You’ll come to table tomorrow with an apple in your mouth.’

‘Not at all, now. Wait. Here he is,’ said O’LiamRoe, as the King swung to a halt before him. ‘Ah, bad cess to it, it’s a damned heathen language, the French. What’s all that about?’

De Genstan translated. ‘Since you have proved your ignorance in these matters, it might please you to study the monarchy of France and her peoples in their great moment of accord. His grace desires you to stay in Rouen at his expense until and during the celebration of his Joyous Entry on Wednesday. On Thursday you and your party will be escorted to Dieppe and at the first fair wind a galley will be at your service to return immediately to Ireland. Between now and Wednesday, his grace expects to hold no further communication with you.’

O’LiamRoe had flushed again; but beyond that, there was no trace of anger or of chagrin on the disingenuous face. ‘Tell him I agree so. Why would I not? The Emperor is the King of Kings, so they say; the Catholic King is the King of Men, and the King of France is King of Beasts, “therefore whatever he commands he is instantly obeyed.” And who am I, a mere gentleman, to deny him?’

He waited, to do him justice, until it was translated; he bowed three times in the doorway like the unrolling of some primitive carpet, and he departed. Thus Phelim O’LiamRoe, Chief of the Name, Prince of Barrow and lord of the Slieve Bloom, left his audience with the King of France, his principles firmly unblemished amid the smoking shambles of his personal impact, and his deportation pending.

The O’LiamRoe had no pressing wish to tell his henchmen of the event. As it turned out, he had no need. Profiting by his chief’s absence, Thady Boy had visited every alehouse in Rouen, picked up the rumour, and returned rocking slightly to hear the details.

He bore these with more philosophy than Piedar Dooly, who,
enthralled with his new role of bloodhound, could hardly wait, said O’LiamRoe, to see him half-assassinated another time. ‘But I doubt,’ he added, ‘that there will be no luck in it for him, for who’ll bother himself with me, now I’m leaving?
Ochone, ochone,
’ said the Prince of Barrow, who, to finish it off, had taken a good drink himself. ‘For it will be dull, dull in this town from now till Thursday, and with nothing happening and no one killing us at all, the spoiled souls.’

T
HOUGH none of the King’s circle, naturally, would tell tales out of Court, the whole city of Rouen had the news of the royal baiting in the tennis court in an hour, and like Leo X, said O’LiamRoe, who came to power like a fox, reigned like a lion and died like a dog, the rise and demise of Ireland in the bosom of Father France was not without note.

Very soon in the afternoon, a drift of small boys began to appear outside O’LiamRoe’s lodging, and to pass observations on the traffic therein. A man called Augrédé whose brother had died in the salt tax revolt called on the Chief, and had to be shown out incontinently. A Scotsman spoke to them in the street when, unwilling to lurk at home like a malefactor, O’LiamRoe had insisted on strolling out; and another one, young and speaking good French, had accosted Thady Boy in a tavern, and after a good deal of double talk, hinted that he could get O’LiamRoe an interview with the English Resident, Sir James Mason. Children followed them, and a man or two smiled discreetly, but no fellow Irishmen darkened the door.

After some thought, O’LiamRoe sent a letter to Mistress Boyle with a lighthearted account of what had passed, forestalling visit or apology, and courteously taking his leave. They had, after all, to live in the country; Oonagh, after all, would marry a Frenchman.

The Queen Dowager of Scotland sent for Tom Erskine. There was no idle laughter this afternoon in the Hôtel Prudhomme, where the Queen had lodged since her State Entry, waiting as the Irish party
were doing, though in considerably more state, for the King’s own Royal Entry on Wednesday.

It was only a week since Mary of Guise, the Queen Mother of Scotland, had re-entered her native France on her first visit for twelve years, and already she had lost weight, so that the long sleeves dragged on her large-boned, hollow shoulders. She was the Queen Mother of a sister kingdom which France had just helped to rescue from the hands of the English. She was the oldest member of the de Guise family, the most powerful in France and dearly cherished by the King. But she was also a twice-widowed woman who, in the space of a day, had been reunited with the son of her first marriage, the pale Duke de Longueville whom she had not seen for a decade; and with Mary, the seven-year-old Queen of Scotland and the only child of her second marriage, whom King Henri had brought to France two years since as the betrothed of his heir.

For a motherly woman, which the Queen Dowager was not, a double meeting of distressing joy. For a politician, which she was, an extra agony of behaviour to confuse the already terrible complications of her visit. For she was not on good terms with all her late husband’s subjects. The war with England was over, but England was still giving shelter to disgruntled Scots; and reminding others with promises and pensions of her ancient claims to the Scottish crown. The Earl of Arran, ruling Scotland in the little Queen’s stead, was weak: half-wooed by England and the Reformed religion England stood for; easy game for the powerful families eager to oust him and control the Regency. And France, having poured men and money and munitions into Scotland to help her win the late war, was reaping a fury of wounded pride and growing resentment as her reward. Looking at their forts, their castles, their streets and their beds stuffed full of idle, boasting, quarrelsome French, the Scottish half of the Old Alliance was coming very close to a wholehearted upheaval which might send both the foreigners and their ancient religion flying out of the window.

She had thought of all this. She had met that danger as best she could simply by removing the worst elements of danger and carrying them with her. But even so, before even she came to Dieppe, the powerful and violent men in her train were nipping and kicking and plunging at one another and at the ribbons which held them.

And in the face of this she must move correctly, with haughtiness and with splendour through the excessive and appalling round of ceremony that had been prepared for her; must behave to the King and his Court, to her own family and their rivals and the ambassadors of every nation in Europe who came to pay court to her, as if she had come merely to visit her child, and as if, given her own way, she would not have smashed the gilded bubble of dance and laughter
with a blow, so that these damned lackadaisical, self-important, rich, preening men would be hurled by circumstance round the conference table, where she would have them, to discuss with all the gifts in their power, the future policies of France and of Scotland.

So she sat restless in the Hôtel Prudhomme after a morning of state receptions, with Lady Fleming and Margaret Erskine at her side; and said abruptly, ‘Madame Erskine. I wish to speak with your husband.’

The page found him when he was paying his last calls before leaving, on Friday, for Flanders. The Chief Privy Councillor had also heard the rumours. As he hurried back to the Hôtel Prudhomme, Tom Erskine knew very well he was going to be asked about Lymond.

It was hurled at him as he stepped over the threshold. ‘I hear the Irishmen are being sent home. What does this mean?’

Since Dieppe, he had heard nothing. He wished he had not told her of Lymond’s identity. Now, in the presence of his wife and his wife’s mother, he attempted to reason with the Queen. With so much else, God knew, to harass them, she could not afford to pursue indefinitely this curious whim, or allow its failures to distract her. Lymond’s visit had no vital purpose; he was not her agent. His presence or his absence would make no difference.

But the Queen Mother’s patience had run out. ‘For whom is he working?’

‘Himself. No one.’

‘And whom will he be working for in a year’s time?’

There was a silence. Then Erskine said, ‘He won’t be committed. He told me himself.’

Mary of Guise checked her temper, waited and then spoke in an even voice. ‘You call yourself his friend. Consider him then. He has now his reputation, his possessions, his wealth. Yet at home his future is uncertain. It is his elder brother Lord Culter who has the barony, and the child which Lady Culter is expecting will oust our friend Lymond from his inheritance and even from his title, if it is a son.… He is idle then; he has no attachments, no dependants, no followers; he is ready, my dear Chancellor, for the dedication. In one year’s time,’ said the Queen Dowager of Scotland explicitly, ‘I want his allegiance to be mine. I need it. But far more than that, the Queen will need it. This is the moment most critical in his life and ours. If I do not seize him now, we shall never have him. And now, now is the moment; for I mean to take this man in his failure, Master Erskine—in his failure, and not in his success.’

As she spoke, the door had opened on a scratch, and a page entered, bending double in silence. ‘Bring him in,’ said the Queen Dowager, and turned her cold eyes on Tom Erskine and the two
women. ‘I suspected there was only one way to find the truth; and so I sent for him,’ she said. ‘M. Crawford of Lymond is here.’

The page scuttled; the door shut. The masked man in black, whom Tom Erskine had last seen at Dieppe in Jean Ango’s moonlit garden, stepped delicately from the shadows. He appeared to be quelling a strong impulse to laugh.

‘I must apologize for these damned entrances,’ said Francis Crawford of Lymond. ‘I feel Tom here never knows if he should send for a bishop or start a round of applause.’ And lifting finger and thumb, he slid the mask from his face, disclosing the intelligent, sardonic features of Thady Boy Ballagh.

It was late when Lymond returned to his lodging, walking silently under the rocking lamps skeined sagging over the crooked streets. Behind him lay an interview remarkable for its courtesy, its cool vigour and, from the Dowager’s point of view, for its total lack of success.

Tom Erskine might have warned her, had she given him time, that it was a mistake to allude to O’LiamRoe’s shortcomings. Personally he shared her doubts about Lymond’s choice of travelling companion. Whether or not the sinking of
La Sauvée
had been an attempt on O’LiamRoe’s life, O’LiamRoe’s present actions had certainly led to his and Lymond’s dismissal from France. About the Prince of Barrow’s innocence in all this Tom was perfectly confident: Lymond had not only studied the Chief in that preliminary week in the Slieve Bloom before sailing for France; he had set on foot an investigation of appalling thoroughness into O’LiamRoe’s character before ever O’LiamRoe was approached.

And Lymond had been right. O’LiamRoe was the one man in ten who would look with amusement and even enthusiasm on the prospect of duping his royal hosts by passing off a foreigner as his Irish secretary and bard. Unhappily, it was this very irresponsibility which had brought the scheme to a halt.

The Queen Dowager only got halfway towards speaking her mind about that, when Lymond stopped her. She turned next to the future, and to the prospect of closer cooperation, object unspecified, between the Master of Culter and herself. The Master of Culter simply reminded her, with unvarying deference, that what he did in France or out of it, by their mutual agreement, was his own affair and not hers. For Lymond, who could explode into fire and brimstone when he chose, could be equally formidable in the language of etiquette; and had already managed to give Jenny Fleming a chaste verbal trouncing for her morning’s work at the bridge, unnoticed by either Tom or the Dowager.

It was at this point that the Queen Mother played her master card, and startled even her Chief Privy Councillor. ‘And what,’ she had said, ‘if the Queen my daughter’s safety were in question?’

In the ensuing silence, ‘Is it, ma’am?’ had asked Lymond.

But already, she was retreating. ‘Of course, we know of nothing. Where could the child have better care than among our dear friends in France? But if her life were threatened, by some madman, let us say …’

‘Then double your bodyguard, madam,’ he had coolly replied. ‘They are not in your confidence either, but they are in your service.’

They let him go after that, with something like relief; and after he had gone, Margaret Erskine was very silent, counting up in her mind the frequent illnesses and the unexplained accidents that had befallen Mary Queen of Scots, during her sojourn in France. Her thought had reached her husband. Tom began a single, hazy question, ‘Does your grace suspect that …?’ and received the snub of his life for his pains. Her grace was visibly regretting that the subject had ever been raised.

To Lymond, presumably, the interview meant no more than an irritation brushed aside. Retiring, exploring, the swinging lights as he walked lit an emotionless face.

The streets were not empty. Light shone from most houses, seeping in slits round baffled shutters where shields were painted, swords burnished, jewels embroidered in the great, consuming fever of the Entry. A troop of the de Guise household went quickly by, banner held at thigh and wrist, and the lamps tripped and rocked afresh as the silver eaglets of Lorraine, the quartered lilies of Anjou and Sicily, the crimson bars of Hungary and the double cross of Jerusalem brushed by.

A girl stepped back out of an open doorway, laughing, and Francis Crawford sidestepped softly and went on his way. More even than Lyons, than Avignon or Paris, Rouen’s women were notorious. A mocking voice called after him, and below the mask, momentarily was the twitch of a smile.

Very soon after that, he vanished altogether for a moment; and when he took the cobbled crown of the street again, it was in the portly, potbellied, unmasked and alcoholic person of O’LiamRoe’s secretary.

Robin Stewart saw him wander along the Rue St.-Lô, pass the Palace of Justice and stop looking up at the newly finished tower of St. André. The church lantern shone on the ollave’s Adam’s apple and upturned, stubbled chin and Stewart himself glanced up at the tower. He laid a hand on Thady Boy’s shoulder.

His purpose, in a muddled way, was to give comfort; his need was to receive it. Thady Boy Ballagh turned round slowly, and said, ‘Well,
well, Mr. Stewart. The Orcades flowed with Saxon gore this day, and Thule became warm with the blood of the Picts, and icy Erin wept for her heaps of slaughtered Scots. We’re to take the next boat home on Thursday, you’ll have heard.’

‘If I had my way of it, those dewy young madcaps at Court would hang like catkins on a willow tree. It’s plain to anyone the insolence was unintentional.’

‘And yet, do you know, I have an awful feeling that O’LiamRoe himself had a wee, little suspicion, a hint, a first trickle of a notion, that it was maybe the King he was facing after all,’ said Thady Boy placidly. ‘He wasn’t very sure of being courtly, but he knew he could make a smart success of being outrageous.—Were you going somewhere?’

Robin Stewart recalled suddenly that he had been struck before with this man. ‘I was going just a step up the road,’ he said, ‘for a word and a drink in the back parlour of a friend of mine. Would it interest you?’ He grinned with sudden candour. ‘You’ll need to make the most of your days left in France.’