Queens' Play (26 page)

Stewart’s unpractised, eager emotion carried him forward too quickly. ‘And come to Ireland with you?’

There was a pause. Then, relaxing, Stewart heard what he had wanted to hear. ‘If you wish to,’ said Thady Boy slowly, and bearing Stewart’s inarticulate pleasure with patience, won his way at last out of the room. Presently he lost the last of his escorts and was able to make his way straight to Jenny Fleming’s pretty room.

She was not in bed; not even surprised, it seemed, to see him, although it was nearly dawn and the paint on her face, over the feathered bedrohe, was cracked and moist. ‘Francis …? I gather you have sounded the tocsin and ruined the sleep of every living person in Blois. Margaret will be beating her breast.’

He stood stock-still inside the door, his doublet thrown over one burst and filthy shoulder. ‘Pray tell me, Lady Fleming … Why is no one on duty outside the Queen’s door?’

Jenny Fleming never shirked an issue; she enjoyed it. Backing up the velvet steps to the great bed, she perched on the end. ‘Do I need to tell you?’

His eyes and voice remained bleak. ‘No. The King has been here, and probably the Constable. Is the child always unguarded when the King comes?’

Mary’s room adjoined hers. Lymond’s voice had been quiet. Even late hours could not make Jenny’s smile less than delicious. ‘You would like me to have Janet, and James, and Agnes in chairs round the room? The doors from the Queen’s room to mine and to the passage are both locked. And the King’s valet and the Constable are usually in the anteroom.’

‘But not always. What happened tonight?’

‘Happened?’ Her fair lashes rose like stars with the stretching of her brows. Then as Lymond’s stare stayed immovable, she laughed.
‘The Duchesse de Valentinois surprised the King leaving my room. She accused the King of being unfaithful, and the King was hurt to the quick at the lady’s lack of faith.
“Madame, il n’y a là aucun mal. Je n’ai fait que bavarder”.’

Her laughter, light as it was, had the finest edge to it. ‘Are you wondering if he cut her off after fifteen years? If so, you are wrong. He apologized.’

‘And Diane?’

‘Accused the Constable of procuring. There was a considerable scene, with some high language, at the end of which the Duchess and the Constable were not on speaking terms. The King promised not to see me again. He also promised’—she laughed—‘not to tell the Duke or the Cardinal of Lorraine.’

‘And,’ said Lymond, ‘where were you all this time?’

‘Here,’ said Jenny simply. ‘At the keyhole, listening.’ She rose lightly and, drifting down the steps in a shiver of satin, came close and caught his two wrists. She clicked her tongue. ‘
What
a state to come visiting in. It was rather silly, and very amusing. Margaret will laugh. No, perhaps she won’t. But in point of fact, it doesn’t matter. The maîtresse en titre was a little late. Whether he likes it or not the King will have to admit, I fear, that he did a little more than gossip.’

And holding his hands, she laid one over the other to her heart. ‘Feel it beat strongly, my dear. It rings out like your tocsin for a son or a daughter of France.’

The violence of his disengagement staggered her. Strong wine and stretched muscles disregarded, Lymond strode to the window and stayed there, gripping his anger hard until he could speak.

‘ “A girl of spirit need never lack children,” as was said on another celebrated occasion. You are with child by the King of France. It will be born when?’

Straight-backed she eyed him. ‘In May.’

‘Do you imagine, after what happened tonight, that the King will install you instead of Diane?’

The red hair fell streaming over her silken robe, and her brown Stewart eyes shone. ‘I think,’ said Jenny Stewart, Lady Fleming, ‘you are forgetting who I am.’

Fat, battered and dirty, a hireling, an adventurer, a guest in her room, he showed not one shred of the mercy he had shown to a Scots Archer.

‘You are a bastard,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘Your son will be a bastard. Who is the Duchess? A cousin of the Queen. The wealthiest woman in France. The finest huntress in Europe. The patron of every high official at the Court. The ruler of Henri’s lightest action for fifteen long years. The virtual ruler of France for three years. Her boudoir is the political axis of the kingdom; the Cardinal dines daily
at her table; the children of France are her creation by training, if not by bearing. Her position is known, recognized, assured, accepted in public, long accepted by the Queen, free of scandal, stable, built into the King’s daily routine. There is no woman alive, were she Guinevra herself, who could eject her now.’

She stood by the bedpost listening to him, her eyes sparkling with anger, and one blue-veined arm caressed the ebony. ‘Will you take a wager?’ said Jenny.

Levelly, Lymond answered. ‘You will be sent back to Scotland with a pension, my lady. That is your fortune. But first, nothing can now stop a scandal. And every name the bourgeoisie of France chooses to call you will attach itself, in double measure, to the Queen.’

‘Nonsense.’ For Jenny, her voice was sharp. ‘We are not touching on hay parties and inn wenches and simple fun in a close, my dear. Things are arranged a little differently at Court.’

‘Do you think,’ said Lymond softly in a voice which recalled, suddenly, many things—‘Do you think I don’t know
exactly
how they are arranged?’

There was a long silence, and it was Jenny’s gaze which dropped first. He said, ‘How often are the pages and the maids of honour dismissed?’

‘Once or twice a week. She couldn’t possibly come to harm.’ She paused, and said sulkily, ‘It won’t happen again, in any case. He won’t come back here.’

‘—You will go to him. By all means, if you want to. You can hardly do any more harm. Within the unguarded doors, what could be tampered with?’

She was already a good deal exasperated. ‘They were locked. And the Constable—’

‘I heard you. Every locksmith in the kingdom knows how to make false keys. Do you keep drugs here?’

‘No.’

‘Drink of any kind?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Lymond, and flinging from the window, caught her by her two shoulders. ‘Think. You want Mary to die; and you can get access secretly to her room and to the cabinet. What harm might you do?’

Jenny’s eyes flamed back at him. ‘Nothing. She’s perfectly safe; has been always. Do you think we shouldn’t hear …?’

‘No,’ said Lymond brutally. ‘I don’t. Think.
What could be done with that arsenic?’

From below his fingers she dropped to sit, her hair fallen, her back straight as a rod in spite of all she had been through. She had never
looked more a King’s daughter than now, when her face told its own story.

‘I suppose … there are … the sweets: the cotignac,’ she said.

Eight-year-old, sweet-loving Mary. The Duchess de Valentinois had forbidden her sweetmeats and Janet, Lady Fleming, had made them for her; giggling together over a midnight fire: the Queen, the small maids of honour, James and Jenny. From Chastain, the apothecary, they had the cinnamon and the sugar—four pounds of it, at ten sols a pound. Nothing was too much trouble. Jacques Alexander had supplied the boxes. The kitchens, secretly, had provided the fruit. Peeled, quartered and cored, the quinces had been boiled and strained and pounded in a stone mortar with the sugar and spice, all the children beating in turn; and then the paste was boxed and, after a little, cut into strips.

They had done all that a long time ago. The boxes, stacked in Jenny’s garde-robe, full of thick fingers dusted sugary white, had become fewer and fewer, until less than half a dozen were now left.

With Jenny silent beside him, Lymond pulled out box after box, piling them opened on the floor. All looked innocent and all looked alike. From the last one he lifted some of the sweetmeat, marked the lid, and closed it. Then he left the room and Jenny could hear his voice, two doors away, and one of the loyal grooms, Geoffrey de Sainct, answering. Her son James, whom she had sent away earlier in the night, suddenly appeared, sleepy-eyed from next door, and she made him go back. Then Lymond returned.

‘Put the boxes away in your own coffer, and lock it. Tomorrow, search everything in these rooms and tell me if anything has been disturbed. We shall know shortly if the cotignac was touched.’

‘How?’ Her face, drained of its vivid daytime colour, was still pretty and positive.

‘The old lapdog has been given some. You needn’t weep for him.’ The hostile, soft voice made not the slightest concession. ‘He deserves an end to his misery.’ He paused. ‘You realize, of course, that the Queen’s life is in danger; that poison is known to be missing; and that every morsel she has eaten since she came to Blois has been protected, tested and passed as safe first, except for your cotignac? Do you expect your
love child
to inherit the throne?’

Roused, she answered with asperity. ‘If we are to be serious, we still needn’t be silly. If you think something has gone wrong, then do what you can to put it right. I shall help as far as I can. But to be frank, I think this commotion is a little foolish. You have no shadow of proof that the cotignac or anything else has been touched.…’ Her voice softened. ‘The romantic trappings of leadership are hard to give up, are they not? Francis?’

He had not even listened; had only paused, half turned to the door,
to run his eyes for the last time over her possessions: the table, the bed, the coffer, the shelves, the prie-dieu, the chairs. Between his eyes, a thin line of sleeplessness showed.

Jenny said again, ‘Francis? I am going to need help. I don’t want to quarrel.’

‘Are we quarrelling?’ said Lymond.

‘We were insulting one another like brother and sister.’ She paused. ‘I must go to bed, my dear. Am I forgiven?’ She had laid her hand, still endearingly young, on his steady arm. Now she slid her fingers up, and drawing him gently downwards, kissed him full on the mouth.

Under hers, his lips were taut and wholly inexpressive. But her own kiss was warm and loving, and she held him lightly, so that he breathed in her natural freshness, her costly scents and her human harmlessness.

She had thought, if she had thought at all, that he was tired enough to respond. But his fingers opened and he stepped smoothly back, boredom and a jaded, forbearing courtesy dry as meal on his face. ‘I ceased discriminating a long time ago. Good night, Lady Fleming,’ said Lymond; and in the precise pressure on her name and her title she glimpsed at last the chasm that lay and always would lie between them. Then the door closed at his back.

Behind him, as he crossed the courtyard, the night sky was already aware of the dawn. Beside the black coil of the staircase, the guardroom windows were lit, and opposite, men’s voices stirred from the chapel. The guards, appointed at every door, paid no attention. Thady Boy’s nocturnal habits were nothing new; and ignorance, at this Court, was often best.

He climbed the staircase to his own wing automatically and blundered once, blindly, crossing a passage. Robin Stewart had remembered it with pleassure; Jenny Fleming as yet knew nothing about it; but Lymond had lived that evening with the memory of Oonagh O’Dwyer’s serenade and the knowledge that there awaited him in his room neither sleep nor peace but the Prince of Barrow.

Outside his own room he rested for a moment, his palm on the door, and for a moment looked neither brutal nor romantic nor indifferent. Then he heaved the door open and went in.

Inside, the storm was waiting for him; but it was not of O’LiamRoe’s making. The candles were burning, the fire was lit, but the room was empty except for Piedar Dooly, his black eyes venomous, the rawhide flanks of his face blotched with passion and prickled with the onset of his overnight beard. Thady Boy shut the door, and the fumes of strong wine from his clothes, stiff with spilled drink and dried sweat, filled the room. ‘Where’s His Highness?’

O’LiamRoe’s indifference to his ollave’s double identity had never
been shared by his little Firbolg retainer. Dooly’s Wicklow accent was silky. ‘Isn’t it troubles enough you have without bothering yourself over O’LiamRoe? I hear you and the great gentlemen have been walking the length of the stars in your woollen stockings, and came back with the universe set in a ring.’ He broke off.

Thady, moving swiftly, stood over him. ‘Where is he?’

Between double lids, the Irishman’s eyes were full of hate. ‘You had wrestlers at Court this evening, I heard tell. A power of strong lads they must have been, and a terror for horseplay.… They jumped on O’LiamRoe, on his way home from Mistress O’Dwyer’s.’

‘And you were there?’ said Thady Boy.

‘Just behind. He’d been asked to stay at the house, Master Scotsman. He only left to discuss a certain thing with yourself.’ Again he stopped.

Thady Boy, leaning hands clasped over the back of a chair, said quietly, ‘There is no mark on you. So I have a fair idea, you see, that O’LiamRoe is not much hurt. But I think you should tell me.’

The colour high in his face, Piedar Dooly said, ‘There was a party of men in the next alley who heard us, and turned back to help. Two of the wrestlers were killed and one ran away—the Cornishman, we thought, but no one could swear to it. O’LiamRoe himself took a slash on the arm, and it pouring blood more than was correct for it; so he walked back to Mistress O’Dwyer’s.’ He paused. ‘I left him there. She has asked him back to Neuvy, tomorrow. I was to tell you that in the course of a piece maybe, he’ll be back.’