Queens' Play (40 page)

‘I fear,’ said Brice Harisson, ‘that you must think me very stupid.
The sense in what you said struck me directly you had gone.’ He gave his unexpected, high laugh. ‘I think the poor sheriff was quite startled when I began to tell him. It has gone to Warwick already, and now they will know, of course, that I have told you. It will all be very simple. Now I was to tell you about Stewart?’

‘Yes.’ His left arm always had to bear the weight of his stick; he moved a little, so that the wall took some of the strain.

‘He’s at the brickworks in Islington. You go to a certain place, and whistle and a boy will fetch him.’ Graphically, Harisson described the place. There was nothing to do but note it, and leave.

Lymond went alone to Islington, and on horseback—something not easy for him yet; but though he whistled, no boy arrived; and though he searched, Robin Stewart had gone.

The bare fields, the lime kilns, the mud and the rubble of Islington had fitted Robin Stewart for all these weeks as an ancient landscape frames and nurtures its fossils.

Flung in grating revulsion from Thady Boy’s perfidy back into the caustic stewardship of his lordship of Aubigny, Stewart had accepted the hated commission to travel to Ireland, and had reached with his lordship the tacit understanding that on his return, he would be tolerated in his lordship’s vicinity.

On board ship, this arrangement lost most of its attraction. Stewart suffered George Paris’s bland self-confidence all the way to Ireland. There was no future with Lord d’Aubigny. There was no future with any of the gentlemen whom he served and envied and criticized so bitterly. What he had to sell, he would market in England.

The violence of the decision was in itself a deliverance. He held to it through all the difficulty of getting to London: the curricle; the fishing boat up to Scotland; the horse bought with the gold provided by the Kingdom of France to pay for the journey of Cormac O’Connor.

Once in London, he had found Harisson, and he was no longer alone. The plotting he had enjoyed. He had always found it satisfying, since his earliest efforts in France, quite apart from the rewards he hoped it would bring him. When, stepping ashore at Dieppe, Destaiz had brought him the news that O’LiamRoe was a danger to them and was to be removed, he had decided on a casual gesture, as flamboyant as Thady Boy’s ascent of the rigging, and with Destaiz had arranged for the fire at the inn.

That had failed. Someone else had got O’LiamRoe into trouble over the tennis court meeting with the King, and he had kept out of the affair with the elephants. But he had found the hunting of the Queen’s hare exhilarating. He could still picture O’LiamRoe’s face when the woman O’Dwyer had arrived and he had been forced to
present her with the dog. And when he saw the cheetah arrive. That had not been difficult to arrange: a respectful suggestion just beforehand to the old mistress had been enough.

So there he was, with a very good chance of involving both O’LiamRoe and the child Mary before the day was over; his only worry, to keep the scent of the leveret he carried from the dogs. How was he to know that O’LiamRoe’s bitch would actually tackle the cat?

After that, he had begun to think that he might do better on his own. He had the arsenic he had stolen at St. Germain—he had told Harisson about that. He had mentioned also that the way was open, now and then, into Mary’s anteroom, where the cotignac was. There was no harm in Harisson or Warwick being aware of his special chances, and also of his special ingenuity. He said nothing, discreetly, of having doctored the tablet already; nor of the discovery, made just before he left, that all the poisoned sweetmeat had gone. He was only beginning, in bloodshot snatches of retrospect, to realize the part Lymond had played.

The name of Thady Boy Ballagh he could barely bring himself to mention. Nor, with belated wisdom, had he betrayed the fact that nearly all he had done had been done under direction. He wanted Harisson to admire his proficiency. And he felt, common sense struggling dimly through the smoking wreck of his ardours, that Brice, tender friend that he was, would be less likely to aid him find a new sponsor if he realized that, back in France, was an employer he had abandoned already.

All that he put behind him. He might find it difficult to explain abandoning O’Connor in Ireland, of course. He might have to return anonymously, and work and bribe under cover. But that would be easy. He would have money from Warwick; he knew the weak links, the irresponsible guards, the kitchenmaids. And once the thing was done, he could leave France for good and find prestige, wealth and security at Warwick’s fine English Court.

No one suspected him. Lymond might have come to it—sullenly, you have to recognize the man’s perverted skill. But Lymond was poisoned and dead. The arrival of O’LiamRoe, left safely in Ireland, had shaken him, disturbed his precarious confidence. But there had been in it nothing ominous: a typical piece of foolishness by a foolish man.

Thrusting these thoughts behind him, Stewart smiled. Someone else might even attack the small Queen before him. And that would be even funnier. For Warwick would surely give him credit for it, just the same. No one else was likely to come forward; that was sure.

In the weeks he spent alone, or during the rare, discreet visits to Harrisson, the image of Mary, the living child he was to murder, never took shape in Stewart’s mind. His half-set, vulnerable
emotions, trodden underfoot too hard and too early, had become a cage lined with mirrors in which daily, nightly, he could examine the shrinking image of himself. And the people he met who spoke to him through the bars, and pushed him, and directed him, and exercised him, were his food.

Much of this, in his queer way, Harisson must have understood. In Scotland, long ago, he had endured Stewart’s pricking aggression without riposte or impatience: on a creature as confined in his way as the Archer, Stewart’s shafts had simply missed their mark. Also, as a matter of vanity, Harisson happened to enjoy, from time to time, using his neat-fingered charm. Coming back to Harisson, for Stewart, had been like returning to a private, mossy plateau after wading rotting through the treachery of some infested swamp.

When Harisson had concluded his interview with Warwick, he was to send for the Archer. The summons came: the rendezvous was not at Harisson’s house, but in Cheapside. Full of firm, purposeful efficiency, Stewart pulled his bonnet low over his long, bony face, and set off.

Just past the High Cross of Cheap, next to the rich gables of Goldsmiths’ Row, the sun gay on its sinewy carvings, the painted balconies, the gilded statues, was the house Harisson had designated. Cheapside was thronged. Its sparkling conduits, its church spires, its inns, its calling apprentices (‘What d’ye lack?’), its thrusting bustle of men and women, cheerful, noisy, decently dressed, were all kindly to Stewart’s eyes: a fat token of promise for the leisure to come. He dismounted at the gate; a boy ran forward to take his horse, and he was conducted instantly to the sunny parlour overlooking the garden, where he found Brice Harisson waiting.

Excitement, suspense, pleasure, had never altered the middle-aged smartness of Brice’s face. He was dressed as usual, with extreme care, his doublet braided and his cuffs showing, a slit of frill above the small hands. He wore a dark puffed cap on his brushed hair, and the flat of his cheeks and his thin nose shone.

He represented success, amity, excitement, and a haven from the brickfields of Islington. Stewart grinned, his Adam’s apple moving untidily, before he noticed that Brice was not alone. Beside, him in black and scarlet robes and the gold chain of his office, was a sheriff of the City of London, with his usher and clerk.

By God, thought the Archer, and paused, controlling his delight. By God, Warwick is with us. We’ve got a sheriff to deal with the affair. Next it’ll be the Mayor, Alderman and Recorder. But naturally he won’t risk getting the Council openly involved. An intermediary, this would be. And a very nice house, thought Robin
Stewart, looking round appreciatively, to conspire in. There were two men standing at the door.

‘That is the man,’ said Brice, the pliant voice flat, not taking time to answer the grin. Stewart looked round, but no one had come in. Instead the sheriff, a stout man marbled in puce, unrolled a paper, depressed a firm pink underlip as overture, and read, ‘Robin Stewart, late of the Royal Guard of Scottish Archers in France and now in London and in no known abode: know ye that I, John Atkinson, Sheriff of the City of London, am bid and empowered to seize and hold you on the charge of conspiring against the body and person of the high and mighty Princess Mary, by the grace of God Queen of our dear sister kingdom of Scotland, while under the roof and domicile of the Most Christian King and our dear ally, Henry II of France. And until instruction be received from France or Scotland as to your disposal, I have here a warrant that you may be put under ward and guard, from this day onwards, in the King’s Tower of London.
Take him.
’

There was a soldier at either of his elbows. Robin Stewart didn’t heed them. His long face yellow, the grain exposed by the sinking blood, he stared, unfocussed, at the sheriff. Then his ruffled head, on its long neck, swung round to Brice.

No soldier stood at Brice’s elbow; nor did Brice, in any of his languages, utter a word.

‘I thank God,’ said Sir John Atkinson, rolling up his parchment and passing it to the clerk, ‘that a warning of this wicked plot was given by Master Harisson here to an emissary of the French Ambassador, so that the affair could be prevented in time. I have no doubt what your fate will be. The King of France will have a short way with intended murder and high treason.’

Stewart heard the first half of this; then, with a conscious suspension of understanding, stood thinking of nothing at all. A distorted picture, slipping glutinously from nowhere into his vacant mind, showed him Tosh, chatting amiably among the wood shavings, and a pearwood block with the Culter arms.

Then Tosh’s asthmatic face gave way to Brice’s, flat and white; and Brice’s voice, higher-pitched than usual, saying, ‘That’s all, then. That’s all, isn’t it? I assume he can go away now. He had better go before Crawford comes back.’

Stewart missed it. Because understanding was only now coming dizzily into his brain, like the agony of blood refilling a limb long benumbed, he missed it and bleated, his own voice breathlessly tight, ‘
You gave it away!
’

Harisson looked quickly at the sheriff and away again, saying nothing.

This time Stewart’s voice was louder. ‘You went to the
Ambassador!
You told them what we were doing! You sent for me just now! You pretended to go to Warwick and help, and all the time … An impossible truth, a dreadful certainty, burst upon Robin Stewart, raking back wildly among Harisson’s recent affairs. ‘Ah, dear Christ send you to hell, you filthy tattle-bearing runt—
you’re in league with O’LiamRoe!
’

‘I really wish you would take him away,’ said Brice Harisson angrily. He faced Stewart, the veins of his dark, high forehead standing out, his hands clenched behind his flat back. ‘No one could have gone on with it, I tell you. My God, you might as well conspire with an elephant. Blundering in and out of boats in broad daylight, putting your horse in my stables. You never did one thing well in your life—Christ, not even killing that fellow you talked about. O’LiamRoe didn’t persuade me to make a clean breast of it, Stewart. Only one man did that—tried to force me to tell the French Ambassador the whole transaction, and begged me to betray you. Not O’LiamRoe, you fool, you stupid, long, witless fool.
But your friend Crawford of Lymond.’

There was a shocking silence. When you least expect it, the true, rending blow falls. ‘He’s dead,’ said Robin Stewart, his voice bleached of colour.

‘He was here in this room a few hours ago. Laughing,’ said Brice Harisson spitefully. ‘You and your vile plots and your deadly nightshade. They must be fair palsied with laughter in the Loire Valley by now. High treason! You poor, puking villain,’ said Harisson, carried back in his nervous hysteria to the frightened defiance of boyhood, ‘you couldna knock the head off a buttercup!’