Queens' Play (52 page)

Dim in the shadows by the door, Lymond showed neither alarm nor surprise. Instead he said sardonically, ‘It’s quite a price to pay for being the Petite Pucelle of Ireland, my dear. There are worse things than passing from hand to sweaty hand, much as the prospect appalls you.’

She did not make the woman’s answer: ‘Who told you so … Martine of Dieppe?’ Instead she said, ‘Before you spend yourself loosening my chains, you had better find out what they are. I never did anything yet out of fear … even fear of common harlotry, Francis Crawford. The O’LiamRoe, you must remember, is a sentimental man. If he told you I am tied to Cormac’s side by any fear of the future, he was wrong.’

‘Was he? What was Cormac like as a young nobleman, Oonagh, ablaze for Géraldine Ireland? The splendour there must have been.’

‘The young man is there in him yet,’ she said, and went on quickly. ‘What would you have him? A spectator, or a spy?’

‘A man,’ said the pleasant voice, undisturbed, ‘who does not need a woman to lead him.’

Two of her fingers were at the bruise on her cheek; she did not know how they got there. Dropping them, she said with soft bitterness, ‘Do you think I want power?’

‘I think you have staked your life on Cormac O’Connor,’ said Lymond. ‘And have kept his young love and his young crusade
green under the ice while the reality has rotted. He is not ambitious for Ireland, he is ambitious for Cormac O’Connor. He may still love your body, but he keeps you for your brain.’

Her throat closed; but through the anger rising like thunder through her head she managed to speak. ‘And what would
you
keep me for? The graveyards and prisons of Europe are full enough of half-made souls created by Francis Crawford and loneliness and God.’

When he spoke, his voice was dry. ‘I was not proposing, my dear, to support you for life, or even to seduce you in lieu of a fee. I am offering you a chance to define and revise your ideals. It is impossible that they should quire with mine?’

‘ ’Tis a lavish offer, if a trifle obscure,’ said Oonagh O’Dwyer. ‘If in my burning patriotism, I betray someone else’s scheming, you will refrain from the cruder gestures of appreciation. You return triumphant to Scotland, the golden stripling; Cormac languishes no doubt in a French prison for attempting the life of an Irish rival and I, with my eyes averted from this unworthy Messiah, am cast into a dull but healthier void.’

‘It is still an improvement,’ said Lymond, ‘on the Tour des Minimes. What aspect of Cormac’s homely charm made that experiment worth while? Lord d’Aubigny had found out, perhaps, that Francis Crawford was not O’LiamRoe, and began to suspect that you had been helping him kill the wrong man for your own ends? And as she moved suddenly, before she could stop herself—’Oh, yes,’ Lymond added calmly. ‘We know that d’Aubigny is the villain. Don’t let’s labour the point. So when Stewart told him who Thady Boy was, his lordship realized you had deceived him?’

She said shortly, ‘Give me credit for sense. I had discovered long ago that Phelim O’LiamRoe was no rival that Cormac need fear.’ Then, as he was silent, she said, ‘I risked my safety to pull you free from the Tower that night. What more are you worth? It was Cormac or all of you.’

‘Cormac, or all of us,’ said the voice from the darkness, reflectively. ‘Cormac’s ambitions, Ireland’s future, to be bought at the price of our lives, and the life of Queen Mary as well.… You know that Lord d’Aubigny meant her to die? But of course you did. He had been in your confidence and your aunt’s for a long time, I suspect. He was trying to kill me because I had been induced to come and protect her … how did he know that, I wonder? From someone in Scotland who was haunting the Queen Dowager hoping for favours—and not receiving them; someone who has an excessive interest in the Culters and with relatives in both London and France … someone like d’Aubigny’s own relation, Sir George Douglas?’

This time she did not move; and wondered afterwards if her very
stillness had given her away, for he laughed and went on. ‘And you, of course, knew from George Paris that the Queen Dowager at just this moment had proposed the unknown O’LiamRoe’s visit to France. There was no time to attack him in Ireland, but it seemed easy to have an accident at sea. Then Robin Stewart encouraged Destaiz in his little piece of fire-raising at the Porc-épic: a foolish move, not at all easy to explain as an accident, for which d’Aubigny duly berated him. And the next attempt to get rid of him was yours, at Rouen, when you arranged for O’LiamRoe to make a fool of himself at the tennis court, when he was nearly sent home. But by then, of course, you had guessed the truth.… What gave away Thady Boy’s identity, I wonder? Bad acting or bad grammar, or a certain aura which is neither flesh nor fisshe?’

‘An Appin man taught you your Gaelic long since, and a Leinsterman has recently corrected you well; but you still forget to lay stress on the first syllable instead of the second, now and then. It is not a thing a Scotsman would notice.’

‘So Stewart and his lordship continued to believe that O’LiamRoe was their proper victim, and you allowed them to think so.… D’Aubigny took poor Jenny Fleming to the Croix d’Or and confronted them with each other. He must have had the highest opinion of their dissimulation. How foolish he must have felt when he learned the true facts. And how angry he will be, my dear, should he ever find out that you knew these all the time.’

‘My life is my own,’ she said, her voice thin in her own ears. ‘You asked me last time to leave you to deal with this man. What ails you? Deal with him!’

‘You know what I want,’ said the quiet voice. ‘Evidence against Lord d’Aubigny. Destaiz is dead. Someone besides Stewart must have helped him at times. He didn’t tie that rope at Amboise himself. One name would do.’

She thought, her hands gripping the windowsill, the dim, merry lights on her grazed face. She thought of the organ at Neuvy, made to magnify her breath, her heartbeats, her fears, instead of the Almighty; of the humiliating serenade at the Hôtel Moûtier, so mercilessly timed for the one space when she had hoped to reach Lord d’Aubigny’s ear with the news of Cormac’s arrival. For two days she had waited at Blois for the Court to return, so that she could warn d’Aubigny that O’Connor was coming, and that it was time for him to keep his promise and influence the King in Cormac’s favour. And Lymond, she now realized, had waited too—had he had her watched?—to see if her sudden departure from Neuvy had to do with Cormac, and if so, whom she might meet when the Court came back to Blois, for she had to meet someone that night, if at all. Next day the Moûtiers would leave, and she must return to Neuvy.

He had not only waited, damn him. He had taken half the Court to her. Transfixed on her balcony, full in the public eye, she had been forced to ask O’LiamRoe’s help. Piedar Dooly, unwatched, had slipped from the Hôtel Moûtier to the castle, and in response to her message, Robin Stewart had come to receive her news and bear it to d’Aubigny. And even that had played into Lymond’s hands, for it had brought the Archer to run with him on the rooftops and had nearly suborned him from his purpose. She wondered, briefly, if her borrowing of Piedar Dooly that night had been mentioned by O’LiamRoe; and then dismissed the thought from her mind. It was the hour for harshness and for strength: neither symptomatic of Phelim O’LiamRoe. She said, ‘There is nothing I can do.’

The whole width of the room lay between them; there was no sound. Then Lymond said calmly, ‘Let us try a little sentiment, then. Queen Mary is eight years old.’

‘She is eight, and has food in her mouth and down in her bed, a nurse to dress her and a great chest for her jewels. The jewel of an Irish child is a handful of meal.’

‘And a rebellion under Cormac will bring plenty?’

‘It will bring freedom. The rest will come.’

‘You talk as if Mary were free,’ said Lymond. ‘Her death will set brother against brother in Scotland as it has already with you. Can you look no further than one nation and one man?’

‘You do not know me,’ she said.

‘I know your pride. As your lover shrunk in stature his cause had to grow. A humbler woman would have knifed him.’

She stared at the blur of his face in the twinkling dark, her rage bursting its self-imposed locks. ‘Then there are two of us,’ she said hardily. ‘A man of smaller vanity would have killed him before she had need.’

‘Thinking death the only division. I could not imagine,’ said Lymond, ‘ever so insulting you. In any case, you are committed to your cause, are you not? You would need only another Messiah. The Prince of Barrow, perhaps.’

‘Perhaps.’ Under the heavy damask the sweat was cold on her skin; her eyes, open in the scented darkness, ached with the strain of the fight; her lashes dragged like fire from their roots.

For it was a struggle. She was under no illusions. He meant to have the help she could give. His moderation was a debt he owed to other women, not to her, and eventually it would break.… Placed between these steely levers, face to face with her own mind, she must use what weapons she had. Choosing her words, she said, ‘… But that you would frighten him out of it. No matter. Ambitious princes in Ireland are as thick as the sands of the sea. Any one of them will do.’

Deeply she had planned this inevitable duel of theirs; her blood
heavy in her veins she waited to hear him reply. The silence went on, drowning the shallow murmurs of talk and laughter, the remote beat and pipe of music outside. Then Lymond said, ‘So you have never loved.’

Oonagh said, ‘Have you?’

He did not answer. Instead he said, his voice attuned to a deeper breath, so that her hands closed suddenly, ‘There is a man already half-awake in O’LiamRoe. I should not prevent you. How could I?’

She let him hear the contempt in her voice. ‘And in the loving leaf-beds of France I should let drop the starved skull of a nation, and watch it roll into the weeds? Show me the man, awake or half-awake, whose lips could teach me to do that!’

Her own words chimed in her head. They sounded unconvincing, the words that were meant to persuade as the spade persuades the deep earth. Standing in that dark room, gambling mind and body against this silken, disembodied voice, she had begun, strong as she had made herself to be, to tremble. She had to wrench from him her secret, her identity, her pride all intact, and to buy security for Cormac in the future. Oh, God … she thought furiously, shaking. How frigid was he? Mary Mother, how much wooing must she do?

She had thought herself open as a sounding board to every move of his body; she had killed her sight on his dim, jewelled dress. But blind with stress she missed the move when at last it was quietly made; was aware only of his perfume behind, and of two peaceful hands lying under her throat. His voice in her ear said, ‘I gave you my word, a while back, that I proposed to be continent … but are you and your song, my green-haired morrow, attempting by any chance to seduce me?’

Before her, his shadow lay superimposed on her own upon the empty tiles; his breath was sweet; his smiling lips in her hair. Her chin lifted. Staring open-eyed before her, ‘Are you afraid?’ she said. And raising her hands, slid apart his light ones and turned.

She had studied his sleeping face, exposed under the dye. Lymond asserting his full powers she had never met at close quarters before. Without touching her, he was so near she could feel the warmth of his skin; the lamps from the garden struck a sudden, dense blue from under his lashes. In the broken light, the short hair clasped his head like lit silver. He spoke again, his voice steady; but she could hear that, at last, he was controlling his breath.

‘The star of Gormluba was fair. White were the rows within her lips, and like the down of the mountain under her new robe was her skin. Circle on circle formed her fairest neck. Like hills beneath their soft snowy fleeces rose her two breasts of love. The melody of music was in her voice. The rose beside her lip was not red: nor white
beside her hand the foam of the streams. Her eyes were bright as sunbeams; and altogether perfect was the form of the fair.… Maid of Gormluba, who can describe thy beauty!’

In the timbre of the Gaelic, you remembered his gifts, his hands on the strings and his thoughts in them. She answered him in the same tongue and kind, her body graced by his voice, her glimmering face and shoulders and breasts small and deep in his eyes.

Without looking, he put out his hand and drew the great shutter slowly closed. Behind her, the lit square dwindled on the fine tiles and was gone; in his eyes the last spark of light, reflected from her own, flamed and was extinct. In the soft darkness, smoothly, he found her two hands and brought them high under his own before gathering her for his kiss.

Within the boy’s frame and the armoured violence of her soul came a response stronger than her will: a surge of triumph so great that she would have stopped him, if she had been strong enough, in that moment before the glory could be dimmed. Then she was held fast in a sudden turbulence as suddenly leashed, as if an iron door had closed on a fire. Attentively, his lips visited her skin, exploring the way to her dry mouth, and found it.

He spoke, in the end, lifting his lips from hers; but she did not hear. Consumed like a spar in the flame she had incited, born like some parched changeling on the white bed of its heat, she was sealed by that spare kiss from words. When she came to herself she found him kneeling, and herself taut in his hands. ‘My dear, you are weeping,’ he said. ‘Welcome with hautbois, clarions and trumpets, noble lady. Welcome to the company of those who can be hurt.’

She had guessed, and she had gambled on one fact: that Francis Crawford’s ultimate stake in this war between them, unsought by either, would be the same as her own. And in this one thing she was his equal, and thought to find herself even his peer. She had almost loved O’LiamRoe for his innocence. She had come tonight, sure that Lymond would try to assail her mind in the end, in the long run, by trying to captivate her body. And grimly, icily, she had come prepared to show a conceited trifler ten years her junior a glimpse of what he had never known. She had come ready to serve him well, her anger cloaked, so that by morning, wordless, he would know that he had nothing of this coin with which to bid. And then, perhaps, he would let her and Cormac go.