Queens' Play by Dorothy Dunnett Read Free Book Online Page A

Boyle said, ‘You are nippy enough yourself, we were hearing, and a terrible smart fellow up a rope. Are they putting games on you, in the long training you have, now?’ And she shrieked with laughter. The girl did not smile.
    ‘And teaching us to run like the wind too; ’Tis fundamental’, said Thady Boy sourly. ‘And when serving such as the Prince of Barrow, it would be a great help and comfort to be invisible as well.’
    Oonagh O’Dwyer got up. Silent as a cat, she walked over and removed from Thady Boy’s lax hands his dry cup. ‘Why come to France with him?’ she said. ‘To set your epigrams pimping for a little free drink?’
    ‘Free, is it?’ said Thady. ‘I thought I was paying for it.’
    ‘ ’Tis a little polished living the fellow is after,’ said Mistress Boyle comfortably.
    ‘Polished living! With The O’LiamRoe stuck on me, and the jaws of him going like the leper clappers?’
    ‘Ballagh’s here for asylum,’ said Robin Stewart, grinning. ‘He’ll tell you he’s come for the money, but it’s woman trouble, mark me.’
    ‘And O’LiamRoe, has he woman trouble too?’ asked Oonagh O’Dwyer of Thady.
    Mr. Ballagh was exasperated. ‘Have I the second sight? I was one week at his castle, and there was no woman in it barring his ma and the kitchens; and two weeks at sea when he passed his time on his two knees splicing ropes like the wind in the barley fields. I never caught him so much as wink at the figurehead.’
    The older woman sat back in her seat, chuckling; but Oonagh O’Dwyer spoke like an ancient goddess in her black hair. ‘He doesn’t mind being laughed at?’
    ‘Not if he can laugh first.’
    ‘Well, cock’s blood,’ said Robin Stewart with annoyance. ‘He was asked over to discuss ways and means of throwing the English out of Ireland. Is it a joke, just?’
    ‘Oh, he’s got a brain in him. He’ll talk all you want,’ said the ollave, wildly airy. ‘And maybe the King’ll get one or two good ideas off him, if he can stand him at all. But first and last and in the middle, The O’LiamRoe plans to treat himself to a small private survey on how the rich live … and it paid for by somebody else.’
    Mistress Boyle shook with laughter and Robin Stewart was delighted. But the black-haired girl turned on her heel and walked out of the room.

III
Rouen: The Nut Without Fruit
    Thou shall not bind anyone to pay in kine … who has not kine; thou shalt not bind anyone to pay in land, who is wandering;… thou shalt not bind a naked person to pay in clothes unless he has got raiment: it is as a nut without fruit to adjudicate in this manner.
    V ULNERABLE as a crab at the moult, The O’LiamRoe rode, mild, unwashed and hoary, into the splendid bosom of Rouen. And by the grace of all the old and mischievous gods, his arrival, with Thady Boy Ballagh and Piedar Dooly, passed that day unremarked by the townspeople. For four days, the Sacred Majesty of the Most Christian King of France, the most magnanimous, powerful and victorious King Henri, Second of that name, would enter his Norman capital for the first time in the three years of his reign, and the preparations for that joyous Entry had worn the Rouennois into tatters.
    They were lucky to miss the Court, which had blocked the Rouen road all that morning, settling into the Priory of Bonne-Nouvelle across the river to sit out the days till the Entry. Lord d’Aubigny, who had escorted the Irish party from Dieppe and last night had secured them an unexceptionable inn for their comfort, took his leave there with his lances to join the gentlemen about the King, leaving Robin Stewart with his small retinue to see O’LiamRoe safely lodged in the city.
    They had reached the suburbs in the plain of Grandmont when a whale came out of a house on a trolley and crossed the road, with four men pushing it. Every horse in Robin Stewart’s party snubbed its owner and O’LiamRoe’s mare reared. The Chieftain was nothing if not a