Free Queens' Play by Dorothy Dunnett Page B

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.’

IV
Rouen: Fine, Scientific Works Without Warning
    In the case of all fine, scientific works which can be done without being seen or heard, it is required by law to apply the rule of notice and removal: warning is to be given to sensible adults; beasts and non-sensible persons are to be turned away, and sleepers are to be awakened; deaf and blind persons to be removed.
    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 partywere 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