coolness with the Emperor, France is not so hot to appropriate Ireland, and would hardly be troubled if a lordling, offended, took the first galley back home.’
‘I am tempted,’ said O’LiamRoe.
For a moment longer she studied him; then with her square-tipped boy’s hands pulled her green cloth hood forward. ‘That is all. I promised to tell you. I hope,’ she said pointedly, ‘that your philosophy does not leak on you under stress.’
‘Do not disturb yourself,’ said the Prince of Barrow, and the sunlight carried his raw shadow and laid it like a plinth at her feet. ‘If they come close to tickle, they can’t complain of the fleas. Is Thady Boy expected to join in my folly?’
‘No. He speaks French. It is you alone they are baiting. I am sorry,’ said Oonagh O’Dwyer unexpectedly, raising her light grey eyes straight to his. ‘It is not the sweetest news from a woman.’
‘No,’ said O’LiamRoe slowly. ‘No, it is not. There must be vanity in me somewhere yet. But it was not an easy errand you gave yourself either, and my thanks to you and Mistress Boyle.’ He opened the door as she moved forward, his oval, whiskered face quite benevolent. ‘But God help me, I was raised on all the wrong sports in the Slieve Bloom,’ said Phelim O’LiamRoe.
An hour later, in his saffron, his leggings and his frieze cloak, Phelim O’LiamRoe, Prince of Barrow, walked into the royal residence at the Priory of Bonne-Nouvelle, hairy as a houseleek; and the thick cream of French
espièglerie
closed over his head.
It was a young, supple Court, with the sap still in its veins. Henri, absolute lord of nineteen million Frenchmen, was thirty-one; and of the ten de Guises in whose hands half the power of ruling France lay, the eldest, the Queen Mother of Scotland, was only thirty-five. It followed that the courtiers, too, were mostly young. Those of an older generation had been born into the world of Henri’s predecessor Francis I, the enchanting rake, the Caesar, the Sunflower, who did not care for dreamy, sullen, sleepy children and had committed his two sons without a thought to the prisons at Pedraza in his place when he lost his Italian war and his liberty at the battle of Pavia.
Henri came back from Spain an uncouth eleven-year-old, unable to speak his native language; and the gay Court noted him in passing—‘M. d’Orléans, a large, round face, who does nothing but give blows, and whom no man can master.’ When he was King, he kept a court still of marzipan and kisses, but a tough, esoteric, gamey core also persisted: the patronage of scholars and master craftsmen; the habit of good talk and private accomplishments, with the poet and the professor familiarly at the elbow.
But although the personal triumphs of the sullen, sleepy prisoner were now established, not without pains; although the swiftest runner, the best horseman, the finest lute player in France, was her King; although he had ended the English wars successfully, regained possession of Boulogne, would have Scotland when his son married the little Queen, and was in a fair way to frightening the Emperor with his league of German princes—in spite of all these, Henri of France kept two things from the world of his father as a child keeps its cradle rag: his beloved Montmorency, shrewd old warrior whom Francis had exiled from Court; and Diane de Poitiers, for fourteen years Henry’s mistress.
Too wealthy, too powerful, too blunt for King Francis’s liking,Anne Duke de Montmorency had been none the less one of the bulwarks of the kingdom; and it was not until the old King’s latter years, when Montmorency was already nursing the young heir, that the final clash came, and Francis threw him into the exile from which King Henri rescued him.
Diane, widow of the Grand Seneschal of Normandy and familiar with courts, had come, at thirty-six—some said straight from the old King’s pillow; and with wit, address and a natural kindness perfectly
‘I am tempted,’ said O’LiamRoe.
For a moment longer she studied him; then with her square-tipped boy’s hands pulled her green cloth hood forward. ‘That is all. I promised to tell you. I hope,’ she said pointedly, ‘that your philosophy does not leak on you under stress.’
‘Do not disturb yourself,’ said the Prince of Barrow, and the sunlight carried his raw shadow and laid it like a plinth at her feet. ‘If they come close to tickle, they can’t complain of the fleas. Is Thady Boy expected to join in my folly?’
‘No. He speaks French. It is you alone they are baiting. I am sorry,’ said Oonagh O’Dwyer unexpectedly, raising her light grey eyes straight to his. ‘It is not the sweetest news from a woman.’
‘No,’ said O’LiamRoe slowly. ‘No, it is not. There must be vanity in me somewhere yet. But it was not an easy errand you gave yourself either, and my thanks to you and Mistress Boyle.’ He opened the door as she moved forward, his oval, whiskered face quite benevolent. ‘But God help me, I was raised on all the wrong sports in the Slieve Bloom,’ said Phelim O’LiamRoe.
An hour later, in his saffron, his leggings and his frieze cloak, Phelim O’LiamRoe, Prince of Barrow, walked into the royal residence at the Priory of Bonne-Nouvelle, hairy as a houseleek; and the thick cream of French
espièglerie
closed over his head.
It was a young, supple Court, with the sap still in its veins. Henri, absolute lord of nineteen million Frenchmen, was thirty-one; and of the ten de Guises in whose hands half the power of ruling France lay, the eldest, the Queen Mother of Scotland, was only thirty-five. It followed that the courtiers, too, were mostly young. Those of an older generation had been born into the world of Henri’s predecessor Francis I, the enchanting rake, the Caesar, the Sunflower, who did not care for dreamy, sullen, sleepy children and had committed his two sons without a thought to the prisons at Pedraza in his place when he lost his Italian war and his liberty at the battle of Pavia.
Henri came back from Spain an uncouth eleven-year-old, unable to speak his native language; and the gay Court noted him in passing—‘M. d’Orléans, a large, round face, who does nothing but give blows, and whom no man can master.’ When he was King, he kept a court still of marzipan and kisses, but a tough, esoteric, gamey core also persisted: the patronage of scholars and master craftsmen; the habit of good talk and private accomplishments, with the poet and the professor familiarly at the elbow.
But although the personal triumphs of the sullen, sleepy prisoner were now established, not without pains; although the swiftest runner, the best horseman, the finest lute player in France, was her King; although he had ended the English wars successfully, regained possession of Boulogne, would have Scotland when his son married the little Queen, and was in a fair way to frightening the Emperor with his league of German princes—in spite of all these, Henri of France kept two things from the world of his father as a child keeps its cradle rag: his beloved Montmorency, shrewd old warrior whom Francis had exiled from Court; and Diane de Poitiers, for fourteen years Henry’s mistress.
Too wealthy, too powerful, too blunt for King Francis’s liking,Anne Duke de Montmorency had been none the less one of the bulwarks of the kingdom; and it was not until the old King’s latter years, when Montmorency was already nursing the young heir, that the final clash came, and Francis threw him into the exile from which King Henri rescued him.
Diane, widow of the Grand Seneschal of Normandy and familiar with courts, had come, at thirty-six—some said straight from the old King’s pillow; and with wit, address and a natural kindness perfectly
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