Queens' Play Read Free

O’LiamRoe, Prince of Barrow, son of Milesians, descendant of Carbery Cathead, of Art the Solitary, Tuathal the Legitimate and Fergus of the Black Teeth, cousin to Maccon whose two calves were as white as the snow of one night, was thin and middle-sized, with a soft egg-shaped face thatched and cupped with blond whiskers. And at this moment, Stewart saw, he was bent double in fruitless converse with a coal-black bow oar from Tunis; thereby closing the main thoroughfare of the galley to seamen, oarsmen, timoneers, soldiers, warders, ensigns, lieutenants and captain alike.
    The sweating Moor, bearing down on fifty feet of solid beechwood, crashed back regularly and wordlessly on the five-man bench like a piston, rowing twenty-four strokes to a minute, while the voice of The O’LiamRoe, Chief of the Name, Prince of Barrow and feudal lord of the Slieve Bloom in the country of Ireland, warmly cordial, went on and on.
    ‘… And it would be queer if we didn’t agree, with leverage itself the great wonder of the world, as my own father knew, and my grandfather twenty-two stones and bedridden. When they came from sluicing him down at the pump they would lay the coffin lid over the turf stack next the bed and sit my grandfather at one end. They had a heifer trained to jump on the other. When the lid was nailed over him at the end my grannie was blithe, blithe at the wake; for she got a powerful lot of bruising when he landed.…’
    Robin Stewart winced. He had had two weeks of it. At Dalkey, Ireland, he had had his first sight of the great man, as The O’LiamRoe had shinned ineptly and eagerly up the ladder, to stand revealed on the tabernacle of
La Sauvée
, a carefree, mild and hilarious savage in a saffron tunic and leggings. His entire train, for which Mr. Stewart had cleared a compartment, consisted of two: the small wild Firbolg called Dooly and the comatose Mr. Ballagh.
    Robin Stewart had been mortified: not by O’LiamRoe’s looks, or his dress, or his simple enjoyment of useless knowledge, but because he not only invited questions, he answered them. As a student of human nature, Stewart enjoyed a long, difficult analysis; his onslaughts were memorable. A man talking amicably about the art of the longbow would find that, by means known only to Mr. Stewart, this led straight to God, his total income, and where his schooling had taken place, if any. In one day, the Archer knew that O’LiamRoe was thirty, unmarried, and resident in a large, coarse Irish castle. He knew that there was a widowed mother, a string of servants and five
tuaths
filled with clansmen and the minimum wherewithal to sustain life with no money to speak of. He knew that, in terms of followers, O’LiamRoe was one of the mightiest chieftains in English-occupied Ireland, except that it had never yet occurred to him to lead them anywhere.
    Watching the lord of the Slieve Bloom straighten and move happily off, tripping over an old pennant with a salamander on it, the Scotsman was moved to an irritation almost maternal. ‘And anyway, what in God’s name’s a
tuath
?’
    He had said it aloud. A voice replied in his ear. ‘Thirty ballys, my dear. And if you ask what in God’s name does a bally do, it holds four herds of cows without one cow, desperate lonely that they are, touching another.’ The fat Irishman in the next chair scratched his black poll and recrossed his hands over his comfortable little stomach ‘Surely The O’LiamRoe told you that? Bring in any little fact and O’LiamRoe will wet-nurse it for you.’
    Mr. Ballagh, asleep or drunk, had so far escaped the Archer’s attentions. In the dark-skinned, slothful, unshaven face he thought he saw disillusionment, intelligence, the remains of high aspirations perhaps, all soaked and crumbled into servitude and cynicism. He said easily, ‘Ye’ll have been a long time with the Prince?’
    Mr. Ballagh’s answer was succinct. ‘Three weeks.’
    ‘Three weeks too much, eh? You should have made