Queens'' Play by Dorothy Dunnett
Her gaze, resting idly on the float, suddenly focussed, slid down a familiar small body, and stopped at a hand adorned with a small piece of bandage. The Queen Mother of Scotland drew a long, shuddering breath and brought her fingers hard down on Margaret Erskine’s soft wrist. ‘It isn’t possible!’
Jenny Fleming’s daughter, pressing her lips tightly together, caught her husband’s eye. There must be no scene. But, of course, except in private, there would be no scene. The Dowager’s hand was already relaxing. ‘It is, you know,’ said Margaret Erskine. ‘Look who the angel is.’
The Chariot of Happy Fortune reached the Pavilion. It paused; king bowed to king, flowers were thrown and cheering broke out; then the unicorns took the strain and it rumbled on in its turn, bearing with it, unnoticed by its less observant French audience, Lady Fleming, Mary Fleming, Agnes Fleming, and Her Majesty the Queen of Scotland.
The O’LiamRoe was very taken with it also, mentioning to his neighbour that it would be a grand cart for market day, and the hens fairly cross-eyed peering and marvelling at the pictures. The elephants which followed, tasselled, crescented and harnessed, pacing in three pairs between their turbaned attendants, fascinated him even more.
Long trunks docile, brush tails lightly twitching, they patiently paced with shaky replicas of ships, forts and captured castles on the mighty massif of each back. The finest beasts led, a monolithic pair with the noble head and bright hazel eye of a healthy animal in the prime of its life. The bull elephant, with a certain amount of planned forethought, carried on its back four bronze ewers smoking with scented oils. On its high brow there lay a broad and shallow serenity, and its small, searching ingenious eye was irregularly gay.
They passed, and the foot cortège came, and the mounted Children of Honour. As the end of the procession came in sight the King rose, the princes and peers of his retinue with him, and prepared to mount and follow his burghers into his good city of Rouen.
The head of the procession reached the bridge and began to cross it. In silence the trample of hooves and the tread of feet rumbled over the boards. Gaunt and splendid in the October air, the Cathedral bell spoke. It rang in great strokes, beating on the wind as the Court, glittering silver and white, moved in a drift after the long laborious ribbon of the pageant. The Marie d’Estouteville, high and sweet, joined her voice to the Georges d’Amboise and from church to church and belfry to belfry the pealing anthems of pomp and tribute sprang to life. From the Grosse-Horloge itself Rouvel and Cache-Ribaud swung and vied until the crack of gun salvoes told that the King was nearing the bridge.
From all the theatres, music rose and fluttered like flags beyond and within the crowds. A burst of cannon from the river told that the water pageant had begun. The crowds cheered, debris floated, and a firecracker, mistimed in the excitement, coughed, exploded and sparked under the bellies of the Queen of Scotland’s four unicorns as the Chariot of Happy Fortune entered the bridge.
Another went off. The leading horse, sweating, jerked its head, horn askew, and with a plunge whipped its bridle free and turned round. The harness jangled, the wheels rumbled and skidded, and the groom, losing grip, ran forward and shouted just as the horses, jammed flat on the rail, came to a stop in a tangle of traces. The Chariot, swinging behind them, struck the float in front, split, and stopped broadside on the bridge, with four startled children upset on the floor and a king, prostrate, with a descending angel in his arms.
The six elephants hesitated. By the great bull at their head a man in Oriental dress spoke sharply. There was a pause; and in that small instant, unnoticed by the crowd, a plaster whale at the bridge end ran up on quiet wheels. Swift, white-faced and gruesome, it sped towards the last pair of elephants, and as their eyes whitened and their vast loins gathered, it opened its jaws and ejected, squealing, bloody and blinded, the one missing lamb. Like blown paper in a grey, petrified forest of limbs it hurled itself, insane, among the elephants; and the elephants, screaming, began to lumber away.
There was only one way for them to go; and that was forward to the bridge. The man, woman and children in the jammed cart, the watching crowd and all the impacted mass of the procession filling the far bridge watched them come in a trance of fright. The turbaned men began to run; the great beasts gathered speed. There were perhaps ten yards of road, densely lined with spectators, between the bull elephant and the bridge when the chief Keeper, running lightly, caught him with his iron hook.
It might have been a fly whisk. The bull brushed past, great feet thudding, housings swaying; and there was a crash as the powerful hind leg, lashing out, found the drifting side of the whale and made it powder. The Keeper dropped the goad, and laying hands on the crupper straps, tried to mount as the beast passed, but was shaken off, hands bleeding, before he could find a hold for his feet.
On the bridge, the trapped float rocked and crashed as its horses, frantic, splintered and smashed the bridge rails. Lumbering steadily, the six elephants made straight for the threshold, the bull leading, eyes white, tusks alight in the sun, burning oil jars rocking spilt on his back.
On the arch over the bridge, something moved. Plump, nimble, fluttering black, light as leaf on lind, a man dropped from the pediment and clung firm among the upset, steaming urns on the bull elephant’s back. Then, gripping the harness with one hand, he plunged spur and knife both into the animal’s right flank.
The bull raised his taut, dripping trunk, screamed, and stopped dead like a log in a jam. With a shuddering thud, his harem ran into him. For a moment they plunged, trumpeting, edging and thudding on to the bridge; then the bull’s rider used the goads again quickly, shouting, and the Keeper, running up, added his strange gibberish to the noise. Frantic, infuriated, blind with fright and seared and scalded by the oil, the bull heeled like an undermined fortress and made for the river.
Thady Boy Ballagh, filthy, blistered and smelling like an in-season civet cat, slid off the bull elephant’s back as it went under. A turbaned figure, sleek as an eel, with one eyebrow pulled high by a scar, passed him running and got to the great back before it submerged. The elephant ducked, and the Keeper, with the ease of long practice, wrapped his fists round the harness and prepared, standing, to be taken for a swim. The other five followed; and with heaving flank and spraying trunk and bright eyes turned suddenly from panic to pure mischief, began to put the fear of God into the mermaids, the monsters, the little boats and Father Neptune himself in the Seine.
For a moment Thady Boy watched; then streaming river water and perfume he turned, a little stiffly, to wade back to the shore.
He was still in the water when they reached him, back-slapping, shouting, talking, exclaiming, streaming down from the road. He was hustled from the beach to where a heavy, grey-bearded man in his fifties waited on horseback, a sword of ceremony stuck temporarily in his pommel. The rider bent down. ‘You, sir!’
Behind them, the procession was jerkily resuming its way; the wreckage was being cleared, and the shocked performers had vanished. Thady Boy was white, but his voice had a lilt in it. ‘Your lordship’s servant.’
‘Your brave action was marked by the King’s Majesty. He desires to thank you.’
‘It was nothing,’ said Thady Boy with modesty. ‘A middling piece of invention, all patched up with cat and clay.’
The royal party was beginning to pass. The Constable Montmorency brought his horse to the side of the road, and Thady Boy followed. ‘His grace desires to do your courage honour. I am commanded to ask your name and designation and to invite you to sup with the King and his friends at St. Ouen tonight.’
‘Indeed, now, isn’t that kindness itself?’ said Thady Boy. ‘And I would think shame to refuse, except that the King himself was for having me leave the city this night. Thady Boy Ballagh is my name, and I am paid secretary to The O’LiamRoe, Prince of Barrow; and himself unlucky with his small chat the other day.’
There was a short silence. The Constable cleared his throat. ‘I am sure tha
‘Ah, dhia, the sweet generosity that spouts from his heart’s veins,’ said Thady Boy. ‘And the loving forgiveness. And then Sir Gawaine wept, and King Arthur wept, and then they swooned both. Mallory might have had this very thing in his mind.’
‘I am not empowered,’ said the First Christian Baron, Marshal and Grand Master and Constable of France, Knight of the King’s Order and of the Garter and First Gentleman of the Chamber and Governor of Languedoc, ‘to invite the Prince of Barrow.’
‘And that is a power of good news in itself,’ said Thady Boy with composure, ‘for it would take an elephant, no less, to persuade him to come there.’
The procession was moving quickly now, and the Swiss Guards were almost on them. Montmorency sat back in his saddle, gathering the reins, his small shrewd eyes above the squat nose and rough beard outstaring the ollave. ‘But you, my friend, have no objections?’
‘May I be struck by a mallet of lightning like Lewy if I lie. You couldn’t stop me,’ said Thady Boy Ballagli.
Long after the Court had gone, crowds still jammed the roads and access to the city was blocked for an hour. The affair at the bridge, seen by them merely as a distant upheaval, had by that time been detailed ten times to O’LiamRoe and Robin Stewart. While the Irishman seemed only mildly amused, Robin Stewart, red-faced and a little upset, was avid to discover Thady and explore every nuance. They made the attempt to get back eventually, pushing through the picnicking crowds; but although they met plenty who had seen him, Thady Boy himself in his temporarily restored dignity was not to be found.
Alone on the plains of Grandmont, disgraced in the trampled grass and litter, far from the celebrated procession, the six elephants stood, roped each by the foreleg side by side in the vast thirty-foot tent put up several days since for their comfort; their trunks peacefully swaying as the cowardie scuttled back and forth with limp forkloads of hay. Small puffs of steam came from their mouths. Their breath was sweet, filling the sun-warmed, crisp air; and their hides, soothed, clean and lustrous from the water, lay calm on their great hips like the skin of the moon. Only at the end of the line the great bull stirred a little, the towering back swathed and padded and the knowing eye blurred.
Lymond, who had been standing quietly at the entrance, moved a little; and the workboy, pulling his fork out of a bin, saw him and whispered in Urdu. ‘M. Abernaci?’ said Francis Crawford.
The boy was frightened. He walked sideways for three steps, saying nothing; then suddenly scuttled and vanished. Within the Keeper’s own tent beyond, the door flap in his hand, a silent, turbaned figure stood watching. Scarred, bearded and withered, the brooding Djinn of the printing presses, Archembault Abernaci, head Keeper of the King of France’s elephants, smiled, displaying gapped, broken black teeth, and summoned with a noiseless raised hand. Lymond passed the elephants and went in.
Inside, it was comfortable, with a bench and several stools, a small chest and a mattress in one corner. There was a cloth of coarse saye on the floor and a stove with the remains of somebody’s meal beside it. Against the canvas was a stand of weapons: a hook, a spear, a sword, several knives and a mahout’s wristband, the five lead-heeled tails hanging limp.
Abernaci stood now by his armoury, immaculate in the high-collared coat, his face within the shining folds of his turban like one of the jewelled crocodiles of Arsinoë. The black eyes stared unmoving at Lymond.
Lymond, weaponless, tattered and damp, gazed back, his head tilted. Then, still silent, he slipped his hand inside the scaly mess of his clothes and brought it out holding a square block of pearwood. It was the block Abernaci had been carving four days before.
The dark man’s eyes flickered. There was a pause; then he broke the silence at last with a soft exclamation in Urdu.
‘I trust,’ said Lymond pleasantly, ‘that the sentiment was polite. You guessed, I should imagine, who had taken it.’
The mahout bowed.
Amusement, irrepressible, pulled at Francis Crawford’s long mouth. ‘God keep us from gyrcarlings and all long nebbit things from the East. There is no need,’ he said, ‘to be so cautious, my butty. I’m from Scotland myself.’
The scar lifted, the black eyes narrowed, and the dreadful teeth within the curling black beard were exposed. ‘Christ. It’s yourself, Mr. Crawford,’ said Archembault Abernaci, Keeper of the Menageries of France, in the purest cadences of Partick, Glasgow, Scotland. ‘It’s yourself; and here I never said sids for fear I was wrong—heigh, heigh.’ And the mahout sank down on the bench puffing and cheeping like a hen with a cold. ‘Heigh, heigh; and the grand head ones of France with a scrape or two where they hadna an itch, but for twa clever lads from the Clyde.’
Lymond laughed aloud; and spinning the block of wood in the air, let it impale itself on the razor-sharp spear, engraved side uppermost. The arms of the house of Culter, crudely peeled from the wood under his eyes by Abernaci in the murk of the sculptor’s big cellar, stared down at them both. Abernaci, his head cocked, studied it fondly, and Lymond said, ‘You left it lying at Hérisson’s, for me to take. How did you guess who I was?’
‘We fought together, you and I,’ said Abernaci, and grinning, hauled off the silk turban. Underneath was a fringed head, trimly bald. Below that, by some alchemy, the nutlike face was pure Scots. ‘When I was between jobs. Ye willna remember. But my brother ye knew. A grand man at arms in his day; and he was with you and your men a good while. He’s dead, I’ve heard tell, but whether it was the drink or the English I never found out.’
Lymond’s voice was sharp. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Abernethy. Erchie Abernethy,’ said the King of France’s mahout, his face blithe.
‘So Turkey Mat was your brother …’ said Lymond, and went on with barely a pause. ‘He’s dead, yes. He died in my service. I can tell you about it if you wish. And then I’ll go. I’m not proposing to make it a family custom.’
The athletic small figure jumped to its feet. ‘Christ, man, there’s nothing more I want tae hear. He was going anyway: what better way would he want it?… I formed my ain opinion of Crawford of Lymond, I’ll say to your face, yon time I served with you; and Turkey formed the same. It was the only time in our two lives we ever agreed about anything.… There was a scar or two ye had then that ye carry now, and I was nine-tenths sure of ye. Sure enough to give a hint that there was a friend handy at least …
‘… Fegs,’ said Erchie Abernethy in a vexed voice. ‘Fegs, I’m right buffle-heidit—sit down—I’m that pleased tae see ye I forgot the state you’d be in. I’d a chancy half hour with yon big bull in there, I’m telling you. A nicer, kinder-hearted big bairn of a beastie you’d be hard pushed tae find. Heathens! Foreigners! I’ll have the law on them, so I will …’
Hopping, chattering, his arms full of cloths, he came to rest at last. ‘Sit down, man. It’ll pass off. I’ll ease it for you in a minute. Man or beast, the treatment’s the same. But I’m ettlin’ tae know,’ said Erchie Abernethy, tenderly lifting the ruined cloth off Francis Crawford’s shoulders, ‘I’m fairly bursting tae ken how ye guessed I spoke Scots?’
Lymond looked up. Superficial pain, withstood or ignored for quite a long time, had made his eyes heavy, but they were brimming with laughter. ‘Well, God,’ he said. ‘In the water, you were roaring your head off at a bloody bull elephant called Hughie.’
Skilfully doctored and done up in balm and bandages, Lymond slept on Archie Abernethy’s pallet like the dead and woke up fresh, collected, and in command of a stream of cool, sarcastic invective.
The Keeper was impervious.
‘Ye needed it. It was part of the treatment. Ye ken the tale of the lassie and her pastille of virgin Cretan bhang—’
‘Whereof if an elephant smelt a dirham’s weight, he would sleep from year to year. Quite,’ said Lymond. ‘But I am not Ali Nur al-Di
The Keeper had unbuttoned his brocade coat, displaying a wonderful silk shirt and breech hose beneath. Sitting hands on knees, he studied his fellow Scot with a cracked black-stumped grin. ‘I heard you were with the Irish prince, him that’s soft in the heid,’ he said. ‘And under guard these last three days forbye. How would you be so sore short of sleep, I wonder? Picking locks, maybe, of a night?’
Sitting on the low pallet, Lymond picked up Abernaci’s dress scimitar and made a cut at the air. ‘No need. The guard was Robin Stewart.’
The walnut face filled with a malicious joy. ‘Och, yon speldron. King Harry’s prize Archer, all sense and no wits. He’d let a mouse out of a mousehole if it put on drawers and a mask. Anything by-ordinary, and Robin Stewart’s fair flummoxed: you can dodge him blindfold, I suppose. They let him in to Michel Hérisson’s, ye know, and lay wagers on what he’ll do next.’
‘Do you go there often?’
Archie Abernethy rose. He caught the scimitar deftly in midair by its handle and hung it on the stand with the rest. ‘I enjoy the carving. And whiles I like to hear Scots spoken—a lot of exiles, and English too, go there.’
‘I noticed as much. The English Resident calls it a hotbed of intrigue.’
‘Och, it’s a cheery crowd of irreligious rascals. They don’t care. You’ve been making night calls on Sir James Mason then? And you the guests of the King of France?’