Queens' Play by Dorothy Dunnett
The last course had been served. Soon the boards would be removed. Meanwhile the players had given place to tumblers. They came up the centre carpet springing and whirling and took their stance, the acrobats before the royal dais, the jugglers at the other end. The royal fool Brusquet, a hard-working man, strolled down from the top table and placed a privileged hand on the shoulders of Condé and his Irishman. ‘Welcome, Master Ollave, fresh from the kingly castles of Ireland. Can we hope to match them in splendour at this poor Court of France?’
The Irishman thought, chewing. ‘Well, at home, ’Tis not the fools only who make converse at table.’
Before Brusquet could reply, Condé’s dark, painted face turned. ‘You would teach us how to be courtiers?’
Thady Boy bowed meekly. ‘I would leave that to Madame la Princesse.’
Urgent with epigram, Brusquet rushed in, as the lady exchanged raised brows with Condé. ‘The courtier’s task, like garlic, sir, is to flavour his master with his own wit and skill.’
Thady Boy licked his fingers and wiped them fastidiously on the sleeves of his gown. ‘Do you tell me now. I would put it nearer the surgeons’, M. Brusquet: to bring together the separated, to separate those abnormally united, and to extirpate what is superfluous.’
‘And what, sir,’ said the fool silkily, ‘has proved superfluous in Ireland?’
‘Ah, did I say we needed courtiers in Ireland?’ said Thady, surprised.
A light had come into Condé’s eye, but the King’s fool, his colour high, was again first. He was acid. ‘We had forgotten. If you can manage one elephant, no doubt you can manage them all.’ He lowered his voice suddenly. A page, sent from the top table, requested silence for the tumblers. Up and down the room, conversation and laughter fell to a mellow buzz.
A resounding hiccough pock-marked the silence, like an arrow in the gold.
Thady Boy apologized. ‘Strange, strange are your ways. In Ireland, now, princes are not known as elephants, and them walking about with their castles on their backs.’ The glance he gave at Condé’s superb satin was politely fleeting. ‘But there is a saying. A fool, though he live in the company of the wise, understands nothing of the true doctrine as a spoon tastes not the flavour of the soup.’ He choked, but failed to stifle another shattering hiccough.
Condé said softly, forestalling Brusquet, ‘The spoon has compensations. Of washing thrice daily, for example.’ He had an audience of perhaps half a dozen, and at the hiccoughs more were turning.
‘Not in Ireland,’ said Thady Boy, his blue eyes innocent; at ease from his tangled black crown to his fine, dirty hands. ‘’Tis not the gentlefolk but the beans that we put into water, so that they swell and go soft.… To turn to these hiccoughs, now. There’s a thing you do with a cup to stop them?’
‘What?’ The Prince of Condé, drawn into extraordinary tête-à-tête, was momentarily at a loss. Another report like a pistol shot escaped the Irishman’s glottis, and more heads turned. Distantly, by the King’s chair, Lord d’Aubigny moved restively. The tumblers, leaping, looked resigned.
Diamonds flashing, Condé picked up his silver drinking cup and offered it to the sufferer, his face suddenly contorted. Thady Boy shook his head, exploded and explained. The cure sounded incredible. The Princess said, ‘Give him water!’ She was amused, and in a lifetime of boredom, the moment was worth keeping. A laugh rippled up the table, and Condé jerked his head.
A page, misunderstanding, brought a fingerbowl, the rose leaves still floating, and Thady Boy, between two explosions, had his chin in it when Condé pulled it away. A silver tankard was brought. ‘Oh, Jesus, no!’ said Thady Boy, and hiccoughed. ‘Two ears, the thing must have.… It’s clean infallible. Ah, wait you now. There she is!’ And rising, The O’LiamRoe’s ollave tipped the royal flowers from their tall vase before him, lifted it, and inserting his chin, attempted to suck the far rim. Brackish water poured round his ears. It soaked his jerkin and streamed on the cloth, and jellied leaves, slipping through, came to rest on Condé’s white satin. From about them, there was a muffled round of applause and a low cheer; and opening watery eyes Thady acknowledged it, before exploding like the tuck of a drum. ‘… Infallible,’ he was heard to say; and his two hands grasped the handles again.
Three people pulled him back from it, and as many more offered advice, some less sober than others. ‘Something cold.’ ‘A key.’ ‘A coin.’ ‘Madame de Valentinois,’ said someone else, sotto voce.
The Prince of Condé, who had started to laugh, opened his purse on the table and then stopped. He was too late. Thady Boy’s long fingers had already darted inside the mesh. ‘The very thing, so!’ And he held up a key: a very fine one of silver gilt, with leaves and flowers and a crest on the stem. Condé snatched. Madame la Maréchale de St. André was not watching—she was deep in low talk with de Lorges. But her husband, from across the carpet, stared at the pretty key with his thoughts plain on his face. The eyes of the two men met; and the limpid blue gaze of Thady Boy, after dwelling on them both, turned and surveyed his audience. One eye closed, then both, in the most stupendous upheaval yet, and he slipped the key down his spine and wriggled. ‘Although, dhia, you are all wrong; it is for a nosebleed, so.…’ From along the table, Jean de Bourbon’s silvery laugh rang out.
With practised ease, his neighbours softened the pause. They chattered to Condé; they called gentle advice; they summoned pages to mop up the water while their perceptive senses descended like locusts on the immediate conduct of Condé, of St. André and of his wife. At the top table, the King sent to know the reason for the flurry. In a low and private whisper the details, discreetly censored, began their journey up the scented tablecloths. A sense of tolerance and even of indebtedness began to settle on the Irishman’s neighbours. Condé was perhaps a little quiet; but the others, drawling, vied with each other as the tables were removed in trying to cure Thady Boy’s hiccoughs; and Condé’s brother, smiling, watchful, had begun to flicker his fan.
It was then that the jugglers got involved. Ignoring the laughter, eyes snakelike, arms whirling in particoloured costume, they sent blunt-edged daggers in a stream to each other, their hands a pink blur in the slipstream of silver. Thady Boy exploded, his arms full of remedies, and somehow a two-handled vase flashed alien into the glittering stream. Cramp-fingered and incredulous, the first juggler waited for it, changed grip desperately, and sent it back to his partner in a shower of knives. The next convoy of daggers brought a key; and then a cup appeared. The juggler caught it and hurled it to the side, where Thady Boy with no apparent effort received it.
Swift, timely, in perfect position, one of the juggler’s little knives came back from the same quarter; then another; then the cup. His embrace slipping with objects, Thady Boy seemed to have acquired a whirlpool of possessions in mid-air: dishes and salt-cellars began to join it. His object seemed to be to regain possession of the amphora; but instead a stream of incoming knives began mysteriously to shoot at him. With combined and deadly malice, the jugglers had begun to incorporate Thady Boy in the act. From knives, they fed the rest of their stock into the air. The knives turned to balls, the balls to rings, the rings to eggs. He returned them all.
By now the whole room was watching. From a rustle of amusement rose a few cheers; then the King, leaning forward, was seen to smile, and the cheering became louder. From the top table Lord d’Aubigny, his handsome face on fire, strode down to the ollave; then backed a step as an egg, mishandled, landed, thickly soggy, in his shirt. Another, slipping badly astray, splashed M. Brusquet, talking hoarsely and unheard in what was approaching a din. The jugglers themselves began to suffer.
Their clothes were not cheap. To preserve their garments and the shreds of their professionalism they with one accord moved backwards, out of range and towards the end of the room. The alien objects—the cup, the key, the vase—dropped to the floor. A last tremendous hiccough shook Thady. Clothes streaming with egg yolk and water, hair erect as the crest on a jay, he
The King of France laughed. And like the well-bred bone and tinkle of an ancient and imperial sepulchre on the eve of All Hallows, the bored and over-refined flower of French civilization gave way to its mirth.
The tumblers had gone; the mess had been cleared up, and in the muted, end-of-meal light, diamonds flickered, caught like stars in quick water, as the company talked and laughed, and the King summoned Thady Boy to his chair.
As Lymond walked past without a sign, Tom Erskine at last allowed his eyes to meet the Queen Dowager’s with gentle triumph in his gaze. Thady Boy’s face was childlike in its innocence, and the wide, fringed blue eyes met the King’s with confidence, with a trust perfectly endearing. Henri of France addressed him in his deep, pleasant voice. ‘You have made chaos of my supper and a shambles of my supper room, sir. Are dinners so conducted in Ireland?’
‘We repel sadness if we can. It is a duty of our profession.’
‘You were not invited, I believe,’ said the King, ‘to repel sadness.’
‘I was not invited, I believe, to repel elephants,’ said Thady Boy with serenity. ‘We turn our hand to whatever we may.’
The royal eyes searched for presumption and found none. The royal face relaxed a little. ‘It is true, both your endeavours today have made you remarkably damp.’
‘It is not my favourite element. I had no choice.
‘A la fontaine je voudrais
Avec ma belle aller jouer.
‘Ma belle being a cow elephant called Annie.’
‘Ah, you quote poetry,’ said Henri. ‘But you prefer horseplay to music?’
‘It depends on the music,’ said Thady Boy with the gentlest gravity.
Beside the King, Catherine, Queen of France, had made leisurely study of him, her nimble mind and blanched cultures weighing his answers. She now spoke, her voice muted. ‘You dislike the King’s lutenist?’ The consort, she was aware, had been unspeakable.
‘I should be proud to have trained him,’ said the ollave.
She sat back and a little drift of comment ran along the table, with a laugh. The King was smiling. ‘You think you could do as well?’
‘It is my profession.’
‘As well as elephant riding and juggling?’
‘These are my field sports.’
Without looking round, the King snapped his fingers. Lord d’Aubigny, blank and deferential, stepped forward. ‘Fetch Alberto quickly.’ To Thady Boy Ballagh, the King spoke slyly. ‘We have heard the buffoon; show us the bard, Master Ballagh. Play for us, sing, perform as well as M. de Ripa, and you shall have a full purse to take back to Ireland tomorrow.’
Slowly Thady Boy shook his black head. ‘Money, now, that is not the price of a song. The reward we would ask, O’LiamRoe and myself, is leave to enjoy a little longer the wonders and delights of your country, and to atone for the innocent mistake which led the Prince of Barrow, to his sorrow, into such misfortune the other day.’
There was a silence. ‘I cannot,’ said the King at last. ‘I cannot under any circumstances have your master here at Court.’
‘The O’LiamRoe,’ said Thady Boy delicately, ‘is not accustomed to Court life. He asks only to remain and study the grand country it is.’
The King hesitated. De Ripa had come in, looking startled, and carrying his lute. Further along the table, the Dowager of Scotland chatted softly to her neighbour, ignoring the little audience. The Constable of France, excusing himself, rose and bending over the King’s chair, murmured in his ear.
Henri turned, collected the unspoken agreement of his Queen, and said pleasantly to the Irishman, ‘If these are the only conditions under which you will play, then we must of course agree. But we wish it understood that we propose passing the winter at Blois, and that none but the finest in each profession accompany us there. The lute is my own instrument. Her grace the Queen, my lady sister, and my sweet sister of Scotland besides M. de Ripa and myself will judge you.’ Somewhere under the white and silver, there was an amiable spirit. ‘In Ireland, the standards for such things may be different. Do not be disappointed. You will not leave the poorer,’ said Henri of France.
The bundle of wattle and daub which was Thady Boy Ballagh straightened up. His gaze wandered past the King to the Queen Mother, to Erskine, to Margaret, to Jenny Fleming, to Lord d’Aubigny behind them, and down the long tables to Condé and the Princess, d’Enghien and St. André—all the bored, chattering faces. Then he turned and, bowing elaborately, accepted the challenge.
In the softly lit hall the command was passed; the noise died. Heavy with food and wine, warm and weakened with laughter, and laden with visiting dreams of the night hours ahead, the predatory and feckless flower of France lay wreathed in its velvets, and the Bodyguard, in sparkling white, stood silent behind.
There was a low chair for the player, and a stool for his foot. Thady Boy took the satiny, pear-sliced lute from the Italian and smiled at him; the dark eyes were inimical for a moment longer, then smiled back. Drowned in the coloured darks of the floor, Thady Boy sat with the frail waxlight over his head, bearded stubble and obesity sunk in the darkness. From his right hand came a hardly heard brushing of sound; then he spoke in his skilful, velvety Irish-French.
‘To the ladies of France, who win music and love as their birthright. To the ladies of France, the tale of the King of Kerry’s daughter whose greenan was thatched with eagles’ wings, and their breasts made her pillow.’
For years he had commanded men and knew the trick of controlling and throwing out tone. He knew others too. His fingers flowed over the shining wood, plucking, snapping; dipping the phrases into acid and wiping them pure again. Then Thady’s voice joined the music, and the spare, tragic story was told, reaching into the carved room where the silence was the same as the night silence of a deep Kerry meadow. Moving to its end the music was strict and steely light; the pull at the heart extraordinary. In that company wholly spoiled, wholly self-centred, ruthless, neurotic, worldly-wise, more than one woman bit her lip to avoid tears and ridicule.
It ended; and there was silence, and then a rattle of cautious, genuine approval; and Marguerite of France, her jewels running like light over her dress, rose and knelt by the ollave. ‘I pray you … play Palestrina for me. And sing me this.’ And she stayed, watching his hands, as the fastidious music was made, watching his face as he sang the words she had requested.
‘Si la noche se hace oscura,
y tan corto es el camino,
i cómo no venís, amore?…
Cómo no venís, amore?’
The stamp of her approval, the vivid attention on Henri’s face, the concentration on de Ripa’s, broached the brittle defences of pride, and opened the golden floodgates of fashion. During the poem, someone sighed. Towards the end, the Duchess de Guise pulled out her handkerchief. As it finished, a wave of sensitive acclamation engulfed the singer and, charmingly, other ladies surrounded him. He glanced at them thoughtfully, and roused the strings this time to gentle satire. The song was new, and it pleased them. He sang again, settings by Jannequin and Certon; Il n’est soing que quant on a fain; Belle Doette, Mout me desagree; and songs even older. He sang in Gaelic, sírechtach music; and drawn like the tides by the wordless drag of the pain, they wept this time and were proud of it. And later, he sang them songs which were spicy as well as romantic, and they laughed and cheered and joined in with the catch phrases. But he took no risks, yet.
They were all, or nearly all, his patrons. Condé, for dignity’s sake, was his loudest admirer. Marguerite of Savoy addressed him softly between songs, and Jean de Bourbon, sieur d’Enghien, thoughtfully fluttered his fan. The two senior de Guises smiled with to
Only two people reacted differently. Margaret Erskine sat in silence, as she had done the whole evening, her candid gaze on the ollave. Only when he sang, her face changed to something very like pain. And Brusquet, angered, had left.
Towards the end, when the circle about the singer overflowed, and people were moving freely, talking, singing and drinking wine, Sir George Douglas leaned confidentially on Thady Boy’s shoulder as he sat, head downbent, tuning the lute. ‘My dear man, how fortunate that your friend Abernaci was in charge of the elephants.’
The implication was obvious. The Bourbon beside him looked up. ‘You’re wrong this time, my Scots Machiavelli. Abernaci would never permit the big Ué to be fried—not for His Holiness himself.’ And Condé chimed in, yawning. ‘The scents must have been worse than usual. They ruined the poor creature’s skin. Let that be a lesson to you, my dear.’
It was the oldest woman there who took the point. Diane de Poitiers, Duchess de Valentinois, was not easily moved, but she was intensely curious about the newcomer; and had no intention of competing with the flattering circle on the floor. Neither Condé nor his absent friend the Vidame was a favourite of hers. She moved coolly to remove their protégé to rarer climes. ‘If the elephant was hurt,’ said Madame de Valentinois, ‘did M. Ballagh not suffer injury?’
Like a thunderclap, watching Lymond’s taut back, Erskine realized that she had hit on the truth; and further, that this was no part of the evening’s improvisations. His personal state, both spiritual and physical, was Lymond’s own affair; and injury, if he were injured, spelled nothing but inefficiency within his creed. Nervously, Erskine saw the idea spread among Thady’s admirers; heard the mellow cries of well-bred curiosity; and saw St. André, more than a little in drink, lay hands on the ollave’s soiled shirt.