Queens' Play by Dorothy Dunnett
Despite herself, she looked for the Irishmen and found them, Thady long-stirruped on a jennet whose belly tickled the grass. Above him towered O’LiamRoe on a mouse-dun stallion. The Archer Stewart swung off to mount beside a pack of his colleagues. Bit by bit, the coursing dogs vanished to take their place in the relays. The picnic, dismantled, had gone. She saw O’LiamRoe bend down to speak to Dooly, who was moving off with two whining couples hardelled in his fists. Then a rustle of brushwood, a chime of metal and a scriech of greeting announced the Irishwomen from Neuvy.
Quilled like a porcupine, her hood leaking grey hair, and her strong, crowded teeth active in the leathery face, Mistress Boyle knew how to make her apologies to a de Guise. She soothed him, amused him and left him, pulling Oonagh’s horse with her own.
At O’LiamRoe’s side both horses stopped dead, under the idle, observant eyes of every waiting soul in the wood, while Theresa Boyle gazed at the mounted huddle of frieze and the matted, calf-high dog at his side. ‘Father in heaven. I’d not have believed it, though ’twas the buzz of the court. They did say that splendid great prince O’LiamRoe had bought a dog was the most handsome thing ever made; more beauteous than the sun in his wheels of fire, so they said. And whatever do you want with a fine thing like that, Prince of Barrow?’
The two pairs of eyes, dog and man, turned to Mistress Boyle and the young woman at her side. The waiting horses, impatient, trampled a little in the quiet; and far off you could hear the berners, speaking low to their greyhounds as they went. The lymhounds, trained to silence, sat and scratched.
Margaret Erskine, who knew O’LiamRoe from the river bank at Rouen, and from her mother’s sophisticated hilarity, felt her face harden with anger, and leaning over, spoke to the Queen, her back to the clear, expressionless profile of Thady Boy’s face.
Into the silence, only a little flushed, O’LiamRoe spoke evenly. ‘She is not Failnis itself, but she is sweet-mouthed and fleet, so they say. Her name is Luadhas, and she and I had great hopes that you and your lady niece would accept her.’
Like a tall sea goddess, stonelike on her horse sat Oonagh O’Dwyer, her black hair blowing a little, the only moving thing, on her trailing mantle. Mistress Boyle, releasing a thin scream, leaned over and dug her fingers in the girl’s quilted arm. ‘Is he not the darling knight of the kennels, and shy too, with the two little blushes on his cheeks? Thank him, Oonagh. Ná buail do choin gen chinaid, they say.’
It was doubtful whether any part of this speech reached Oonagh O’Dwyer. At the first words she had pulled off her glove, leaned down, and cracked her long, boy’s fingers once. The wolfhound turned its flat head and, trailed by a sullen Dooly, first walked and then trotted to her side. The long, hairless white arm caressed the dog briefly; then she straightened, drew on her glove and renewed her firm grasp of the reins.
‘A fair beast and a good purchase, Prince of Barrow,’ she said, straight-faced and straight-backed, and clear as a bell. ‘Now let us see how she runs.’ And with her movement, as at a signal, the company, circling, swinging, trampling, returned to its affairs. With the rustle and pad of perfect control, the Duke trotted past, and into the lead. With him went the Duchess and the Queen, their entourage following. Then they paused; the Duke turned, and they saw his arm raised, and heard the ululation of the horn.
Taut, merry, nervous, expertly mounted, exquisitely clothed, haughty in their bright youth, the chevaliers of France poured from the dishevelled clearing. Sunlit, all that morning, they spanned the glittering woods: diamond on diamond, grey on grey, riches on riches; bough and limb indistinguishable; skirts and meadows sewn in the same silks; skulls in antique fantasy knotted with rhizome and leafy with fern frond. Webs, manes, beards, spun the same smokelike filament; rime flashed; jewels sparked, red and fat, on rosebush and ring. Earth and animals wore the same livery. Jazerained in its berries, the oak tree matched their pearls, and paired their brilliant-sewn housings with low mosses underfoot, freshets winking half-ice in the pile. O’LiamRoe’s mild face was suffused like a god’s; Diane’s alert, sweat-bathed cream; Margaret’s and the child’s a bright, comely red; and the Duke de Guise, like the sun, threw off splendours and had majesty at his command.
There were many hares. Four miles she might run at her best, the lovers’ creature, the God-given Hermaphrodite; and thirty grey hounds might she still outpace. Fast, keen-nosed, cunning, jack or puss, they leaped from form or feeding ground as the lymhounds came. Big-jointed, white-tailed, they ran, jumped, doubled as the three motes rang out mellow behind them and the first relay of hare-hounds left the liams.
They hunted not in an enclosed park, but in a chase; in woods and scattered covert of nut tree and beech, poplar and ash, and in scrub and heath with elder and alder on the ground, gorse and blackthorn and the stubble of reaped corn. There the great hares started, with three years of cunning behind them, ears and scut couched, leaving the form cantering, not yet at full stretch. Then the running dogs would pass the slow lymers, the leader opening a single note as the hare ran and the ‘Laisser courrer’ sounded. Other hounds doubled and trebled their tongue as the hunt swept uphill, horns stuttering du grêle, the yeomen berners addressing the dogs.
The O’LiamRoe, Prince of Barrow, golden hair streaming on streaming wool frieze, with his queer, inbred instinct had chosen his dog well. In the third relay, the best, the parfitières, ran Luadhas with her great bones and long back swaying, swimming; the flat brow and Roman nose high and delicately held. O’LiamRoe watched her, his soul in his eyes, and did not even know that Oonagh O’Dwyer was watching him in her turn.
Nothing in the situation escaped Robin Stewart. Pounding along, never quite abreast of the hunt, he caught Thady Boy’s eye at last and heavily winked. Thady Boy, who had pressing concerns of his own, took the first chance to spur his pied jennet and draw off.
The next hare was a fast one—eight pounds of her, grey in her winter coat, but with the wisdom to spare herself, squat when she could, and exhaust the dogs seeking her, questing, yearning in circles. They headed her at last to the stable where the last relay stood, and O’LiamRoe was not the only one who, elated with the sun, the cold wind, the warm saddle, the music of hunt horn and voice, strained to see the noble, waiting head of his lovely dog Luadhas.
She was there, but tight in hardel as were all the braches in that place, the rough hair lifted stark at her spine. Next to her stood a royal groom, a great thong round his wrist. And among the grey-yellow dusty filaments of last year’s flowering weeds was a low spread of dappled fur, staunch elbows, and great pads laid flat, and, above them, motionless in the quiet grass, a shallow, masked head. In a moment you could see the wide-spaced, tufted ears, the bottle nose, and the cheetah’s lyre mark sealing ancient secrets round the white muzzle. One of the hunting cats had been brought.
It was not hard to tell who had engineered it. Through Robin Stewart, mischievous in his jealousy, O’LiamRoe had already been forced to present his lady prematurely with his self-conscious gift of the hound. So much Thady Boy had already ascertained. Now the display of Luadhas was destroyed at a stroke, and Robin Stewart, who had laid his plans well, admitted as much buoyantly, with his knowing smile seeking Thady Boy’s eye yet again as they stood arrested, the tired dogs hard-leashed, the horses still. In the bare field before them, nothing moved but the hare.
The Duke de Guise raised a hand. The groom, bending, whipped off the cat’s mask. There was an arc of something pale-spotted, all shoulder and leg; then the plushy shoulders and weird, thick-jointed shanks worked silently through the long grass so that it leaned a little and stirred, as if a snake had passed through. The blemish sprang across the wide field like a shadow, and then stopped. With a thin scream, the big hare died.
Oonagh O’Dwyer knelt by the groom, her pale eyes blazing, as the cat drank its reward and, masked and manacled, leaped in a flash of white fur on its keeper’s crupper. Soon, pleased with their new toy, they were galloping at full stretch again; and the su
The check came with the last hare of the day. The mechanical killing, the silken violence of the cat, had added a fulsome excitement to the hunt but drained it of skill. A good while before, O’LiamRoe, without comment, had dropped to the back; and immediately the pied jennet also had slackened its pace.
This hare had waited in her form till unharboured and had left it like a thunderbolt, running hard in the open for over a mile before clapping; and then trying every trick. She doubled over gates, bobbed along a boundary wall, leaped long-short, long-short on the straight for a while, and then, jumping at right angles to her own track, made off in a fresh direction. In a little while she began to run mostly straight, and they knew she was lost. Then the scent, weakened over the stubble by the morning’s bright sun, suddenly redoubled, fresh and strong, and the lymers quickened, tongues lolling; and then checking, flung here and there searching. She had come back on her tracks, doubling scent, and then vanished. The riders stopped and the horns blew the ritual bewilderment of the stynt.
They were not sorry to stop. In twos and threes, they gathered at the edge of another wood, steam rising from riders and horses. Before them, a wide mole-combed meadow unrolled, dipping distantly to a grey, ice-clogged stream and rising beyond in the same rolling yellow grass and gorse, with low bushes and a rare copse beyond.
Waiting, they chatted. Margaret Erskine, pausing briefly at his side, complimented O’LiamRoe pleasantly on his dog; but he wanted to speak of the little Queen, who certainly rode well, even boisterously, for her age. St. André on foot at Mary’s side was checking a saddle girth. The horses chafed a little, sidling as the cold penetrated; and O’LiamRoe, his face thoughtful, looked down at the ollave heaped at his side. ‘Thady Boy, between this and no one murdering me at all, it’s a poor day you’ve had.’
‘Ah, be still. The day is not over. There are worse off,’ said Thady, acknowledging the unexpected thrust neither in dark face nor flat voice. ‘Look at Piedar, and the legs on him like honeybags.’ Then the horn, blowing the rights, told the hare had been found, and like split pulses the party tumbled apart.
A beaten hare, far from landmarks, forgets to run in a ring. A beaten hare runs uphill; and if she is old and shrewd and there is a fresh young hare at hand, she will clap and lie by the young one, and let her spring up first, if she will, so that the simpler braches, the pups, the addlepates, would bob and babble after the different scent.
It happened here. But the older hare, rising, fled the meadow with half the company following, as the braches in the wood gave tongue after a different prey. For a space, two hares held the field and split the pack between them, one crossing the open in great bounds with the leaders—the Duke, Diane, the little Queen, the Neuvy party—after her, and the other skirting the wood, with the dogs in full cry.
It was bad hunting and improper coursing, but the day was ending and etiquette relaxed. The rival hunts swept after their respective hares, neither knowing nor greatly troubling about which pack was following the original prey, and which was hunting change. Then, with the width of the meadow between them, the de Guise party killed.
The ironic whoops, the waves, the horn blowing from the ridge, reached the less fortunate party down below; the second hare, now patently a fresh one, was far ahead, and both horses and riders were tired. But St. André, riled by the shouting, followed grimly, with O’LiamRoe at his elbow. And behind, among the running berners and the leashed dogs, the cheetah rode stiff-legged on its cushion, the mask dark above the silent muzzle.
They had no break for horn blowing now. Stream and ridge far on their left, they raced along the wooded edge of the meadow until the turf turned to a weedy tilth and began to show the bones of the underlying lime. Small quarries, holes and underworkings patched the distant ground; and it was apparent that they were now very close indeed to the banks of the Loire. Stewart, loose-seated in the middle, could hear O’LiamRoe swearing. Once into the broken ground, their hare was as good as lost.
Then their luck turned. Out of the ground far ahead materialized a man, a middle-aged man dressed in working clothes who waved his woollen cap and shouted and jumped so that his breeches clapped in mid-air. It had perhaps been worth a crown to him once before, and it certainly earned him as much again. The hare veered, hesitated, and then altering course grimly, began to forge back over the meadow.
It lay before them, a long field of close grass rolling uphill, dipping to the stream, rising to the ridge where the others waited, black and derisive against the frosty blue of the sky. If they chased her, they would simply drive her into the Duke’s hands.
St. André’s arm came up. They halted, sweating, jolting, behind him, the latecomers padding through the crumbling lime; and at an order the groom thrust past with the silent cat. The Marshal spoke. Fast and smoothly, the thong was slipped, the mask peeled off; and the cheetah’s peat-brown eyes, glassy full, were directed to their prey. Then with gloved hands the man lifted the cat by its flanks and flung it to the ground. For a moment the cat crouched, pale-spotted, furry, the tufted ears pricked; then the spine rose thin and raw like a lash, the thick joints folded, and the cheetah launched itself, clinging, inescapable as a dream and, undulating, began to cross the wide field after the hare.
Softly as she went, the sound reached the hare. Her thews responded, flinging her forward in great jumps, eight feet and nine feet between her pricking, her dark-tipped ears surging above the high grass. She jumped; and from the short fur on her neck a blaze of green flared into life and died again in the shade.
St. André suddenly froze in the saddle. On the pied jennet, Thady’s blue eyes narrowed. But Robin Stewart, closer to the household than any, knew at once what it was. As the hunting cat, smooth as lava, unfurled to the rhythm of its most perfect pace, Stewart flung his horse forward, shouting, the words floating thinly through the ice-clear, sunny air. ‘Damn you. It’s the leveret! It’s the Queen’s hare you’re hunting!’
They heard on the ridge. On both sides of the field, for a single second, no one moved. An outsider looking at the flushed faces would have seen fright and irritation and anger. The death of a royal pet was not the best way to win favour. Of all the faces beside St. André, only O’LiamRoe’s showed pity. Thady Boy was as still as the cheetah on his leashed pillion had been. For clearly the little hare was doomed. Already, it had swum, big-headed, bobbing, over the stream and was halfway up the long meadow; and already, far behind, the long spine and the padded, working shoulders of the cat, yellow like smoke, smoothly loping, had begun to narrow the gap. And hopelessly behind on a tired horse, Robin Stewart was going to be too late. For no horse on either side could now reach Queen Mary’s pet hare before the cheetah did.
The hare was tiring. Little lovers’ gift, consecrated to Venus, fed on wild thyme and summoned by flutes, the young puss with her emerald collar was unused to enemies, had had no dreams of the bamboo forests of the Ganges and the glib death lurking there. She ran white-eyed and unbreathing, sensing the thick soft pads closing and feeding horror from every sense to her loaded heart until, clear above the sifting grasses, the far-off barking, the distant beat of a tired horse, the voices muted and uneasy and the tinkle of bit and hardel, a familiar voice cried, a little porcelain mare started forward, and someone with a familiar smell and look and shape called ‘Suzanne!’
With all the strength in her bleeding paws, the little hare turned from the open, unyielding horizon and made for the small Queen. Far behind, the cheetah turned too, and pinned its mesmeric, passionless
On the ridge, the Duke de Guise, his spurs instant and cruel, hurled his horse after his niece. Below, helplessly, the mounted and unmounted surged forward in their fear. But before that, a hand like steel closed on O’LiamRoe’s wrist, and Lymond’s clear voice said ‘Luadhas.’
For a second the silence lay between them, aching. Then O’LiamRoe moved and spoke. Unbelieving, the little Firbolg heard, bent and, slipping the fine shackles, sent the wolfhound Luadhas hurtling after the cat.
She was a noble bitch, high in heart and honest after her calling. She could overthrow a wolf, but the alien, wicked beauty slipping through the grasses ahead was of an element she had never known. She raced uphill, tail streaming, rough hair blown and parted with her speed, loping high on her long legs; and fast as the gap was closing between cheetah and hare, the gap between dog and cat began to close faster still. The hazel rod in O’LiamRoe’s right hand broke in two.
The hare was at its end. Thrashed by its heartbeats, suffocated with exhaustion and fear, its thick sight blinded, it was running by sound alone to its mistress’s voice, the fortune on its neck winking and sparkling in the unsparing sun.
And the porcelain horse, with the lightest and smallest of riders, had flown, skidded, stumbled downhill faster than any. Within yards of the creature Mary kicked her feet from the planchon and slid to the ground as the Duke’s gelding reached her. She rushed forward; the little horse fled; and her uncle, one-handed, snatched at her cloak.
Mary stumbled. She was weeping, her hair tangled about her hot face, the tears rushing off nose and chin. The leveret gave a mighty, last leap and stopped, rigid, in the naked ground out of her reach. Mary tore herself from her uncle’s grasp and flung herself forward as, in the distance, the grass shook and parted.