Queens' Play (12 page)

‘… 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-Din and you, save the mark, are not Miriam the Girdle-Girl. I can stand twitching my tail like Hughie any damned day of the week. Meanwhile, my time is short.’

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?’

‘The estranged guests. We antagonized our host so much that one of Mason’s men was bold enough to approach me next day. Our English friends are interested, of course, in attracting O’LiamRoe’s alienated affections. O’LiamRoe hasn’t given it a thought. But I have been discussing it on his behalf. I wanted to find out, and quickly, whether it was myself or O’LiamRoe someone is trying to kill.’

The Keeper’s dark eyes were entranced. ‘Why should anyone want to kill you?’

Lymond said ruminatively, ‘That’s what I wondered until today. I have an unspecified commission from the Queen Mother to be on hand during her visit to France. Which is why I am formed so fowle.
I now know why she wants me, by God. Did you see the float on the bridge?’

Abernethy shook his bald head.

‘Mary, Queen of Scotland, was in it, my merry mahout,’ said Lymond coolly. ‘And her aunt and two of her cousins. A private prank which one person too many knew about. Someone tried to assassinate that small child today, and it was the same person who tried to kill either O’LiamRoe or myself. Who is Pierre Destaiz’s employer?’

Well past its zenith, the October sun shone red into the grain of the canvas, spilling curious shadows on the wall. Beyond the flap, an elephant could be heard siphoning hay with a dry rustle over her back, and whining breathily as the cowardie checked her.

There was a silence. ‘I am,’ said Archie Abernethy at length. ‘When he’s here to employ.’

‘Who is he?’

‘A Rouen man. He was at the St. Germain menagerie when I went there in ‘48, with two others. They had one animal each—Dod, think of it!’ said the Keeper, showing his teeth. ‘The beasts they had in the old King’s day: hundreds of livres’ of them—lions, ostriches, bears, birds. Peter Giles did nothing but travel around and send him stock. And then the old King died, and what was left? A lion, a bear and a dromedary. That’s what was left. I’m telling you,’ said the mahout, rocking himself, ‘it was pitiful.’

‘What brought you?’ asked Lymond.

The Keeper shrugged. ‘I’m getting old. But after Constantinople and Tarnassery I couldna see myself in a bit hutch in some lady’s garden, looking after a wee puckle peacocks, or an old done lion and some doos. Giles told me King Henri here was building a grand new place at St. Germain and restocking, so I got the elephants together and came. You can’t beat experience. I was in charge of them all, the birds and the hunting cats too, in six months. Yon one Destaiz didn’t like it.’

‘Did he know you were Scots?’

Abernethy spat. ‘Would I get a job, would I keep a job anywhere with elephants, if it was known I was Scots? I’m Abernaci of St. Germain, the King’s Keeper and Hughie’s mahout; and in the whole of France, the only ones who know different are one or two travelling showmen, a moneylender, and a woman who lives in a house called Doubtance and kens not only my name but my soul, if I have one.—And yourself.’ His shrewd eyes turned on the other man. ‘I know I can trust you, but you’ve only my tale to believe. You’ve been gey confiding for a man of your sort, Crawford of Lymond.’

‘You don’t need reassurance,’ said Lymond. ‘And neither do I. You identified me at Hérisson’s and told me so. You ran your guts
out with those elephants today. You’re Turkey Mat over again without your nightcap; and I remember you more clearly than I want to for a murderous, reliable Partickhead rat.—But I wish to God you’d tell me all you know about Pierre Destaiz. He’s attempted arson and bulk murder both in less than a week.’

‘I’ve done you a good turn you don’t even know about,’ said the Keeper complacently. ‘I told Sir George Douglas I’d met you in Ireland, passing through five years since. He was giving you a gey queer look in yon cellar. But what with the tale and the hash I made of it with my English, he was ready to laugh himself into fits and forget it. As for Destaiz … He was heading for trouble. I never took to him. He was in the procession with me, but he’d put in days helping his friends with yon damned whale, and he’d disappear for twenty-four hours at a time. But if he was working for someone else, I never heard of it.’

‘He was,’ said Lymond mildly. ‘But he knew he was being followed. Piedar Dooly’s enquiries the first day possibly put him on guard.… Destaiz filled the urns and strapped them on Hughie’s back?’

‘He did. And would Piedar Dooly be a wee, dour black fellow like a goat, that was haunting us all day Saturday, and upsetting the elephants?’

‘It sounds like him. He’s O’LiamRoe’s servant,’ said Lymond gravely. ‘They both know who I am.’

‘By God,’ said Archie Abernethy. ‘He nearly got served with a kick on the bottom. I was nearly sure Destaiz was plotting something myself, and then he turned as cautious as a dog with his first flea—Are ye wanting to see him?’

‘I have been trying,’ said Francis Crawford, ‘to indicate as much for ten minutes.’

‘Yes. Well. There’s a wee difficulty,’ said Archie Abernethy; and standing, he began to button up the gorgeous silk of his coat. ‘There’s a wee difficulty. He’s deid.’

‘You surprise me,’ said Lymond dryly. ‘How?’

‘Oh, drowning. He got dragged in this morning, and he was no swimmer, poor chap. We had to send the elephant back in after him.’

‘May I see him?’ asked Lymond.

The Keeper hesitated. Then he said, ‘Oh, aye. Come away. He’s just next door’, and led the way through to the elephants, nimble fingers resettling the turban on his head. In the darkest corner he bent, and hauling back a layer of sacking, disclosed the undignified and sodden corpse of a man with half a foot missing. ‘That’s Pierre.’

He had probably drowned as indicated; but he had certainly been knifed first. Proof or none, Hughie, the kindhearted big bairn of a beastie, had been swiftly avenged.

Crawford of Lymond, looking down, kept his counsel, and the man Abernaci, equally wordless, softly replaced the sheet. They walked together outside, and faced each other.

‘Aye. It was a pity he drowned,’ said Archie Abernethy, a genuine frown on his face. ‘For I fancy if they’re after the little Queen, someone else will have a try.’

‘Yes. Unless we find out who it is.’

‘We?’

‘I thought I might rely on your benevolent eye—and that of Hughie,’ said Lymond. ‘How strict is your secret? If I send friends of mine to you, will they have to speak Urdu?’

‘If they’re Scots, and you trust them, then I’ll take my chance,’ said Abernaci. ‘Tell them what you want, and ye can count on me if ye need me. Of course the Irish, I’ve always held, are a different matter … but I’m willing tae make an exception for your Doolys and such—provided, ye understand, it doesna spread. But, man—ye’re leaving France yourself tomorrow, are ye not?’

‘My dear Archie, were not you and I and Hughie all that lay between the King’s triumphant Entry and a sad calamity today?’

‘Even so—’

‘And has not the King invited me to appear at his supper at St. Ouen tonight?’

‘It’s the least he could do. But still—’

‘There is a saying of my adoptive ancestors. Though he performs a miracle, or two miracles, if he refuses the third miracle, it is not as profit to him. I shall dine at the Court of France tonight, and in the course of that evening, acquire the royal consent for O’LiamRoe and myself to stay as long as we please. For, to be perfectly frank,’ said Lymond, gently reflective, ‘to be perfectly frank, I can’t wait to sink my teeth into the most magnificent, the most scholarly and the most dissolute Court in Europe, which so lightly slid out The O’LiamRoe, Chief of the Name, on his kneecaps and whiskers.’

O
NE of the pleasures of Lord d’Aubigny’s fastidious middle age was to see the Court dine, properly served, housed and habited. In diamonds, music and spice, in good talk, in good taste, in the secure knowledge that nearly every man present was of a higher rank than his own, Lord d’Aubigny felt that his life was worth while; that the great deeds of his forebears and the high honours of his brother Lennox were being outstripped by the splendour of his days; and that winged Comus was his bedfellow.

In all this glory, the promised presence of an Irish princeling’s toadlike secretary was a blight and an affront. At Court, his distaste was shared. And when after Mass the Court resettled itself finally into the Abbatial Logis of St. Ouen amid a roar of talk in which with irony, with ridicule, with parody, with ruthless observation, the municipal efforts of the day were analysed, the cruellest and the wittiest quips concerned the King’s forthcoming reluctant discharge of his elephantine obligations.

Meanwhile, the ollave, of course, was still missing. It was one of the occasions when Lymond asleep wrecked the peace of mind of more people than Lymond awake. Lord d’Aubigny was if anything relieved. Robin Stewart became very short-tempered, but was persuaded to allow The O’LiamRoe, unruffled as usual, to take advantage of the relaxed atmosphere to visit his friends under guard. In the smouldering ruins of a major explosion, which left the child Mary’s face swollen with angry tears and Jenny Fleming in bed, boiled to rags in the seething vat of the Queen Mother’s rage, Tom Erskine was trapped by the Dowager’s remorseless determination
that nothing whatsoever should prevent Thady Boy Ballagh from making the most suave, the most accomplished and the most glittering debut of the century at the French Court that night.

So, in the utmost secrecy, there was despatched to Thady Boy’s lodging a case of soaps, scents and jewels, a sword, a sword belt, a dagger, a paper for a horse of up to 150 crowns, and a set of garments stiff with gold buckles and embroidery. It lay sealed in his room all afternoon beside a similar parcel, of a soberer kind, containing a selection of garments from the King of France’s tailor. O’LiamRoe, returning at five from a successful series of visits, beginning with Michel Hérisson and ending with Mistress Boyle, found both boxes locked and untouched in the empty bedroom at the Croix d’Or, and beside them a litter of tattered black clothing.

Thady Boy Ballagh had returned, had climbed into his spare and salt-stained black suit, and abjuring even the modest standards of grace and hygiene enjoined on O’LiamRoe, had trailed off on foot to the Abbey Lodging of St. Ouen looking, as Piedar Dooly observed, like a potboiling of chimney sweeps’ handkerchiefs. For, where The O’LiamRoe had an obstinate humour all his own, Francis Crawford of Lymond had genius.

Each in its nest of gauze and gilt thread, of tissue and taffeta, swathed in silver and satin, in velvet and white fur sugared with diamonds, each face painted, each brow plucked, hair hidden by sparkling hair of raw silk, the well-born of France sat in waxlight and flowers like half a hundred candied sweets in a basket. Last at the last table, soggy gristle next the sugar plums, sat Thady Boy Ballagh.

Coming in with the Queen Mother’s train, Erskine had seen him at once, and noticed by the hardening of her face that Mary of Guise had also been taken aback. He sat, taking care not to meet his wife’s eyes, or the carefully restored face of Jenny Fleming. He was familiar up to and beyond the point of boredom with these affairs. Plain food was his preference and plain clothes his unfulfilled dream; below his solid face, fresh as prawn butter, the whitest velvet looked slatternly. He sat; rose again for the royal entrance; noted Lord d’Aubigny’s miraculous bow and the trumpeter who had drunk a little too much. There was a second, more brilliant fanfare, and the supper began. Erskine’s eyes, irresistibly, travelled once more down the table.

A weed in the fairest orchard of France, Thady Boy had been placed, with a malice both deadly and deliberate, next to the curled and painted, the earringed, the chypre-strewn young person of Louis first Prince of Condé. Brother of the Duke of Vendôme, Condé was
at that time just over twenty, a Bourbon of the blood royal; spare, sallow and of an extraordinary agility despite the crooked shoulder which he quite simply ignored, having no need of either an incentive or an excuse. The Prince of Condé was a younger brother with the tastes of a king. Below the paint lay the potential greatness which was marking him already as a man to watch in the field. Idle, he was a force to be reckoned with, one of the four men in the King’s circle about which happily scandalized gossip most frequently flew.

The second was his older brother, Jean de Bourbon, sieur d’Enghien, olive and beautiful, who sat at the same table, newly back from London with one of the younger de Guises, with his favourite love lock dyed rose. No wealthier than Condé, d’Enghien liked a mode of life equally self-indulgent, a shade wilder, and decidedly more eccentric in its scope. It was difficult not to like him, and few people tried.

In London, d’Enghien had left the third gallant, François de Vendôme, Vidame of Chartres. A favourite of the Queen Mother of Scotland, the Vidame combined brilliance and charm with the subtle mind of a diplomat: if treaty making with an elderly queen was in question, the Vidame was the man to send. In London at this moment he was enchanting the ladies of England with four-thousand-crown parties into which even the stiffer noblemen of the Court threw themselves with abandon—d’Enghien had brought to France a highly witty rendering of the Duke of Suffolk at one of the Vidame’s parties, dressed as a nun. Lively, superstitious, enthusiastically scheming, the Vidame was the best company of all.

And lastly, close to the King stood Jacques d’Albon, seigneur de St. André, Marshal of France; soldier, courtier, wellborn son of the Governor of Lyons, who was twenty years older than these three young men; rich, adventurous and at the height of his power.

Fourteen years before, when Henri became heir to the French throne, St. André had been brought to his side to make of him a king of courtiers and a commander of armies, where Diane had been installed to instruct in the gentler arts. As with Diane, the growing love between the Dauphin and his tutor earned St. André the dislike of King Francis. As soon as Francis was dead, the new King Henri made of St. André a member of his Privy Council and a Marshal of France, appointed him Chevalier of the Order of St. Michael, and First Gentleman of the Bedchamber, and later gave him his father’s post as Governor of Lyons. Shrewd, courageous and intimate friend of the King, St. André shared with these three men, with the younger de Guises and with the other quick-witted, cultured and happily immoral lights of the Court, a talent for profligate luxury which was a byword in Europe.

Of the four courtiers, three had suffered the displeasure of the old
King; a matter of near poverty to men like Condé and the Vidame, who had survived on a pittance of twelve hundred crowns yearly as chamberlains-in-ordinary to Francis. They had used their wits, and contrived: the Vidame by refusing to marry Diane’s younger daughter, which had endeared him to the Queen; and the Prince by judicious friendships among the married ladies at Court. Since taking his place tonight, for example, Conde had expertly avoided the eye of Madame la Maréchale de St. André, and instead lavished all his public attention on the handsome, arid presence of the Princess de la Roche-sur-Yon on his right. Divining with a sure courtier’s instinct the King’s dilemma and his desires, the Prince of Condé carried them out as best he could by presenting to Thady Boy Ballagh without courtesy or compromise, a permanent view of his round, jewelled back.

Thady Boy paid no attention. He sat like a blackbird in cold weather at the table end and applied himself with both hands to his food.

There were nine courses, served feathered and ribboned by good-looking pages in cloth of silver to the interminable blasting of trumpets. Knife in hand, nose to plate, Thady Boy muttered from time to time. ‘ ’Tis marvellous, surely. One toot for the ham, and another for the capons; and wouldn’t you think it, at the third you get attacking the pages.’

Louis of Condé faltered only a moment in his chatter. He was far enough from the royal table to exchange a little current gossip; philosophic dialogues with Marguerite of France were well enough in their place, but with the Princess he could relax. They had finished discussing the sale of chastity belts at the last St. Germain fair, which had temporarily doubled the locksmiths’ trade before the unfortunate salesman had to flee the Court gallants, and were now into a little triangular affair of some years before between d’Estouteville, his mistress and a young widow of a Rouen Parliamentary President which was still having repercussions.

A recipe for chestnut hair was bandied about, causing a good deal of laughter, some of it high-pitched as the strong Hungarian wine went round; and a conscientious consort of assorted wind and percussion followed the lutenist in the gallery. In a fleeting lull, the voice of Madame la Princesse de la Roche-sur-Yon was heard saying suavely, ‘And what is this I hear of our dear Constable and the Lady Fleming?’

‘Nothing, I fear, that can be repeated at table,’ said the Prince of Condé, presenting her with a piece of wrought marzipan. ‘Remember our friend on my left.’

She peered round him, her silver wig spooled, veiled and jewelled, her long buckram bodice coated with satin and jewels. ‘The Irishman? Is he alive, my dear?’

The Prince neither looked round nor lowered his voice.
‘Vivit, et est vitae nescius ipse suae.’

Having just enough Latin to recognize an expression of contempt, the Princess gave out a peal of laughter. Against the whine of the music, the roar of chatter and the clatter of sugar almonds bleached and milling in his teeth, the ollave droned comfortably on to himself:
‘De una mula que haze hin, y de un hijo que habla latin, libéranos, Domine!
 … Tell me,’ said Thady Boy, swallowing busily as the Prince of Condé whipped round, ‘is it the King’s fool, the fellow in black and white by the top table there?’

There was a little silence. The lazy eye of the Prince fell on the replete ollave, travelled from his black-rimmed hands to his mud-splashed boots and rose again. ‘Yes. That is M. Brusquet. Allow me to invite him over,’ he said smoothly, and spoke to a page. His eyes, and those of the Princess, were wide, vacant and impersonal. Further up the table, someone pressed a fan on someone else’s arm and smiled.

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.