Queens' Play (61 page)

The brocaded figure, cross-legged before the biggest pavilion, watched keepers and cowardies move about the tents and cages, listened to the soft animal sounds and breathed through bean-wide nostrils the pattern of smells that reveal the well-regulated menagerie. He did not turn his head. ‘If ye dinna know, then likely you’re not meant to ken,’ said Abernaci. The camel, which was supposed to carry the incense, had thrown a fit in the night. Mules would have to do; he wouldn’t trust any more cats. The grass rustled to approaching feet, and another figure slid on its haunches beside him. ‘If you mean the Prince of Barrow, he’s at the castle,’ said Tosh. ‘Christ, what does it remind you of?’

‘Paris. Lyons. Rouen. Dieppe. Amboise. Angers,’ said Abernaci. ‘There’s a kind of sameness. Only this time we’re untying our very own purse, so we’re a wee thing skimped as to hay. D’ye mind Hughie upsetting the—No. Ye werena at Rouen.’

‘They play at gods,’ said Piedar Dooly, and spat. ‘French and English alike. Gods out of hell would you say, harrowing green land for their tennis courts and dressing lapdogs in treasure that would keep half Ireland in bread for a year. The heroes of Tara would have put them face to schisty face and used them for millstones.’

Dropping back on the burned grass, Tosh stretched his arms under his head. ‘Ye needna miscall the French. They drove the English fairly out of their country.’

In two wiry steps, Dooly lowered over the funambulist. ‘With eight thousand Irishmen to help them!’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you saying that Ireland won’t send the English off her shores with a blow that will make these fat folk look seven ways at once—and the Scots too? Doesn’t every man know that the great Scottish nation has got so soft all out that France has to fight all her wars for her? Women ruled by women … and there’s the great war-lord chief of you all, in her petticoats, scarce off the breast of her nurse, come to preside at the weapon showing there.’

Tosh, an even-tempered man, caught Abernaci’s eye and rolled over. ‘Oh, aye, there’s great bullocks in Ireland,’ he said. ‘But they canna get them shipped for their long horns, they say.’ Abernaci, having observed that the child Queen had indeed come to the far edge of the lake, hopped to his feet and stood astride, shading his brown cracked face with his hand. ‘Christ. The governess. The
Erskine woman. The Fleming boy. Two of the children, and six men-at-arms. They’re examining the boat the way it was a good case of beggar’s leprosy.… They’re getting in.’

‘They’ll be as safe in mid-water as anywhere, if the boat’s all right,’ said Tosh. ‘What’s the rest of the armada?’ In the middle of the lake, twelve little boats bobbed, roped to each other and then to a buoy: gondolas, brigantines, galleys in small.

‘Nothing to harm her,’ said Abernaci. ‘Brigantines and galleys for the mock fight, the state barge, and boats with squibs and canes of fire darts and clods and moulins à feu. Even were they all set off at once, they couldn’t hurt; and they can hardly be set off. There’s not a lit torch been allowed near the lake. You’ll have heard—Man,’ he broke off, turning on Piedar Dooly, craning at his elbow. ‘Are ye not for finding O’LiamRoe, now ye ken whaur he is?’

‘Ah, get comfortable,’ said the Irishman contemptuously, and turned his back on the water. ‘I was there when they threw the ollave into prison, and a better thing the fools never did. It’s no news to me.’

For the second time, the eyes of the other two met. ‘Nor to me,’ said Tosh briefly. ‘—I hear also that Cormac O’Connor is sick.’

Piedar Dooly dropped to the grass. ‘O’LiamRoe—would you know it?’ he said. ‘I tell you, were I not to let the wind out of him this while and that, we would never see the Slieve Bloom again.’ And he hugged his knees, his raw face complacent.

It was Abernaci, used to reading the speechless, who stood as if graven, receiving the first signals of danger; then, like a snake striking, flicked into the grass and came up with Piedar Dooly’s shoulder pinched flat in one hand. Tosh, jumping to his feet, took one look and gripped Dooly’s other arm, a question on his broad Aberdeen face. ‘Would you say,’ said Abernaci kindly, ‘that he was waiting for something?’

Piedar Dooly was too wise to shout, and too stupid to keep his mouth shut entirely.
‘Stad thusa ort!
—It’s too late, anyway,’ he said smiling, and spat.

The King’s Keeper looked over his head at Thomas Ouschart, and then spoke aside briefly in Urdu. Then, holding the little Firbolg very carefully between them, they carried him silently into the pavilion.

At five minutes to ten the King, hatless in white, entered the Privy Chamber, and the Archers of the Guard, the gentlemen and princes lining the walls uncovered and bowed. The music stopped.

Outside the far door, the Garter procession had been formed for ten minutes, talking in low voices, sweating in velvet. The Constable,
incongruous among all the English faces, had arrived, a little late, to take his place next to Mason. Ahead of him was the Bishop, Sir Thomas Smith and Black Rod; in the middle, Northampton was talking to Dethick, a Christian act for all concerned. The file of servants stretched in front up to the doors, not speaking at all. Their necks were clean.

The trumpets blew, and they moved in.

You had to grant they were good at it. Like machines, the Lord Ambassador’s staff paced into the Presence, lined with diamond-studded foreigners, moving straight up to the tables to let the tail of the Embassy get in. The door shut, the three reverences were made, and as the trumpets burst into a fantasy of sound the two ranks separated, exposing the advancing officers of arms: Flower, tramping steadily in Chester Herald’s brilliant coat, his arms full of material, and Garter King of Arms, his beard combed, his crown straight, in his furred robe with the blue and red quartered tabard V-necked over it, gleaming with gold lions and fleurs-de-lis. He carried the cushion of purple velvet, tasselled with gold, on which sparkled the Garter, the Collar, the Book of Statutes in gold lace and velvet and the scroll with their Commission of Legation—most of which must be pinned—nothing slid or even moved.

With a marvellous bow to the sovereign’s state, Dethick deposited the Ensigns on the long table beside the Mantle, Surcoat, Hood and Cap, and made way for Northampton. The oration began. The Commission of Legation, handed over to Henri, was read aloud by his secretary. ‘Edward VI, by the grace of God, King of England and Lord of Ireland, Defender of the Faith, Sovereign of our Most Noble Order of the Garter, to our right truly and right entirely beloved Cousin, the Marquis of Northampton … will and authorize you … accept and admit to the said Order, and receive his oath.…’

Extraordinary how well their robes became them. Parr, who hadn’t the wits of a trumpet on the field, could pass for a King. There was d’Aubigny. Henri looked nervous. Devil take the de Guises, thought the Constable. He would like to see the Dowager’s face if Edward agreed to hand over Calais in return for marrying her daughter after all, compensation or no compensation.

He suppressed a sigh. It wasn’t likely to happen; merely an interesting gambit, nothing more. But it was a triumph for his own party that the thing had even been agreed. He hoped to God that St. André would be circumspect. The last marriage embassy they had sent in old King Henry’s day had nearly ruined their mission, selling off the contents of their baggage at cut prices to their hosts before the puddings were set on the table; the Tailors’ Hall had looked like a market stall, and the guilds had all been up in arms, and quite rightly too. However, he could trust St. André. Unlike the de Guises.
Pasque-Dieu, the Duke wasn’t here. No, he was; come in late.… God, it was hot.

It was the short guard who came at a run and unlocked and flung open the door; the men behind him were de Guise’s. Lymond was amongst them in a second, his hand on O’LiamRoe, white and breathless at their head. ‘—She told you?’

‘Robin Stewart sent word. Dooly held it back. It’s only reached us this minute. The attempt is now, on the lake.’

They were running, the armed men rattling behind. As they ran, O’LiamRoe managed to speak. ‘We must go quietly. Your release is unlawful. There’s no proof as yet, and the King would never agree.… Tosh brought Piedar; Abernaci’s gone back. The Queen’s on the lake, but even if the explosive is there, Cholet has no means of firing it,’ said the Prince of Barrow, reaching dizzily for some sane element in a rocking world. ‘And listen—Stewart is wanting you. He was after you to come for him this morning at nine, to keep the blame off him for all this. There’s a message.’

‘Oh—Stewart,’ said Lymond. ‘He’ll bustle in with a knife and a bloody lecture, both wide of the mark, when it’s all over. To the sea. To the sea, thou that art initiated!’

Running past the tiltyard, the sweat dripping from the chin—’Michel Hérisson is there,’ said O’LiamRoe. ‘They’ve got Beck.… The man we’re looking for is fortyish, small, thick, black haired, with a ginger beard.’

‘God!’ said Lymond and laughed, panting; to O’LiamRoe he seemed vibrant with life. He ran like a dancer, outstripping the other man’s stumbling feet, the soldiers in their leather jerkins at his elbow. But at the lake he stopped dead. ‘My God, what are they doing?
She’s still there
. Look!’

They stopped. It was true. The Queen’s barge, gaily painted and stuffed with children and men-at-arms, was tied up in the centre of the lake, with the twelve little vessels alongside.

‘No boats,’ said O’LiamRoe, a shade late. ‘They took the last for the Queen. And the musicians are drowning the shouting.’

‘If there’s a slow match …’

‘There isn’t,’ said O’LiamRoe. ‘Abernaci swears no one has been out to these boats since last night. There isn’t a master gunner alive who could judge a slow match for that long.’

‘Then it’s going to be a fire arrow,’ said Lymond, without apparently taking any thought at all. ‘The menagerie is clear of strangers?’

‘We can depend on that.’

‘Then it must come from the pavilion, or the end of the lake where
the chariots are. You can see this end is empty. Take three men and scour the carriages. I’ll do the—’

It was Michel Hérisson, without greeting, who interrupted him. ‘Thady, there are Diana’s bows over there, and flint by the stand—’

‘Find the fountains and put them on. Can you swim? No? Phelim? God—no, look. Abernaci is in.’ The file of running men, stringing out, began to spread round the box paths. Lymond, Hérisson at his side, started up to the lakeside stand, glaring cloth of gold, with the workmen resting, staring, on its roof. One of them began to run.

Lymond whistled. The high, sweet call stopped O’LiamRoe in his tracks, halfway over to the carts. The de Guise men below halted and looked up. By now the men-at-arms in the Queen’s boat had caught sight of the flurry. From the shore their sun-reddened faces could be seen gazing distrustfully towards land. They had raised their shields in a kind of barricade; behind it, not even Mary’s red hair could be seen. They must have thought, with relief, that she was quite safe; they made no move to row to land.

The man on the roof disappeared. But not before they had seen the small barrel body, and the chestnut grizzle on the chin. It was Cholet. Lymond seized one of the stout Roman pilasters and began to climb like a goat—O’LiamRoe could see the flying black coat of the ollave, racing up the mast of
La Sauvée
, knife in his teeth. He had no knife now. To free his arms he had stripped off even the wide canvas shirt; against his brown, scarred back his hair looked less yellow than silver.

Cholet reappeared, bow in hand, on the thick cartouche crowning the front of the stand. Against the white disc of the sun, flame was pale as air, but they could see the grey smoke rising, thin and wandering, from the flaming arrow as he nocked.

He shot three burning arrows swiftly, one after the other. The first dropped hissing into the water. The second and the third sank firmly into the wood of the ninth vessel in the lake, the small galley next the canopied barge of state. Then Artus Cholet threw down the bow and kindling on the flat roof beneath him. The varnished wood and baked metal cloth of the stand received it like some worldly friar his martyrdom, and laid between Cholet and Francis Crawford, racing towards him, a sudden lurching barrier of fire.