Queens' Play (17 page)

They roamed the neighbourhood. Sightseeing in Paris, they stopped at the Pineapple and ordered the first ten men they met to eat pork and mustard in their gloves. De Genstan left the Pineapple on a ladder. The rest were more fortunate, but lost Thady Boy, who was removed by Lord d’Aubigny for a quick cultural tour of the city. After St. Denis, Notre Dame and the unfinished Louvre, Stewart reclaimed him for display at the Mouton, but before he could be primed sufficiently to sing, his lordship was back to escort him to see the jumping at Tournelles. Stewart sulked. He could tolerate the mignons and Thady Boy’s half day at Anet. But Lord d’Aubigny’s patronage roused him to rage.

On the last day at St. Germain, Thady Boy put himself in Stewart’s
hands for a visit to the menagerie. Lymond handling a disciple had all the address of a surgeon.

With Thady went Piedar Dooly and The O’LiamRoe who, like Maximilian’s pelican, followed him everywhere except into the royal presence and who, in private, uproarious sessions in Gaelic, was evolving a brilliantly bigoted new philosophy to meet the occasion.

It was a mild, damp day, with a haze over the valley, beading the cobwebs, and with grit and bladdered leaves underfoot. Stewart led the way, his starched collar limp on his cuirass, and the three Irishmen followed through the castle park to the Porte au Pecq. The kennels by the Parc des Loges were empty; the famous pack of black and white hounds had gone south. The Falconry too was denuded.

The elephants were not travelling yet. Abernaci, warned beforehand by a call from Stewart, met them with his primitive English at the barred gates, bowing softly in his turban and silks. Not by a flicker of his opaque black eyes did he betray interest in either O’LiamRoe or his ollave. The Keeper’s words were blandly welcoming, and at Stewart’s prompting, he led them inside.

This building was new, a hollow square two storeys high enclosing a courtyard. On the ground floor were the cages, each divided into two compartments by a door operated by chains from above. Upstairs, stores, offices and sleeping quarters gave on to a gallery running round the entire court. The Irish party, looking down from the gallery, were shown the arena where the animals exercised and fought; and at their feet the traps, one for each cage, where the meat was thrown down to the lions and bears and hunting cats far below.

Robin Stewart had seen it already that morning. While The O’LiamRoe, all honey hair and plum-coloured vowels, went off to sink his teeth into zoology, Robin Stewart was waiting edgily by the door with a groom. He established, automatically, what the local butcher wanted for mutton, and whether a keeper’s monthly wage matched his oncosts. He asked if the groom’s wife approved of his work, if he had ever caught anything off the beasts, if he’d been clawed.

The man was reluctantly opening his shirt when O’LiamRoe interrupted. There was an empty lodge just below which he wanted to see. The groom, relieved, scuttled away and Stewart took the Prince down, while Thady Boy remained to watch Abernaci wind the chains.

It was difficult to tell afterwards how the mechanism stuck. Stewart and O’LiamRoe entered the windowless rear half of the cage and Abernaci shut the door from above. There it remained immovable for some considerable time. As every ablebodied man on the premises worked cheerfully with crowbars to release the two men, Thady Boy and Abernaci watched from above. Then, ‘Aweel,’ said Archie, pushing back his turban to scratch his bald head.
‘They’ll be some time at that. Come on away ben where it’s comfy. I hear you’re having a grand time playing Roi Ca’penny at Court.’ And firmly shutting the door of his sanctum, he gave the ollave a broad and confidential wink.

Lymond’s dark face was amused. ‘I am being fattened like a thrush on flour balls and figs.’ He hitched a stool to himself neatly and sat on it. ‘I hear you are going to Blois with the cats and Mary’s little menagerie. Who goes with you?’

‘Two men I can trust. And there’ll be more there. The travelling trainers aye come in when the court arrives. It’s a grand fraternity; ye can trust them. I ken them all. Tosh’ll be there. D’ye mind Tosh?’

Lymond shook his black head. The place was a store. On one side of him was a sink, and at his elbow a high cupboard and table flap loaded with bowls and mortar, spoons, gallipots, balances. Stretching an arm, he took down and opened a stone jar, and sniffed it cautiously. ‘Christ, Archie, you could blow up the whole tedious stewing of them if you wanted to, and establish a Court of Beasts. Who’s Tosh?’

‘Thomas Ouschart’s his name. Tosh they called him when he was a builder’s laddie in Aberdeen, and a good friend you’ll find him at need. He was fairly born in the shape of a ladder; he could lift the whiskers out of a gallant’s beard-box without giving a tweak to his chin. Tosh’d take the meat off your foot.’ Abernaci rocked, incandescent with gossip.

‘He’d to get out of Scotland in a hurry, of course, but you should see him now with his tightrope—a rare act he has, him and his donkey. Gets its horoscope read whiles in Blois by the woman I told you of, that lives at Doubtance by the moneylender’s; but you won’t get him to tell you much about that.’ He broke off, his gaze following Lymond’s, and added in his matter-of-fact voice, ‘I saw your eye on these pots at Rouen. Ye ken that stuff, do ye?’

Carefully Lymond put another stoppered jar back. ‘Yes, Archie. I thought your range was a bit startling when I was being washed in warm water by Sakra-deva’s diamond hand. What drugs do you keep?’

In the withered face, the darting black eyes were steady. ‘All the ones you’re thinking of. If you knew elephants, ye wouldna be surprised.’

‘Such as—?’

‘Belladonna for their coughs, and sweet oils. You had them on you at Rouen. And soap and salt and Aak ka jur Mudar … that’s a narcotic. Bhang, ganja and kuchla when their bowels are upset.’ The wrinkled face filled with compassion. ‘Awful bad with their bowels, some of them can be.’

‘I can imagine,’ said Lymond. ‘What else?’

‘Well. Lime water—that went on Hughie’s back. Opium for a sedative. Resin and beeswax against the flies; arsenic and nux vomica for a tonic … that’s the most of it. You can see it all. There’s big supplies,’ said Abernaci informatively, ‘because elephants is big beasties.’

Below, the banging had become intermittent and joined with occasional noises of rending. Lymond was thoughtful. ‘How many people know of these poisons?’

‘The whole Court, I should think,’ said Abernaci. ‘We had to lock up the hashish and the opium in the end—they were aye daring each other to try it. The worst of the pharmacies hand it out. Bordeaux, Bayonne, Pamplona—they all sell freely. And they get it when the spice ships come in, if only from the seamen and their women. If you’ve money, it’s not hard.’

‘All the same, don’t lock it up any more’ said Lymond. ‘Don’t lock anything up. We want it to be easy.’

‘It
is
easy,’ said Abernaci simply. ‘Since I checked them this morning, a hundred grains of arsenic have gone.’

In the silence, the brazen blows from below sounded Ogygian: some ritual call to intercession. Then Lymond said, ‘Who has been in? The keepers? The carters, for example?’

Abernaci shook his head. ‘Not the keepers. They’re my own lads. And not the carters; not with the cats ready to travel. They’re excited enough without a wheen of heavy-footed labourers stirring them up. We had the joiners to look at the travelling cages, and the butcher’s cart, and the man with the buckets, and fifteen bushels of hempseed for the canaries; but they all stayed outside, and had one of my men with them forbye. As for the ones we let in … there were your four selves, and the Prince of Condé, to see a bear he’s betting on, and the children—Queen Mary and the Dauphin and the aunt Lady Fleming and her boy, and Pellaquin, a man of mine that looks after the wee Queen’s pets—’

‘Why did they come?’

‘It was about a leveret, a sick leveret that needed a dose. They’re aye giving her wee things. Pellaquin’s about daft with it, because she won’t turn them off when they’re full grown. He’s having a grand time, I can tell you, with a full-sized she-wolf the now … Oh. The Marshal de St. André was with her, and his wife. The leveret was their present. Nobody else … No. I’m telling a lie. George Douglas came to pass the time of day and speir whether I knew my friend Master Ballagh was the sensation of Rouen. The midwife should have clipped yon one’s mouth with black ants.’

‘The Queen Mother’s very words. What a pity; they’ve got the gate open. That’s Stewart’s carping tract of sweet Berla-speech, I’ll swear. And that’s the final tally? How very competent, Archie.
Unless someone simply wants to put down some mice, we have at least a list of possible culprits.’

Abernaci grinned. At the door he said, ‘Well, look out. It’s tasteless, and there’s just about no known antidote.’

For a moment Lymond, irritated, did not answer. Then he said succinctly, ‘Every crumb the little Queen eats has been tested first, from the time she left Rouen.’

The Keeper snorted. ‘What d’you test it on? Her aunty?’

‘One of your animals. If you’re dead keen, I’ll make it the she-wolf,’ said Lymond. ‘In Brehon Law, they call it setting the charmed morsel for the dog. We want to see them try out that arsenic. Because then, with a little luck, my dear, we shall know who they are.’

They were packing the monkeys in baskets as, returning, the three Irishmen and Robin Stewart passed the little garden of pets. Mary was helping, a piece of bandage on her other hand, and her red hair streaked over her face. The she-wolf was still in its cage, and a bear, together with a wild pig and the female parent of the leveret, wearing a small, gold-chased collar. Its name, Suzanne, was picked out visibly in stones uncommonly like emeralds. The twenty-two lapdogs now whirling in squeak-girt and telepathic unrest in the castle were collared also, Robin Stewart informed them, in precious ore. His grimly ossified face relaxed, however, when the little girl turned, and he answered her questions as readily as acute uneasiness would allow. Robin Stewart was unused to children.

‘Vernom-tongue of Loughbrickland,’ said The O’LiamRoe to his secretary, ‘you did not tell me she was a pearl in a clear glass of mead.’

Her grace the Queen of Scotland was not much interested in O’LiamRoe, although he got a practised smile and a fine-grained, downy wrist to kiss. She said immediately to Thady Boy, ‘It is you who throws eggs in the air?’

Thady Boy’s hands were still over his small, shoddy stomach. ‘Question me, doorkeeper. I am a sorcerer.’

She instantly flung back her head and looked down her stained nose. ‘I am no doorkeeper.’

‘It would be a terrible presumption, would it not, to call you so. I was speaking of an old tale, noble person, which you may hear one day.’

With Janet Sinclair behind her, and the little girls standing waiting Mary dropped like a twig on to a pile of sacking and folded her hands. ‘Tell me,’ she said.

‘Please your noble grace,’ said O’LiamRoe, his face solemn. ‘But it is a terrible long tale, that one; and I hear the juggles of him are the
wonder of the world. He is better than Aengus the Subtle-hearted, that drew live frogs out of his ears.’

Lady Fleming had come across to the group, and with her, her son and the Dauphin. Sallow and ill-grown, smaller and feebler than his red-haired fiancée, François of France crossed to ask her a question. She answered him in her disconcerting Scots-French and, gabbling absently through the courtesies, pulled him peremptorily down beside her. Jenny retreated to the nurse’s side and Robin Stewart, backing also, attached his joints to the small menagerie fence. If anything went amiss, he couldn’t be blamed.

‘Juggle,’ commanded Mary.

In two minutes Thady had what he wanted: some oranges from the monkey house; the Dauphin’s scabbard; a fan. On the wild red hair was a small brimmed hat, very smart, with a feather curling at an angle; and he got that from her too. Then he began to juggle. He caught the oranges a foot from their upturned faces; he dropped the hat neatly on the little Queen’s crown, to scoop it up the next moment; he sent fan, scabbard, spheres vivid as fish in the grey air.

Her face scarlet, Mary was squealing with pleasure. The Dauphin hunched his shoulders a little and Jenny, laughing beyond them, applauded sharply with her two plump palms. Cross-legged in the mud, O’LiamRoe watched, a forgotten grin on his face.

When the bell rang for Vespers they had found how to make the fan unfurl descending, and were experimenting, hazel eyes and blue gazing upwards, Thady’s hands flying just above Mary’s ruffled head. Then the bell clanged and instantly he sent his implements flying; oranges lobbed each child on the skull, the fan struck Jenny Fleming and the hat dropped precisely on Mary’s own head. Warm with pleasure, forgetful, she swung on his arm, ignoring her nurse’s purposeful moves. ‘Master Thady, Master Thady, do you tell me a riddle?’

It was the first time, thought Robin Stewart, amused, that he had seen Thady Boy pulled up short. Anyone can seize a child’s interest for a moment. To keep it needs rather more than one trick.

Thady Boy looked down at her, her weight on his arm, swinging her a little while he thought. ‘It is time to go in. Ask your lady aunt about the three thousand monkeys of Catusaye who came at bell stroke to take their supper by hand. Is there a particular riddle you want?’