Queens' Play (62 page)

The Latin was over, thank God, and the worst of the affair: Ely with a cursed long-winded oration and de Guise replying, silky in red camelot—a foreigner; one would say English himself. Now Henri, in plain white sewn with silver aiglettes, his black hair shining, looking well, touched the Book, kissed the Cross and was taking the oath.

It was going smoothly after all. Garter, well into his stride, took the blue silk Garter with its gold letters and buckle from the cushion, kissed it and gave it to Northampton. Flinging back his own mantle the Marquis took it and, kneeling, bound it round the muscular left leg of the King, combining reverence with deftness in a way that betrayed well-spent time with an equerry.

D’Aubigny was looking smug. Why had François de Guise been late? That fellow who played the Irishman had been his sister’s spy; you could tell that. The play acting over the boar had been typically
à deux visages
—a disclaimer of her interest at the time, and an excuse for her to be lenient later, if she needed one. And she had cast him off pretty sharply in the end. It was surprising that he permitted it. Not that you could blame her. As events proved, she had been right.

You could guess, too, the kind of game she would be playing in Scotland. A de Guise Regent of Scotland; a de Guise Pope at Rome; a de Guise virtually King of France.… Well. They would see about that. But with this fellow at her back …?

Well, they would see about that, too. The King had liked him; he would give the Médicis something to think about, too.

Capito vestem hanc purpuream
.… God, it was hot.

The ninth galley was on fire. On Mary’s boat they had seen it. Someone, head and shoulders over the gunwale, was hacking at ropes. Then the whole linked cluster of boats rocked, and began to drift slowly forward. In his haste, the would-be helper had cut all the vessels free of the buoy, and the dozen roped boats were still drifting shoulder to shoulder in the same moving mass with his own.

Cholet, on the far side of the roof, had started to slither down. Beyond, O’LiamRoe with his three men were running back. Lymond called to him; then turning, slid to the ground and made fast for the lake. The fountains came on, two delicate blizzards of light on either side of the water.

The Duchess de Valentinois had long since gone in; the nymphs had absented themselves, with Bacchus, at the first sign of trouble; the men-at-arms in Mary’s boat, still obviously fearing nothing worse than an illicit fireworks display, were fending off the empty fleet with their oars. The brigantines, the painted galleys with their dragon prows, rocked; and a spurt of flame showed at the side and deck of the ninth. A sudden gift from heaven: the musicians, gaping, had fallen silent. Lymond, already running in water, cupped his hands.
‘Gunpowder in the boats. Row away.’
And turning quickly, caught the knife someone tossed him.

Abernaci, halfway from the menagerie shore, was treading water. Already the drifting boats were nearer Lymond than himself. He
heard Lymond shout again, this time in Gaelic, just before he struck out. It was an instruction to harness the elephant.

It was meant for Abernaci, but it was O’LiamRoe who heard and acted on it, shouting to the cowardie, thonging new rope into Hughie’s harness. He stood at the water’s edge, hemp in hand, and threw it in unfolding yellow fakes into Abernaci’s wet hands as Francis Crawford slid through the water, green and white, to the boats. Under the sudden, urgent drive of two pairs of long oars, the Queen’s boat shot towards him, and the flotilla, sucked by the wake and the rush of fire near its tail, curtseyed after.

The white surcoat was off, and the new crimson gown on, the sword girded without incident; and Garter was kissing the Mantle and Hood.
‘Accipe Clamidem hanc caelici coloris
 … Take ye this Mantle of heavenly colour, with the shield of the Cross of Christ garnished, by whose strength and virtue ye always be defended …’

The fresh-tied tassels hung still; the powdering of garters on the blue shone steadily, silver-gilt in the bright light. Henri was becoming bored.

There was only the Collar left, and the usual homily; then Chapel; then the meal. There was this: Scotland no longer had such value to France, now the English threat was so weak. If the girl died, the Dauphin would be free to marry elsewhere. For example … By God, it was hot. A man might go to sleep, heavily robed in this heat.

At the last moment, the cowardie would not go. So the big male elephant, moving lazily through the lake, had O’LiamRoe on its back, O’LiamRoe who could not swim, with his ears clouded with water, clinging to the sodden leathers on big Hughie’s brow and watching Abernaci, ahead, continuing steadily towards the burning boats.

Lymond got there first. Margaret Erskine saw it, holding Mary loosely in her arms behind the rattling barricade of shields, tossing everyday conversation between James, herself and the children, bracing herself against the great tug of the oars as the four men drove the boat through the water. The smoke behind them smelled acrid. ‘What a shame,’ she said brightly. ‘All the beautiful feux de joie meant for tonight. I fear, chérie, you are about to have the most costly display of squibs ever set off in broad daylight.’

‘M. Crawford will stop it,’ said the girl, and poked her ruffled red head out between the lattice of arms. She was afraid—Margaret could sense it—but gallantly she too subscribed to the fiction. What a pity … the squibs would be put to waste.

The fair head, the dark chevron in the water, were almost level with them now. He must have known, halfway there, that the fire was now too strong to put out. His eyes lifted every few strokes gauging distances, watching O’LiamRoe and Abernaci drawing close from the far side of the lake. Once, perhaps hearing his name, he turned and lifted an arm quickly, in a shower of sunlit drops, in brief salute to the Queen. Then he was at the first of the boats, and pulling himself, wet as a starfish, up to its flanks.

It was one of the display boats. Smoothly though he climbed, the hull kissed the brigantine tied poop to prow, and the little shock ran jarring down the flotilla. The boats danced and for a second even the stranded players, clinging hoarse to their raft, were quite still. A cloud of sparks sprang from the burning galley, two-thirds along the swaying pack, and fell radiant against the rush of black smoke, thickly metallic with the smell of burned paint. The shadow of it netted them all: the clutter of boats; the Queen’s barge straining to burst free at one side; and at the other, Abernaci’s brown arms whirling nearer, with O’LiamRoe beyond, the bull elephant halted just within its own depth, hauling and barking at it in Gaelic to make it turn.

From the paved shore, as the startled water bumped and splashed at their feet, the men-at-arms and the workmen, streaming down to the edge, joined moment by moment by men and women from the castle, saw the sparks drop soundlessly into the smoke. The galley’s carved rails were crowded with fire. All her detail was printed black on burgeoning gold, and her pennants, pointing to the blue sky, were run up afresh by the flames.

With a crack, the fire wheel on the ultimate barge burst into light. The pale gold head of Vervassal, slipping fast through the smoke, was haloed suddenly with coloured fire. The great wheel, near enough to touch, began to turn with gathering speed, and with crack after crack the little charges within it began to fire and revolve, sparkling within the grey haze, jewelling Lymond’s glittering skin as he hopped through.

On the sailyard a second wheel began to whirl, and in the foreship another. On the flaming boat, the fire had reached the deckhouse, and the little brigantine in front had begun to show a pilling of flame. Lymond crossed from the last boat to the next, his feet like velvet, slid from there to a barge, and moving from boat to boat with unbelievable softness, had reached the burning galley before the wheels behind him had gathered full speed.

He must have checked each boat as he passed. Margaret Erskine, her light sleeves flying with their own gathered speed, realized it as she saw him poised on the eighth, the burning galley before him. He was standing on the barge of state. The cloth of gold draping the
top castle had caught. Lymond ripped it off in passing, flinging it to hiss in the lake. The painted windows of the stateroom whirled and glowed, eye to eye with the spitting feux de joie in the rear. Then he jumped on to the blistered deck and, blazing prow and port rails bright at his back, cut the lashing to set all the boats he had just traversed free.

It was just possible to pass to the foreship with the deckhouse giving shelter between. Lymond stopped once, to glance in the well. Then he was gone, darting like a dragonfly down, up, along, regardless of caution, crossing three boats to where Abernaci, flying turbaned through the water, was ready with the rope.

The mahout lifted himself up, his scarred face enamelled with light, and raising one thin, powerful arm, sent the hemp flying. Lymond caught it. He had found a belaying place. He lashed the cable to the leading prow, raised an arm, and as O’LiamRoe kicked and Abernaci called, saw it tighten as thirty-eight hundredweight of elephant took the strain. It was all he waited to see. As the truncated convoy, heavy, squinting, stirred and started to move, Lymond made his way back to the fire.

O’LiamRoe looked back. Bleached as a raisin inside his pulped clothes, clinging to the horny grey loins with numb hands, his legs bumping awash, he could feel the big bull beneath him walking steadily and well, brow, trunk and back breaking the water, obeying the odd sounds of his mahout’s distant voice.

It was a long way to the shore, but the water was empty, and the ground before them was vacant of buildings, or men or even animals to take harm. The musicians’ raft, never very close, was now far away; between the four boats he was pulling and the rest of the flotilla the swirling debris-flecked gap grew and grew. Beyond that, the royal boat had pulled clear at last, skimming out of the shadow with the helmets of the rowers alight in the sun. The children’s gowns showed, red and blue beyond the woman’s encircling arms, and, bobbing and tousled, an excited red head. How much gunpowder was there? Christ.… Well, even if all four boats were full, in another few minutes the children would be safe.