Queens' Play (13 page)

Condé said softly, forestalling Brusquet, ‘The spoon has compensations. Of washing thrice daily, for example.’ He had an audience of perhaps half a dozen, and at the hiccoughs more were turning.

‘Not in Ireland,’ said Thady Boy, his blue eyes innocent; at ease from his tangled black crown to his fine, dirty hands. ‘’Tis not the gentlefolk but the beans that we put into water, so that they swell and go soft.… To turn to these hiccoughs, now. There’s a thing you do with a cup to stop them?’

‘What?’ The Prince of Condé, drawn into extraordinary tête-à-tête, was momentarily at a loss. Another report like a pistol shot escaped the Irishman’s glottis, and more heads turned. Distantly, by the King’s chair, Lord d’Aubigny moved restively. The tumblers, leaping, looked resigned.

Diamonds flashing, Condé picked up his silver drinking cup and offered it to the sufferer, his face suddenly contorted. Thady Boy shook his head, exploded and explained. The cure sounded incredible. The Princess said, ‘Give him water!’ She was amused, and in a lifetime of boredom, the moment was worth keeping. A laugh rippled up the table, and Condé jerked his head.

A page, misunderstanding, brought a fingerbowl, the rose leaves still floating, and Thady Boy, between two explosions, had his chin in it when Condé pulled it away. A silver tankard was brought. ‘Oh, Jesus, no!’ said Thady Boy, and hiccoughed. ‘Two ears, the thing must have.… It’s clean infallible. Ah, wait you now. There she is!’ And rising, The O’LiamRoe’s ollave tipped the royal flowers from their tall vase before him, lifted it, and inserting his chin, attempted to suck the far rim. Brackish water poured round his ears. It soaked his jerkin and streamed on the cloth, and jellied leaves, slipping through, came to rest on Condé’s white satin. From about them, there was a muffled round of applause and a low cheer; and opening watery eyes Thady acknowledged it, before exploding like the tuck of a
drum. ‘… Infallible,’ he was heard to say; and his two hands grasped the handles again.

Three people pulled him back from it, and as many more offered advice, some less sober than others. ‘Something cold.’ ‘A key.’ ‘A coin.’ ‘Madame de Valentinois,’ said someone else,
sotto voce
.

The Prince of Condé, who had started to laugh, opened his purse on the table and then stopped. He was too late. Thady Boy’s long fingers had already darted inside the mesh. ‘The very thing, so!’ And he held up a key: a very fine one of silver gilt, with leaves and flowers and a crest on the stem. Condé snatched. Madame la Maréchale de St. André was not watching—she was deep in low talk with de Lorges. But her husband, from across the carpet, stared at the pretty key with his thoughts plain on his face. The eyes of the two men met; and the limpid blue gaze of Thady Boy, after dwelling on them both, turned and surveyed his audience. One eye closed, then both, in the most stupendous upheaval yet, and he slipped the key down his spine and wriggled. ‘Although,
dhia
, you are all wrong; it is for a nosebleed, so.…’ From along the table, Jean de Bourbon’s silvery laugh rang out.

With practised ease, his neighbours softened the pause. They chattered to Condé; they called gentle advice; they summoned pages to mop up the water while their perceptive senses descended like locusts on the immediate conduct of Condé, of St. André and of his wife. At the top table, the King sent to know the reason for the flurry. In a low and private whisper the details, discreetly censored, began their journey up the scented tablecloths. A sense of tolerance and even of indebtedness began to settle on the Irishman’s neighbours. Condé was perhaps a little quiet; but the others, drawling, vied with each other as the tables were removed in trying to cure Thady Boy’s hiccoughs; and Condé’s brother, smiling, watchful, had begun to flicker his fan.

It was then that the jugglers got involved. Ignoring the laughter, eyes snakelike, arms whirling in particoloured costume, they sent blunt-edged daggers in a stream to each other, their hands a pink blur in the slipstream of silver. Thady Boy exploded, his arms full of remedies, and somehow a two-handled vase flashed alien into the glittering stream. Cramp-fingered and incredulous, the first juggler waited for it, changed grip desperately, and sent it back to his partner in a shower of knives. The next convoy of daggers brought a key; and then a cup appeared. The juggler caught it and hurled it to the side, where Thady Boy with no apparent effort received it.

Swift, timely, in perfect position, one of the juggler’s little knives came back from the same quarter; then another; then the cup. His embrace slipping with objects, Thady Boy seemed to have acquired a whirlpool of possessions in mid-air: dishes and salt-cellars began
to join it. His object seemed to be to regain possession of the amphora; but instead a stream of incoming knives began mysteriously to shoot at him. With combined and deadly malice, the jugglers had begun to incorporate Thady Boy in the act. From knives, they fed the rest of their stock into the air. The knives turned to balls, the balls to rings, the rings to eggs. He returned them all.

By now the whole room was watching. From a rustle of amusement rose a few cheers; then the King, leaning forward, was seen to smile, and the cheering became louder. From the top table Lord d’Aubigny, his handsome face on fire, strode down to the ollave; then backed a step as an egg, mishandled, landed, thickly soggy, in his shirt. Another, slipping badly astray, splashed M. Brusquet, talking hoarsely and unheard in what was approaching a din. The jugglers themselves began to suffer.

Their clothes were not cheap. To preserve their garments and the shreds of their professionalism they with one accord moved backwards, out of range and towards the end of the room. The alien objects—the cup, the key, the vase—dropped to the floor. A last tremendous hiccough shook Thady. Clothes streaming with egg yolk and water, hair erect as the crest on a jay, he leaped and fell on the amphora in the exact moment that Condé leaped and fell on the key. There was a squelching collision. Thady Boy tripped, rocked and collapsed, and falling, snatched at the carpet. Far off at the end, in front of the dais, the pyramid of tumblers, wreathed in dazzling smiles, planed a moment, genuflected and shot into space.

The King of France laughed. And like the well-bred bone and tinkle of an ancient and imperial sepulchre on the eve of All Hallows, the bored and over-refined flower of French civilization gave way to its mirth.

The tumblers had gone; the mess had been cleared up, and in the muted, end-of-meal light, diamonds flickered, caught like stars in quick water, as the company talked and laughed, and the King summoned Thady Boy to his chair.

As Lymond walked past without a sign, Tom Erskine at last allowed his eyes to meet the Queen Dowager’s with gentle triumph in his gaze. Thady Boy’s face was childlike in its innocence, and the wide, fringed blue eyes met the King’s with confidence, with a trust perfectly endearing. Henri of France addressed him in his deep, pleasant voice. ‘You have made chaos of my supper and a shambles of my supper room, sir. Are dinners so conducted in Ireland?’

‘We repel sadness if we can. It is a duty of our profession.’

‘You were not invited, I believe,’ said the King, ‘to repel sadness.’

‘I was not invited, I believe, to repel elephants,’ said Thady Boy with serenity. ‘We turn our hand to whatever we may.’

The royal eyes searched for presumption and found none. The royal face relaxed a little. ‘It is true, both your endeavours today have made you remarkably damp.’

‘It is not my favourite element. I had no choice.

‘Ma belle
being a cow elephant called Annie.’

‘Ah, you quote poetry,’ said Henri. ‘But you prefer horseplay to music?’

‘It depends on the music,’ said Thady Boy with the gentlest gravity.

Beside the King, Catherine, Queen of France, had made leisurely study of him, her nimble mind and blanched cultures weighing his answers. She now spoke, her voice muted. ‘You dislike the King’s lutenist?’ The consort, she was aware, had been unspeakable.

‘I should be proud to have trained him,’ said the ollave.

She sat back and a little drift of comment ran along the table, with a laugh. The King was smiling. ‘You think you could do as well?’

‘It is my profession.’

‘As well as elephant riding and juggling?’

‘These are my field sports.’

Without looking round, the King snapped his fingers. Lord d’Aubigny, blank and deferential, stepped forward. ‘Fetch Alberto quickly.’ To Thady Boy Ballagh, the King spoke slyly. ‘We have heard the buffoon; show us the bard, Master Ballagh. Play for us, sing, perform as well as M. de Ripa, and you shall have a full purse to take back to Ireland tomorrow.’

Slowly Thady Boy shook his black head. ‘Money, now, that is not the price of a song. The reward we would ask, O’LiamRoe and myself, is leave to enjoy a little longer the wonders and delights of your country, and to atone for the innocent mistake which led the Prince of Barrow, to his sorrow, into such misfortune the other day.’

There was a silence. ‘I cannot,’ said the King at last. ‘I cannot under any circumstances have your master here at Court.’

‘The O’LiamRoe,’ said Thady Boy delicately, ‘is not accustomed to Court life. He asks only to remain and study the grand country it is.’

The King hesitated. De Ripa had come in, looking startled, and carrying his lute. Further along the table, the Dowager of Scotland chatted softly to her neighbour, ignoring the little audience. The Constable of France, excusing himself, rose and bending over the King’s chair, murmured in his ear.

Henri turned, collected the unspoken agreement of his Queen, and
said pleasantly to the Irishman, ‘If these are the only conditions under which you will play, then we must of course agree. But we wish it understood that we propose passing the winter at Blois, and that none but the finest in each profession accompany us there. The lute is my own instrument. Her grace the Queen, my lady sister, and my sweet sister of Scotland besides M. de Ripa and myself will judge you.’ Somewhere under the white and silver, there was an amiable spirit. ‘In Ireland, the standards for such things may be different. Do not be disappointed. You will not leave the poorer,’ said Henri of France.

The bundle of wattle and daub which was Thady Boy Ballagh straightened up. His gaze wandered past the King to the Queen Mother, to Erskine, to Margaret, to Jenny Fleming, to Lord d’Aubigny behind them, and down the long tables to Condé and the Princess, d’Enghien and St. André—all the bored, chattering faces. Then he turned and, bowing elaborately, accepted the challenge.

In the softly lit hall the command was passed; the noise died. Heavy with food and wine, warm and weakened with laughter, and laden with visiting dreams of the night hours ahead, the predatory and feckless flower of France lay wreathed in its velvets, and the Bodyguard, in sparkling white, stood silent behind.

There was a low chair for the player, and a stool for his foot. Thady Boy took the satiny, pear-sliced lute from the Italian and smiled at him; the dark eyes were inimical for a moment longer, then smiled back. Drowned in the coloured darks of the floor, Thady Boy sat with the frail waxlight over his head, bearded stubble and obesity sunk in the darkness. From his right hand came a hardly heard brushing of sound; then he spoke in his skilful, velvety Irish-French.

‘To the ladies of France, who win music and love as their birthright. To the ladies of France, the tale of the King of Kerry’s daughter whose greenan was thatched with eagles’ wings, and their breasts made her pillow.’

For years he had commanded men and knew the trick of controlling and throwing out tone. He knew others too. His fingers flowed over the shining wood, plucking, snapping; dipping the phrases into acid and wiping them pure again. Then Thady’s voice joined the music, and the spare, tragic story was told, reaching into the carved room where the silence was the same as the night silence of a deep Kerry meadow. Moving to its end the music was strict and steely light; the pull at the heart extraordinary. In that company wholly spoiled, wholly self-centred, ruthless, neurotic, worldly-wise, more than one woman bit her lip to avoid tears and ridicule.