Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [187]
It was an old sport, a little run-down now, popular since the days of the Triple Goddess when lions by the hundred, elephants, bulls, giraffes, were killed in internecine combat in the Roman ring. It was a little difficult, now, to find new and interesting combinations. Once the old King had cheered the Court for a fortnight by laying his drunken dinner guests in the lionhouse, à la Heliogabalus, and then introducing a very old beast with its teeth drawn, to shock them awake; it was not repeated, as the lion shortly afterwards went into a decline. Modern baiting was simpler: between bear and bear, or boar and mastiffs, or bull and lion; rarely between beast and man. The animals were brought in wheeled carts, pushed close to the arena gates. Outside, Abernaci and his staff stood waiting, with swords and spears and lighted torches, ready for accidents.
They were not needed. The first two combats took their course. The bear, ponderous and flat-handed, bare-rumped with disease, still managed to strangle one of the mastiffs pitted against him, and broke the spine of the second. They pelted his bleeding muzzle with flowers as he was led off.
The boar was a different matter. A bolster of fat and muscle, plated with spikes, he hurtled sud-strewn through the gates and stopped, skidding, under the straw dummies they had dangled over his head. This was not a sanglier, but a fresh-caught wild boar of the third year. The arms and grinders stuck dripping out of his mouth were nearly two fingers thick; and in the heavy head, sunk below the strong flesh of his shoulders, the eyes were needle-sharp and red.
He was angry, excited and frightened; and the grotesque, wind-jolted dummies catching his eye, he raced towards them and gored. There was a cheer, and a spatter of straw whisked into august faces. The two bigger tushes, contrary to appearance, were harmless; they existed only to whet the two lower. With these he kills. Grunting, the boar turned in its small feet and made for the next figure.
Amid the cheers Sir George Douglas at last worked to Vervassal’s glittering shoulder. For a moment he studied the downcast lashes and the imprint of well-bred deference held, evidently without effort, on that harlequin face. Then he turned his own eyes to the boar and said, just loud enough for Francis Crawford to hear, ‘It is a proud beast, and fierie and perilous; for some have seen him slit a man from knee up to the breast and slay him all stark dead, so that he never spake thereafter.—You know that Robin Stewart is about to take the arena?’
He got Lymond’s attention then; all of it, except that the man’s eyes in the event looked through him and not at him. ‘Dear me, really?’ said Lymond slowly. ‘I wonder why.’
The answer to that was easy. Sport. They wouldn’t permit him to be badly damaged; indeed, if he were skilful, he might make his kill and escape unhurt until his official disembowelling. Sir George was not fool enough to give Lymond the easy answer. He waited, alive with curiosity, and after a moment the other man said reflectively, ‘Of course, a little public odium would be helpful,’ and turned back to the ditch as if satisfied. Resignedly, Sir George settled to watch.
Behind the gates, the keepers had launched into the agere aprum, the shouting and horn blowing calculated to rouse the beast and bring him to frenzy. The third dummy, exploding on the wet tusks, snapped free and flounced over the grass. The boar’s head dipped, and with a rustle the dummy soared into the crowd on a flying carpet of straw rack and glitter. The King, glancing at Lord d’Aubigny, leaned forward and raised his baton. As the boar turned, dripping, and paused, the gates opened and Robin Stewart was pushed inside.
From the Archers lining the stands and the passages, there was rigid silence. From the townspeople, long since primed by rumour with tales of more deeds than he had ever done, there rose a clamour of shrieks, hissings and mock threats. He was the fourth dummy. They did not much care what he had done, if it made good gossip and good