Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [239]
The grand rabroueur had gone. His leaf-gold tresses on end, his eyes in baskets from the long night without sleep, Phelim O’LiamRoe smacked his two fists together and cursed. The Queen Dowager, hardly aware of him, had turned her erect body to the window, followed by Margaret Erskine’s wide eyes. But Michel Hérisson, who had arrived so unexpectedly on the Irishman’s heels, ran his hacked and gouty hands through the wild white hair and said through his teeth, ‘Liam aboo, son, Liam aboo! My Gaelic’s all out in holes, the way my arse is ridden out through my breeches; but if you are saying what I hope you are saying, Liam aboo, my son, Liam aboo!’
On the lake, the early mist had all gone and the little boats had been moved into the middle. A small gathering of musicians, moving tenderly about a flower-decked raft, were tuning rebec, lute and viol for a rehearsal, thin as oyster-catchers in the still air. Elsewhere, on the shore, in the tilting ground, about the pavilions and stands, men were busy.
It was magnificent, if not very new. The theme and costumes for today had been used before: they did the English Commissioners sufficient honour. Industriously classical, Sibec de Carpi’s stands lining the tilting ground were redecorated with vine garlands and busts, cartouches and winged genii bearing the three royal flags; for after the Investiture, after the banquet, after the conference, there would be jousting that night.
And later still, a water pageant. Round the lake, low gardens had been laid out, a fountain erected at each end and a pavilion put up overlooking the water, draped with eye-blinding cloth of gold and fitted with lamps and torch sockets. From here, where the painters worked stripped to the waist, the Court would sit after dinner and watch the spectacle of Ida, la bergère phrygienne, driving cautiously round the lake, her chariot harnessed to geese and nymphs and satyrs, Pans and centaurs gambolling round. Some of these, lured by the sun and an authorized negligence of dress, were already there, spread on the dry grass: a Victory with gold wings sat under a pear tree playing a whistle, and two priestesses crowned with snakes chaffed a Bacchus in purple sitting on the paving, knees akimbo, and feet spread green in the cool pond.
Behind the gardens, the accessories were stacked: the hero’s flask of leopardskin destined to spray the paths with cheap wine; the chariots to be drawn by elephants, ostriches, deer; the Fortune forwarded from Angers, wheel and apple in hand; the carts with statues of kings and gods stacked inside. Among a group of forest maids admiring them was Diana herself, Madame de Valentinois, in black cloth of gold sewn with silver stars and amazingly brief, though not as short as the nymphs’ dresses, turned up to mid-thigh. Their bows and darts, of carved and gilded hardwood, were piled among the crowns and the torches and the cages of doves. Her ladies, in violet lustring, looked hot and rather cheerful: the workmen were not shy of tongue.
‘The auld quean,’ said the Keeper of the Menageries, watching mask-faced from under his turban on the distant side of the lake. Hughie the elephant, half-dressed in expensive gold harness, eructated with sonorous calm, and Piedar Dooly, his bees’ legs in fustian black hating the ground they stood on, said coldly, ‘It’s the King’s woman. Would you need three eyes to see it? And if he isn’t here, where is he?’
The brocaded figure, cross-legged before the biggest pavilion, watched keepers and cowardies move about the tents and cages, listened to the soft animal