Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [244]
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