Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [34]
For years after, in Hérisson’s circle, they told the story of that night: how with a cordon round the whole house the bailly and his sergeants burst into the cellars to find nothing worse going on than an uproarious, a scurrilous rehearsal for part of tomorrow’s great Entry, with charade following monologue and lampoon following charade under the direction of a potbellied, black-headed Irishman representing the Spirit of France, suspended gently swaying above the packed audience from the blocks and pulleys on the roof.
And when, reluctantly at length, the city guard tore themselves away, the entertainment was only beginning, for they had forgotten to let down the Spirit of France and that fluent person, not at all willing to be ignored, had captured the hand bellows and, declaiming, was coating the seething heads below with black varnish.
It was Michel Hérisson himself, draped half-naked in a sheet and almost helpless with laughter, who jumped for the cable operating the hook and let go, so that Thady Boy hurtled down through the air, past the dais under which lay the portable printing presses, past the bales of paper disguised behind scenery and the bales of paper disguised as scenery, and straight into a full trough of paste. A wall of white porridge three feet deep rose with a glottal smack and dropped in knackery-haunted gouts on the company.
It was as if a divine signal had come. The audience stood to a man. Into the nameless, lung-scouring gas which replaced air a clay ball shot; then another; then one with lead in it knocked someone out. Benches began to rise. The Delphic Oracle, tackled low, sagged with godlike indifference and stuffed her august nose at last into the copper. Abrupt as an overtaxed weight lifter, other deities fell. Someone whirled a stone elbow, skirling; paste-soggy clothes ripped; and in the glorious, semi-inebriated whirl of pounding flesh, the thicket of flailing arms and belling throats and the shouts of damnable hilarity, blood and ink became one.
They delivered Thady Boy, damp, clean and singing at the Croix d’Or at three in the morning.
Not a few people heard him arrive. A door banged after repeated farewells, and an uneven satisfied chanting ascended the stairs interrupted by innumerable thuds and clatters:
‘Cows, pigs, horses, sheep, goats,
Dogs, cats, hens, geese—noisy goods—’
The O’LiamRoe heard it. He awoke from his fireside snooze in the parlour and turned a speculative blue eye on the door.
‘—Noisy goods,
Little bees that stick to all flowers:
These are the ten beasts of the world’s men.
The reason I love Derry …’
‘Death alive, the world’s only liquid chapbook,’ said O’LiamRoe.
‘—The reason I love Derry …’
The solemn voice was outside the parlour. There was a prodigious fumbling, a scrape, and the door shook.
‘The reason I love Derry is for its quietness, for its purity and for its crowds of white angels. Still up?’ Thady Boy Ballagh strolled in, locked the door, slung a spattered cloak on a chair and stuck out his tongue at a mirror. ‘God, I’m full of sour wine and cows’ feet and you could make scones from my underwear.’ His voice was pleasant, without accent, and clear as a bell.
O’LiamRoe, while philosophic enough about a reverse of his own, did have a conscience, and had been out of temper ever since Lymond’s summons from his Dowager Queen. Addressing his prodigal ollave, his voice had an edge to it. ‘The Queen Mother of Scotland surely has a queer style of entertaining?’
‘Oh Lord, no. I spent the evening elsewhere. Playing at paper games. With your admirer Robin Stewart.’
‘In Ireland,’ said The O’LiamRoe shortly, ‘that man would be put into petticoats and set to milking the goats. He’s a terrible let-down to his sex.… So the royal audience was brief? Fruitless her corn, fruitless her rivers, milkless her cattle, plentiless her fruit, for there was but one acorn upon the stalk, and it failed her?’
Quickly, methodically, Lymond was stripping. Under his soaked shirt the