Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [41]
From all the theatres, music rose and fluttered like flags beyond and within the crowds. A burst of cannon from the river told that the water pageant had begun. The crowds cheered, debris floated, and a firecracker, mistimed in the excitement, coughed, exploded and sparked under the bellies of the Queen of Scotland’s four unicorns as the Chariot of Happy Fortune entered the bridge.
Another went off. The leading horse, sweating, jerked its head, horn askew, and with a plunge whipped its bridle free and turned round. The harness jangled, the wheels rumbled and skidded, and the groom, losing grip, ran forward and shouted just as the horses, jammed flat on the rail, came to a stop in a tangle of traces. The Chariot, swinging behind them, struck the float in front, split, and stopped broadside on the bridge, with four startled children upset on the floor and a king, prostrate, with a descending angel in his arms.
The six elephants hesitated. By the great bull at their head a man in Oriental dress spoke sharply. There was a pause; and in that small instant, unnoticed by the crowd, a plaster whale at the bridge end ran up on quiet wheels. Swift, white-faced and gruesome, it sped towards the last pair of elephants, and as their eyes whitened and their vast loins gathered, it opened its jaws and ejected, squealing, bloody and blinded, the one missing lamb. Like blown paper in a grey, petrified forest of limbs it hurled itself, insane, among the elephants; and the elephants, screaming, began to lumber away.
There was only one way for them to go; and that was forward to the bridge. The man, woman and children in the jammed cart, the watching crowd and all the impacted mass of the procession filling the far bridge watched them come in a trance of fright. The turbaned men began to run; the great beasts gathered speed. There were perhaps ten yards of road, densely lined with spectators, between the bull elephant and the bridge when the chief Keeper, running lightly, caught him with his iron hook.
It might have been a fly whisk. The bull brushed past, great feet thudding, housings swaying; and there was a crash as the powerful hind leg, lashing out, found the drifting side of the whale and made it powder. The Keeper dropped the goad, and laying hands on the crupper straps, tried to mount as the beast passed, but was shaken off, hands bleeding, before he could find a hold for his feet.
On the bridge, the trapped float rocked and crashed as its horses, frantic, splintered and smashed the bridge rails. Lumbering steadily, the six elephants made straight for the threshold, the bull leading, eyes white, tusks alight in the sun, burning oil jars rocking spilt on his back.
On the arch over the bridge, something moved. Plump, nimble, fluttering black, light as leaf on lind, a man dropped from the pediment and clung firm among the upset, steaming urns on the bull elephant’s back. Then, gripping the harness with one hand, he plunged spur and knife both into the animal’s right flank.
The bull raised his taut, dripping trunk, screamed, and stopped dead like a log in a jam. With a shuddering thud, his harem ran into him. For a moment they plunged, trumpeting, edging and thudding on to the bridge; then the bull’s rider used the goads again quickly, shouting, and the Keeper, running up, added his strange gibberish to the noise. Frantic, infuriated, blind with fright and seared and scalded by the oil, the bull heeled like an undermined fortress and made for the river.
Thady Boy Ballagh, filthy, blistered and smelling like an in-season civet cat, slid off the bull elephant’s back as it went under. A turbaned figure,