Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [49]
A recipe for chestnut hair was bandied about, causing a good deal of laughter, some of it high-pitched as the strong Hungarian wine went round; and a conscientious consort of assorted wind and percussion followed the lutenist in the gallery. In a fleeting lull, the voice of Madame la Princesse de la Roche-sur-Yon was heard saying suavely, ‘And what is this I hear of our dear Constable and the Lady Fleming?’
‘Nothing, I fear, that can be repeated at table,’ said the Prince of Condé, presenting her with a piece of wrought marzipan. ‘Remember our friend on my left.’
She peered round him, her silver wig spooled, veiled and jewelled, her long buckram bodice coated with satin and jewels. ‘The Irishman? Is he alive, my dear?’
The Prince neither looked round nor lowered his voice. ‘Vivit, et est vitae nescius ipse suae.’
Having just enough Latin to recognize an expression of contempt, the Princess gave out a peal of laughter. Against the whine of the music, the roar of chatter and the clatter of sugar almonds bleached and milling in his teeth, the ollave droned comfortably on to himself: ‘De una mula que haze hin, y de un hijo que habla latin, libéranos, Domine! … Tell me,’ said Thady Boy, swallowing busily as the Prince of Condé whipped round, ‘is it the King’s fool, the fellow in black and white by the top table there?’
There was a little silence. The lazy eye of the Prince fell on the replete ollave, travelled from his black-rimmed hands to his mud-splashed boots and rose again. ‘Yes. That is M. Brusquet. Allow me to invite him over,’ he said smoothly, and spoke to a page. His eyes, and those of the Princess, were wide, vacant and impersonal. Further up the table, someone pressed a fan on someone else’s arm and smiled.
The last course had been served. Soon the boards would be removed. Meanwhile the players had given place to tumblers. They came up the centre carpet springing and whirling and took their stance, the acrobats before the royal dais, the jugglers at the other end. The royal fool Brusquet, a hard-working man, strolled down from the top table and placed a privileged hand on the shoulders of Condé and his Irishman. ‘Welcome, Master Ollave, fresh from the kingly castles of Ireland. Can we hope to match them in splendour at this poor Court of France?’
The Irishman thought, chewing. ‘Well, at home, ’Tis not the fools only who make converse at table.’
Before Brusquet could reply, Condé’s dark, painted face turned. ‘You would teach us how to be courtiers?’
Thady Boy bowed meekly. ‘I would leave that to Madame la Princesse.’
Urgent with epigram, Brusquet rushed in, as the lady exchanged raised brows with Condé. ‘The courtier’s task, like garlic, sir, is to flavour his master with his own wit and skill.’
Thady Boy licked his fingers and wiped them fastidiously on the sleeves of his gown. ‘Do you tell me now. I would put it nearer the surgeons’, M. Brusquet: to bring together the separated, to separate those abnormally united, and to extirpate what is superfluous.’
‘And what, sir,’ said the fool silkily, ‘has proved superfluous in Ireland?’
‘Ah, did I say we needed courtiers in Ireland?’ said Thady, surprised.
A light had come into Condé’s eye, but the King’s fool, his colour high, was again first. He was acid. ‘We had forgotten. If you can manage one elephant, no doubt you can manage them all.’ He lowered his voice suddenly. A page, sent from the top table, requested silence for the tumblers. Up and down the room, conversation and laughter fell to a mellow buzz.
A resounding hiccough pock-marked the silence, like an arrow in the gold.
Thady Boy apologized. ‘Strange, strange are your ways. In Ireland, now, princes are not known as elephants, and them walking about with their castles on their backs.’ The glance