Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [50]
Condé said softly, forestalling Brusquet, ‘The spoon has compensations. Of washing thrice daily, for example.’ He had an audience of perhaps half a dozen, and at the hiccoughs more were turning.
‘Not in Ireland,’ said Thady Boy, his blue eyes innocent; at ease from his tangled black crown to his fine, dirty hands. ‘’Tis not the gentlefolk but the beans that we put into water, so that they swell and go soft.… To turn to these hiccoughs, now. There’s a thing you do with a cup to stop them?’
‘What?’ The Prince of Condé, drawn into extraordinary tête-à-tête, was momentarily at a loss. Another report like a pistol shot escaped the Irishman’s glottis, and more heads turned. Distantly, by the King’s chair, Lord d’Aubigny moved restively. The tumblers, leaping, looked resigned.
Diamonds flashing, Condé picked up his silver drinking cup and offered it to the sufferer, his face suddenly contorted. Thady Boy shook his head, exploded and explained. The cure sounded incredible. The Princess said, ‘Give him water!’ She was amused, and in a lifetime of boredom, the moment was worth keeping. A laugh rippled up the table, and Condé jerked his head.
A page, misunderstanding, brought a fingerbowl, the rose leaves still floating, and Thady Boy, between two explosions, had his chin in it when Condé pulled it away. A silver tankard was brought. ‘Oh, Jesus, no!’ said Thady Boy, and hiccoughed. ‘Two ears, the thing must have.… It’s clean infallible. Ah, wait you now. There she is!’ And rising, The O’LiamRoe’s ollave tipped the royal flowers from their tall vase before him, lifted it, and inserting his chin, attempted to suck the far rim. Brackish water poured round his ears. It soaked his jerkin and streamed on the cloth, and jellied leaves, slipping through, came to rest on Condé’s white satin. From about them, there was a muffled round of applause and a low cheer; and opening watery eyes Thady acknowledged it, before exploding like the tuck of a drum. ‘… Infallible,’ he was heard to say; and his two hands grasped the handles again.
Three people pulled him back from it, and as many more offered advice, some less sober than others. ‘Something cold.’ ‘A key.’ ‘A coin.’ ‘Madame de Valentinois,’ said someone else, sotto voce.
The Prince of Condé, who had started to laugh, opened his purse on the table and then stopped. He was too late. Thady Boy’s long fingers had already darted inside the mesh. ‘The very thing, so!’ And he held up a key: a very fine one of silver gilt, with leaves and flowers and a crest on the stem. Condé snatched. Madame la Maréchale de St. André was not watching—she was deep in low talk with de Lorges. But her husband, from across the carpet, stared at the pretty key with his thoughts plain on his face. The eyes of the two men met; and the limpid blue gaze of Thady Boy, after dwelling on them both, turned and surveyed his audience. One eye closed, then both, in the most stupendous upheaval yet, and he slipped the key down his spine and wriggled. ‘Although, dhia, you are all wrong; it is for a nosebleed, so.…’ From along the table, Jean de Bourbon’s silvery laugh rang out.
With practised ease, his neighbours softened the pause. They chattered to Condé; they called gentle advice; they summoned pages to mop up the water while their perceptive senses descended like locusts on the immediate conduct of Condé, of St. André and of his wife. At the top table, the King sent to know the reason for the flurry. In a low and private whisper the details, discreetly censored, began their journey up the scented tablecloths. A sense of tolerance and even of indebtedness began to settle on the Irishman’s neighbours. Condé was perhaps a little quiet; but the others, drawling, vied with each other as the tables were removed in trying to cure Thady Boy’s hiccoughs;