Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [64]
The bag was the quintain, a wooden Saracen on a post, to be charged on horseback and hit three times with a lance. A poor hit, because of its pivoting arrangements, gave the rider a crippling clout on the ear. It was a popular spectator sport.
How Thady Boy was brought to compete, Stewart never knew. But on a mild grey afternoon in October The O’LiamRoe and the Archer and every idle sophisticate on the premises turned their backs on the newly renovated castle of St. Germain, on its wide terraces above the flat panorama of the Seine, and strolled off to the tilting ground to see the courses.
Far from being technical, the talk in Stewart’s vicinity was largely about someone’s new boots, straying lightly now and then into the recent boudoir history of the combatants. But whatever they sounded like, they were soldiers judging soldiers. There was some wit on the changes which other times and other alliances had brought to the quintain itself: instead of the Turk there hung a crude painted barrel with eyes, nose, chin and a string midriff to mark the points of high scoring.
It rocked slightly in the light wind, causing a moment’s alarm to those in the plot, who had gone to a great deal of trouble to struggle it off and fill it up to the brim with cold water.
And of course, the first rider selected by blind fate to try his three stabs at the wood was Thady Boy Ballagh, hatless and gently fuddled on what appeared to be the highest peak of a very tall horse.
There were a hundred paces of a run up to the barrier. At the far end the barrel gaudily swayed; the circle of judges and spectators was suspiciously wide. Thady Boy stuck his heels into the tall horse; along the fence the hoofbeats redoubled; beyond the fence the stout post with its burden lay in wait.
The squat, black figure reached it, raised its lance, aimed and thrust. So far from scoring, the mark was not even over the belt. The lance nocked into the wood, with a thud which could be heard, and came out fast as Thady Boy ducked to dodge the swing of the pivot. A great and derisive cheer rose into the clear air of the St. Germain plateau, and Jean de Bourbon, sieur d’Enghien, flushed. No icy douche had soaked Thady Boy from the gash. The barrel, inexplicably, was dry.
Three times Thady Boy Ballagh ran the prescribed course, and the mignons applauded the cheerful constancy of his incompetence and rallied Condé and his brother in the same merciless breath on the collapse of their scheme. Since no other entertainment offered, the tilt continued. D’Enghien himself trotted up as Thady Boy came back, and spurred into the first course.
Slender and dark, with his pretty lashes and red, Bourbon lips, the sieur d’Enghien was an expert jouster. The lance, aimed true and straight, transfixed the very nose on the staves. There was a thud, a hiss, a light puff of steam, and from the stab in the wood a trembling arc of hot water started to play on the noble rider below.
They made him run the three prescribed courses before cutting down and examining the barrel. It had been floored midway and top-filled from a copper; Thady Boy, he remembered, had aimed consistently low.
Music, seeping out from the lounging throng of his friends, told Jean de Bourbon where to find his ingenious prize. His fur weeping, his boots full of water, d’Enghien for a moment looked like sinking his teeth, like the Archbishop of Pisa, in his neighbour. On second thoughts he bent, arm on elegant knee, and said, ‘For that, my dear, I shall want my revenge.’
Thady Boy looked up. Garlanded with young men, he sat squat on the grass, boots crossed, expression pure as a halcyon hatching an egg. ‘¿Con que la lavaré, La tez de la mi cara …?’ he sang, and smiled at the unfolded hair and the sleek, wet painted face. ‘… That depends on the sport.’
They all stayed five days at St. Germain, and St. Germain would as soon