Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [68]
In two minutes Thady had what he wanted: some oranges from the monkey house; the Dauphin’s scabbard; a fan. On the wild red hair was a small brimmed hat, very smart, with a feather curling at an angle; and he got that from her too. Then he began to juggle. He caught the oranges a foot from their upturned faces; he dropped the hat neatly on the little Queen’s crown, to scoop it up the next moment; he sent fan, scabbard, spheres vivid as fish in the grey air.
Her face scarlet, Mary was squealing with pleasure. The Dauphin hunched his shoulders a little and Jenny, laughing beyond them, applauded sharply with her two plump palms. Cross-legged in the mud, O’LiamRoe watched, a forgotten grin on his face.
When the bell rang for Vespers they had found how to make the fan unfurl descending, and were experimenting, hazel eyes and blue gazing upwards, Thady’s hands flying just above Mary’s ruffled head. Then the bell clanged and instantly he sent his implements flying; oranges lobbed each child on the skull, the fan struck Jenny Fleming and the hat dropped precisely on Mary’s own head. Warm with pleasure, forgetful, she swung on his arm, ignoring her nurse’s purposeful moves. ‘Master Thady, Master Thady, do you tell me a riddle?’
It was the first time, thought Robin Stewart, amused, that he had seen Thady Boy pulled up short. Anyone can seize a child’s interest for a moment. To keep it needs rather more than one trick.
Thady Boy looked down at her, her weight on his arm, swinging her a little while he thought. ‘It is time to go in. Ask your lady aunt about the three thousand monkeys of Catusaye who came at bell stroke to take their supper by hand. Is there a particular riddle you want?’
They were moving out of the paddock. She turned back, pulled François to his feet, and returned, holding his hand. ‘Anything. A new one.’
Jenny Fleming had come forward. She laid a hand on Mary’s shoulder, a glint of mischief on her face. ‘Don’t bother folk, child. You know all the riddles there are.’
True for you, lady,’ said Thady Boy Ballagh, ‘but there is no woman so great that she knows all the answers there are. There is the one on the monks and the pears, now, what about the like of that? The answer you must work out for yourself.’
It was new to Stewart as well.
‘Trois moines passoient
Trois poires pendoient
Chascun en prist une
Et s’en demeura deux.’
Later, without success, he tried to get the solution out of the ollave; it annoyed him to be left out. He became irritatedly aware that he had to add the royal children to the list of his rivals. If O’LiamRoe had not been there, Stewart would have tried to quarrel with Ballagh again.
But Thady Boy was extraordinarily forbearing; and O’LiamRoe was silent all the way back to the castle, pricked for the first time in his life by the terrible innocence of childhood.
The next day they resumed their journey, and Thady and his patrons were restored to adult pursuits. They raced. They shot. At Fontainebleau they set fire to a birch grove and hurled their mounts through it. At Corbeil they paid the boatmen to exchange clothes and in blue caps and wide breeches towed the women’s dress boxes to a side stream and held them to ransom.
By that time, the gaming was at a fairly high level. Between Melun and Gien, Thady lost Piedar Dooly as his last stake at the tables; and stark sober and hissing the little Firbolg was in pledge for ten days, eating black bread and beans. None of the others was approaching sober, except O’LiamRoe. Surprised and interested, and gifted by nature with no compelling urge to join in, he understood that this, in an unfettered form, was what Lymond meant by taking a holiday. When shortly before Gien, the all-night escapades on strong wine bowled the last of them over, O’LiamRoe captured a donkey, loaded his ollave into a pannier, and paid a boy two silver carlins to see him on to a boat. There Lymond, who was by no means incapable, curled up peacefully and slept.
II
Blois: Red Tracks in the Wood
The dog that follows a woman and that has on a tested