Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [91]
‘Set fire to the rest of him, my dear, and drop him below.’
Thady’s teeth shone white, and his eyes blazed with drink and with laughter. ‘Robin is my partner, monseigneur.’
The ringed fingers on his shirt tightened. ‘You are racing with me.’ In his smiling, sleepless face, d’Enghien’s eyes were black and glittering. ‘You’re very drunk, my dear. Entrust to me those beautiful hands. We must not risk a fall.’
Lymond, staring back, did not move. ‘Find yourself a new lámdhia. My hands are for the only fellow among you who has not had the drop in him since suppertime.’
Jean de Bourbon, sieur d’Enghien, no more vicious than the rest, had his own style of wildness. He answered the rebuff quite simply by a neat jab which knocked Robin Stewart staggering down the roof. At the gutter he fell. As the edge struck his back Thady Boy flung himself full length in the gulley and brought his arm hard down on the somersaulting body. Then a hand beneath his head gave Stewart the leverage he needed. He swung himself half round and, using a gargoyle at his hand, threw his weight up and back to the roof. Thady Boy gave him a parting shove and sat up, rubbing his grazed palms and gazing sardonically at d’Enghien who was standing still, breathing rather hard.
Of the rest, only St. André was clearheaded enough to have noticed. He gripped the young man’s satin arm, speaking briefly, and d’Enghien answered tartly; then, staring at Robin Stewart, made a three-word apology and turned his back. St. André, catching Thady Boy’s eye, smiled and shrugged and then, to a roll on the side drum, bent in the sudden silence to catch a white packet thrown up from below. In it were the first clues. The rules they knew. To set foot on ground level was to be disqualified. Each clue would lead them to a fresh house. In each house was a new clue and a word they must memorize. The couple to reach the château first, over the rooftops with the whole message, would be the winners.
On the roof, in the red glare of pitch torches, the heat was surprising. Below them, splayed, crooked, jostling, the impacted rooftops of Blois like some dental nightmare sloped down from the hill to where the plateau of the château rose blue-black against the green-black of the sky, iced and prickled with lights. On their left, beyond serried chimneys, the river Loire lay like pewter, braided with dark trees. Above, it was cool, sparkling and silent: a gracious winter sky below which earth’s younglings could rest. With a roar that rattled the windows, the steeplechase began.
At first the danger lay in the numbers. They ran shoulder to shoulder, pushing, joking and jostling for position along the flat-topped sloping roof, twisting past the hot chimney, and sliding down the blue tiles. The next house, a yard away, was lower. Stewart hesitated but beside him Thady Boy leaped into space and landed, bouncing on the crown of the thatch. Stewart jumped, was caught, and ran.
For the space of three houses, the levels were uneven, but just feasible. At the fourth they were faced with a blank wall, a brick and stone house a full three stories above their heads. It was just possible to get a toehold among the packed bricks. Thady Boy watched the leaders start to climb. Then he looked up at the sky, glanced back at his partner, and backing a little, deliberately put out his torch. Turning his face to the street, he started to run. Stewart saw him launch into his jump from the gutter, arms outflung, hurtling across the narrow gap of paving below. The width was not excessive; the roof opposite was flat. Tumbling, he landed on the edge, somersaulted forward and leaped up as Robin Stewart, elbows flailing, arrived smash in his wake. When the Archer got to his feet Thady Boy, running lightly, was already halfway down the