Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [92]
They re-crossed further down the road and found by the bobbing torchlight they had gained two housetops by the manœuvre. Then they were in the Carrefour St.-Michel, and next to the high sloping roof of Diane de Poitiers’s town house.
She was not there; always at Blois she slept at the château when the King was in residence. The clues they sought, one for each pair, were in the attic. It was a tricky climb round the twisted columns of the dormer and on to the carved sill. Thady Boy moved in like a marmoset while Stewart waited, anxiously watching the torches; and the next two competitors arrived as the ollave climbed out and up. He gave de Genstan a deft flick with his toe as he went, so that the young Franco-Scot, shouting, dived neatly into the room; and then, grinning, joined Stewart on the rooftop to read the clue by the bright moon. He stayed for some moments—too long for Stewart’s liking—before saying, ‘All right. Come on …’ and hurling the crumpled paper to the street. Stewart followed blindly. Acrostics in French or acrostics in Hebrew were still Greek to him.
The Rue des Juifs led out of the square, and this time the house they wanted was at the far end. Their lead now was much reduced. Three couples were hard on their heels: d’Enghien, with his brother Condé as partner; Tom Erskine’s brother Arthur with Claude de Guise, Duke of Aumale; and St. André, running with Laurens de Genstan. More distantly were two others, and behind that four more partners were following slavishly, having failed either to enter the attic or interpret the clue. These alone now kept their torches; the leaders, like Thady Boy, had preferred to trust to darkness. And lacking the word cypher the others had memorized, they had no chance of winning, although they might be ready to run for the sport.
Below, their audience ran too, lamps swinging, torches streaming, and shouted insults and encouragement. Sliding, jumping, Stewart hardly saw them. Once, when a cat sprang, spitting, from a corner, he stopped with a gasp; and once, as a tile broke loose under his foot, he froze, gripping the gutter as the thing clanked and slid to drop tinkling below. ‘Good God, there’s no time to spit,’ exclaimed Thady, passing his shoulder; and grinning, Stewart picked himself up and ran after.
Then, minutes ahead of their rivals, they stood high on the pinnacle of some merchant’s house, looking across a twelve-foot gap to the roof slope of the house they next wanted, soaring high over their heads to the fretted, stalk-chimneyed ridge and plunging below to inaccessible gutters, below which was the only window in the whole facing wall. It was a large window, with a small balcony, and the balcony rails ended in spikes. On either side of the two men, the roof they were crossing planed down, blue and silver in the moonlight, to overhang the packed street. It offered a standing jump across twelve feet to a gradient too steep to walk on; and it was impossible.
Stewart, clinging to his side of the chimney and breathing fast, found Thady Boy had hardly hesitated. Sliding, slipping, using his hands as brakes, he made his way down the overlapping Angevin tiles to the roof’s edge and with infinite care swung himself over. Then, his fingers in the gutter, his shadow moving and jerking on the cobbles far below, he began to move along the timber face of the building.
Stewart followed. He let himself down, found a toehold in the wood, and instantly found what Thady Boy had seen from above: a window facing out across the gap they must cross, with a balcony. To reach it meant leaving the gutter: for some steps their only foothold and their only grasp would be the uneven surface of the wood. Stewart, spread-eagled, his heart cold, saw the dark head turn towards him and something gleam. Then Thady Boy, pressing his soft bulk against the building, felt downwards with one shoeless foot, found a toehold and began to transfer his weight. Then there was another spark of metal,