Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [97]
A long time ago, the crowd had discovered Thady Boy; or Thady Boy had invited the attachment of the crowd. In the last stages of the race, the excitement was frenetic. The whole of Blois was a network of light. Catcalls, screams, jibes, encouragement and insults were flung at them all; but Thady Boy received the compliment of laughter.
None of them now was either fresh or sure-footed. After a chase equal to a hard climb at speed up the most difficult mountain he had ever attempted, Stewart’s knee muscles were on fire, his shoulders ached and his heart burned in his chest. Thady Boy could hardly have fared better, but his inbred sense of the ludicrous never failed. Someone far below played a guitar, and he trod a half measure with a chimney. Of the three clocks they had passed, none was ever straight, timely or decent again. Shutters were for swinging on and roof gardens for plucking and bestowing, nymphlike, on unsuspecting persons below. One angry gentleman, complaining from his window, was mysteriously smoked out of doors three minutes later by his bedroom fire.
As window after window in the quarter lit up and opening doors threw their light golden on the running Blésois below, hands waved to the dark figures slithering by. Someone reached up a hot sausage on a stick, and a trio of tousle-headed kitchenmaids, kicking bare heels at an attic window, passed up and tossed them a stolen bottle of wine, and received three kisses, at speed; and three more, alarmingly, from a hilarious Stewart.
Thady and his partner drank the wine as they scrambled on, St. Andre and de Genstan two houses behind. Then they were among the Benedictines’ sloping roofs and ahead of them was the squat, foursquare tower of St. Lomer.
It was an outside climb, vertical from base to belfry, with no unbarred window which would admit them. Nothing they had attempted so far had been a tenth as difficult. It was Thady who, speaking soberly for once, insisted that they should be roped together. ‘Lean inwards, keep your hands low and use my footholds Let me make the pace. If you’re worried, use the free rope to belay yourself and give a shout. Forget the audience. A hay ladder is all they could climb.’ He smiled suddenly, a carefree, friendly, uncalculated smile; then turning, black head upflung, began the ascent.
Sometimes in nightmares, Stewart re-created that climb. The tower was three hundred years old, and its weathered fabric offered crevices; but by the same token nothing—gutter or stringcourse, cornice or coping stone—could be taken for granted. A parapet, firm under one foot, might crumble under the other; a louvre break beneath the fingers. To the upturned faces in the street, the two climbers moved infinitely slowly. To St. André, leaping and stumbling over the remaining roofs, it was faster than he thought possible. Eyes stinging with sweat, he strained to watch every foothold. When he and Laurens climbed, it would be quicker. Then the other two had to find the word to be memorized, and the clue, and disentangle it. If he or de Genstan could so much as lay hands on the funambulist’s rope before it was cut, they stood a chance. No Scots Guard, no Irishman, however mad or however drunk, would cut it while St André was crossing, and send the King’s friend to die on the rocks.
Shoulder to shoulder with Laurens de Genstan he climbed the rooftops that cluttered the south shoulder of the church, and the crowds at the foot of the façade, with its three great doors, its arcades, its twin towers and rose window, surged round to watch. Then reaching the sloped roof of St. Lomer itself, the two men scrambled to the base of the tower and started to climb.
Between Thady Boy and Robin Stewart the rope hung slack. The fat man was moving gently, testing foot and handholds half seen in the dark, and Stewart crawled up after, paying