The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [103]
A small orchestra played on a dais at the back of the hall, and the dancers spun about in graceful circles, a hundred bright eddies in a many-hued pool. Masked harlequins worked their way through the lively throng, distributing drinks and candies and sweetmeats. It was a bewildering maelstrom, for a man in search of a singular and particular quarry.
Quire looked up, not to the glittering chandelier with its dozen gas-jet pinpricks of white light, but to the wide balconies that ran around the hall. They were filled with seating, for the ballroom served as lecture hall too. He found his way up there easily, and it seemed a safe enough vantage point. He could look down upon the whole delirious scene, and saw not a single face, masked or otherwise, lifted up towards him; the entire population of the ballroom was entirely absorbed in the festival they had fashioned for themselves.
It took him a little while to find them. The cacophony of sight and sound down there on the floor was distracting, making it difficult to pick out the details he needed. But there they were: Ruthven and Isabel, his wife, dancing with the rest, close to the musicians. He a turbaned corsair, complete with a great sabre at his belt that Quire could tell even from this distance was a fabrication; she an Ottoman princess, or harem girl perhaps, radiant in pink silks, flowing skirt bedecked with glimmering glass beads.
Durand stood alone, right back against the wall near the doors. Exactly what character he was meant to portray, Quire was unsure, for the Frenchman looked little different from his usual dapper style, save for the addition of a powdered wig of the most old-fashioned sort. He was sipping from a tall fluted glass, but did not give the impression of a man greatly enjoying the experience.
Quire went quickly down and slipped out once more to find Dunbar, who was leaning on the counter of the cloakroom, keeping a discreet watch to ensure that the servant Quire had deprived of his costume did not change his mind and raise a hue and cry.
Quire pushed the suffocating mask up on to the top of his head, and savoured the release from its confinement.
“You look like a bit of roast meat,” Dunbar observed.
“Never mind that,” Quire said, wiping the sweat from his face with his chaotically coloured sleeve. “I’ve seen the man I need. I’ll send him out to you. You’ll know him when you see him: small man, about fifty or so, wearing a stupid little wig.”
“What about you?” Dunbar asked.
“I’ll hang back, just for a minute, to make sure we’re not followed. We need to spirit him away, if we can, and leave them not knowing we’ve got him, let alone where we’ve taken him. You just get rid of the silly wig he’s wearing off his head, and wrap him up in the cape. If you can sneak a hat out of the cloakroom, maybe put that on him, too. I’d have brought one if I’d thought of it. Anything that’ll make him harder to spot or recognise. I don’t need anyone even remembering the sight of him, so they can’t say where he’s gone if they’re asked.”
“Aye, and I don’t want to know myself. Whatever it is you’re up to, I’m about at my limit for getting involved.”
“Quite right. Don’t worry about that.”
Quire hurried back to the door of the ballroom, eager to ensure the dance did not finish, and the Ruthvens abandon the dance floor, before he had done what he came to do. Everything was, thus far, playing out more easily than he could have hoped, and he did not mean to mock his good fortune by pushing it any further than it wanted to go.
He plunged into the gorgeous assembly, and made his way directly towards Durand. He went through the crowd a little more roughly and urgently than was fitting for a servant, but that seemed a risk worth the taking. A jester he bumped against turned sharply and made some complaint, but Quire was already beyond him, closing on Durand. He was no judge of the sort of music to which these grand folk danced, but there seemed to be a rising, speeding vigour