The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [270]
At the door they met Philip Gunter, the sober merchant from Corn-hill who supplied Sir Henry with most of his bedding and hangings and who, delivering buckram and bells to the Office, had remained there to speak to Sir Henry. It was, Philippa said, a matter of choosing a tapestry. The two men disappeared and Philippa, aping faintly the custodian of King Arthur’s Round Table, led Mr Crawford, Mr d’Harcourt and Nicholas through the door and into the hall of the Revels.
At first, dazzled by the sun, the gloom seemed unrelieved and the smell of horse hoofs and flax oil unbearable. Then it could be seen that sun, of a sort, was entering through the high rows of dim churchly windows, and that the vast fire at one end, spitting coal dust and wood smoke and frying jewels of rosin was barred by the untoward assembly of manifold objects for drying.
On either side of the fire were the benches: long, rough benches with butts of thread on them, and cutting and paring knives, and shears, and pins and bodkins and thimbles, and coils of wire and black chalk and rolls of tinfoil. And paper and ink, and fine pens of swans’ quills, and powder for dusting. And nails and cering candles and rubbing brushes. And on shelves over the tables, painters’ pots of red lead and yellow ochre and vermilion, and saffron and sap green and dragon red, and a row of wood headblocks for hats, on which some treasonable hand had sketched royal likenesses.
Gum arabic over there. Beside the fire, buckets of glue, thick as cloth at the edges, and painters’ paste of thick flour and white wine, reeking gently. And against the wall, stacks of pasteboard with cut buckram long as bolsters leaning beside them, and the painters crawling between on the rushes: Dick and George, the Bosum brothers. Philippa introduced them. John, the property maker. The twenty tailors, crosslegged among the bales of new cloth sent straight from the Queen’s own royal wardrobe: twenty-five yards of red velvet; fifteen yards of carnation velvet; nine yards of purple gold sarsanet, twenty-five yards of yellow, forty-nine yards of red, thirty-three yards of white and four of silver. Philippa admired them, and the Yeoman of the Revels, John Holt, called her by name.
‘They know you,’ said Ludovic d’Harcourt
‘She is the model,’ said Lymond, ‘for their dragons. What are they preparing for? War with the French?’
Philippa smiled at John Holt. ‘A St Mark’s Day Masque for the Duchesses. Allmaynes, Pilgrims and Irishmen, with their Incidents. Right, Master Holt?’
‘Right, Mistress Philippa,’ said the Yeoman. He turned, grinning, to the two men and the boy. ‘I don’t know how we’d have managed with those Turks, but for Mistress Philippa.’
‘Mistress Philippa is excellent at managing Turks,’ Lymond said. ‘Allmaynes … Yes. Irishmen … I believe so. But pilgrims? Mistress Philippa, could you manage pilgrims?’
She looked up at him, her brown eyes astonished. ‘I start with the Whifflers,’ said Philippa, ‘and work my way up.’
‘Whifflers?’ said Ludovic d’Harcourt.
‘They march in front of the pilgrimage,’ offered Nicholas eagerly. ‘And clear the way with wood wands. The wands striking the air make a——’
‘Whiffle,’ said Philippa gently.
‘To make people buffle,’ said Lymond, even more gently. ‘Unlike hufflers.…’
‘Who take umbrage too readily,’ said Philippa, frowning at him. She said to Master Holt, ‘I arranged with Master Becher the milliner to leave me his drakes’ necks.’
‘They’re there, Mistress Philippa.’ They followed him across to the store racks. Nearing the tall wooden erections, Nicholas saw for the first time how many there were. What seemed at first a thick screen of shelving was in fact a type of rough scaffolding filling a good half of the great hall, and halting just before