Into the noisy mob, with his arm about the waist of his paramour, stalked cocky Captain Quire, his sword jutting behind him like the wagging tail of a triumphant mongrel who has found the way into the butcher’s store. The elaborate white and silver costume of his companion, the little tinsel crown upon the coiffeured head, face powdered white, eyes hugely exaggerated, lips a startling crimson, were in evident parody of the Queen as she had appeared during the festivities on the ice.
Tinkler, patting at the back of his singed coat, staggered up to greet his master and was shocked. “Hermes, Captain, what’s this?”
“Our very own Queen, Tink, come to see her people. Pay your respects, Sir Tinkler. Let’s see you make a good leg.”
And Tinkler, infected as always by Quire’s confidence, fell in with the charade at once and bowed deep, whipping off his tattered cap, his snag tooth twisting upwards in a grin. “Welcome, Your Majesty-to the-the Court of King Booze!” He giggled and staggered, grabbing hold of dark-chinned Hogge, who passed with two tankards in either hand. “May I present to Your Majesty Lord Grunt of Hogge and"-he pulled on the wrist of the wench who had pushed him into the fire-"Lady Sow, his beautiful wife.” She pushed him again and he sat down in the slushy mud of the yard, still grinning. “But which Queen is it we honour? What’s her name?”
“Why, it’s Philomena,” said Quire, struggling from the bearskin coat to reveal his own black cloak beneath. From his belt he took his folded sombrero and smoothed it out, brushing at the crow’s feathers. “Queen Philomena-the Queen of Love!” Quire pinched his queen upon the painted cheek, upon the silken bottom, and caused a simper, though the huge, hot eyes were also a little startled, a little wary. The pair moved closer to the bonfire and Quire took one of Hogge’s tankards for himself, another for the Queen. “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Gryffyn. A cheer, if you please, for your sovereign, Queen Philomena, who dubs this night a Night of Love and bids you celebrate in her name.”
As the crowd began to cheer, and some of them cried out bawdy promises to Quire’s queen, the captain looked about him in mock astonishment.
“I see no throne. What’s become of it? Where’s the Queen’s great Chair of State? What shall she sit upon?”
The answer was loud and conventional. Quire continued to play to the crowd. He held up his hands. “You are bad hosts. Sir Harlekin here will tell you that the Queen’s guests were better treated.” He put his arm around the patch-coated shoulder of the comedian, who hiccuped theatrically in his face and scratched his eye under his mask. “All had chairs, did they not?”
“They did, sir.”
“Good, solid chairs?”
“Excellent chairs, sir. Your Queen’s a beauty and I’d swear she’s-”
But already a large, high-backed chair was being passed over the heads of the mob and placed so that it was framed by the firelight behind. Again Quire bowed. “Be seated, madam, if you please.” With an awkward curtsey the mock-queen sat and stared around at the newfound Court, who, slack-mouthed, stared back. It seemed that she was drunk, or drugged, for her eyes were glazed and her own mouth moved oddly, though she showed lechery enough for Quire whenever he tickled her and licked her ear and whispered into it.
“Oh, Phil, how you’d satisfy the Caliph now-so much better than the real Queen.” Quire grinned, and hugged his concubine tighter.
And Phil Starling, gone quite Eros-mad, simpered at his lover, his master, and looked at the wonderful ruby ring upon his finger and could not believe that such riches could be his.
THE TENTH CHAPTER
It seemed so permanent,” said Lady Lyst, kneeling on her window seat and looking down into the February morning. “I thought the snow had come to stay forever. Look, Wheldrake, it’s melting. See, crocuses and snowdrops!” She stared over her shoulder at her untidy room, scattered with books, papers, ink, instruments, dresses, bottles, stuffed animals and living birds, where her tiny crimson-combed lover strutted, in a black dressing gown, a sheet of paper in one hand and a pen in the other.
“Um,” he said. “Well, spring won’t be long now. Listen"-and he quoted the sheet:
“And Ada’s Ardour’s slowly growing cold
’Neath leaden hammer blows
Of Slavic Prose,
As picking at his Academic nose
He’ll pass in Public as a
Wit And Labouring Iron transmute to Gold.”
“Well, what d’you think? Got ’im, eh?”
“But I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she said. “A rival poet? Really, Wheldrake, you become increasingly obscure and decreasingly inventive as times goes on.”
“No! It’s him! He grows obscure!” Master Wheldrake’s arms flapped as if some primitive pterosaur tried desperately to take to the air for the first time. “Not me!”
“You, too. And I don’t know him.” Her lovely blue eyes were wider than ever as they regarded him with a certain distant sadness; her lovely golden hair fell in unruly strands across her golden face. “And I doubt, Wheldrake, dear, from your tone, if he knows you.”
“Damn him!” Wheldrake stalked, as best he could, through the rubble of her room. Parrots and macaws cackled and fled for the thicker growths of ivy near the ceiling. “He’s rich-because he panders to the public. Makes ’em think they’re intelligent! Bah! While I’m here, forever, dependent on the Queen’s patronage, when all I want is her respect.”
“She said how much she liked the last Masque, and Montfallcon murmured of an imminent knighthood.”
“I’m wasting my time, Lucinda, writing indifferent attacks on rival poets, self-pitying verse against women who’ve rejected me, and earning my keep by writing elephantine, grandiloquent farts to be performed by the Court’s Philistines. My poetry, my old poetry, is slipping away from me. I lack stimulus.”
“Arioch, Wheldrake! I’d have thought you’d have had enough of that to last you through a hundred sonnets at least!”
He frowned and began his return flight, ink from his pen splashing upon her upturned chests and draperies, her half-read metaphysical tomes, crumpling the paper as he came. “I told you. No more scourges.”
She turned again to the window. She was neutral. “Perhaps you should return to your North country to your borders?”
“Where I’m even more misunderstood. I’d considered a journey to Arabia. I have an affinity I believe, with Arabia. What did you think of the Grand Caliph?”
“Well, he was very Arabian. He had a good opinion of himself, I think.” Lady Lyst vaguely scratched her ribs.
“He was confident.”
“Aye, he was that.” She yawned.
“He impressed the Queen, you could tell, with his exotic sensuality. So much more than poor, bumbling Poland.”
“She was kind to Poland,” said Lady Lyst.
“Yet both departed, frustrated in their ambitions, with Albion unconquered. They made the mistake of laying siege when they should have delivered themselves as captives at her feet.”