Queens' Play (46 page)

O’LiamRoe, his evidence unwanted, was silent throughout. His most powerful memory of an unpleasant experience was the little silence after Stewart’s diatribe against his former captain, when the Archer’s eyes, passionate in his sunk, meagre face, had turned on him. The look had held a fearful triumph, and an accusation as well. Stewart had carried out his share of the bargain. It remained for
O’LiamRoe to support him in the other half, when he chose to call on him to expose Francis Crawford of Lymond.

His other recollection came at the end, when sentence had been passed. It was not a quick or dainty death they had devised for Stewart; but he must have expected that. What he had not expected, clearly, was the smooth jettisoning of the entire case against Lord d’Aubigny. It was then that he began to shout, and they took him away. O’LiamRoe, his round face pale, wanted to leave, but had to wait until the King rose. The hearing had been short because of the bearbaiting in the moat. Stewart had not even had time, at the end, to mention Lymond. It came to O’LiamRoe that Stewart would only do that anyway, if humanly possible, in Lymond’s presence, and with the largest audience he could get.

It was at this moment that he heard Lord d’Aubigny, laughing, suggest to his grace that in view of the discomfort he personally had suffered, the Court was entitled to a little amusement, not to say revenge. He proposed that Robin Stewart should be exposed in the moat; and the suggestion, with some pleasantries, was accepted.

The Court, such as it was, rose. O’LiamRoe, looking grim, went off immediately to try to find Vervassal but did not succeed, being only just in time himself to take his place at the baiting.

Traditionally, at Angers, such shows were held in the ditch, a hundred feet wide and forty deep, which circled the castle. The tame deer this time had been cleared out, and for the time of the royal visit Abernaci and his staff had restored the moat and the castle gardens to something of the redolent vivacity of Roi Rene’s time, when lions roared from the river bank, the pond was stocked with swans, ducks and wild geese, and there were ostriches and donkeys, dromedaries and ibexes, and lodges of boars, ewes, deer and porcupines in the moat.

Now a miscellany of instruments, somewhere, had started to play and Brusquet, the King’s fool, had descended a ladder into the moat and was performing, in mime, both sides of an encounter between a very shy lady goat and her suitor. The townspeople, on the far side of the ditch, were amused to the point of hysterics; Brusquet, who had mistimed his programme a little, capered on, smiling harshly, while the royal stand remained empty.

Then the trumpets blew, drowning the viols; but for the entrance of the Queen Dowager of Scotland with her ladies and noblemen, pacing between the great doors of the castle and on to the canopied drawbridge where the gold fringe whipped in the wind, and the gilded chairs, neatly arrayed, had dust and grass seed caught already in their cushions. The thick clouds tumbled over the sky, jerking shadow
back and forth, as if dispensing sunlight from a badly made drawer; and Margaret Erskine, as she walked between the Dowager and the child Queen, did her best to keep her eyes from the new face in the torrid, familiar crowd.

Reserved and correct, Vervassal had arrived that morning. They had all seen him enter and leave the Queen Dowager’s cabinet. He had not sought their company since. She saw, from George Douglas’s sudden halt, that Lymond’s arrival was new to him. After a second Sir George, having failed to catch Vervassal’s own gaze, turned and threw a vast query in her direction, suggestive of a reeling astonishment laced with malice.

She turned away. Mary, thank God, had noticed nothing. The Dowager, although a little flushed, was of the order of superb politicians to whom dissimulation was life. Her brothers, at her other side, obviously had met the herald fleetingly, if at all, and had dismissed him utterly. Lymond himself, looking like ice, had not put a foot wrong; nor had he looked at her. She found, without realizing it, that she was watching him again, and took her place hurriedly along the side rail of the drawbridge. Even two years ago, he had not looked like that.

Then the fanfares burst out afresh, and the long gallery on the castle face at right angles to theirs became filled. Henri. Catherine. The Constable. Diane. The courtiers. The Ambassadors, the mayor and échevins, the castle Governor, the guests. On one side, in an indifferent seat, was O’LiamRoe. At the other, much nearer the front, the man O’Connor. And next to O’Connor was John Stewart, Lord d’Aubigny.

He was handsome still; magnificent in his puffed and slashed doublet, the shoulder knots sparkling, the jewels on his slanting bonnet flaring as the flickering canopy admitted the sun. But he took no time to gaze down at the arena. Instead, fists in his lap, he turned his well-shaped, long-lashed eyes on the crowded drawbridge.

Margaret could have told the very second he found what he sought. His lordship of Aubigny drew a deep breath. Whatever, from his brother’s warning, he had been expecting, it was clearly not this. Then slowly, as he gazed still at Lymond, the colour returned to his face and Margaret realized she was watching an open challenge. D’Aubigny was intent on capturing Lymond’s gaze. Then, suddenly, he had it. Between gallery and gallery each man looked silently into the other’s eyes and conveyed, not an ultimatum but a judgment. Then below, the first bear and the dogs were let in.

It was an old sport, a little run-down now, popular since the days of the Triple Goddess when lions by the hundred, elephants, bulls, giraffes, were killed in internecine combat in the Roman ring. It was a little difficult, now, to find new and interesting combinations. Once
the old King had cheered the Court for a fortnight by laying his drunken dinner guests in the lionhouse, à la Heliogabalus, and then introducing a very old beast with its teeth drawn, to shock them awake; it was not repeated, as the lion shortly afterwards went into a decline. Modern baiting was simpler: between bear and bear, or boar and mastiffs, or bull and lion; rarely between beast and man. The animals were brought in wheeled carts, pushed close to the arena gates. Outside, Abernaci and his staff stood waiting, with swords and spears and lighted torches, ready for accidents.

They were not needed. The first two combats took their course. The bear, ponderous and flat-handed, bare-rumped with disease, still managed to strangle one of the mastiffs pitted against him, and broke the spine of the second. They pelted his bleeding muzzle with flowers as he was led off.

The boar was a different matter. A bolster of fat and muscle, plated with spikes, he hurtled sud-strewn through the gates and stopped, skidding, under the straw dummies they had dangled over his head. This was not a sanglier, but a fresh-caught wild boar of the third year. The arms and grinders stuck dripping out of his mouth were nearly two fingers thick; and in the heavy head, sunk below the strong flesh of his shoulders, the eyes were needle-sharp and red.

He was angry, excited and frightened; and the grotesque, wind-jolted dummies catching his eye, he raced towards them and gored. There was a cheer, and a spatter of straw whisked into august faces. The two bigger tushes, contrary to appearance, were harmless; they existed only to whet the two lower. With these he kills. Grunting, the boar turned in its small feet and made for the next figure.

Amid the cheers Sir George Douglas at last worked to Vervassal’s glittering shoulder. For a moment he studied the downcast lashes and the imprint of well-bred deference held, evidently without effort, on that harlequin face. Then he turned his own eyes to the boar and said, just loud enough for Francis Crawford to hear, ‘It is a proud beast, and fierie and perilous; for some have seen him slit a man from knee up to the breast and slay him all stark dead, so that he never spake thereafter.—You know that Robin Stewart is about to take the arena?’

He got Lymond’s attention then; all of it, except that the man’s eyes in the event looked through him and not at him. ‘Dear me, really?’ said Lymond slowly. ‘I wonder why.’

The answer to that was easy. Sport. They wouldn’t permit him to be badly damaged; indeed, if he were skilful, he might make his kill and escape unhurt until his official disembowelling. Sir George was not fool enough to give Lymond the easy answer. He waited, alive with curiosity, and after a moment the other man said reflectively, ‘Of course, a little public odium would be helpful,’ and turned back
to the ditch as if satisfied. Resignedly, Sir George settled to watch.

Behind the gates, the keepers had launched into the
agere aprum
, the shouting and horn blowing calculated to rouse the beast and bring him to frenzy. The third dummy, exploding on the wet tusks, snapped free and flounced over the grass. The boar’s head dipped, and with a rustle the dummy soared into the crowd on a flying carpet of straw rack and glitter. The King, glancing at Lord d’Aubigny, leaned forward and raised his baton. As the boar turned, dripping, and paused, the gates opened and Robin Stewart was pushed inside.

From the Archers lining the stands and the passages, there was rigid silence. From the townspeople, long since primed by rumour with tales of more deeds than he had ever done, there rose a clamour of shrieks, hissings and mock threats. He was the fourth dummy. They did not much care what he had done, if it made good gossip and good burning. From the Court, according to rank and nationality, there was impatience, anger and disgust, and ordinary pleasurable anticipation. The Dowager’s features were set in their harshest mould; but then a great many people were looking at her. A trumpet blew.

A boar trusts to his strength and his tushes, and not to his feet, which are slow and less than nimble. To kill him, a man needs a spear of exceptional strength, razor-sharp, with a crossbar of great staying power. This is to prevent the spear, once driven in, from sinking so deep that the man is brought within range of the boar’s last, formidable charge.

Robin Stewart had one of these; and in his other hand a sword. He had also, invisibly, the years of his profession, when from Christmas to Candlemas every year a chosen escort of Archers had helped the monarch bait, net and spear his boar. And more than these was a violent anger, driving out even fear, at the fate which could strip him of the dignity of death and the pleasures of denunciation at one stroke.

He did not suppose he would be left deliberately to die. Someone would intervene—if they could. But he was there to make sport, with the beast of this world that is strongest armed, and can sooner slay a man than any other. In the last resort, the man his life depended on was himself. And Thady Boy—Lymond—wherever he was, was still untrammelled, still feted and free.

A gust of wind rocked the last dummy. The boar, hearing, started round at it and then paused. The heavy head turned again, and the small, thick-veined eyes hunted, stiffly, for the man-figure the delicate nose had picked out. The young boar, the animal gregale, the stinking beast born to rip, sidled, stopped, gathered his haunches and, shaking his leather hide, his shield and his straw-spattered spikes, launched into a straight charge at the Archer.

As if Beelzebub, god of Accaron, oracle of Ochazias, had dragged her by the hair, Margaret Erskine looked round. She met, disconcertingly, the direct gaze of George Douglas, who raised his eyebrows in even more exaggerated enquiry this time. Beside him was an empty seat. Circumspectly, controlling all her impulses, she searched the crowds, to realize presently that the Queen Dowager, calling on her herald for some service, had kept him at her side. Lymond was folded neatly beside Mary of Guise’s chair, distracting the attention of several nearby ladies and enjoying an uninterrupted view of Robin Stewart sidestepping the first rush of the boar.

Robin Stewart’s view being equally unimpeded, he glanced up, gasping, from this endeavour in which he had slit, but not impaled, the boar’s hide, and discovered that Heliogabalus, fair, exquisite and untouched in cloth of gold, was in the front row, savouring him. He turned on the boar, and the boar backed.

Then, transfigured with anger. Robin Stewart fought, and fought well: well enough for the laughter and the drawled abuse to alter to excitement. A direct hit he could not get. But as time went on, the black mess on the animal’s hide showed how near he had come; and Stewart’s gashed left arm, the stained doublet and the sword split in the grass told of something stoical and persevering which had always been there, but seldom drawn out in other than low causes and grumbling.

Man and beast were by that time tired, shaken with effort and the loss of much blood. The boar, sustained more than Stewart now by stubborn anger, slid and threshed on the grassy tilth, and turning, lowered his head afresh.

Now, if ever, was the moment for Henri to end it: to drop the baton and let the Archer serve his days of waiting with honourable wounds. It was Lord d’Aubigny who stayed his hand, and his own passionate love of sport which left the baton untouched. For Stewart, in Roman style, was kneeling, his back to the castle wall and the shaft of the spear tight in both hands, waiting for the boar face to face. And for the flicker of a second, as the lumbering creature gathered speed, Stewart’s eyes turned, searching, to the crowded faces above his head. Some of his audience, in this ultimate moment, had risen craning to their feet. And among them, suddenly, was the herald Vervassal.