Queens' Play (66 page)

‘And that, you think, I should find easy,’ Lymond said; and even to himself his voice sounded odd. It was cold. O’LiamRoe spoke and it came to Lymond, only then, that something was happening to him, and that he did not know if his eyes were closed or foolishly open, or even if he were moving or not. It was the last, bloody, squeak-gutted, pusillanimous straw.

As O’LiamRoe began to run towards him, Lymond swept round to the window and with a force that jarred the hair loose on his brow, smashed his fist clean through the glass. The mild, herbal airs of the forest welled through the space, and O’LiamRoe stopped.

For a long moment, neither man moved. Then the air, or the pain, did its work. Lymond opened his eyes, straightened, and after hesitating for a second, walked past O’LiamRoe to the table. He sat down, holding his injured hand tight with the other, Robin Stewart’s blood and his own mixed on his sleeve.

‘That is the work of a child,’ said the Prince of Barrow, and opening the beautiful pack on the floor, began to search it for bandages. After a moment he got up from the litter and came over. ‘Here.’ Lymond, his gaze on his hand, had not moved.

There were flies in the warm wine. O’LiamRoe tipped them out and slapped the jug back on the table. ‘He got it for you, so you might as well have it. Give me your hand.’

The thinned mouth tightened. Then Francis Crawford gave up his wrist, pushing the jug untasted away, and said in his ordinary voice, ‘Yes, of course. Pure melodrama. How my brother would agree.’ And added, after a moment, ‘Thank you, Phelim. It was all well intentioned, I know … and very likely true.’

Two of the cuts were deep, but nothing was severed: the old bands round the thick glass had given way. By the time he had finished, Lymond was sitting quite collectedly, watching him with a sort of desiccated courtesy. ‘Now what?’ said O’LiamRoe.

‘Now for the funeral,’ said Lymond flatly, and got up.

The forest floor was soft. They dug in the small clearing; with stones, with their hands, and finally with a shovel O’LiamRoe unearthed from an old midden. In his pack was the Archer’s cloak
they wrapped him in; and the twined crescents of Henri and his mistress glittered up from the rich dark mould.

Lymond, looking down for the last time, saluted, as O’LiamRoe had done, the meticulous shadow of himself, then bent, with O’LiamRoe, to obliterate it for ever.

It was a pleasant grave; gentler than the gibbet, or the town spikes, or the cold yard of uncaring, distant kin. They buried his pack with him, and put his hands on his sword, and put the turf like a living mosaic where he had been.

‘Let us be tidy at all costs,’ said Lymond. He came to where O’LiamRoe had flung himself, the last task done, and stood swaying a little, his face emptied of emotion, the blood drying on the soiled bandage round his hand. ‘What, in the event, did Margaret Erskine say? Now, if ever, seems the time to tell me.’

O’LiamRoe looked up, sweat spilled in the soft cup of his throat.

‘Ah,
dhia
.… Have I not attacked you enough? It was a piece of advice only, and aimed at myself as much, I suppose, as at you.—For those of easy tongues, she said. Remember, some live all their lives without discovering this truth; that the noblest and most terrible power we possess is the power we have, each of us, over the chance-met, the stranger, the passer-by outside your life and your kin. Speak, she said, as you would write: as if your words were letters of lead, graven there for all time, for which you must take the consequences.
And take the consequences.’

Bringing down his gaze from the still, golden-green of the trees, Lymond was for a long time silent. Then he turned squarely to meet O’LiamRoe’s blue eyes and in his own, remotely, a familiar irony showed. ‘Now, that at least I seem able to do,’ said Lymond dryly, and dropping beside the Prince of Barrow, rolled like a weary animal on his back and lay still.

Now the sounds of labour had ceased, birdsong had come back to the wood. You could even see them, high up: a dove, a couple of finches, the swinging flight of a tit. In the trees, the light had changed and ripened; it must be midafternoon by now. Their horses, content with the shade and the deep grass, cropped complacently, the unstrapped bits tinkling like Mass bells. Otherwise the quiet was absolute; the peace heavy as wine.

Out of a warm and billowing mist of some comforting colour, O’LiamRoe realized suddenly that, beside him, Lymond’s breathing was making no sound. With a grunt, forcing his strained eyes open, he lurched to one elbow and looked.

He need not have worried. Francis Crawford and Thady Boy Ballagh were both asleep, noiselessly, the clever hands quiet, the ruffled head sunk in the grass; as still as that other, unendowed face they had just laid to rest.

‘I want your help,’ O’LiamRoe had said to that face, ‘to trim a bowelless devil named Francis Crawford until there’s a human place on his soul to put the mark of grace on.’

The living Robin Stewart had failed. But the dead, thought O’LiamRoe, sinking back, his eyes on the green grass and the cottage from which now no smoke came—Perhaps the dead Robin Stewart would achieve it one day.

‘Lord d’Aubigny,’ said Henri of France, ‘will not leave this realm. Is that sufficiently clear to you all?’

Anne de Montmorency, Marshal, Grand Master and Constable of France, avoided looking at the Queen; by a stroke of good fortune they were without Madame de Valentinois just now.

The conference was over. They knew where they stood, though the arguments over dates and dowry would go on for a long time yet. Magnificent, manly and frank, my lord of Northampton on his King’s behalf had demanded the Queen of Scotland in marriage with his master Edward of England, and had introduced the subject with a short homily of the kind familiar to all diplomats abroad.

His Majesty daily showed himself the towardest prince that ever England had to be her King. The estate of the realm was in good case, and quiet. The Commissioners on the frontiers of Scotland, as they knew, had concluded peace with the Scots. Ireland grew daily towards a good policy: justice and law were being set in good hand in parts where before they were unknown; the base money had been called down and commercial exchange had been reformed. Now, said the Marquis, looking King and Constable straight in the eye, now was the ripest time to carry out the age old promise between his nation and the Scots, and join their two monarchs in promised matrimony.

‘No,’ said the French monarch politely and at even greater length. She was affianced, as everyone knew already, to the Dauphin. ‘We have been at too great pains and spent too many lives for her,’ the French King replied.

And that was over. Northampton, withdrawing without ever having advanced, asked for and was granted the hand of the Princess Elizabeth, Henri’s daughter of six, for his junior King. Provided a suitable dowry could be agreed.

The matter was at length finished. The compact of mutual alliance and defence was virtually sealed. And here in the privacy of his chamber was his Constable, producing witness after witness and argument after argument to demand that Stewart of Aubigny should be put under arrest.

The accusation was true. Even the wronged boy of the Spanish prisons could understand that; its very obstinacy in being blatantly true blinded him with rage. However the Constable gentled him, however calmly Catherine reasoned, the hurt pride was there. Stewart loved him.… Had loved him, once.

‘You have appropriated Scotland today for your son,’ said the Constable painstakingly. ‘To keep by your side Mary’s murderer would be an insult no nation would bear.’

‘Let her leave, the Queen Dowager, if she does not like it. Let her take her begging train back to Scotland.’

‘Insult her people?’ asked the Constable.

‘Insult her family?’ said Catherine’s collected voice.

‘Then,’ said the Constable thoughtfully, ‘there is the charming M. Thady. He will wish satisfaction, and no doubt will expect a reward. My men are daily discovering interesting news of M. Crawford of Lymond. You know he owns the manor of Sevigny?’

‘He is my dear sister the Queen’s,’ said Henri.

Catherine smoothed her fine dress with small, thickly ringed hands, and pursed her big mouth. ‘My guess is—not yet,’ she remarked.

There was a little silence. ‘Then we shall make of Sevigny a comté,’ said the King; and Catherine, smiling, played with her jewels. ‘It is in my mind also to give his lordship of Aubigny work for his company of lances to do, on the frontiers.’

The Constable shifted his elderly bulk. ‘Yes. But he must be shown, Monseigneur … It must be publicly understood that …’

‘As you know,’ said Henri abruptly, ‘we have placed a ban on duelling in this kingdom. A ban not as perfectly kept as I should like.… It does not apply, of course, to sport in the tilting ground, with blunted steel. Before supper, we had planned a display of this kind. It shall be held in place of the water pageant. Advise Lord d’Aubigny and M.… M. de Sevigny that they will be permitted to relieve any hard feelings between them harmlessly in this fashion … and that Lord d’Aubigny, since he, I understand, received the first blow this afternoon, is in the position of challenger.’

Silently the grizzled face of the Constable turned to the Queen and silently, without lifting her eyes from her lap, Caterina Maria Romola smiled acknowledgment.

The Constable would take the news to Francis Crawford, Comte de Sevigny; the Constable, not Diane nor the de Guises, would report the King’s wisdom and clemency.

A new star was being born. Not a star of Lorraine, or of Stewart, or Douglas; and she and the Constable were its sponsors. She looked on her husband’s black head, and in the shallow, prominent eyes was love.

The hot, brilliant day was sinking at last. In Châteaubriant, the lights sprang small and pale; in the castles, new and old, there were more; and a beading of lamps lined the walks. In the parks, the lake shone like a scale from the sky, buttoned with unwanted boats, black sitting on black without motion. Next the water, the great stand was unlit and silent, gazing emptily at the moving lights from the menagerie, where the small, clear jungle sounds, the chink of chains, the easy phrase of command, dwindled in the still air.

But between the lake and the châteaux, an arena sprang to the eye. The tiltyard, twenty-four yards long and forty wide, was garlanded with lights. Pale as new stars under the rosy sky they wreathed without illumining the great rectangle: the long, flower-packed stands for the Court; the tents to right and left for the champions; the striped silk raised like panniers to display the gilt stools; the gilded towers at the four corners for the pursuivants-at-arms.

Rose and pewter, flat as puppets under the great, dwindling sky, the audience bobbed and gestured and swarmed under the dark eaves, their splendours drained to grisaille; grey and grey among the small lights. Flatly the morions shone, pearly in the dead light; the silver trumpets, greyly flagged, were grey as water. Into all the riches of tissue and gems, into the silver brocade of the Archers edging the stand, into the bullion of the canopy, the cloth of gold on the champions’ table, the armoured squires in the lists, sank the thin, pellucid light, levelling as ashes, ancient as the dry air from some staring rock.

Then the long day exhaled its last, and blue, liquid night rushed in. Then the clusters of lights shone golden as fruit, and the diamonds blazed. Then in the bed of each light, colour—living, vibrant—was suddenly reborn; then the warm, painted faces nodded and laughed; then the drums beat and rolled. Lovely night had come; and the lists were open.

They opened gallantly, gay as France could make it gay. The laughing companies came and went in their plumes and bright skirted armour: the side of youth, flamboyant, vicious against the side of riches; the side of the Bretons against the teams of the Loire. They shot at an inch board under the flaring torches and tilted at the ring in their ballroom dress, with diamond rings in their ears. Black-bearded, smiling, the King watched from his tribunal in the middle, the English Commission on his right.

Since the royal summons directly after their return, O’LiamRoe had not laid eyes on Lymond. The story he heard was the story put about all the Court: that after some unfortunate breach of conduct, Lord d’Aubigny and Mr. Crawford were to settle their differences formally in the arena, for the sport of the King. The charges of
theft and treachery laid against Mr. Crawford, it was understood, had been dismissed.