Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [213]
‘I am glad to hear it. I believe it was my son,’ said Sybilla, ‘who was responsible. But it was long ago.’
‘Indeed. You see my glove, how it is small. But still,’ said the Queen, ‘your son defends us. It is gentle of you to spare us his presence.’
‘It is my privilege, your grace,’ said Sybilla steadily; and sank in a perfect curtsey as the Queen, with Lymond escorting her, moved to the next group of her countrymen.
Then—‘We meet at last,’ said the handsome, scented lady who had entered the room behind Francis. ‘We know the requirements of royalty: Francis is unable to divide his attention, so I shall take it upon myself to introduce myself and my daughter. I am Marguerite de St André, Lady Culter, and this is my only child Catherine.’
Her lustrous eye, as she spoke, was upon Richard, and Richard, approaching after his mother, decorously kissed the Maréchale’s hand and then, gravely, her cheek.
Catherine d’Albon offered, guardedly, only her hand, but was drawn by Sybilla into a little embrace, as loving as it was gentle. ‘You are used, of course,’ Sybilla said, ‘to being told that you are beautiful, and I knew, if Francis had chosen you, that you must be so. I also know, if he has chosen you, that you are clever and honest and kind.… Richard and I wish to thank you for accepting him.’
The Maréchale, a student only by hearsay of Scottish sentimentality, was shocked to see in her daughter’s composed face the signs of undoubted emotion. She said, affably, ‘He is a gallant creature: all France knows of it, and I believe they will make a famous couple. Of course, we are all very fond of the little wife. It is not always that a first contract can be broken so easily.’
‘Philippa isn’t here?’ said Sybilla, a little distractedly. Behind the young Queen, she noticed, had entered the four young attendants called Mary and virtually all of her suite who were Scottish.
‘No. It would not have been discreet. She has engaged herself elsewhere, I understand, for the evening. You know that the Queen herself was not invited? It is an escapade. The maids of honour wished so much to go, since their relatives are among the Commissioners. I am told that she simply sent word to M. le comte this afternoon that he was to fetch her. Even the rest of the Court is not aware.’
‘Christ,’ said Danny Hislop, behind Richard, but not very loudly. And when Richard, by no means a stupid man, turned and glanced at him he added, brightly, ‘It’s going to play merry hell with his table plan.’
But, it seemed, the matter was taken care of; and when, her slow progress ended, the Queen of Scots reached the end of the gallery, the double doors opened before her on another room, a vision of paintings and delicate, open-work plaster in which supper was laid, quite differently from any supper she had seen before, on garlanded damask, with confections spun glistening high among the candles. And creams and curds and sugared flowers and sherbets and little birds and thin, woven bread rolls, and before every plate a stem of green crystal, with a pink salted rose in its sheath.
In the middle of the long principal board stood the chair of state, and to this her host directly led her. ‘This evening, Madam, you are at home with your countrymen. Pray do them and me the honour of presiding over us.’
So she took her place beside him, and looked under her long lashes at all her unknown subjects, while the Bishop said grace, and the chaplet proper of Sevigny made a nimbus of the bright canopy over her.
*
‘What are they talking about?’ said the Provost of Edinburgh irritably, to his step-sister Mary Seton.
‘You, probably,’ said the maid of honour and smiled, for the fourth time, at Fleming’s older brother.
*
‘They are, as you see, somewhat subdued,’ said the comte de Sevigny to his guest of honour. ‘Brought on by respect for the crown, and a certain natural diffidence. It poses a problem. If we contrive to bring each man to his nature, then he will be happy; but he will no longer be quiet. Do I have your grace