Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [269]
Here, the perfunctory tinsel was more apparent. Here, the triumph of the six brothers de Guise was quite tangible.
It had been Lymond who had taken in hand, after a moment, the shiftless, fraying web of small talk, aided quickly by Reid, and a little later, quietly by James Stewart. If they could not rejoice, at least they should not look like men stricken by the occasion.
It was accepted that this was a court which enjoyed, whatever the excuse, performing before its inferiors. The gentlemen in bright satin robes, having finished their meal—not lavish, but quite satisfactory—were gathered now at one end of the room and expected to assimilate, dazzled, the grace of blue blood: its wealth and its superiority. And from the masques, the ballads, the mummeries to be impressed, once and for all, with the splendour and consequence of this marriage which, with his usual care for their happiness, their monarch and his seigneurs had arranged for them.
First, the princesses danced; the long, sinuous line led by the Queen of Scots and the King’s daughter, Madame Elizabeth. Then, using for dressing-room the gilded Chamber of Pleas, the court proceeded, for two hours, to entertain themselves and their guests with a Triumph, as several Aldermen ringingly said, greater than that of Caesar.
Tact had solved the sartorial problems of the Seven Planets: Mercury’s wand bore a snake which looked like silver, even if it was painted hemp, and all sang the verse written for them with fervour and even some accuracy. The children of France, their exhaustion stiffened by arrogance, rode without mishap the twelve willow palfreys, trailing housings of gold and silver.
The white chariot horses did not flinch under the mouths of the clarions, and the singing by each crew, apostrophizing the Dauphin, was such that the noise from their audience abated a little, and faded. ‘O Mars, filz de Mars!…’
Three of the singers were not from the King’s chapel. ‘The young men who so delighted us at your reception. I could wish,’ said John Erskine to Lymond, (Mars, donne nous ce jour où se fait l’aliance/Qui joindra pour jamais l’Ecosse à notre France) ‘that their songs today were of the same order.’
(O mariage heureux, que Dieu veule lier/Pour faire sous un Roy deux royaumes plier/Et non deux seulement, mais sans meurdre et sans guerre/A la France et l’Ecosse alliant l’Angleterre.)
It is not difficult, if paid sufficiently well, to find rhymes in French and Latin to extoll the virtues of a match made in heaven, and to proclaim the joy to all men of a union between two brave and ancient countries. None of the main protagonists, including the Scottish Commissioners (Surgit ab Orcadibus speciosus Palladis autor), escaped eulogy. But through it all the principal theme, chanted in chorus and proclaimed, thrillingly, by single voices was repeated, hardly varying; glancing from wall to window to pillar to vaulted ceiling, striking back with a thousand tongues from bone and medal and jewel, and ending with the noble Latin of Cassillis’ former tutor:
Haec una centum de stirpe nepotes
Sceptriferos numerare potest, haec regina sola est,
Quae bis dena suis includat secula fastis …
O royal youth! destined o’er Gaul to reign
Accept a dowry worthy of a King …
When history her pride of birth enquires
The race and honours of her ancient sires
She can recount, on Fame’s wide spreading wings
One hundred sceptre-bearing martial kings
Sprung from the same august and royal line …
When conquered kingdoms were compelled to change
Their laws, and statutes of their sires derange
Scotland alone her liberty retained
And on her ancient base inviolate remained …
Hunger to endure beneath a northern sky
The summer’s heat and winter’s cold defy
Never beneath the tyrant’s foot to bend
Without high walls their country to defend …
Whate’er of other kingdoms Fame may tell
Scotland still nobler deeds and tales can trace
And from the proudest claim a prouder place …
(Icelle Dame a ceddé et delaissé, par ces présentes au Roy et ses successeurs,