Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [36]
He had told her what she wanted to know, breaking off because the Dowager materialized, carrying her embroidery and standing on his toe because she had forgotten to take off her spectacles. After that, Christian had done no more than thank him firmly for his help and indicate the matter was closed. He was slightly nettled. Despite the noble disclaimers he remembered making she might, he thought, have let him into the secret.…
The next day, the autumn trumpets gave tongue, the sun shone like copper, and a flaming row was taking place in the Priory cloisters. To the north the hills of Ben Dearg reared empurpled, and soft airs shuddered on the blue water. On Inchmahome, Discord beat against the ancient pillars, where five adults and a child sat or stood about the green cloisters.
The Queen Dowager of Scotland was in a state of Gallic rage. “Will someone kindly inform me how this escapade has arrived?” Thus Mary of Guise, seated bolt upright in a carved chair.
Croaking reply from a middle-aged nurse, white as her tortured apron. “Oh, Madame; that I dinna ken, the puir wee lassie …” and she broke off, shooting a basilisk glance at a younger maid, completely overcome, who was being patted by Mariotta.
The Dowager Lady Culter, who was also seated, wisely said nothing, partly out of diplomacy and partly from sheer respect for her vocal chords: a very small child with tousled red hair standing before her continued to hammer on her knee in a detached sort of way, screaming gibberish at the top of her voice.
“Hurble-purple, hurble-purple, hurble-purple!” chanted the child.
“On the rivage, in broad daylight! Murder! Kidnap!”
“She’d cuddle a milk jug, the jaud!”
“Boo-hoo—hic—hoo!”
“Elspet! You’ll be ill! Be quiet, now!”
“Hurble-purple, hurble-purple, hurble-purple!” said the child with ascending power.
Lady Culter winced slightly, and drawing her knee away, put out a kindly but restraining arm. She spoke briskly. “I doubt there’s no need to hunt for villains, Ma’am; the lass was scatterbrained, and Mistress Kemp as bad, to let her go off alone with the child. But there was no worse intention that I can see. Just an escapade.”
“Escapade!”
Sybilla, after a daunting glance at the hysterical Elspet, returned to her task.
“Yes. The foolish girl had a tryst with one Perkin at Portend Farm, and the child wanted to visit the pleasance. There was a skiff unattended, and off they went to the shore, where Elspet apparently left Mary playing while she went up to the farm—”
“Alone and unattended,” said outraged motherhood grimly. “And then of course my daughter is accosted, attacked! One hears her screams, the girl returns, thrusts her back into the boat and attempts to return unobserved. Oh, I grant you the girl Elspet is innocent: by returning she doubtless foiled the attempt. But how could such a thing be? Is there not a bodyguard, here at Inchmahome … attendants … the good fathers? Are there not armed men surrounding the lake, blocking the roads? Dame Sybilla, but for my daughter’s screams, where would she be now?”
“Sitting in the Pleasure Gardens, I imagine,” said Lady Culter dryly, “although I must admit that the attractions of Perkin seem to have played ducks and drakes with our safety precautions. Suppose we ask the Queen’s Grace?”
Mary of Guise, Queen Dowager, stretched an arm and called her daughter. “Marie! Come and tell Maman what the ill-doing man did?”
“What ill-doing man?” asked the red-haired child, trailing over the grass without lifting her dress, and proffering a sticky mouth. “Can I say my rhyme?”
Her Royal mother, ignoring this, wiped the mouth thoroughly with a clean handkerchief and said, “The man in the Pleasure Gardens, ma p’tite. What did he say?”
Her Most Noble Majesty Mary, crowned Queen of all Scotland, found her pomander and began to play with it, with unsavory results.
“He wasn’t a malfaisant. I liked him. Can I—”
“Mary, was he a monk?” said Sybilla gently, mindful of one of the unlikelier aspects of Elspet’s story (“But all the monks are at Sext