Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [65]
“Tom certainly does,” said Erskine, grinning. “The Kilwinning baillies used to hand down their suits of armour like chains of office for when Dandy was perch shooting at the steeple.”
Sir Andrew aimed a friendly cuff at him. “Watch your own step. The old man won’t be pleased if you break one of his windows.”
Since the Keeper’s quarters were not only several hundred feet up the castle rock but invisible, this seemed unlikely. However, Tom replied, “You’re safe, as it happens—I’m not competing either. But if you’d do squire for me, Dandy, I’d be grateful. There’s something I must do in town.”
He received Hunter’s cheerful acquiescence, took leave of the ladies, and burrowed away, to a chorus of exasperated groans.
The field, having encouraged the perilous rearing of the perch, settled down into its new stance. Well back from the danger area there was an air of comfortable expectancy.
Looking around, in the bright, sparkling air, Mariotta found that, like tesserae in a mosaic, her warring emotions had merged, peaceably, into untrammelled pleasure. She was sorry for the papingo, winking blue and yellow in the sun on his high pole; but admired the sunlit castle rock behind him, the wide grass arena, with its elderly, occupied officials which spread on its three exposed sides; and even found something to please her in the crowd, of which she was one, which impinged on three sides of the grass behind the barriers, filling all the space between the arena and the bright rows of pavilions behind.
Protocol, having much the same separatist requirements as a good, fancy jelly, produced much the same results. The layer of peers, in wind-blown furs and large flat hats, was naturally in the best position, next the barrier; then came the clergy, almost indistinguishable except for their plainer headgear; then the merchants and their wives, obviously full of good dinners and dressed at cost, in much better cloth on the whole than the nobles; then the less prominent burgesses and the more reserved professionals, nonclerical lawyers and teachers and Household and other people with minor positions at Court; then all the people one saw in the street, whom one’s steward dealt with, and, occasionally, one visited. The fleshers and brewers and smiths and weavers and skinners and saddlers and salters and cappers and masons and cutlers and fletchers and plasterers and armourers and porters and water carriers, and the one-eyed man who had called at Bogle House selling fumigating pans. And country people on holiday, and beggars, and pickpockets (no doubt) and sorners and the wandering unemployed.
The sun shone. Trumpets blared; and drew every nose to the field as one of the heralds, his tabard looking a trifle end-of-season and tarnished, made an announcement, inaudible. More trumpets. Then a temporary barrier was removed and the competitors, fifty noblemen and fifty commoners, filed self-consciously onto the field and around its margin.
One recognized one’s friends at once from the banners. The pages were obviously enjoying the parade much more than their masters, who were smiling in a resolute sort of way at their friends in the crowd, indicating that they only did this kind of thing to entertain the tenants. One looked for the warmth and hilarity which halfway through, by unexplained custom, would suddenly enliven and vulgarize the proceedings.
Nevertheless, and not to be carping, the long file of athletic and purposeful bowmen looked very splendid, though not as splendid as if one’s own husband were there. The wind blew the standards straight toward the castle rock.
Blue and silver. She liked her own standard. The St. Andrew’s Cross; the crest (argent, a phoenix azure), and the highly ambiguous motto, chosen (of course) by the First Baron, which always eluded her, Contra Vita—whatever it was.
As the thought crossed her mind, the motto itself appeared, almost within touching distance: