Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [69]
On the field, an orderly pattern, pleasing in itself to the eye, had fallen into place. Far out to one side stood the Master and officials of the games, dressed in Arran’s red and white livery; and beside them a group of arrow boys, minute fungi under cartwheel rush hats. Beside that again, in a long line against the painted barriers, the competitors waited; a trifle uneasy; a trifle tense now the moment had come.
The first bowman, flexing his shoulders, took his place in the centre of the field below the high, painted pole, and footed the mark. The parrot, brilliant in the eye of the sun, struggled and screamed against the backdrop of the castle rock, scarlet with bracken and the autumn glory of beech and sycamore; above the rock, the Palace windows gave back the sun in stabs of flame behind their cage grilles. A voice shouted “Fast!;” the archer raised his longbow smoothly to the sky, nocked his arrow, drew, held and released; replaced his second shaft, aimed, held and released again.
The papingo squawked bad-temperedly and swore with an Aberdeen accent; the arrows arched and fell harmlessly, six yards to the left. To a roar of sardonic cheering the tension broke, and Sir Andrew suddenly moved.
“There’s only one place Lymond can shoot from,” he said, almost to himself. “And that’s from the shelter of the rock.”
Mariotta heard him. She raised her eyes as he had done and studied the broken face of the crag. “Shooting against both the sun and the wind?”
“That’s the difficulty, of course,” he acknowledged. “But look. The rest of the field is hedged in by the crowd: a man couldn’t raise his arms in it, never mind aim six feet of a longbow.” He hesitated, and then said, “Lady Culter, if you’d give me leave, I’ll climb up and look through some of that scrub there.”
But Mariotta, unimpressed by the suggestion that he should safeguard Richard’s life at the risk of his own, refused and would not be persuaded. He argued uneasily, found her adamant, and dropped the proposal. In silence they watched.
The wind, violent and skittish, was making better sport of it than the competitors were. Buccleuch, shooting third, nicked the post with his first shaft and overshot with his second, retiring bellowing amid a chorus of witticisms. The next two were wide; the fifth caused a mild sensation by breaking his bow and nearly amputating himself with the shards; the sixth lost his thread and bungled both draws; and the seventh squirted off like a firecracker.
The eighth nearly got it.
“Oh!” said Agnes, sparkling. “It’s very exciting, isn’t it?” And she added, a little wistfully, “A woman would enjoy being married to a wonderful archer.”
In the midst of their anxiety, the eyes of the other two met, and laughter sprang into Hunter’s. “My dear girl,” he said, “your mind’s running a great deal on marriage today, surely?”
Lady Herries looked surprised. “Not specially. But I’ll have to get married this year, I expect; and if I’ve got to be sold like a packet of wool—”
“Agnes!”
“Well. I mean, having children and doing embroidery may not be fun, but it’d be more so if at least they fought battles for you and pretended they liked it. Courts of Love, and sonnets, and scarves in their helmets. That’s what I think. Otherwise,” pursued Agnes, “there’s not much point in it all, is there?”
“Well, I’m afraid Johnnie Hamilton won’t write any odes to your eyelashes,” said Sir Andrew cheerfully. “Besides, that’s a limiting form of courtship, isn’t it? You’d be much more comfortable with a husband who worked up a connection at Court, or developed his lands, or exercised his money in trade so that you had diamond bracelets by the gross and a house in each county.”
“But I’ve got all the diamonds I want,” said Agnes succinctly. “Like Mariotta. And the little Queen. So I don’t see there’s any point in marrying, unless it’s to get something you haven’t got already. And nine times out of ten, you needn’t marry for that, either,” she added as an afterthought.
Watching the twelfth bowman loose off, Sir Andrew said unhappily,