Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [122]
There followed the small silence of the faux pas. Then d’Enghien said, ‘You’re going to the Cardinal’s tonight, Thady? But of course you are. Everyone is.’
Sir George Douglas continued for him. ‘He is having wrestlers after supper. The story is that you challenged one of them to a bout. Is it not true?’
Surprise, annoyance, acceptance and a wild and untrustworthy enthusiasm informed the ollave’s sallow face. ‘No, it isn’t,’ said Thady Boy cheerfully. ‘Someone, I would guess, is wanting to contrive a piquant sauce for the dish—probably that very Cardinal Charles. But it’s a matter, you know, of a challenge; and dhia, I never refused a challenge of any kind yet.’
He did not, as it happened, know that as he uttered the words, his brother had ridden into the open courtyard beyond the quadrangle at his back, and dismounting, had entered the château.
Because her dear brother the King had made certain, quite properly, that the Scottish Dowager and her friends would be watched, no one in her suite was able to warn Lymond that Lord Culter had arrived. In any case, while his lordship was being welcomed by the Constable, taken to the King, and confronted, in the royal presence, with the Dowager with tranquil assurance on both sides, Lymond was launching a fruitless search for a wrestler.
By late afternoon, the Cornishman had still not been found; a fact significant enough in itself. Lymond wasted no more time on it. He went straight to his room and, lying flat on the tortoise-shell bed, forced himself to rest for an hour. There, after making an inadequate toilet for the Cardinal of Lorraine’s supper party, he was collected by a party of fellow guests, already too talkative and exchanging aqua vitae and bad puns. Then, avoiding the official party which included the royal family, the Constable and Diane, they set out for the Hôtel de Guise. The Cardinal’s sister Mary, Queen Dowager of Scotland, was already there, together with her brother the Duke, the Erskines and Lord Culter.
By then Richard Crawford of Culter knew all that he needed to know about his younger brother.
Erskine had prepared him, as best he could, with a swift narration of all Lymond had done, followed by an unadorned account of his conduct. Lord Culter heard it with complete calm; at one or two points his mouth twitched. At the end he said, ‘Well, Tom; you know Francis as well as I do. Your confidence isn’t shaken, surely?’
Erskine’s answer had no hesitation. ‘No. But my God, Richard, be prepared.’
‘A fan, and his clothes hung with bells?’ Then, as Erskine hesitated, ‘No. Obviously. One of his grosser deceptions. It would be irresistible, given the Court of France and O’LiamRoe.’ Richard Crawford’s grey eyes were amused. ‘Thank you, Tom. I am amply warned.’
This steadiness, this quality of tough-minded tranquillity which could sometimes seem stolid, was balm to the disease of danger and unrest which was preying on them all. In this was Culter’s great strength. Now in his mid-thirties, quiet, stocky and unremarkable, he was still nearly unique for his time in that he was perfectly reliable. It seemed as if he had set himself since boyhood to outweigh all the wanton recklessness of the younger brother; and had brought to it much the same deliberate power. Where Francis had ranged Europe in blazing notoriety, Richard had stayed at home, husbanding his wide estates, fighting for them when he must. Beyond this, and the joy he now possessed with Mariotta, his dark Irish wife, there was nothing more he desired.
When, black-headed and sardonic, Lymond had departed for France, Lord Culter and his mother had been, in their different ways, thankful to see him set off at last, wholly on pleasure bent. For family reasons, Richard himself had not wished to go with the Queen Dowager to France. She, in turn, had been as anxious for him to stay: one of the few watchdogs she could trust. So that the bare, censored terms of her message, arriving at Midculter with the King of France’s pressing invitation, were enough to confirm that the summons was not of her seeking, and