Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [186]
The Court, such as it was, rose. O’LiamRoe, looking grim, went off immediately to try to find Vervassal but did not succeed, being only just in time himself to take his place at the baiting.
Traditionally, at Angers, such shows were held in the ditch, a hundred feet wide and forty deep, which circled the castle. The tame deer this time had been cleared out, and for the time of the royal visit Abernaci and his staff had restored the moat and the castle gardens to something of the redolent vivacity of Roi Rene’s time, when lions roared from the river bank, the pond was stocked with swans, ducks and wild geese, and there were ostriches and donkeys, dromedaries and ibexes, and lodges of boars, ewes, deer and porcupines in the moat.
Now a miscellany of instruments, somewhere, had started to play and Brusquet, the King’s fool, had descended a ladder into the moat and was performing, in mime, both sides of an encounter between a very shy lady goat and her suitor. The townspeople, on the far side of the ditch, were amused to the point of hysterics; Brusquet, who had mistimed his programme a little, capered on, smiling harshly, while the royal stand remained empty.
Then the trumpets blew, drowning the viols; but for the entrance of the Queen Dowager of Scotland with her ladies and noblemen, pacing between the great doors of the castle and on to the canopied drawbridge where the gold fringe whipped in the wind, and the gilded chairs, neatly arrayed, had dust and grass seed caught already in their cushions. The thick clouds tumbled over the sky, jerking shadow back and forth, as if dispensing sunlight from a badly made drawer; and Margaret Erskine, as she walked between the Dowager and the child Queen, did her best to keep her eyes from the new face in the torrid, familiar crowd.
Reserved and correct, Vervassal had arrived that morning. They had all seen him enter and leave the Queen Dowager’s cabinet. He had not sought their company since. She saw, from George Douglas’s sudden halt, that Lymond’s arrival was new to him. After a second Sir George, having failed to catch Vervassal’s own gaze, turned and threw a vast query in her direction, suggestive of a reeling astonishment laced with malice.
She turned away. Mary, thank God, had noticed nothing. The Dowager, although a little flushed, was of the order of superb politicians to whom dissimulation was life. Her brothers, at her other side, obviously had met the herald fleetingly, if at all, and had dismissed him utterly. Lymond himself, looking like ice, had not put a foot wrong; nor had he looked at her. She found, without realizing it, that she was watching him again, and took her place hurriedly along the side rail of the drawbridge. Even two years ago, he had not looked like that.
Then the fanfares burst out afresh, and the long gallery on the castle face at right angles to theirs became filled. Henri. Catherine. The Constable. Diane. The courtiers. The Ambassadors, the mayor and échevins, the castle Governor, the guests. On one side, in an indifferent seat, was O’LiamRoe. At the other, much nearer the front, the man O’Connor. And next to O’Connor was John Stewart, Lord d’Aubigny.
He was handsome still; magnificent in his puffed and slashed doublet, the shoulder knots sparkling, the jewels on his slanting bonnet flaring as the flickering canopy admitted the sun. But he took no time to gaze down at the arena. Instead, fists in his lap, he turned his well-shaped, long-lashed eyes on the crowded drawbridge.
Margaret could have told the very second he found what he sought. His lordship of Aubigny drew a deep breath. Whatever, from his brother’s warning, he had been expecting, it was clearly not this. Then slowly, as he gazed still at Lymond, the colour returned to his face and Margaret realized she was watching an open challenge. D’Aubigny was intent on capturing Lymond’s gaze. Then, suddenly, he had it. Between gallery and gallery each man looked silently into the other’s eyes and conveyed, not an ultimatum but a judgment. Then below, the first bear and the