Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [189]
Something happened to Stewart’s face—an intake of breath, a grimace of hatred, the beginning of a smile, even. Then his whole attention, blazing, meticulous, was on the charging boar.
It was the boar’s own weakness which made him falter in the last dizzying second before the spear. The point took him, not through the yielding, breathing flesh but near the snout, where the near tush caught it, deflected it, and left the ponderous body, stumbling sideways, to take the shaft askew in the shoulder and twist it, shuddering, out of Stewart’s wet hands. The slobbering bulk crushed him, the stinking breath took him in the face; then he was on his feet weaponless, while the boar, grazing the wall for a dozen, staggering yards, turned and faced him, tusks chattering like glass, the metal in him vibrating in the wind. The Queen Mother of Scotland dropped her scarf.
It whisked into the arena with an efficient air and lay twisted in elastic abandon, sparkling. There was silver embroidery on the hem. ‘Fetch it for me, M. Crawford?’ said the Queen.
For an interminable moment, Lymond did not move. The ladder Brusquet had used to enter the ditch lay at his feet. Such an order, capricious and intolerable as it might be, was royal. It was a command performance of chivalry; and to disobey it in public was something no man there would have done. After waiting just long enough, the herald turned and bowed; meeting the cool gaze under his lifted brows, Mary of Guise smiled. Then he swung over the rail and down the ladder, thrown swiftly into place. He stood there, gripping the rungs, while Stewart, unaware, backed towards him, the boar trampling the far side of the square.
The boar had seen and smelled the newcomer if Stewart, dazed with injuries, had not. He sidled nearer, approaching the Archer in small runs and halting as the whickering spear twisted within. Stewart waited, hands spread, oblivious of all but the tusks, the eyes, and the quivering haft of his spear. All the strength of his badly knit body, all the grudging, drearily acquired skills, came to his fingertips. He waited, traitor, conspirator, confessed assassin, in his single moment of solitary public achievement; his one honest treasure found just this side of the axe.
With the low, snoring groan of his kind the boar charged. It ran onesided, furiously, pounding the mangled earth, spitting blood and foam as it went, the spear whipping at its side. It ran past Stewart, past his hands outstretched to grasp the shaft, past the embroidered gauze snake lying supine on the soil, and straight up to the ladder. Lymond left it till the last second. Then he leaped aside as the boar sheared clean with his tusks the bottom rungs of the ladder where the herald had been. Lymond let him pass, took a single step, and laying both hands on the spear stuck in the animal’s hide, gave a powerful jerk. It caught the half-rearing creature off balance. Squealing, the boar tottered, lurched and tumbled backwards among the debris of the ladder, as Lymond pulled the spear free of the wound.
The herald got to his feet like a cat, his tabard washed with boar’s blood, lithe and gravely intent, and faced the dripping animal, the red spear in his hands. Then as the boar charged heavily for the last time, Lymond sunk the spear upright, with both hands, between the broad shoulders. The beast screamed, and its naked, neatly turned knees suddenly shook. Then, shapeless, unshackled, spiritless as a sack of wet peat, it fell on its side, the tushes scoring the turf.
Across the bulk of it, as the dust seethed and settled, swaying, bleeding, Robin Stewart faced his daemon. The flowers were already beginning to fall, clinging to the wet tabard. Lymond caught one up and walked with it, slowly, past the dead animal. The broadsword, shattered in the early play, lay at his feet. Lifting it, Francis Crawford impaled the spray on its split point and, moving straight up to Stewart, offered the sword, balanced