Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [196]
It was the first chance many of them had had of meeting Francis Crawford of Lymond. Stewart guessed, from the gravity of his face, that he was playing with them. He saw George Douglas, bland, ironical, his manner verging on the exhibitor’s, abandon all his attitudes with a thud as some intellectual morass received him, leaving him to climb out with what dignity he could. Lymond was evidently not feeling patient tonight.
The day had been hot. Lying among the lukewarm grasses, stifling his hunger as dusk fell. Stewart watched the cones of marquees all silken yellow with candlelight; and beyond, the sprinkled windows of Candé, the village and castle all ablaze. In the meadows, there was still a whole tapestry of space-dwindled noise. Men spoke and laughed; pails clanked; dogs and horses responded, and the forked banners changed direction under the light evening wind with the soft night-noises of birds. A blackbird sang.
When the light had gone, and the fires gave gold and red to the eye like the jewels of an icon, Stewart held his stolen cloak tight at the throat with his one free hand, and walked forward from under the trees.
Somewhere, a company was parting. A tent flap stirred; hosts and guests, stooping, came out, rimmed and vesicled with flurried light, the words and laughter unmasked by the cloth. The clear, pleasant voice refusing escort was immediately recognizable, accentless though it was. Someone made a faintly edged joke. ‘—Le monde est ennuyé de moy, Et moy pareillement de lui. I would prefer, forgive me, to promenade my bad humour alone.’
And turning, his hair edged with silver and his face faintly amused, like some professor escaping a dull class, Francis Crawford walked steadily through the tented grass and out beyond, to the open flanks of the meadow. For a long time he stood there alone, his back to Stewart, his eyes on the ranks of tents, now extinguished and dim; and Stewart in the distant shadows waited, watching, his throat closed, blinded, exalted by the peerless moment of victory.
Then the longbow came, cool and heavy to his hand; the clothyard nocked, razor-sharp, the aspen with its grey goosefeathers smooth to the touch. Noiselessly Robin Stewart drew the cord to his ear, the lovely instrument aiming true, the even weight of the pull on each finger pad, every muscle answering by instinct the one skill above all others he had been made to acquire. He aimed, and shot.
The whine of the flight was no more than an indrawn breath in the night; the whicker as it buried itself as soft as a harp. Vibrating, the arrow sank into the ground a yard from Lymond’s right hand and Lymond himself, collected suddenly like an animal, turned his head.
In the broad, dark meadow he was alone. The tents were silent: no sentries had seen. With a puff of dust the second arrow, bracketing him, had arrived.
He might have shouted, or run, or drawn his sword, or done all three—all equally useless. There is no reply, in clear terrain, to an archer in cover. But Lymond made no sound, though his face, colourless in the moonlight, was turned to the trees whence the second arrow had come. Neither did he draw a weapon. Instead, silent on the grass, he began to run towards the source of the flight.
Robin Stewart’s mouth was paper dry. Somewhere, for the first time, a tremor began within his worn nerves. But he raised the bow for the third time, nocked his bodkin point, with its four barbs and its sweet chisel head, and standing tall, rawboned, firm, aimed and let fly for Lymond’s breast as he came.
It struck him true, in the centre of the breastbone, and fell to the ground. For an instant, the running man checked. Then, one hand firm on his scabbard, choking the rattle and keeping the bastard sword out of his way, Lymond came steadily on. Which meant only one, devastating thing: he was wearing shirt of mail. And he was coming now