Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [204]
On the Friday of Northampton’s arrival, Lymond swept through the Queen Mother’s empty rooms airily. ‘My sweet, the pennants are hanging like gutter cloths and they are writing sonnets on the statues: will the cool northern blood be enchanted, do you think?’
‘According to O’LiamRoe,’ said Margaret placidly, ‘every statue in Westminster has its bottom covered with verse.’
‘But in France, my dear, they sign them,’ said Lymond. He had come straight from somebody’s perfume room and was furled in attar of roses and expert goldsmith work; clearly he was going to the ball. Sir George Douglas, also exquisitely dressed, smiled as he passed by. ‘Such élan, my dear. Lady Lennox will worship you,’ he said.
But it was Matthew Stewart, Margaret’s husband, he saw first at the ceremonial meeting between Northampton and the two Scottish Queens. This Lymond attended, inhumanly grave, while Mary of Guise, mollusced like a sea wall with jewels, acknowledged the triple obeisance, and the young Queen and the Marquis touched hands. The child’s face under Moncel’s fine pearl cap was scarlet, less because of the Latin sentence she had to recite than that the tight lacing, the gartered stockings, the long sleeves and silk attires, and the floor-length soieries de luxe were throttling them all.
Nor were the gentlemen, with chemise, camisole and pourpoint, with tracé tunic and high bouffant breeches and pushed-in waists, better off. Even the Duke of Guise, godly in his calm, was leaving dark fingermarks on his scabbard and the crisped point of George Douglas’s beard sadly hung. Afterwards, when the Queens were greeting the chosen few brought up to the dais, the Earl of Lennox strolled over to his wife’s uncle.
Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, was at home here, as Douglas was at home. For eleven years he had lived and fought in France; had indeed left for richer pastures only eight years before. For his defection to England he had been anathema to the old King of France; d’Aubigny his brother had been imprisoned because of it. But that was over. England and France were about to become allies; d’Aubigny was one of the present King’s dearest friends; and if Warwick, so hastily Reformed, was not a very dear friend of Lennox at present, all might be well if Margaret were circumspect in her encounters with that shifty gentleman Crawford of Lymond; and if nothing untoward happened to the young Queen of Scotland—or at least, so ran his prayer, nothing that could be traced to Matthew Stewart of Lennox. For since that first, delicate conversation with brother John long ago, he had been horrified to notice how the sparks from the d’Aubigny activities in France kept flying towards the Lennoxes in London. Whatever was happening, he wanted nothing to do with it; as Catholics, he and Margaret found life risky enough.
In defiance of all these morbid shadows, Matthew Stewart was wearing all his portable wealth. Sir George, not patently impressed by gold lace, watched his approach, amused. When he was within earshot—’What surprising encounters one does have,’ he said. ‘Is this visit wise, Matthew? I thought the French had taken a little against you.’
The washed-out, over-relaxed eyes were angry. ‘I bow to your definition of wisdom of course’, but a little leavening among the dogmatists might not come amiss on this Embassy. You heard about the scene at Saumur where none of my Reformed colleagues would bow to the pix. At Orléans, they distributed consecrated bread to the populace; and at Angers the whole legation would have been massacred if the dear Marquis had not intervened.’
‘I didn’t hear,’ said Douglas, interested. ‘What did they do?’
‘Abstracted a holy image from the church,’ said Lord Lennox bluntly. ‘And carried it about the streets with a hat on its head.’
Sir George laughed.
‘It was not, at the time, very mirth-provoking,’ said Lennox. ‘At Nantes they had to hide the statues in their houses from the Commissioners