Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [205]
‘Then you must make jokes about my lord of Warwick instead. How fortunate,’ said Sir George, not at all to be put off, ‘that Robin Stewart is no longer with us, at least. Your brother has been looking out for you quite assiduously ever since you arrived. Have you seen him?’
‘No,’ said Matthew Stewart briefly. ‘I find John’s passions a little irksome.’
‘Do you now?’ said Sir George, his eyes opening in delighted surprise. ‘Not drawn to our dear d’Aubigny, are you? Then what about the Queen Mother? The lady doesn’t bear grudges. After all, she turned down Bothwell’s marriage offer as well as yours. And she has a charming Officer-at-Arms. Make a point of meeting him.’
But long before that, as Sir George well knew, the faded blue eyes had made their exploration. The Earl of Lennox turned his back on the very presentable Court of Queen Mary of Scotland, in the middle of which winked the blue and red and gold tabard of Vervassal, now restored, and said thinly, ‘If you mean Lymond, I have met him already, in London. These men’s lives are very short. I should not pin my faith, Douglas, on a giddy gentleman who will carry a hod for anyone willing to pay.’
‘Usually, in my experience, to use in browbeating his would-be patron. And giddy?’ said Sir George. ‘We are all giddy, loitering here begging with a golden cup. But certainly, like Jack Straw, our friend is enflamed with presumption and pride; and I for one will applaud his first serious mistake. So, I am sure, will Margaret. I should even trust her to help him to make it.’
The wandering gaze of Margaret’s husband, like a ball from a racquet, slapped back into Sir George’s bland face. ‘—In which case,’ Sir George added, smiling more broadly still, ‘I should say, more power to her elbow.’
In this last speech, the hesitation between one word and the next was fractional. But it was enough to turn the Earl’s pale face paler, as he gazed after the retreating speaker; and to make the more informed of the bystanders wince.
Sir George, whose son was married to the heiress of Morton, was undisturbed.
After the receptions the banquet; after the banquet, the masque; after the masque, the ball, in the great courtyard where new fountains were filled with rosé wine and drowned insects, and the trellis between dancers and stars was hung with muscatel grapes.
The formal music for the branle and galliard, the charconne and allemande and pavane and the Spanish minuet blew pattering like tinfoil through the peach trees, suffocated by the drawling French of English thoraxes and the polite, beautiful French of the most highly cultured courtiers in the world. In the long arcade adjoining the Château Neuf, Queen Catherine watched with her ladies, Margaret Lennox among them, and the pages glinted like rudd in between.
Moving in the dance, pair by pair in their worked satins and Tardif velvet and their gem-embroidered silks, in silver lace and cloth of gold, the ostrich feathers tilting the grapes; with the men with their bleached hands, long-legged, broad-shouldered, smiling and negligent; the women with their jewelled breasts and high, plucked brows, the long oversleeves glinting, the train lifted to show an inch of stocking and Venice satin pump—the high blood of three nations bowed, swayed, paused, dispersed and re-formed as time dallied past.
Cupids filled the cleared floor and danced a moresca with torches. Veiled ladies sang flattering verses and masked knights recited. There were tonight no gigantic pies, no lions, no living statues … fantasy would come another day. Instead, the pages brought garlands of flowers, and wine, and wicker baskets filled with cat masks.
They were beautiful. Oonagh O’Dwyer, her black hair cauled and jewelled, her long limbs hidden under stiff damask, was masked in the ash-grey fur of a Persian, the emerald