Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [252]
He had waited a long time, in his swept and mirror-bright cottage, with the food set out as best he could on the table, and his new life and his new resolutions waiting, painfully created and painfully offered, for his last, jealous trust; his last friend.
He had waited a long time. The hours had passed, unmarked by the birds. The fire, raked out and raked out again, had begun to sink into ash; the fresh bread to stiffen; the wine to swim, greasily warm, in the jug.
When the explosion came and the birds were silent, then left the trees in a calling cloud of alarm, he had received notice of his ultimate failure. Then indeed, Robin Stewart had taken out his knife and held it high in his fist; but not to use it against Lymond. To use, instead, conscientiously, doggedly, steadfastly, against the man even a Lymond could not befriend. He had killed himself.
‘Ma mie …’ said the Queen Dowager. It would not become her to run, even with her child’s life at stake. She had walked to the lake with her ladies unobtrusively, getting there just as the first fireworks went off. It was later, with the noise and then the explosion, that all the castle people who were free and many from the town, including her own Scottish lords, had crowded with her to the shore.
By her side, as the long boat with her daughter pulled to the shore, Lady Lennox was standing, and beyond her, Sir George Douglas her uncle. Lady Lennox: half-Tudor, half-sister to Mary of Guise’s own late husband the King; Catholic, and dangerous. Without shifting, the Dowager took note.
But Margaret was watching the flaming boats, not the red head flying to safety: the boats, and the man who dived, like a gannet, just before the great white explosion came. Then—‘Ma mie!’ And the Dowager had bent to plant a soothing kiss on the child’s hot, splashed cheek, to receive Mary’s curtsey and to see her rush off to Janet Sinclair, waiting grimly behind. ‘Did you see? Did you see? The boats go bang, and all the fire darts are gone!’ And, true emotion suddenly tapped, the brittle excitement came all untied, and fatigue and fright bursting through, spent themselves on Janet’s broad chest.
‘Ma’am …’ There was nothing to say. Margaret Erskine faced the Dowager and curtsied, seeing in the big-boned fair face a strain at least as great as her own; but for different reasons. Behind, tight in her nurse’s embrace, Mary was being taken away. Margaret held her own little sisters by the hand. They had understood less, and they had James on their other side, his eyes sparkling.
‘You did excellently well. The assassin was caught, it seems.’
‘If not, he will be soon.’ Sir George’s voice, breaking in, was urbane. ‘Lord d’Aubigny and half a company of Archers went by a moment ago.’
There was a little silence. Then—‘Indeed,’ said the Dowager. ‘In that case, events may be worth watching. We shall wait. Margaret, you may take the children.’
What did she fear? Collecting Mary and Agnes, curtseying, walking over to James, Tom Erskine’s wife became aware of someone addressing her.
‘You are Margaret Fleming, otherwise Graham, otherwise Erskine? Is that right?’
The woman she disliked above any other blocked her way smiling.
‘Yes. I am Margaret Fleming,’ she said.
The tawny eyes which had studied her last night in the wood did so again, to the verge of impertinence. ‘Jenny’s daughter. One would never suspect it … I wondered,’ said the other Margaret. ‘… But you are a sensible woman, I can see.’
The clear, unremarkable eyes turned up to hers. ‘We cannot all think of nothing but ourselves,’ said Margaret plainly and, curtseying, turned.
‘A sensible woman. Yes. And lucky, lucky for the man you were watching there that sensible is what I am,’ said Margaret Erskine to herself, angry tears in her eyes, as she marched to the Château Neuf, her sisters and brother at her side. ‘Or neither he nor the child Mary would be here this day.’
Those who stayed by the lake had not long to wait. The news came, faster than Lord d’Aubigny would have liked, like