Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [253]
‘The assassin—’
‘He is caught?’
‘He is dead.’
The musicians were ashore. The loose boats, their squibs all spent, their deckwork flaked and blackened with sparks, were being collected and tied. In the middle, the burned-out galleys sagged, half-sunk, black on the satiny blue, smoke climbing sluggishly still over the sun. And beyond, from the menagerie, the press of many bodies, the glitter of pikes, the voices of a vociferous crowd, pierced by the small, sharp voices of command. Then, news again.
Sir George collected it and brought it, together with his niece, to where the Queen Mother was sitting with her ladies in the gold-hung stand. Around her swarmed the workmen, already cutting, hanging, painting, repairing, removing traces of the fire. It was not for them to decide whether royalty would come after all to sit and stare at the empty boats. Arms on the fine cushions, she watched Douglas come. ‘Well, sir?’
‘My nephew has, happily, apprehended the assassin, but unhappily has also seen fit to kill him.’ He paused. ‘He has also seen fit to place Mr. Crawford under arrest. His friends, foolishly, even fear for Mr. Crawford’s safety.’
Margaret spoke. ‘Whoever fears for Mr. Crawford’s safety is a fool.’
‘I have also heard,’ said Sir George tentatively, ‘that testimony of some kind has appeared which may even connect my nephew d’Aubigny with these attempts against her grace your daughter. If this is so, then Mr. Crawford is clearly innocent, and may indeed be in danger.’
‘If so, the King will see to it.’ It was Lady Lennox to whom this challenge was being directed, and it was she who spoke. The Dowager, understanding, waited her time.
‘The King is engaged. Action is necessary now.’
‘But who,’ said Mary of Guise, her hands helpless before her, ‘who can command his lordship of Aubigny? I have no powers.’
‘His brother,’ said Sir George, and in the long pause that ensued, gave an avuncular squeeze to Lady Lennox’s arm. ‘My dear, I know how hard you have struggled against Lord Warwick’s conviction that the Protector Somerset has all your loyalty. He knows your love for Mary Tudor, your loyal love for your Church. Since the Archer Stewart babbled in London he must have wondered—unreasonably, I know, but nevertheless wondered—if Matthew was by any chance involved.… How awkward if, at this very moment, while the amity of France and England is being sealed over a chivalrous capon, on this very day when an English embassy is to ask for Mary’s—or is it Elizabeth’s?—hand, it transpires that Lennox’s brother has attempted murder, and that Lord Lennox is by no means dissociated with the act.’
Silence. The Queen Mother, watching, added nothing. Sir George’s suave voice, after a space, said only, ‘You must disown d’Aubigny, Margaret, quickly, publicly, now. Or your hopes … your most legitimate hopes … are as dust.’
He knew those eyes. He had looked into them often before; the magnificent, formidable eyes of Henry of England. She waited to force his gaze down, and succeeded, before transferring her regard to the Dowager. ‘Mr. Crawford has performed a service for us all,’ she said directly. ‘My Lord of Northampton will certainly wish to congratulate him. I shall desire my husband to relieve Lord d’Aubigny of his … misapprehension.’
‘So kind.’ The Dowager’s eyes, of cold Lorraine blue, were the masters of anything a Douglas could offer. ‘And there is not the smallest need for you to leave us. As it happens, I sent to wait on Lord Lennox quite some time ago now … and here he is.’
It was true that he was overtired; but even standing you could in some measure rest, if you knew how. And it took the edge off the other sort of strain and dulled the smell of decay.
A mind responsive to beauty is a storehouse with many rooms; words, sounds, textures, all the nobler exercises of the senses leave some image filed and folded to be summoned at need.
There, too, the brutal images are kept: the sights and smells and hurts, real and imagined, which the responsive mind accepts and has bedded deep.
All