Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [262]
‘When is he coming?’ said Mary, Queen of Scots. ‘And will he have the black hair again?’
‘How did.… No,’ said Mary of Guise, a little helplessly. ‘M. Crawford has no black hair now. You must watch.’
The dwarfs had gone. ‘Will they kill each other?’ asked Mary.
‘No. Naturally. This is mock fighting only, my child. Be quiet,’ added her mother.
There was a brief silence. Then—’Do they fight for a lady?’ the girl demanded.
The impatient reply did not leave Mary of Guise’s lips. She hesitated, looking down. ‘In truth, no. But if you wish it, one of them might wear your gauge. Do you wish it?’
‘Oh, mon dieu yes!’ said Mary, carried slightly further than she intended, her hazel eyes enormous. ‘A scarf! Maman, I have no—’
‘Tais-toi. Your glove. Madame Erskine, procure me a large pin,’ said the Queen Dowager of Scotland. ‘I have yet to meet a man who can lay hands on a pin when there is need for it.’
The banners came first, as the trumpets proclaimed them down the lists to the royal tribune: Stewart of Aubigny and Crawford of Lymond, never before side by side.
And after them, the double line of servants: d’Aubigny’s lances, steadily marching in the Stewart livery, halberds precisely angled, glittering in the streaming light; and Lymond’s retinue, in new colours, in dress which Margaret Erskine found vaguely familiar and which Lord Northampton wakened up slightly to admire. They reached the table and there divided, so that the two protagonists stood revealed, walking steadily forward to the King.
John Stewart of Aubigny, on trial as he knew before his enemies, succoured as he believed by the clemency of his King, stood before him in all the riches of his heritage and estate. Below his justaucorps his shirt was embroidered and re-embroidered with gold; his dress of satin was sewn an inch thick with oystered pearls, and diamond-fire leaped on his shoes.
Beside him, Lymond had the desperate expression which more spectators than he knew in that audience recognized as a devastating impulse to laugh. With d’Aubigny’s imperial grandeur he had simply not troubled to compete; either that, or had shrieked down all efforts to compel him.
He had no need. Lymond wore black silk, the shirt edge at neck and cuffs snowy white, and a twelve-thousand-ducat diamond on his shoulder, pinning a little girl’s glove. On the glove, specific in the dazzle, the crown of Scotland was plainly embroidered. They bowed, the heralds stepped forward with the Master of the Lists, and the ceremony was under way.
Lymond lifted his eyes. All over the stand were faces he knew: the Dowager and her lords, who had so busily courted him at Candé; the child—he smiled and bowed, hand elaborately on heart; Margaret, the quiet, deep woman who was older now than her own mother ever would be; George Douglas, whom France had treated kindly, and who might not find Scotland so kind.
The Lennoxes, Margaret blanched in the light, staring at him; he bowed lightly to her too. Diane, enemy of the Constable and of Jenny Fleming, who had not unbent. The de Guises, who had freed him—how Mary of Guise had laid her subtle stress on that point—but who had lost the diplomatic threads, in the end, to another faction.
The allies and good companions: O’LiamRoe, grinning sardonically, his new-grown whiskers gold in the lamps; Michel Hérisson, squashed in a corner, shouting something and being silenced by a Guard; and lurking among the performers, the flags, the tents, the stands of armour, the rare crooked smile of Abernaci and the shameless stare of Tosh.
Inescapable in the herald’s strong, trained voice, his extraordinary title. Francis Crawford of Lymond, Comte de Sevigny. No longer Master of Culter as he had always been.… Well, that was an old story now. Mary of Guise, too, had heard. He had accepted