Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [265]
Not even her ladies had been present at this interview. She had dressed herself with care; she had given him her hand and permitted him to sit. And it was she, accustomed to dealing with male minds, barely aware of her sex, who found herself irritatingly aware that, sitting motionless, answering laconically and fast, he had formed his opinion long ago about her mind and her abilities, and was addressing himself solely to the pitch of these … as he might have done to a bullfrog similarly endowed, she thought with a sudden flash of anger, who had happened to be the Queen Mother of Scotland.
‘I offer you a child to fashion,’ she had said; and his tone, even and courteous, did not change. ‘Then you must send her to Scotland—for that is where I shall be,’
After a long while she said slowly, ‘I do not think you understand what I offer.’
And he had answered, rising as she rose, his eyes clear under the smooth brow where youth sat; the youth she would close in her fists if she could, the youth she coveted, raging, to fling against the mewing pack of wild creatures, the Douglases, the Stewarts, the Hamiltons, the ambitious sons and the kingly bastards and all young, young, young who would one day snap at her vacant throne.
And in all his enviable youth he stood before her and said, ‘I have understood and I have refused. If you wish me to lead, I shall lead. In Scotland I shall make a company of men who can match any fighting men in the world; and for twelve months in Scotland they and I shall be. If you want me, send.… But I may not always come.’
‘Even for the child?’ she had said.
‘Even for the child.’ And his eyes had betrayed for one moment the life she knew must be there, but did not know how to reach. ‘The brilliance and beauty of France were all ours, and more, forty years ago. They ended with Flodden, and they cannot be pinned on afresh, like a decaying rose. They must grow again, and in security. It has been merry,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘But the time for follies is over.’
He was waiting peaceably now, the child’s glove on his shoulder; but d’Aubigny was watching the Master of the Lists, was waiting for the paper which the Master took now in his hand, and adjusting the spectacles which, to his sorrow, he could not do without, perused and then read.
‘To messire Jean Stewart, Chevalier, Seigneur d’Aubigny, la Verrerie et le Crotet, fell the choice of arms to be used in this match, the fullest choice as the said seigneur demands to be provided, under pain of forfeiting the match.’ And, licking his lips, he proceeded to read out the list of arms from which Lord d’Aubigny desired to choose.
And the quick Douglas mind had guessed right. Notorious among the malicious, sometimes done in sport, sometimes for a wager, this shift was the most ill-mannered and peremptory in the whole game of arms. The injured party had this right: to force his opponent to bring together an adequate choice of weapons, such as gentlemen might use. He had the right, if he chose to exert it, of stating sword by sword and plate by plate from what weapons and what armour and what horseflesh he desired to select.
Stewart of Aubigny had done just this. As the Master’s voice launched forth, spoke, and then rolled on through phrase after phrase, first exclamations and then gathering laughter answered him from the stirring stands.
‘Item. Horse. A pair of Turkish mares in harness, with ears and tails clipped, and furnished with military saddles; a pair of cobs, saddled in plaited armour and a pair of Spanish jennets with leather saddles and clipped tails. Two asses, caparisoned in velvet, with têtières of brass.
‘Item. Two partisans, damascened in gold. Two halberds, with silk tassels; two pikes. A pair of the new Italian pistols. Two hand arquebuses, furnished with balls. Two cutlasses; two poniards with double edges and St. Hubert in the hilt, and two single-edged, with a