Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [266]
‘Item. Two suits of goffered leather, with chain mail over. Two engraved corselets, damascened gold and silver. Two brassards in Milanese steel, and two in German. Two cuirasses the same. Two bucklers, decorated in silver, with leather straps; and two with steel. Two pairs of gauntlets. Two morions, plumed, with …’
Long before the list ended, the laughter died. The form of mockery did not seem particularly witty; and they had all at least expected to witness a fight. In silence, the Master reached the end and folded the paper. D’Aubigny’s eyes, large, flashing with life, looked at Lymond and then, head high and smiling, his lordship turned to the King. The trumpets blew.
‘Do you produce these arms, M. le Comte?’ asked the Master, of Lymond.
And—‘I do,’ said Francis Crawford, with the clarity, the abandon, the felicity of some royal bridegroom; and you could hear the sound, throughout all the pavilions, of the torches burning. Then, two by two through the barrier came the men of his short retinue in their brilliant dress which you remembered seeing, suddenly, on the King’s pages a day or two before, with other servants to help them. And two by two they paced to the cloth of gold table and laid on it the most precious armour in Europe.
Gamber made the engraved armour Henri had worn at Blois; the golden cuirasses were wrought with lions; the morions with rams’ horns and ostrich feathers, with diamond buckles at their roots. The swords had each their own scabbards, rubies on velvet, pearls on silk. The pistols lay in leather cases, the hackbuts with damascened stocks lay each with its pile of balls. The horses were brought on, shying a little at each other and the queerly muted noise, their housings sparkling with gold, their saddles waxed.
The English Embassy sat up, and made brief and privately astonished noises of admiration. Every Frenchman round the King was prudently silent. For every courtier there recognized the armour, horses and weapons of Henri, King of France.
It was the greatest rebuff John Stewart of Aubigny had ever received in his life; and the greatest he ever would receive until he ended his days in undistinguished obscurity after undistinguished service far from Court. And it was public as a proclamation to every French courtier there. Death, to Lord d’Aubigny, might have been less unkind.
He stood, his gaze on the King for a long time, sparing only a glance for the glittering arms on the table, and none for Lymond. He said, his voice a little high, ‘I am satisfied,’ and the Master of the Lists, looking in vain for guidance from the King, the Constable or the defendant himself, said desperately, ‘State, then: what is your choice?’
He was a captain of lances, and he tried, at the end, to gather about him some tatters of pride. The handsome face, ignoring the Master, looked again up past the cloth of gold and the embossed fleurs-de-lis to the royal tribune, its crest the same as the one he had worn once on his own breast and back. Lord d’Aubigny, his eyes on the King, said, ‘I make no choice. I forfeit my injury and withdraw my cartel of challenge.’
Above him, Henri’s schooled face did not change. He said, ‘Pray do not disappoint us. We and our friends here had hoped to see some sport.’
‘The sport is done,’ said John Stewart, his voice faded, and received the King’s permission to go.
He walked firmly, in the midst of his retinue, banner high, and the glittering procession threading the undisturbed sand received neither cheers nor catcalls as it became dim in the night distances and dissolved. The fall of a favourite is celebrated with discreet music at Court.
On the field the Vidame, his hand on Lymond’s shoulder, gently caressing, was inviting him to fight; and the English delegation, shifting a little in their seats, were careful not to meet each other’s eyes. Northampton was smiling again.
They fought on jennets, for exhibition only, and the bout was pretty to watch. The Vidame, not unaccustomed to doing