Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [8]
Lymond and Tom Erskine had little in common, and their personal exchanges took no longer than the pouring of two cups of the King of France’s wine. As they sat, Tom raised his in elaborate salute. ‘Welcome to France.’
‘Thank you. I gather our excellent Queen Mother arrived safely.’
‘Last week. The French King is outside Rouen, waiting to make one of those damned ceremonial entries. She’s off to join him, and they’ll install her in Rouen for the festivities. Then the whole Court goes south for the winter.’
‘While you go to Brussels: there’s no justice.’ There was a little silence, occasioned by the Special Ambassador wondering, rather despairingly as usual, how much Lymond knew. He was on his way to Brussels and Augsburg to conclude a peace treaty with the Emperor Charles, or with the Queen of Hungary on her absent brother’s behalf. It was a treaty not much wanted in Scotland, whose abler mariners liked to be able to raid Flemish galliasses in peace. But under French pressure, the Scottish Governor had agreed; and for that agreement, no doubt, the Queen Dowager of Scotland would receive due reward in due time from France.
It was a peace of which the Emperor himself, at Augsburg, was also wary, and of which he would be warier still if he knew that Tom Erskine was coming to him fresh from London, where he had just opened negotiations for a treaty with England, the Emperor’s current enemy. No peace treaty had yet been signed between Scotland and her neighbour, only a truce. Erskine could say, hand on heart, at Brussels, that there was no trade or contact between England and Scotland without safe conducts; that the Queen Dowager’s visit to France meant nothing more than a mother’s natural anxiety to see her daughter the Queen; that his own visits to France now and after this embassy were merely to satisfy himself for the Government as to the welfare of Mary of Scotland.
He hoped to God that Lymond believed so too; from the malice hardly concealed in his face he doubted it. But Lymond himself merely said, ‘And Mary Queen of Scots, our illustrious princess?’
‘With her mother.’ Erskine hesitated to go on, distrusting the other man’s tone. In the stiff ceremonies at Dieppe it had been one of the picturesque moments of the Queen Dowager’s arrival: the meeting with her child Mary, now seven, cheerful and self-willed after two years in France. Queen and Queen Mother had been in tears; the Dowager’s visit was limited, after all, and when she left Mary would still be in France, and in six or seven years would marry the King’s heir. She was the reigning Queen of Scotland, and had forgotten most of her Scots.
Lymond said, ‘And now, tell me: which of your charming colleagues came with the Queen Mother from Scotland?’
Erskine’s face cleared. ‘By God, Francis, that’s a pack of weasels she has in her train this time … the whole Privy Council, pretty nearly. All the rogues she can’t trust at home. You’ll need to be careful.’
There was a little inlaid spinet in the corner. Lymond had put down his wine; getting up, he wandered over to the instrument and perched before it. ‘They won’t know me. Who?’
Erksine reeled them off. The Earl of Huntly was amongst them; and Lord Maxwell, and Lord James Hamilton, heir to the Governor of Scotland. He added, watching Lymond, ‘And two Douglases. James Douglas of Drumlanrig and Sir George.’
Francis Crawford and the Douglas family were old opponents, and he looked pleased. ‘This is promising. Anyone else?’
‘A pack of Erskines.’ Tom was grinning. His family, father to son, were among the staunchest next the throne. Margaret his wife was here as a lady of honour; Jenny, Lady Fleming, his wife’s mother, was the little Queen’s governess; his wife’s young sisters and brother were her playmates. His own two brothers were in the train, and his father, now invalided and absent, small Mary’s guardian since she came to live in France.
He went over the dispositions, and Lymond