The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [52]
‘How kind you are,’ Philippa said. ‘If my readings with Mr Ascham allow it, I should be privileged to study with Mr Elder as well.’
There was an elegant silence. Then Margaret Lennox smiled and touched the warm, scented surface of Philippa’s cheek. ‘I have offended you. Don’t hold it against me. I am merely anxious to help. Don Alfonso, take good care of her. I suspect she is a mine of accomplishments.’
‘So you are not afraid of her,’ said Don Alfonso, after the Countess had gone. ‘Although she is a formidable lady. You know, I suppose, that John Elder and Roger Ascham love each other as do God and the Devil?’
‘Yes,’ said Philippa.
‘And if the Queen’s Latin secretary will take you, then you must be a pupil of promise indeed.’
‘My Latin is promising,’ Philippa said, ‘but my English not necessarily so.’
‘Then we shall converse in Latin,’ said her new conquest promptly. ‘Although not in the hearing of Lady Lennox.’
Lady Lennox had half crossed the hall when a man she did not know, from the privy clerk’s office, hurried after her and asked if she would repeat the name of the lady to whom she had been speaking. Lady Lennox did so, with courteous precision, and asked him his own, which was Bartholomew Lychpole.
Chapter 7
The cane-play was an artistic disaster. To the thud of kettle-drum and fluting of trumpets the six quadrilles of riders wove through the long hall at Westminster and re-created with exquisite horsemanship the delicate tilting with reeds brought to Castile long before by the Arabs. The audience chattered.
Watching from the gallery, Philippa was pained, and said so. The bands of the Duke of Alva, Ruy Gomez de Silva and Don Diego de Acevedo moved forward, in a shimmer of tissue and a glow of deep-coloured velvets. ‘It was worse the last time,’ said Don Alfonso beside her. ‘Last time your English friends laughed. They prefer something coarser, with blood in it. Have you distinguished King Philip?’
The shields glanced; the canes with their long streamers arched through the air. Protected by tapestried barriers, the Queen sat with her ladies, dressed at King Philip’s expense, like a box of great nodding peonies. Jane, now on duty, looked grave in purple velvet banded with silver. On the other hand, Jane suited purple. Philippa said, ‘Which is the King?’
‘Opposite Ruy Gomez. In purple and silver, in the band led by Don Diego de Cordova,’ said Ruy Gomez’s secretary. Since he had discovered she also spoke Spanish, his black eyes, to her mild alarm, had outshone even his earrings.
‘Oh,’ said Philippa. Bearing the royal shield was the very high and mighty Prince Philip, sole heir to the realms and dominions of Spain, whose father had thrust upon him the titles of Naples and Sicily in time to call him King at his marriage. A widower, with a nine-year-old son, married to his aunt, twelve years older. A man of twenty-seven, small, bearded and colourless, with thick lips and a narrow, aquiline nose who was far, Philippa noted with regret, from being a natural-born athlete.
A cane, hurled a little awry, was deftly caught and retained by an anonymous English spectator in another part of the gallery. There was a small derisive cheer from his companions. The rider waited a moment, head upturned; then, as it was not thrown back, turned his horse into its pattern again. Another cane was passed to him. ‘I am told,’ Philippa said, ‘that unlike Henri of France, King Philip doesn’t care for pageants or field sports or chivalry.’
Don Alfonso raised his black eyebrows, sneezed, and apologized. ‘It is the climate,’ he said. ‘We are sick with the rheum. First the rolling at sea; then the rain at the wedding. No, he dislikes physical games. His father writes him, For the love of God, appear to be pleased, for there is nothing that could be of