The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [55]
One could discuss none of this in the pure hearing of Jane, the dear and devout, herself almost the subject of a political marriage with Edward Courtenay, the inconvenient Earl of Devonshire, to keep him out of Elizabeth’s hands. One said it instead to Austin Grey, when he came to see her on her rare periods of leave at Lady Dormer’s, and to escort her to the triumphs and tourneys or the celebration of the Feast of St Lucy, or the St Nicholas’s going about, against orders, in the bright frosty glitter of a December evening in London.
Austin never required brisk handling, as Don Alfonso did, by the end of the evening. He listened to her stream of speculation in silence, and didn’t laugh at her at all, but seemed to regard her power of observation and analysis as something worth celebrating on their own.
Cut off in full spate, Philippa was apt to find it pleasant, but embarrassing. ‘Oh, that’s Kate for you,’ she said the first time. ‘All the Somervilles are fiends for dissecting their neighbours. We had you judged from the moment your nurse brought you to visit, and you cried when the cook’s niece was sick. Tender-hearted.’
She thought, with contrition, that he flushed, but he had more than enough social ease to disguise it. ‘If I were less tender-hearted, I might be tempted to wonder whether you saw in the Queen’s marriage an echo of your own. What dreams are in your head, Philippa? Is it dreams which prevent the annulment from taking place?’
The round brown eyes which opened upon him were probably answer enough. ‘My goodness,’ said Philippa. ‘You’ve never been in the hands of the Turks, or you wouldn’t expect anyone to have much time for dreaming. Nor, I imagine, do you have any recollection of what Lymond is actually like. My mother can barely put up with him. We can’t get an annulment because he hasn’t written giving his formal consent. Which reminds me. Have you ever heard of a gentleman called Leonard Bailey?’
‘No,’ said the Marquis of Allendale on the faintest note of inquiry.
‘Oh,’ said Philippa. ‘Well, if you do, I should be deeply obliged if you’d tell me. He’s by way of being a relation by marriage.’ And was thoughtless enough to giggle at his expression.
Roger Ascham, with whom she had begun her classical studies, was less tender-hearted in his reaction. ‘There are one hundred and eighty thousand people in London. I know them all,’ he said.
‘Well, you write Latin letters for half of them,’ said Philippa, unsubdued. She possessed, it would appear, a brain almost as quick for Latin as Madam Elizabeth’s, and a great deal of rummaging about in the library of her nominal spouse had given her an advantage in some directions which the Queen’s Latin secretary thought quite unethical. They read Virgil, Homer, Herodotus, Plato, Terence and endless pages of Xenophon together and wrangled about Philippa’s analysis of King Philip’s character, which Master Ascham claimed to understand completely after three years as the English Ambassador’s secretary at Augsburg.
‘It would never occur to the Emperor,’ Ascham said, ‘that his son is unpopular. He will give him everything, whether he can hold it or not; whether he has ever fought in anger or not. The Emperor is twisted with gout—a dying man, and no wonder. I remember the Golden Fleece banquet. He had his head in the glass five times as long as any of us, and never less than a quart of Rhenish wine at one time. And the boy’s a tyro. Hates to stir himself: lies abed in the mornings; keeps his fine shape for wooing by diet, and none of your exercise. Have you seen him in the lists?’ asked Master Ascham. ‘I saw him joust genteelly at Augsburg. He hurt neither himself, his horse, his spear, nor the fellow he ran with.’
‘A stout stomach, pregnant-witted, and of a most gentle nature,’ Philippa quoted, with delicacy.
Ascham stiffened, his