There was nothing noble about the dishevelled head snivelling harshly at his feet. After this show of cleansing emotion, Stewart would doubtless feel much restored. Already, wiping his smeared face with his hand, he had opened his eyes, glaring, on the earth and was catching his breath to speak.
It was going to be sentimental; the very cast of the mouth foretold it. The bloody fool could not realize, even yet, that anyone trained as Lymond was could have outplayed him, disarmed him and manhandled him back to camp shirtless, swordless and without intervention from half-naked young idiots with their mistresses or anybody else.
The Archer lifted his furrowed face to speak, and Lymond said, ‘But really, bastardy is no excuse for all this. Look at Bayard. And who was your father? The last lord of Aubigny? Old Robert?’
The other man’s face stayed upturned, the mouth half opened. The resemblance to d’Aubigny was not striking, but that would explain it. The great-uncle had been a vigorous old man. Stewart swallowed. Then he said hesitantly, ‘I canna prove it. Anyway, she was out of the bakehouse; they didna marry. Had they married—’
‘You would have been Lord d’Aubigny. Not, I suppose, an uncommon trouble really. Would you have made a good seigneur, do you think?’
Stewart, who had been caught on all fours, crept to a log and sat down. He said roughly, ‘As good as him, then.’
‘Do you think so?’ said Lymond idly. ‘You might have harried your Protestants—yes—but would you have cherished your beautiful buildings and dressed them with works of art? Would you have spent your money on jewels and fine clothes, on music and tapestries? Neither of you can lead. Neither of you has made a wild success of the profession of arms. If you are not going to be practical, you must perfect the lusty arts of leisure.’
‘Living on what?’ With the tingling resurgence of anger and prejudice the Archer stiffened like a hog. ‘John Stewart of Aubigny will live on manchets and muscatel all his days, out of his parents’ marriage lines. The same as you did. You treat life, all of you, as if the world was a tilting ground. The lusty arts of leisure! When you’re born to a mean spoon and a worn thread, when the only food in your mouth and the only clothes on your back and the only turf on your roof is your own bloody sweat, you get good heart out of all your braw hours of leisure, I can tell you!’
‘In other words,’ said the voice in the darkness, profoundly unimpressed, ‘your enforced métier was to be practical. Very well. When you ran that roof race with me you started with one stocking marked, a loose row of bullion on your hoqueton, and your hair needing a cut. Your manners, social and personal, derive directly from the bakehouse; your living quarters, any time I have seen them, have been untidy and ill-cleaned. In the swordplay just now you cut consistently to the left, a habit so remarkable that you must have been warned time and again; and you cannot parry a coup de Jarnac. I tried you with the same feint for it three times tonight.… These are professional matters, Robin. To succeed as you want, you have to be precise; you have to have polish; you have to carry polish and precision into everything you do. You have no time to sigh over seigneuries and begrudge other people their gifts. Lack of genius never held anyone back,’ said Lymond. ‘Only time wasted on resentment and daydreaming can do that. You never did work with your whole brain and your whole body at being an Archer; and you ended neither soldier nor seigneur, but a dried-out huddle of grudges strung cheek to cheek on a withy.’
He stopped again, his eyes running over the rigid, tattered figure on the log. ‘I wish,’ said Lymond with the same surgical incisiveness, ‘I wish you had come to me five years ago. You would have hated me, as you do now, but the Stewarts might have found themselves with a man.’
‘Created by you!’ Rising, Stewart’s head blocked out the moon.
Lymond’s voice sardonically deferred. ‘You don’t need to excel at anything in order to teach.’
‘Except hypocrisy,’ said Robin Stewart. ‘You taught me to respect you, and all the time you were a spy. What did you teach O’LiamRoe?’ He laughed, quite out of his usual key. ‘I notice he’s shaved. He broke his oath to me without a backward glance the day you got hold of him again. He’s neither the seigneur nor the practical man either, is he?’
‘On the contrary,’ said Lymond, ‘he is very nearly both.’
‘And by the time Francis Crawford has finished with him he’ll be neither,’ said Stewart. His hands swung loose at his sides, unregarded, like rough-tackle. ‘He’ll be kneelin’ greetin’ at your feet.’ The thick voice choked, cut off with self-loathing, then with a new breath Stewart said, ‘You’re gey unsympathetic with bastardy, aren’t ye, man? Gey unwilling to let us crawl over the clean floors until our manners have been trimmed? What does Richard Culter say to that?’
Silence. Then—‘To what?’ said Lymond quietly.
‘To the habits of his famous grandfather. By all accounts a grand family man, if a mite careless where he slept. How does his lordship enjoy all the rumours?’
Lymond rose. Not quite as tall as the Archer, he had a voice which cut the space between them to ribbons. ‘What rumours, Stewart?’
The Archer, fleering, did not answer directly. ‘The new heir to the title’s cried Kevin, is he not? I heard the Erskine woman talk of it once. The old lady wouldn’t have Francis, and she wouldn’t have it after your da. You can understand it, right enough.’
He didn’t see Lymond’s right arm go back. He only felt the brutal snap of the blow on the ridgy bones of his face. The moon dissolved into a powder of planets and the air swept his cheek as he fell.
When he woke he was alone, in the thick of the bushes, with his sword and his bow at his side. The bow must have taken some time and trouble to find.
Robin Stewart rolled over, and pressing his fists to his face, cursed Francis Crawford with hate and yearning raw in his voice.
It was hot. At Châteaubriant, in the new palace and the old feudal fortress, with their gardens and parks, where the old King’s mistress had lived until her husband had opened her veins, where the poetry they wrote each other spoke still in the air, the garlands drooped and the new paint boiled into tremulous cabuchons. Here, in one of the Constable’s splendid castles, the Court was to gather and the principal members of the Ambassage Extraordinary were to stay. In hall and audience chamber and arcade, outside in the new tilting ground, the new lake, the tone was one of severe efficiency: ceremonial inventiveness stiff-corseted—propped up sometimes, indeed—by precedent and etiquette.
The Marshal de St. André, bound for London with a train of seven hundred, several shiploads of wheat, a band of the King’s best musicians, a kitchen staff of vast proportions and Boisdaulphin, the new French Ambassador, with a hundred barrels of wine for his own use alone, called and was fêted, before setting off in a leisurely way to present the Order of St. Michael and a number of interesting propositions to His Majesty of England.
If he regretted leaving his own newborn son, he did not show it. If there were more reasons than appeared on the surface for the recall of de Chémault, the Constable did not explain. The Marshal de St. André went on his way, and called on the English Embassy at Saumur as he passed. Sir James Mason, thankfully nearing the moment when his year’s French embassy would end and he could pass the two thousand seven hundred ounces of silver and gilt plate on to his lucky successor, left likewise to join his fellow countrymen on their slow journey to Nantes.
At Châteaubriant, the preparations drew to a close. This was what France did best. The guests on her soil, willing and unwilling, were forced to admire as the splendid, costly machine blandly continued to work. O’LiamRoe lingered, smitten with uncomfortable awe.
He had stayed, in spite of himself, because of the little Queen. Stewart was still at large. Since the cheetah hunt, O’LiamRoe himself had been amiably received at the Queen Dowager’s little Court, but he kept in touch circumspectly, lest he compromise Lymond.
His feelings towards Francis Crawford were still close to bitter; b
ut he could not bring himself to see him denounced for something he did not do. Moreover, it had to be recognized that in this one man, however pagan, however despotic, however lawless, lay the little Queen’s main hope of safety. It had also to be recognized, with a pain at your vitals that grew as day followed critical day, that Lymond’s surest means of doing just that lay to hand, in the person of Oonagh O’Dwyer.
O’Connor was not to be at the castle for obvious reasons of diplomacy from which the Prince in his state of registered neutrality was exempt. Mistress Boyle and her niece likewise, harmless residents, were permitted to attend, and had rented lodgings for themselves in the town, which O’Connor would doubtless inhabit until the Embassy had gone on its laborious way.
They had not arrived yet. But the Queen Dowager’s train had. Presently O’LiamRoe went off by Madame de Paroy’s permission to visit Mary—Madame Françoise d’Estamville, Dame de Paroy, the plain martinet who had replaced Jenny Fleming at five times Jenny Fleming’s (ostensible) salary; and had heard a familiar, pleasant voice behind the door.
‘King and Queen of Cantelon, How many miles to Babylon?’
A young voice laughed. ‘Go on,’ said Lymond; and the young voice obediently, strongly French, continued.
‘Eight and eight and other eight—Don’t,’ said the young voice warningly, ‘pray me to add them.’
‘I don’t need to,’ said Lymond, affronted. ‘I can do it myself.’
There was a long pause. ‘You’re taking a very long time,’ said Mary.
‘Don’t hurry me.’
‘I can do it quicker than that,’ she said. ‘It’s twenty-four.’
‘Unfair! Unfair! Bestiall and untaught,’ said the pleasant voice, ringing like a wedding bell. ‘I have ten fingers and ten toes, and beyond that I must rely on my good and noble princess Mary. Again?’ ‘Again.’
‘King and Queen of Cantelon, How many miles to Babylon?’
‘Eight and eight and other eight.’
‘Will I get there by candlelight?’
‘If your horse be good and your spurs be right.’
‘How many men have ye?’
‘Mair nor ye daur come and see.’ And both voices laughed.
Then a page opened the door.
On the way out, Lymond spoke as they passed each other, lingering, in the doorway. ‘Hallo. Minerva covered with sweat. No attempt so far, as you see. Smile, Phelim. I called on your lady and she was not at home.’
Taking a deep and painful breath, O’LiamRoe said, ‘Is there nothing I can do to stop you?’
Lymond’s face closed hard. ‘Go in there,’ he said, his hand on the door. ‘And then ask me again.’
O’LiamRoe did not drop his pale gaze. Instead he said, ‘And Robin Stewart? Is there any news?’
‘It depends,’ said Lymond evenly, ‘on what you call news. I saw him yesterday.… The interview was interesting but indeterminate.’
‘My faix,’ said O’LiamRoe a little blankly. ‘Did he speak to you?’ And added quickly, ‘Then how did it end? Where is he now, then? Did he get away again?’
Lymond did not answer at once. Then he said, looking consideringly at O’LiamRoe’s agitated face, ‘It ended in my knocking him unconscious and coming away. He’s free still, so far as I know.’
‘But—’ began O’LiamRoe loudly, and hurriedly modified his voice. ‘But that leaves the child exposed to Lord d’Aubigny … unless you’ve found real evidence against him?’
Lymond shook his fair head. ‘I have told you. Our mutual friend is proving hard to trace. Mistress Boyle’s doing, I should guess. But she will have to come to Court for the Great English Lupercalia.’
In the single moment he, O’LiamRoe, had had with her, Oonagh had flung her head up, a bruise yellow under the stretched white skin, and had said, ‘What comfort do you owe there, Phelim O’LiamRoe? Are you away in your head?’ And later, grimly, she had said, ‘All right. I tell you, he is safe from me. Were I to name him Thady Boy Ballagh I should have a question or two to answer myself. But let him try to lay his harness on me while better men are breaking their hearts and I will scorn him clean out of France.’
And now Lymond was telling him that he had spared the Archer at Oonagh’s expense. ‘This sudden tenderness for the unfortunate Robin,’ said O’LiamRoe, ‘would fairly bring you out in the purples. You prefer to sacrifice Oonagh?’
‘I hope,’ said Lymond precisely, ‘not to sacrifice anybody. As far as Stewart is concerned, I preferred not to deliver the log to the sawpit, that’s all.’
‘And Oonagh?’
‘My dear Phelim,’ said Lymond, moving away. ‘Cease to worry. You know my tenets. The mind is the origin of all that is; the mind is the master, the mind is the cause.’
‘Try telling that,’ said the Prince of Barrow grimly, ‘to Cormac O’Connor.’
The Court waited. During all this time, its manner to Lord d’Aubigny had never changed. Only the charges against him were mentally docketed against future indiscretions, and the suavest exchanges invisibly edged with black. D’Aubigny expected it. Despite the graceful attentions shown him by Henri, the added courtesies and warmth, Lord d’Aubigny travelled in childish fury from Angers to Châteaubriant, and on his first off-duty day, rode to Nantes and brought back some smoked crystal and an authenticated statue by Phidias, eighteen inches high.
Examining its dry ivory and gold, his fellow-courtiers were polite, but he was in need of a therapy deeper than that. It was Francis Crawford, Vervassal Herald, bending over the lovely carving, who said, ‘There is one like it in Rome. But I never saw a finer. This, and this, for example.’ And, his manner lyrical, Lymond expounded, while his lordship with angry reluctance feasted on these tainted sweets.
But then, neither now nor at any time could you have told that they were enemies. For a week now, the herald had attached himself to John Stewart of Aubigny and had sat at his feet, a fellow Scot and admirer. There were many times—at night, and when his lordship was on duty—when he and his acolyte were forced to part. But for the rest, it was surprising how often John Stewart looked up from cup or gem or manuscript to find the lazy, well-dressed person of the Queen Mother’s herald somewhere nearby. Even to Lord d’Aubigny, who had no keen sense of the ridiculous, this was trying, but he did his best to keep his manner both placid and cool. After all, it was not for long.
In the intervals when Lymond was free, Margaret Erskine sometimes saw him. From Richard, before he left, she had learned a little of what to expect. Francis himself, at their first encounter shortly after the episode of the boar, had described O’LiamRoe’s brief embrace of Saxon culture until she was speechless with laughter, and had been otherwise uninformative. His eyes were clear, his movements resilient as a whip. What had cured his broken bones had mended, clearly, the damage other things had done. He made no reference to that.
On the Friday of Northampton’s arrival, Lymond swept through the Queen Mother’s empty rooms airily. ‘My sweet, the pennants are hanging like gutter cloths and they are writing sonnets on the statues: will the cool northern blood be enchanted, do you think?’
‘According to O’LiamRoe,’ said Margaret placidly, ‘every statue in Westminster has its bottom covered with verse.’
‘But in France, my dear, they sign them,’ said Lymond. He had come straight from somebody’s perfume room and was furled in attar of roses and expert goldsmith work; clearly he was going to the ball. Sir George Douglas, also exquisitely dressed, smiled as he passed by. ‘Such élan, my dear. Lady Lennox will worship you,’ he said.
But it was Matthew Stewart, Margaret’s husband, he saw first at the ceremonial meeting between Northampton and the two Scottish Queens. This Lymond attended, inhumanly grave, while Mary of Guise, mollusced like a sea wall with jewels, acknowledged the triple obeisance, and the young Queen and the Marquis touched hands. The child’s face under Moncel’s fine pearl cap was scarlet, less because of the Latin sentence she had to recite than that the tight lacing,
the gartered stockings, the long sleeves and silk attires, and the floor-length soieries de luxe were throttling them all.
Nor were the gentlemen, with chemise, camisole and pourpoint, with tracé tunic and high bouffant breeches and pushed-in waists, better off. Even the Duke of Guise, godly in his calm, was leaving dark fingermarks on his scabbard and the crisped point of George Douglas’s beard sadly hung. Afterwards, when the Queens were greeting the chosen few brought up to the dais, the Earl of Lennox strolled over to his wife’s uncle.
Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, was at home here, as Douglas was at home. For eleven years he had lived and fought in France; had indeed left for richer pastures only eight years before. For his defection to England he had been anathema to the old King of France; d’Aubigny his brother had been imprisoned because of it. But that was over. England and France were about to become allies; d’Aubigny was one of the present King’s dearest friends; and if Warwick, so hastily Reformed, was not a very dear friend of Lennox at present, all might be well if Margaret were circumspect in her encounters with that shifty gentleman Crawford of Lymond; and if nothing untoward happened to the young Queen of Scotland—or at least, so ran his prayer, nothing that could be traced to Matthew Stewart of Lennox. For since that first, delicate conversation with brother John long ago, he had been horrified to notice how the sparks from the d’Aubigny activities in France kept flying towards the Lennoxes in London. Whatever was happening, he wanted nothing to do with it; as Catholics, he and Margaret found life risky enough.
In defiance of all these morbid shadows, Matthew Stewart was wearing all his portable wealth. Sir George, not patently impressed by gold lace, watched his approach, amused. When he was within earshot—’What surprising encounters one does have,’ he said. ‘Is this visit wise, Matthew? I thought the French had taken a little against you.’
The washed-out, over-relaxed eyes were angry. ‘I bow to your definition of wisdom of course’, but a little leavening among the dogmatists might not come amiss on this Embassy. You heard about the scene at Saumur where none of my Reformed colleagues would bow to the pix. At Orléans, they distributed consecrated bread to the populace; and at Angers the whole legation would have been massacred if the dear Marquis had not intervened.’