Child Royal. D. K. Broster

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СКАЧАТЬ made no motion to obey. “Indeed, your Grace,” she protested gently but firmly, “it is not wise to loose the birds here. The Lord Robert’s hound——”

      “He has it on a leash,” replied the Queen impatiently. “Lady Fleming, I desire——”

      But just at this juncture Lord Livingstone caught at Ninian’s arm. “Come, kinsman, and I will show you my own wean.” And he bore him away from this little unresolved clash of wills towards the three children with the ball. “There, that is she—but I will not call her from her play.”

      It was indeed a pretty sight at which the two men stood gazing, yet Ninian rather wished that his eyes were set in the back of his head instead of in the front. With some idea of being allowed to return to the two children with the quails, he looked about after a moment or two, and began to ask questions of Lord Livingstone.

      “The Queen’s eldest brother, the Lord James, does not accompany her, I think?” he observed.

      “No,” replied his kinsman, “only the two younger, the Abbot of Holyrood and the Prior of Coldingham. You can see them yonder; the Prior is he with the dog.”

      No two persons could have looked less like the bearers of such reverend titles than the two youths talking together a little way off, but Ninian was aware that the little Queen’s four illegitimate brothers were not in holy orders, and that they held their respective abbeys and priories in commendation, as had happened before in the case of royal bastards. One of the boys had in leash the large wolfhound to which the maid of honour, Mistress Magdalen Lindsay, had referred. The leash indeed seemed necessary, for the animal’s eyes were fixed intently on the birds, in their wicker prison upon the chest at no great distance.

      The game of ball now took on a much faster and more general character, for as the little girls tired the younger among the spectators joined in. The ball sped, amid laughter, from hand to hand, and all at once the little sovereign herself, abandoning the quails, hastened towards the group, followed by Lady Fleming and Magdalen Lindsay, and clapped her hands at a good catch, as any child of five might do.

      And she was still the child, and a wilful child to boot, when, just as suddenly, after a glance at Lady Fleming, whose head was turned the other way, she slipped back to the chest and the caged birds, by which little Mary Beaton was still standing.

      Out of the corner of his eye Ninian Graham watched this manœuvre with amusement, but no one else appeared to be aware of it, not even M. de Brézé, who had left his former place and was talking to Lord Erskine. Ninian saw one child whisper to the other, and then deliberately open the door of the cage. And as neither of its inmates displayed any enthusiasm for liberty, the Queen put in both hands, captured a quail and brought it forth.

      Next instant the whole cabin was a tumult of noise and movement. Baying furiously, the great wolfhound in the corner had wrenched itself free from its young master’s hold, and, sending the Lord John reeling, launched itself towards the bird. Crying its name, the youthful Prior hurled himself after it, too late; while the bewildered and then horrified ball-players merely got in each other’s way. Only the man on the outskirts of their circle who happened already to have his eyes on what was taking place by the cage was able to get there in time—and ever afterwards wondered how he had done so. He flung himself between the wolfhound and its double quarry—for the little Queen, with a cry of alarm, had caught the frightened bird up in her arms, and was herself in equal danger. The dog was enormously powerful, and slavering with desire for the quail; for the first few seconds, as Ninian struggled and staggered, with its great scrabbling paws upon his shoulders, its bared fangs within a foot of his face, he thought he must go down before its onslaught. Then other hands, and many of them, seized and dragged the beast off him, yet not before its terrible claws, cutting through doublet and shirt, had torn their way like steel down his left arm.

      Even before the wolfhound, growling and resisting, had been hustled out of the cabin, every soul in it had realised that the royal child had been saved from what none liked to contemplate. She was breathlessly surveyed. Hurt she was not—but was she badly frightened? She was very pale, the little Queen, standing backed against the chest with the terrified quail still clutched to her breast, while its mate beat in alarm about the cage, and Mary Beaton, with her hands over her face, continued to scream.

      But Mary Stuart, at five years old, could remember in the face of danger that she was, as she had just announced, a crowned queen; and when the distracted Lady Fleming, even paler than she, rushed to her, flung herself on her knees and clasped her in her arms, the child said, with scarcely a quaver:

      “My poor bird is frightened; pray take her, Madam.” And then, looking round, “I hope Master Graham was not hurt.”

      Nobody answered that, of all who were crowding round her with anxious questions on their own lips, with protestations, with solicitude, like the French ambassador, with excuses and pleas for pardon like her brother the Prior, and those of her train who realised that they might have been quicker to avert disaster. Little Mary Beaton, weeping hysterically, had to be removed by Magdalen Lindsay; Lord Livingstone hastened to reassure his own little daughter. And as for the rescuer himself, he was all the time edging as best he could through the press in the direction of the cabin door. The blood from his lacerated forearm was now soaking his torn sleeve, but since his doublet was black it made not too much show upon it, and he hoped that the fact might escape notice. His intention was to leave the cabin unseen and get the hurt bound up.

      He was almost at the door when Lord Livingstone caught him.

      “Kinsman, kinsman! Indeed you must not leave us thus! The Queen desires to thank you in person—as you most fully merit! And I too. God’s troth, if that beast had sprung upon her! . . . What, did it harm you?”

      “It is but a scratch or two,” answered Ninian, nursing the injured arm. “I do indeed thank the saints that I was in time, for I verily believe the beast would have pulled her Majesty down.—Nay, my lord, best let me go now. The child is too young to see blood.”

      But other faces were turned towards him, and other voices were speaking his name. Ninian saw that the sooner he acceded to the Queen’s request the sooner he could get away. Winding his handkerchief hastily over his sleeve, and putting his arm behind his back, he made a sign that he assented, and was led back by the Lord Keeper to receive, not only his little sovereign’s thanks, sweet and oddly dignified, but Lady Fleming’s much more effusive ones, the apologies of the conscience-stricken Lord Robert Stuart, and M. de Brézé's congratulations on his good fortune in being of such service.

      And all the while he was conscious less of the pain of his hurt than of the fact that his clenched hand, concealed behind his back, was now sticky with blood, and that unless he were soon suffered to depart, the fact of his injury must proclaim itself, at least to anyone in his rear. But as long as the child-Queen did not see . . .

      And she, looking up at him with sparkling, red-brown eyes, was making what he knew to be an impossible proposal, flattering though it was.

      “I will have Master Graham to be captain of my guard when I am come to France,” she had just said to the assembly. “Are you willing, Master Graham?”

      “Your Grace does me far too much honour,” responded Ninian, bowing. “But I am in the service of the King of France.”

      “Then I shall ask his Majesty to set you free for mine,” responded the Queen of Scotland. “My Lords Erskine and Livingstone, may I not do so?”

      Lord Erskine took up the challenge. “If his Majesty gives your Grace a household of your own you might with propriety make the request,” he responded СКАЧАТЬ