Child Royal. D. K. Broster

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ before which he said a prayer had a fish and an anchor carved at its feet—Stella Maris none the less, who had surely brought that other crowned Mary to safe harbour through the tempest.

      Ninian had hardly stepped out again into the little parvise outside when two hooded ladies came down the steps from the narrow street. Any doubt about the identity of the one was removed by a convenient gust of sea wind which blew aside the hood, and showed him the features of the giver of the veil on board the Queen’s galley. He stood still, removing the bonnet which he had just put on.

      Colouring a little, Magdalen Lindsay stopped also. “Master Graham, is it not? Mistress Ogilvy, this is the gentleman who saved her Grace from the Lord Robert’s great dog.”

      But Ninian scarcely heard the words of admiration which this speech drew from the comely young woman bearing that name. His eyes were all for Mistress Magdalen Lindsay, whom he had not seen before in untempered daylight. Now he could appreciate the pale, smooth oval of her face, from which the momentary colour had already faded, the intensity and very dark blue of her eyes, above all her expression, faintly remote and pure, as of some saint in a missal, but a saint full of compassion, even of tenderness. At all this he gazed in what he felt next moment must have been an unmannerly fashion, conscious at the time of a wish that he were alone with her—not that he had anything especial to say.

      In another instant the wish was all but fulfilled, for a smiling youth came pelting down the steps, and accosted Mistress Ogilvy as one who was in search of her. Amid the chatter that ensued between them, therefore, Mistress Lindsay and the Archer were to all purposes alone.

      Her eyes were already dwelling on his sling. “How does your arm, sir?” she asked gravely. “I hope that you consulted the Queen’s physician before you left the galley that day?”

      “What need was there, Mistress Lindsay, since the arm was bound up with your veil?” asked Ninian with gallantry. “From that moment its healing was assured, and is now near accomplished. And since in Roscoff such ladies’ gear is not, I think, easy to procure, I hope you will permit me, should we meet again, to offer you in place of what you sacrificed——”

      “Oh, never speak of that, I pray you, Master Graham!” she broke in, her face losing its gravity, her eyes very kind. “Do you not know how heavy a debt you have laid upon us all—upon all Scotland indeed! Her Grace is not unmindful of it; she still talks of her desire that you should be captain of her guard.”

      Ninian smiled too. “Bless the child’s sweet heart—if it be not treason so to speak of one’s sovereign! But I am sure she will have no household of her own yet awhile. Nevertheless, Mistress Lindsay, since King Henry will certainly soon pay her a visit——”

      “Magdalen,” broke in the voice of her companion, as she swung round and caught at her sleeve. “Magdalen, come say your prayers quickly, for Master Seton waits to escort us to St. Pol de Léon. There, if you be so minded, you can say them at more length in a cathedral. Perhaps,” added the maid of honour (if so she was), casting a look at Ninian, “perhaps Master Graham will also accompany us thither?”

      Ninian thanked her, but refused. “I have too long a journey in front of me, mistress, and must set out at once.” He kissed their hands, and, young Seton having intimated that he was not for entering the church, watched the hoods and farthingales of the two ladies disappear through the low grey doorway.

      “’Tis to be hoped their prayers will not be long ones,” laughed the young man, twirling his gaily-plumed hat round and round on his finger. “For my part, I put up enough Paters and Aves on the voyage to last me from here to Tartary. . . . I see you have suffered an injury, sir, at the hands of Neptune, no doubt. My faith, he nearly caused me to break my neck one night. But does it not make amends for all to set foot on the fair soil of France, where other gods have power—Venus, to wit, and Mars?” And before Ninian could make any reply he added, clapping his hat upon his head at a jaunty angle, “For myself, I own it intoxicates me!”

      That indeed was the impression he gave, and Ninian’s smile as he took leave of him was not unkind. He himself had once been a youth abrim with high spirits and expectations.

      (7)

      Habited once more in the white surcoat edged with gold, with the three crescent moons interlaced on the back, the crowned H and crescent moon on the breast, Ninian Graham was back again among his comrades of the Archer Guard. The town was Lyons, the place the large lower room assigned to them as guardroom in the building set apart for the reception of the King and Queen, and the time the last week in September.

      The King had been at Turin when Ninian set out from Roscoff, but the news of the serious revolt in Bordeaux against the salt tax had decided him to return to France, and he had recrossed the Alps in the first week of September. Immediately he was in Dauphiné the Constable de Montmorency and François de Guise were despatched against the rebels, and the King joined the Queen and the Grande Sénéschale of Normandy, Diane de Poitiers, on the 21st at Ainay, thereafter descending the Rhone in a great barge to Vaise, near Lyons, and making his state entry thence on Sunday the 23rd.

      And for the last four days the city on its twin rivers had been given up to a perfect orgy of fêtes, processions, mimic water-battles, and pageants—and these were not over yet. To greet its royal visitors it had bedecked itself everywhere, on archway, banner or obelisk with the device of Henri and his mistress, the intertwined H and D and the crescent moon, and with the motto Donec totum impleat orbem. Queen Catherine in her open litter had indeed glittered with jewels, while Diane rode modestly behind in her customary black and white, but it was upon Madame Diane (after the King) that the eyes of the cheering multitude were bent.

      Many, indeed, looked with interest at the other Queen in the procession, the King’s aunt, Marguerite of Navarre, seated in a litter with her fascinating and strong-willed daughter Jeanne, a girl of twenty. And all Lyons knew why there rode by the side of the litter that handsome if unreliable cavalier Antoine de Bourbon, Duc de Vendôme, for he was the chosen husband of the Princess of Navarre—chosen, that is to say, by King Henri and approved by the young lady herself. Not a single smile, however, was Queen Marguerite, that erudite novelist, poetess, and protector of Huguenots, observed to throw to this bridegroom to be, for both she and her husband disapproved of the match, which, besides increasing the prestige of his house (just then sorely in need of this) would eventually give the Bourbon the crown of Navarre. And none of the good citizens of Lyons, none of its school of humanists, were seers enough to perceive that it was not only the crown of Navarre which hung upon this marriage, but that above the young couple was hovering impatiently the spirit of the unborn Henri Quatre, with two hundred and fifty years of Bourbon Kings of France to come pressing behind him.

      “Yes, this has indeed been a noble reception of his Majesty,” observed Ninian’s friend and comrade Patrick Rutherford, yawning, however, as one who had had enough of it. “Did you not admire last Sunday, Ninian, the nymphs who came tripping forth from the artificial forest, and in particular her who, in the guise of Diana, led the tame lion on a silver chain?”

      “Graham should have been with us at St. Jean de Maurienne on the outward progress to Piedmont,” said another archer. “There the town entertained his Majesty with the most curious and original device you ever heard of. As he entered he was met by a hundred men clad in the skins of bears, who followed him on all fours to the church when he went to hear Mass; and afterwards, making the noises proper to those beasts, climbed about the market place. His Majesty vowed that he had never been so diverted in his life, and gave them a large sum of money.”

      “But Heriot has not told you,” observed Patrick Rutherford, “how they frightened the horses left tethered during Mass, and that some of the townspeople СКАЧАТЬ