Читать книгу Child Royal - D. K. Broster - Страница 11

The wonderful good fortune which had attended Villegaignon’s galleys in the voyage right round the north of Scotland—a voyage the like of which vessels so little suited to such seas had never made before—now deserted them entirely. Almost immediately the weather deteriorated, and though it was high summer the sky put on the gloom of November, and the sea its turbulence. And when, after delays in the river caused by the adverse wind, the convoy was at length launched forth into the Firth of Clyde, between the long finger of Kintyre and the Ayrshire coast, a real tempest snarled about the slender vessels. Having so precious a cargo M. de Villegaignon thereupon put back for safety into the harbour of Lamlash in Arran, behind the shelter of Holy Island.

Despite his kinship with Lord Livingstone, Ninian Graham was not of sufficient importance to be among those who made the voyage in the royal galley, nor, for all his desire to see his little Queen, had he expected such a privilege. But it was here at Lamlash that the ill wind not only brought him the fulfilment of his wish to set eyes upon her, but blew open the gate to all that followed.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon of the day succeeding that on which the squadron had sought refuge at Lamlash. The sea had marvellously abated, but the sky was still angry enough to make it prudent to defer departure till the morrow. Leaning against the bulwark on the poop of the Sainte Catherine, Ninian was staring idly at the long, slim shapes of the anchored galleys, built for speed rather than for encountering heavy seas, and relying more upon their banks of oars than upon their triangular sails. A small boat, he saw, had put off from the Saint Michel l’Archange, and was pulling towards the Sainte Catherine. He noticed it, but no more, his thoughts busy with memories of his mother and of Garthrose.

Some minutes later the captain of the galley approached him. “Monsieur l’archer, a messenger is come for you from the Queen’s galley.”

Ninian turned, and saw the cinquefoil badge once more. Its wearer removed his cap.

“If it please you, Master Graham, my lord requests your presence that he may present you to her Majesty the Queen.”

When Ninian boarded the Saint Michel he found his distinguished relative awaiting him.

“Welcome, kinsman,” said he, clutching his fur-bordered mantle closer about him. “I bethought me to take advantage of this delay to present you, as I promised, to the Queen’s Grace, lest it should not be possible upon arrival in France. But when I saw you tossing about in that cockle boat, I doubted if the summons pleased you.”

“Indeed it did, my lord,” Ninian assured him gratefully. “For I too have doubted whether upon landing I should have that privilege, seeing that I must hasten back with all speed to the Archer Guard.”

“God knows whether we shall ever land in France at all, as things have fallen out,” responded the Lord Keeper rather dismally, as they engaged in an alleyway. “Even should we have fair winds henceforward, this delay will have given the English the chance to waylay us. You will find great quantity of people round her Majesty, I fear.”

He was right. The long, narrow poop cabin was full of the Queen’s train, and Ninian could see nothing at first but a throng of gentlemen and ladies, though almost immediately he heard above their voices the sound of childish laughter. Next moment the nearest group, recognising the Lord Keeper, parted to allow him passage, and the Archer, following him, saw in a space cleared in the centre of the cabin, three little girls in their long stiff kirtles playing at ball, watched and applauded by the bystanders. Yet as Lord Livingstone paid no heed to them, Ninian knew that none of them was the Queen.

But farther away were two others, engrossed with a large bell-shaped wicker cage, containing a couple of quails, which stood on a small chest by one of the cabin windows. The child whose face Ninian could see was a dark-eyed, golden-haired, mischievous-looking little girl of five or six; the other, whose back was turned, had a hand inside the cage and was trying to stroke one of the fat brown birds. Over her bent a handsome lady in the late thirties, and a man, whom Ninian correctly took to be the French ambassador, stood surveying the scene with a benevolent smile.

“Your Grace!” said Lord Livingstone, advancing.

But his small sovereign, murmuring words of endearment to her pet, seemed not to hear, and the lady was obliged to touch her on the shoulder.

“Marie, here is my Lord Livingstone, who would speak with you.”

And at that the little hand was quickly pulled from between the wicker bars, and the child turned round, dignity coming upon her as she did so.

“My Lord?”

A short distance behind his kinsman Ninian Graham found himself looking down with emotion at her whom he had so desired to see. Long minorities had been the rule, rather than the exception, in the troubled history of Scotland since the days of Bruce; time after time the sceptre had fallen into a childish hand. But never before into the hand of a girl-child six days’ old. On that innocent head, where now the red-gold hair showed bright through the elaborate gilded caul, the crown of Scotland had been solemnly placed when but nine months and a day had passed over it. As he thought of that, Ninian felt oddly moved.

Lord Livingstone addressed this little girl fresh from play, whose head came no higher than his dagger point, as he would have addressed any enthroned sovereign giving audience.

“I crave leave to present a kinsman of mine, your Grace—Master Ninian Graham, who returns to his post in His Most Christian Majesty’s Archer Guard, and who hath a great desire to kiss your Grace’s hand.”

He stepped back, and motioned Ninian forward.

“Master Graham, you are very welcome,” said the child, in a clear, composed voice. With equal composure she put out to be kissed the hand which a moment ago had been caressing the quail. And her very humble servant put those small fingers reverently to his lips.

When he rose from his knees the Queen looked up at him, and he could see better her rather narrow and deep-set eyes, reddish-brown like her hair, the straight little nose, short upper lip, small mouth and prettily-rounded chin. The lower part of her face was unusually oval for a child’s.

“How long have you been in the Gendarmes Ecossais, monsieur?” she asked, speaking French.

“Fourteen years, your Majesty.”

“They are all Scots gentlemen in the Archer Guard, are they not?”

“Everyone, your Majesty.”

“I should like to see them when I come to France.”

“Your Majesty may be assured that it will be their most fervent wish to see their Queen.”

“The Guard goes everywhere with the King of France?”

“Yes, Madame, it has that privilege. A certain number of us are always on duty about his person.”

“Then, Master Graham, you have seen Monseigneur le Dauphin, whom I am to marry. Is he as M. de Brézé has described him to me?”

Ninian glanced for a moment at the French ambassador, regarding this colloquy with an intensification of his benevolent smile. How exactly had this gentleman depicted that sickly but high-spirited little boy destined, if he lived, to be Francis II of France? His brush was certain to have been dipped in the rosiest colours.

“I am sure,” answered Ninian diplomatically, “that whatever M. de Brézé has told your Grace of his Royal Highness is no more than the truth. The prince is full of promise, and of the most gallant disposition.”

“But he is six weeks younger than I am,” announced Mary, with a slight accent of superiority. And then, taking a further backward step over the frontiers of childhood, which for a few moments she seemed entirely to have left behind, she added, “Although it is true that he will be a King some day, I am a Queen already!”

And with that, giving a little inclination of her childish head to signify that the audience was at an end, she turned back to the cage behind her and said decisively: “Now, Mary Beaton, we will let them out.”

Lady Fleming instantly protested. “No, no, Marie, not here!” She appeared, perhaps of set purpose, to be speaking to Mary Beaton, not to her royal charge, but the prohibition was unmistakable. The little Queen, however, disregarding it, beckoned to a tall girl in a blue gown standing at a little distance.

“Mistress Magdalen, pray set the cage on the ground for me.”

The girl came forward, but 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 rather doubtfully. But from the rapid glance which passed between him and his brother Keeper it was plain that he did not think this condition would be fulfilled. And Ninian himself felt pretty sure that the future bride, of such tender years, would at first be brought up in the royal nursery with the Dauphin and the two little princesses.

Here, to the damaged hero’s relief, the scene was cut short by the advent of M. de Villegaignon himself, who, entering the poop cabin at that moment, and being instantly apprised of what had happened, perceived, as he came forward, just what that hero was trying to hide.

“Tête-Dieu!” he exclaimed bluntly, acknowledging the Queen’s presence only by removing his cap, “this gentleman needs care rather than thanks. With your Majesty’s leave I’ll take him at once to have his arm dressed.” And he laid upon Ninian’s shoulder a hand so compelling that the latter was obliged to withdraw, after a word of excuse and reassurance to the royal child, whose eyes were wide now with concern and, for the first time, with a measure of alarm.

Just outside the cabin the two men all but ran into the tall maid of honour who had removed little Mary Beaton a few minutes ago. At the sight of Ninian’s arm, with the now soaked handkerchief crimson about it, she stopped short with a cry.

“Yes,” said Villegaignon, “you have this gentleman to thank, it seems, Mademoiselle, that your little Queen was not savaged before everyone’s eyes by that accursed dog. And, as you see, he has paid for his courage and quickness. Could you procure us some clean linen?”

“I . . . why, yes, Monsieur. But . . . for the moment, will you not take this?” And Magdalen Lindsay, hastily unpinning the short white veil which hung from the back of her head-dress, thrust it into the Frenchman’s hands and quickly disappeared.

In the Sieur de Villegaignon’s own cabin, where the commander himself, despite Ninian’s protests, acted leech, Ninian asked the name of the donor of the veil which, after washing the injured arm, he was binding round it.

“A Mademoiselle Lindsay, I believe,” replied the Frenchman, “some kinswoman of her Majesty’s gouvernante, the Lady Fleming” (he pronounced it Flamyn). “She is quickwitted, is she not? But this scrap of stuff will not suffice.—Here, however, if I mistake not, comes further provision for your hurt, Monsieur.”

There was indeed the sharp, screeching sound of linen being rent, and in the doorway appeared Janet Sinclair, her hands still busy, strips of white hanging over her arm.

“Eh sirs!” she exclaimed, in a tongue which it did Ninian’s ears good to hear in that French vessel, “whit a mairciful escape! I’ve torn up a shift o’ my Leddy Fleming’s for ye, my bonny brave gentleman, and had I torn up ane o’ the Queen’s hersel it wad be nae mair than is due to ye . . . forbye they’re but wee bit things, ye ken. God send ye be weel recompensit that saved the blessed bairn!” And here, to the Archer’s embarrassment, she reached up and gave him a hearty kiss.

“You say well, Madame Nourrice,” observed the Sieur de Villegaignon gravely. “Had aught happened to her little Majesty, whom I am to bring safe to France——”

“Ye’d likely hae lost your ain heid,” completed Janet Sinclair, who did not mince her words. “Best let me finish redding that airm, my Lord Captain; savin’ your presence, ye’re not ower handy at it. And what’s this ye hae happed it in a’ready?”

Ninian explained, Villegaignon with a grin of amusement yielding his place. “Aweel,” commented the thrifty Janet, “since the bit veil isna torn, ye’ll be able tae gie it back tae Mistress Lindsay in the end.”

During the Scotswoman’s ministration Ninian was aware that someone else had sought and obtained admission to the commander’s cabin. Hearing his own name he turned his head, and beheld a small, withering gentleman, breathing hard, as from hurry—Lord Keeper Erskine. He began at once:

“Master Graham, I am glad to have found you at last. Sir, I cannot enough commend and thank you for your courage and your promptitude. I am your debtor, Master Graham, to eternity! Had my royal charge——” And here he broke off, as one unable to finish the sentence. “If there be any recompense in my power, sir . . . as for her Majesty’s desire to see you captain of her guard—a child’s whim as you’ll understand—there’ll be no such post for a while yet in France, if ever there is . . .”

“That I well understand, my lord,” answered Ninian, still unable to free his arm from the hands of Janet Sinclair who, beyond glancing up once at Lord Erskine, took no notice of his presence, but went on bandaging. “Moreover, I am in the service of King Henry II, as I pointed out to her Majesty. Nor do I desire any recompense; to have saved her from possible harm is recompense enough.”

“And lucky ye think sae,” muttered Janet Sinclair under her breath. “For I’m thinkin’ ye’ll likely get nae ither.—There, Maister Graham, ye’ll need but tae carry yon airm in your bosom for a while, or get ye a scairf. Guid day tae ye, sir, and tak an auld wife’s blessin’ for whit ye did!”

She made a brief reverence to the Lord Keeper and went out with dignity.