Читать книгу Child Royal - D. K. Broster - Страница 13

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 were injured by them.”

“Tell me,” said Ninian to him, dropping his voice, “why the burghers of Lyons are so set upon exalting Madame Diane above Madame Cathérine? Surely for the city fathers to kiss the Grande Sénéschale’s hand before that of her Majesty was little short of an affront?”

Rutherford shrugged his shoulders. “You know who is Sénéschal of the Lyonnais—M. de St. André. Madame Diane had only to inform him that she wished to see her authority recognised in the south-east and he took measures. . . . Whom are you looking for, my lad?”

For a royal page, jaunty yet languid, had just approached the group of Archers.

“Which of you three gentlemen is M. Ninian de Graeme?” he enquired. “You, sir? I am sent to tell you that his Majesty desires to see you at once.”

“For what reason, I wonder?” commented Patrick Rutherford; and Ninian put the same question to himself as he followed the messenger up the wide staircase to the first floor, where were the temporary royal apartments.

His two comrades on guard outside the door moved aside to let him pass and the gentleman usher announced him.

The wide, handsome, panelled room, bright with arabesques of painting on wall and ceiling, sumptuously furnished by the city of Lyons for its exalted occupants, enshrined, amid its rich colouring, only two figures, both in their habitual black and white—assumed by the one in memory of her husband, now nearly twenty years dead, and by the other because she always wore it.

The King’s back was turned when Ninian entered. But Madame Diane de Poitiers, Grande Sénéschale de Normandie—soon to be Duchesse de Valentinois—sitting upright and composedly at a table with a parchment spread before her, and an inkhorn and pen within reach, faced him as he advanced. If he had not already been familiar with them for years, he would therefore have had an excellent opportunity of studying those firm features, that dazzling complexion, so much extolled, which was supposed never to have known cosmetics, and that small, determined and slightly pursed mouth. This woman, nearly twenty years older than himself, for whom Henri de Valois’ affection had never wavered since as a youth of seventeen he had come under her influence (and he was now just upon thirty), was comely rather than beautiful, a woman of business rather than a siren, calm, capable and grasping to the last degree. The thought flitted through the Archer’s mind that probably the parchment under her hand was waiting for the royal signature, and was some grant conveying to her or to her kin still more of the public revenues. She wore her usual widow’s coif and a gown of black velvet with wide, white-furred sleeves. Smiling, she motioned to him to approach, and extended her hand over the small table for him to kiss.

As he did so, the King turned round, revealing his dark, melancholy countenance. He was wearing a doublet of rich black velvet under a sleeveless just-au-corps of white leather embroidered with two golden crescents clasped together by the H and D of his name and Diane’s. Tall and vigorous, an adept in all athletic pursuits and passionately devoted to the chase, he yet looked fully ten years older than his age. He had never shaken off the adverse conditions of his youth, the years of captivity as a boy in Spain, a hostage for his father, the brilliant Francis I, the knowledge that that father’s love was given to the elder brother who died untimely, and that father’s failure, after the first Dauphin’s death, to train him, sullen and inarticulate as he was, for the throne which he would inherit. Whatever he had learned, whatever awakening of the spirit had come his way, he owed to the fifty-year-old mistress beside him whose livery he wore, and whom that age of pseudo-chivalry and the Amadis de Gaule could quite comfortably view as merely his inspiratrice, but who undoubtedly had his heart, and to whom he was almost unwaveringly faithful—as he was to that other great influence of his life, the Constable Anne de Montmorency.

“I would have sent for you earlier, Monsieur de Graeme,” said the King, with the affable address which covered a capacity for occasional outbursts of dark fury, “had I known that you returned from Scotland in M. de Villegaignon’s squadron. I learnt of it but this morning from a chance remark of M. de Montgomery’s. I am naturally eager for further news of my dear daughter the Queen of Scotland, from one who has so recently been in her company.”

Conceiving himself censured, Ninian got out some excuse. He had no idea of His Majesty’s wish—he had ascertained that the royal courier had arrived at Turin from Brittany within ten days of the landing at Roscoff. The King cut him short.

“Nay, I am not blaming you,” he said pleasantly. “But I have sent for you now that Madame la Grande Sénéschale and I may question you about a child who is so dear to me. Did you make the voyage, Monsieur de Graeme—which I hear was sadly tempestuous—in the same galley as her Majesty?”

“No, sire, but I had the privilege of seeing her when we were in harbour in the isle of Arran.”

“Tell me of her then,” said the King, throwing himself into a chair. “I have here M. de Brézé’s letter full of her praises; no doubt but that you will echo them.”

“To do otherwise,” observed Madame Diane with her pursed smile, “would in M. de Graeme be disloyalty.”

So Ninian, standing there, answered questions, attempted a description of his Queen, and gave by request some details of the voyage and its stormy nature.

“There was also a mention in M. de Brézé’s letter,” said the King, “of the Queen of Scotland’s having been saved—he says not by whom—from some savage dog which was about to attack her. Upon a sea-voyage that has a strange sound!”

Not knowing whether this were a question or a mere comment, and uncertain in any case what to reply, Ninian was silent; but Madame Diane, whose eyes had never ceased to study him, remarked: “Your Majesty forgets that M. de Graeme has just told us that he was only for a brief space on board the Queen’s galley, nor was he of her train.”

“That is true, m’amye,” said Henri, turning towards her. “However, wherever this incident took place the child was, thank God, unharmed.—Tell me now, Monsieur de Graeme——”

The door opened rather smartly. “The Princess of Navarre craves an immediate audience, your Majesty,” said the usher in a hurried voice.

And without waiting to learn whether her request was granted or no the suppliant appeared almost at the same instant, swept forward, and entirely regardless of the Archer standing there, began with but a dipped curtsy to the King her cousin:

“Here is a fine to-do, your Majesty? That tiresome Antoine—what hare do you think he has started now? Why, that our marriage may not be held valid because of that contract to the Duc de Cleves when I was a child! And my mother——”

The King’s face grew dark, for he had set his heart upon this union.

“What nonsense!” he said sharply. “It is well known that your former marriage was annulled. Vendôme must——”

“Her Majesty the Queen of Navarre,” announced the usher once more.

Only then, as he perceived his aunt bearing down upon him, did the King give Ninian the signal to withdraw. And Ninian, as he left the room was sure, from the expression of the royal authoress, that it was her prospective son-in-law’s scruples rather than her daughter’s wishes which had her support.

And he had for a moment a clear picture of that marriage ceremony eight years ago at Châtelherault, when the twelve-year-old and entirely recalcitrant bride, in her heavy cloth of gold and ermine, had suddenly declared herself unable to walk to the altar where the Duc de Clèves awaited her. King Francis had bidden the Constable de Montmorency carry her there; and Ninian, in the King’s guard, had with his own eyes beheld this order carried out. Child as Jeanne de Navarre had been then, and in spite of her all-powerful uncle François, she had set her will then as much against her marriage to Guillaume de la Marck as she had set it now as a young woman upon wedding Antoine de Bourbon. And, with King Henri behind her, Ninian thought that the ceremony would probably take place in the end just when and where it was planned to do—at Moulins, whither the court was next to proceed.

He was making for the staircase, to return to the guardroom, when he heard a cough and a rustle behind him, and turning, perceived an elderly waiting-woman who could only be the Queen’s.

“Her Majesty desires, Monsieur l’Archer,” she said primly, “that you would come to her, if your duties permit.”

“Certainly I will come,” quoth Ninian. This was something new. He could not remember ever having been summoned by Madame Cathérine before.

Following the discreet, duenna-like figure he soon found himself in a small room furnished partly as an oratory, but decorated by the tactless municipality of Lyons for the occasion, like every other apartment of the royal suite, with the twined initials of the King and of her who was not the Queen. Here—also with writing materials to her hand—sat the other member of this singular ménage à trois, true daughter of the Medici, with the ugly mouth and jaw, almost the long nose of the great Lorenzo the Magnificent, her great-grandfather. Catherine’s forehead was high and rounded; her large eyes somewhat prominent; she was no beauty. Her dress, rich but severe, had pearls sewn along the juncture of the bodice with its transparent upper portion, and, at the base of the ruff-like collar which opened to expose her throat, a beautiful stone of the hue of an aquamarine engraved with some device or scene, for she had a passion for cut gems. Of the same age almost to a day as her husband, she was still a young woman, and the mother now, after ten disconcerting years of barrenness, of four children.

She greeted the King’s archer with the courtesy and affability which she showed to all. Yet for all that, thought Ninian, as he kissed her particularly small and beautiful hand, her thoughts and intentions were a hundred times less easy to guess than those of her triumphant rival a few rooms away, whose pre-eminence she endured with such outward composure. And though the situation was not new to Ninian, since it had gone on for twelve years, at least Catherine was now Queen. Yet as he rose from his knee he saw that the very chair she sat upon was surmounted by the gilded crescent of Diana. How, being a woman and not a sphinx, could she endure to sit in it? . . . That the same crescent and the same twined initials confronted her on his own breast did not occur to him. It had been the Dauphin Henri’s device too long for him to feel it strange when it had replaced the salamander of King François there.

“I hear that you made the voyage from Scotland with the little Queen, Monsieur,” began Catherine. “His Majesty naturally received despatches from M. de Brézé at Turin, but I am anxious to hear of my daughter from one who has set eyes upon her. You did so, I suppose, Monsieur de Graeme, even though not making the voyage in the same galley?”

“Yes, your Majesty, I had the honour of seeing her once.” (How does she know, he thought, that I was not on board the St. Michel, when even the King, apparently, did not?)

“She will now, I think,” said Catherine as if to herself, “be nearing Blois or Tours on her way to St. Germain. But as there still remains to celebrate the marriage of Monseigneur de Vendôme to the Princess of Navarre I do not know when I shall be able to embrace the child. Yet I am all impatience to see my son’s future bride,” said the Queen, as naturally as any burgher’s wife. “I would I had a portrait of her.”

“If your Majesty permits, I will describe her to the best of my ability,” volunteered Ninian.

“You would indeed put me in your debt by doing so, Monsieur de Graeme,” said Catherine graciously.

Ninian did his best, and, this being his second attempt at word-painting for the benefit of royalty, succeeded, he thought, not so ill. At any rate, when he had finished Catherine put out that marvel of a hand and took out from a small embossed casket beside her a netted purse of gold tissue.

“I pray you accept this, Monsieur de Graeme, as payment for the portrait you have drawn me. The Sieur Monnier, whom His Majesty appointed last year as painter to the royal nursery, had not made me a better.”

Thanking her, Ninian bent his knee once more and kissed her hand. The Queen, he knew, was fond of making gifts, in contradistinction to Madame Diane, who preferred to acquire them.

As he left the room, Queen Catherine turned again to one of those urbane letters in which she was continually seeking to oblige her correspondents by the exercise of such small powers of patronage as she possessed. They were seed cast upon waters which must recede in time; for she had twenty years the advantage of Diane de Poitiers. Then would come harvest. . . .

It was not until he reached the stairs that Ninian began to speculate how she, away in her apartment, was aware that the King had sent for him that afternoon, and why; and how she had so exactly timed his interception by her woman.

And a little later, going down the stairs, he suddenly wondered how the royal child in whose company he had come across the sea from his own native shore and hers would fare in this many-tided ocean of the court. She would be another Queen in the arras now—his thoughts had flitted back to Garthrose for an instant—but, scarce out of the cradle though she was, she had already given signs that she would one day be as living an inhabitant of that tapestry as the young Princess of Navarre, whom he had not long left.