Читать книгу Child Royal - D. K. Broster - Страница 14

The French tiring woman removed the half-made gown about which she had been receiving instructions, and Magdalen Lindsay sat down at a table in her bedchamber in the château of Carrières, near St. Germain. It was rather cold there, so that she was glad to see a shaft of thin autumn sunlight strike in through the narrow window, for it gave at least an illusion of warmth. Already, by this second week in November, the Queen of Scots and her train had been lodged in the château for a month, while the cleansing and setting in order of that of St. Germain-en-Laye went forward. This was now finished, but the move thither would not take place until the King came. His arrival from Moulins was expected now every day.

Magdalen had sat down to write a letter to her father in Scotland, but her pen was idle, and after a moment she got up and stood by the window looking out. She could see little but the sky, of a very pale blue, traversed at a considerable rate by wisps of cloud. Yet there was no sound of wind. After three months it still caused her a certain emotion to realise that it was the sky of France. When she felt thus she would sometimes remember with a pang poor young Seton, so overwhelmed with pleasure at Roscoff, who had never completed the journey hither. Short indeed had been his acquaintance with this fair land, for he had died at Ancenis of the flux. Lord Livingstone, too, had been ill for some time, though he was now better.

The girl’s thoughts played once more over that leisurely journey. An affair of many stays and stages, it had taken almost exactly two months. There was indeed no hurry for the little Queen to arrive at St. Germain, since King Henri for all his anxiety to see her was occupied elsewhere. And how enchanted the child had been with all she saw—herself enchanting, too, all those who saw her. Brittany had been for all of them a new and strange world, with its outlandish costumes, so gaily embroidered for the men, so sombre for the women, with its uncouth Celtic tongue, its calvaries at every turn, its little chapels to unfamiliar Armorican saints. The great moment of that portion of the journey had been the delivery of the Queen by M. de Brézé to her grandparents, the Duc and Duchesse de Guise, who had travelled across France to meet her, and whose delight in the child had been patent.

Magdalen had looked upon the father and mother of the Queen Mother of Scotland with a certain amount of awe. She had imagined them older; yet the Duchesse Antoinette, born a Bourbon, was but in the early fifties, and had captured the girl’s fancy with her long nose and her amiable and intelligent expression. Duke Claude Magdalen revered for his personal courage; had he not been left for dead upon the field of Marignano in 1515 with two and twenty wounds? She had not been long enough in France to know how much of the Guise greed and calculation were his, along with these honourable scars.

Then had come Nantes, and the slow peaceful voyage up the wide Loire in the serene September weather, with constant song and merriment and the children trying to hang over the sides of the barges to watch the water sliding past, while from the banks one proud castle after another watched them go by. At Tours they had left the river, and proceeded by Illiers and Chartres towards Paris, and thereafter to the temporary quarters of the royal children of France in the château of Carrières.

Magdalen’s first sight of the little Dauphin she would never forget; she thought, with a shock, that she had never seen a more unhealthy-looking child. The richness of the costume in which his puny little body was encased only accentuated his sickly appearance. Born with a wretched constitution, smitten by small-pox at the age of three, his short life had been—and was to continue—a perpetual struggle against ill-health. And yet, as she soon discovered—and it made his case the more pitiful—the little boy’s spirit was alert and gallant; he longed already to emulate his father’s physical prowess and looked forward to the day when he could go to the wars. His greeting to his future bride was courtly beyond his years, and they were soon on excellent terms.

* * * * *

The girl came away from the window and sat down anew to her letter.

Honoured Father,

Since I last writ to you there hath passed little of moment. Monseigneur the Dauphin continues to show great pleasure in the company of her Majesty our Queen, and it is verily a charming sight to see them together. The King of France and the Queen, and in particular “Madame Diane” have writ many letters of instruction on matters connected with the royal children to Monsieur and Madame d’Humières, under whose care they are. My Lady Fleming continues to show me kind——

The door was flung open without ceremony, and a young, excited Scottish face looked in.

“Magdalen, Magdalen, he is on his way! A courier has just arrived.”

Magdalen sprang up. “Who? Not the King?”

Jean Ogilvy nodded. “The courier reports that he will be here in a couple of hours. He says that His Majesty, in his haste to enjoy the company of Messeigneurs ses enfants, and to greet his new daughter the Queen of Scots, is hastening hither with but a small escort, ahead of his gentlemen. Come, there is much to make ready!”

That indeed was the case, and the next hour was feverish. The little Scottish girls were all arrayed in their best gowns and coifs, nor did Lady Fleming omit to embellish herself. To M. and Madame d’Humières the occasion was naturally less perturbing. But the Dauphin was greatly excited, not having seen his father for more than six months.

“Now at last, Madame,” he was heard to say to his future spouse, “now at last you will behold the great King, my father!”

At the same time Lord Erskine enquired in an aside of Lady Fleming whether her Grace needed further instruction in the deep curtsey which, except to her mother, she had been so seldom called upon to make. As for her four small playmates, the chamber at one moment resembled a dancing school as they all diligently practised their reverences, with their stiff little skirts outspread, till Mary Fleming, to her mother’s mortification and her own, toppled over and sat down.

At last everybody was ready and waiting in the hall of the castle, grouped round the great fire at the upper end. Midway down the long apartment the old tapestries which cut it in two swayed almost rhythmically in the draught. Some distance from the fire, in the background, and near a window with ill-fitting glass, Magdalen shivered, yet not, as she was well aware, entirely with cold, but with excitement and a touch of apprehension, too. She was not yet used to courts. She thrust her chilly hands up the wide, bell-shaped sleeves of her gown; even the fur edging seemed to give no warmth.

Then she forgot her physical sensations. There had come a brisk and continued clatter of horse-hoofs; the King and his escort must be riding into the court-yard.

The Dauphin began to jump with impatience; a flush came into the little Queen’s face, and for a moment one hand made a wavering movement towards Lady Fleming, just behind her. Then she folded them both resolutely in front of her. Yet it seemed a long time before the two ushers in readiness drew aside the heavy folds of grey and green, and through the aperture came with his vigorous stride, alone, Henri II in his usual costume of black relieved with white, his short cloak swinging, his high boots spattered to the thighs with mud.

The Dauphin gave a little shout and ran forward; then, recollecting himself, advanced more sedately, bent his knee, and formally kissed his father’s hand, on which the King stooped and embraced him warmly. He was devoted to his children.

The stage was now set for the meeting of the two crowned heads. Mary Stuart neither hurried nor hung back, and the two sovereigns, the tall, early-grizzled man, and the bright-haired little girl not yet six, met in the centre of the hall. The Queen of Scots dropped a very respectful but not reverential curtsey, and the King of France, removing his plumed cap, stooped—a very long way—and lifted her small hand to his lips. Then, murmuring, “Welcome, my dear daughter,” he kissed the cheek which she presented to him. Holding her by the hand, with his other hand on the Dauphin’s shoulder, he then advanced towards Madame d’Humières and his three-year-old daughter Elisabeth, whom he caught up in his arms.

“No more measles, I see, my sweet—no more need of that unicorn’s horn of the Constable’s! Madame, I congratulate you upon my daughter’s looks!”

“Indeed, your Majesty,” said Madame d’Humières, rising from her deep curtsey, “her Royal Highness has never been in better health.”

“And Claude, the sweet chuck?” He bent over the fourteen-month-old princess presented by her nurse. “How she has grown since I saw her last! And my small son Louis . . . asleep elsewhere, no doubt?”

Both the Dauphin and his eldest sister were now pulling at their father, making innumerable requests. “All in good time, little chatter-boxes,” said King Henri good-humouredly, “all in good time!” And then he became the King again.

“My lords and ladies, you may now withdraw. Monsieur d’Humières, will you convey my dear daughter the Queen of Scotland and Monseigneur the Dauphin and the Princess Elisabeth to my own apartments, that I may enjoy their society there.—Nay, first there is a further thing to do. If my daughter the Queen of Scotland permits, my escort, the archers of my guard, all of her own nation, who have ridden hither with me, desire to kiss her hand, which will more than recompense them for their hard riding. Do you consent to this, Madame la reine d’Ecosse?”

“With all my heart, your Majesty,” said the child sedately, but with brightening eyes.

The King waved his hand towards two chairs of state which stood upon a small dais against the wall. To one of these Lady Fleming conducted the Queen of Scots, waiting, however, for the King to seat himself first in the other. But Henri shook his head good-humouredly, and merely saying, “Bid my escort now enter,” went and stood by the great hearth as though to warm himself, his melancholy eyes fixed upon the scene.

Once more the ushers drew apart the tapestry curtains, but wider this time, and through them came in double file a dozen of the archers of the famous Scottish Guard in their white, gold-embroidered surcoats with hanging over-sleeves striped diagonally with gold. Magdalen Lindsay did not recognise in this unfamiliar garb the man who had taken farewell of her at Roscoff, but Mary Stuart had better eyes, for when all the Archers had kissed her hand, she gave a little cry and stood up from her chair, looked hard at the row of Scottish gentlemen gazing at her with such pleasure and emotion, and next moment, like any small girl, had jumped off the dais and was running to King Henri by the hearth.

“Sire, my good father, I have a favour to ask!”

“A favour? Ask what you will, my dear daughter, and it is yours.”

“Yonder in your guard,” said the little Queen excitedly, “is Master Ninian Graham, who saved me from the savage dog on board the galley. And if your Majesty is willing, I desire him for my own service.”

The King looked somewhat astonished, as well he might. “Saved you from a savage dog? Whose—Ah, I remember, M. de Brézé wrote of something of the sort. But how came one of my Archers . . . nay, I remember that also. Monsieur de Graeme, come forward.” And as Ninian obeyed, the King went on: “Why, when I summoned you at Lyons, did you not tell me that it was you who saved her Majesty, for I spoke of the affair, I believe?”

“Because it was nothing, sire; only the kindness of her Grace recalls it.”

“No, Master Graham is wrong,” urged Mary; “it was not nothing. My brother’s great dog would have attacked me, had not Master Graham come between. And he was hurt himself—his arm . . .”

The King looked round the circle as if asking for corroboration. Lord Livingstone stepped forward.

“It is perfectly true, your Majesty. The Lord Robert Stuart’s dog was excited by the presence of some quails which were in the cabin near her Majesty, and flew at them and her Majesty. It has been a source of gratification to me, as one of the late Keepers of the Queen of Scots, that it was a kinsman of my own who had the honour of saving her from this peril.”

“Tudieu! Perils by sea I know her Majesty ran, but I had no notion there were others! And so”—Henri smiled down at the small royal suppliant—“so you wish me to give up Monsieur de Graeme to you! But, madame my daughter, what shall I do if one of my dogs attacks me?”

“I shall defend you, my King!” promptly said the Dauphin, laying his hand upon his miniature rapier. “And I shall defend her Majesty the Queen of Scotland, if need be.”

“Then she will hardly need Monsieur de Graeme,” replied the King, looking fondly upon him. “Well, we will deliberate upon the matter. Now, my children, we will go to my apartments, and you shall tell me, Marie, of all the other incidents of your voyage to the land which you have made happy by your coming.”