Читать книгу Child Royal - D. K. Broster - Страница 16

“I canna but feel it’s a peety, Maister Ninian,” said Sandy Forbes, Ninian’s middle-aged body-servant, who had been with him ever since he came to France, looking down at what he was folding up and putting away. “I’m wonderin’ when ye’ll pit this on again. Ou aye, I ken it’s fine to sairve oor ain wee Queen—I ken that!”

His sentiments reflected pretty exactly Ninian’s own. It was the first of December, and here he was, habited like any other private gentleman, no longer, save technically, an Archer of the King’s Scottish Bodyguard with its record of honourable service of a century and a quarter. What he was chiefly going to regret, he fancied, was the loss of the society of his comrades, fellow-Scots, all of them. The old intimacy, the old communal life, was shattered, even though he could count on seeing Patrick Rutherford and the rest from time to time, when the Court and the royal nursery happened, as now, to be established under the same roof. And the King loved to have his children near him.

But he went towards the apartments of the Queen of Scots and the Princess Elisabeth with none too joyous a heart beneath his grey doublet.

It was a very quiet interior upon which he entered. None of the Queen’s little playmates was there for fear of passing on to her the cold which Mary Livingstone had caught from the Dauphin’s so constant store, and which was indeed this morning confining him to his bed. A great fire burnt in the room, a fire too large for it. By it on a low stool sat the Princess Elisabeth nursing a doll, with a French maid-of-honour in attendance. In the centre of the room stood an embroidery frame, at which was seated Lady Fleming, working, while the child Queen, standing beside her, a skein of bright silks drooping from her hand, watched the needle go in and out. The only sound was the yapping set up by a litter of puppies in the far corner of the room.

The first person to move was Lady Fleming, who rose with a smile and dropped him a curtsey. “Welcome, sir!” The Queen stood where she was for a moment, overtopped by the great embroidery frame, then letting fall the skein of silk danced a few steps forward as one who sees a friend enter.

“You are verily come, Master Graham? You have left the Archer Guard for my sake?”

Ninian went down on one knee before her. “Yes, Your Majesty. I am come to be your very humble servant.”

Child rather than Queen at that instant, she clapped her hands together, so that he was unable to kiss one of them. And she went on almost without drawing breath: “I wish to have a white palfrey with a very long tail . . . and a dapple-grey . . . and I think a black horse. Master Graham, if you can procure me a black horse I shall call it ‘Sultan,’ or perchance ‘Morocco.’ ”

“Marie,” said Lady Fleming, intervening, “Master Graham waits to kiss your hand. Do not keep him longer upon his knee.”

“I crave your pardon, Master Graham!” said the child instantly; and next moment, not without a recurrence of the emotion he had felt upon the galley, Ninian was putting a small warm hand to his lips. The last Queen’s hand which he had so saluted had been Queen Catherine’s, that day at Lyons.

Yet he was still unable to rise from his position, for all at once he perceived at his elbow the still smaller form of the Princess Elisabeth, holding out, in embarrassing proximity to his face, the totally unmeaning countenance of her doll, and uttering some command or request which he was not sufficiently quick to interpret. But the French maid-of-honour had hurried to the scene.

“The Princess wishes you to kiss her doll, Monsieur. If you would have the complaisance to do so, lest she should weep. . . . She is a little fretful to-day.”

Ninian hastily complied, the doll’s owner meanwhile imparting some completely unintelligible information about it. He was fond of children, and this was, after all, a child of royal blood, but he was not altogether sorry that he was on his feet again when the door opened and there came in, behind Madame d’Humières, the tall, burly, bearded figure of perhaps the greatest man in the realm, Anne de Montmorency, Grand Constable of France.

He was fresh from the barbarities of his repression of the revolt in Guienne, he was at all times rude, overbearing, cruel and grasping, he had immense possessions all over France and the King’s ear always, but, father himself of eleven children (whose nests he was busy feathering), he could also concern himself with the Dauphin’s insufficient use of his pocket handkerchief, recommend his keeping indoors in cold weather, and write constant letters of advice upon nursery matters to his kinsman d’Humières, the prince’s governor, and to Madame d’Humières—whose own offspring numbered eighteen. And directly she saw him the little princess, dropping her doll, ran towards him with outstretched arms, crying: “What have you brought me—what have you brought me?”

The soldier-statesman picked her up and held her high in the air. “Ah, my little mistress, I must have payment before I give it to you! One kiss, that is all!”

And the future bride of Philip II of Spain threw her little arms round his neck and was kissed by the ironic mouth whose rough speech had earned Anne de Montmorency the title of le grand rabroueur.