She turned away. Mary, thank God, had noticed nothing. The Dowager, although a little flushed, was of the order of superb politicians to whom dissimulation was life. Her brothers, at her other side, obviously had met the herald fleetingly, if at all, and had dismissed him utterly. Lymond himself, looking like ice, had not put a foot wrong; nor had he looked at her. She found, without realizing it, that she was watching him again, and took her place hurriedly along the side rail of the drawbridge. Even two years ago, he had not looked like that.
Then the fanfares burst out afresh, and the long gallery on the castle face at right angles to theirs became filled. Henri. Catherine. The Constable. Diane. The courtiers. The Ambassadors, the mayor and échevins, the castle Governor, the guests. On one side, in an indifferent seat, was O’LiamRoe. At the other, much nearer the front, the man O’Connor. And next to O’Connor was John Stewart, Lord d’Aubigny.
He was handsome still; magnificent in his puffed and slashed doublet, the shoulder knots sparkling, the jewels on his slanting bonnet flaring as the flickering canopy admitted the sun. But he took no time to gaze down at the arena. Instead, fists in his lap, he turned his well-shaped, long-lashed eyes on the crowded drawbridge.
Margaret could have told the very second he found what he sought. His lordship of Aubigny drew a deep breath. Whatever, from his brother’s warning, he had been expecting, it was clearly not this. Then slowly, as he gazed still at Lymond, the colour returned to his face and Margaret realized she was watching an open challenge. D’Aubigny was intent on capturing Lymond’s gaze. Then, suddenly, he had it. Between gallery and gallery each man looked silently into the other’s eyes and conveyed, not an ultimatum but a judgment. Then below, the first bear and the dogs were let in.
It was an old sport, a little run-down now, popular since the days of the Triple Goddess when lions by the hundred, elephants, bulls, giraffes, were killed in internecine combat in the Roman ring. It was a little difficult, now, to find new and interesting combinations. Once the old King had cheered the Court for a fortnight by laying his drunken dinner guests in the lionhouse, à la Heliogabalus, and then introducing a very old beast with its teeth drawn, to shock them awake; it was not repeated, as the lion shortly afterwards went into a decline. Modern baiting was simpler: between bear and bear, or boar and mastiffs, or bull and lion; rarely between beast and man. The animals were brought in wheeled carts, pushed close to the arena gates. Outside, Abernaci and his staff stood waiting, with swords and spears and lighted torches, ready for accidents.
They were not needed. The first two combats took their course. The bear, ponderous and flat-handed, bare-rumped with disease, still managed to strangle one of the mastiffs pitted against him, and broke the spine of the second. They pelted his bleeding muzzle with flowers as he was led off.
The boar was a different matter. A bolster of fat and muscle, plated with spikes, he hurtled sud-strewn through the gates and stopped, skidding, under the straw dummies they had dangled over his head. This was not a sanglier, but a fresh-caught wild boar of the third year. The arms and grinders stuck dripping out of his mouth were nearly two fingers thick; and in the heavy head, sunk below the strong flesh of his shoulders, the eyes were needle-sharp and red.
He was angry, excited and frightened; and the grotesque, wind-jolted dummies catching his eye, he raced towards them and gored. There was a cheer, and a spatter of straw whisked into august faces. The two bigger tushes, contrary to appearance, were harmless; they existed only to whet the two lower. With these he kills. Grunting, the boar turned in its small feet and made for the next figure.
Amid the cheers Sir George Douglas at last worked to Vervassal’s glittering shoulder. For a moment he studied the downcast lashes and the imprint of well-bred deference held, evidently without effort, on that harlequin face. Then he turned his own eyes to the boar and said, just loud enough for Francis Crawford to hear, ‘It is a proud beast, and fierie and perilous; for some have seen him slit a man from knee up to the breast and slay him all stark dead, so that he never spake thereafter.—You know that Robin Stewart is about to take the arena?’
He got Lymond’s attention then; all of it, except that the man’s eyes in the event looked through him and not at him. ‘Dear me, really?’ said Lymond slowly. ‘I wonder why.’
The answer to that was easy. Sport. They wouldn’t permit him to be badly damaged; indeed, if he were skilful, he might make his kill and escape unhurt until his official disembowelling. Sir George was not fool enough to give Lymond the easy answer. He waited, alive with curiosity, and after a moment the other man said reflectively, ‘Of course, a little public odium would be helpful,’ and turned back to the ditch as if satisfied. Resignedly, Sir George settled to watch.
Behind the gates, the keepers had launched into the agere aprum, the shouting and horn blowing calculated to rouse the beast and bring him to frenzy. The third dummy, exploding on the wet tusks, snapped free and flounced over the grass. The boar’s head dipped, and with a rustle the dummy soared into the crowd on a flying carpet of straw rack and glitter. The King, glancing at Lord d’Aubigny, leaned forward and raised his baton. As the boar turned, dripping, and paused, the gates opened and Robin Stewart was pushed inside.
From the Archers lining the stands and the passages, there was rigid silence. From the townspeople, long since primed by rumour with tales of more deeds than he had ever done, there rose a clamour of shrieks, hissings and mock threats. He was the fourth dummy. They did not much care what he had done, if it made good gossip and good burning. From the Court, according to rank and nationality, there was impatience, anger and disgust, and ordinary pleasurable anticipation. The Dowager’s features were set in their harshest mould; but then a great many people were looking at her. A trumpet blew.
A boar trusts to his strength and his tushes, and not to his feet, which are slow and less than nimble. To kill him, a man needs a spear of exceptional strength, razor-sharp, with a crossbar of great staying power. This is to prevent the spear, once driven in, from sinking so deep that the man is brought within range of the boar’s last, formidable charge.
Robin Stewart had one of these; and in his other hand a sword. He had also, invisibly, the years of his profession, when from Christmas to Candlemas every year a chosen escort of Archers had helped the monarch bait, net and spear his boar. And more than these was a violent anger, driving out even fear, at the fate which could strip him of the dignity of death and the pleasures of denunciation at one stroke.
He did not suppose he would be left deliberately to die. Someone would intervene—if they could. But he was there to make sport, with the beast of this world that is strongest armed, and can sooner slay a man than any other. In the last resort, the man his life depended on was himself. And Thady Boy—Lymond—wherever he was, was still untrammelled, still feted and free.
A gust of wind rocked the last dummy. The boar, hearing, started round at it and then paused. The heavy head turned again, and the small, thick-veined eyes hunted, stiffly, for the man-figure the delicate nose had picked out. The young boar, the animal gregale, the stinking beast born to rip, sidled, stopped, gathered his haunches and, shaking his leather hide, his shield and his straw-spattered spikes, launched into a straight charge at the Archer.
As if Beelzebub, god of Accaron, oracle of Ochazias, had dragged her by the hair, Margaret Erskine looked round. She met, disconcertingly, the direct gaze of George Douglas, who raised his eyebrows in even more exaggerated enquiry this time. Beside him was an empty seat. Circumspectly, controlling all her impulses, she searched the crowds, to realize presently that the Queen Dowager, calling on her herald for some service, had kept him at her side. Lymond was folded neatly beside Mary of Guise’s chair, distracting the attention of several nearby ladies and enjoying an uninterrupted view of Robin Stewart sidestepping the first rush of the boar.
Robin Stewart’s view being equally unimpeded, he glanced up, gasping, from this endeavour in which he had slit, but not impaled
, the boar’s hide, and discovered that Heliogabalus, fair, exquisite and untouched in cloth of gold, was in the front row, savouring him. He turned on the boar, and the boar backed.
Then, transfigured with anger. Robin Stewart fought, and fought well: well enough for the laughter and the drawled abuse to alter to excitement. A direct hit he could not get. But as time went on, the black mess on the animal’s hide showed how near he had come; and Stewart’s gashed left arm, the stained doublet and the sword split in the grass told of something stoical and persevering which had always been there, but seldom drawn out in other than low causes and grumbling.
Man and beast were by that time tired, shaken with effort and the loss of much blood. The boar, sustained more than Stewart now by stubborn anger, slid and threshed on the grassy tilth, and turning, lowered his head afresh.
Now, if ever, was the moment for Henri to end it: to drop the baton and let the Archer serve his days of waiting with honourable wounds. It was Lord d’Aubigny who stayed his hand, and his own passionate love of sport which left the baton untouched. For Stewart, in Roman style, was kneeling, his back to the castle wall and the shaft of the spear tight in both hands, waiting for the boar face to face. And for the flicker of a second, as the lumbering creature gathered speed, Stewart’s eyes turned, searching, to the crowded faces above his head. Some of his audience, in this ultimate moment, had risen craning to their feet. And among them, suddenly, was the herald Vervassal.
Something happened to Stewart’s face—an intake of breath, a grimace of hatred, the beginning of a smile, even. Then his whole attention, blazing, meticulous, was on the charging boar.
It was the boar’s own weakness which made him falter in the last dizzying second before the spear. The point took him, not through the yielding, breathing flesh but near the snout, where the near tush caught it, deflected it, and left the ponderous body, stumbling sideways, to take the shaft askew in the shoulder and twist it, shuddering, out of Stewart’s wet hands. The slobbering bulk crushed him, the stinking breath took him in the face; then he was on his feet weaponless, while the boar, grazing the wall for a dozen, staggering yards, turned and faced him, tusks chattering like glass, the metal in him vibrating in the wind. The Queen Mother of Scotland dropped her scarf.
It whisked into the arena with an efficient air and lay twisted in elastic abandon, sparkling. There was silver embroidery on the hem. ‘Fetch it for me, M. Crawford?’ said the Queen.
For an interminable moment, Lymond did not move. The ladder Brusquet had used to enter the ditch lay at his feet. Such an order, capricious and intolerable as it might be, was royal. It was a command performance of chivalry; and to disobey it in public was something no man there would have done. After waiting just long enough, the herald turned and bowed; meeting the cool gaze under his lifted brows, Mary of Guise smiled. Then he swung over the rail and down the ladder, thrown swiftly into place. He stood there, gripping the rungs, while Stewart, unaware, backed towards him, the boar trampling the far side of the square.
The boar had seen and smelled the newcomer if Stewart, dazed with injuries, had not. He sidled nearer, approaching the Archer in small runs and halting as the whickering spear twisted within. Stewart waited, hands spread, oblivious of all but the tusks, the eyes, and the quivering haft of his spear. All the strength of his badly knit body, all the grudging, drearily acquired skills, came to his fingertips. He waited, traitor, conspirator, confessed assassin, in his single moment of solitary public achievement; his one honest treasure found just this side of the axe.
With the low, snoring groan of his kind the boar charged. It ran onesided, furiously, pounding the mangled earth, spitting blood and foam as it went, the spear whipping at its side. It ran past Stewart, past his hands outstretched to grasp the shaft, past the embroidered gauze snake lying supine on the soil, and straight up to the ladder. Lymond left it till the last second. Then he leaped aside as the boar sheared clean with his tusks the bottom rungs of the ladder where the herald had been. Lymond let him pass, took a single step, and laying both hands on the spear stuck in the animal’s hide, gave a powerful jerk. It caught the half-rearing creature off balance. Squealing, the boar tottered, lurched and tumbled backwards among the debris of the ladder, as Lymond pulled the spear free of the wound.
The herald got to his feet like a cat, his tabard washed with boar’s blood, lithe and gravely intent, and faced the dripping animal, the red spear in his hands. Then as the boar charged heavily for the last time, Lymond sunk the spear upright, with both hands, between the broad shoulders. The beast screamed, and its naked, neatly turned knees suddenly shook. Then, shapeless, unshackled, spiritless as a sack of wet peat, it fell on its side, the tushes scoring the turf.
Across the bulk of it, as the dust seethed and settled, swaying, bleeding, Robin Stewart faced his daemon. The flowers were already beginning to fall, clinging to the wet tabard. Lymond caught one up and walked with it, slowly, past the dead animal. The broadsword, shattered in the early play, lay at his feet. Lifting it, Francis Crawford impaled the spray on its split point and, moving straight up to Stewart, offered the sword, balanced on his two palms.
The blood sticking about his burst clothing, his hopeless hair glued on his cheeks, his lip bitten, his eyes aching, his head ready to burst, Stewart stared at the graceful gesture, the cool splendour, the careless thief of success, and seizing the sword by its pommel, aimed at Thady Boy’s face.
Lymond was fresh, and moreover knew exactly what he was doing. The message he had failed to transmit, walking steadily to Robin Stewart, had been a warning against just this. He ducked, and brought his foot up in the same smooth, practised movement and Stewart, tripped, ended his lunge on the ground where, buffeted and bleeding, he rolled over and lay.
To a casual observer, nothing had occurred except Stewart’s collapse. Already the keepers were running on, and with them two or three Archers, in whose charge he nominally was. The cheering, except on the part of the townspeople, was dying away: excess in anything was ill-bred, and there was a need for collective speculation. The Queen Mother’s herald, moving easily over the grass to retrieve her highness’s scarf, was being given points like a greyhound, and probably knew it. Any hopes Lymond might have had of discreet anonymity on his second appearance in France had been decisively dashed. His second entrée, as it turned out, was quite as spectacular in its way as his first.
When he could walk, Stewart was taken to the King at his own request. Two tumblers were in the arena, along with a goat. From the height of the royal stand you could see plainly across to the drawbridge, where the sun shone on a cluster of admiring heads, the middle one yellow.
He had the King’s ear: filthy though he was, prisoner though he was, he had fought well. And the Queen, the Duchess, the Vidame, the Court all about him, were watching and listening too; only Lord d’Aubigny, in the last moments, had risen and gone.
Robin Stewart raised his voice, aiming it at the King, and at O’LiamRoe sitting beyond. ‘About the man calling himself Crawford of Lymond,’ said Stewart loudly and plainly, blood springing as the muscles jerked in his cut face. ‘There’s something this Court ought to know. The Prince of Barrow there will be my witness.’
He had their attention, at least. Within sound of his voice, conversation drawled to a halt; there was a second’s silence. The Constable broke it sharply. ‘You presume, sir. The gentleman is a herald of her grace the Queen Dowager of Scotland, and is no concern of yours.’
‘Is he no? Is he no? Then he’s a concern of yours, monseigneur, and a concern of the King’s, and a concern of everybody who doesna care to be made a fool of, whether he’s a pet of the de Guise family or a dressedup tumbler with a chapman’s tongue in his heid.… Ask The O’LiamRoe. Listen to the Prince of Barrow, then,’ said Robin Stewart, his voice an uncontrolled shout. ‘Tak’ tent o’ this!’
Mysteriously, like a simple-minded jack-in-the-box, O’LiamRoe’s face appeared at his side. The kind, oval face glanced ov
er over the arena before O’LiamRoe said, ‘Death alive! Listen to what? The only soul I ever knew anything about was Thady Boy Ballagh, and him due for the block for mass murder now that our other suspect is proved white, white as the driven snow. Lymond? I met him in London. Aside from that, I know nothing of the fellow at all.’
In a single, ripe-vowelled breath out of Ireland, Stewart’s one, sweet hope of revenge had thus gone. For a moment, as he stared dizzily at O’LiamRoe’s steadfast, scarlet face, he was on the verge of denouncing Lymond regardless, in face of the ridicule and denial and the final, damning opposition of O’LiamRoe. He struggled with it, breathing heavily, while the translation was going on, aware that he was losing their attention. The King, his eye straying impatiently to the goat, said, ‘Eh bien, monsieur?’
Stewart opened his mouth.
‘Body of me, take him away,’ said the Constable briefly. ‘This is a man already half crazed. Who else would lift a sword just now against one who had just saved his life?’
The King said, ‘Did he do so?’ in the same moment as Stewart exclaimed, ‘I could have turned off the beast by myself. Devil draw me to hell, I didna need that mincing mountebank—’
The royal brow cleared. ‘Stole your audience, did he? And receives a fine reward, I see. Below.’
They cleared him away, shouting. He had let them bring him to France for two reasons: to implicate Lord d’Aubigny, and to expose Lymond as Thady Boy. Because of the King, Lord d’Aubigny was still free. And as a direct consequence of that, he had lost his only corroborative evidence against Lymond.
O’LiamRoe wanted Lymond exposed and degraded; but he was too soft in the guts, it seemed, to make him suffer for another man’s crimes. Robin Stewart was not. He was not to face the wheel for the better part of a week. And before he died or after it, Robin Stewart would make sure that on Robin Stewart’s behalf, if on no other, Thady Boy Ballagh would suffer.