Queens' Play by Dorothy Dunnett
Nothing could have suited Robin Stewart better. During the second day, moving quietly from cover to cover, he found where, among the cockleshells of buckram, Lymond shared his pavilion. Now, at leisure, you could see how pitilessly right had been the whirling impression of the boar ring, the distorted glimpse at the Tower. Under the honest earth of Thady Boy was somebody’s precious gallant quite alien to the uproarious creature of the hunt and the race. It made it in a way quite easy to kill the one without even touching the image of the other.
Thady Boy—Lymond—had been called over by a group of his fellow countrymen. He was treated, Stewart saw, with the easy familiarity due his name, and with a certain guarded respect. What Lymond would do, in the end, with himself and his talents mattered, after all, more to these men than to anybody. And this singular, if temporary, metamorphosis as a state servant of the Queen Mother’s would have been analyzed from Chinon to Candé.
It was the first chance many of them had had of meeting Francis Crawford of Lymond. Stewart guessed, from the gravity of his face, that he was playing with them. He saw George Douglas, bland, ironical, his manner verging on the exhibitor’s, abandon all his attitudes with a thud as some intellectual morass received him, leaving him to climb out with what dignity he could. Lymond was evidently not feeling patient tonight.
The day had been hot. Lying among the lukewarm grasses, stifling his hunger as dusk fell. Stewart watched the cones of marquees all silken yellow with candlelight; and beyond, the sprinkled windows of Candé, the village and castle all ablaze. In the meadows, there was still a whole tapestry of space-dwindled noise. Men spoke and laughed; pails clanked; dogs and horses responded, and the forked banners changed direction under the light evening wind with the soft night-noises of birds. A blackbird sang.
When the light had gone, and the fires gave gold and red to the eye like the jewels of an icon, Stewart held his stolen cloak tight at the throat with his one free hand, and walked forward from under the trees.
Somewhere, a company was parting. A tent flap stirred; hosts and guests, stooping, came out, rimmed and vesicled with flurried light, the words and laughter unmasked by the cloth. The clear, pleasant voice refusing escort was immediately recognizable, accentless though it was. Someone made a faintly edged joke. ‘—Le monde est ennuyé de moy, Et moy pareillement de lui. I would prefer, forgive me, to promenade my bad humour alone.’
And turning, his hair edged with silver and his face faintly amused, like some professor escaping a dull class, Francis Crawford walked steadily through the tented grass and out beyond, to the open flanks of the meadow. For a long time he stood there alone, his back to Stewart, his eyes on the ranks of tents, now extinguished and dim; and Stewart in the distant shadows waited, watching, his throat closed, blinded, exalted by the peerless moment of victory.
Then the longbow came, cool and heavy to his hand; the clothyard nocked, razor-sharp, the aspen with its grey goosefeathers smooth to the touch. Noiselessly Robin Stewart drew the cord to his ear, the lovely instrument aiming true, the even weight of the pull on each finger pad, every muscle answering by instinct the one skill above all others he had been made to acquire. He aimed, and shot.
The whine of the flight was no more than an indrawn breath in the night; the whicker as it buried itself as soft as a harp. Vibrating, the arrow sank into the ground a yard from Lymond’s right hand and Lymond himself, collected suddenly like an animal, turned his head.
In the broad, dark meadow he was alone. The tents were silent: no sentries had seen. With a puff of dust the second arrow, bracketing him, had arrived.
He might have shouted, or run, or drawn his sword, or done all three—all equally useless. There is no reply, in clear terrain, to an archer in cover. But Lymond made no sound, though his face, colourless in the moonlight, was turned to the trees whence the second arrow had come. Neither did he draw a weapon. Instead, silent on the grass, he began to run towards the source of the flight.
Robin Stewart’s mouth was paper dry. Somewhere, for the first time, a tremor began within his worn nerves. But he raised the bow for the third time, nocked his bodkin point, with its four barbs and its sweet chisel head, and standing tall, rawboned, firm, aimed and let fly for Lymond’s breast as he came.
It struck him true, in the centre of the breastbone, and fell to the ground. For an instant, the running man checked. Then, one hand firm on his scabbard, choking the rattle and keeping the bastard sword out of his way, Lymond came steadily on. Which meant only one, devastating thing: he was wearing shirt of mail. And he was coming now so quickly that Stewart halted with the shock, had no time left to aim. As Lymond hurled himself into the wood the Archer threw aside his useless bow, and drawing the sword singing from its sheath, plunged forward under the trees to meet and slice the vulnerable, pale flash of bare hands and face.
Lymond had not drawn his sword. For a second they confronted each other, Stewart’s blade descending already. Then the other man swerved violently, the steel grating on his protected shoulder, sparks glinting blue from the mesh; and disengaging, ran on into the shadows away from Stewart, deeper and deeper into the wood.
He had no chance of escape. The Archer’s long legs pounded behind him, losing ground sometimes a little, sometimes baffled by the echelonned trees; but always led, like a drumbeat, by the crackle and thud of Lymond’s light feet. Then, a long way out of earshot of the camp, where the trees thinned for a space and the moonlight fell like frost on the grass, Stewart overtook him, and Lymond turned, his sword drawn, at bay at last. For a moment the steel glowed in the darkness, caught in the queer opal light like green fire; then Robin Stewart raised his own sword and cut.
They breathed like animals, the sweat streaming down Stewart’s face, a moment ago so dry and cold. From the beginning, no word had been spoken. None was necessary. Lymond had expected him; Stewart knew that now. Equally, he supposed, Lymond realized that this was the end. The death of a herald could mean nothing to a man with nothing to lose. The chain mail couldn’t save a man’s legs. It couldn’t save his hands, or his head, or his eyes. It couldn’t save his neck. Using all the lying shadows, the floating beech boughs, the leaded moonlight, Robin Stewart, gaunt and invincible, crossed swords with his private devil at last.
He had never been brilliant, but he was thoroughly trained in a hard school. He knew the joy of the first sweet tingle of contact which taught you your enemy’s calibre. There was a long, fiery exchange, the sparks red in the darkness; a pause; and then a briefer one. Stewart fell back, the dried saliva stiff round his grinning mouth. They were matched. And he, who had nothing on earth left to fear, had the stronger will of the two. He paused, on an involuntary snort of pleasure that closed the back of this throat, swallowed, renewed his grip on the pommel, and began to play, delicately, for one thing only: the pale skin of the other man’s face.
And that, clearly, his opponent did not relish. An excellent parry suddenly appeared, to defend those thick lashes from a cut which would have sliced the bridge of his nose. Then Lymond’s blade swept low to save himself from being hamstrung. In dumb and desperate battle, Robin Stewart realized elatedly, the golden voice was silent.
It was silent, had he known it, because in the midst of these very real difficulties, Francis Crawford was also wrestling with an urgent desire to laugh.
Swordplay in a wooded clearing at night has its own special hazards: you must turn your eyes up as well as forwards, or the annihilating blade may sink deep in some curtseying bough. Creeper and rabbit hole await you; a shocked bird blunders, and the hair springs cold on your skin.
As it was, they pranced knee-deep like player-goblins, their breath in the silence like saws, the soft palate registering each truncated, tight-mouthed gasp. Stewart’s blade had touched once, near the beginning, and a thread of black showed from a scratch under Lymond’s bright hair. Stewart himself was unharmed.
Fern and knotted root pulling at their feet, they tired quickly. Between Stewart, with the
To Stewart, his body slippery inside his doublet, it seemed that his opponent was becoming unnecessarily nimble, but he felt no inclination to laugh. High, low, to one side or the other, the flat blades cracked and crashed, wringing his arm. With grim exaltation he aimed the deliberate, maiming blows, and made the other man hop. The sparks blossomed, bright as smithy-work suddenly, as he touched the chain mail and very nearly the neck; Lymond drew a short breath and disengaged. Stewart fell back, his eyes joyous, his dedication a holy thing; and a girl’s voice, high, shaky and French, said from beyond the clearing, ‘Georges! Qu’est-ce que c’est? Ah, non, ne me laisses pas!’
There was a shocking pause. Then the bushes parted. Through them bounced a half-dressed, half-drunk and wholly belligerent young man whom Stewart recognized in a single, hate-filled glance as one of those sharing Lymond’s tent. ‘What in the name’s going on here … Crawford!’
For Lymond in three dancing steps had moved into the moonlight from under the lee of Stewart’s high, arrested blade and said, almost stripped of breath, ‘Thank God, George. Did you see him? He ran past over there.’ And pointed, with his sword, to the trees directly opposite the shadows which hid Robin Stewart.
Stewart, girded with muscle and sick resolution which somehow were to help him fight and kill two men instead of one, stood, his chest heaving, stopped on the verge. The young man said short-temperedly, ‘Who?’ and Lymond answered: ‘One of the venturieri—a robber. Or so I suppose. When he heard you, he ran.’
‘Aïe! Bertrand!’ The girl’s voice scraped through the silence. ‘C’aurait dû être Bertrand!’ She had appeared at the edge of the clearing, Stewart saw; a local girl obviously, her hair in a mess. The long gown was kirtled, country style; otherwise, unlike the lady who by tight-lacing bought hell very dear, she was singularly untrammelled. Neither she nor anyone else had glanced behind Lymond’s back, where the bushes were comfortingly thick. The Archer hesitated, then stepped softly among them.
‘Was he a stout man?’ The enquiries of the hasty lover had suddenly become a good deal more cogent. ‘Black-bearded, with a stinking jerkin half-cured?’
‘Christ, yes,’ said Lymond, after the briefest possible pause. His voice sounded odd. ‘Not as the fragrance of him who walks according to the precepts. Her brother?’
‘Mon mari,’ said the girl, and moaned. ‘He will follow you, Georges. He will kill you. Quickly!’ She tugged at him. ‘You must run!’
‘Try that way,’ said Lymond, and indicated the way they had come. ‘It’ll take you back quickest.’ He paused. ‘You fool, you haven’t a sword?’
George, swaying very slightly, fired up. ‘I’ll kill him with my bare—’
‘You won’t get a chance. Here, take mine.’
The young ensign held out his hand, then drew it back. ‘But what about—’
‘He won’t trouble me again. He’s had a taste of the steel. Besides, he knows by now he had made a mistake. Hurry, you imbecile. Good luck.’
Pulled by the lady of his heart, George hesitated no longer. Seizing the weapon and the girl, one in each hand, he disappeared into the undergrowth, and Lymond, alone in the moonlight, collapsed breathless on to the ferns, helpless with laughter. ‘… The next lesson,’ said Francis Crawford, sitting up at length, ‘will be some Quick and Merry Dialogues. Before you cut my throat, dear Robin, may we talk?’
Much later, Stewart realized that fate had improved on some original plan. At the time he only knew, fumbling to recover the blind paths of his wrath, that Lymond had seized the chance neither to betray him nor to escape; but had made instead the one unanswerable affirmation of neutrality: he had disarmed himself.
But for themselves, the wood was empty. You could sense it, vacant around you after the running footsteps died away. Even the wild life, flinching from the metal and the angry voices, had abandoned the arena to Lymond and him. Shakily, cold with overstrain and post-battle nausea, Stewart walked out sword in hand to where his enemy was sitting.
Looking down at the long, exposed throat, ‘What did you do that for?’ said the Archer angrily, ‘Something you want off me, eh? Something you couldna survive, just, without. I hope so. For you’ll lack it and life both before I get out of this wood.’
‘Hanged in irons within the floodmarks of thy pride. I know it. How did Lord d’Aubigny contrive your escape?’
‘Lord d’Aubigny!’ After a second, flummoxed both by the suggestion and the unexpectedness of the subject, Stewart exclaimed, ‘I escaped with no man’s help, thank you. Are ye wud? His lordship as you well know has more reason to want me executed than anyone.’
‘Why? Your cannon misfired last time, my dear. Free, you can do him nothing but good.’
‘How?’ It was guttural in its contempt.
‘By killing me, for one thing,’ said Lymond gently. ‘And when he kills the Queen, by taking the blame. Afterwards, your body will be found.’ He paused. ‘Someone in the escort was sympathetic, wasn’t he? And made sure that after you had escaped, you would know how to reach him? Someone rather clever, by the way; for a man of mine who was following you quite closely saw nothing at all.’
No one had helped him escape. He said as much again, blasphemously, with André Spens’s address burning in his pouch, and André Spens’s bow lying back there in the wood. The man had been friendly, yes. But as to conniving at his escape …
His expression, as he worked it out from that point, must have told its own story, for Lymond said quietly, ‘I thought you might prefer to know. Mary’s death might make of d’Aubigny a very exalted person indeed. Do you want him to kill her?’
Success for that aesthetic gentleman was the last thing he wanted. But how, anyway, to prevent it? Stewart said coarsely, ‘I forgot—you were raised in a coven. A bit juggle here and a puff of smoke there, and his lordship vanishes into a bottle—if I spare you.’
‘I’m not indispensable,’ said Lymond surprisingly. ‘Not to you, anyway. If you want to kill me, I should find you hard to stop. No. The only certain way of embarrassing d’Aubigny—surely—is for you to give yourself up.’ And, as Stewart’s snort of disbelief grew into a single, outraged laugh, Lymond added coolly, ‘Why not? What else in God’s name did you escape for? You claim you don’t want to live.’
But the Archer’s mind was busy. ‘Why didn’t you have yon silly loon come and help take me, then? Ah, of course! For greed, come ben! Witness wanted against his lordship! Ye thought out of gratitude I’d help you trace my escape back to him!’
‘Perhaps,’ said Francis Crawford. During all this exchange he had remained seated, his weight thrown back on his hands, his expression obliterated by the dark, like a face seen through gauze. ‘It seems likely that the man suborned for your escape might well have been used, or might be used yet on an actual murder attempt. You could injure d’Aubigny to my benefit by telling me who. The only way you can injure us both is by killing me now, and by giving yourself instantly up to the Constable, throwing in the facts about your escape for good measure. With you once more in prison, d’Aubigny really dare not try; and in the meantime, proof may appear against him through your helper.’
And having stated his premise, Lymond took out a square of linen, unfolded it, and removed neatly, by touch, the trace of blood on his face.
Stewart, staring at him in the milky light, the mild leaves still and undemanding about them, listened to the exposition of logic which, half an hour ago, in his blood fever, would have meant nothing at all. You had to admire the skill which had brought this about; you had to say, however unwillingly, ‘If you’d taken me between you, just now, I’d still have overthrown Lord d’Aubigny, very likely, by telling the facts, as you call it, of my escape.’ His first conclusions, obviou
‘I owe you a little free will,’ said Lymond shortly. ‘The crossroads may not be of your seeking, but at least the road you choose will be your own.’
Stewart advanced. It was impossible to see the other man’s face. Standing so that the sword threw its shadow across the white gullet, the Archer said, ‘Take off that mail shirt of yours, then.’
The silence lengthened. Then Lymond, without speaking, untied and dragged off his doublet, and pulled off the mail. It rustled tinnily, a far-off tambourine, a far-off anchor chain spilling sweet in the locker: which last anchor had been raised? Lymond said, ‘It’s off. Are you happy?’
Commonplace words, to achieve what they did. But, straining, Stewart at last had made out his enemy’s features. There was no fear in Lymond’s face. The thin, long bones of it were set in thought, and there was a line between the shadowy eyes. It all said, plainly enough, that Francis Crawford did not know what he, Stewart, would do; and that patiently he was giving Stewart himself time to decide.
The sheer weight of the blade in his hand reminded the Archer. Tightening his grip, he lifted it afresh. The soft light, like strung sequins, spilled off its edge. Lymond said impersonally, ‘Are you happy?’ and the leaden tangle between Stewart’s ribs, where every bearing rein of his body was whipped hard and knotted, grew until his thin throat with its coarse tendons and its comic Adam’s apple shut tight. He dropped to his knees, the sword falling flat and unheeded on the dark grass, and clapping his two bony hands to his beaten face, wept.
Francis Crawford, who had his own laws, did not move. ‘Je t’en ferai si grant venjance Qu’on le savra par tote France,’ someone had once written. ‘I shall wreak such a vengeance that all France shall know it.’ It had a noble ring.