Queens' Play by Dorothy Dunnett Read Free Book Online Page B

good rider. He bore her down, the horsecloth all over him, and instantly bestowed his fond attention on the situation. ‘
Dhia!
I see you have a great care for your fishing industry, to improve them with wooden legs. Will you look at that, Thady?’
    Mr. Ballagh leaned over. The whale at their feet, its plaster sides sweating in the sun, clapped open its jaws and a jet of Seine water hit the air. The horses, thoroughly shaken, plunged and danced tothe tune of Scots swearing, and O’LiamRoe this time very neatly fell off.
    It was a scene of unqualified extravagance. Before them lay the lit walls of Rouen veiled with rigging; the crowded bridge and the yellow, slapping water; but the city was all but masked by the white canvas of tents and marquees sprung like land-ships on the near bank before them. A half-finished pavilion covered with crescents and fleurs-de-lis stood by the roadside, crawling with joiners, and behind, a square of horse lines was busy with men, and a knot of six or seven soaked geldings being rubbed down. Someone had left a streaky chariot in the mud, a trident stuck by a wheel; and inside one of the tents, where a city archer gossiped on guard, a dozen fresh green canvas fishtails were drying in a row.
    The sandy mud of the banks boiled with dripping men and small boats; the islands were messy with scaffolding; and somewhere a rather poor choir was practising hard. The air was filled, like birds flying, with shouts and hammer blows and arguing voices, and at the entrance to the bridge a woman halfway up a ladder with a boy under her arm was screeching at a painter curled on a pediment high above, decorating a niche. The four men, no doubt regretting their exuberance, had disappeared with the whale to the water. Leaving his horse blithely loose, and with never a glance at his surroundings, O’LiamRoe followed.
    Robin Stewart, of the King’s Bodyguard of Scots Archers, gave a hard-pressed sigh and turned to share his despair with his bowmen. Instead, the acid, droopbrowed face of the ollave caught his eye.
    ‘France, mère des arts, des armes et des lois,’
observed Thady Boy, without altering a muscle. ‘I take it you wish to enter Rouen. Unless you divert O’LiamRoe’s mind instantly, he will feed on his whale like a prawn on the seethings of drowned men.’ Robin Stewart opened his mouth.
    But the diversion came from another direction. Over the bridge before them, two women came riding, satins fluttering and furs blowing; and the servants mounted behind were all in a livery Stewart knew as well as he knew the redheaded owner in front. It was Jenny Fleming.
    Janet, Lady Fleming, was pretty, and Scottish, and a widow. She was a natural daughter of King James IV of Scotland. She was also royal aunt and governess of Mary Queen of Scots, whom she had brought to France two years before as a little girl of five, and whose mentor she had been ever since.
    ‘Governess’ as applied to Jenny Fleming was the most irrational of terms. Mary had her teachers for every art and science, and her faithful Janet Sinclair for nurse. Jenny, who could govern nothing, and least of all herself, was her companion in mischief. A king herfather, an earl her grandfather, her dead husband a great and wealthy Scots baron, she had been born like a honeycomb moth into silk and soft living; and despite seven children, had preserved in her thirties the vivid, autocratic and expensive sparkle of her youth.
    Now, leaving her escort by the bridge, she plunged down with her horse to the shore, her companion following. She waved to Robin Stewart as she passed and Stewart flushed and waved back, and wondered who the quiet, plump young girl behind her might be. He did not know Margaret Erskine.
    ‘A whale! Does it swim? Does it spout? May I look at it?’
    The enormous creature lay in the shallow water. As its attendants grinned and chattered, an impossible jaw dropped and the whiskers of O’LiamRoe rose, tadpole-like, from the