Child Royal (Historical Novel). D. K. Broster

them.”

      “To do otherwise,” observed Madame Diane with her pursed smile, “would in M. de Graeme be disloyalty.”

      So Ninian, standing there, answered questions, attempted a description of his Queen, and gave by request some details of the voyage and its stormy nature.

      “There was also a mention in M. de Brézé’s letter,” said the King, “of the Queen of Scotland’s having been saved—he says not by whom—from some savage dog which was about to attack her. Upon a sea-voyage that has a strange sound!”

      Not knowing whether this were a question or a mere comment, and uncertain in any case what to reply, Ninian was silent; but Madame Diane, whose eyes had never ceased to study him, remarked: “Your Majesty forgets that M. de Graeme has just told us that he was only for a brief space on board the Queen’s galley, nor was he of her train.”

      “That is true, m’amye,” said Henri, turning towards her. “However, wherever this incident took place the child was, thank God, unharmed.—Tell me now, Monsieur de Graeme——”

      The door opened rather smartly. “The Princess of Navarre craves an immediate audience, your Majesty,” said the usher in a hurried voice.

      And without waiting to learn whether her request was granted or no the suppliant appeared almost at the same instant, swept forward, and entirely regardless of the Archer standing there, began with but a dipped curtsy to the King her cousin:

      “Here is a fine to-do, your Majesty? That tiresome Antoine—what hare do you think he has started now? Why, that our marriage may not be held valid because of that contract to the Duc de Cleves when I was a child! And my mother——”

      The King’s face grew dark, for he had set his heart upon this union.

      “What nonsense!” he said sharply. “It is well known that your former marriage was annulled. Vendôme must——”

      “Her Majesty the Queen of Navarre,” announced the usher once more.

      Only then, as he perceived his aunt bearing down upon him, did the King give Ninian the signal to withdraw. And Ninian, as he left the room was sure, from the expression of the royal authoress, that it was her prospective son-in-law’s scruples rather than her daughter’s wishes which had her support.

      And he had for a moment a clear picture of that marriage ceremony eight years ago at Châtelherault, when the twelve-year-old and entirely recalcitrant bride, in her heavy cloth of gold and ermine, had suddenly declared herself unable to walk to the altar where the Duc de Clèves awaited her. King Francis had bidden the Constable de Montmorency carry her there; and Ninian, in the King’s guard, had with his own eyes beheld this order carried out. Child as Jeanne de Navarre had been then, and in spite of her all-powerful uncle François, she had set her will then as much against her marriage to Guillaume de la Marck as she had set it now as a young woman upon wedding Antoine de Bourbon. And, with King Henri behind her, Ninian thought that the ceremony would probably take place in the end just when and where it was planned to do—at Moulins, whither the court was next to proceed.

      He was making for the staircase, to return to the guardroom, when he heard a cough and a rustle behind him, and turning, perceived an elderly waiting-woman who could only be the Queen’s.

      “Her Majesty desires, Monsieur l’Archer,” she said primly, “that you would come to her, if your duties permit.”

      “Certainly I will come,” quoth Ninian. This was something new. He could not remember ever having been summoned by Madame Cathérine before.

      Following the discreet, duenna-like figure he soon found himself in a small room furnished partly as an oratory, but decorated by the tactless municipality of Lyons for the occasion, like every other apartment of the royal suite, with the twined initials of the King and of her who was not the Queen. Here—also with writing materials to her hand—sat the other member of this singular ménage à trois, true daughter of the Medici, with the ugly mouth and jaw, almost the long nose of the great Lorenzo the Magnificent, her great-grandfather. Catherine’s forehead was high and rounded; her large eyes somewhat prominent; she was no beauty. Her dress, rich but severe, had pearls sewn along the juncture of the bodice with its transparent upper portion, and, at the base of the ruff-like collar which opened to expose her throat, a beautiful stone of the hue of an aquamarine engraved with some device or scene, for she had a passion for cut gems. Of the same age almost to a day as her husband, she was still a young woman, and the mother now, after ten disconcerting years of barrenness, of four children.

      She greeted the King’s archer with the courtesy and affability which she showed to all. Yet for all that, thought Ninian, as he kissed her particularly small and beautiful hand, her thoughts and intentions were a hundred times less easy to guess than those of her triumphant rival a few rooms away, whose pre-eminence she endured with such outward composure. And though the situation was not new to Ninian, since it had gone on for twelve years, at least Catherine was now Queen. Yet as he rose from his knee he saw that the very chair she sat upon was surmounted by the gilded crescent of Diana. How, being a woman and not a sphinx, could she endure to sit in it? . . . That the same crescent and the same twined initials confronted her on his own breast did not occur to him. It had been the Dauphin Henri’s device too long for him to feel it strange when it had replaced the salamander of King François there.

      “I hear that you made the voyage from Scotland with the little Queen, Monsieur,” began Catherine. “His Majesty naturally received despatches from M. de Brézé at Turin, but I am anxious to hear of my daughter from one who has set eyes upon her. You did so, I suppose, Monsieur de Graeme, even though not making the voyage in the same galley?”

      “Yes, your Majesty, I had the honour of seeing her once.” (How does she know, he thought, that I was not on board the St. Michel, when even the King, apparently, did not?)

      “She will now, I think,” said Catherine as if to herself, “be nearing Blois or Tours on her way to St. Germain. But as there still remains to celebrate the marriage of Monseigneur de Vendôme to the Princess of Navarre I do not know when I shall be able to embrace the child. Yet I am all impatience to see my son’s future bride,” said the Queen, as naturally as any burgher’s wife. “I would I had a portrait of her.”

      “If your Majesty permits, I will describe her to the best of my ability,” volunteered Ninian.

      “You would indeed put me in your debt by doing so, Monsieur de Graeme,” said Catherine graciously.

      Ninian did his best, and, this being his second attempt at word-painting for the benefit of royalty, succeeded, he thought, not so ill. At any rate, when he had finished Catherine put out that marvel of a hand and took out from a small embossed casket beside her a netted purse of gold tissue.

      “I pray you accept this, Monsieur de Graeme, as payment for the portrait you have drawn me. The Sieur Monnier, whom His Majesty appointed last year as painter to the royal nursery, had not made me a better.”

      Thanking her, Ninian bent his knee once more and kissed her hand. The Queen, he knew, was fond of making gifts, in contradistinction to Madame Diane, who preferred to acquire them.

      As he left the room, Queen Catherine turned again to one of those urbane letters in which she was continually seeking to oblige her correspondents by the exercise of such small powers of patronage as she possessed. They were seed cast upon waters which must recede in time; for she had twenty years the advantage of Diane de Poitiers. Then would come harvest. . . .

      It was not until he reached the stairs that Ninian began to speculate how she, away in her apartment, was aware that the King had sent for him that afternoon, and why; and how she had so exactly timed his interception by her woman.

      And a little later, going down the stairs, he suddenly wondered how the royal child in whose company he had come across the sea from his own native shore and hers would fare in this many-tided ocean of the court. She would be another Queen in the arras now—his thoughts had flitted back to Garthrose for an instant—but,