The Galliard by Margaret Irwin

complaint.’
    ‘Ha, ha, undermined his constitution, hey?’
    ‘But,’ said the Cardinal, turning yet again to that tall pretty child, taking, as Bothwell noticed, any chance to hear her clear voice, ‘you have still not told us, Madame la Reinette, how is one to say that name – K-N-O-X?’
    ‘You do not say the K at all, sir; it is pronounced “NOX”, like the Latin for “night”.’
    ‘Then may night never fall on you!’ he answered, smiling, and Bothwell was hastily suspicious of so lewd a gallantry from an uncle. But she took his remark literally and gave him a bewitching, rather tired little smile.
    ‘My crown is so heavy,’ she said. ‘May I take it off?’
    She lifted it from her head and put it beside her, although she saw her mother-in-law give an involuntary gasp. The Medici was so superstitious with her astrologers and slavish belief in dreams and omens, she was always afraid, thought Mary with the irritation of one who is never afraid. She pushed up the, damp reddish tendrils of hair that the crown had pressed down on her forehead, and gave her head a little shake to free it from the sensation of that weight.
    As she did so she caught the eye of a young noble at a neighbouring table, and recognised the Earl of Bothwell. She was so tired that she gave him exactly the same bewitching shy sleepy smile before she remembered that she had dismissed him in anger at their last meeting. But why should she bother about that? It was tedious to go on being angry; and her mother had told her she would be wise to make friends with this young man.
    So, for she did things thoroughly, she beckoned him to her side after the banquet and introduced him to her uncle the Duc de Guise, ‘who has heard so much of you.’
    De Guise was gracious, his keen eyes sweeping the strong figure before him, the alert head and great shoulders. ‘My sister the Regent has told me something of your doings, my lord, and so has our Ambassador to England. You have not only done somevery pretty work for Scotland; you have actually brought a blush to Queen Elizabeth’s maiden cheek!’
    ‘No man could have the face to do that, sir!’
    ‘At least you gave her an awkward moment when you robbed her baggage.’
    ‘And gave your Ambassador the opportunity to call her one,’ was the instant retort.
    De Guise chuckled at his impudence. ‘Yes, you forced her underhand dealings into the open.’
    ‘Wars nowadays,’ said James Hepburn, ‘seem to be less a matter of men and weapons than of the lies told by their governments.’
    He spoke quickly, forcibly, as if he were dealing strokes in battle, for he knew that the greatest captain in Europe was summing him up, and he might only have a minute or two in which to give a decisive blow for himself.
    De Guise’s next words were obviously designed to give him an opening: ‘What did you think of our cannon? Do you believe in a future for that weapon?’
    ‘Its best effect, sir, is no doubt in siege, but I firmly believe there is a great future for it, though we may not live to see it.’
    ‘I hope not. For I have heard it said that with improved artillery the individual soldier will make precious little odds.’
    ‘Don’t you believe it, Your Highness! What counts, as always has and always will, is the kind of man you’ve got behind the big gun, as behind the musket, behind the bow and arrow or the stone in the sling.’
    ‘Personal leadership – and well you’ve proved it, young man! The Galliard has made war gaillardement .’
    So he even knew his nickname. Bothwell saw why the Guise’s men worshipped him. And the great man gave him his best chance by asking how he had combined with his French allies.
    ‘I fought side by side, sir, with the Sieur d’Oysel all through that last siege of Leith this spring, and ask nothing better. There was a sortie I led of French men-at-arms and my own light horse which swept the English trenches clean – and I never saw better work done in unison