He got no answer from his prince. All looked, as there fell on all a dead hush. The crowd thrilled and surged: utter silence—then a heavy stroke—all the voices began again together, swelling to one shrill cry. Châtelard, poor kite, flew a loftier course.
The cavalcade began to drive through the maze of people, pikemen going before with pikes not idle. ‘Room for the prince! Room, rogues, room!’
CHAPTER X
THEY LOOK AND LIKE
He was rather stiff in the garden; rather too tall for the raftered rooms of the burgess’ house. He did not lend himself readily to the snug cheer which was the rule at Saint Andrews. Des-Essars has recorded the fancy that he was like that boy who comes home from school, and straightens himself in his mother’s embrace; ‘not because he loves her the less, but that he knows himself to be more than when, six months ago, he parted from her with tears.’ This lordly youth cropped his English words, and stammered and blushed when he tried the French. He laughed gaily to hear the Italian staccato run its flight—like a finch that dips and rises as he wings across the meadow. ‘Monkey-speech,’ my young lord called it.
In all respects he was on the threshold. None of the deeper, inner speech of their daily commerce came near him; he ignored, because he did not see, the little tricks and chances, the colour, significance, allusiveness of it. What was the poor youth to do? He had never journeyed with the stored gallants of the Heptameron, nor whispered to the ladies of Boccaccio’s glades. He thought Bradamante a good name for a horse, and Margutte something to eat. The Queen rallied him, the maids looked out of window; Mr. Secretary exchanged glances with his Fleming, Signior David bowed and bowed. But this Italian was comfortable, seeing his ships homeward bound. In rapid vernacular, as he lay late in his bed, he told himself that the French poet could not have chosen a better night for his extinguishing.
‘That was a night, one sees, when she suddenly sickened of low company, having suddenly viewed it and been shocked: of me, and the fat Bothwell, and all these cuddling nymphs and boys. Our Châtelard was the last loathly morsel, the surfeit after the Ambassador’s bolus. Certainly, certainly! I saw her go white at his “winning” of the English favourite: how a word may stick in a gizzard! Then comes my late friend, hiding for favours under the bed. “Dio mio,” she cries, “do I live in a lupanar? O Santo Padre, let me henceforward mate only with eagles!”’
He expressed himself coarsely, being what he was; but no doubt he was perfectly right.
My Lord of Darnley, then—this eagle—was a very handsome youth, clean, buxom, and vividly prosperous. He had the most beautiful slim body you ever saw on a young man; and long legs, in whose shape he evidently—and reasonably—took delight. He had that trick of standing with his feet apart—grooms induce their horses to it with the tickling of a whip—and arms akimbo, which, with its blended savour of the Colossus of Rhodes and a French dancer, gives a man the air of jaunty readiness for all comers, and always a hint of gallantry. His head was small and well set-on, his colour fresh; his eyes were bright and roving. Yet no one could look more profoundly stupid than he when he chose to be displeased with what was saying. His lips were red, and like a woman’s; he had a strong, straight nose, and strong hair, short and curling, in colour a hot yellow. Good-natured he looked, and vain, and courageous. Mary Seton considered him a dunce, but Mary Beaton denied it. She said he was English.