The Queen's Quair
The Six Years' Tragedy
9781465640024
313 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
A tall, slim girl, petted and pettish, pale (yet not unwholesome), chestnut-haired, she looked like a flower of the heat, lax and delicate. Her skin—but more, the very flesh of her—seemed transparent, with colour that warmed it from within, faintly, with a glow of fine rose. They said that when she drank you could see the red wine run like a fire down her throat; and it may partly be believed. Others have reported that her heart could be discerned beating within her body, and raying out a ruddy light, now fierce, now languid, through every crystal member. The cardinal, who was no rhapsodist of the sort, admitted her clear skin, admitted her patent royalty, but denied that she was a beautiful girl—even for a queen. Her nose, he judged, was too long, her lips were too thin, her eyes too narrow. He detested her trick of the sidelong look. Her lower lids were nearly straight, her upper rather heavy: between them they gave her a sleepy appearance, sometimes a sly appearance, when, slowly lifting, they revealed the glimmering hazel of the eyes themselves. Hazel, I say, if hazel they were, which sometimes seemed to be yellow, and sometimes showed all black: the light acted upon hers as upon a cat’s eyes. Beautiful she may not have been, though Monsieur de Brantôme would never allow it; but fine, fine she was all over—sharply, exquisitely cut and modelled: her sweet smooth chin, her amorous lips, bright red where all else was pale as a tinged rose; her sensitive nose; her broad, high brows; her neck which two hands could hold, her small shoulders and bosom of a child. And then her hands, her waist no bigger than a stalk, her little feet! She had sometimes an intent, considering, wise look—the look of the Queen of Desire, who knew not where to set the bounds of her need, but revealed to no one what that was. And belying that look askance of hers—sly, or wise, or sleepy, as you choose—her voice was bold and very clear, her manners were those of a lively, graceful boy, her gestures quick, her spirit impatient and entirely without fear. Her changes of mood were dangerous: she could wheedle the soul out of a saint, and then fling it back to him as worthless because it had been so easily got. She wrote a beautiful bold hand, loved learning, and petting, and a choice phrase. She used perfumes, and dipped her body every day in a bath of wine. At this hour she was nineteen years old, and not two months a widow. All this the cardinal knew by heart, and had no need to observe while she stood strumming at the window-sill. His opinion—if he had chosen to give it—would have been: these qualities and perfections, ah, and these imperfections, are all very proper to a prince who has a principality; for my niece, I count greatly upon a wise marriage—wise for our family, wise for herself. He would have been the last to deny that the Guises had been hampered by King Francis’ decease. All was to do again—but all could be done. This fretful, fair girl was still Queen of Scotland, allons! Dowager of France, but Queen of Scotland, worth a knight’s venture. Advance pawns, therefore! He was a chess-player, passionate for the game. He surveyed the maids of honour, bouncing Livingstone and the rest of them, too zealous after their mistress’s ease, and too jealous lest the world should edge them out; and found that he had more zest for the world and the spring weather. ‘Ah, madam,’ he said, ‘ah, my niece, this cloister-life of stroking, and kindly knees, is not one for your Majesty. There are high roads out yonder to be traversed, armies to set upon them, cities and towns and hill-crests to be taken. But you sit at home in the dark, nursed by your maids!’
