She nodded curtly, not looking at him. He bowed and backed from the room. Ronan went with him. So, he was working through the French Ambassador. This was going to be tougher than I thought. But at least Bothwell was here, somewhere. And under the protection of the powerful Lord Seton, who would be one of the few supporters of Bothwell’s marriage to the queen. Should that ever occur.
Back in this chamber, still no one had moved. Had all our good work gone for nothing? She was in a shitty mood and we had nothing left. Yes, we had spices and perfumes but the fabrics were our star turn. If they didn’t impress her, she was unlikely to be excited by a bunch of dried sticks and leaves. There was nothing I could do. Stuck on the fringe of things, I fretted inwardly and tried to think.
However, I didn’t have to. Farrell already had the situation well in hand.
She was saying pettishly, ‘So, my masters, spices and perfumes? How easily did you think I could be bought?’
‘I expressed myself badly,’ he said calmly and it might have been a good idea to bow and scrape a little, not look her in the eye, grinning as if he knew something and she didn’t. This was my first royal personage and certainly my first case of royal mood-swing. I had felt the blast of it standing all the way back here and I suspected this one was comparatively mild in the scheme of things. Over the border, Elizabeth’s courtiers had been known to wet themselves in fright under her vicious tongue.
I resurfaced from that mental picture to find her in no way returning his smile.
‘How so?’
‘All this –’ he gestured dismissively around the room. ‘These are gifts from my masters in Istanbul. Tokens of goodwill and respect.’ He paused. ‘What will come tomorrow …’ he paused again, ‘is something quite different.’
He stopped speaking.
She waited, but he said nothing.
She tapped a foot.
He said nothing.
She played with a pomander hanging from her waist.
He said nothing.
At last, she said quietly and with beautifully understated menace, ‘I’m waiting.’
‘Your Grace would like me to spoil the surprise?’
She hunched a shoulder and said flatly, ‘I don’t like surprises. Tell me.’
It was a command.
‘What will come tomorrow is a personal gift. From me to the Queen of Scotland.’
‘You could not have brought it today?’
‘But Your Grace, if I present you with everything all at once then there will be no reason for Your Grace to grant me further audiences – and that would be a great sadness.’
‘How so?’
‘Your Grace has only to look in the mirror to answer that question.’
I was gobsmacked. He was leaning in very close, smiling directly into her eyes, his voice low and intimate. He was flirting. She was lapping it up. I’d had to work my way through years of his stifled inarticulacy and here he was now, practically sitting on her lap.
A long moment passed and then she laughed and slapped his hand. A long exhalation of relief ran around the room.
Her good humour apparently restored, she said, ‘Tell me of this gift.’
There was no doubt that was a command.
‘Jade, Your Grace. Carved and shaped especially for you.’
She raised her heavily plucked eyebrows.
‘A chess set, Your Grace. One set of players fashioned from exquisite green jade, the most expensive there is, and the other from lavender jade, rare and precious. The board is black and white, set with gold and mother of pearl and most cunningly hinged. The only example of its kind in the whole of the Christendom and beyond. Carried by caravan across mountains, deserts and oceans, to delight the most beautiful queen in the world.’
He paused and eyed her challengingly. ‘It will be my pleasure to instruct Your Grace in the intricacies of – the game.’
‘If you refer to chess, Sir Richard, I should tell you now that I am more than proficient.’
It was said with something of a snap. I tensed. Had he blown it?
No, of course he hadn’t. He was in no way dismayed.
Holding her gaze, he said, in French, ‘But no, Your Grace, I most definitely did not mean – chess.’
There was another long moment.
Suddenly, she stood. The court snapped to attention.
She cast him a long, enigmatic glance from under her lashes and swept from the room. Hastily, we all bowed. It was a magnificent exit, leaving as it did, so much unsaid. Her ladies followed her out. Their ladies followed them. Margaret sent me a swift smile over her shoulder.
People sighed and stretched and began to congregate around the glittering pile of fabrics in the room. Chamberlains appeared to supervise its removal. I was suddenly conscious of wobbly legs, a splitting headache, and an overwhelming desire to pee.
‘Let’s go home,’ I said.
Chapter Nineteen
I let everyone have a drink that night. God knows, we’d earned it.