Royal Blood. Rona SharonЧитать онлайн книгу.
The long trestle tables, perpendicular to the high table reserved for Their Majesties and their entourage, were bedecked with Paris napery, herbs and flowers, lustrous plates, trenchers, bowls, spoons, goblets polished to a shine, manchet loaves wrapped in embroidered napkins, and gem-encrusted candlesticks. The air was spiced with fragrant aromas. A corpse of musicians fanfared the assembly to supper with a medley of notes played on flutes, trumpets, shawms, and tabors.
As the royal procession had yet to appear, the clinquant theater known as the court streamed into the hall in its finery. Most were men, but there were women interspersed among them as they clustered in select hives, speaking sotto voce and scrutinizing the rival camps. None of them paid attention to Michael as he sauntered inside, looking for the two conspirators and the mysterious spy, and in their indifference to anonymous and therefore insignificant life-forms such as him, they labored under the misconception that he must also be deaf and blind. They were mistaken.
Michael observed and listened with the alacrity of a predator on the hunt, catching snippets of intrigue, gossip, and flirtation unwittingly yet generously dispensed. He learned that the man to put one’s purse on in the jousting tournament was last year’s champion, the Undefeated Baron Monteagle; Dom Leonardo Spinelli, the papal nuncio, had lost a game of tennez to his friend and host, His Grace of Norfolk; His Grace of Buckingham had railed and misused himself in words with Cardinal Wolsey in the privy council and had been fomenting sedition against the lord chancellor ever since; Queen Katherine had remonstrated stridently with the king over the lewd theme of the midnight masque, but the king had stood pat, and well he ought to have, for the queen, should she care to preserve her dignity, would do well to avoid public rows in the future.
The last piquant crumb to fall into his ear as he prowled King Henry’s ambry of information concerned a recently arrived French princess. Young blades wishing to rise high in the world discussed the value of her dowry in jewels, plate, demesnes, and farming land, hailing her a prize worthy of a prince. Ribalds keen on disporting themselves praised her beauty and wagered on the odds of bedding her. A corpulent dame, gossiping with her matronly friends, was making a star chamber case against the French princess’s pernicious influence: “Now we are all French in eating, drinking, and apparel, and our young men, these fashion-mongers who attend so much on the new form, are all pardonnez-moi, bons and mais oui, French in vices and brags, afflicted with these strange flies, as if they can no longer sit at ease on the old bench. Fah!”
The courtiers, he noted, were somewhat licentious in their disposition: ladies kissed men on the lips in greeting, laughed at bawdy jokes, and tippled aplenty. A merry court, indeed.
Evidently the path from dismal obscurity to infamy or glory ran through this crowd. Michael frowned. For the nonce he was a nameless arriviste, skirting the fringes of society, but soon, once he foiled the attempt on the king’s life with swiftness and élan, he would strike them with awe.
A troop of ushers sporting green badges of the household staff came to herd the courtiers to their designated seats, allotted according to rank, family connections, and closeness to the throne. Michael found himself standing like a maypole, or rather a clod-pole, amid the fast-manned seats and glaringly being ignored. His gaze found Walter, the popinjay who had plowed into him in the yard. Brother and sister were sitting high up the middle table. As he scrutinized the fair pair, Michael’s gaze collided with Walter’s, who smiled maliciously and offered a mock salute.
Around them, all the seats were occupied and gusty with conversation. Feeling and looking like the gawky village idiot no one wanted at his table, Michael turned his back to the peacockish jackslave. He was confronted with the nasty Riggs, who condescended to crank a slight bow.
“Good-den. Master Devereaux, am I correct? How may I serve Your Worship?”
Michael choked down his fury and humiliation to rasp, “Pray point out my seat, good man, ere I commandeer the throne and explain to His Majesty that you seated me there.”
Muttering, “Aye, great one!” under his breath, the sergeant led him to the last pair of vacant seats at the end of one of the rear tables, closest to the entry and farthest from the throne.
A seat to suit his quarters, Michael fumed inwardly, and slid onto the edge of the bench. A murmur, a snicker, and the odd sensation of having eyes upon him sped his gaze back to Walter in time to catch the conspiratorial nod bestowed on the sergeant. Michael gnashed his teeth, pretending not to have noticed. The venal Riggs was in league with the popinjay to play him for a fool. What a foul prank, billeting him in the dungeon of the undercroft and seating him at the foot of the banquet! An act of retaliation was in order, but he would have to become acquainted with the lay of the land first in order to come up with a foully contrived prank of his own by way of reprisal. For the nonce, he would have to sit at the edge and sleep in a warren.
“Hark, Stanley, Baron Monteagle! Be this not your place of last year?”
Michael saw a corpulent fellow cackling complacently with his close neighbors at the high end of the opposite table.
“Hark, Lovell! Be that not tomorrow’s carcass all fattened up for its slaughter at the lists?”
Michael’s head swerved in the opposite direction to find a bearded, burly fellow standing two paces inside the door, affecting a fearsome glower to disguise his discomfiture—albeit his riposte did earn him several sympathetic laughs—at finding his seat of last year usurped by this Lovell fellow. Michael was aware that the last vacant seat was the one beside his, but Stanley, awkwardly scanning the better tables for a place to sit, failed to spot it as he kept looking farther up, all the way to the great salt, cursing his gaucherie under his breath.
Commiserating, Michael called out to the man discreetly, “Sir, would this be your place?”
Stanley eyed the vacant spot with disdain, then with a disgruntled snort swaggered over, sat down, and stared morosely at the empty goblet set before him. As if on cue, an army of servitors stepped forth, brandishing flagons overflowing with wine, and filled everyone’s cup to the rim.
“Do you also make food appear on plates?” Michael chuckled, reaching for his wine goblet.
Stanley’s paw fastened around Michael’s forearm. “We wait for the king’s pleasure, codling. What hoa! What have you there?”
“A hand?” Michael suggested wryly, though he knew what had captured the man’s eye: the gules peeking from under his sleeve, painted on his wrist in the shape of three red roundels and a red band that circled his wrist like a bracelet.
“Nay, your markings. What are they?”
“A birthmark,” Michael hedged.
Astute eyes alight with humor met his. “Bless the fathers whose sons are born bearing their arms on the skin, and may Our Lord pity their adulterous wives and indiscreet mistresses.”
“I surrender to your logic.” Michael grinned. “In truth, I was marked upon birth.”
“Why?” The bearded lord scowled in bewilderment.
“To keep me from getting lost, I imagine.”
“Did you make a habit of getting lost?”
“I was found.” Michael flashed him a sphinxlike smile.
“Why keep painting your skin, then?”
“The markings do not wash off.”
Bushy brown eyebrows snapped together. “You do wash, do you not, as all good knights do, once a year to please the ladies?”
“I endeavor to.” Michael laughed, recalling his testiness as a boy when the Earl of Tyrone’s emphatic intolerance of rancid smells, above all in humans, sent him a-bathing daily before bed. He explained, “The dye was pricked into my skin with a needle. Hence, ’tis called pricking.”
“Bless my black heart! And here I thought pricking meant something else entirely.” A wink and a thick elbow in the ribs gave Michael a fair idea of what his neighbor referred to.
“It