The day after that, it dawns bright and clear, as if the rain has washed the air. It will be good for hawking.
“Thank God,” Beale says softly. He would not have been able to stand another day of Walsingham’s impatient fretting.
Beale is to pass as a member of Talbot’s household, and he presents himself at the castle in riding clothes. The ostlers and stable lads have the horses ready in the bailey, and though there may be thirty or so riders in the party, Queen Mary is instantly the center of attention. It is the first proper sight Beale has of her, and he feels as he did when as a child he was taken to his first bear-baiting: he could not then believe such an animal as a bear might exist, and yet there it was. When he saw it in the pit, he could not take his eyes from it. It is the same with Mary, Queen of Scots: human and yet not. She is veiled in the French manner, aloof and isolated, and she looks sickly, moving as if in pain, and Beale recalls the purple contents of her chamber pot.
He has to tear his gaze from her, for he has been told to look for Lord and Lady Livingston, whom he identifies as the nervy man and his anxious wife; and Mary Seton, the last of the queen’s longtime companions, all four of whom were also called Mary. She is fraught and fussing impatiently with points and buckles. Beale wonders what it might be like to have your fortunes depend so much on one person. Beale’s eye is then drawn to the girl trailing behind: Margaret Formby. She looks cowed, he thinks, as if straining under a mental load. No. She looks guilty. That is it.
He looks forward to telling Walsingham his divination. He can imagine him now: utterly restive, pacing up and down, waiting; waiting for Beale to come back with his report; waiting to get on with the next part of his plan. The thought makes Beale smile, though it should not. It is the death of a queen they are talking about.
After a while during which pewter cups of warm wine are passed around, and the birds are brought from their mews and cautiously admired, the queen is anxious to be off. Beale lingers at the back, almost with the servants, while at the head of the party Queen Mary rides with unexpected ease. Behind her comes George Talbot, hunched in his saddle as if going to a funeral, and Beale realizes that far from being the usual happy hunting party, there is a strange nervous tension to this one, as if everyone is primed for a disappointment.
They pass through the furlongs and market gardens that surround the town, and everything is at the peak of harvest. Men and women come to the wayside smiling and offering a taste of their produce: apples, pears, strawberries even, and it should be a sight to gladden any heart, but the hunting party seems immune to its pleasures.
When they emerge onto sheep-cropped pastures at the top of the hill, they look down into the town below as if into a plate: the castle, the church, the marketplace, and the houses all packed within its walls and rivers. On the other side of the hill is a stretch of moorland, and beyond, deep oak and beech woods where the huntsman says the beaters are ready.
It is perfect.
There follows the usual fussing about with the birds: their hoods, their jesses. The huntsman signals his men in the nearby wood, who start beating the trees and soon the sky is filled with the alarm calls of various fleeing birds. This is when the hawks should be launched, but the hunting party remains stationary in their saddles, waiting for the queen to remove the hood of the bird she has been passed.
“Come on,” Beale finds himself murmuring. “What is she waiting for?”
But she will not do it. He can hear the sigh suppressed in every chest. Here we go again.
The huntsman looks desperate.
A long, long moment passes.
The beaters are still beating but the wood is emptying of birds. The sky likewise.
Beale has slowly maneuvered himself to be alongside Margaret Formby.
“Shame,” he murmurs.
She glances at him. Under her veils she is very pale. She seems on the verge of tears.
When at last nothing seems to be about to happen, there is one last bird, a pigeon of some sort, that comes flapping up out of the margins of the wood. How the beaters can have missed it, Beale cannot guess.
And only now does Queen Mary remove the hood of her falcon and, when its eyes are right, and it has seen the pigeon, she sets it free. It drops and hurtles through the air and it brings its prey down with precise ease. The pigeon tumbles to the ground and the dogs bound down through the bracken after it. The falcon circles back and kills it but is put to flight by the dogs.
He comes circling back to Mary’s glove and lands with a thump. There is polite applause. Mary seems not quite indifferent to the bird, but she is watching the huntsman extract the pigeon’s little body from the jaws of the dog, and the way he gives the dog a treat of sorts.
“May I have it?” she asks.
It is the first time Beale has heard her speak. Her accent is neither French nor Scottish, but somewhere in between. He’d like to hear her speak more. The huntsman brings her the bird. It is not an everyday pigeon, Beale sees, but a dove of some sort. Probably escaped from a nearby cote.
“Won’t do that again,” he jokes.
Margaret Formby glances at him again. She looks terrified.
“Are you quite well, my lady?”
She nods tightly. She will hardly look at him. Instead she watches Queen Mary with a feverish intent.
Beale is rebuffed.
Meanwhile Mary holds up the dove for her falcon to take
