The man laughed lightly. “We are all brothers, are we
not? No doubt you refer to a kinsman of mine, one I’ve not met.
Still, if he’s in the environs, I’d like to call on him. Did you
say you knew where he’s gone?”
“
No,” retorted Sorcha, feeling more
like herself, but still light-headed. “I wish to God I
did.”
The man glanced at the others. “Could he be at
Fotheringhay?” he inquired of Sorcha.
“
He could be roasting Cecil over a
spit at Windsor, for all I know.” Sorcha knew she sounded vexed and
didn’t care. Her life was difficult enough without finding two
Napiers tangled up in it.
“
Mayhap we’ll some day cross paths,”
the man said, signaling for the others to fetch the horses. “It
might be amusing to see a face so like one’s own. Especially one
that inspires such concern from a bonnie lass.” He gave her the
wide, winning smile again and kissed her hand.
Startled, Sorcha awkwardly got to her feet. At least
she wasn’t dizzy anymore. “A fair journey to you all,” she said,
one hand waving in their general direction. “Wherever it may take
you.”
“
Our thanks,” said the man, still
smiling. “Pray forgive me if I don’t rise, mistress.” He uttered a
self-deprecating laugh of apology. “I’m lame, you see. I cannot
walk.”
Sorcha gazed from his covered legs to the other men
who were carrying a litter to the edge of the road. “Oh!” she
exclaimed with sympathy, “I’m sorry!”
“
Don’t be,” the man said simply.
“Better to lose one’s legs than one’s soul. No one yet has walked
through heaven’s gate.” He bowed from the waist up as Sorcha gave
him an uncertain curtsey. “Godspeed,” he called after her, “and
when you find your Gavin Napier, take good care of him!”
If only I could, Sorcha thought fervently, quickening
her step back toward Chartley. After a few yards, she looked over
her shoulder before rounding the curve in the road. The little
party had started moving again, heading south. Toward Fotheringhay?
she wondered—and felt as if she’d spent the last hour in a bizarre,
disturbing dream.
On the last Sabbath in October, Sorcha received
several communications. First, there was a letter from Dallas,
stating that Rob had returned safely in body, “though his brain be
riddled by earwigs, or so it would seem,” their mother wrote with
some asperity. Obviously, Rob had told her about his small role in
the Babington conspiracy. Dallas would have been outraged, not just
because Rob had risked his life, but that he had done it in the
cause of the unworthy Mary, Queen of Scots.
Dallas was somewhat less guarded in her wording about
Rosmairi. “Her spirits have been revived by being so much in the
King’s company. Still, she seems unnaturally aged for her
years.”
The letter contained little else of importance—how
the McVurrich brood and Aunt Glennie fared, a few bits of harmless
court gossip, and plans for Dallas and Rosmairi to go home to
Inverness soon to make ready for the wedding of Magnus and Jean
Simpson. Wistfully, Sorcha envisioned the grand ceremony and
unbridled celebration. She longed to be at Gosford’s End for her
brother’s nuptials, but instead, she was closed up at Chartley,
feeling as if she were in limbo.
There was no direct mention of Mary Stuart’s tragedy
nor of any reaction by her former subjects. Dallas had been very
careful. Nor did she make any reference to Gavin Napier—unless it
was a veiled one in her closing line: “God keep you in His tender
care, my daughter, and may your journey prove to have done you no
lasting harm nor given you unwanted sorrow.”
The second piece of communication had come from
Fotheringhay: The commissioners who had sat in judgment at Mary
Stuart’s trial had found her guilty of conspiring to assassinate
Queen Elizabeth. It seemed to Sorcha that the verdict was a
foregone conclusion. However, there was a rumor among the servants
at Chartley that Elizabeth, never at a loss for coming up with
surprises, would ask for clemency.
In the wake of that news came word that Sorcha and
the remaining members of the Scottish contingent would be allowed
to attend Queen Mary at Fotheringhay. Sorcha received this message
with ambivalent feelings. If Gavin Napier were neither at Chartley
nor at Fotheringhay, what difference did it make where she stayed?
Except that upon reflection, she knew she owed the Queen of Scots
her comfort and support.
The third and final missive was a brief, jerkily
written note from Gillis Mowbray, who had been summoned to
Fotheringhay a fortnight earlier. While she and Sorcha had hardly
been close, an apprehensive Gillis had wept upon departure.
“
The chit writes an appalling hand,”
Sorcha complained, knowing she sounded very like her mother. “I can
scarcely make twixt or tween of this mess.”
Ailis glanced over Sorcha’s shoulder and snorted. “I
can’t see it at all. It looks to me like chickens’ feet.”
Sorcha shook her head. “She hopes we’ll join her
soon—I think. Truly, it reads as if she hopes we’ll join her ‘son.’
But as she is unwed and childless, that seems unlikely.” Sorcha
made a droll face at Ailis over the rumpled parchment. “She
says—perhaps—that the Queen spends much time with napping. Poor
lady,” Sorcha remarked, frowning at the note. “I suspect she is
exhausted from her tribulations. Oh!” Tapping at the paper with her
finger, Sorcha’s eyes widened. “That’s not ‘napping’—it’s ‘Napier’!
He must be at Fotheringhay, too!”
“
Well.” Ailis’s tone was dry, her
gaze speculative. “Do we pack and await our call?”
Sorcha felt her cheeks grow warm under Ailis’s
scrutiny. With unwonted care, she folded Gillis’s note and shoved
it under the other two letters. “Do you despise me, Ailis?” The
green eyes invited candor.
Ailis’s oval face held no expression, save for a
certain thoughtful set of her small mouth. “No, certainly not. Nor
is it my place to question your judgment.”
The second statement seemed to detract from the
first. Discomfited, Sorcha began to prowl the room. “I don’t know
how to explain. It’s very distressing.” Though the misery was
apparent in her face, she stopped to regard Ailis levelly. “I
didn’t want this to happen.”
“
Mayhap it will pass.” Ailis had
folded her hands at her waist. In her somber gray gown and matching
wide bandeau, she looked very like a novice nun. The mental
comparison only made Sorcha more uncomfortable. But, though Ailis
remained detached, she was not without compassion. “Someday you
will find a fine young laird to wed. Once we are back in Scotland,
of course.”
“
Of course.” Sorcha couldn’t help
but smile, albeit weakly. She was touched by Ailis’s concern. Any
show of sympathy on the other girl’s part was worth ten times that
of a less taciturn, more extroverted sort of person. “Meanwhile,
though,” Sorcha said, unable to keep the eagerness from her voice,
“you’re right—we had best pack up our belongings.”
But the trunks and boxes sat in lonely readiness for
all of November and much of December. Summer now seemed long ago,
as the trees around Chartley shed their leaves to stand starkly
barren against the gray, gloomy skies. Heavy rains filled the moat
and flooded the duck pond in the manor house gardens. From
Fotheringhay, word came that Mary, Queen of Scots had stood trial.
Her bearing had been regal, her composure unruffled, her arguments
irrefutable. Not that either matter or manner could change the
verdict. It was a question of when, not if, Mary Stuart would be
executed.
For the few of her followers who remained at
Chartley, the news came as a devastating, if expected, blow. Sorcha
was disturbed at the thought of Queen Mary’s impending death, but
she soon grew depressed as well. With the end no doubt near, it was
possible that she and the other Scots would not be summoned to
Fotheringhay at all.
Christmas was all but ignored at Chartley. Only a
skiff of snow in the morning changed the dreary pattern of the
winter landscape. Sorcha had a sudden, almost uncontrollable urge
to go home to Scotland.
But at last, on a chill, bleak late December day,
word came that all who supported the former Queen of Scotland
should make ready for Fotheringhay. Despite herself, Sorcha’s
spirits soared as she and Ailis headed out with the others on the
journey from Chartley to Northamptonshire. Whatever tragic hours
lay ahead were all but obscured by Sorcha’s knowledge that within
the dark, stern walls of Fotheringhay, Gavin Napier also
waited.
* * *
Handsome, stately Chartley might possess its own
unhappy memories, but Fotheringhay’s menacing towers and the double
moat that ran along three sides made it impossible for Sorcha to
think the castle had ever been used as anything but a prison.
“
Jesu,” murmured Sorcha to Ailis as
they walked their horses up to the massive gateway that served as
an ominous counterpoint to the hulking keep looming over the
courtyard, “to think I found Doune Castle ugly!” She shivered in
the saddle as the pounding waters of the River Nene beat against
the worn stones of Fotheringhay’s unmoated side.
If the structure itself seemed inhospitable, the
inhabitants of Fotheringhay were even less inclined to offer a
gracious welcome. To Sorcha’s surprise, she and the rest of the
little party were met not by Sir Amyas Paulet, but Sir Drue Drury,
who had been appointed by Queen Elizabeth to share the burden of
Mary Stuart’s captivity.
Drury was a balding, boxlike man with pale blue eyes
and a small scar on his full upper lip. He scowled with disapproval
when the Scots rode into the courtyard. “This is a most unseemly
arrival, seeing as how you were told not to come to this place,”
intoned Drury, the pale eyes focusing somewhere near the ground
rather than on any individual face. “We are at a time when less,
not more, attendants are required herein.”
Sorcha and Ailis exchanged perplexed glances with the
others. “We were summoned here, sir,” Sorcha said at last,
realizing that no one else in their small party was about to speak
up, “by express command of Sir Amyas Paulet. Who countermands his
orders, may I ask?”
Drury made a quick shift of his feet, looking rather
like a portly court dancer responding to a cue. “That was the
original order,” he replied, still avoiding Sorcha’s gaze, “but a
second message was sent the following day. It nullified the
original.” Drury lifted his chin, now appearing to stare off in the
direction of the northwest castle turret.
“
Well, we missed it, then,” Sorcha
said, as a snowflake drifted down to touch her nose. “We left
immediately.”
They had, indeed, with Sorcha so anxious to head for
Fotheringhay and no one at Chartley outranking her authority among
the Scottish contingent. Her hands and feet were already numb from
the last raw miles over the bleak plains of Northamptonshire, and
Sorcha’s patience had begun to ebb. Ironically, she was reminded of
her arrival at Chartley under a sweltering summer sun half a year
ago—and of the equal lack of civility shown by Mary Stuart’s
English gaolers.
“
Come now,” urged Sorcha, wondering
how—and why—a middle-aged subject of Elizabeth Tudor’s would bend
gracefully to the will of an unknown Scottish lass not yet twenty.
“Will you let us freeze our haunches out here in the courtyard, or
may we at least come in to warm ourselves?”
Drury’s pale eyes darted in the direction of Sorcha’s
wool-covered “haunches.” He flicked his tongue over the scarred lip
and cleared his throat. “Ah, since there is clearly a
misunderstanding, we can allow you to enter the castle. For a time,
however. Only for a time.” He held up one pudgy thumb.
Sighing, Sorcha dismounted and let a servant lead
Thisbe away. “Your messenger must have missed us,” she said, now on
eye level with Sir Drue Drury. “Perhaps he passed by in the
night.”
Drury still did not meet her glance, seemingly
diverted by the flurry of activity among Scots and serving people.
“Perhaps, perhaps. Yet it would have been better for you all to
have stayed at Chartley. Or,” he added in ominous tones, “to have
returned to Scotland.”
He started to turn away, but Sorcha was at his heels,
like a worrisome terrier. “Why? What’s amiss?”
At first, Drury didn’t respond, but kept walking
briskly toward a side entrance between what appeared to be a chapel
on the right and a great hall on the left. “Amiss?” Drury all but
snorted. “Even now, the scaffold’s abuilding for the prisoner.” He
jerked his head in the direction of the great hall. “All that is
needed is our gracious sovereign’s word to proceed with the
execution. But does that word come? My, no!” Leaning against a
heavy, ancient battered door, Drury tugged at the latch and looked
fretful. “The warrant is drawn up, we’re told. The prisoner is
ready, she says. The ax is sharpened, it’s said. And nothing
happens—except that Sir Amyas gets sick!” Drury threw up his hands
in helpless exasperation, the picture of a frustrated civil
servant, charged with a duty he was powerless to perform.
Only Drury’s words about the scaffold had really sunk
into Sorcha’s brain. She was barely conscious of Ailis, who had
followed them to the side entrance and was looking much put out.
The door suddenly opened from inside, revealing the tall, imposing
form of Gavin Napier.
It was all Sorcha could do to keep from hurling
herself into his arms. Napier, however, seemed as astonished to see
Sorcha as she was relieved to see him.
“
You came,” he stated without
inflection, and stiltedly stepped aside to let Sorcha, Drury, and
Ailis pass through the doorway.
“
You know them, I assume?” Drury
inquired peevishly of Napier. “Then,” he went on as the other man
nodded, “take charge of them. I must go see if Sir Amyas improves.
Such a time for ill health on his part!” Drury fussed off down the
narrow corridor, the quick little steps again reminding Sorcha of a
performer in a court masque.