"Welcome, Your Grace," someone else was saying, but it was addressed to
James, not to her. Never before had she heard him addressed thus; it
was a title for the children of kings and of high-ranking prelates.
"Thank you," he said, accepting the honorific. "You look well," he
finally said to Mary, staring at her like a little boy who suddenly
finds a snake in his path.
"And you," she said. "Your sojourn on the Continent must have agreed
with you." She did not mean the words to sound sarcastic, but they
did. What had struck her was how rested and preserved he looked. He
had absented himself during all the crucial moments of terror, and it
showed.
Morton, Atholl, and Lindsay came up and flanked him, as if daring her
to charge at them. They looked almost afraid of her.
"Come," said Mary. "I look forward to speaking with you, dear
brother." She turned and led him toward the tower, and then up the
stairs. To her dismay, the other three came along and stood there in
the main room with James. She cast him imploring looks, but he ignored
them and made no effort to dismiss the other men. Lindsay had his
usual sneer on, and Morton was repulsive to her. She could not bear to
look upon him. Atholl was a cipher.
"My dear sister," Lord James said, clearing his throat. "I see here
that you are well cared for." He glanced around the chamber.
"Well cared for? I have barely any clothes, nor is there any
appointment for me as queen no canopy of estate, nor even a cloth of
estate."
He gazed at her steadily, still no hint of a smile, still with the
peculiar immobility that made him seem wax like "I will have clothes
sent," he said. "And as for keeping of a queen's estate there is no
longer any need of that."
"If it is indeed possible for me to resign my office, as you" she
glared at Lindsay "claim, then there is no longer any reason to keep me
a prisoner. If it is as a queen that I am being held prisoner, then I
should be allowed the appurtenances of a queen. You cannot have it
both ways."
"This is a most troublesome case," said James. "Although you have
resigned your crown, there are superstitious people who may be
confused."
"I am sure you are not among them, nor are your mother and family."
The more she talked, the more remote he grew, until she felt that he
had died abroad and been replaced by a facsimile made of some Italian
stone that was the colour of flesh and could pass, except under close
inspection, for a human being. Was the real Lord James lying dead of
fever in Venice, while this clever copy was sent north to Scotland?
Lord James. She tried to remember exactly what he had been like as a
child. Had he laughed, sung, bent? When had this creeping coldness
stolen into him and taken away all the warmth?
".. . and thus we will take our leave," he was saying, as the kitchen
maids were entering with her food.
"No!" she said. "Please eat supper with me, brother."
"Nay. I dine with the Lords in the main dining hall."
"I remember when you served me on bended knee, handing my napkin to
me," she said quietly. "You did not consider that beneath you. And
now you will not even sit with me."
He turned to the Lords. "May I have permission to remain?" he asked.
Only when they nodded did he allow himself to sit.
The door clanged shut. The Lords were gone. She could hear their
heavy footsteps descending the stone steps. Now James could speak
freely.
"Yes?" he said, colder than the waters of the loch, turning his grey
eyes on her.
"James!" she said. "Why do you speak so artificially to me? This is
not you, but some impostor. Unless the other James was the impostor
until now."
"How dare you speak of impostors!" he snapped, throwing his hat on the
floor. At once his face rearranged itself into the lines and planes of
a living person. "You, who have raised the art of dissembling to the
highest pitch! You, who deceive everyone!"
His fury was strange to behold. "Dear James " She touched his arm, and
he shook it off in revulsion.
"You wanted me alone, so you could bend me to your will. You
overestimate your charms. I am proof against them, Madam! When we
were children, and you were that pretty, laughing little girl, riding
your ponies and playing at hide-and-seek, then I loved you. But France
changed you; you came back here steeped in the art of lying and
deception. Knox was right about you! He said, after that first
interview, 'such craft I have not found in one so young, no, and if
there be not in her a proud mind and crafty wit, my judgement faileth
me." But I could not see it; I was blind."
Mary was shocked at his twisting of the truth. "No, you were not
blind, just greedy. As long as you could be my chief minister, you
cared not if I were a Caligula! You were always ambitious, James, and
eager to wear a crown. It was I who was blind."
Hold your tongue, she told herself. This is no way to ingratiate
yourself with him, or win his confidence. He is your only hope of
being restored to liberty.
".. . George," he was saying.
"What?"
"I said you are as serpent like as ever. You have been attempting to
make my brother George fall in love with you, so that you can escape,
and you so thoroughly inflamed Lord Ruthven that he has had to be
removed from office!"
"What? Is that what he said?"
"He said nothing, h was his looks and the way he acted, like a lovesick
duck "
"Let me tell you what really happened with the noble Lord Ruthven!"
"I will not hear your lies! Doubtless you will attempt to make a satyr
of him, to say you gave him no encouragement. But nothing you say
carries any weight any longer. Not now that the letters have come to
light!"
"I do not understand."
"The letters you wrote Lord Bothwell, in which you revealed that you
were lovers and that you went to Glasgow to bring your husband back to
Edinburgh so Bothwell could kill him." James was pacing the chamber,
his voice rising.
"I will be honest with you," she said. "I did love Lord Bothwell, and
I did go to Glasgow to see my husband, for private reasons of my own.
But Bothwell did not want me to go; he tried to prevent me from it. He
did not want me to go near the King, because he was diseased. But I
insisted. And, not to besmirch the dead, but it was the King who
brought me to Kirk O'Field to be murdered. The choice of site was his,
and it was he who packed it with gunpowder. I was grieved that he died
by his own method. But I would be as false as you claim if I pretended
I wished to have been in his place, however much others may have wished
it."
"You have dishonoured our father's house," said James, ignoring what
she had just said. "Your actions since the murder have cast shame on
you yourself, on your throne, and on all Scotland. An honest person
would have caused the murder to be investigated, and would have hidden
nothing."
"If I had investigated it too closely, many of the Lords would have
been made uncomfortable. For they are implicated as well. I know
there was a bond signed to murder the King. Bothwell showed it to me.
It had your name on it, and Morton's, and Argyll's, and Huntly's, and
Maitland's all the fine Lords of the Secret Council."
"Where is it? Does Bothwell have it?" he asked sharply.
"Bothwell gave it to me when we parted. Lord Morton tore it up."
"Ah." James smiled.
"But the guilty ones know who they are! And "
"And therefore they are not safe as long as you live," said James
smoothly. "They will seek your death. Indeed they already seek it."
She gasped.
"But I will not permit it," he said. "As long as I am Regent I can
make that a condition of my office. Should anyone else become Regent
.. He left the phrase dangling, threatening.
"And will the noble Lords obey you? There is an old Scottish saying,
"He who will not keep faith where it is due will not keep it where it
is not due." I am the King's true daughter and an anointed queen; you
are his baseborn son. If they rebelled against me "
"Madam, I will not make your mistakes!"
"No, but you will make others. And now the people are apt to be less
and less forgiving of mistakes, like a finicky woman who finds she must
reject a dish unless it is perfect, even though she started out able to
stomach ordinary food well enough." He looked uneasy. Now was the
time to press her point. "It is not too late. Things can be restored.
I have learned much, and neither will I make those mistakes again.
Together we can "
He looked at her, incredulous. "Do you not understand? The people
call for your death. It is all we can do to hold them back; that is
why you are here, surrounded and protected by water. I can guarantee
your life, but not your liberty. And if you were restored, what of
Bothwell? No one will tolerate him, and yet you will not leave him.
No, there is no hope. It is over for you."
"James!" She threw herself, sobbing, against his chest. It was hard
and unyielding. "I am not yet five and twenty "
His arms hung down, heavy, by his side. He did not attempt to embrace
her or comfort her.
"James, what of Bothwell?" she said, between sobs.
"Always Bothwell!" He pushed her away. "You continue to crave the
poison that has killed you. Very well, then it may please you to know
that I have sent a fleet of ships to take him where he is hiding in the
Orkneys. The officers aboard have been given jurisdiction to hold a
court then and there. What that means, dear sister, is that he will be
tried and executed on the spot. Then they'll send his head, arms, and
legs back here as they have sent back the heads and limbs of his men
they've already caught. Dalgleish, Powrie, Hay, and Hepburn are
decorating the gates of Leith, Haddington, and Jedburgh or rather,
certain parts of them are."
She glared at him. "So they were silenced before they could implicate
the Lords. I suppose that is the purpose of the faraway trial of
Bothwell, as well."
"You are finally becoming politically astute," he said. "Pity it comes
too late."
"May I remind you of what even your brother the Laird has said? He
said you cannot merchandise for the bear's skin before you have the
bear."
James smiled. "I know nothing of bears, but Bothwell's flagship is
called the Pelican, and we will make him disgorge the fish in his bill,
never fear."
SIXTY-ONE
Bothwell looked out across the sparkling waters of Bressay Sound, where
his little fleet lay at anchor. He had eight ships at his command;
five had been his as Admiral of Scotland, and another had been on its
way to Lord James laden with food and armaments when he and his men had
boarded her in Cromarty Firth and taken her. The fact that it had been
bound for St. Andrews to succour the Lord James and his men made its
despoiling all the more delightful. The Admiral had struck the first
blow in their personal battle.