The Royal Burgh

by Veerapen, Steven

  ‘Good morrow, Mr Danforth.’

  ‘Good morrow to you, Mistress Pollock.’

  ‘Shall you be wanting some dinner?’ She knew better than to ask if he was expecting company.

  ‘Oh, I think so,’ said Danforth, deciding to test her. ‘Although I have it in my mind to go out.’

  ‘Is that so, sir? On his Grace’s business?’ she fished.

  ‘No. Well, not exactly. I have it in mind to visit young Mr Martin.’

  ‘Oh? Well that’s good, so it is. He’s a good sort.’ The ghost of a smile threatened her thin face, something between a dimple and a twitch troubling her right cheek.

  ‘I had suspected you might find the news agreeable. You like young Mr Martin?’

  ‘May I speak freely, sir?’ She said, after a pause.

  ‘Pray do.’

  ‘I think it does you no good to be without a friend here. No’ just here, I mean – in this land. You’re a solitary wee soul, quiet. Melancholy, I might say. A man should have friends.’

  ‘As should a woman.’

  ‘I have friends, Mr Danforth.’ Her chest rose. ‘When I’ve no’ got duties, when you’re from home, I visit, and I talk. My life’s no’ all toil, nor is it all fond foolishness. A balance, that’s what you need. For anyone, man or woman. That’s all, sir. Sorry if I was forward.’ Something like a blush came into her face, the prominent cheekbones darkening.

  ‘It is no matter, Mistress Pollock. I bid you speak freely and thank you for your concern. I shall call upon Mr Martin, and you might have the … pleasure … of his company again, as it appears you wish. But first I should like to eat.’

  When it came, Danforth’s meal was better than his usual fare, the pottage spiced and thick. Perhaps, he thought, Mistress Pollock was experimenting ahead of the prospect of cooking for someone she liked rather than someone she merely respected. He was surprised at the old woman. He had thought her a sullen termagant; he had taken her on initially because she was taciturn and never pried or made a fuss of him.

  After his morning dinner, Danforth pulled on his furred robe again. Now that he had decided to visit his old friend, he found that he wished to put it off. It was a daunting prospect to approach a man and give an apology. Martin was an easy-going person, but his tongue could be sharp. Danforth would have to work out his opening words in advance: he should give ground, but appear magnanimous in doing so, not overly grovelling. Besides, he must not forget that his decision had been the correct one, the moral one. He had not demanded Martin abandon the Cardinal too; that had been his own choice. It had worked out for the best, at any rate. If Cardinal Beaton was not Scotland’s governor, nor even its co-governor, then he was still its Chancellor and thus in a position to rein in the excesses of Arran.

  Cosy in his furs and gloves, he pulled open the back door and stepped out into the courtyard, when a sudden rush of hoofbeats and the subsequent agitated neighing of Woebegone stopped him. Flying into his garden on a dirty white horse was Fraser, Cardinal Beaton’s messenger and accounting clerk. The man’s face, brown-bearded, had progressed from its usual ruddiness to an aggrieved puce, the cheap-buttoned livery straining. He struggled down, wheezing stertorously, and then stood, head down and hand on his beast’s flank, until he regained speech.

  ‘What brings you?’ asked Danforth. ‘What news, Mr Fraser?’

  ‘His Grace … Cardinal Beaton,’ answered Fraser, a phrase carried on each tortured exhalation. ‘He has … been arrested … taken … King Henry … wants him captive … taken to England … in chains.’

  2

  Customarily, Danforth transacted his business with Fraser in the courtyard. He had no particular liking for the gossipy, pompous clerk, and felt vaguely that inviting him into his home would be wrongfully construed as an invitation to friendship. Now, however, he waved the man into the kitchen, directing him onto a neat wooden chair by the fire. As Fraser passed Danforth, he clapped him on the shoulder. Instinctively, Danforth shrunk away. He despised being touched and was naturally disinclined to any displays of amity.

  Mistress Pollock looked up, alarmed, but said nothing, Danforth’s dirty knife held in mid-air. Her skull-like face registered only disappointment that the arrival was not Martin, who flirted with her shamelessly.

  ‘What is this?’ said Danforth, his cadence low and fearful. ‘Tell me, Mr Fraser, what has happened?’

  ‘His Grace,’ began Fraser, his breathing slowed to normal. ‘His Grace has been arrested. Right there in Holyroodhouse.’

  ‘That much I gathered. How has it come to this? You spoke of Henry of England.’ But Fraser had become distracted at finally gaining entry to Danforth’s house. He was looking around and had momentarily forgotten that he was supposed to be bringing fearful news. His eyes lingered first on Mistress Pollock, and then on a collection of gleaming cooking utensils that hung neatly over the fireplace. ‘You have many good things. Do you live with that woman, Mr Danforth?’

  Mistress Pollock, her eyes widening, dropped the knife, gathered up her skirts and strode from the room. ‘Mistress Pollock is my housekeeper, sir, and I shall thank you not to make evil report of her.’ Danforth had often wondered at the propriety of retaining a live-in housekeeper. Most men kept stewards, stable lads, and maybe a woman to cook, but again he could not justify the expense. Nor did he want some strange, officious man ordering his household. Only the lowest sort, he had reasoned, would cast aspersions on the relationship between a Cardinal’s man and the old woman who tended his home. ‘Now tell me what this news of King Henry is.’

  Fraser made a little moue of disappointment, then his colour rose again as he continued his story. ‘It’s the Earl of Arran, Danforth, the young Protector. He’s King Henry’s creature, for all he’s calling himself a great prince. You know he’s allowed the Earl of Angus and George Douglas back into the realm?’ Danforth nodded curtly. The whole country knew that the exiled Douglas brothers, Archibald and George, had returned to Scotland in the middle of January, in the company of the lords taken at Solway Moss. All of them had been allowed to leave England on the proviso that they would work towards delivering the infant Mary, Queen of Scots since her father’s death, into English hands.

  ‘What have those traitorous knaves to do with anything?’

  ‘They’ve been the Cardinal’s enemies, sir, secret enemies, y’know, for all they pretended friendship. False friends! Their true goal was to imprison his Grace and have him taken to England, where Henry might do him in. The axe, probably, like the Howard lassie got. The English king’s bent on destroying the Cardinal and severing Scotland from our friends in Europe. At last he’ll have us by the bollocks.’

  ‘That cunning old devil. Greed, greed, greed! Always it is greed with the fat, crippled swine.’ Danforth had turned away and was looking in to the past.

  ‘Hard words for your former sovereign, Danforth.’ Fraser’s eyes had narrowed, a smile playing on his blubbery lips.

  ‘Hard words for a hard man. He has been no sovereign of mine since I came into Scotland.’

  ‘Did you ever meet him?’

  Danforth sighed. He should have expected the question. He had heard it often enough. Interest in Henry VIII seemed to grow with the king’s waistline, which was now reputed to be vast. The bloated creature, it was said with scorn, required to be carried around by several stout grooms, the preceding smell of his gangrenous leg alerting those who feared him to scurry for cover.

  ‘No, Fraser, I never had that misfortune. I came here when he rejected the Holy Father: when his second queen lived still.’

  ‘Anne Boleyn,’ said Fraser, the smile fading. ‘The great whore.’

  ‘Aye, Anne Boleyn.’

  ‘They say she opened her legs for half Henry’s court.’ Danforth frowned at Fraser’s coarseness. ‘Was that all true?’

  ‘I cannot say. You have heard the rumours out of England as I have. None believe she was truly a whore, but rather a vain fool.’ Popular report of Queen Anne Boleyn
held that as her looks faded, she had desperately tried to rekindle her husband’s great lust by flirting with other men, thereby exciting his jealousy and passion. But she had misjudged his cruelty and his growing passion for another woman, and he and his familiar, Cromwell, had outmanoeuvred the hapless Boleyn, spinning her foolhardy attempts to breed jealousy into great crimes. Hubris had facilitated her downfall as much as her heresies, yet nevertheless God had seen her head cleaved from her shoulders. Things had a way of working themselves out.

  ‘Will Henry take another bride?’

  ‘I cannot say, Fraser. I am not an master of English affairs. I do not greatly care. I wish only to know what is becoming of our master. Is he being carried over the border?’

  ‘No one knows, the thing’s so fresh. His arrest was sudden, it was all so sudden; he didn’t see it coming. Not like him. Arran and his Douglas cronies have shown him nothing but love and friendship.’

  ‘All the while plotting, I do not doubt. Our poor Cardinal.’ Danforth ran a hand through his sandy-coloured hair. ‘What can we do? What is there to be done?’

  ‘For the moment, nothing. Just have to wait and see.’ Again, Fraser’s beady eyes danced around the room, taking in the neatness, the stacked trenchers on the trestle, the assortment of spoons in their hollow coffer. ‘You’re used to doing nothing, I think. And I see all that money his Grace has been sending you by me has allowed you to live well in leisure.’

  ‘If you have nothing more,’ said Danforth, his voice turning cool, ‘then I thank you for your news, sir.’

  ‘But … but you must have some notion of what to do, Danforth. I brought you this news because I thought you might have some solution. You were his Grace’s pet. You lived under England’s king – you must have some grasp of his ways. What’s going to happen?’

  ‘If the Cardinal is sent before that beast, his Grace will die. Just like Fisher. Just like More. Henry of England cares for no man’s rank or ability. He thinks himself a God upon the earth.’

  ‘Then all hangs upon the Cardinal being delivered to London or kept in thrall here.’

  ‘I believe so. Please, Mr Fraser, I need time to think upon this matter.’

  ‘Aye, very well.’ Fraser looked disappointed. He had evidently come hoping that Danforth would take a lead, would provide some intelligence that might result in the Cardinal’s freedom. In many ways he was an inferior little man: a time server with nothing to recommend him. In moments of crisis, his type would always run to someone of greater ability. ‘I’ve others to tell of this. Perhaps they might be more use.’ He started to rise from his chair, scraping the feet against the rough stone floor, his chubby hands gripping the table as he heaved himself up.

  ‘Wait. What is the dowager saying of this?’ Queen Marie of Guise, wife of the late king, had been living at Holyroodhouse since her husband’s funeral. Though not one of her dower houses, the palace had been her husband’s seat of government and a grand symbol of Stewart prestige and authority.

  ‘I can’t say for certain, though I understand she knew nothing of it. She’s just a woman. I had out of one of her servants that she was told only that a false, lying knave had been arrested. She must know by now that the fellow’s his Grace. I doubt she’ll tarry long at Holyroodhouse now. She fears young Arran. He’d benefit from the death of the infant queen, or from giving her into the care of England. More than anyone.’

  Danforth bit his bottom lip, his mind turning. ‘Then she might go to Stirling, where there is safety behind the castle walls.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Fraser stood back from the table and shrugged. ‘Well, I’ll be off. I’d like to bear these sad tidings myself, before the common tongue adds gall to them. You know how broad-mouthed the riff raff are. What do you plan to do, Danforth? Continue to wallow in your luxury, or lead us in arms to the Cardinal’s liberty?’ To Fraser’s surprise, Danforth smiled: the idea of Fraser performing any kind of militant action amused him.

  ‘My luxury will do for me, Fraser. A good soldier does not rush into battle without the commands of his master. He does not act in haste, nor does he do so without intelligence of the enemy. I thank you again for bringing me this news.’

  Fraser cast one last glance around the kitchen, craning his neck to try and see what lay in the dim passage that led from it into the reception rooms. Giving it up as a bad job, he shrugged again, before stepping back out into the courtyard, crunching across to his horse and swinging up with a grunt. Danforth remained at the table in his kitchen – little more than a stout oaken board with cheaper supports. He doubted that the Cardinal would immediately be transported south. Arran was a boy, and a weak one at that. The Douglas brothers were politicians. They would wait until they had a chance to witness the repercussions of their seizure of Beaton before deciding whether to fulfil the English king’s wishes. There was time yet. There had to be.

  Danforth was aware of another feeling growing within him. His heart was racing and his mind was turning methodically through options and ideas, through the likely and unlikely outcomes of the news. For many weeks now he had been exiled from the great political events and crises that marked his former work as the Cardinal’s trusted English secretary. Now he felt that he could be art and part of them again. It felt like his mind was waking. It was, he supposed, a wicked thing to harbour such a feeling at what was frightful news, but it wasn’t deliberate. The only vaguely troubling thing was that he must now wait, the awoken mind forced to sit idle until the world caught up with it.

  Mistress Pollock re-entered the kitchen, scowling. ‘Sir, has your friend gone?’

  ‘He is no friend, Mistress Pollock. I apologise that he was … rude.’

  ‘It’s no matter. I’m old enough to take it.’

  ‘Would you like me to employ a steward, mistress?’ He asked suddenly.

  ‘A steward? That’s for you to say, sir. I can’t think of any need for one. You’re so often abroad, at St Andrews and in the west and that. A stable boy would be more practical. I don’t much care for horses, filthy beasts.’

  ‘I shall think on that.’ Danforth gazed at his hands, clasped on the table before him. He realised he was still wearing the gloves he had put on before Fraser’s wild ride into the courtyard. He’d been going to see Martin. He must do so now. He had a proper excuse: one that wouldn’t look like a shame-faced climb down. Getting up, he followed Fraser’s passage out the door. By now his courtyard was a mass of hoof- and boot-prints, a haphazard stew of browns, greens and whites. The sound of hooves stopped him again before he could reach Woebegone, and he braced himself for Fraser’s return. Turning, he caught sight of glistening black. The new arrival was not Shug Fraser, but Arnaud Martin, astride Coureur, his tempestuous horse.

  ‘So you’ve heard then?’ said Martin, throwing himself down easily and leading the horse into the little stable.

  ‘Before you, I fancy, sir. You only just missed Shug Fraser, full of the story and desperate to be told what to do.’

  ‘Then I’m glad to have missed the bugger. Unless he had money for me. Did he pay you?’

  ‘Not today.’

  ‘But he has been paying you? From his Grace, I mean?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Good. Me too.’

  They stood in awkward silence for a moment, measuring each other up. ‘Shall I–’

  ‘Would you–’

  ‘You go first,’ said Martin.

  ‘Would you like to come in?’

  ‘Aye, thanks, Mr Danforth. It’s been a hell of a cold winter, and after such a wet summer.’

  Martin followed Danforth into the house but remained standing in the kitchen. A few weeks before, when their friendship was new and unspoiled by disagreement, he would have marched confidently through the kitchen and into Danforth’s withdrawing chamber, where there were cushioned seats, a small fireplace and often wine and ale. That’s how they had been between leaving Paisley and attending the Cardinal at Falkland. Not so long ago. Danforth paused too, un
sure what to say. Martin saved him the trouble of having to think of something.

  ‘So, Simon, I’ve been a proud wee idiot, too much of a child to admit that you were right about his Grace’s demand for …’ he lowered his voice, ‘a counterfeit will.’ Danforth nodded hesitantly, cursing himself. Deflated. He had hoped to be the more mature gentleman, the man who generously offered his apology and craved pardon. He ought to have been bolder in taking charge of the conversation, rather than allowing a break for his friend to gain the advantage. All conversation was as a tennis match, the ball batted between opponents. He had let young Martin score.

  ‘That is gracious of you to say, Arnaud. I confess it is good to see you. Yet I was also a heavy-handed fool. I can offer only that I was so dismayed by his Grace’s command, by his hard words, that I could brook no discussion. Pistis and Pietas were at war over my soul, and the conflict led me into error.’

  ‘Same Simon,’ said Martin, smiling. ‘That I haven’t missed, to be honest. You got any wine? I’ve a thirst on me like the Eastern desert.’ He began removing his riding gloves, waggling warmth into chilled joints.

  ‘Mistress Pollock?’ called Danforth. A heavy tread announced her return. It lightened considerably as she saw from the passage that Shug Fraser had not returned but been replaced by her friend.

  ‘Mr Martin!’

  ‘Mistress Pollock. You’re a fine sight after these last weeks. I’ve missed your good fare and fairer smile. Dare I say Dorothea?’

  ‘You dare not, you saucy young lad,’ she answered, blushing contentedly. ‘But you’ll want some wine? You young gents like your wine more than in my young day.’

  ‘You’re still in your youth, mistress, surely.’

  ‘Och, chase yourself. Go on up to Mr Danforth’s private chamber. I’ve set a fire in there, so it’s very merry. I’ll bring you wine directly, and there’s some dried fruit in the pantry.’