“You are too kind,” the Frenchwoman said, pleased, and then requested from her servants that wine and cakes be brought. Turning back to Janet she asked, “How may I be of help to you, Lady Leslie, for I know your home is several days to the north, and travel is not easy at this time of year.”
She may be vain, thought Janet, but she is not stupid, and so she said honestly, “All the adult men in our family—my brother, the Earl of Glenkirk; his heir; and my son, Charles, the Earl of Sithean—were killed at Solway Moss, madame. All were widowed, and now the offspring belonging to my son and nephew are orphaned. I would have their custody. If I do not, a stranger will eventually be given charge over Sithean and Glenkirk. The children will be used as pawns even as your own wee daughter is now being used.”
Marie’s lips tightened. “How many children are there, madame?”
“Ten,” Janet said honestly. “They range in age from seven weeks to eleven years. My little granddaughter is but two.”
“That is a large family with which you propose to saddle yourself at this time in your life, Lady Leslie,” said the widowed queen, but even as she spoke the words, she thought of her own child. The children of Glenkirk and Sithean had this woman to fight for their interests even as she fought for those of her petite Marie.
Janet’s green-gold eyes caught the dark eyes opposite her. “Madame, I beg you to help me!” she said low. “The children have lost so much. We have nothing left but each other. All else has been given in Scotland’s fight against England, for we Leslies have ever been loyal to the Stewarts.”
Marie’s eyes filled with quick tears for the plight of this woman; a plight so like her own. Caught between Cardinal Beaton, and her late husband’s cousin, the earl of Arran, who had already spoken publicly of betrothing the infant Queen of Scots to the heretic English king’s son; she understood Janet’s plea better than anyone else might have. Women, even queens, were usually helpless in the face of a man’s power. “You will need help other than mine, Lady Leslie,” she said. “Who will aid you?”
“My brother has a bastard son, a fine and good man, my nephew. He has been in my service for many years, and is completely trustworthy, with no pretentions above his station. Between us we will manage, madame. Neither Glenkirk or Sithean are wealthy, but thanks to your late husband, my wool trade has been exempted from taxes. We can manage if your Majesty will but award me custody of the bairns.”
Marie of Guise-Lorraine was a shrewd woman, and she admired that quality in other women, though she had met precious few in Scotland who had it. Having now seen the dowager countess of Sithean she had no doubt as to why her husband had always spoken so fondly of her, or why he had given her son an earldom. How like Jamie! She almost smiled with her amusement. Yet this was no loose woman of easy virtue; and she obviously cared enough for her young relations to have made a dangerous journey through the snowy winter in order to settle their fates. This countess might have played heavily upon her connection with the late King, but she had not. Her demeanor was one of concern for her family, and utmost respect for Scotland’s royal widow.
Making up her mind, Marie called for her secretary, and quickly dictated an order awarding the guardianship of the third earl of Glenkirk, his two sisters, his two brothers, his castle, lands and chattels to the dowager countess of Sithean until the earl’s sixteenth birthday, at which time he would assume his rightful responsibilities. The second order, similar in content to the first, concerned itself with the young earl of Sithean, his four siblings, and his property. When both parchments were completed, Marie of Guise-Lorraine sealed them with not only her seal, but with the royal seal belonging to the monarch.
“A petite precaution, madame, n’est ce pas?” she said with an arch look and a faint smile. “Queen Marie’s first official act.”
“Milles mercis, madame la Reine,” Janet said quietly. “Milles mercis from the bottom of my heart!”
Marie smiled again. “I understand your position, Lady Leslie. I am in a similar one. How I would like for someone to come and rescue me, but Helas! I am alone. So I do the next best thing I can. I rescue you. I doubt,” she sighed, “that I shall have the power much longer. Go home to your great brood, madame; and remember to pray for me and for your new queen. Look at her!” Marie gestured, and for the first time Janet noticed the cradle by the fireplace. “She knows nothing of the great stir she has caused, ma petite bebe,” the widowed queen said of the sleeping infant, of which the dowager countess of Sithean could see nothing but the back of a lace cap.
“May God and the blessed Mother look upon her with favor,” Janet said.
Marie’s eyes were damp with unshed tears as she held out her ringed hand for Lady Leslie to kiss. “Pray for us,” she repeated, and nodding, Janet backed from the royal presence, her face a mask of calm as she hid her elation.
Exiting Linlithgow she hurried toward Red Hugh who waited with their horses. One look at her face told him of her success. He grinned broadly as he helped her to mount.
“I won’t deny I was worried for all ’tis said you can work miracles. Are we for home then, aunt?”
“Aye, nephew! We’re for home. I promised the bairns I’d be back by Twelfth Night!”
Janet often thought in the years that followed of how easy her victory had been. Her own concerns paramount, Marie of Guise-Lorraine had never learned that the dowager countess of Sithean was one of the wealthiest women in Scotland. The guardianships of her young relations might have cost her a pretty penny had King James’ widow known of this; not that Janet wouldn’t have paid, for she would have. Never flaunt your wealth, Hadji Bey had once warned her, for the man who shouts his good fortune may bring down upon himself the wrath of the Gods, not to mention the greedy envy of his neighbors and relations.
Arriving back at Sithean on the fifth of January, Janet and Red Hugh found all the children lined up in the snowy courtyard to greet them. Their faces were anxious, but the smiles that greeted her as she held up the parchments brought a prickle of tears to her eyes. “You are all safe,” she told them. “The dowager queen has awarded your custody to me.” A relieved and happy cheer greeted her words.
She had acted none too soon, for in the spring when the roads were once again passable, some distant Leslie cousins on Fiona’s side arrived at Sithean to announce that they had come to take charge of the earl of Sithean and his siblings. Janet quickly sent them packing, and once they learned that the lands belonging to Sithean were Janet’s, not wee Patrick’s, they were not unhappy to go; particularly as the dowager countess had told them the queen had awarded her custody of her grandchildren. Believing her to mean the infant queen Mary’s current guardian, the earl of Arran, the interlopers departed impressed.
At Greyhaven Lord Hay suddenly found himself totally responsible for his seven grandchildren. His daughter-in-law, Jean, could not resign herself to her husband’s death, and quietly pined away in the last days of winter. Her sister, Alice, Gilbert’s widow, announced to her startled father-in-law that she had received a proposal of marriage from a neighbor, Fergus Innes; and less than six months after her husband had fallen at Solway Moss, Alice Hay remarried, departing with her bridegroom to France on an extended honeymoon. Her children she left to Lord Hay for, she told him with a bright smile, “One Innes can hardly be expected to raise three Hays.”
Desperate, Colin Hay had brought his grandchildren to Janet at Sithean. Jean’s new baby was near to starvation as Lord Hay had not known how to find a wetnurse. The situation was entirely out of hand.
“I think,” Janet told her lover, “that the time has finally come for us to wed.”
“And to think,” he replied dryly, “that it has only taken seventeen children to convince you, Jan.”
“There are conditions,” she warned him.
“I suspected there might be, madame.”
“How well you understand me,” she chuckled.
“Yer worth the trouble,” he smiled. “Say on.”
> “First, what is mine now remains mine alone, to do with as I choose, and I am to be buried at Glenkirk with my son and his family. I was born a Leslie, and I shall die one no matter I am thought to be eccentric. Secondly, we arrange for several matches between the children.”
“Agreed on the first. As for the second condition, which children?”
“My Heather for your heir, Jamie. My Andrew for your Elizabeth. My James for your Jean, and my Anne for your Gilbert.”
“Why not young Glenkirk or Sithean for one of my girls?” he demanded.
“No, Colly,” she said honestly. “I need a more advantageous match for Glenkirk; possibly some great Lord’s little bastard. Sithean I intend to wed to his cousin, Mary of Glenkirk, in order to keep the families united and close after I am gone.”
“Tis wise,” he said, understanding her reasoning. “Very well then, I agree to your terms. Have Father Paul draw up the documents.” He kissed her mouth warmly. “Where shall we live, Jan? Certainly not Greyhaven. It would never hold all our brood, though I shall keep it in good order for Jamie and his bride to live in one day.”
“I’m afraid we must live at Glenkirk, for Sithean was not meant for such a large family either. Perhaps you and I shall summer here alone when the bairns are older.”
“Will ye name the day, Jan?”
“I must think on it, but mid-September for certain,” she told him.
“So soon? ’Tis but a few weeks away.”
“Do you wish to cry off then, my lord?” she teased him.
“I shall be fortunate if you dinna cry off,” he told her.
“Nay, Colly, ye hae the word of a Leslie.”
Taking her hand in his, he raised it to his lips and kissed it. “Tell me, sweetheart, tell me that you still love me. That ’tis not simply for the bairns.”
Sighing, she caressed his cheek. “Nay, love, I would shame neither of us by such unkind conduct.” She smiled. “What a strange, soft thing you are for such a big, bold man. Have I not shared your bed for 9 years, my lord? What kind of a wanton do ye take me for to sleep wi ye. and not love ye? For shame, Colly!”
He flushed, looking very much abashed.
And so they were wed on the twenty-first day of September, in the year of our Lord, fifteen hundred and forty-three; and many at their wedding banquet remarked how radiant the new Lady Hay appeared, particularly considering her age. It was the best time the guests could remember in many a year, for Janet and Colin Hay’s happiness seemed to be infectious.
Around them their world went mad, and Janet thanked God that both Glenkirk and Sithean were relatively isolated, and fairly safe from the insanity. The earl of Arran, that half-Protestant heretic, had gained the upper hand in the struggle for control of Scotland’s baby queen. His partisans gave to him the regency, and he became governor of the land. His first act was to imprison Cardinal Beaton in his palace. His second move was to execute the Treaty of Greenwich which betrothed the infant queen of Scots to six year old Edward, Prince of Wales.
No sooner had this been done than the English king, Henry VIII, in a burst of pomposity, began treating Scotland as a subject territory. He demanded custody of little Queen Mary, and proclaimed himself her successor should she die in infancy. To punctuate his demands, he seized half a dozen Scots ships upon the high seas, a Leslie ship among them.
The Scots reacted as one might expect—with a burst of nationalistic fervor. Despite his imprisonment, Cardinal Beaton was in communication with Scotland’s traditional allies, the French. Securing the return of two important exiles, the earl of Lennox, and Arran’s own half-brother, the abbot of Paisley, he balanced off the pro-English lords. Next the Cardinal regained his own freedom. He was joyously welcomed and supported by the queen mother, Marie of Guise-Lorraine, who at this point had had all the arrogance she could stomach from the earl of Arran.
The regent now found himself in the very uncomfortable position of being surrounded by a large and menacing group of his peers; all proclaiming their Catholicism, and very vocally opposed to the Treaty of Greenwich. No fool, Arran hastily and publicly regretted his lapse of faith, and returning to the Mother church, joined with Marie and Cardinal Beaton to form a new council. The “auld” alliance with France was reaffirmed by the new chancellor, Cardinal Beaton. The new man in charge of the government’s purse strings was none other than the Abbot of Paisley. The Treaty of Greenwich was roundly denounced.
Unfortunately the stabilization of the Scottish government did not produce the desired unity among the contentious and jealous nobility. Lennox, brought back specifically to offset the English, turned about and joined them. Encouraged by this important defection, Henry angrily set about what the Scots called his “rough wooing” of their little queen.
Led by the earl of Hertford, the English swarmed up the Firth of Forth, and put Leith, Holyrood and Edinburgh to the torch, much to the surprise and shock of the Scots. Another army of English poured over the border burning Jedburgh and its abbey. The Scottish earls moved from one faction of the dispute to the other with the ease of a courtesan changing her lovers. Early in 1545 the Earl of Angus changed sides and routed a large English army at Ancrum Moor; but King Henry, still determined to force Scotland to his will, prepared for an assault by both land and sea. The French sent troops to aid their allies, but the French were of little help and quickly became unpopular.
In September Hertford crossed the border once again bringing fire and destruction, The entire harvest was burned leaving the Scots to face a bleak and hungry winter. The abbeys of Kelso, Dryburgh, Melrose, Coldingham and Roxburgh were wantonly destroyed and left in ruins, their religious inhabitants—those who escaped the sword—left to wander the cold countryside begging for their bread from a populace already starving. A rising in the West led by Lennox and Donald Dubh, the MacDonalds Chief of the Isles, fell apart when Donald died and his bickering clansmen went home. Lennox fled to England.
The battle between religious factions came to a bitter head when George Wishart, a popular Protestant preacher, was arrested and executed for heresy. The fact that Master Wishart was proved a spy in the pay of the English did nothing to alleviate the fury of his adherents. At the end of May 1546, a band of men broke into the castle of St. Andrew and savagely murdered Cardinal Beaton. The castle was seized and held by the murderers, amongst them one John Knox, a lapsed priest. The English, having concluded a brief war with France, aided the cardinal’s slayers in order to keep the pot boiling.
In January of 1547, Henry VIII of England died. His son’s regent was none other than his uncle, the earl of Hertford, now raised to Duke of Somerset. England’s policy towards Scotland did not soften. The English king’s death was followed in the spring by that of his great rival, King Francois I of France, who was succeeded by Henri II. King Henri’s two greatest friends were the Due de Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, brothers to Scotland’s queen mother.
In short order a French fleet arrived off the Scots coast to batter the castle of St. Andrews into submission. The gentlemen of the garrison were sent to French prisons. The common defenders. John Knox among them, went to the galleys of the French fleet cruising the Ottoman-infested waters of the Mediterranean. Scotland’s difficulties with England, however, were not yet over.
In September of 1547 Protector Somerset and his army of 18,000 poured over the border. This was war! Clan rivalries were put aside as the fiery crosses appeared on the hillsides across Scotland summoning her sons to defend her and roust the invader. Close to 25,000 brave Scotsmen answered that call. When the two armies met at Musselburgh, however, the Scots, in a show of bravado, gave up their strong defensive position boldly to attack the English. Too quickly they found themselves caught between Somerset’s artillery and the English fleet’s blazing guns. The ensuing slaughter and rout was devastating, with thousands of Scots perishing in the crossfire. The English ended up occupying Haddington and several other important castles in southeastern Scotland.
; The two young earls at Glenkirk and Sithean, along with several of their brothers and cousins, had attempted to answer the call to arms; but had been strongly prevented from doing so by Lord Hay and Gienkirk’s master-at-arms. Red Hugh. When the results of the battle of Pinkie arrived several weeks later Janet told the young, would-be heroes:
“There is no doubt that you would have all been killed, for men with great battle experience, and none of ye have any, died despite their experience. I will nae deny that the skirling of the pipes, and the brave words that tell our land’s history are glorious; but after the pipes and the stories comes blood, the noise of real battle, pain, fear, confusion, and very often death. There is nothing glorious in death for all the church’s prattle.”
“But, Mam!” protested wee Patrick. “The English are invading! Should we not drive out the invader?”
Janet smiled at his innocent patriotism, and sitting down, drew him before her so she might see his face as she spoke. “A long time ago, Patrick, a very wise man named Hadji Bey told me that to survive, one must look carefully at the entire picture before deciding upon how to act, or react. Let me put the picture that faces Scotland now before you, and then you decide how you would behave; and if you still want to throw your life away.
“The King of England is a lad of ten. Our Queen is almost five. Do either of these two children really rule? Nay! Others rule for them. Greedy, ambitious men for the most part. Men interested only in their own successes, in amassing wealth and territory not only for the crown, but for themselves. If these poor royal bairns survive to reach their majority, their regents will present them with a list of accomplishments in the hope of being rewarded even further. The greater the accomplishments, the greater the reward is sought.
“For now the prize being fought over is Scotland. Both France and England would have us, and God only knows how many young lives will be wasted before it is settled, if it is ever settled. Would you willingly throw your lives away for this, laddie? For a stranger’s ambition?”
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