The Spitfire

by Bertrice Small

  “I dinna think Archie will trouble ye any longer,” the king remarked wryly.

  “Nor do I, Sire,” Arabella answered him.

  “‘Twas really very naughty of ye, my dear,” the queen chided the Countess of Dunmor mildly.

  “It shall not happen again, your majesty,’’ Arabella promised Queen Margaret solemnly.

  The queen burst into a fit of the giggles.

  “Ahh, Uncle, what fun it must be to be married to my aunt,’’ Prince James said, joining them. “‘Twas a splendid trick, madame!”

  “I thought you liked the Earl of Angus,” Arabella remarked to the prince.

  “I do,” came the reply, “which is why I know that when he has recovered from the gripes to his bowels, no one will appreciate this jest more than Archibald Douglas himself.”

  “‘Tis nae the proper behavior for a Countess of Dunmor,’’ Tavis Stewart grumbled.

  “I did not ask to be your wife, my lord,” Arabella said sharply. “‘Twas you, if you will remember, who stole me away from my home and forced me to the altar.”

  “Thereby saving ye from Sir Jasper Keane,” Tavis Stewart said, for lack of anything better to say, for he could not deny her words. “Perhaps I should hae left ye to wed wi’ him, for my revenge would hae been complete by now. Ye would hae killed the bastard before a year of wedded bliss had run its course.”

  “Then you had best beware, sir, had you not? We have not been wed a year yet,” Arabella mocked him, her eyes narrowing catlike.

  He grinned suddenly, feeling the excitement rising between them. “Perhaps I shall kill ye first, lovey,” and his voice became almost a whisper, “for I surely know how.”

  She laughed softly, and it was as if they were completely alone. “Aye, my lord,” she agreed with him, “you know well how to bring me a petite morte.”

  The passion between them now was almost visible, and the prince felt a stab of serious envy. Though Arabella had made it quite plain she would not betray her husband’s honor, Jamie Stewart’s desire for the Countess of Dunmor had not lessened a whit. He would have her one day, he vowed. He did not know how, but he would have her. Queen Margaret, though she remained silent, was more than aware of her son’s reputation. She saw the lust in her eldest child’s face and was concerned.

  “Your majesties,” the Earl of Dunmor said, bowing to his half brother and sister-in-law, “may my wife and I have yer permission to withdraw from the royal presence?”

  The king and queen nodded in unison, and as the earl and his countess departed, Margaret of Denmark said, “He is so very much in love with her, I feel almost sorry for him.’’

  “Why, Mother?” demanded Prince James.

  “No man, or woman for that matter,” the queen said softly, “should love another person so deeply. When ye love that much, ye are more often than not doomed to disappointment because ye make yer lover someone or something he isn’t. Eventually ye realize it, and then ye must come to terms with that disappointment, Jamie.”

  “It seems a small price to pay, Mother,” the prince said wisely, “for the pleasure that love brings.”

  “I speak of love, my son, but ye speak of something entirely different,’’ the queen told him, and then she ruffled his red hair. “‘Tis not important, laddie mine. Ye’ll go yer own way in any case.”

  “Is that nae how it should be, Mother?” he asked her with a smile.

  “Aye,” she told him, returning the smile, her eyes straying beyond him to Tavis and Arabella, who were just now departing the Great Hall of Stirling Castle.

  “Yer a wicked, wild wench,” the earl told his wife as they hurried to gain their coach. “I hope that Angus does indeed think yer jest a good one, for I dinna need a feud upon my hands right now.”

  They entered their vehicle, and no sooner had the door been shut upon them than Arabella slid into his arms, her face raised to his, her lips soft and inviting. “Let’s go back to Dunmor,” she murmured against his mouth, setting the hair upon the back of his neck a-prickle. “I sense winter about to strike us a fierce blow, and I would be happiest locked away from the world with you, my lord.” She kissed him a long, sweet kiss.

  “Madame, ‘twas ye who wanted to come to court. I should have been just as happy remaining at Dunmor,” he said, one hand sliding into the neckline of her dress to cup a breast, even as he nibbled at her lips.

  “Mmmmmm,’’ Arabella sighed, pressing against him. “Can a lass nae change her mind, my lord?” she teased him, using the Scots idiom for the first time since he had known her.

  “We hae no good excuse to leave court right now, lovey,” he said with genuine regret in his deep voice. “In the spring, perhaps, we can return home, for traditionally the English come raiding in the spring, and I must be at Dunmor to help defend the border.”

  But they did not go home in the spring, for Henry Tudor, unsure upon his throne, was as interested in keeping peace along the borders as was James III. For the time being the English king did not need a war with Scotland, and to the disgust of many of his earls, Scotland’s king would not let his people make war upon the English.

  “This could be the beginning of total peace between us,” Jemmie Stewart told his younger brother, Tavis Stewart. “I must bring Scotland into the modern world, but as long as she wastes her few resources and the lives of her sons in useless wars, I hae nae a chance. Why can they nae see it as I see it? Why must they live in the past? I need peace, and I need time to accomplish it all, but if nae me, Tavis, then my Jamie! He’s a braw bairn and they like him, but I’ve taught him well, for though they think he’s like them, he is nae. That was my mistake. Letting them see me as I really am. I was too honest, but I’ve taught Jamie better.”

  “Aye,” the earl agreed. “He’s got charm, my nephew, and he’s strong as well.”

  “He’ll be a good king when he’s old enough, Tavis, but I must hold on until he is. I know, I know,” the king told his brother. “There are those who agitate to overthrow me and put my son upon the throne, but Jamie will nae betray me ever.”

  “Nay, he will not, Jemmie, for he loves ye even if he doesna understand ye.”

  “Do ye understand me, Tavis?”

  “Sometimes, in some things, but not always in all things.” The earl grinned, and then he took a deep swallow from the goblet he was holding. “But I love ye too, Jemmie.”

  “Would ye ever betray me?” the king asked quietly.

  Tavis Stewart thought a moment, and finally he said, “I dinna know, Jemmie. Not as ye are now, certainly, but time and circumstances change. I honestly dinna know, but this I can tell ye, Jemmie, I will nae ever betray Scotland.”

  The king nodded. It was an honest answer, and more than he would have gotten from any other man. “Yer wife says that I am Scotland,” he told his younger brother craftily.

  “Arabella is young and driven by passions I am only just beginning to explore,” Tavis Stewart told his brother. “I do not, however, admit to understanding them or her in the least.’’

  The king laughed. “What man really understands a woman’s mind?’’ he replied. “There are many, Angus for one, I suspect, who think women dinna hae minds. Only bodies like that pretty drab of a cousin of his, Sorcha Morton. Even my laddie hae plowed in that well-tilled field.”

  “And paid dearly for the privilege, I can assure ye, brother,” the earl said. “Sorcha hae expensive tastes, and like an alley cat who will go to whoever will feed it, nae true loyalty. I had a taste, but found it not to my liking. I dinna imagine Jamie stayed too long in that pasture.”

  “Nay,” the king chuckled. “Then, too, he feared his mother would find out. Angus encourages the lad to carnality, and I canna stop him, for my son seems to hae a natural bent for the ladies.”

  The earl grinned. “He’s a true Stewart.”

  “Yet yer faithful to yer wife, Tavis, as I am to Margaret.”

  “Perhaps we are unique amongst our family,” the earl replied.

&nb
sp; The king smiled to himself. His younger brother, with a Stewart mother and a Stewart king for a father, was the quintessential Stewart. He seemed to possess all of the best qualities inherent in the Stewarts. He was handsome, loyal, intelligent, a good horseman, a good soldier, and if his reputation might be believed, a good lover. He was charming, and kind and politic. Very politic. The king knew his own total fidelity to his queen, coupled with the pleasure he gained from the company of artistic men, had given rise to stories that left his reputation less than savory. He would neither deny nor confirm those rumors, for he felt to do so was to give them credence, but he realized now that even Tavis Stewart was not certain of the truth of those rumors. Still, his brother was too loyal to even voice his concern in this one matter, and whatever answer James Stewart might have given to the question, should the earl have asked it, the king knew his brother would still continue to love him. There were precious few, he realized, that he might depend on to that extent.

  “Indeed,’’ he agreed with his brother, “I think we are unique, Tavis. It is unfortunate, however, that that quality is nae appreciated by the highland earls and their ilk. They will be the death of me yet, I fear. Though the lowland lords and the bonnet lairds complain, they remain loyal to me nonetheless.”

  “Yer like a bloody rope dancer, Jemmie,” the earl remarked. “Ye must step carefully at all times.”

  “Pray God I dinna fall, brother,” the king said. “At least not until my Jamie is old enough to rule wi’ out the interference of rash and ambitious men.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The queen was dead. Suddenly, and without any real warning. She had awakened early on the morning of July fourteenth with a sharp cry, and the lady who had hurried to the queen’s bedside had heard her say even as she fell back upon her pillows, “God and His mother, Mary, have mercy on me.” Then she was gone, and as word of her unexpected death spread throughout Stirling Castle, the town below, and the very realm itself, the reaction was the same. Total astonishment and disbelief.

  Margaret of Denmark, daughter of King Christian I of Norway and Denmark, was only twenty-nine years old. She had come to Scotland as James III’s bride at the age of twelve. No one in Scotland, even her husband’s fiercest critics, had a bad word to say about the young queen. She was universally loved by all, for her nature was sweet, her heart good, and her piety legend. She had borne her husband three sons, the eldest two of whom were named James, because when Jamie the elder had been a small child, it was thought he was ill unto death, and so the son his mother had borne shortly after his illness began was also christened James, ensuring that Scotland’s next king would have the same name as the previous three. The queen’s third son was called John.

  The king was in a state of total shock, more so than any of the others, for whatever might be thought of him, he had loved his wife. He sat silent and staring at a wall in his beautiful rooms, deaf to all pleas, unable to even give orders for his wife’s funeral. James Stewart had never been the most decisive of men where his duties were concerned, but at this particular moment he was virtually useless. Even his young favorite, John Ramsey of Balmain, whom he had created Earl of Bothwell, could not reach him.

  The king’s family, the Stewarts, with help from the kingdom’s greatest lords, planned the queen’s funeral, offering a final and perfect tribute to a gracious lady who, while she lived, had spurred her husband on in his efforts to put the affairs of his half-savage realm in order. Now it was wondered what would happen without her, and those more practical and less sentimental than others considered a suitable replacement for the grieving royal widower, amongst the candidates, the dowager queen of England, Elizabeth Woodville.

  The day of the queen’s funeral dawned gray and bleak. All along the road between St. Michael’s Chapel at Stirling to the Abbey of Cambuskenneth where the burial would take place, the way was lined with hundreds of common folk, many of whom wept openly for the queen. The black-draped coffin was drawn by black horses caparisoned in black and gold. Before it went black-clad riders upon black horses bearing the flags of Scotland and Denmark, dipped in respect. Other riders carried banners with the quartered Arms of the Danish Royal House and the Lion Rampant of Scotland. The clergy, all of Scotland’s bishops and abbots walking side by side in pairs, the lesser priests—their vestments, their jeweled mitres, their croziers blazing with precious gemstones, making an almost painful flash of color amid all the black—preceded the coffin.

  The coffin itself with the queen’s own arms upon it was carried by Scotland’s six senior earls, and after it came the king, bareheaded and all in black, followed by his sons, the youngest of whom was carried by his nurse, his two younger sisters, Margaret the spinster and Lady Mary Hamilton, the queen’s own ladies, the lords and ladies of the court, the royal servants, and all others who had official reason to be there.

  “Why are there so many simple people?” Arabella asked her husband. “Surely they cannot have known the queen, and yet their grief seems genuine.’’ The Countess of Dunmor had never before taken part in such a great occasion, and she was not certain if it was all usual.

  “The queen,” replied her husband in a low voice as they walked, “was generous wi’ her time and gave audiences to any who asked. When this was known, the ordinary folk began bringing their complaints to her. She never turned them away, and she never hurried them in their tales. She was also open-handed wi’ those in need, although she hid both her charity and her willingness to listen well, that she nae be taken advantage of by those who didna really need her. She was truly Jemmie’s better half, and God help Scotland now that she is gone.”

  The high requiem Mass and the many prayers for the repose of the queen’s good soul took up most of the day, which, despite its gloomy outlook, was also warm with unusual midsummer heat. In the hours that followed, the press of too many people jammed into the abbey’s small church caused many to faint or even grow ill with the heat and the stench. The stench came from the court’s mourning clothing, which were so elegant and expensive that the garments were passed down from generation to generation. Most of the garments were made of velvet, which was too heavy a fabric for a summer’s day, and all of the doublets, robes, and gowns were heavy with embroidery. In the interim between important funerals these clothes were stored in airtight chests and dusted with pungent spices to kill several generations of body odors.

  There was no air in the abbey church, and eventually, as the bodies of the mourners grew warm, not even the frankincense and myrrh wafted from the censers could overcome the rank reek of ancient sweat mixed with new. Arabella could feel the roil of her belly, and tried desperately to concentrate upon the mourning rosary of jet beads that the king had given members of his family, which now hung in her hands. Her head had begun to ache, and although food had been the furthest thing from her mind this morning when she had arisen, now, even with her upset stomach, she was beginning to feel quite hungry.

  At last, to the grateful thanks of the many mourners, the state formalities were over. The king could not at this time abide the thought of returning to his beloved Stirling Castle, and so the court was to move to the place he disliked above all places, Edinburgh Castle. It was as if James Stewart felt in some way responsible for the death of his dearly loved spouse and was punishing himself.

  The Stewarts of Dunmor moved along with the rest of the court to the capital city, where they had another town house, which was located on the High Street. Arabella liked Edinburgh, which she found an exciting and colorful place with its open markets and many merchant shops with their wide variety of goods from all over the known world. She did not, however, enjoy traversing the city streets, which were virtual open sewers, populated not only by respectable citizens and not so respectable citizens, but by dogs, pigs, and rats, as well as other assorted vermin. Arabella, like other ladies of the nobility, blocked the stench of the town by carrying a clove-studded orange called a pomander ball.

  “Let’s go home to Dun
mor,” the earl suggested to his wife as they idled away the early hours of the morning in their bed some two weeks after the queen’s funeral. It was the beginning of August.

  “What of the king?” Arabella asked her husband. “He has virtually shut himself away from everyone in his grief. Is it wise to leave him to the mercy of his opponents now?”

  “Jemmie must come to terms wi’ himself sooner than later, lovey. He will nae even see us now, and the court is in mourning for the next few months. Even the most militant of the earls will nae act against the king for the time being. It is a good time for us to leave, and besides, Arabella Stewart, there is something ye hae nae shared wi’ me yet that ye should,” the earl said, kissing the tip of his wife’s nose.

  Arabella blushed prettily. “My lord, I am not certain of your meaning,” she answered him.

  “Are ye nae with child?” His dark green eyes searched her face.

  “I am not quite certain,” she said. “I must speak with your mother first. How did you know?” Her cheeks were still pink.

  “Because everything about ye is important to me, lovey, and I have noted that ye hae nae had yer link wi’ the moon broken in at least two months now.”

  “But perhaps ‘tis something else, my lord,” Arabella said. “I need very much to speak with your mother before I am certain. I have never had a child before, and I was but a wee girl when my mother was last with a child by my father and I did not know she was quickening with Sir Jasper’s child last summer.”

  “Ye hae other symptoms, lovey,’’ he said with a doting smile. “Yer belly hae become fussy of late, and yer pretty titties are growing plumper and rounder. I hae planted my seed deep wi’in ye, and yer already quickening wi’ my son.’’ His big hand cupped her head, and he kissed her mouth warmly.