The Courtesan mog-2

by Nigel Tranter

  This was the signal for Lennox to make a speech of welcome on behalf of the Privy Council. He had, however, forgotten every word of it, and the phrase or two of Danish, especially memorised, had quite gone.

  'We… er, bid you welcome, Sire! And Your Grace, Madam. Welcome! To your realm,' he said, haltingly, into the succeeding silence. 'Very welcome.' He stopped, unable to think of anything else to say. The bawling of the small and almost naked boy shivering in the wind as an angel, came to his rescue. 'Provost!' he called. 'My Lord Provost!' He pointed at the infant.

  Edinburgh's civic chief strutted forward, took the child from the halberdier who had clutched him manfully all this time, and dragged him towards the royal couple. Nearly there, he drew from beneath his robes of office a golden orb. This he thrust upon the youngster, before pushing him bodily towards the Queen.

  The angel, intrigued by the round shining thing, stopped crying and walking both, and began to try to open it, turning it this way and that.

  Smilingly Anne stepped forward, hand outstretched. The child shrank back, clutching his prize to him. Prettily the Queen coaxed him, to no effect. James, glowering blackly, pointed a peremptory royal finger, and then stamped his foot hard. The celestial messenger dropped his gift in fright, and burst once more into wailing. The orb burst also, on the cobblestones, spilling out a handsome necklace of wrought gold links inset with pearls and emeralds.

  Hurriedly before any of his courtiers could reach the spot, James himself stooped down to pick up the jewellery. Carefully he examined it, peering at the craftsmanship, holding up the stones to the light, assessing its worth – until Anne reached over and quite sharply twitched it out of his hands. She raised it to her young neck, squinting down at it with proprietorial satisfaction, and held it so. A man stepped out from the group of high personages close by, moving in front of Maitland the Chancellor and behind the Queen. He put out his hands to take the ends of the necklace from her fingers, and fastened them together deftly at the back of her slender neck. She turned to him quickly, surprised. It was the handsome Earl of Moray. Anne smiled warmly.

  He bowed, but not low.

  'So!' Patrick, further back, observed to Marie. 'Here is both an allegory and a lesson to be learned, I think!'

  Before there could be any more unseemly and unprofitable time-wasting, the Kirk took charge. It had, indeed, been very patient. Andrew Melville, Principal of Glasgow University and fiery pillar of godly reform, a massive sombre figure with voluminous black Geneva gown and white bands flapping about him, stepped forth to announce in a rasping but powerful voice that had no difficulty in competing with wind or chatter, that Christ's true Kirk, recognising well the sins and follies that so readily beset those in high place – particularly women – greeted Christ's humble vassal James and the woman Anne whom he had brought back from a land where the truth was perhaps less firmly established than in this realm of Scotland, and prayed God that both might be delivered from the temptations to which they were all too vulnerably exposed, in fleshly lusts, carnal concupiscence, heretical doctrine, Popish idolatry, worldly converse and the curse of evil company. At this last, Master Melville glared round him at practically everyone present, especially the bishops. In token of which, he went on, he would now, in the Kirk's name, deliver an address of welcome.

  Tugging at a forked beard, and fixing Anne with a fierce eye, he raised his voice to a higher pitch. Forceful, clear, vigorous, his sonorous periods rang out, cleaving the rushing air, throbbing in all ears. There could be no more doubting of the eloquence than the clarity – only, unfortunately for some, the said periods were entirely in Latin. Excellent Latin, needless to say, if delivered in a harsh Fife accent – all two hundred stanzas of it, a feast, a banquet of worth, edification and warning.

  James paid due, indeed, appreciative attention to it all. Anne, whose education, is to be feared, had been neglected, did the epic performance less than justice, her sharp little eyes fairly soon beginning to wander. The Kirk did not fail to note, especially when more than once she yawned.

  A right and proper atmosphere having thus been introduced, Andrew Melville launched into prayer. This was powerful stuff which could not fail to have a marked effect on his Maker, however incomprehensible it might be to most of the visitors. The real kernel and pith of the matter was still to come, however. With a wave of his hand, Melville summoned forward Master Patrick Galloway to preach the sermon.

  Master Galloway, a noted divine, excelled himself, rising to the occasion untrammelled by notes or hour-glass, in an ever-mounting crescendo. His theme was the necessity of the obedience of wives to their husbands, and obedience of husband's to Christ's Kirk. After half-an-hour of it, Bothwell, who had been carrying on a loud-voiced conversation with some of his henchmen, abandoned the struggle, and with hooted laughter marched from the scene, followed by most of his party – and, sad to relate, not a few others who suddenly found pressing business elsewhere and took this opportunity to attend to it. After an hour, much of the crowd had melted away. Mary Gray, noting how pale the Queen looked, slipped under the rope-barrier, picked up a small drum that one of the city drummers had set down, and moved forward with it, braving the frowns of nearby clerics, to the group of wilting notables nearest the royal couple. There she handed it to Moray, whispering in his ear. The Earl, nodding, took it and carrying it over to Anne, threw his short velvet cloak over it, and motioned for her to sit. Thankfully the Queen sank down on it, eyed sidelong by her husband, who pulled at his ear, uncertain it seemed whether to be envious or scandalised.

  Master Galloway thundered on.

  At last it was over. There was to have been an elevating ceremony of Faith, Hope and Charity beckoning the King and Queen through the garlanded doorway to receive the keys of the city from the Lord Provost, but by unspoken consent -and since they would not in fact be going to Edinburgh today, after all – this was dropped meantime. With most of those who had been unable to escape hitherto rushing off incontinent for relief and refreshment to Leith's numerous taverns, it seemed that the royal welcome was completed. It but remained for the Master of the Wardrobe to acquaint the King of the unfortunate fire at Holyroodhouse and the consequence that the royal quarters would not be ready for Their Graces for a day or two. The King's-work, here in Leith, however, was prepared…

  James threw up his hands. 'Fire!' he cried. 'Flames! Here, too! Even here he rages against me! In my own realm, my own house! He's aye clawing at me, clutching…'

  'It was but some careless workmen, Sire…'

  'It was Satan! It's aye Satan, I tell you. Reaching out for me. But he'll no' have me – God Almighty is my ally. The powers o' darkness winna triumph ower the Lord's Anointed!'

  'Er… quite. Exactly, Your Grace. But, the Queen – she must be very tired. Her ladies await her, at the King's-work. Next to the Citadel. Just along the waterfront. Refreshment is there, Sire…'

  'Aye, refreshment. Refreshment for the battle!' James muttered. 'Come, Annie – come you.'

  But already the Queen had started out, on the arm of the Earl of Moray.

  Chapter Thirteen

  IT did not take Scotland long to discover that her new-married monarch had something on his mind more pressing than the cosy joys of matrimony. He had been in a strangely distraught

  state before ever he set sail for Denmark; he returned, with his bride, even more preoccupied – though no longer distraught. Whether it was marriage that had done it, the months of absence from his own land, or discussions with curious foreign authorities, is not to be known – but he came back a man with a mission. He was going to get to grips with Satan, without delay.

  Always James had been interested in and much aware of the supernatural. His lonely parentless childhood had been beset by devils, ogres and apparitions, all malevolent – many of them in the guise of steel-clad, hard-faced grasping lords. George Buchanan, his stern tutor and taskmaster, had been a student of demonology. The ministers of the Kirk who had borne heavily upon h
im all his days, were much concerned with the dark powers of evil. Now was the reckoning.

  Despite all the other matters which clamoured for his attention, the King was much closeted in small dusty rooms, first in Leith and then in his own quarters at Holyroodhouse, with books, parchments, folios, on abstruse and difficult subjects such as necromancy, sorcery, Black Magic, wizardry, astrology and the like. No longer did he ink his fingers with much writing of poetry; now he was inditing more serious stuff. It was difficult for his officers and ministers to get in at him in these locked sanctums – and there was so much to be done; the innumerable matters of state that had had to be held over, awaiting the monarch's return; deputations to be received from all over the land; the due entertainment of the great company of distinguished foreigners, Danes in especial, who had come over with Anne; most important of all, the Queen's Coronation. James expended only grudging attention on all these.

  The very night before the Coronation, indeed, with many of the details still to be arranged, Patrick Gray, responsible as Master of the Wardrobe for much of the ceremonial, prevailed on the Duke of Lennox to gain him the King's presence, somehow. Ludovick was in fact almost the only person for whom James would open his locked doors.

  After much knocking and a certain amount of shouted reassurance, the King was persuaded to draw the bolts of his study in the south-west drum-tower of the palace, and peer round.

  'What's to do now, Vicky?' he demanded querulously. 'Can you no' see I'm busy? And who's yon you've got there wi' you, man?'

  'It is the Master of Gray, Sire. He has urgent matters for your attention. Regarding tomorrow's crowning.'

  'Och, him! Patrick's aye at something…'

  'Aye, Sire – but since he found the money to pay for this Coronation, he should be heard, should he not?'

  'Humph! I'ph'mmm. Well… ' Grumbling, James let them in, and quickly shot the bolts again. 'He got a third part o' the gold himsel', did he no'? A thousand pounds! Bonnie payment for a' he did…'

  'Was that not in lieu of his claim for Dunfermline Abbey?' the younger man asked bluntly.

  Tut, man…'

  'Your Grace's generosity was notable,' Patrick intervened smoothly. 'I have no complaints. The difficulties now are otherwise. The most serious is the problem of the Queen's anointing. The Kirk is proving… obdurate.'

  'There's nae problem in it, Patrick,' James answered testily. 'I have given my royal commands. The Kirk has but to carry them out in a seemly fashion. Waesucks – must I do their work for them? I hae other work o' my ain, 'fore God! That only I, the Lord's Anointed, can accomplish.' He pointed a stained finger at the tables littered with parchments and books. 'Have I no' plenty on my hands, man?'

  Lennox looked askance at the disarray of papers. 'Inky work, Sire, it would seem! Is such not for clerks…?'

  'Clerks!' James all but squeaked in indignation. 'Could clerks wrestle wi' the Devil? Could clerks bind Satan in his ain coils?'

  'Lord, James – are you drowning Satan in ink? Choking him with dust…?'

  'Dinna scoff, Vicky Stuart – dinna scoff! I'll no' be scoffed at, d'you hear? Belike he'll turn his assault on you, man, as well as me. I am binding Satan wi' words, see you – potent and mighty words. In the beginning was die word, mind. I, James, by the Grace o' God, am writing a book!'

  His visitors stared from the King to each other and back again.

  Apparently encouraged by the impression he had made, James nodded vigorously. 'A book. A great and notable work. On the wicked wiles o' Satan and his black kingdom. A book to undermine his ill powers and reveal his evil ways.'

  'You…?' Lennox swallowed. 'How may you do that, James? What even the Pope of Rome cannot do.'

  'H'rr'mm,' Patrick coughed warningly.

  'The Pope!' That was a snort. 'The Pope's ower near allied to the Devil himself to do any such thing! Forby, he hasna my advantages, as the Lord's Anointed. I am Satan's especial foe, see you – and his ways are revealed to me.'

  'But

  'You learned this in Denmark, Sire?' Patrick asked.

  'I jaloused it before I ever went, man. You'll mind a' the storms that prevented my Annie frae coming to me? Yon was Satan's work. He wouldna hae me married and my royal line strengthened against him. A' the way yonder my ships were sore assailed. I was near the gates o' Hell. But I won ower. In yon Denmark, the winds dropped and the storms died. He couldna reach me there. A' winter there was scarce a breeze. But when I set sail again, the hounds o' Hell were quick after me, God kens! That very day the storms rose. Day and night the seas clawed at me. The deep opened its maw to engulf me. We were sucked in and spewed out again. Like yon Jonah. But I wrestled. I wrestled wi' Satan in person – aye, and wi' God too, in prayer. Notable prayer. And so we won back to this my realm. As an ill grudge, he set his flames to this house o' mine, but… but…' Panting with his vehemence, the King paused for very breath.

  Embarrassed, Ludovick looked at the floor. Patrick stroked his chin.

  'And if you are convinced, Sire, that these unseasonable storms are the Devil's work, raised expressly against your person,' he said, 'how do you seek to bind him by writing a book?'

  'Och, Patrick – where are your wits? Ydu, of a' men, should see it. The Devil thrives in darkness, ignorance. He canna abide the light. The word is light. Do the Scriptures no' say so? The Good Book is the light that lightens the world. My book shall lighten Satan's ain world, Hell itsel'. To his undoing.'

  'H'mmra. A lofty ambition, Your Grace. A Homeric task, indeed.'

  'Do I not ken it, man? That is why I labour at it, day and night, thus – why I shouldna be disturbed wi' lesser things. I must myself read a' that's written. And I must test what I read. Try it. Aye, there will need to be a deal o' testing. I shall require your aid, belike…'

  'Testing, Sire? What mean you by testing?'

  'Ha – wait, Patrick man! Wait! You shall see. In good time. Aye, a' my realm shall see Satan tested. But no' yet. I'm no' ready yet. There's that much to do.'

  'But… can you reach the Devil, to test him?'

  'Satan works through men, Patrick. And women. As well as in winds and storms. Them I can reach.' James rubbed his inky hands, and actually chuckled. 'Ooh, aye – I can reach them.'

  The Master of Gray searched his monarch's face intently, and said nothing.

  'There is much to do at the Coronation also, Sire,' Lennox reminded. 'And on the morrow. This matter of the anointing. As Chamberlain, I must know…'

  'Tcha! I told you – I have given my commands.'

  'Unfortunately, Your Grace, the Kirk has other views,' Patrick pointed out.

  'It canna. It canna. I am the head o' Christ's Kirk.'

  'Yet the Kirk says that anointing with oil is a Popish practice. An idolatrous vanity. Master Robert Bruce says that he will not be a party to it.'

  James gulped and giggled. 'He'll no'…? He'll no'…? Vanity? Idolatrous – the royal anointing! Guidsakes – is it no' what makes the monarch different frae other men? I am the Lord's viceregent – His Anointed. No subject will deny the anointing oil to my Queen!'

  'Master Bruce says that he will, Sire.'

  'Then Master Bruce is acting for Satan, no' Christ. Aye, that's it. Satan again, it is! He'd deny my Annie her royal due, and so hae my seed less than kingly. For his ain ends. Och, I ken him. He's but using Bruce. Tell you Master Bruce that he will anoint my Queen wi' oil, or I'll hae one o' the bishops to do it! That will scunner him! Or I could do it mysel'. Who is mair fitted to transmit the blessed unction than I who am already anointed? Tell me that.' James was trembling with emotion.

  'Very well, Sire. It shall be as you say. Then there is the matter of where the bishops shall stand. And in what precedence. The Kirk would not have them in the ceremony, at all. It would put them after the last of the presbyters… '

  'Soul o' God!' the King cried. 'Away wi' you! Hae them where you will. I'll no' be embroiled, d'you hear? Let them fight it out for themsel's. I hae God's work to see
to – no' man's pride and folly. Away, now. Out wi' you both. I'll hae no more o' it. This audience is closed. Aye, closed.'

  Patrick and Ludovick bowed themselves to the door, being all but pushed through it in the process. The latter eyed his companion ruefully.

  'Heaven save us – do you think he's parted from his wits entirely?' he demanded.

  Patrick took a little while to answer, as they went down the winding stairs. He was looking very thoughtful. 'I do not know, Vicky,' he said. 'It may be so – but the situation is not as it was, mind. He is married. Has been for six months. The Queen may well be with child even now – child herself as she is. She may soon produce an undoubted heir to the throne. So what we had in mind before will no longer serve… '

  'What you had in mind,' the Duke pointed out.

  The Master ignored him. 'It is… interesting. It behoves us to think carefully. Most carefully.'

  'To what end?'

  'Why – to the weal and benefit of the realm, Vicky. And us all. What else?' The other smiled his sweetest. 'You heard him. Testing, he said – trying. He would need our aid, he said. Know you any of the Devil's spawn to test and try, Vicky?'

  Mary Gray, with Jean Stewart and Katherine Lindsay, stood or knelt around the thin white naked figure of Queen Anne, sponging and wiping and dabbing. Still in their fine gowns that they had worn for the Coronation ceremony, Mary's borrowed from the royal wardrobe, they busied themselves amongst the steam from the cauldrons of hot water, exclaiming, twittering consolations to their mistress.

  Anne stood stiffly, on a pile of cloths and towelling, in the circular tower-room off the royal bedchamber which she was calling her boudoir – the room indeed directly below the King's study in the drum-tower. Pale, her lips tight, she was breathing hard – but even so her tiny budding bosom scarcely stirred. From most aspects, naked, she might have been a boy, so unformed in womanliness was her slender body. But her expression was neither childish nor lacking in definition. Her cold anger was remarkable in its still intensity. She answered nothing to her ladies' commiserations.