When, one day, Lennox came to her in the Commendator's House of Dunfermline Abbey, Mary saw the writing on the wall. Actually in this instance the writing was Bothwell's, in the form a letter just delivered to Ludovick, and of which that young man could make neither head nor tail. It was written from Hailes Castle in Lothian, and after professing the keenest regard for the Duke and asking after his health, declared that the writer understood that he, Lennox, was interested in the better running of the realm and the reform of certain notable tyrannies at present afflicting it, in especial the witch-trials which had become no more than a means for bringing down one's unfriends. Bothwell urged Lennox to band himself together with him and sundry other similarly well-intentioned lords, with a view to ending this reign of terror, and assured him that the time was almost ripe. He prayed that he might have an affirmative reply – as it was indeed the plain duty of all honest men in the kingdom to act in this matter.
'I cannot understand it, Mary,' Ludovick declared. 'This, from Bothwell. Why write this to me? I am no friend of his. I am against all bonds and plots. I have not great tail of men to help form an army. I am against this folly of the witches, yes. But I cannot see that Bothwell is the man to reform the government of this realm. And he has ever scorned me. Why should he approach me now? What can I answer him? I do not see the meaning of this letter…'
Mary looked out into the wet street. 'I fear that I do, Vicky,' she told him. 'And you should nowise answer it. This letter – do you not see? It is a trap. Burn it, Vicky – in case any other see it but ourselves. And pray that there are no more from whence it came! This may be Bothwell's writing -but I fear that it is Patrick's hand behind it!'
'Patrick's? Surely not!'
'Yes, Patrick's. Do you not see it? Answer this, show but the least interest in what Bothwell says, and you could be deep in trouble. Any communication with Bothwell, the King would take amiss. This, a bond with others, and against his precious witch-trials, he would name treason without a doubt. Aimed at himself… '
'James knows that I would never commit treason. That I would never league myself against him.'
'Are you so sure, Vicky? Remember that once you talked of deposing him, with yourself as Regent. Because you feared him mad. If he was to hear word of that…!'
'That was Patrick's project.'
'Yes. And there is the danger. Vicky – you have put yourself in Patrick's way. Because I besought you. But – whoever does that is in danger. I should have realised this before I sought your help. I have begun to fear something of the sort, these last days. Patrick's hand is behind this, I am sure. This way he could have you removed, out of the way. He may intend no more than that – but it could lead to worse things.'
'I cannot believe that this is Patrick's doing, Mary. How could he have Bothwell write to me?'
'Easily. Remember, he now can act Bothwell's friend and counsellor. Bothwell owes him his freedom. No doubt Both-well is planning all kinds of treasons – he is ever at it. What more simple than for Patrick to have him include you in his crazy plans? One day a letter will come into the King's hands, from you to Bothwell, or from him to you, and you will be no longer dear Cousin Vicky but a treasonable plotter! This is a warning.' Mary stepped over to the fire, and thrust the letter into its heart.
'Suppose that I told James that it was Patrick who aided Bothwell to escape from Edinburgh Castle?' Ludovick said slowly.
'Would you? And think you he would believe you? Patrick would deny it – and you have no proof. Only my word. None would accept that. Even… even if I would agree to testify against him!' Her voice faltered just a little as she said that.
Helplessly he shook his head. 'What are we to do, then?'
'What we should have done ere this.' She quickly was her calm self again. 'I spoke of it before, with the Lady Marie, but we believed that it could wait. Have the King send Moray north, Vicky. He has great lands there – his own earldom of Moray. Convince the King that he is seeing overmuch of Queen Anne, here in Fife. Abet Patrick in this, at least! It should not be difficult. Have him banish Moray to his castle of Darnaway. Work on Mar and some of the other lords to support you in this. I do not see how Patrick can object. But do it secretly, so that the Queen does not come to hear of it, or she may prevail on the King not to do it. Then… you will be no more in Patrick's way in this matter.'
'Lord, Mary!' Brows furrowed, he stared at her. 'How do you do it? How do you think of these things. On my soul, it is a marvel! And yet so simple. So simple that I would never have thought of it. Where do you get such wits?'
'You know where I get them,' she answered him, her voice strangely flat. 'I heired them. They are my inheritance. Sometimes I wish to God that they were not!'
Long he considered her. 'I think that I do, also,' he said, at last.
'Yes.' She turned away. 'But you will do this? Speak with the King. Secretly. Plague him, if need be. He will do it, if only for the sake of peace. His mind is wholly on his book and his witchcraft. It is the best course. Better Moray banished to the north, but free, than languishing in a pit of Edinburgh Castle. Which is where Patrick, I think, would have him.'
'Aye. But why is it, Mary? Why does Patrick so hate Moray? He did not, formerly.'
'I do not believe that he hates him. Indeed, I do not believe that Patrick hates any man. It is never hatred, I think, which makes him act so, but something quite other. You may laugh at me – but I believe that the greatest evils that Patrick has done were done with no malice to any. Not to the persons he injures. Can you understand that, Vicky?'
His blank face was eloquent enough answer.
'It is so hard to explain. But I think that I have come to understand him. By looking deep into my own mind, perhaps. Patrick is not interested in hurting people. In especial he would not seek to injure poor people, ordinary folk – although many innocent folk may come to be hurt in the working out of his plots. He is a better husband than most, a good master, and one of the ablest rulers this realm has ever known. But he sees statecraft as a game, a sport. And all that influences the rule of the state, in power, position, even religion, as but pawns in that game. He is a gamester, in more than cards and horse-racing. His greatest sport is this – the game of power. As Moray excels at the glove and the ball, so Patrick excels in this greater sport. He knows that he is better at it than is any other. Any that cross his path in this, he must remove. It is a challenge that must be met, and overcome. It is not the man that he fights, or the woman, but the challenge. Do you not see it?' Urgendy she put it to the young man, so urgently that she gripped his arm, all but shook it. 'Do you not see it?'
Doubtfully he eyed her. 'It is difficult, Mary. I see a little, perhaps. Patrick is not as other men, I do perceive. But this bringing down of others, so many, to their ruin, even their deaths – that is evil, surely? Only evil.'
'I know! I know!' she cried. It was seldom indeed that Mary Gray raised her voice thus. 'I do not say that it is not evil. But Patrick does not see it so. You asked me why he hates Moray. I do not believe that he does. But Moray has crossed his path, with the Queen. Moray's folly with the Queen could harm the realm. So Moray must fall. There may be more than that -1 do not know. But that is enough, for Patrick.'
He shook his head. 'You are too deep for me,' he said. 'Too clever – you and Patrick both.'
Strangely enough that remark seemed to strike home at her. 'So clever,' she repeated, dully. 'Yes – too clever. I could be too clever. I was, before. I hope, I pray, that I am not being too clever. This time. But… we must do something, Vicky. We must do something.'
He nodded. 'That we must. And this appears the wise course. What you now propose. I shall see to it. Never fear.' He kicked at the floor with his toe. 'I am sorry, Mary. I did not mean… that you thought yourself too clever. Never that' 'I know it, Vicky. But it is true, nevertheless.' 'The Queen?' he asked, changing the subject abruptly. 'How
is it with her?'
'All is well. Mistress Cunningh
am is curling her hair. Moray is there – but so are Lady Kate and your good-sister, the Lady Beatrix. All is well, for the moment.'
He sighed. 'I wish, Mary…!'
She completed that for him. 'Methven Castle will wait for you, Vicky,' she assured.
Although in the past King James had cared nothing for weather, so long as the hunting was good, this season his heart was not in hunting, and the November rain drove him back to Edinburgh. Bothwell seemed to have lain suitably low since his escape from ward, and it was to be hoped that he had learned his lesson at last. Even the Master of Gray seemed to consider that it would be safe enough to return to the capital. There was some talk of going back to Craigmillar Castle for security, or even to Edinburgh Castle itself; but none of the Council seemed to think that this was necessary, not even the cautious Maitland. Since Moray had been packed off to his northern fastnesses at Darnaway, a certain aura of peace had descended upon the Court. There was no denying it. The Queen was less upset than might have been expected. After only a day or two of sulks, she consoled herself readily enough with the Duke of Lennox and the Master of Gray – which allowed her husband to get on with the all-important issue of his book and his warfare with the Devil.
In this connection there was a grave, a shameful matter to put right. One of his special courts for trying the witches had actually acquitted the woman Barbara Napier – after he had forfeited her lands of Cliftonhall and bestowed them upon young Sir James Sandilands of Slamannan, his latest page, who was an extremely talented youth in certain ways, even if the ladies did not like him. In righteous wrath James had had the entire jury responsible arrested, brought to Falkland, and themselves thereupon tried on a charge of bringing in a false verdict, in manifest and wilful error, the King himself presiding. Faced with a fate exactly similar to that they should have imposed upon the high-born Mistress Napier of Cliftonhall, the jury sensibly and humbly confessed their fault, and clearly would not so err again. James was magnanimously pleased to pardon them. But others might do likewise, and it seemed clear that Christ's vice-regent should return to the centre of affairs forthwith – for it demanded eternal vigilance sucessfully to counter the Devil. The Justice-Clerk was instructed peremptorily to have the woman Napier re-tried and condemned, without further delay.
So to Holyroodhouse they all returned. The Queen, in lieu of the fascinations of house building and plenishing, fell back upon the cosy winter-time delights of possible pregnancy, and set her ladies to much making of baby-clothes.
Satan was not backwards in seeking to overturn King James's godly campaign. By a most unhappy coincidence, the same young James Sandilands, in an excess of youthful spirits, had the misfortune to shoot and kill a Lord of Session, Lord Hallyards, in the street soon after the return to Edinburgh. This greatly upset many of the judicial fraternity, some of whom even went so far as to demand that James should have his new page tried and punished. The King's indignant refusal undoubtedly had a deleterious effect on the witch-trials, which he had ordered to have precedence over all other matters juridical. He came to believe that the entire legal profession began to drag its feet in this vital issue – indubitably to Satan's glee.
As if this was not enough, there came a complaint from, of all people, George Gordon, Earl of Huntly. Although banished to his own countryside, he was still Lieutenant of the North -since there was nobody else up there powerful enough to control that barbarous land – and while besieging the Laird of Grant in Castle Grant, for some reason or another, had been attacked by the Earls of Moray and Atholl, coming to Grant's aid. No doubt only the fact that Moray was the King's cousin had produced this petition of protest from Huntly in place of a much more drastic and typical reaction. James was annoyed, justifiably. A plague on them all!
Mary no sooner heard of this than she imagined Patrick's hand behind it somewhere, pursuing Moray even two hundred miles into the Northland. He was in constant secret touch with Huntly, she knew. Atholl, a weak and unstable character, was married to the Lady Mary Ruthven – the same who was suspected of playing Leda to Patrick's swan at Falkland, and his full cousin as well as the elder sister of Ludovick's new wife. Patrick had used Atholl as his tool before this. Or it might have been a trumped-up clash arranged through Huntly himself…
In deep trouble, Mary Gray looked within himself. To such a state of suspicion, of irrational fears and dark imaginings, had she come. She saw Patrick's shadow everywhere, suspected his every action, sensed mockery behind every smile, tainting her love. It could not go on, thus. Either they must come to terms, or one must yield and go. And she did not see the Master of Gray conceding the game, the game that was his very life, to his unacknowledged daughter.
Chapter Twenty
ONLY five days before Christmas, with Queen Anne planning Yuletide revels on a Danish pattern and scale, something new and therefore suspect in Scotland, Patrick Gray surprised his wife and Mary by announcing that it would be suitable and fitting that he and his family should celebrate Yule in their own house of Broughty, not in this rabbit-warren of a palace. To Marie's protests that it was late in the day to think of this, that the journey at this season of the year would be most trying, and that Broughty Castle was indeed the last place that she would choose for festivity, her husband made laughing reply that she was obviously getting old and stodgy, and needed shaking up a mite; that the weather was excellent for the season; and that Broughty Castle was somewhat improved since last she had seen it. Moreover, would she not see her beloved Davy Gray?
He was in the best of spirits, anything but harsh, but adamant in this sudden whim. They would travel first thing the next morning. Mary was included in this arrangement.
While they would be sorry to miss her company, she could spend her Christmas at Castle Huntly if she preferred it Evidently there was no question of her being left at Holyroodhouse, Queen or no Queen.
Sudden as seemed this decision, Ludovick would have accompanied them – but Patrick demurred. It might look somewhat blatant, he suggested, for so newly a married man. Moreover, Anne might well be sufficiently concerned over losing her Maid-in-Waiting for her Yuletide antics, without sacrificing her most faithful admirer and constant attendant into the bargain. The Duke of Lennox was not as lesser men, and must bear the responsibilities of his high calling.
They took two easy days to the journey, stopping overnight at Falkland. Mary was escorted to the gatehouse of Castle Huntly, but neither the heir thereto nor his wife and son crossed the threshold. My lord's shadow lay too heavily athwart it.
Mary was joyfully received, the unexpectedness of her arrival nowise detracting. My lord, three parts drunk, welcomed her like the prodigal returned. Mariota wept in her happiness. The young brother and sister shouted. It was left to Davy Gray to remark concernedly that she was looking pale, great-eyed, strained – not the same cool and serenely lovely young creature that she had been, although almost more beautiful.
Mary, for her part, was more glad to be home than she could say, more in need of its settled normalcy and security than she had realised – and especially her father's strong, reliable presence. Undoubtedly prolonged association with Patrick Gray enhanced an appreciation of David, his illegitimate half-brother.
The day after Christmas, in sunny open weather, Mary rode pillion behind her father the dozen miles to Broughty. Even at a distance, Patrick's hand was notably visible. After the French fashion he had harled the bare stone wall outer walls and colour-washed all but the actual battlements and parapets in a deep yellow, so that the fortress on its rocky promontory soared above the sparkling, blue and white of the sea like a golden castle, gleaming in the sun. The place was larger too, new building towering above the high curtain-walling that faithfully followed the outline of the small headland; the restricted site precluded any lateral extensions, so Patrick had built upwards, and again in the French style, with corner-turrets, rounded stair-towers, overhanging bartizans and conical roofs. Over all no fewer than six great banners fluttered in
the breeze, proud, challenging.
'Patrick has done as he vowed,' David said, over his shoulder, pointing. 'Broughty is no rickle of stones, any more. It is a finer place than Castle Huntly now – finer than any castle that I have seen north of Tay. But the cost! He has poured out siller like water. Where does he get the money, Mary?'
She shook her head. 'A thousand pounds of Elizabeth's pension to the King he got – for fetching it, and as solace for Dunfermline…'
'That is as nothing to what has been spent here. You have not yet seen the inside. I cannot think where he has gained it.'
'He wins much at cards. And it may be that he has his hands on some of the Ruthven money already, with the wardship of the daughters. And he soil has dealings with Queen Elizabeth.'
'Aye, then. To pay so well, what does he sell her?'
When they reached the castle, the reason for David's won-derings was amply clear. The place was transformed. From a bare echoing shell, it had become a palace. Tapestries and hangings clothed every wall, and not skins but carpets on every floor, brought from the East. Great windows had been opened in the thick walls to let in the light, fireplaces blazed with logs in every chamber, and candles in handsome candelabra turned night into day. Furnishings, bedding, silverware, pictures – nothing was stinted, nothing less than the best. Nothing in Holyroodhouse could compare with this. If Patrick Gray knew how to find money, he knew how to spend it also.
Questions and doubts, however, had to give way to greetings, admiration and festivity. Patrick was at his dazzling best, all laughter, wit and brilliance, like quick-silver. Even to Davy he was all affection, gaiety, frank brotherliness. As for Marie, with all she loved most gathered around her, she accepted this day as snatched from care, not to be spoiled. The others found themselves of a like mind.
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