‘Of course.’
‘Thus it is for a Brunson. Except for us, the one thing we must do is protect and preserve our family. That was the choice Johnnie made. He could make no other.’
‘Make no other? Then what I make of it is that the Brunsons are traitors.’
The heat in her cheeks grew cold.
‘You know why you are here, don’t you?’
To persuade you to forgive my brothers. But it seemed wiser not to say that now.
‘As surety for my brothers’ good behaviour.’ That, at least, was what the King thought. Of her effort to prove Carwell’s deception she would say nothing.
‘Then I must keep you close or the Brunsons will have no reason to do as I wish.’
She parted her lips, but he had stolen the very words from her throat.
‘And do you know what will happen if they continue to make war on the Border?’
She had never considered the question. She had expected to meet the King, explain things so that he would understand them, and return to the tower. ‘What, Your Grace?’
‘You shall not see home again.’
It sounded like a death sentence.
‘Do you want to see home again?’
She did. Sharply. The well-worn steps she had resented seemed like friends calling to her feet. The sharp green of summer grass. The howling wind in winter. All of it.
Never to go home again? Perhaps death would be better.
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
‘Then you had better hope your brothers keep the peace. And you had better prepare for a long stay.’
A long stay. She had never thought truly of what her brothers would do if the King held her. But she knew what she would expect them to do: whatever was necessary to protect the family.
Not what might save Bessie Brunson.
* * *
Carwell had waited, pacing, outside the King’s chamber. The guard had kept him too far from the door to understand words, but he heard the King’s voice rise.
A bad sign.
And when she emerged, pale, too pale, he suspected worse. ‘What did he say?’
She hesitated, as if loath to admit failure. ‘He would not listen.’
‘He’s the King. He does not have to listen.’
He led her out of the building and towards the wall walk, where they might avoid other ears. The November sun was pale, but it was midday and as warm as the day would get.
‘Am I looking towards home?’ she asked, wistful, as they gazed over the valley.
‘Over there.’ He pointed at an angle and she followed his finger with her eyes.
‘It’s a long way,’ she said, not really to him.
‘Now tell me what happened? What did you tell him?’
‘The truth.’
He closed his eyes with a sigh. How was he to unravel this tangle?
‘Would you have me lie?’ she asked.
‘There is a difference between lying and shoving words in his face that the King does not want to hear. What particular truth did you force upon him?’
‘Only that Johnnie made the decision that any Borderer would.’ A stubborn pout graced her lips. ‘To put family first.’
Something prickled the base of his spine. He would have chosen the same. ‘And what did the King say to that?’
‘That Johnnie was in rebellion.’
She spoke the words calmly, as if not truly understanding their meaning. He did. ‘What did the King say then?’
‘He said that if they continue to make raids, I will not see home again.’
A permanent hostage. Such things had happened. The family would be fortunate if that was the worst of it. The King had already authorised the utter destruction of two families this year. Only women and children had been spared. ‘Did I not say that from the beginning?’ Yet neither she nor her idiot brothers had taken his warning seriously.
‘Even if he does, it won’t force Rob and Johnnie to do what he wishes. My brothers will protect the family as a whole, not me.’
‘I would not be too sure of that,’ he said. Her brothers had been adamant that no harm come to Bessie, a charge that now rested with Carwell. It was becoming more and more difficult a task.
‘Johnnie warned me the King might not be wise.’ She shook her head, with a small smile. ‘He certainly knows little of women.’
He looked at her in surprise. In his experience, the King knew too much of women. ‘What do you mean?’
‘He thinks we are weak and unreliable.’
You are. He caught his tongue quickly and resculpted the words. ‘Many men would agree.’
‘Do you?’
That was a truth he was wise enough not to shove in her face. He cleared his throat. ‘I have known those who needed to be...cared for.’
Her eyes met his and he saw not the woman who stumbled on the dance floor but the one who had insisted she and no other come to Stirling. ‘Well, neither you, nor the King, has ever known a Brunson woman.’
That, he was beginning to realise, was true. ‘Are they all as stubborn as you?’
‘Do you not know the story of the First Brunson?’ Her voice amazed as if it were a tale all should know.
He searched his memory. ‘The man left for dead after a battle in the valley.’
She nodded and then crooned a few lines of the ballad, her voice throaty and soft. ‘Left on the field by the rest of his clan, Abandoned for dead was the first Brunson man.’
She crossed her arms and hunched her shoulders against the cold. ‘And do you know what set off that battle that left the first Brunson near death?’
He shook his head, sure that she would tell him. ‘I do not.’
‘They were trying to creep up on their enemies and the First Brunson stepped on a thistle. He swallowed his pain, but the man next to him could not. He cried out, spoiling their surprise.’
He raised his brows and held his tongue. He had heard the story before, but told of another invader, in another part of the country. ‘Then what?’
‘Because of his warning, most of his fellows were killed.’
War. Battle. Death. Tales any child on the Borders knew well. ‘But he lived.’
‘They left him for dead, the ones who still had two limbs and could escape. And he was close enough to dead that the enemy simply stripped his sword and dagger before they, too, left for their homes.’
He shuddered. Wounded and without weapons, a man might as well be dead. ‘How did he survive?’
She shrugged. ‘Brunsons are a stubborn lot. Because he had lived, because the ground he lay on had not let him die, he decided to stay on it, to hold it, and never to leave it again. Nor any of his family after him.’
Obstinate as all his descendants. No doubt it had kept the man alive. And no wonder such stubbornness lived in their blood. The land nourished them as the earth grows the thistle.
But what happened to a thistle when ripped from the soil?
No wonder court had made her so uncertain. Immovable Bessie Brunson had been uprooted from the land where she flourished completely as if she had been a thistle bush. Could she thrive in any soil other than her own?
Thomas was a Border man, a warrior fierce as any in the hills, but his family had lived by the sea. He knew ebbs and tides, treacherous sands and dangerous surges. Things that taught a man that there was nothing certain, nothing solid. And that a line drawn in the sand would disappear beneath the next wave.
But there was something more, something missing from the Brunson story. ‘Where did they come from, the First Brunson and his fellows?’
She tilted her head, then waved her hand vaguely to the north-east. ‘From the sea.’
He blinked. This woman, whose family was the most earthbound of the clans, had an ancestor come from the sea.
She turned back to look at him, her gaze direct, but with an uncertainty in her eyes he had never seen before.
‘What should I do now, Thomas Carwell, if I am ever to see home
again?’
* * *
Bessie could read his face now, well enough to know she had surprised him. And that he knew what those words had cost her.
‘Do you trust me enough to do as I say?’
She had learned enough in these two days not to say the first thing that she thought, but not enough to keep the thought from her face.
‘I can see you do not.’
But who else was there to trust? ‘What would you tell me? If you thought I would listen?’
‘To speak cautiously and move carefully. To take one step at a time and to look for an opening.’ He smiled. ‘As in the galliard, when all the dancers switch to new partners. There can be...opportunities.’
She shook her head. ‘That is no advice at all. I want to do something.’
‘Now is the time to wait and watch.’
Waiting and watching would not move her one step closer to home. ‘And to dance?’
He smiled. ‘Yes. And to dance.’
She struggled against a smile, and the temptation, as he led her back inside. But while she was here, there must be something else to do besides wait.
A woman, perhaps, might be a better counsellor. It might be that she was going to owe the Marys even more before she could go home again.
Chapter Ten
After a week, she had settled in to the routine of the royal household. She was still out of place, too high born for the kitchens, yet not an appointed lady-in-waiting. But she helped the Marys with their tasks, taking messages, fetching forgotten trinkets, learning the stairways of the royal quarters and the Great Hall.
That, at least, felt like home.
And she took every opportunity to ask, and listen, as they talked.
‘Why is it, then,’ she asked Stowte Mary one night, as they both plied needles in the candlelight, ‘that the King hates Angus so deeply?’ She was proud of herself for asking the question aslant. It was Carwell’s hatred she wanted to probe, not the King’s.
Stowte Mary looked over her shoulder, though the door to their room was closed. ‘Well, his mother, Queen Margaret, was widowed almost as soon as he was born, you know.’ She nodded, a look that said she had seen it all. ‘I served her even then. I remember. It was a dark, dark time. Poor lady had a new son, warring factions vying for power and the weight of the government on her shoulders.’
Not certain what this had to do with Angus, she murmured something encouraging. Stowte Mary knew everything, it seemed, and was willing to share it with the right audience.
‘Hard for you to imagine, I’m sure, but she was still young and pretty.’
Bessie bit her tongue. She had seen the woman from a distance. Mary was not the only one who she would describe as ‘stowte’.
‘But then...’ Stowte Mary sighed and clucked a sound of judgement that signalled the heart of the story was to come. ‘She let herself be swept off her feet by a man.’ Raised eyebrows.
Bessie put down her needle. The shiver of a lesson travelled up her spine. ‘The Earl of Angus.’
Stowte Mary nodded, as if Bessie were an apt pupil. ‘A woman can be tempted, you know. All thought left her head and she married him, in secret, thinking he really cared for her.’
Thinking he really cared for her.
She tried to swallow. ‘Then what?’
Stowte Mary waved a hand. ‘Stories too many for an evening. She made Angus regent. The other lords protested and fought over the boy. She sought help from the English, the French...’
My mother is strong, but, alas, changeable, the King had said. No wonder her brother Johnnie had been so important to him.
And no wonder Carwell had warned her about the court. Allied to the French one day, to the English the next. There was no solid ground.
Stowte Mary paused, looking at Bessie with a suspicious eye. ‘Did you not know these things on the Borders?’
‘My brothers did, perhaps.’ She had been too busy in the kitchens and at the wash tubs. ‘Court was a long way away.’ And nothing a king did seemed to change life in their valley. ‘So what about Angus?’
‘Well...’ Stowte Mary seemed pleased that the tale was new to her ‘...the poor Queen discovered soon enough that it was her power and her money that Angus cared for, not Margaret.’
Not Margaret. And not Bessie. No, Thomas Carwell could not care about Bessie. Then why...?
‘The man was cruel,’ Mary continued. ‘He went back to his mistress. Took the Queen’s money for himself.’ She shook her head. ‘Finally, the Earl kidnapped her son. Held him captive and ruled the country in his name for two years. King James finally had to escape in the middle of the night to take control of his own country.’
And there she remembered the story. That was when Johnnie had come home.
‘The Queen is free of him now,’ Mary said, in a tone of satisfaction. ‘The Pope finally agreed to her plea for a divorce.’
Bessie put down her needle, her head spinning. Royal families, it seemed, were not like those on the Borders. ‘So that’s why he hates Angus,’ she said.
‘He and many others.’
Now. Now she could ask. Had she buried her true question long enough? ‘Thomas Carwell does, I understand. Because of his father.’
‘He’s more reason than most. The Carwells are wardens of the March by right. Always have been. Angus snatched not only his position, he took his life.’
‘Angus killed him?’ No man would need better reason for revenge.
But Stowte Mary shook her head. ‘They said he died of natural causes. I think the man was broken-hearted.’
‘Nothing like his son, then!’ Carwell’s head ruled him, not his heart. That’s what she must remember. Except when he spoke of his wife...
Before she had time to regret her quick tongue, Long Mary opened the door, bringing a dejected pout into the room.
‘Busy again,’ Long Mary said. ‘For near a week now, he’s done nothing but meet with the negotiators.’
Bessie looked to Stowte Mary, who shook her head in warning.
He. The King.
And Long Mary wanted to whine. ‘Meetings in the morning. Meetings at night. He’s time for little else.’
Bessie wondered whether he had less time for Long Mary because of the meetings or because her belly grew larger. Soon there would be two ‘stowte’ Marys. Bessie had inherited another dress as a result.
She risked a question. ‘Negotiators?’
‘Aye,’ the woman said. ‘They were meeting with the English, trying to agree on a renewal of the peace, but a few weeks ago, when they could come to no agreement, the King recalled his men.’
‘And none too happy he was, either,’ Stowte Mary added.
‘So he needed diversion,’ Long Mary added. Her smile suggested that her lips had provided it. ‘But for the last week, it’s been nothing but meetings again.’
For the last week. She had been at court so long. ‘Has Thomas Carwell been in these meetings?’
Long Mary shrugged. ‘Probably. I care not.’
‘Now, now. They’ll all be back to Berwick soon,’ Stowte Mary said, in soothing tones. ‘You’ll have him to yourself again.’
Off to Berwick to negotiate with the English. What had changed in the last week that would bring new hope to failed negotiations?
Thomas Carwell had come to court.
He wanted my counsel on the treaty with England.
Watch and wait. Aye, that’s what Carwell wanted, but he was the one she should be watching.
Closely.
* * *
Thomas walked out of his meeting with the King feeling highly satisfied. The last session with the negotiators was over. God willing, the treaty would be renewed before the beginning of Yuletide.
Angus might even be in their hands by then.
The sight of Bessie, lurking in the hall, slowed his steps. He looked around, hoping none of the others leaving the room were finishing conversations she might overhear.
‘You meet oft
en with the King,’ she said.
‘He seeks my counsel, yes.’
‘A Brunson could give him better advice.’
He frowned. He could well imagine what they would say. The stiff-necked Brunsons had never been willing to bend a little to one side to accomplish something on the other.
‘Your brothers chose to stay home instead of responding to the King’s command.’ He was starting to speak to her as bluntly as she to him. It might be the only way to make her understand. ‘Do not complain now that he does not listen to their counsel.’
He saw her flinch, knew he had hit his mark.
‘But I understand treaty negotiations are to resume.’
He studied her expression, wary. Well, that news was not a secret. Few things were at court. ‘The negotiators leave for Berwick on the morrow.’
‘Yet only a few weeks ago talks had broken down and all looked hopeless.’
She had become, he noted, more skilled at questioning.
‘That is how negotiation works. Give and take. An offer and a counter-offer.’
‘And a secret offer?’
How had she guessed? He kept his breathing steady. ‘If there were, I would keep it so.’
‘If there were, I suspect it is one you brought them. Even one you brokered.’
‘Me?’ Would lifted eyebrows show surprise? ‘I am Warden of the March, not an ambassador.’
‘And as Warden, you meet more frequently with your English counterpart than most diplomats do.’
Had she guessed? No, or she would be accusing, not questioning. For neither she, nor her brothers, would ever understand why he had spent the better part of last autumn sneaking in and out of England for secret talks with the English Warden.
The two of them had finally come to the terms he had presented to the King. Angus would not be given sanctuary. They would be allowed to pluck him out of England should he run there, brought back across the border, tried for treason and hanged if the King so pleased.
And the price for that? A temporary reprieve for one worthless English life.
But in her accusing eyes, he saw it all again. I’ll hold you responsible. And the next thing he knew, Storwick was at large and even the combined forces of the Carwells and the Brunsons had not been enough to track him down.
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