Lord and Master mog-1

by Nigel Tranter

  Chapter Twelve

  THE Douglas has played into our very hands, I tell you, Davy!' Patrick declared. 'A Yuletide gift, in truth! My waiting game is proved the right game. Here is the proof of it.'

  Seldom had David seen his brother so openly, undisguisedly elated – indication, if such was needed, of the weight of menace that had hung over all about the King for so long, however lightly Patrick, for one, had seemed to bear the burden.

  'He is coming to attend the Council next week, unbidden. My information is sure. He has decided that the time is ripe to move – that with most of the lords offended in Esme, he can sway the Council, and with a few hundred Douglases around the Parliament Hall and a street mob worked up to yell against Popish Frenchmen, the day will be his.'

  'As may not he be right?'

  'I think not, Davy. Something on this sort is what I have waited for. There is more than my Lord Morton can make plans!'

  The meeting of the Privy Council, an important one, was to be held on the afternoon of Hogmanay, the last day of 1580. Only an hour before it was due to start, the venue was changed from Parliament Hall, up near St Giles, to a room in the Palace of Holyroodhouse itself, at the King's command. When the Councillors – or such as had not already been warned – thereafter came riding down the long High Street and Canongate, on a chill dark day of driving rain, jostled by a clattering escort of hundreds of Douglas men-at-arms, it was to leave the No Popery crowd behind, their ardour notably damped. And at the great forecourt of Holyrood, and all around the palace, rank upon rank of armed men stood, mounted and afoot, pikemen, hagbutters, mosstroopers, Highland broadswordsmen, waiting silent, motionless in the rain, five or six times outnumbering the Douglases. No lord might bring with him more than ten men into the palace precincts, the Captain of the Guard declared-by the royal command. Morton, who obviously had expected to be forbidden to enter anyway, snorted a scornful if somewhat disappointed laugh, and strode within.

  He was still smiling grimly amongst his red whiskers when he stalked into the Council Chamber. Men greeted him uncertainly, but there was nothing uncertain about James Douglas. He marched straight for his accustomed place at the right of the empty throne, where he had been wont to sit as Regent, and sat down at once. He produced from a pocket the small Regent's baton – to which of course he had not been entitled for two years, but which made a potent symbol nevertheless – and rapped it sharply on the great table.

  'Sit ye down, my lords,' he commanded, in the sudden silence. 'Let's to business, Argyll, yon are still Chancellor, are you no'? We'll have the sederunt.'

  At the other end of the table, the Earl of Argyll, dark, thin-lipped, fox-faced, still stood. 'We await the King's Grace, my lord,' he said.

  The laddie can come in and signify the royal assent when we're done, man,' Morton snapped. 'Here's no bairn's work!'

  'His Grace has intimated his intention of presiding in person.'

  'Has he, 'fore God! Then let word be sent him that we are ready.''

  David, sitting at another table at the far bottom end of the room, along with other secretaries and clerks, took in all the scene-the uneasy hesitant lords, the watchful Chancellor, and the assured dominant Morton. He was perhaps a little thinner than when David had last seen him, but had lost nothing of his truculent authority and sheer animal power. David noted that, though summoned, his father, the Lord Gray, was not present

  A fanfare of trumpets marked the royal approach. Preceded by heralds in the blazing colours of their tabards, the Lord Lyon King of Arms, and the Earl of Erroll as Constable, King James came in, robed in magnificence, but anxious-eyed and chewing his lip. He looked both older and younger than his fourteen years. At his right and left paced the Earl of Lennox and the Master of Gray.

  Such as were seated, rose to their feet, bowing. Even Morton, sniffing and hawking loudly at all this display, perforce raised his posterior some way off his chair in a mocking crouch.

  'We bid you all welcome to our Council, my lords,' James got out thickly, as he sat down in the throne, beside Morton unavoidably, but not looking at him. 'Pray be seated.'

  As Morton, still crouching, opened his mouth to speak, Argyll the Chancellor banged loudly on the other end of the table. 'Is it Your Highness's declaration that this Council is duly constitute?' he asked quickly.

  'Aye, it is. But…but first I… we oursel' would, would make announcement aneht our dear cousin Elizabeth… Her Grace of England.' James was trembling almost uncontrollably, continually glancing over his shoulder and upward, where Lennox stood behind the chair which.Morton had appropriated. 'I… we do hereby declare…'

  He was interrupted by a loud rat-a-tat from without. The doors were thrown open, and the Captain of the Guard strode in, in full armour, plumed helmet, hand on sword-hilt Straight for the King he hastened, an imposing martial urgent figure.

  'Sire,' he cried. 'Your life is endangered!'

  'Eh…?

  'Sirrah – what means this unseemly entry?' the Chancellor croaked but with little conviction.

  'Treason!' Stewart exclaimed, and sank down on one knee at the sideof the throne. 'Sire -I say treason!'

  At that dread word fully half the men in the great chamber were on their feet.

  Two distinct table bangers beat for quiet, the Chancellor's gavel and Morton's baton. 'Silence!' the latter bellowed – and no voice could be more effective. 'What fool's cantrip is this?'

  He got his silence and his answer. 'Sire, take heed!' Stewart declared. 'As Your Grace's guard, I charge you – take heed! This man at your side, the lord of Morton, has designs upon your royal person.'

  'Belly-wind!' Morton scoffed.

  'I… we will hear of our trusty Captain of the Guard,' James quavered. 'What is this, of treason, Captain Jamie?

  Still kneeling, and pointing directly at Morton, Stewart cried, 'Treason I said – high treason it is! I accuse James Douglas, before Your Grace and this whole Council, of the cruel slaying of Your Grace's royal father, King Henry Darnley!'

  Uproar followed. A dozen lords were shouting at once. No amount of baton banging would still it Not that Morton was trying. He was on his feet, m towering rage, roaring his loudest.

  Terrified, James cringed on his throne, with Cousin Esme's arm protectively around his shoulders. Patrick signed to Stewart to rise to his feet, and together they interposed themselves between the wrathful Morton and the boy. Stewart part drew his sword; he was the only man who might lawfully wear arms in the presence of the monarch.

  Morton raved on for minutes on end, a furious foul-mouthed tirade of such sustained violence and vibrant force as to set the nerves of every man in the room aquiver. Only when speechless through sheer lack of breath, was there a pause, and Stewart was able to resume.

  'Such denials abate nothing of my charge, Sire. I charge this Council, for the King's safety, to bring the Lord Morton to his assize, when I will testify on oath that all is truth, I was but a page then, but I bore the confidences between this lord and his cousin and familiar, Archibald Douglas of Morham – whose was the hand that slew the King. The same whom this Earl Morton made a Lord of Session and judge of this realm, for reward!'

  'You snivelling puppy…!'

  'Where is Archie Douglas?' somebody demanded. Troduce him, to testify. Produce Archie Douglas!' 'Aye!'

  'The Senator Archibald Douglas fled last night, south of the Border and into England!' Stewart announced grimly.

  That clinched the matter. When Argyll, perceiving his moment, demanded whether or no they, as the Council, would heed the plea of the King's Captain, there were a score of ayes. Any who thought to say no, looked hastily around them, and discreetly held their tongues.

  Morton himself almost seemed to be stunned – or it may have been the first stages of apoplexy. He mouthed and all but choked, staring. 'Lindsay!' he managed to get out, at last. 'Ruthven! Glamis! Glencairn!'

  But the aged Lord Lindsay gazed at the floor, and twisted his claw-like hands; Ruthven, the
once terrible Greysteil, now considering events afresh, and in consequence the new Treasurer, looked out of the window at the beating rain; the Lord Glamis, that sober man, was dead, killed in, of all things, a brawl in Stirling street, and his brother the Master was banished the Court and sulking in the north; Glencairn indeed was there, but drunk, as ever – only, maudlin drunk where once he had been fiery drunk. The fact was, the old lion had outlived his jackals.

  'God's curse on you all, for puling dotards and tit-sucking babes!' Morton almost whispered. He spat 'That for you – each and all! I will see you in hell…'

  'Captain Stewart,' Erroll said stiffly. 'You will see the Lord Morton warded securely. In this palace until late tonight Then you will convey him straitly to the Castle of Edinburgh, where you, Master of Mar, will answer for him with your life. In the King's name! Take him away.'

  Stewart signed forward guards from the doorway.

  Morton, of a sudden, assumed a great dignity. 'No man's hand shall touch Douglas!' he declared quietly, finally, and without a glance or a word to anyone, passed from the chamber, surrounded by the soldiers, Stewart following.

  The Council will resume,' the Chancellor called out, before chatter could begin, his gavel now unchallenged on the table. 'Silence for the King's Grace.'

  James, however, was too overcome to do more than blink and wag his head Argyll nodded

  'In the matter of Her Grace of England her letter to His Highness…'

  So fell James Douglas, harshest tyrant that even Scotland had known in a thousand years, who had waited too long in the waiting game. Neither the Earl of Lennox nor the Master of Gray had so much as said a word, throughout.

  Morton was taken after dark, by devious ways, to Edinburgh Castle, and though his leaderless men-at-arms rioted throughout the city and did immense damage, they could neither assail the palace or storm the castle to free their lord. In due course he was removed to Lennox's distant castle of Dumbarton, for greater security.

  It was six months before the red Earl was brought to trial – if trial it could be called. One thousand men, no less, were sent to convoy him back to Edinburgh, and a Douglas attempt at rescue en route failed. By a jury of his peers, all his enemies, he was tried on June the second, and on the testimony of Stewart, Sir James Balfour, one of his own Douglases turned renegade, and letters from the imprisoned Queen Mary, was found guilty of being art and part in the murder of Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, the King, fourteen years before. No one witnessed in his defence; those who might have done were either dead or had ill consciences and no desire to swim against the tide. He was condemned to die that same day.

  The Maiden, set up at the Market Cross, outside St Giles, was Morton's own invention, and had long given him a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction. It was a somewhat clumsy contrivance, of a great knife counterbalanced by a heavy weight, all set within an upright frame, that was designed to whisk off heads with mere fingertip control – a forerunner of the guillotine, in fact. Now the Maiden took her begetter to herself right lovingly, to his own grim jests as to her well-tried efficiency. He laced her mockingly, declared as his last testament that none should know what so many wished to hear -where his vast accumulated treasure was hidden, since he had let none into his secret and made sure that the servants who had helped him stow it away had not lived to reveal its whereabouts; and as his dying prayer, mentioned, grinning, that if he had served his God as well as he had served his King he might not have come to this pass. Then, puffing, he got down on his thick knees, to lay his red head in what he called his Maiden's bosom – and the knife fell

  Set on a spike on the topmost pinnacle of the Tolbooth thereafter, the said head grinned out for long over all the capital that its owner had so long dominated. James the King trembled every time that he passed beneath.

  Chapter Thirteen

  'Is it not as good as a puppet show, Davey?' the Lady Marie asked, nodding her coifed golden head forward 'An entertainment, no less. Even here, on the high top of Lomond, they're at their mumming… with Patrick pulling the strings.'

  'Aye,' David said briefly. 'I see them.'

  'One day, Patrick is going to get his strings entangled I' she added.

  He companion made no comment, but shook his horse into a trot, to keep pace with their leaders. The young woman did likewise.

  They were high on the green roof of Fife, on a crest of the long ridge of the Lomond Hills, tar above the tree-level, with the land dropping away below them on either side in great brackeny sweeps, northwards into the strath of the Eden, wherein Falkland nestled amongst its woods, and southwards over rolling foothills and slanting fields to the sandy shores and great guttering estuary of Forth, beyond which Lothian smiled in the noonday sun and Edinburgh was discernible only because of its soaring castle. They had been hunting, from the Palace of Falkland, almost since sunrise – for James loved hunting, and was but a poor sleeper into the bargain. They had raised and killed three times in the forested foothills of Pitlour and Drumdreel, and then had put up a notable fourteen-point woodland stag, and all else was forgotten – at least by the King. For two hours they had run it, as it twisted and turned and sought sanctuary ever higher up out of the glades and thickets of the wood, up through the birch scrub and the whins, on to this high bare ridge where the larks sang and the curlews called, James and Lennox ever in front because of the fine Barbary blacks which they alone rode. And on the very crest they had found the hunted brute dead, its poor heart burst -for woodland life makes a stag heavy if nobly headed – and James had wept in vexation, for he had thought to shoot the killing bolt himself Now they rode back along the heights, seeking a spot where they might water the horses and eat their picnic meal, a colourful and gallant company – though not all of them as fond of this sort of thing as was their monarch.

  It was extraordinary how James had changed in the months since Morton's death. He was a different youth altogether, like some plant long hidden under an obstruction which blossoms up and swiftly spreads itself.whenever the obstruction is removed. Not that all held that the transformation was for the better. He had taken to asserting himself, erratically rather than consistently; he would have no more of Master Buchanan; he indulged in sly tricks and devised cunning traps for all but his beloved Esme; he sought to spend as much of his time as he might in the saddle, where undoubtedly he made a better showing than on his spindly knock-kneed legs. Morton's shadow had been potent indeed.

  More than James burgeoned, of course, under the smiling sun that the Douglas's lowering threat had for so long obscured – in particular Esme" Stuart, Captain James, and the lady – who had been Venus, the Lady Lovat, and Countess of March, and now was none of them. Unfortunately, to a large extent their burgeoning was mutually antagonistic. The Captain had blossomed to best effect, most assuredly. He was now James, Earl of Arran, Privy Councillor and Gentleman of the Bedchamber. He had known the price to ask – and when to ask it. On the very day before Morton's trial he had announced his terms: the Hamilton Earldom of Arran and the rest, or he would not testify. Since all depended upon his impeachment, at that late hour there could be no denial, Patrick had pointed out -though Lennox would have risked disaster fighting him. So the legitimate holder of the title had been hastily and judicially declared to be insane, and the honours and lands transferred to his illegitimate third cousin. And on the same happy day that his patent of nobility was signed, the Captain had the Court of Session declare the Earl of March to be frigid and incapable of procreating children, with the fortunate consequence that his marriage of less than a year earlier to the Lady Lovat was esteemed to be null and void. The pair were married the very next day – which enabled the lady's child by the Captain to be born legitimate a couple of weeks later – excellent timing, as all had to admit. The Earl and Countess of Arran were riding high – and would ride higher.

  And yet, the Lady Marie Stewart suggested that it was Patrick Gray who pulled the strings.

  Esme, Earl of Lennox had not lo
oked on entirely idly, of course. James, with a little prompting, had gladly created him Duke of Lennox, almost the first non-royal Scottish dukedom in history; moreover he had convinced Argyll that he was getting too old for the tiresome dudes of the Chancellorship, and could well transfer these to the elegant shoulders of the new Duke. So now dear Esme was Chancellor of the Realm, President of the Council, and first Minister of State. Also, he had taken over Morton's magnificent palace at Dalkeith.

  David, for one, doubted whether these were strings of Patrick's pulling.

  Such were the puppets that the Lady Marie exclaimed over on West Lomond Hill.

  Admittedly they had been behaving ridiculously in front there, all morning, Lennox and Arran bickering with each other when they thought that James was not looking, very civil before the King's face and aiming slights and insults behind his back, ever jockeying for position, seeking to pull the boy this way and that. And the Lady Arran made her own contribution, ogling the King – and indeed all others so long as they were male – managing to have her riding-habit slip aside with marked frequency to reveal great lengths of hosed, gartered and well-turned leg, fetching a lace handkerchief regularly in and out of the cleft of her remarkable bosom with much effect, and laughing in silvery peals the while.

  The Master of Gray, smiling, debonair, equable, but watchful always, rode beside and amongst them, occasionally coming back to where the Lady Marie chose to ride with David, but never leaving the principals for long.

  An entertainment, that young woman called it; she had, perhaps, a mordaunt sense of humour.

  The chief huntsman had found a suitable hollow, with a bubbling spring, and had come back to guide the royal party thereto, when the drumming of hooves drew all eyes northwards. Up out of the low ground rode a single horseman on a gasping foam-flecked mount. It was Logan of Restalrig, red-faced, rough, untidy as usual. He doffed his bonnet perfunctorily to the King, but it was at Patrick that he looked.