The Royal Mile

by Mary Daheim

  Sir James was just over thirty, with receding red hair and a close-trimmed beard. He had met Dallas at Holyrood the previous year and had thought her tongue oversharp, though she obviously possessed an unconscious physical allure. He was not, however, pleased to see her at Whitehall.

  “Madame,” he began, after hearing her out, “I regret your husband’s arrest as much as anyone, but I’ve spoken to Queen Elizabeth several times and she is closed as a clam about her intentions. Furthermore, I’ve tried to see Iain myself, with no success. Until the Queen reveals what game she’s playing, we’ll just have to wait.”

  Dallas pounded her fists on Melville’s desk. “Wait, wait, wait! I’ve been in London almost a month and that’s all I’ve done! Pox on Elizabeth and her harebrained whims! Must I go to her myself and tell her what I think?”

  That was the last thing Melville wanted Dallas to do. At best, she’d create a terrible scene, which would do no good for relations between England and Scotland; at worst, she’d find herself in the Tower, a prisoner like her husband. “Nay, madame, that you must not do,” Melville asserted. “You’d only make it harder for Iain. The Queen can retaliate in many ways—further deprivation, torture, even—death.” He let the last word fall heavily between them to impress upon Dallas the possible consequences of her folly.

  His ploy worked. Dallas agreed to keep away from Queen Elizabeth but insisted Melville make another effort on Fraser’s behalf. At last he promised to do so, though he knew his efforts would be in vain.

  By the end of September Dallas had decided to move out of the inn. The quarters were too confining and the bills were mounting. She had contacted the Countess of Lennox, who responded graciously with an invitation for Dallas to stay at her London residence.

  The Countess was a full-bodied woman of forty or so with auburn curls and an overbearing manner. Though a Stuart by ancestry, she was an English subject by birth. Her husband, Matthew, was also a Scot but owned more land in England than in Scotland. His political intrigues in his native land had earned him exile across the border. Together, the Lennoxes formed the most important and formidable Scots alliance in London.

  “Certainly I’ll speak to Elizabeth about your husband,” the Countess asserted in her usual brisk manner. “She’s a tartar, but no one ever put the fear of God into Margaret Lennox.”

  Dallas felt braced by the Countess’s words. They weren’t mere bluster, either. Margaret Douglas Lennox had a claim of her own to the English throne through her grandfather, Henry the Seventh. She had never considered herself anything less than Elizabeth's equal.

  But even Margaret Lennox’s methods took time. It was late October, damp and foggy, before the Countess won her first round. Sir James Melville would be allowed to see Iain Fraser.

  On the day Melville was scheduled to visit the Tower, Dallas prowled her bedroom all morning. Outside, rain pummeled the Lennox gardens, drowning the last chrysanthemums in puddles of mud. The Lennoxes’ elder son, Lord Darnley, who had been mentioned as a possible husband for Mary Stuart, had stopped by earlier to show off his newest creation from the tailor. He had admired Dallas’s own taste in clothes and wanted her opinion. She had regarded the preening youth without much enthusiasm, for she found him spoiled and self-indulgent, but had finally declared he looked splendid and sent him on his way.

  The bouts of nausea were past now, but Dallas was faced with a new dilemma: Very soon she would have to add panels to her gowns. Already there were only three dresses in her travel wardrobe which she could still squeeze into. She and Flora began altering Dallas’s gowns and making clothes for the baby. It helped pass the time but Flora worried whether or not Dallas would be back in Edinburgh in time to give birth.

  “Of course,” Dallas declared more vehemently than she felt. The months of waiting had undermined her confidence. “It will be February before the bairn is due.”

  Just then the Countess of Lennox entered with Sir James Melville following in her wake, looking not unlike a pet terrier. “He’s seen your husband, my dear, and Iain is quite hale if not exactly hearty. He has books and is allowed outside occasionally and the food is quite passable—but let Sir James tell you himself.”

  Melville was beginning to think he’d never get the chance. “He seems to be resigned to a lengthy stay in the Tower,” Melville said, “though he’s unable to conquer his native restlessness. His gaolers play cards and dice with him to help pass the time. Once a week or so he dines with Sir Reginald and Lady Stanley in their quarters. There’s an enclosed garden area on the river side of the tower grounds where he can take the air.”

  Dallas was relieved. At least Fraser wasn’t penned up in some tiny dark hole shut off from the world. “What did he say when you told him I was here?” she asked.

  Melville could not meet her eager gaze. “Ah, no, madame, I didn’t mention your presence in London.” As Dallas began to explode with recrimination he waved a hand to silence her. “Please, don’t you see, if he knew you were here, he might do something reckless, try to escape. His current perquisites—for which you may no doubt thank the Countess here—give great hope that the Queen may be ready to show leniency.”

  “You mean I can’t even write to him?” Dallas’s voice was thin and forced. She wanted so badly for him to know she was close by. Just seeing Melville here in her room, so soon after he had actually been with Fraser and spoken to him, made her heart ache more than ever with longing.

  “Nay, not yet,” Melville cautioned soothingly, “bide awhile, it’s the only way.”

  Dallas slumped into a chair, feeling the babe turn over in her womb. She uttered a brief, foul oath and started to make a motion of dismissing Melville but remembered her manners. She thanked him with forced courtesy, said good-day to both him and the Countess, and took to her bed for the rest of the afternoon.

  Young Darnley’s sulky face followed Dallas all the way out into The Strand. When she’d announced her intention of taking advantage of the fine autumn weather to visit the shops and stalls of Cheapside, Darnley had insisted upon going along.

  “You’d be bored,” Dallas had told him. But Darnley had persisted, asserting that shopping amused him, that he enjoyed perusing ladies’ fripperies or sniffing scents at the perfumers’.

  “Donald is going, why can’t I?” he’d whined, as peevish as a puppy whose biscuit has been taken away.

  “Donald isn’t going,” Dallas had informed him, though she had originally planned it that way. But if Donald went, Darnley would, too. “Flora is accompanying me, and that’s that!”

  So she’d trudged out of Lennox House with Flora walking briskly at her side, while Darnley leaned in the doorway, mumbling to himself. Flora was mumbling, too, declaring that Dallas’s real mission was as harebrained as it was hazardous.

  “You know what Sir James told you, if your husband finds out you’re in London, he’ll do something foolish. This whole scheme, right down to deceiving the Lennoxes, is much too rash!”

  “Hush!” Dallas threw Flora a withering glance. “Melville and the Lennoxes can dredge up a hundred reasons why I shouldn’t see Iain. I only need one to tell me I should.”

  Sir Reginald Stanley welcomed Dallas cordially to his lodgings in the Tower. The demure manner she had adopted for her previous interview had vanished, however. It had gotten her nowhere and she’d decided on a more direct approach.

  “As you can see, Sir Reginald, I’m with child. My husband has a right to know and you have a duty to let me see him.”

  Sir Reginald stifled a sigh. He thought Melville had taken care of Lady Fraser and her importunate demands. “I’ll write to Her Grace again and explain your condition,” he said, not without sympathy. “It’s possible she may change her mind.”

  “It’s possible she may not.” Dallas waved her gold-tasseled purse at the lord lieutenant. “I’ll not be put off another moment! Take me to my husband or I won’t budge from this place!”

  Rubbing his close-cropped beard in vexation,
Sir Reginald ground his teeth together. “I can’t, really I can’t. If need be, I’ll have to order my men to carry you out bodily.”

  Dallas made a sweeping gesture over her abdomen. “You’d do that to an expectant mother? You’d have your minion churls mishandle me so?”

  It was best not to tell Lady Fraser exactly how men—and women—could be ill handled in the Tower. Yet Sir Reginald felt ill-at-ease. What had happened to the charming, enticing little lady who had visited him some weeks earlier? “Please, madame,” he entreated, “you’d best leave at once. I’m helpless to accede to your request.”

  Hurling Sir Reginald a scalding glance of contempt, Dallas whirled around to where Flora stood in motionless disapproval. Without another word, Dallas flung out of the room, down the corridor and through the lodging house doorway. Flora flapped along beside her mistress, her mouth set in a prim, angry line.

  Once outside on Tower Green, it was only a short distance to Fraser’s prison site. Dallas raced across the open area as fast as her increasing girth would permit, pulling up short in front of the Beauchamp Tower. With a sharp clang of steel, the two guards on duty crossed their halberds, blocking her passage. One of them ordered her to halt, the other stared in astonishment at her boldness.

  “Let me pass! I must see my husband, Baron Fraser!” Dallas was shrieking at the top of her lungs, one hand fending off Flora’s attempts to restrain her.

  “Stay where you are,” the first guard commanded. “No one enters here except with the lord lieutenant’s permission!”

  “Don’t stop me! I’m carrying my husband’s babe! Let me by!” Dallas darted forward, trying to slip under the halberds. But Sir Reginald was already halfway across Tower Green, with two other soldiers following close behind him.

  The halberdiers had moved their weapons down far enough to keep Dallas from getting inside. The other two guards were now upon her, each grabbing an arm, halfcarrying, half-dragging her back towards the Tower gateway. Dallas screamed like a madwoman, swore, bellowed and cursed all the way onto the Lion’s Gate Bridge. Flora’s disapproval of Dallas had turned to indignation with the guards, and her own reproaches rent the brisk autumn air. Then the Tower entrance clattered shut behind them as Dallas struggled to her feet from the rough stones where the guards had unceremoniously dumped her.

  “Iain must have heard me,” she gasped, leaning in exhaustion against the bridge’s cold masonry. She glanced across the moat to gaze at the outline of the Beauchamp Tower. “Oh, God, he’s so near ....” The babe moved wildly in her womb and Dallas’s hand flew to her stomach, fear flooding her face. “Sweet Virgin! What have I done?”

  Flora rushed to put her arms around her mistress. “I warned you of such foolhardiness! You’ll lose the bairn, too!”

  But the child quieted down in a few moments. Still shaken, but no longer frightened, Dallas extricated herself from Flora’s grasp and began walking slowly away from the Tower. She had made one last desperate attempt to see Fraser. Now Dallas realized that she was as much a prisoner of her body as he was of the English Queen. At least she had not failed completely—he must have heard her, must know she carried his babe, must realize that she was near.

  Some distance from the Beauchamp Tower, in the enclosed garden area between the Jewel House and the decaying ancient hall of the royal lodgings, Iain Fraser lounged on a small stone bench and threw bread crumbs at the ravens. The damp, dying smell of autumn came off the river and somewhere in the distance he heard shouts. Bargemen quarreling over a fare, no doubt, he thought lazily, and winked back at the one-eyed sparrow he’d made into a pet.

  Chapter 15

  The countess of Lennox was irate when Melville told her about Dallas’s outrageous behavior in the Tower precincts. He warned the Countess that if such a thing happened again he could not restrain Elizabeth from wreaking vengeance on everyone involved.

  His threat turned the Countess’s anger from Dallas to Melville himself. “I refuse to let you permit that harridan to menace me! You tell Elizabeth that I’m protecting Lady Fraser out of compassion for her situation, out of Christian charity for a fellow human being! That barren twig of an illicit union can’t possibly understand a loving wife’s need for her husband at such a time!”

  Intimidated by the Countess, Melville did not point out that Dallas’s behavior had gone beyond the boundaries of acceptable conduct. There was no need for him to do so, of course, since despite her tirade, Margaret Lennox fully understood that Dallas would have to be watched more closely in the future.

  The walls of the Beauchamp Tower were scarred by the scribblings of previous prisoners. Iain Fraser refrained from leaving his own mark in the masonry but spent many hours contriving fantasies about the various names, dates, snatches of verse and pithy sayings. It was as good a way as any to pass the time when the guards had other duties or the light was too poor for reading.

  During the first few weeks of his imprisonment he’d paced the floor so much that he’d worn a path through the rushes. Realizing that such exertion was as fruitless as it might prove unnerving, he had forced himself to stop and turn his mind, if not his body, to other methods of enduring the endless days.

  But every so often he’d catch himself straining at the bars of the tower’s one small window or heaving his weight full-bore against the unyielding iron door of his prison. Such vain efforts were followed by an anger with himself which always brought him back to instant rationality.

  Had he known what Melville had told Dallas, Fraser would have scoffed. The ambassador was dead wrong on two counts: First, Elizabeth had made no move to release Fraser during the month which had followed—or the next. Melville’s second error in judgment pertained to Fraser himself. Not only was he unresigned to his captivity, he was making ready to escape.

  During the last week of November, a candle had been overturned in Fraser’s cell, setting fire to the rushes and causing considerable damage to the walls. Fraser himself avowed that he’d no idea how the accident had occurred, being asleep at the time. His gaolers thought it providential that he hadn’t been overcome by smoke or burned to death before they unlocked the door. But fate had been kind to Fraser, since he’d awakened in the nick of time to call for the guards who rushed in to save him.

  Naturally, it was impossible for Fraser to remain in the Beauchamp Tower until repairs were made. Sir Reginald, thankful that his prisoner hadn’t died in the fire, a tragedy for which he himself would be blamed by both the Scots and English governments, felt he owed Fraser a favor. He asked his prisoner if he’d prefer a change in scenery, perhaps a view of one of the gardens?

  “I stayed at an inn overlooking the river when I first came to London,” Fraser had said upon apparent reflection. “I enjoyed the bustle of the river traffic then, perhaps it would be a pleasant distraction.”

  Sir Reginald had agreed and ordered that Fraser be moved to the Cradle Tower, which provided a view of both the river and the Queen’s privy gardens. His cell there was somewhat larger, but more importantly, it was separated from the Thames by a mere fifty yards, the narrow moat and a relatively low stone wall.

  That had been the first part of Fraser’s plan. The second was to find an accommodating gaoler. Many hours of dice and cards were passed that autumn and much ale and whiskey were consumed before Fraser decided on his man. He was one Octavian Goolsby, a native Londoner, who’d tried many a trade in his time, liked none of them, and was employed as a gaoler only until he’d saved enough to go to Italy, where he could spend his days in the sun.

  “Full o’ Papists, Italy is, but I say, so what?” Goolsby had expounded one night when he and Fraser had diced and drunk the hours away. “Weren’t we all Latin-mumblers fifty years ago or less? Besides, I don’t have to kiss the Pope’s arse or ask him to dinner.”

  “Passage to Italy doesn’t come cheap, though,” Fraser mused. “How long will you have to work?”

  “Oh, a year at least.” Goolsby laughed good-naturedly as he noted the pil
e of coins in front of Fraser. “Maybe two, if you keep winning.”

  “Maybe not more than a few weeks, if I’m released,” Fraser said mildly.

  Goolsby’s eyes, which had been rather glazed by drink, suddenly came into focus. “How so? You mean you’d bribe me?” He bristled indignantly, but without conviction.

  “Not at all. I just know someone with a ship. I could arrange your passage—without charge.”

  That was how it began, and by mid-December Fraser had gotten word to Cummings with full instructions for an escape attempt. There would be no moon on the night of January eighteenth, which would give the Richezza’s crew sufficient time to sail from the Isle of Lewes and anchor off the mouth of the Thames. Corelli would take the land route and secure a skiff in which he’d wait in the river by the Tower Wharf. Goolsby would supply the rope and both he and Fraser would climb out of the Cradle Tower and make for the stone wall. As the momentous night grew near, Goolsby displayed more excitement than Fraser.

  “What a joke!” he exclaimed. “A gaoler escaping from the Tower! But damme, I’ve felt as much a prisoner here as you, I feel like that whenever I’ve worked in the same place very long.”

  Goolsby, of course, knew every move of the night watch. At precisely twelve-thirty they threw the thin but sturdy coil down from the Cradle Tower’s window. It was raining and quite chilly but there was no wind. Goolsby went first, slipping a bit, but reaching the moat without mishap. Fraser followed, hoping that his expert seaman’s knots would hold for the second descent. He slipped smoothly down the rope and dropped into the murky water. They waited for a few seconds against the tower itself, then swam to the stone wall. There was just enough space in the masonry to provide hand and footholds. The men scrambled up to the top quickly, but as they were about to leap down onto the wharf Goolsby lost his footing on the slippery stones and toppled backwards into the moat.