by Mary Daheim
After the spasm passed, she moved slowly but resolutely down the stairs. Certainly Bothwell wouldn’t have been involved in the ghastly plot. And surely he’d want to help the Queen. She moved cautiously, struck by the ominous calm in the immediate vicinity. Outside, she could still hear a few shouts from the citizenry and somewhere off in the distance, horses clattered off over the cobblestones of the Canongate.
Dallas had just entered the east wing when a figure moved out of the shadows. It was one of Morton’s Douglases, wearing chain mail and a steel cap. She stopped, wondering if he’d bother to detain her.
But he recognized her from the supper room and moved to block her way. “Lady Fraser?” His cold blue eyes surveyed her from under dark brows which grew almost together over the bridge of his nose. “Go to your chamber. Stay there until you’re released.”
“I’m no prisoner here,” Dallas retorted. “I’ll go where I please. Now step aside.” She made a clumsy gesture to push his arm away but one hand shoved her backwards.
“You heard me. Go to your rooms. This is no night for gallantry.” His voice was rough, faintly slurred with drink.
Angry as she was, Dallas realized she had to comply. But the pain came again and she was paralyzed by it, unable to either move or speak. Douglas mistook her frozen state for disobedience and slapped her hard across the face.
“Bitch! Go now, or suffer the same fate as Rizzio!” Dallas didn’t doubt that he meant the threat. One hand touched her stinging cheek, the other clutched her abdomen. “Nay ....” she murmured, “I cannot—the babe ....”
“No tricks!” Douglas grabbed her by the shoulder, a knife held menacingly in his other hand.
“Please ....” She saw Douglas fuzzily before her, the knife raised in mid-air. She saw something else, another man, a flash of steel, and then Douglas thudded facedown onto the floor.
“Dallas!” Fraser scooped her up in his arms and moved as quickly as possible back towards the staircase. “Where are your rooms? Please, lassie, try to tell me!”
“Up the stairs … left … third door, there’s a torch outside.” As the pain ebbed once more, Dallas’s mind and eyes began to come back into focus. “Let me walk, I must weigh ten stone! Oh, Iain, I can’t believe you’re here, it’s a miracle!”
“A lucky guess,” Fraser grunted. “No talking, no walking, I’ll manage.” But his bulky burden didn’t make for an easy task. He finally reached the room and kicked the door open with his foot. Tarrill and Donald were standing close together, astonished and afraid.
Fraser waved their cluster of questions aside and laid Dallas on the bed. “Do you know how to deliver a baby, Tarrill?” he asked, loosening the hooks of Dallas’s gown.
“I helped Marthe when Glennie gave birth to Jamie,” she answered hesitantly. “But ’twas a long time ago.”
Fraser turned grimly to Donald. “And you?”
“Nay,” he replied, horrified at the prospect of being pressed into service, “I know nothing about bairns. Farm animals are all I ken.”
“Fie, Donald, I’m not a sow or a ewe. Why don’t you fetch the court physician?” Dallas was sitting up, clutching her loosened gown around her bosom. The pains appeared to have subsided temporarily and the shocks of the last hour had not yet taken their toll.
Tarrill sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed. “Dr. Arnault is not here, Dallas, he’s with a sick relation in Restalrig. I know, because Mary Fleming was here to tell us about poor Rizzio and she had already tried to find the doctor to attend the Queen. There’s no midwife in the palace, either.”
Dallas swore under her breath, then shook her head in ironic dismay. “By heaven, I’d like to bear a babe some day in relative peace! My deliveries seem to take place at the most inopportune times!” She turned to her husband who was standing beside her, frowning at the bulge of her abdomen. “Iain,” she commanded, “if you don’t tell me how you really happened to have materialized from nowhere, I’ll burst with more than just the babe.”
Fraser eased himself onto the bed, his hand on her shoulder. “I knew approximately when the baby was due. I promised to be with you this time.” He gently pushed her back against the pillows before launching into the rest of his story. “We sailed the Richezza to the Isle of Lewes, then I rode to Beauly where Sorcha told me about your letter to Lord Hugh.” He stopped, aware that Dallas had gone as white as the pillowcase. “What is it, lassie? Another pain?”
“Nay,” Dallas gasped, clumsily shifting her bulk in the bed. “My water broke.”
Fraser looked up helplessly at Tarrill. Donald looked away, embarrassed and ill at ease. “It’s all right,” Tarrill soothed. “It just means that real labor should begin now. Come, Dallas,” she went on, helping her sister move over to the edge of the bed, “we’ll put a blanket over the wet spot so you don’t take a chill.”
“ ’Tis easier with ewes,” Donald murmured to Fraser, who had gotten up from the bed while Tarrill tended Dallas.
“Sweet Christ,” Fraser muttered to nobody in particular. It occurred to him that though he may have been a father more times than he would ever know, he’d never actually seen a baby born. A new sense of guilt assailed him as he thought of the women who had borne his children and of how Dallas had gone through all of this before without him.
“Don’t stop talking, Iain,” Dallas commanded as she settled back down in the middle of the bed. “It keeps me distracted.”
Fraser came back to sit gingerly beside her. “Where was I?” He took her hand and brushed the tip of her nose with his lips. “Oh, aye, I went to the town house, Cummings told me where you were, and then I sent a message to Bothwell so he could get me into Holyrood. A few minutes after we sneaked up to his rooms, all hell broke loose ....”
But Fraser was interrupted again as Dallas clutched at his hand and writhed in pain. Transfixed, he stared at his wife until the spasm passed. “Go on, go on.” She was grimfaced and breathless but insisted that Fraser keep up his narrative.
“Before we could decide what to do, one of Bothwell’s men came flying into the room, crying that Rizzio was murdered and that the conspirators were coming after Bothwell and probably intended to kill George Gordon, Fleming and Livingstone as well. We could hear the tramp of boots and rattle of steel somewhere close by, and when the door burst open again we thought we would have to fight for our lives, but it was George, fleeing the assassins.”
This time Fraser recognized the anguish in Dallas’s huge eyes before her body began to tense with the next pain. He stopped, felt her fingernails bite into his flesh, pressed his lips together in a tight, grim line and waited. Without urging, he took up his tale as Dallas slumped back against the pillows. “I told Bothwell and George to jump out the window, it was only a few feet to the ground. They wanted me to come with them but I couldn’t leave you here, lassie, with murderers crawling all over the place. You can imagine how astonished I was when I found you with that cur of a Douglas waving his dirk at you.”
Shakily, Dallas reached up to touch her bruised cheek. “It was a nightmare. I can hardly take it all in.”
Tarrill stared at Dallas and Fraser. “One of the Douglases threatened you with a knife? Oh, Dallas!”
“I hope to God I killed the whoreson,” Fraser asserted as Dallas began to groan again. This time the sound grew more high-pitched and its intensity made Fraser grind his teeth. He found himself speechless when the pain finally passed.
“Why did they kill Davie?” Tarrill asked, knowing that silence would serve her sister ill. “Was it just resentment?”
Fraser rallied enough to reply. “He was a symbol of many things, I suppose—lowly birth, foreign intervention, the old faith. And Darnley was crazed with jealousy.” Donald shook his head. “Poor little Davie. He was a good-hearted fellow.”
“He was one of the few who was kind to me when I first came to court,” Dallas said in a shaky voice. It was the last coherent sentence she would speak for the next hour; the room became a bed
lam with her cries as Tarrill mopped the sweat from her sister’s brow with one hand and forced whiskey down her throat with the other. Fraser held his wife by the shoulders, to keep her from rolling off the bed. Donald busied himself with emptying a bureau drawer and lining it with soft linen for the baby’s arrival. At one point he went to the door when a guard knocked loudly to demand what all the commotion was about. Donald shouted back that Lady Fraser was giving birth and to mind his own business.
For Fraser, Dallas’s agony seemed to go on forever. Duels to the death, battles on the high seas, lethal political intrigue, imprisonment and exile—all were situations he could master. But his pain-wracked lassie filled him with helpless frustration.
And then Dallas let out one final ear-piercing shriek as the bairn’s head appeared between her thighs.
“Thank God,” breathed Tarrill, and the next few minutes were spent in a frenzy of bringing the new babe into the world.
The church bells chimed midnight as Dallas lay exhausted and Fraser cradled his second son against his chest.
“Another boy, lovey,” he grinned in spite of himself. “You’ll have to wait until next time for your lassie.”
“Next time!” Dallas gasped. “Don’t speak to me of next time!”
Fraser looked shame-faced. “I’m sorry, Dallas, my poor sweet mite, I swear to God I suffered as much as you did just now.”
“Then you have the lassie,” Dallas said and drifted off into a deep sleep.
Chapter 25
Fraser slept beside Dallas that night, the bairn slumbered in the makeshift cradle by the divan where Tarrill was stretched out, and Donald sprawled under a big quilt on the floor. None of them, not even the new babe, stirred before eight o’clock.
Tarrill was the first one up, rousing Donald with instructions to beg, bribe or barter his way out of the palace and return with a wet nurse. She herself would go down to the royal kitchens to fetch some breakfast.
Their departure awoke Fraser who got up just as the babe began to squall. He carried the bairn about the room, hoping the little cries wouldn’t wake Dallas.
They did, of course. Looking ghostly and feeling weak, she moved her head to watch Fraser and the babe. “Bring him here, Iain. I haven’t really seen him yet.”
As Fraser placed the little bundle in her arms she gasped with astonishment: The child had bright red hair and looked like neither of his parents. “By heaven,” Dallas gasped, “I just assumed he’d look like Magnus! Who has red hair in your family?”
Fraser’s mouth twisted wryly. “My mother was dark, I’m told. I would guess my father’s side of the family has passed the red hair on to the bairn.”
Dallas touched the tiny pink cheek with her forefinger. “Whoever he takes after, he’s sweet as honey. But I think he’s hungry. I have no milk yet and probably never will, if I’m dry as I was with Magnus. Maybe he’d be content to suckle anyway.”
Fraser watched Dallas put the babe to her breast. “I think I’m jealous. It’s been a long time since I’ve had any taste of you, lovey.”
She smiled at him over the fuzzy red head. “I’ll not be fit for much for a while, I’m afraid.”
“I’ll wait,” he asserted in a tone which made Dallas think he actually might. “But right now we’ve got to name the little scamp. I’ve been thinking, up in the Highlands I knew a wonderful old poacher named ....”
“Oh, no, not this time! It’s my turn—I still haven’t recovered from Magnus.” Dallas shifted the babe from one breast to the other as her chin jutted out. “This one’s to be called Robert, after the Bruce. He was a great hero of my father’s.”
Fraser rubbed at the dark stubble on his chin. “Robert. Well, it’s unexciting but solid. If you insist, lassie.”
Dallas did. After the newly named Robert had satisfied himself, she handed the child back to Fraser. “What are we going to do now?” she asked as her husband strolled around the room with his son propped against his shoulder. “Eventually they’re bound to find out you’re here.”
Fraser hadn’t had much time to contemplate his next move. The events of the previous night had thrown his earlier plans into confusion. He had intended to see the Queen and use his considerable powers of persuasion to change her mind. He knew he might fail, but continued exile from Scotland—and from Dallas—had become intolerable.
But if the Queen was being held captive, she was powerless to help him. Bothwell had told Fraser that he thought one of the motives for Rizzio’s murder had been the banishment of the Protestant lords. Fraser, however, was no Protestant, and he certainly had no desire to throw in his lot with the likes of Patrick Ruthven, the Douglases and their ilk. As for James Stuart, where did he fit in?
At least one of his questions was answered when Tarrill returned a few minutes later carrying a hamper of food. “The Queen’s under guard, sequestered with Darnley. Lady Huntly, George Gordon’s mother, is with them. Her Grace is said to be well and calm. You can’t help but admire her courage.”
“I’ve never doubted Mary Stuart’s pluck,” Fraser commented, helping himself to a fresh-baked roll and sausage. Despite the terrors of the previous night, life was apparently going on in some sort of routine fashion at Holyrood.
“Imagine, Will Ruthven being part of such a horrible crime! To think I ever cared for him!” Tarrill spoke with fervor as she dished up boiled eggs for Dallas. “Lord Lindsay has been most callous with the Queen,” she went on, plumping up the pillows behind her sister. “It’s said he threatens to lock her away at Stirling while Darnley rules in her stead.”
“Jesu,” Dallas exclaimed, “I heard such rumors weeks ago but never thought anyone would be foolish enough to set Darnley up as king in his own right. The conspirators must be daft.”
“Or uncommonly canny,” Fraser pointed out. “Darnley would make an admirable puppet.”
Donald returned just then with a bedraggled-looking wench no more than a child herself. The engorged breasts, however, indicated that she was no maid but a mother.
“I found her in the Grassmarket,” Donald said somewhat apologetically. “Her name is Meg and her own bairn died aborning just a few days ago.”
Dallas eyed the girl skeptically. “She needs a good scrubbing, if you ask me. Have you any family, Meg?”
Terrified blue eyes blinked rapidly at Dallas, then looked down at the floor. She was pitifully thin, with stringy blond hair and an angular face which might have been presentable with proper attention. A nervous garbled account finally explained her plight: Unwed, Meg had been thrown out of her parents’ house when they learned she was with child. She had lived with her sister in Potter Row Port, but there were too many mouths to feed and Meg had decided to leave when her baby was born dead.
Pity overcame repugnance, and Dallas smiled at the girl. “You’ll be better off with us,” she said kindly, knowing full well that if left on her own Meg would end up starving to death or selling her body for a few coins. “We’re a bit, uh, unsettled just now, perhaps you’ve heard what’s been happening at the palace. Tarrill, can you see that she gets a bath?”
Her sister obliged, while Donald insisted on escorting them. The mood of the palace was still tense and he didn’t want Tarrill walking unescorted through the corridors.
“A nuisance for Tarrill and Donald,” Fraser commented after they’d left. “I could have given the lassie a bath myself.”
“Fie, Iain, you can’t be that desperate!” Dallas made as if to throw a crust of bread at him, felt too weary to bother, and collapsed back against the pillows. “Well? Have you figured out what we’re going to do?”
Fraser paused by the makeshift cradle to be sure little Robert was all right. “Aye, I have. You’ll stay here until you’re well enough to go back to the town house. As for me, I think I may have figured out a way to gain the Queen’s pardon.”
Dallas eyed him warily. “How?” she inquired.
“Simple enough,” Fraser responded, hooking his thumbs in his belt .
... “I’m going to help her escape.”
Andrew Ker of Fawdonside stood outside the door of the Queen’s chamber, his pistol balanced in his hand. Two guards lounged nearby, vaguely curious about the tall, dark-haired woman with the tiny bairn in her arms.
“I tell you, Her Grace would want to see the babe as proof that her lady-in-waiting has been delivered safely in spite of last night’s events.” Tarrill spoke with authority. Little by little, her youthful diffidence and nai'veté were giving way to a new confidence and self-assurance.
But Ker had already weathered several plots to get Mary Stuart out of the palace that day. The resourceful Lady Huntly had connived at most of them, but so far Ker and his confederate Lindsay had thwarted her. “I can relay the message,” Ker asserted. “In truth, the Queen has other things on her mind just now.”
“How little you know of women!” Tarrill exclaimed as Robert began to cry. “The Queen will have her own babe soon, yet you think she’d not be interested in my sister’s newborn! Oh, sir, you underestimate maternal instincts, whether they be in the heart of a Queen or a ....”
It had been a long day preceded by a longer night, and Ker was weary. The cries of the infant and the relentless voice of Tarrill weakened his obstinacy. “Enough, mistress.” He gestured to the guards. “Search her.”
Tarrill juggled Robert as she submitted to the guards. Apparently the child armed her against overfamiliar pawing and a minute later, she was ushered into the royal bedchamber.
The Queen was reclining on a divan, a fur throw over her lap. Darnley stood by the window, gazing distractedly out at the March mist. Lord Lindsay sat in an armchair, picking his teeth with his dirk while the indomitable Lady Huntly chased one of the Queen’s terriers away from Tarrill’s skirt.