The Royal Mile

by Mary Daheim

  “We’ll talk here or not at all,” Fraser affirmed, moving aside to let a half-dozen youths get closer to the murder site.

  “This bedlam is hardly conducive to conversation,” Hamilton said, raising his voice to make himself heard over the shrieks of some women who had gotten their first glimpse of the corpse.

  Dallas shifted her gaze back and forth between the two men. She was thoroughly alert now, but still on edge from the shock of Darnley’s murder and the tumult of the crowd. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Claud and Gavin Hamilton watching her with bemused curiosity. “Then we’ll go somewhere else. Tarrill and Donald’s flat is just a few doors away in Blackfriars.” Not waiting for any further argument from either man, she almost ran towards Our Lady’s Steps, shoving aside several onlookers as she headed into Milk Row.

  Hamilton signalled for his kinsmen to remain behind. Dallas was almost to Blackfriars before Hamilton and Fraser had made their way through the noisy crowd to catch up with her. She had been to the flat several times, helping Tarrill furnish her new home. But the door was locked and the landlord was gone, apparently roused out of bed by the explosion.

  “Christ.” Fraser regarded the gloomy corridor with annoyance. He stood with his arms folded across his chest, one booted leg slightly in front of the other. The old familiar stance made Dallas soften slightly but she remained silent.

  “All right,” Fraser sighed with resignation, “at least it’s quiet. Well?”

  Instead of answering Fraser’s question, Dallas opted for counterattack. “I see you arrived too late for your sister-in-law’s wedding, but made it in time for the King’s murder!”

  “God’s blood, Dallas!” Fraser rounded on her. “You don’t think I had a hand in that? I came back to Edinburgh to prevent such a thing, not to take part in it!”

  “You? You wanted to spare the King?” Dallas stared incredulously at her husband. “But how did you know?”

  “Never mind that now,” Fraser retorted, prowling along the corridor and trying to keep his voice down in case some of the inhabitants had managed to sleep through the tumult. Hamilton was standing behind Dallas, one hand resting on the wall. “I’ve answered your question,” Fraser glared. “Now you answer mine.”

  Hamilton put a hand on Dallas’s shoulder, ignoring Fraser’s grimace. “I can answer you.”

  “I’d prefer to hear it from my wife.” Fraser’s tone was dry. A draft from somewhere blew at his cloak and he slapped impatiently at the billowing fabric. “I trust you can still speak for yourself, Dallas?”

  Dallas ignored the barb. As concisely as possible, she told him what Hamilton had said about Delphinia and James, sparing none of the details. As she spoke, her words were occasionally interrupted by chattering residents who were returning from Kirk o’ Field. They paused to stare at the trio but made no comment. The night had already been filled with enough mysterious shocks.

  Fraser had listened to Dallas’s account with a growing sense of acceptance. He knew Delphinia well enough to realize she could be dangerous; as for James, his continued intrigues were an old story by now. Yet being grateful to Hamilton was extremely difficult. Then he noticed something which had never occurred to him before: Hamilton’s stance in back of Dallas was more than protective, it was proprietary. Fraser knew his wife too well not to be aware that the other man’s attitude was not only accepted by Dallas but somehow necessary to her.

  “Jesus,” Fraser breathed, forgetting momentarily about James and Delphinia, about Darnley’s body lying just a hundred yards from Blackfriars. What he had just perceived astounded him, yet explained much that had long puzzled him about his wife. “You love this man, don’t you?”

  Dallas’s hand flew to her bosom. Then she took a deep breath, gazed thoughtfully from one man to the other, and moved between them with unaccustomed dignity. Dallas had spent too many years fending off love to deny what she had ultimately won. “Yes,” she answered simply. “I love John. I must have always loved him—but only in admitting it now to you have I admitted it to myself.”

  “Oh, Christ!” Fraser banged his fist against the wall, then wheeled on Dallas and Hamilton. “Then why in God’s name didn’t you marry him in the first place!”

  “Oh, Iain!” Dallas was infuriated. Hamilton was gazing uncomfortably at them both. While the revelation might have come as a shock to both Dallas and Fraser, he was not surprised; despite her apparent uncertainties, Hamilton had always been certain that Dallas loved him.

  And Dallas was confessing as much. “It was natural enough for me not to face the fact that I loved John. It was also natural that it would take me a long time to realize it. My God, it took me forever to recognize how much I loved you!”

  Fraser had started to prowl the passageway, muttering angrily under his breath. Hamilton put a hand on Dallas’s shoulder. “What can I say, Dallas? Your candor pleases me as much as it disturbs your husband.”

  “I suppose I can’t expect it to make him feel elated,” Dallas retorted in a vexed tone. “Really, Iain,” she said as his pacing brought him within a couple of yards, “this is hardly the place for a domestic denouement. You seem to forget we have a murdered King lying just a few steps away.”

  Fraser’s heavy cloak swooped like a huge bat as he turned abruptly. “What do you want me to do? Offer you your damned annulment after all?”

  Dallas gasped. Her husband looked furious, miserable and confused all at once. “Of course not! I’m your wife, I love you, I refused to even think of an annulment when other women might have leaped at the opportunity.” She clasped Fraser by the shoulders and her sheer force of will seemed to immobilize him. “I love you! I love you more than ....’’Her voice trailed off as she glanced at Hamilton.

  “More than you love him?” Fraser spoke sharply, one thumb gesturing jerkily in Hamilton’s direction.

  Dallas sighed. “Oh, fie! Yes. Yes, I suppose I do. But,” she added, turning to Hamilton, “that takes nothing away from my feelings for you, John.”

  Even had the passageway been well lighted, it would have been impossible to tell which man looked more perplexed. Dallas stood between them, wondering how men could be so dense. “Iain,” she said at last, “you must get away from here. It isn’t safe, you may be suspected of complicity in Darnley’s murder. And you, John, everyone knows the rivalry between the Hamiltons and the Lennox Stuarts.”

  Fraser swore softly, Hamilton sighed resignedly, but they both followed Dallas out of the passageway and into the wynd.

  Dallas had assumed they would seek sanctuary in the town house, but Fraser swiftly relieved her of that notion. “Your reaction to my sudden appearance is one all Edinburgh will share. I must leave the city at once.”

  The crowd had begun to disperse, realizing there would be no more excitement or revelations that night. Fraser and Dallas had mingled with the others, moving south to the Cowgate. Rumors were rampant: A henchman of Bothwell’s had been arrested; Darnley had actually been strangled; a woman swore she had seen a nobleman in court dress flee Kirk o’ Field just before the explosion.

  “If you race off again, I go with you,” Dallas declared firmly. “I made up my mind after you left without a word this last time that from here on, we take flight together.”

  They had paused by St. Mary’s Wynd Port, which led out of the city and into the adjacent farmlands beyond the new wall. “That’s rather impractical,” he said testily. Fraser still had not recovered from his recent insight and Dallas’s frank admission. “Damn, I lost Simpson in all the commotion. If he were here, he could take you home.”

  Dallas was leaning against the stones of the city wall. “I’m not going home, I’m going with you. Didn’t I just say that?”

  Fraser swore under his breath and grasped her by the arm, all but pulling her through the portal. No one stopped them; apparently the guards were still at the murder site. They moved quickly down the snow-powdered lane, towards an abandoned stable where Barvas was tethered. Just as Dallas
climbed up behind Fraser, Simpson cantered towards them.

  “Go to my town house,” Fraser commanded. “Tell Cummings that Her Ladyship and I are leaving the city. We’ll try to let them know where we’ve gone later.”

  Simpson saluted Fraser, attempted a bow from the saddle to Dallas, and galloped back towards Edinburgh. Wheeling Barvas around, Fraser spurred the horse southwards as the moon began to set over the distant River Tyne.

  Tarrill and Donald had drifted off to sleep in each other’s arms when they were awakened by the explosion at Kirk o’ Field. Donald had wanted to rush out to learn what had happened but Tarrill had urged him to remain with her. A half hour later, the Exchequer’s servants brought them the news of Darnley’s death.

  For what remained of the night, the newly married couple slept little. Every time one of them began dozing off, the other would suddenly come up with a new piece of speculation. When dawn finally spread out across the February sky, Tarrill got up and announced she should leave for Holyrood to be with the Queen.

  This time it was Donald’s turn to protest. “The Queen has ladies aplenty to help her grieve,” he said, kissing the curve of Tarril's neck as she began brushing her long black hair, “but I only have one wife.”

  Tarrill found his argument irresistible, but she did go to Holyrood later that day. Mary Stuart was astonishingly composed, behaving like a stiff, inanimate puppet.

  “Has she cried?” Tarrill asked Barbara Hamilton.

  “Not to my knowledge.” Barbara critically surveyed a bolt of black serge, the first of the mourning materials delivered to the palace. “Her initial reaction was fright—she was certain the assassins aimed not for Darnley but at her.”

  “Oh!” Tarril’s hand flew to her cheek. “I’d not thought of that! But of course, the Queen has been staying frequently at Kirk o’ Field. It was only because of my wedding that she went to Holyrood instead last night.”

  “That’s right,” Barbara said with a sage nod. “You may be responsible for saving Her Grace’s life.”

  “A coincidence,” she said, wondering how soon she could impart these new facts to Dallas. Later, however, when she stopped off on her route from Holyrood to her new flat in Blackfriars, Tarrill discovered that her sister had fled the city.

  Fraser had ridden Barvas hard over the frozen ground to Dunbar. Dallas had suggested going to the McVurrich croft since the entire family was spending several days in Edinburgh following the wedding. But her husband didn’t want to implicate anyone else in their turbulent affairs. Since Dallas still wore her dark green court gown, he thought it best to purchase something less ostentatious. Following a noon meal at an inn on the outskirts of Dunbar, he rode alone into town to obtain more suitable clothing for her and a change of gear for himself.

  “A good thing I had some money with me,” Dallas said when Fraser returned to their room at the inn. “You seem to have spent all yours in doing God-knows-what these past weeks.”

  “Aye, extravagances such as food and shelter,” Fraser retorted. “I’d no plan to be gone more than a few days when I left.” In bits and snatches, he had explained what had happened to him since his departure on New Year’s Eve Day. She had been confounded by his determination to warn Darnley and his subsequent vain efforts to prevent the consort’s death. But Fraser’s persistent ideals about Queen and country had always mystified her; there was no point in arguing with him at this late date.

  “Oh, Holy Mother,” Dallas exclaimed in disgust as she unwrapped the blouse and kirtle her husband had purchased. “Orange! I detest orange! And this drab olive skirt! Would you make me into a crone?”

  For the first time since being reunited with his wife, Fraser smiled faintly. “I’ll admit men won’t swoon when you walk past, but then we don’t want you attracting every eye, do we?”

  Dallas was pulling the elegant court gown over her head. “The way you’ve been acting of late, I don’t think I could even attract yours anymore,” she said in a muffled voice.

  “I was preoccupied before I went to Glasgow,” Fraser said with uncharacteristic defensiveness. “I had important decisions to make.”

  Carefully hanging her green dress inside the tiny wardrobe, Dallas gave Fraser a questioning look from over her shoulder. “That was six weeks ago. You don’t seem any more ardent now.”

  Fraser slammed his hand against the back of a chair. “Dammit, Dallas, how should I behave after you’ve coolly acknowledged you love another man? I think I found your going to bed with Hamilton easier to understand than that!”

  “Fie, Iain, you know that’s not so!” Dallas tossed her tumbled hair out of her eyes and smoothed down the folds of her petticoat. “If that were true, you’d have slit poor John’s throat on the spot!” Advancing on him, she waved a finger in his glowering face, “At least now you know why I succumbed to him in the first place, and that’s more than I knew myself at the time!”

  He moved away from her, prowling about the room until he sat down on the bed. “I realized that last night,” he conceded, draping one long leg on the faded counterpane. “I should have known all along that you, of all women, would never bed with someone you didn’t love.”

  “But I love you more,” Dallas declared with considerable vigor. She had come to the bed and flung herself down beside him. “For God’s sake, Iain, I had ample opportunity to bed with John last summer while you were away. Yet I never permitted him the slightest familiarity,” she averred, somehow managing to dismiss the previous night’s near indiscretion from her mind. “You must remember, until I met the two of you, no man had ever made me feel like a woman. John showed me another side of myself, a tenderness, a sense of peace, a desire to give of myself. If I’d never loved him, I might not have made that discovery, and you and I both would have been the poorer for it.”

  “Jesus,” Fraser muttered, “now I’m supposed to be grateful to the whoreson for making love to you?”

  Dallas shook her head in exasperation. “Of course not. But it took both of you, being so different, to break down the barricade I’d built around myself. When that finally happened, I found out about love, and that it wasn’t always the same. My love for you, my love for John, my love for the bairns, for Tarrill and Glennie and all the rest—all are unique kinds of love. Now I’m part of you, just as you’re all part of me. Oh, Iain, am I making any sense?”

  Fraser lay on his side, his head on his hand. “Perfect sense, since most people figure that out by the time they’re twelve. Nay, Dallas,” he said quickly, seeing the angry hurt spread across her face, “I didn’t mean that in reproach. We all learn about life at our own pace. Until I met you, I wasn’t open to love, either. Making love was easy, loving was the hard part. And then you came along, rebuffing the least of my advances, forcing me to deal with you in a completely different way than I’d ever dealt with a woman before. It was the first time I’d felt the need of wooing the heart along with the body.”

  Touching his thick new growth of beard, Dallas smiled. “You did it well. I love you, Iain.”

  “Hmmmm. I know you do, lassie. But I still can’t quite take your feelings for Hamilton in stride.”

  “No,” she said, moving her fingers to trace the outline of his ear, “perhaps you can’t. But then I’ve never gotten used to wondering whose embrace you’re lying in when we’re apart, either.”

  “That’s different,” he asserted, rolling over to take her in his arms. “I never loved any of them.”

  “No. But pain, like love, may be different, yet it’s still pain.” She winced suddenly as the beard rubbed her cheek.

  “Maybe pain is love,” he replied, kissing the corner of her mouth.

  “Maybe. At least it will be for me, until you shave off that damned beard.”

  Throughout Edinburgh, the whispers grew: Bothwell had murdered the King. The most blatant placards appeared along the High Street, accusing the Border Earl of regicide and implicating the Queen as his whore. Darnley was no longer the spoiled, contem
ptible fool, but a hapless victim whose blood had been spilled to make way for the illicit lovers.

  Mary responded not with prudence but with collapse. By late March, she had taken to her bed and a new rumor spread: The Queen was carrying Bothwell’s child. As she lay weak and melancholy at Holyrood, pressures mounted for Bothwell’s arrest and trial. Ultimately, it was not Mary who acted but the Earl of Lennox who, through private petition, demanded that the Border Earl be brought before Parliament.

  According to Scottish law, both accuser and accused could bring no more than six followers to the Tolbooth. Lennox felt compelled to comply with the stricture, but Bothwell, whose moss-troopers had filled the city for some time, showed up in the company of Morton, Maitland and four thousand Borderers.

  Faced with such awesome numbers, Lennox did not confront his son’s alleged murderer. The trial went on, however, lasting some seven hours before Parliament acquitted Bothwell.

  When the news reached Dunbar the following day, Fraser mulled over the possible courses of action he might take to ameliorate the situation. He and Dallas had managed to lease a small farmhouse near the sea, using Dallas’s jewelry as collateral. They had not made the deal themselves but had Oliver McVurrich handle it for them. Though Fraser had been loath to involve Oliver, the other man had insisted. He’d enjoyed pulling the wool over old Farquharson’s eyes and telling him how he’d inherited a small fortune of jewels while in Edinburgh. Dallas had been surprised at the usually staid McVurrich but decided that a fortnight in the city had made him light-headed.

  Posing as chicken farmers recently come from the Highlands, Dallas and Fraser moved into the sparsely furnished croft at the end of February. “Do you know anything about chickens?” she asked her husband. “I suppose we’ll have to get some.”

  Fraser assured her that his bucolic background at Beauly would put him in good stead. Dallas had rolled her eyes at this pronouncement but once the chickens were installed, she was amazed at her husband’s knowledge.