I change back into my riding breeks and wrap my cloak warmly around my body. I make my way through the empty corridors down to the front door, walking quietly past the great hall where the others are still at dinner. But when I step down to the portcullis, the guards refuse to let me through.
“Strict orders,” one of them says, looking at my clothes and trying to keep his face expressionless. “The castle is always locked at night. Double the guard with the Queen here.”
“Triple the guard, I’d say.” Isobel has stepped out of the hall and she comes down the corridor toward us. “The Borders are a dangerous place, Alison, and the Hume family takes no chances of being caught unaware by intruders. The castle is vulnerable, you see. Because of the noise of the river, an army could set upon us in the dark without us hearing. The portcullis is never opened at night.”
She turns her face away from the guard, toward me, and in the flickering torchlight I see a quick wink. “Let me take you to your room.”
She takes my elbow and walks me along the corridor until we are out of their sight. “I do not like being locked in either,” she whispers. “I’m sure even the Queen’s great palace must have its secret ways.”
I nod. “The Queen escaped the last uprising through a passage in the wine cellar.”
“We, too, have such a secret way. Very few know it.”
“Will you show me?” I ask. “I am longing to be outside.”
“Swear you will keep it secret.”
I hesitate only a moment. “I swear.”
Isobel leads me down through a maze of stairs to the kitchen, still humming with activity. The cook is preparing the sweet course for the Queen; servants and dogs are snarling over the scraps.
Isobel attracts the attention of the spit turner. When he creeps over to us, she presses something into his hand and he leads us to a storeroom.
“Help me with this dress,” she says when he leaves us. “I cannot take us there in such finery.”
She faces away from me and holds up her hair. I hesitate for a moment and then unlace her. She steps out of the frock and pulls her cloak around her underthings. Then she leads me into a dark corner. Rats skitter past, and together we roll a barrel out of the way. Behind it is an earthen tunnel and she beckons me to crawl inside after her. It is short; at the end she pushes a large stone aside with surprising ease. It must have some clever mechanism to allow it to move so.
As it rolls back, the sudden roar of rushing water is shocking, and the night is black and silver before my eyes. We emerge high up the riverbank, on a narrow shelf above a sheer drop to the rushing water. Through the clouds, the moon lights up the landscape: the hills, the trees, and the river rushing directly toward us before sweeping into a turn at the foot of the castle. There is a mist of very light rain.
She touches my arm and gestures for me to follow her. We scramble down a steep path, clinging to branches and grass.
At the bottom, she steps out in front of me and stands on a rock, her face turned upstream. I make my way to the edge of the water. How long have I waited for this moment? I crouch down in the mud. The reeds pull at my clothes and at last my stretching fingers find the water.
Its touch is so cold I can forget the young woman standing on a rock, gazing upstream with burning intensity. I can forget Beatrice’s words cutting into me. I can forget everything except the feel of the water on my fingers, the connection at last, the meeting of elements, water and flesh, flesh and earth, flesh and air. I wait, my fingers dangling in the water, listening. Surely deep in my heart the truth of this matter must lie. Surely my bones know if I come from this land or not.
I wait until I am straining, but there are no words from the river. It rolls past as if it is water that knows nothing but having fallen as rain on the hills, water that has been floating as mist, water insubstantial.
The lightning flashes in the sky far upstream. The clouds cross the moon, plunging me into darkness, then pass, leaving the land silver again. I think of Alison Douglas. She must have known there was a secret escape but she didn’t take it. She chose marriage and the castle over freedom; servitude for her and Beatrice and Margaret over the charity of the Tulliallan Blackadders.
William has shackled himself to the castle as firmly as Beatrice. Isobel stands on the rock and plans how she will cast out her cousin and take it for herself. But this castle does not change owners without bloodshed and perhaps I have no more right to be here than David Hume had to take it by force in the first place. If Alison’s son in truth lies buried on the hill, then who is William and who am I?
In the patterns of rippling silver moonlight on water, a movement startles me. Isobel has clambered above me on the riverbank and I am crouched on slick mud beside the swollen water. She has only to kick me and I will be in the icy current. I curse my foolishness as I rise to my feet and brace my muscles. I have trusted a Hume and now I will pay.
Isobel leans forward and I steel myself not to recoil, lest the moment unbalances me.
“I’m cold,” she shouts, so I can hear her over the river’s rush. “There’s another storm coming. Let’s go back and get some whisky.”
I glance back once at the river before we push through the tunnel, closing it behind us and cutting off the water’s roar.
≈ ≈ ≈
We creep our way back through the castle, our hair and clothes damp, Isobel carrying her clothes in a bundle. She listens at the door and, when she is certain that the great hall is empty, she pushes the door open and we cross to the hearth. She calls a servant to stir up the fire and bring whisky, and we stand in front of it, our palms facing the flames. Isobel shivers in her underthings. I am shivering too, but it is not from the cold. The whisky burns a path to my stomach but the rest of me feels numb.
“Is it easy to really dress like a man?” she asks.
I shrug. “Dressing is not so hard. Acting like one is harder. You must walk differently, sit differently, speak differently.”
“Have you had great adventures playing like this in Edinburgh?”
I put down my cup and the servant tops it up. “It is not always a game. Once I had to kill a man who attacked the Queen, thinking she was a merchant whose pockets he could pick.”
“How did you kill him?” she asks, fascinated.
“I shot him,” I say, looking her in the eye. “A woman who wants to dress this way must be as good as a man at defending herself.”
“I can defend myself,” she says. “I am skilled at archery.”
I laugh. “That will be useless. You need to be fast with a dagger or a pistol.”
“I have used a dagger.”
“Can you have it out and at a man’s throat before he has reached for his own?”
She stares at me, then composes her features and tosses back her drink. “I want to show you Alison’s portrait.” She waves to the servant to bring a lantern.
It is a large portrait, hung to good advantage in another chamber on the ground floor. It is one of a pair, and before I look at my grandmother, I stare up at the face of David Hume, fifth Baron of Wedderburn, the man who took the castle with his own hand and compelled Alison to marry him. His eyes are impassive, his jaw strong.
Then I turn to Alison. The painter was a man of skill, for she seems to look at me out of the canvas, as if she would open her mouth and speak to me.
I can see little of myself in her face. She is an older version of Isobel, with her long auburn hair and green eyes and the proud lift of her chin. I wonder that any person, man or woman, could have made her do what she did not want to do.
“Everyone says I look just like her,” Isobel says.
“You have the same color hair.”
“Is that all?”
I study my grandmother again, looking for William’s face. She was a strong woman, who did not let pain show on her countenance. I can see Beatrice, but suddenly all I can recall of William’s face is the bitter lines running across his forehead and around his mouth. I c
annot picture my own face at all.
“Well?” Isobel says.
I shrug. “You must have inherited your features from the Hume blood.”
She turns away from me. “It is late. The servant will take you to your bedchamber.”
≈ ≈ ≈
I lie in the dark and retrace every step I’ve taken since arriving. I have not seen half of the castle yet, only its wide public rooms, one of its winding secret ways and some of the bedchambers. I have glimpsed the bustling kitchen, the great bread ovens, the roasting fire roaring in its pit. I have ridden out into its forest, I have let its water run over my hands.
At the Queen’s word this castle will be emptied of people and handed to William and me. My life’s dream, here within my grasp. But outside is a gravestone that casts a shadow across everything I have believed in, and down below me the Blackadder Water passes on its way to the sea, indifferent.
It is William whose face rises before me. William who has carried the heavy weight of this name and this injustice all his life. William with his pride and his honor, waiting to take his place at last.
I must choose what to do and I wish I knew what God I could pray to for guidance. But when I do lower myself to my knees on the hard stone floor, it is my mother I call upon. The person who knew the depth and breadth of William’s desire, the one person who will know what I should do. I kneel with my hands clasped until I am shuddering with cold, my knees aching.
But no answer comes from the castle and no word from the river and no whisper from any waiting ghost.
≈ ≈ ≈
My sleep is devoid of any dreams to guide me and I wake to the chill of an ordinary autumn morning, the sky leaden, the ground wet, last night’s rain hanging heavily off the bare branches outside, the river dark.
The whole family is to ride with us to Wedderburn, even Beatrice, who is pale and dark-eyed and will not look at me when we eat breakfast in the great hall. After the merriment of the night before, we gather grimly in the courtyard in the drizzle. I stay close to the Queen, dressed in the finest frock I own, one I have carried with me all the way from Edinburgh for this day.
We mount and Alexander leads us out of the courtyard, down the hill, and around to the river crossing. Halfway across the bridge, the Queen pulls up her horse and the party comes to a halt behind her. I am by her side, close enough to feel the warmth of her horse near my leg. She turns her head and looks downstream at the castle, wreathed in morning mist, growing out of the rock of the riverbank like something from ancient times.
“It looks so peaceful,” she says, into the thick silence.
Alexander laughs without humor. “Don’t be deceived, Your Grace. There’s nothing peaceful about the Borders. All men sleep close to their weapons here.”
They are all staring, not just at the Queen but at both of us. Beatrice’s face is as white as the mist, her lips almost colorless. Isobel’s hair is even deeper red against the absence of color in the world, and she has chosen a dress the same color as her remarkable eyes. Alexander, after blurting out a laugh, looks like a huge, anxious puppy. I meet their eyes, my chin high, my gaze hard.
The Queen allows the silence to linger long enough for them to feel their fear, before gathering up her reins.
“It was a most enjoyable evening in your home,” she says, with a cool smile. “We had best not keep Lord Hume waiting.”
We clatter over the wet planks of the bridge. I glimpse the river, the black running water that roars day and night through the dreams of the castle and those who sleep within it.
The Humes ride so close to us that I feel like a prisoner being escorted. But the Queen has dropped a word in the ear of one of her guards who rides between them and the Queen, forcing them to fall back. When we come to a little open ground, the Queen pushes her horse into a canter and, when we pull up, she and I are far enough ahead in the mist to not be overheard.
“I will discuss this with Lord Hume today, with Maitland and Lord James present,” she says. “I wish it accomplished with all speed.”
I push my horse closer to her so I can speak quietly. “They have cast some doubt on my lineage,” I say. “It is a lie, I am certain, but I must go to Glasgow to find out before I take the castle.”
She pauses and then shakes her head. “You have waited a long time for this. It is in your reach today and this is your chance, Alison. Take it now, with all the consequences, or see it lost. I cannot come here again.”
The mist wreathes around her and a strand of escaped hair falls damply across her face. Beneath me the horse pulls at the reins and snorts. The castle could be mine, but the Humes will be ruthless in destroying the last of William’s honor.
I can hear the dull thud of hoofbeats approaching through the mist, the same mist that is swirling around that small tombstone near the foot of the castle walls.
“Well?” Her horse prances, anxious to move.
I take a deep breath, a cold lungful of air rising from the Blackadder Water. I do not know what words I am about to speak until they come out.
“I cannot.”
I can see the relief on her face. “If this is your will, then we need not tarry at Wedderburn. I am impatient to reach Craigmillar. But are you sure?”
“Yes,” I say.
She smiles. “You are a brave woman, Alison. Once the christening is arranged, we will discuss your future. I will still reward you for your service. You need not live a lowly life.”
The guards emerge from the mist and she lifts her reins and rides away from me. Farther back I can hear the softer hoofbeats of the Humes riding in my wake, following the course of the Blackadder Water.
My very sinews resist leaving this place and my heart twists in my chest. To have come so close, to have laid my hands upon its stone and placed my feet upon its earth, and now to leave it is almost more than I can bear. Below me the horse prances in agitation, feeling the urge in my body to gallop after her and tell her I have changed my mind. My breath is harsh in my own ears and I am trembling from some deep place inside.
I wish I were truly alone. I would let loose a terrible keen of my loss into the mist.
≈ ≈ ≈
We ride into Craigmillar. I am riding by the Queen’s side, the position of highest honor. Seton has done up my hair this day and I wear the dress in which I would have taken the castle.
The Queen will meet with her most loyal lords and they will discuss the problem of the recalcitrant King and what can be done to bring him into line. But it does not matter to me any longer. I have no birthright to strive for. I am not even a noblewoman entitled to live in the Queen’s court and enjoy its privileges. If I stay, the Hume family may now reveal me as an impostor—and thus expose William too. To keep his honor, so hard won, I must leave the Queen.
Bothwell’s standard is fluttering on the road ahead of us as we draw near to Craigmillar and the horns blare out the herald for the Queen. In that moment I realize my mother has answered my entreaty and her answer is this: to love William I must bear the weight of this alone. I cannot let the woman he believes to be his sister reveal him as a bastard. I must spare him from the truth and take the failure upon my own shoulders. William will not have his castle but I can make sure he has his honor.
Bothwell is waiting to greet us. He is mounted, though by the ghastly color of his cheeks I can see that his wounds have not yet healed and it has cost him dearly to ride out this day. By his right hand, in the position of honor, is William, his horse pressed close to Bothwell’s to bear his weight should he sway. His hair is almost all gray in the sunlight.
There is an expression on his face that I have never seen before. There is something of awe in it, like the way he looked at me when I first rode into Edinburgh dressed as a noblewoman. But it is more than that. I see him straighten himself to sit taller on his horse, his eyes fixed on mine. I see him blinking and I realize he is crying.
It is like I am seeing him properly for the first time in my life and I
find tears pricking at the back of my own eyes, while my heart swells in my chest. He is my father, waiting for me by Bothwell’s side, whatever name he carries, whatever his lineage may be. I have done this for him. As we ride up to them, my heart blazes with what I can only call love.
Part III
1566
Forty-six
Outside the window the mist reaches into every crack in the stone and fingers it with damp. There might be nothing at all beyond the window of the Queen’s chamber in Stirling Castle: no city, no people, no men drinking in taverns, no women trying to warm their children, no spark of love, no joy.
The Queen has hurried her court to Stirling for the baptism of the Prince, for she does not have the heart to hold it in Edinburgh. She has invited the might of France, Spain, England, and the Scottish nobility to attend and has personally borrowed thousands of pounds to pay for days and nights of festivities that Scotland’s coffers cannot afford. But the King, who can bring it all down around her if he casts doubt on the Prince’s paternity, retreats to his chambers and says he will not come to the christening if she will not give him the crown matrimonial.
“Could you stir up the fire a little?” the Queen asks. “The cold is in my bones.”
I move away from the window and cross the room to the hearth. I take up a poker and stoke the fire until it roars and crackles and starts to singe the hairs on my arms. I wish I had a witch’s spell to weave this night to keep the darkness back.
Seton tenderly untwists the Queen’s braids and La Flamina warms her nightgown. None of us speak. The only sounds are the crackle of the logs and the silken scrape of the comb through the Queen’s hair.
“Does something trouble you, beloved?” La Flamina asks.
The Queen sighs. “Lord Bothwell has told me this night there are so many whispered plots that the Privy Council has forbidden any to carry arms in court. Half my lords are in exile. I have taxed the rest of them to help pay for my son’s baptism and most of them will refuse to set foot in the church because they cannot abide my religion.”
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