‘Ah yes, Hermitage Castle!’ Mary was anxious to show her knowledge of her country, though mostly acquired at a distance. ‘That is a lonely fortress on the Border, isn’t it?’
‘Aye, Madam, it stands watchdog over the whole of Liddesdale; no light job with all the Elliots and Armstrongs there for ever spoiling for a fight! But there’s little I’d ask better than a fight with Elliots or Armstrongs – they can follow gear quicker and wind the chase with bugle and bloodhound better than any family on the Border, bar the Hepburns—’
‘The Hepburns?’
‘My own, of course, Madam.’
‘Oh, of course, sir.’
Not exactly a lowered temperature this time, but a hint of irony which Bothwell did not like – if he did not lead it. There was an unexpected dimple in that small chin. So he flicked his eyelids in something very near a wink: ‘We Border robbers are somewhat shady gentlemen, Madam; we work best in the bright dark.’
She was quick to be gracious again. ‘Then it is true of you, as they said of my uncle the Duc de Guise – “the night brought out his star”.’
But to Bothwell the night was a fact, not a metaphor.
‘Aye, Madam, the day is our night, and the night our day, and our over-word, “We shall have moonlight again.” We are no milksops brought up by the fireside. We are used to win our meat by the sword; but for all that, it is we who bear the brunt of all the attacks from England, while the inland Scots sit safe in their castles. Yet it’s not often that royalty deigns to recognise us, unless our King comes down on us with a punitive expedition as your royal father did on my father’s friend, Johnny Armstrong, and strung him up in a withy of a cow’s tail. Yes, your father had mine imprisoned when he was but seventeen, for protecting “the robbers”. But your royal mother dealt more kindly and, I think, more wisely with him; she set a thief to catch a thief and made him Lieutenant of the Border – and she did the same by me when she took the Lieutenancy from that asthmatic bag of guts, old Huntly—’
(There was a gasp at this description of the most powerful Catholic noble in Mary’s kingdom, but he did not stay to heed it.)
‘ – and gave it to me, with the Keeping of Hermitage – aye, and with Hermitage went a subsidy of twenty-three pounds a month, very handy after all the lawsuits left by my father’s death, and the sore necessity I was in to prove my grandmother a bastard.’
The silver thread quivered over the embroidery. Mary had started a ripple of laughter that ran all round the semicircle of girls. But she could not get him to tell her why he had needed so sorely to prove his grandmother a bastard; he had become self-conscious and actually wondered whether it had been a trifle sordid of him to do so. Besides, his grandmother had been mistress to Mary’s grandfather, James IV, before she had married the second Earl of Bothwell. Their disreputable grandparents might prove a common ground between them of a not altogether convenient nature, and he hastily sheered off them to sell her that as Lieutenant of the Border he had the power to command his neighbours, and if they disobeyed, ride upon them with fire and sword and besiege and cast down any houses held against him.
There was a faint gasp of a different kind at this; the young man who stood before them, his eyes flashing as he gave instance of his power, seemed alarmingly ready to put it into execution.
‘And did you?’ asked his Queen a little faintly.
‘No, Madam, I got to work on my enemies quicker than on my neighbours. If Edinburgh had seen I was the man for them, London soon paid me her compliments, for she had to reinforce the garrisons all along the English side against my attacks. Did your mother – did Her Grace ever tell you of the Raid of Haltwellsweir?’
Mary blinked and paused for the fraction of a second. Some such terrible name flashed back into her memory, which hadbeen praised for its royal quality. If only she could prove it now!
‘Was that,’ she began tentatively, ‘when you all but captured the Earl of Northumberland and his brother Sir Henry Percy?’
Thank heaven it was, for this fierce Borderer was nearer smiling than he had been yet. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘and if it had not been for their fine Arab horses, the best that English gold can buy, they’d have been with the rest of the prisoners I took that day, rising two hundred of ’em. But my main object was to draw off the strength of the enemy while our French allies burned the Percies’ outpost, Norham Castle.’
His face had blackened. Mary thought it must sometimes be as dangerous to be his ally as his enemy. ‘And didn’t they?’ she only just dared say.
‘No.’
The answer fell like a stone, and his Queen did not venture to ask the reason. The amazing young man seemed positively to forget that he was talking to her; he stood brooding on that fight in the icy dark of the winter before last, as though it were more present to his mind than the lovely young Queen who sat before him, her shy down-dropped eyes now opened wide upon his face.
‘The deep sluggish Till was our best ally that day,’ he suddenly broke out. ‘Did you ever hear the verse of the two rivers before you left Scotland, Madam?
Till said to Tweed,
“Though I run slow,
Where ye drown one man I drown twa.”
‘It was a day or two after Christmas in the dead hour before dawn that we took our Christmas cheer crossing that black swollen water, eight hundred horsemen and as many foot, each of them clutching a stirrup-leather to keep him from getting swept away by the current, though God knows it was a near thing for many of the horses too.’ He gave a short bark of laughter. ‘It was a bit of a shock to my men, though they took it like lambs, when I turned my horse to tell them where I was leading them.’
‘Couldn’t you trust them before?’
‘Trust a Borderer to keep trust? Aye, Madam, through hell, itself. But trust him to keep a secret from leaking out through his wife’s brother or his son’s wife, that’s another matter. For all the laws against intermarriage, the moss-troopers have relations on both sides of the Border, and are apt to take a fight less seriously than a football match. Why, they’ll stop and gossip in the very midst of a battle – aye, and not even stop for it, for I’ve seen a Northumberland man and a Scot hacking at each other good and hearty, and asking between the strokes how sister Annie fared in childbed with her seventh.’
An amazed titter rustled through the group; he cocked a merry eye at Mary Fleming in acknowledgment, but went straight on.
‘No, I had to keep my true plans to myself. There was only one of the Percies I really had to reckon with – the younger, Sir Henry, a hard man, so his own fellows report him, but the finest soldier I’ve ever had the luck to encounter—’
(‘I think he likes his enemies better than his friends,’ Mary reflected.)
‘As for his brother Northumberland – that easy lord isn’t going to forgive me for getting him out of bed by candlelight at two in the morning, after his Christmas dinner, to gallop with his men to meet his brother. But it was I who met his brother first – on the wooded slope of Haltwellsweir, on the bank of the Till behind a swamp of willows. There we couched in the wet dead bracken, waiting, God knows how long, while some of my best prickers fired the haystacks of Fenton Town to lure Harry Percy by the flames, and so led him in pursuit of them past our ambush. It was “Fire and sleet and candlelight” that night, but Percy’s candles were lit too late. I gave the word to fire. The best thing about these modern firearms is the din they make. Percy must have thought there were three times our number hidden in that wood; their horses took fright and bolted, so did the riders. I hallooed my fellows after them along the river bank. God, what hunting! I’d sent on the foot to turn them at Ford; Harry Percy’s horse out-galloped them and escaped across the river at the shallows, so did some others, but the rest were caught between us and the Till in spate with winter rains, and preferred surrender to cold steel or colder water. It was a bonny fight.’
He was ruminating happily on it again, then remembered that the real point of the story was
not the harrying of the Percies by that steel-dark swollen river, but to impress his new Sovereign with his importance.
‘It spurred on the English to an armistice, there’s no doubt of that, and Percy and I had another sort of river rendezvous some six months later, when we met on the banks of Tweed to settle peace on the Borders – aye, and I saw to it that the English had to cross to the Scottish side for the conference.’ He chuckled wickedly. ‘The Bishop of Durham gobbled like a turkey–cock over it, and Harry Percy was fit to be tied.’
Mary had heard that the new young Lieutenant of the Border was too fond of baiting bishops, and that Sir Henry Percy had indignantly demanded someone more ‘wise and discreet’ to represent Scotland. Should she tell him that? Why should she be afraid of him? ‘I would have told him instantly in the forest.’ But she did not tell him here.
‘We signed the papers for your appointment as Scottish delegate,’ she said; ‘my mother wrote of “the probity, industry and loyalty of our chosen cousin”.’ Here she was quoting praises again instead of criticism, and why in heaven’s name, when he surely had as good a conceit of himself as any man that ever came out of Scotland?
And he paid no heed at all to her compliment.
‘There was underhand dealing, Madam, all through that commission, the English using their chance to get in touch with the disloyal Scots. We signed the peace terms at Ladykirk near the end of last September, a year ago. A bare month later, the Lords of the Congregation dared to “depose” your royal mother from the Regency, and were demanding help from England – English soldiers, English money to pay their troops – when the ink was scarcely dry on the treaty. Nothing open, of course. John Knox the preacher wrote to Cecil suggesting that he should send English troops into Scotland and then declare them rebels!’
‘What? But this is incredible! How dare you make such a charge without proof?’
Mary had certainly lost her timidity now; she had sprung from her chair, her eyes blazing. He scanned her with cool appraisement. She was better like this.
‘Madam, the only proof would be the letter itself, now in Cecil’s files.’
‘Then how could you have seen it?’
‘John Knox himself showed it me, when he was offering me their bribes to make me swerve from my allegiance to the Crown.’
‘Which you refused—’
‘No, which I haggled over, and so learned all I could. Knox, as an upstart tenant (his family have been dependants on the Hepburn lands for generations), was out to brag as well as bribe, by showing how he had given his orders to Queen Elizabeth’s Chief Minister of State.’
‘Then he is dealing direct with my enemy against me!’
‘As practically every Protestant lord in your kingdom is doing – Madam.’
‘Protestant? What has it to do with religion? Elizabeth is not so Protestant.’
‘No, religion has nothing to do with it. Elizabeth dislikes John Knox’s views as much as yourself. But, as her Ambassador here said, it is to her best interest to “nourish the garboil in Scotland”.’
‘These are Machiavelli’s doctrines, utterly devilish—’
‘And the groundwork of every statesman’s principles since he formulated them nearly half a century ago.’
‘Then if that’s how they’ve come to understand statecraft in my father’s country, I thank God I’m never likely to see it again!’
If she had lost her temper illogically, so did he, as quick now to be up in arms for the Scots he had just been accusing.
‘Is it only in your father’s country, Madam? Would the statecraft here of your mother’s fine relatives, the Guises, aye, and your husband’s mother, the Medici, breathe a cleaner air?’
‘This is intolerable, my lord. You need not stay longer to insult me.’
Yes, he had gone too far again; he had seen it even as he did so; curse his unlucky temper! ‘Madam, you are right to be angry. I spoke like a fool. We are both hating the same thing, so why should we quarrel?’
She wanted to say she had not quarrelled but dismissed him, but he gave her no time.
‘Statecraft has come later to Scotland than to Italy and France, and therefore is the cruder in treachery. We have ever been a race of hardy ruffians—’
‘And apparently proud of it!’ she shot at him.
‘Aye, Madam, proud of it, though my father was so damned modem and cultivated that he thought it the clever thing to break his faith, both to Queen and wife – having been paid so ill by your royal father in his youth for keeping it to his neighbours!’ he, could not resist adding.
He longed to shake the confidence of this childishly unconscious creature; to tell her that her father had annexed his father’s ‘Lands and Lordships’ – that his father had called hers ‘the murderer of the nobles’. Before he should be mad enough to express the blood-feud in words, he rushed on: ‘He was a fool. Let him go! The rest of our house have followed our motto, “Keep Trust”. And that is the overword too of the Border. So our society rests on secure foundation – aye, even though we keep little gear, except a score or so of horses lest we be called out at any moment to attack or defend. But now that foundation of a man’s word is being cut away, and no man will be able to trust his enemy.’
‘But why should my people hate me – or my mother? She was called the Good Queen. She was kind to everyone, she forgave her enemies again and again, she allowed more freedom to the Protestants than they have known under any other ruler.’
‘It’s not freedom they want, it’s power. That is why they hounded your Lady-mother to the grave, as they will Your Grace if they get the chance – and sought English aid to do it. And I’ve not yet told you how I baulked that for them, when I frightened the portmanteau of English gold out of John Cockburn’s grip.’
But Mary was still hearing those other words, ‘hounded your Ladymother to the grave – as they will Your Grace.’ What terrible things this man told her, and so roughly and casually! Never in her life had anyone spoken with so little regard for her feelings.
And had there not been the hint of a threat in his voice when he had told her, twice over, of the harsh way in which her father had punished his? He might be a loyal servant to the Crown of his own choice; but it was as a Borderer, loyal to his house, his neighbours, even his enemies, that he thought of himself first and foremost – and he had utterly ignored her command just now to him to go. She must show him that she was to be obeyed.
She rose in as stately a manner as she could muster, and held out a hand which to her intense annoyance she found was trembling a little. Her voice, she hoped, was cold and ironic.
‘I regret, my lord, that there is not time at present for yet another of your adventures’ – and then she must needs repent and spare his feelings, adding impulsively, ‘but you will tell it to me some other time, won’t you?’
‘I will, Madam.’
(‘I’ll swear he will!’ muttered Beton.)
He knelt to kiss the Queen’s hand. This interview seemed to have gone agley, but that should not matter much; she was a young thing and flighty as a weathercock. Now that her hand lay on his, he saw how slight and white a thing it was on top of his hard brown muscles, and felt it flutter a little. A vague, annoyed perception came to him that he had been talking to a child and frightened her; against all etiquette he took her fingers in his grasp as he raised them to his lips. It was done only to reassure her and pledge his loyalty, and he did not know how he crushed them.
Then he went, and all the girls drew a deep breath. The painted walls seemed to close in round them and the room seemed very small.
‘Woof!’ they exclaimed; and Livingstone, ‘I feel as though I had been buffeted in the wind!’; and Seton, ‘Or tossed at sea—’
(‘Or on a bed,’ murmured Fleming, but not loud enough for the rest to hear.)
‘Can we breathe now? And speak?’ asked Beton. ‘It seems we didn’t dare just now!’
That gave the cue to their exclamations.
‘The words he used! “Bag ‘of guts” for my Lord Huntly!’
‘He could not even remember to call you “Madam”, but had to jerk it in every now and then.’
They went on talking about him a surprising amount. You would have thought they were in a convent and never saw a man, Mary said wonderingly.
‘Nor do we often – a man like that,’ said Fleming.
She thought Monsieur Brantôme had been wrong about his looks; the swarthy Borderer was not handsome; his thrusting nose, which should have been straight as well as short, had evidently been broken, but he had a fine head, well carried, broad in the brow, the thick rough hair very high at the temples as though the furious exertions of his twenty-five years had already thinned it there a little.
Seton said his mouth looked cruel, the full sardonic lips shut so hard under the short moustache; Fleming had noticed the quick commanding glance of his eye; Livingstone was enraged by it – ‘he would not even wait to command, but just seize you with those long gorilla arms—’
‘All the better to hold you with, my dear! What heated imagination! Your dislike is more improper than my liking!’
‘Extremes meet,’ observed Seton in her quiet little voice, anxious to hush the small flare-up before their mistress should notice it. ‘At first touch one does not know ice from fire.’
Mary Stewart was surprised they should talk so much about him and never take note of what had excited herself far the most – his tale of the fight and chase along the river Till. She sat staring out of the window at a graceful fountain that her husband’s grandfather, François I, had set at the end of a rose-walk, and behind it formal gardens like a bright new tapestry, stopping abruptly at the edge of the dark old forest of Fontainebleau that grew for miles all round this lovely palace.
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