‘What!’ he exclaimed. ‘Do you know Alison?’
‘Who doesn’t? – if you speak biblically.’
Johnnie Stewart could hardly flush deeper than he had already done, but he laid his hand on his sword. ‘How dare you insult her—’ he began, but James Hepburn struck his hand off the hilt before he could get any further.
‘Put that away, you fool. Have you nothing better to do than defend the honour of a whore? Forgotten something, haven’t you?’
There was an instant’s pause while Lord John still made an attempt to keep his hold on the heroic, but the grim amusement in the other’s eye was too much for him; he grinned and said airily, ‘Ah yes, that little matter of your sister. Let’s go back and get married.’
He took his arm, and Bothwell swung round and marched him back to his house in the Canongate, where he set him down on the opposite side of his hearth and scanned him from the corner of an ogreish eye.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘what’s this foolery a few weeks before your wedding? If Jan got wind of it, you know her temper and the chances she’d pay you back in your own coin.’
Lord John’s explosive reply to this was entirely satisfactory to the other. But he did not so much like his excuses about his old friendship with Alison, his necessity ‘in common courtesy to say farewell’, and his insistence that Bothwell had maligned her – a gentle creature, with a churlish husband and an immorally mercenary father-in-law. It was plain that he half blamed, half flattered himself with having seduced her, and so paved the way for her falling to a cynical ruffian like James Hepburn, who was, he implied, incapable of understanding the essential innocence of any woman.
These high-toned sentiments made the affair much more dangerous from the point of view of the cynical ruffian, who knew how restful insipidity could prove after a fiery jade such as his young sister. At least he should have no chance to compare Alison’s mealy-mouthed modesty in his mind with Jan’s frankly boyish crudity of speech.
‘Would you still believe in the virtue of that squashy pink plum if you found her with Arran?’ he demanded. ‘You’d not call him a seducer like me, I take it, or think no woman could resist him, like yourself.’
But his reputation for rough irreverence went against him. Proof was needed, and it would be an amusing revenge on Arran to blast his reputation, which stood so high with the godly. The sack of his house of Crichton had never been wiped out; and only last week he had had to send out a force of armed horsemen to collect his tithes at Melrose, since Arran’s men were out doing the same thing. To crown all, Arran’s father, the Duke of Châtelherault, had snubbed a friendly overture of his, made in compliance with the Queen’s wishes, with the reminder that he wanted no such assurances from an inferior in rank. Inferior! He, a Hepburn, inferior to any man in Scotland, let alone a Hamilton cockered up with a brand-new French title.
‘Duc de Châtelherault!’ he suddenly exclaimed. ‘If he’s a Duc, then I’m a drake!’
A cruel grin spread slowly on his face. ‘We’ll root up this “young plant” of Johnnie Knox! We’ll show his pastor and master just how deep Arran’s virtue grows. We’ll make a Christmas revel of it and catch him supping at the old pimp’s house: the godly won’t believe, whatever you do, that he goes there to say his prayers.’
Johnnie Stewart was relieved that Arran had become the centre of attention, so much so that he presently plucked up courage to ask if Bothwell had found it tolerably easy to ‘manage’ his sister as he had promised.
‘Oh aye,’ said the other airily, ‘she said she’d no mind to stay a Hepburn always, for she hates a name that sounds like a hiccup!’
Johnnie hurled himself upon him, and the brotherly rebuke ended in a rough-and-tumble.
When Bothwell presented himself to the Queen next day he found her and the Court in deep mourning for the anniversary of King François’ death. Everyone with whom he spoke urged him to hurry home and change his scarlet velvet for a suit of sober black. But he refused, and was no whit disconcerted when he met the raised eyebrows of his Queen.
‘Did no one tell you?’ she asked. ‘But of course you will change for the memorial service in the chapel this evening.’
‘I can remember a year ago, Madam, without any memorial service.’
She gave him a startled look as though she resented his memory of a year ago. ‘Do you mean you will not come?’
‘I am a Protestant,’ he said. ‘I don’t attend services of the Mass.’
‘So are more than half my nobles, yet they are attending this one out of courtesy – and sympathy with me.’
Her voice shook a little with indignation, but he remained unmoved.
‘Then, Madam, you have from them what you expect. You’ve never found me a courtier, and as to sympathy—’
‘Yes?’ she said as he paused. ‘Are you going to tell me you never had sympathy with me a year ago?’
‘That was another matter.’
‘It was indeed!’ But she must not show her anger so plainly, for though he was being insolent, intolerable, she somehow felt that it was giving herself into his hands.
And so it proved, for standing there so nonchalantly, yet every inch of him alert with his powerful vitality, he was getting the mastery of her so that it was possible for him to say, quite easily and coolly and without rebuke from her, ‘You’re thinking more of your next husband than of your last, so why should I help you mourn him?’
And it was he who turned away, not she who sent him, it was that that angered her more than anything as she thought it over; for she did think it over, all through that memorial service, she in her white veils and her courtiers in black, and now holding a great white candle draped in black velvet to her husband’s memory – and how heavy it was, and how overpowering the fumes of the incense-perfumed wax, and how dazzling that tapering heart-shaped flame flickering just in front of her eyes, now leaping, now guttering in the icy draughts that always blew through every building in Scotland.
The wind it blew frae north to south,
It blew into the floor.
She must not think of those rude country songs, she must think of this solemn Requiem the choir were chanting.
But she was thinking neither of her last husband nor her next, whether he were the Prince of Spain or the new little King of France, or the King of Sweden or of Denmark, or either of the Emperor’s two sons, or the Earl of Arran, or Lord Henry Darnley, but of the forcible, arresting face of the man who never cared whether he pleased her or not.
Three days later it was her nineteenth birthday and she gave a ball (‘One moment she is pretending to mourn her husband, and the next leaping and dancing,’ Knox complained to the citizens of Edinburgh). She wore Highland dress as she had done sometimes at the French Court, when they had declared that ‘rude barbaric costume’ the most becoming she had; it suited the lissome grace of her strong young body far better than the stiff gorgeous robes in which she never really felt at ease. She had learned the reels and flings years ago, and danced them now in an ecstasy of enjoyment. This cold grim country had provided the liveliest dances in the world, and here she was dancing them, the Queen of that country, and beautiful, and nineteen today. She called Mary Beton to her to pin up a long shining wisp of hair that had tossed out from under the eagle’s feather on her head. The reel had stopped, the music stepped into the stately royal dance of the Galliard. She turned to the man behind her who was talking with her youngest half-brother Johnnie.
‘Are you not dancing this, my Lord Bothwell? You should, for I think it bears your nickname.’
‘No, Madam, it is the Dance Royal, and the Galliard should not dance it except with royalty.’
The music flourished a magnificent panache and he swept her a bow in time to its rhythm. She flushed, scarcely knowing if he were laughing at her or asking her to dance; in either case an impertinence, to ask her so. She no longer felt a Queen – or nineteen; this odd teasing fellow always managed to make a child of her. She would n
ot bother with him, and turned away to dance with Lord George Gordon, the Earl of Huntly’s eldest son, a magnificent young Highlander, as tall and silent as his father was fat and talkative. He had never taken his eyes off her since she had entered the room in their native dress.
Bothwell’s glance followed them as Gordon handed her across the floor, bowed, advanced to her again, took hands and swung her into the lovely postures of that formal measure. But all he said to Johnnie was, ‘My fellow Paris will bring word when he’s at Cuthbert’s; in another week or two will be best. The Christmas revels will be beginning then, and we’ll have an excuse to wear masks.’
‘What revel is that, my friends? May I make one at it?’
The Marquis d’Elboeuf was taking his arm, smiling under the waving line of his moustache, affable and almost ridiculously handsome.
‘May I tell him?’ asked Johnnie eagerly, and Bothwell nodded, and Mary’s young uncle was allowed to share in the plot – one after his heart, for here was a chance to expose the hypocrisy of that insolent canting knave who had dared insult his niece at her Mass. He insisted that he too should be allowed to ‘testify’ – to use their own jargon – ‘to the impurity of the godly’.
‘Aye, it will be a Christmas sport for you as good as your mumming tourney that I’d the bad luck to miss,’ Bothwell conceded, and the three young men stayed in their corner so long, talking low and laughing loud together, that the Queen had to send her Maries with a royal command to dance. But she was not entirely satisfied with the result, for though her uncle and half-brother both clamoured to dance with her after that, the Galliard danced only with Mary Fleming.
Nor was Mr Maitland of Lethington pleased. Forty years old, thin, dry, delicate, a little wizened, he could not deny to himself that the two made a splendid couple; Mr George Buchanan, now fulsomely intent on showing himself a courtier, wheezed heavily into his ear that Mary Fleming was a venus for beauty, a Minerva for wit, and a Juno for wealth.
‘And her partner,’ said Lethington in his gently dispassionate fashion, ‘is, I suppose, a Ganymede for beauty, a Joseph for chastity, and a Moses for meekness.’
When the dance was over, he complimented Bothwell so elaborately on his dancing that the young man began to have an angry suspicion that he had somehow made a fool of himself, and their political animosity was much increased.
Christmastide set in fine and frosty. The dark goblin figures of little boys were running and squawking, pelting each other with snowballs in St Mary’s Wynd that moonlit evening, when three masked revellers knocked at the door of Cuthbert Ramsay’s house, and were inside it before their ‘host’ had discovered who they were.
‘And who did you think we were?’ demanded Bothwell as Cuthbert twittered and fluttered before him, overcome by such embarrassment of riches as two of his daughter-in-law’s lovers at once, and in company with the young foreign nobleman whose armorial bearings (as Cuthbert could have told you on the instant, having always nursed a wistful passion for heraldry) included the lilies of Anjou and Sicily, the crimson bars of Hungary, the double cross of Jerusalem, and hovering over all, the silver eaglets of Lorraine – the arms, in fact, of the royal house of Guise.
He chirped insistently that he had expected no visitors, but was delighted to have these; he called to Alison to bring them wine, and she came at once, all fluttering eyelashes and shy smiles. There was no sign of Arran. Paris must have mistaken.
‘The women of your country are indeed wonderful,’ murmured d’Elboeuf as they strolled down the hill again to Holyrood later in the evening. ‘At what stage, if any, do they cease, to simper?’
Paris’ information was wrong by twenty-four hours; it was the next evening, he discovered, that Arran would be at Ramsay’s house, and thither went the three indefatigable gallants yet again – to find the doors barred and bolted against them, sure proof that this time their scent was not at fault. They had dined at d’Elboeuf’s expense before coming out, the cold night air acted powerfully on his warmed Armagnac, and the opposition of the barricaded house gave a final stimulus to their rampant spirits.
‘To me, one and all!’ roared Bothwell, and the three of them rushed at the door and smashed it in with their shoulders.
They were in time to see Cuthbert’s hinder parts crawling under the stairway and Alison’s scampering up it, but again no sight of Arran. Bothwell leaped at the back door on to the garden and dragged it open. A tall shadow was visible for one moment running and stumbling downhill. Bothwell yelled to his comrades, hallooing them on to the hunt, and led the charge through the cabbages. Here was sport indeed, with that skulking shadow ahead of him and the frosty air sharp on his face, his blood tingling with the force of that mighty drive against the door, and the crash of rending timber still echoing in his ears – but here he fell headlong over a bee-skep.
Johnnie reached the bottom of the garden to find the door there open, the quarry fled. It was useless to seek him outside in that rabbit-warren of twisted passages, dark courtyards and low shadowy archways. But he returned in some triumph, for at the bottom of the garden he had found Arran’s hat; this he waved proudly before the eyes of his fallen commander, who was picking himself up and blinking at the stars that bounced about so inordinately above his head.
The two champions of virtue returned at leisure to the house, where René d’Elboeuf, now disappeared upstairs, was presumably testing the extent of Alison’s capacity to simper. That of Cuthbert’s was unlimited; he was waiting for them with a coy smirk, and only giggled when Johnnie shook Arran’s hat in his face in righteous wrath.
‘Te-he-he!’ he tittered. ‘If your Lordship could but see yourself!’
‘I’ll wring your scraggy neck,’ growled His Lordship, but was distracted from this purpose by a yelp from Bothwell, who was busy shaking some sleepy bees out of the flaps of his boots. In the warm air of the room they were beginning to zoom and fly about, and one had already stung him. The two champions departed in haste.
But it was a hornets’ nest they had aroused rather than a skep of drowsy winter bees.
Arran sobbed out his complaints, not only to his clan but to his Church. Knox made a thunderous attack on the Court; James came to his young sister with a face as long as Knox’s beard, and dark hints of a matter ‘so heinous and horrible’ that he could not bear to sully her ears with it.
‘Well, if you can’t tell me I can’t deal with it,’ she snapped, ‘so why speak of it at all?’
But James was fully determined to speak of it; he would ‘think himself guilty if he passed it over in silence’.
‘And why not think yourself guilty for once, dear James? You might enjoy the change.’
She spoke in her most coaxingly teasing voice, taking his arm and laughing up into his face; but he went rigid under her touch and his face red with real anger. It was no use, she must never again make the fatal mistake of laughing at James.
His account was still veiled and allusive in regard for her modesty, but as far as she could make out, a citizen’s house had been broken into, and a citizen’s wife dragged from her husband’s bed to please these outrageous rioters. She flatly refused to believe it either of her uncle or her delightful brother Johnnie. The Earl of Bothwell was another matter, he seemed to enjoy showing there was nothing of which he was not capable.
James heartily endorsed this opinion, and added that my Lord Arran and the whole great clan of Hamilton were mortally offended with him.
‘Arran! But what has he to do with the matter?’
James was reluctantly forced to explain that the citizen’s wife had also pleased Lord Arran; then, when pressed, that she had been the mistress both of Bothwell and Lord John; finally, that the outraged house had not been that of her husband, but of her father-in-law, an acknowledged pimp in the matter. ‘But this throws an utterly different light on the business,’ she declared, and rounded furiously on him for bothering her with such an ugly silly affair. Her Uncle René was a foreigner and did not unde
rstand the sanctity of a Scot’s home (even when it was a pandar’s); Johnnie was a lad not quite twenty, his two companions only half a dozen years older: Bothwell had the excuse of his quarrel with Arran, who had shown little regard for the sanctity of Bothwell’s home when he sacked Crichton.
‘That was political,’ said Lord James stiffly.
‘I have yet to learn,’ she replied, ‘that a crime is any the less a crime when it can be labelled political.’
He looked at her pityingly and reminded her that she was a woman and had only just had her nineteenth birthday. She just restrained herself from hitting him.
Finally she promised to reprove the roysterers, and did so, but it was not the end of the riot.
Knox accused her publicly of ‘maintaining impiety, and whoredom in especial’.
Arran was out for blood. Three hundred of his clan planned to attack the three gallants on Christmas Eve as they returned from supping with the Queen, and Paris, more Cock-up-Spotty than ever at proving himself ‘a damned good spy’, brought word of it to Bothwell when he was already at the Palace. His master tapped Johnnie on the shoulder.
‘The Hamiltons are on the street. Warn d’Elboeuf and tell him to send as many men as he can muster instantly to my house. You do the same. But keep the Guise himself out of it. We don’t want his death in a street brawl.’
‘Hadn’t we better leave a hint here how matters stand?’
‘We’ll do that when we’ve mustered our own men – and rather more too than the Hamiltons! Bring Arran’s hat. We’ll stick it on a pole for our banner.’
Within the hour Bothwell’s faithful lieutenant, Black Ormiston of the Moss Tower, had gathered together a mixed bag of Hepburns, Lord John’s men and d’Elboeuf’s ‘Papishes’, amounting in all to between four and five hundred. Johnnie had the devil’s own work in keeping René d’Elboeuf out of the fray, for he at once grabbed a halberd, and a dozen men were barely able to hold him back, but as luck had it Johnnie had already taken the precaution of locking the inner gates on him.
The Galliard Page 16