The Galliard

by Margaret Irwin

Would they dismiss the guard? Hours seemed to go by, and still they were outside. But now the beleaguered party were reinforced by the doctor and midwife. They complained that their patient was in a very grave condition, that she was semi-delirious, and kept screaming that there were armed men in the Palace only waiting to burst in and hack her to pieces. It certainly didn’t seem necessary to keep guard on anyone as ill as that, but Ruthven and Morton were still reluctant to give way. Darnley had the bright notion of saying he would keep guard over her himself, he and his men who were in the Palace. That seemed safe enough, since he was more deeply committed against her than any of them. So they left him in charge, withdrew their men, and went off to hold a convivial supper-party at Morton’s house to celebrate the occasion.

  Mary at once dispatched Margaret Carwood with a message to Arthur Erskine. She kept Darnley by her side, for after playing up so well to the lords he was suffering a collapse of nerves.

  ‘Nothing’s safe yet,’ he kept saying. ‘Any of the household may notice something is in the wind and carry the word to Morton’s house.’

  That was true, of course. They would have to wait till everyone was asleep in bed. Never did the household seem to go to bed so late as on that night.

  ‘There are too many in this,’ he repeated again and again, ‘it’s bound to leak out. That old doctor and the midwife, you ought to have kept them here – I told you you ought to. It’s bound to get out now. And so many of us escaping, someone’s sure to notice when we go. Erskine and Traquair and me and you and Anthony and Carwood. Why should Carwood come?’

  ‘I must have one woman with me, Harry, in case—’

  ‘Oh yes, that everlasting child. But why Traquair?’

  ‘Margaret must ride pillion behind him, as I’m doing with Erskine.’

  ‘You could ride with me.’

  And he ruled out one after the other of their party till it seemed that they themselves had better stay behind.

  She had to buoy up his spirits by treating the whole thing as a joke. She mimicked James walking up and down the room with his solemn voice, his portentous clearing of the throat, his gentlemanly decorum – Davie himself couldn’t have done it better, he declared in spontaneous admiration. He cursed himself the next moment for his thoughtlessness, but she paid no heed to it, only gave him a narrow glance. She was wrought up to a pitch very near hysteria, and just prevented it by making herself ‘hard as steel, cold as ice in danger’.

  It was close on midnight before it was judged safe enough to make the attempt. She was very quiet now, but her eyes were blazing with excitement like a cat’s in the dark. He thought she looked like a lovely young witch muffled in her dark cloak. Had she laid a spell on him that he was doing this mad thing? He would give anything now to get out of it. And if only he could get a drink! ‘Mary, don’t let’s do it. It’s such a frightful risk.’

  ‘Erskine will be very careful, Harry. He’s bringing a safe horse, it shan’t jolt the child.’

  ‘Damn the child!’ His hoarse whisper was nearly a scream. ‘Think of me! I’ve sworn to guard you!’

  ‘Too late now to think of that. Think of them instead tomorrow morning, all their long faces, coming here and finding we have given them the slip.’

  But her laughter could not cheer him now. He could have killed her in his rage of fear as he and she and Margaret and Anthony went creaking and cracking down the wooden back stair into the butler’s quarters. Did ever boards and doors make such a noise? Someone was sure to hear them, someone was sure to be about. Mary had said if they were it wouldn’t matter, for they were her own French servants and would never betray her. But how did she know? Anyone would betray anyone if it were made worth their while. He stopped dead for a moment, thinking he heard a heavy tread. It was only the thumping of his heart.

  Now they were in the sculleries; ‘Pouf, what a smell!’ whispered Mary.

  ‘It’s the washing up,’ Margaret whispered back.

  How could they add to the danger by whispering such stuff?

  Then he whispered himself, for he saw a keg of whisky. It was just what he needed. ‘I must have a drink,’ he told Mary. They tried to prevent him, but it was impossible. He snatched a cup and helped himself. He tried to take another, but Anthony seized his arm and made him put it down.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ he said aloud in an off-hand way. ‘Anyway, I feel better for that.’

  It was striking midnight when they reached the ruinous gap in the outer wall and squeezed through into the keen night air, the frosty stars overhead, the dark shape of the hills rising sharp against them. They were in the burial-ground of the old Abbey and had to pick their way through the mounds. A new one had just been dug. Mary stood still, looking down on it.

  ‘Come on,’ muttered Darnley, then suddenly realized for whom that grave had been dug. ‘Poor Davie,’ he whimpered. ‘I wish it hadn’t happened.’

  A strange new fear came to him by the grave of that mangled body; and beside him, dreadfully still, that cloaked figure with the hidden face. It was as though someone quite unknown were standing there. He put out a hand and touched her timidly.

  ‘Mary!’ he whispered.

  She turned and walked swiftly away.

  There was nothing for him now but to follow her.

  They were outside the walls, and there were the horses, and Erskine, the Captain of the Guard, and Traquair, the Master of Horse. The two women rode pillion behind them. As they mounted, Erskine told them he had got into touch with the Earl of Bothwell, who had decided that his fortress of Dunbar would be their safest refuge. It meant a ride of thirty miles in the dark – ‘No matter, we’ll manage it,’ said Darnley, his teeth chattering.

  He rode off ahead with his servant Anthony. As soon as they were out of the town he set his horse at a brisk canter, and the two men behind, with the double burden on their horses, had great difficulty in keeping up with him. Mary was intensely anxious to go gently; she found it a great strain holding on to Erskine; with her arms thus occupied, she could not keep her cloak wrapped round her, and grew so cold that she was afraid her numbed grip would not keep hold.

  They had ridden for about an hour and a half when Darnley came thudding back to them. ‘There are soldiers about here,’ he gasped out. ‘We’d best stick all together and go slap through them hell for leather. Quick, or we’ll all be murdered.’

  And he lashed out with his whip on the hindquarters of Mary’s horse so that it plunged sideways.

  ‘You’ll kill the child!’ she cried.

  ‘What of it? We can make another. Come on!’

  ‘Ride on yourself,’ she answered.

  Without a word, he spurred his horse to the gallop and disappeared into the darkness.

  The soldiers he had observed were now coming up to them, dark shapes of horsemen, several of them.

  ‘Is that Erskine?’ said Bothwell’s voice.

  Chapter Eleven

  He had lifted her on to his own horse and was carrying her in the crook of his left arm on his saddle-bow, with his great cloak wrapped right round her, binding her securely to him. The release of that strain on her waist muscles, when she had been sitting sideways on the pillion and twisting round to clasp Erskine’s broad waist, gave her intense relief; and now the warmth of his body was coming through to her so that her blood, which had seemed quite congealed, began to thaw and creep back through her veins. He slipped his reins for a moment into the hand that was holding her, and put his right hand inside the cloak to feel her hands; they were still like bits of ice.

  ‘Put your little frog’s paws in mine for a moment,’ he said, enclosing them both in his grasp, and then begged Her Majesty’s pardon, with a smile that she could hear in his voice.

  ‘It’s too dark for majesty,’ she said drowsily.

  ‘Too cold, you mean.’

  ‘All cats are grey – I mean all queens are cold in the dark.’

  She was surprised to hear his chuckle, for she hardly knew what she was
murmuring; ease, warmth, the sudden, even violent cessation of fear and struggle, and above all of the strain of trying to get and then keep a hold on Darnley, were plunging her into a deep wave of peacefulness that engulfed her like sleep – and for three nights and days now she had had practically no sleep. She was riding for her life, with only this small company of men to protect her from the hosts of her enemies who might even now be in pursuit, yet she had never in her life felt as safe as now, in these fierce arms.

  She fell asleep, though not too deeply to lose consciousness of those arms round her, and the gentle jogging of his horse, which seemed to know by instinct what was required of it and picked its way along that rough track over the moors in the dark without any jolt or jar. For a little time she lost the memory of what lay behind this moment, or expectation of what lay ahead. All her life lay here in this movement together through the bright dark.

  It might have been years later that she heard the clip-clopping of a loose shoe on the horse’s hoof. Bothwell would not exchange horses with any other of the men. The Night Hawk, he said, was the best horse he’d ever had, barring old Corbie, for night work; they were close by Broomhousebanks and nearing their journey’s end at Dunbar, and had well lessened the danger of pursuit in this direction; they could afford to lose ten minutes or so at a little forge he knew close by. It showed a cool nerve but sound reasoning, for he had all along refused to hurry, because of the Queen’s condition, and this shoe was necessary.

  A cluster of little houses showed their shapes solidly before them; the night was fading, the stars paler, the rough ground glimmering with frost. She saw this, and the high chimney of a smithy just before her; she smelt cow-byres, heard the horses’ hoofs clattering on cobbles instead of thudding and squelching on the moor. The Night Hawk stood still beneath her, champed his bit and shook his jingling harness; a man dismounted beside them and hammered loudly on the door, but no one came. Bothwell snatched the lance from him and thrust it through the casement window; that brought a scurry of footsteps and frightened voices within the house, the scraping of bolts drawn back, then a dim gaping face, anxious questions and peremptory answers. She was lifted down and carried into the blacksmith’s forge, for it was warmer there than in his cottage. Bothwell left her while he went to set out a picket. She sat on the shaft of a barrow and watched the blacksmith blow up the fire. The darkness leaped away from the place; some of it ran in long shadows up the walls and ceiling and lurked there till chased away altogether by the flames. The smith was a young man in a leather apron and a shirt that left his arms and neck bare. He had the face of a Roman emperor on a coin she had seen in France. An old man, his father as she saw, came up to her with a horn mug of ale in his hand. His benignant bearded face was that of an apostle, not an emperor.

  ‘The lord told me to bring ye a hot drink,’ he said. ‘This is the best I can do, but wait now till I stir it for ye.’ He thrust an iron bar into the furnace to get red-hot, and stood looking down at her with interest, but it was plain he had no idea who she was. ‘That’s a braw horse of the lord’s,’ he said, ‘but his foot is going a bit tender from carrying the both of ye, and with a loose shoe at this latter end.’

  ‘He’s not hurt it, has he?’

  ‘Ah no, a good night’s rest and feed is all he’ll be needing. There was a French knight in these parts when I was a laddie, used to bathe his horse’s hoofs in wine when they went foot weary.’

  ‘A French knight! Who was he?’

  ‘We called him Beauty round here. He’d some such sounding name and he was a beauty to look at too, always wore white armour and a white scarf round his sleeve in honour of his leddy the Queen of France.’

  ‘Was this in my – my lord the late King’s time?’ She had nearly said ‘my father’s’!

  ‘Aye, but the King was a wee bairn then and the great Duke Albany was Governor, and he left his friend Beauty or Bawty here in charge as Warden of the Marches while he was away a while in France. A sair while it was for Beauty, and well that your horse should be shod before going by the Stony Moor – Battie’s Bog they call it now after him, ever since his day.’

  ‘Did his horse sink in it?’

  ‘It did, for it had too many heavy French trappings on it and a new French curb it didn’t well like. Forbye, he was riding for his life towards Dunbar with all Hume’s men after him in their coats of Kendal-green, and had little heed to spare to his going.’

  He pulled the bar out of the furnace. It was red-hot and he leaned over her, stirring her ale, which hissed furiously and rose higher and higher in a smooth creamy froth. His shadow soared behind him, it blackened all the ceiling. Tink tonk, Tink tonk went his son’s hammer on the red-hot shoe he was reshaping to fit the Night Hawk’s hoof. Shadows were stealing out again, sharp and pointed from behind the spears stacked in a corner. She sipped the warm ale, it was very soothing. The rising shadows as the fire died down again, and the swinging of the hammer, were becoming part of a dream spun by the old man’s gruff, gentle, monotonous voice. Was she really here or only dreaming of something she had heard long ago? Was it she herself, or the French knight, who was fleeing towards Dunbar?

  ‘Thou’rt safe if thou canst reach Dunbar

  Afore the gloaming’s grey.’

  Who was singing that? The old man, as he stirred her ale and told her to wake up now and drink it before she dropped the mug out of her hand.

  ‘Tell me the rest,’ she said.

  Well, he had been out looking the hill, a wee lad minding his father’s herd, and himself saw that furious pursuit of the Warden and his handful of Frenchmen, and the running fight down in the dale along the banks of the Bluidy Burn, as the stream was now known; ‘from Langton Tower they’d come across the Corney Ford, by Pouterlaney and down eastward towards Duns’ Grueldykes, and it was in the bog near old Cramecrook’s house that he was laired, and I saw it all with these two eyes; I heard the shouting and the yelling and the clash of their arms down in the dale, and I ran along the hill just in time to see his horse flounder in the quivering marsh among the white bog-reeds. Eh, but I stood there aghast to see that slaughter down below, and the men of the Merse all riding up round him and his handful of men, and their long spears glinting in the sunlight. It was Tom Trotter cut off his head and held it up by its long long hair, and Sir David Hume of Wedderburn tied it to his saddle-bow and rode off light and gay. They stripped him of his white armour and his braw duds, and the song they sing now tells you he was buried where he fell,

  On Broomhousebanks without a Mass

  Or prayer his soul to save,

  but that last’s not true, for I and my father and brothers buried the puir French bodies that very night as they lay gaping at the moon, buried them there in the bog and said a prayer for them. It was a sair pity for him that he came to this land, for he was a great knight in his own country.

  The leddies of France may wail and mourn,

  May wail and mourn full sair,

  For the bonny Bawty’s long brown locks

  They’ll ne’er see waving mair.’

  Now indeed she was dreaming, for she had heard this story before, but in another language, another voice, old too, but a woman’s, talking French; and suddenly she remembered the anxious tone of her grandmother de Guise, as she warned her that when she left France she would be going to a country far rougher and more savage; and told her of the dreadful fate in some obscure skirmish on the Scottish Border that befell the famous Chevalier Blanc, Seigneur de la Bastie of Dauphiné.

  The crisp delicate old voice echoed strangely here in the blacksmith’s forge where her granddaughter sat on the shaft of a barrow and stared at a stack of spears, perhaps the very same spears that had done de la Bastie to his death.

  ‘I’ll never get hame to my ain dear land

  That lies sweet o’er the sea.’

  It was the old man singing that as he took her mug from her; was it of de la Bastie, or of her own despairing homesickness for France?

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nbsp; Bothwell saw that the tears were running down her face when he came back into the forge.

  ‘You’ll be safe now,’ he told her as they lifted her into his arms again on his horse’s back; ‘once over Batty’s Bog and it’s not far on to Dunbar, and look, the dawn’s coming up.’

  But would they reach Dunbar ‘afore the gloaming’s grey’? And would the Night Hawk with its double burden not flounder in the quivering marsh, where now she could see the glimmer of the white bog-reeds?

  She did not speak her fears, but she could not stop the tears from running down.

  ‘Seven centuries lie buried there,’ she said.

  He thought she was light-headed and tried to give her some vague comfort, but she said again, ‘It lies there in the bog, the grave of the Auld Alliance that Charlemagne made with Scotland. Friendship between Crown and Crown, king and king, people and people, he set that down in his charter, the Golden Bull, seven hundred and seventy-seven years ago – and its climax came with my marriage – the Queen of Scotland to The King of France. But it came too late: the Scots had killed de la Bastie; they hounded my mother to the death, as you said yourself; and now are hounding me.’

  ‘Let them! They’ll not get you.’ His arms tightened round her.

  But still she cried, ‘Is it all over? Will England have her way in the long run and take this country to her own?’

  ‘Only when the child that is in your womb is born to wear both Crowns, and then, and then only, the countries will be one. England will never conquer us; it is we, in your little body here, who will give her a King.’

  They reached Dunbar when it was fully light, but the sun had not shown itself and a thin rain was falling. The North Sea rolled up in grey tossing waves to the little harbour and the blood-red fortress of the castle on its edge. The huge bulk of the Bass Rock out to sea was blurred with rain, its white cliffs faintly shining like a ghost-ship in the mist.