A Clash of Spheres

by P. F. Chisholm

  Sir David couldn’t help liking Jonathan Hepburn, he was so respectful, so interested. All the other Grooms of the Chamber, even Sir George Kerr, thought he was mad building a fortress with a tower at Fintry, when fortified houses were now all the fashion.

  “Ay,” he told Hepburn over dinner in his parlour, with his pretty young wife, Marguerite, mercifully silent with her eyes modestly cast down, though her pale skin was looking oddly pink. “See ye, I’m old enough to mind the sights I saw in the Rough Wooing of Henry VIII, when we looked out from our old wooden tower and saw all the land speckled and pecked with fire from the English men at arms.”

  “They didn’t come to Dundee, did they?”

  “No, though they burned Edinburgh, so they did.”

  Hepburn shook his head disapprovingly. Sir David waved his silver spoon.

  “And they might have burned us, they verra well might have, and that was when I swore to do anything in my power to make Fintry strong. I was only a wee lad but I remember it as if it were yesterday, I swore to rebuild Fintry of stone so it could keep out the English.”

  Hepburn nodded. “A noble aim,” he said. “What can be more important than a strong castle where a man can put his feet down and know that it is his, and everything within it?”

  Marguerite suddenly made a coughing noise into her hanky, coughed quite a lot and went quite red, then stood, curtseyed to her husband and retired to the hall to finish her coughing fit. Hepburn didn’t even follow her with his eyes, as most men did.

  “Ay,” said Sir David, his heart swelling. “Ay.”

  Young Hepburn had had many excellent ideas for strengthening what had already been built and improving what was planned. They rode out and checked for more streams undermining the walls and found another unexpected place that needed dealing with, this time by diverting the stream so it fed into the moat.

  Sir David had never known his young wife to be so well-behaved—there were no quarrels, no incomprehensible shouting matches. She was often impertinent and frankly too lively for his nearly sixty-year-old body and she had even protested when he dismissed two of her women when he felt they were plotting against him. But on this occasion she had behaved herself perfectly, almost as if she wasn’t regrettably Flemish and a merchant’s daughter.

  It turned out that young Hepburn was also a Catholic, since his family came from a part of the Holy Roman Empire that had a Catholic prince and so was Catholic. Sir David approved of that: he couldn’t bear the way starveling peasants in homespun and clogs would start haranguing their betters, even the King, on the wickedness of vestments and the importance of salvation through Grace alone. That kind of thing was simply none of their business.

  Sir David had built a little chapel in the main Keep at Fintry, of course, and it gave him immense pleasure to bring young Hepburn proudly to Mass there, where he promptly availed himself of the opportunity to go to confession. Sir David’s priest was elderly, but Hepburn even knew of a Jesuit that was new come over from Spain and introduced Sir David to him.

  And now Hepburn had confided to him that he was worried about Sir David’s wife, the pretty and feather-headed Marguerite. She was certainly quieter, a welcome change.

  Well Sir David knew that Hepburn had no opportunity for dalliance—he was very careful to keep his wife by his side all evening, and at night at Fintry, of course, she was his bedmate. She had much to do with the household during the day and occasionally she couldn’t be found anywhere, but then she would reappear in the dairy or the wet larder while Hepburn might be on quite the other side of the castle, checking the mortressing. And of course she was often with their children, who had two nurses and a tutor for the eldest son who would inherit, in another part of the castle so they wouldn’t disturb Sir David nor get entangled in the building works. He visited them occasionally.

  The new corner tower was nearing completion—young Hepburn had been interested in how Sir David could afford to spend so much on masonry.

  “It’s nae secret,” said Sir David, as they sat on ponies at a couple of miles distance from the castle so they could assess the whole of it. “I’m Groom of the Bedchamber to His Highness and offer him his nightshirt or his wine—not the cap, just his nightshirt—and help him dress in the morning. There’s rarely fewer than ten petitioners at any levée and they all want to pay me.”

  “So there are compensations for having to stay up so late…”

  “Oh ay, all the other grooms do the same, more than me in fact, it’s quite traditional, ye ken.”

  “Of course. We must have traditions.”

  Sir David was glad Hepburn thought that. He had hated the disruption caused by the silly girl who had been briefly Queen and had been very happy to see a male Stuart on the throne again, even if he was under two years old and nominally a Protestant.

  Hepburn smiled a little. “Does the King actually take the nightshirt?”

  “Eh, no,” said Sir David, “we generally can only get him to change it when he’s been sick on his old shirt.”

  “Ah,” said Hepburn, looking away and studying an unremarkable bush very fixedly.

  At last Sir David had asked his wife if she was well, not ill with anything female, perhaps? He knew she wasn’t pregnant again; he would have known at once because she was infallibly sick and cross. She said she was perfectly well but still looked worried.

  And that was when he had started to wonder. Was it happening again? Did this wife too have a lover? He had of course dealt with the young man-at-arms who had looked at her, dealt with him very satisfactorily with a knife in the kidneys. But this was different; he knew no blame had attached to her with the man-at-arms, despite her blond hair. Had she taken another man into her bed, was she unhonest? It was a horrible thing to think of, it made his whole body shiver and go cold; he couldn’t bear to be fooled again.

  Young Hepburn had spotted him looking pensive, boiling internally with fear and rage, and asked him respectfully if he was well—just the same question Sir David had asked her. Sir David had passed it off—a little dyspepsia after a big post-hunting dinner for the Earl of Huntly, that big red-headed man with the bright blue eyes and the slow canny smile, whom the King seemed to like so well, he could do no wrong. Not even knifing the Earl of Moray to death was wrong when done by the Earl of Huntly, it seemed. Hepburn had been all solicitude and recommended a powder to ease the acid stomach, which had been bitter but had worked.

  Sir David thought it was a tragedy that women were such fickle, flighty, unreliable creatures. You couldn’t talk to them about anything interesting like architecture or hunting or even golf. And what if she was untrue?

  “Maybe I could send Marguerite to Fintry,” Sir David wondered. “Perhaps the Court is too wild for her, encourages unsuitable…er…thoughts.”

  Hepburn thought that would be a bad idea—she would be bored at Fintry, and everyone knew where idle hands led. And Sir David had to admit, though not to Hepburn, that there was another problem with that: What if she did in fact have a lover and invited him to Fintry? He didn’t think he could bear that, just the thought made him tremble: his beautiful, safe, beloved castle, violated by the violator of his wife. If she did have a lover. He had no evidence, only a feeling.

  So he watched her covertly, paid one of the Queen’s chamberers to keep an eye on her and suffered silently, wondering. Sometimes he thought she did have a lover, sometimes he was sure she didn’t. Sometimes the tension of not knowing made him sweat as if he had a fever.

  It didn’t help that Hepburn was now not so available, he was deep in plans with the King for a masque—one of the newfangled Court entertainments that encouraged such deeply unsuitable behaviour in the Queen’s women. This one was a Masque of the Seasons with the ladies of the Court risking lungfever in the draperies that almost but not quite hid their nipples. He liked seeing a bit of nipple, did the King, and had been known to take
a suck on them when very drunk.

  Being an engineer meant you could design scenery and toys for masques as well. It was wonderful what the young man could do—he was even designing fireworks, with the help of the Frenchmen with their mysterious slitty-eyed demonic looking assistants.

  But did Marguerite have a lover? Did she? Why would she need one? Sir David tupped her every Friday night, regular as clockwork, whether he felt like it or not because he knew she was prone to attacks of the mother—and the King’s own physician, no less, had advised him that regularly swiving her would help. So why would she take a lover? If she had? Why?

  He had a new Court suit made for himself, green brocade trimmed with gold velvet. It had been a while since he did that and he thought he looked very elegant and manly in it, and young Hepburn had thought so too. Sir David was quite proud that he had kept his figure and only had a little potbelly; he wasn’t going bald at all though his hair was grey; he had the long lantern jaw of the Grahams which always aged well; he was wealthy, though most of his money went on building his castle, of course. All in all, he was as suitable a husband as you could find anywhere in Edinburgh. So why..?

  Hepburn had listened to him friendlywise in the same antechamber where they had met, waiting for the King to finish playing cards with his nobles. Perhaps Sir David had rambled on a bit, for Hepburn had then coughed and asked the extraordinary question “Sir, have you considered buying your wife some new gowns?” Sir David just blinked at him. “Only both her Court dresses are five years old and have been remade twice and relined three times and I couldn’t help overhearing…”

  “Why would I do that?” asked Sir David, genuinely baffled. “They are not worn out yet.”

  Hepburn went into such a paroxysm of coughing that Sir David was quite concerned for him and told him to help himself to the wine.

  “Some firework fumes must have caught in my throat,” wheezed Hepburn. “Of course, it’s a matter for you, but I have found most women are happier for a new gown.”

  Sir David thought about that for a long while because he now valued Hepburn’s opinion and normally took his advice—but in this case, he decided, Hepburn was wrong. Why should he waste money on Court gowns for his wife when she had two perfectly good ones, plus everyday kirtles for when she was not on show? There was nothing at all wrong with the old gowns, except they were not designed in the foolish style with the Spanish farthingale that made women look as if they were standing in a barrel. In any case he had the corner tower to complete which was taking all his ready cash but would last for generations.

  And then something very odd happened. The King suddenly caught sight of Marguerite in her oldest gown and gave her a twelve-yard dresslength of rose-coloured velvet, with six yards of white damask to make her a new gown that would also do for the Masque of the Seasons as Spring. Marguerite was ecstatic.

  “Oh, the King, he is so kind,” she bubbled to her husband, while she was brushing her beautiful golden hair that evening, something he normally enjoyed watching. “He saw I have nossing to wear…”

  “Well, my dear, you do have your perfectly respectable cramoisie damask…”

  “…and pow! Just like that, he gives me beautiful velvet and say, I must be sure and show him when the Queen’s tailor has finished it. I will have it trimmed with freshwater pearls which are not at all expensive, Sir David, and perhaps some mother of pearl…” And so she went happily into a long explanation of styles which Sir David found painful in the extreme although he said “Yes dear” every so often.

  It was painful because he had a thought about a possibility so outrageous he couldn’t quite believe he was thinking it at all…And yet Henry VIII of England had scattered his seed with abandon, and hadn’t Maria, James’ foolish mother, been touched with scandal? The disgusting English Queen had been tupped by everybody at her Court, including her horsemaster and a hunchback. It was a fault of royal personages: they could, so they did. Yet surely James…preferred men.

  Sir David had witnessed many horrible and disgusting things while serving the King as Groom, like the times when the painfully young and spotty King and the corrupt French Duc D’Aubigny had gone to bed together like a married couple. Sir David did his best never to think about it, just as he did his best never to think about Lord Spynie’s young pages, who often had red eyes and a reluctance to sit after a party.

  But then the King seemed to have grown out of it and had a Queen now and as far as anyone could tell had consummated the marriage. And surely a girl as beautiful as Marguerite might tempt even a God-rotted sodomite.

  When Sir David consulted Hepburn on the matter, all he would say was that he was sure Marguerite was honest, that he had never seen the King make any improper suggestions to her and he was sure that the matter of the dresslength of rose velvet and the six yards of white damask was just the well-known and foolish generosity of His Highness.

  Yet the thought came between Sir David and his food, between Sir David and his sleep. When he closed his eyes, he saw the King kissing Marguerite, fondling her breasts with his greasy dirty hands, sweating between her legs…It turned his stomach to lead and made him feel desperate because even if he sent her home to Fintry, who knew what she might get up to, and if he kept her here at Court…Well, he couldn’t watch her all the time. The chamberer hadn’t reported anything but perhaps she had been rebought by someone with longer pockets than his…

  He asked Hepburn again and saw Hepburn’s eyes become opaque.

  “Sir,” he said, “I can but do my best, but if a woman of the Court is being pursued by the King, there is not a lot she can do about it.”

  And that was even worse. It had honestly not occurred to him that she might not be willing (though she had been happy about the gown, women were flighty), that James might be using his Kingship in so ugly a way. To be honest, he wouldn’t put anything past the man since he was so deep-dyed in the sin of sodomy and, worse still, a Protestant.

  It was only when he went home to Fintry on his weeks off and could see the tower and the walls that he felt a little better.

  And then James began one of his fits of economising and started talking about reducing the number of his Grooms from eight to six.

  It was obvious. The King would send Sir David home to Fintry, where he would not be able to do any more building without the daily influx of shillings and crowns from hopeful petitioners. And Marguerite would be defenceless in the King’s power.

  December 1592

  Carey took off his jack with the help of his servant, Hughie Tyndale, who made faces at what the jack was plastered with. “Don’t clean it yourself,” Carey said. “Get Young Hutchin to do it if you can find him.” Underneath was a worn old hunting green doublet trimmed with velvet that was just about respectable enough for Bessie’s. He also left his fighting boots with Hughie, who was getting quite good at cleaning off horrible things.

  He didn’t have another pair of long boots, but he had a pair of shoes which could cope with the mud, pulled them on, put a new tall-crowned hat on his head and walked quickly down the covered way to Bessie’s. He was starving, and Bessie and her wife had set up their usual glorious breakfast for the men of the guard.

  And at least he could eat the bacon now. He felt the healed gap in his back teeth with his tongue and shuddered. God, he had felt so ill.

  He was having an argument with Sim’s Will about which would win in a fight, two rats or a badger, when Bessie’s wife, Nancy, sat herself down next to him in the common room and refilled his leather jack for him. In London he would have had his own pewter tankard behind the bar but Bessie didn’t allow any such things in her house on account of the fact that they got damaged when you hit people with them—unlike leather jacks which weren’t quite so bendable or expensive. Carey felt that reflected the irrationality of women.

  He tipped his hat to her since she had curtseyed first before she sat down an
d raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  “There’s something I heard about ye, Deputy Warden,” she said, “that there’s been two letters come fra the Queen for ye. Have ye seen either one?”

  He sat up at once. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Ay well, one came wi’ the regular postbag from Newcastle the day before yesterday.”

  “Did it now?”

  “Ay, and there’s another package for ye at Thomas the Merchant, but he’ll tell ye about that as he wants the shilling.”

  “And the other letter? Who’s got it?”

  “Ay well, all the post is supposed to go to the Warden, but it often gets stopped by Lowther.”

  Carey smiled at her and lifted his ale in toast.

  Once his belly was full of bacon, sausage, egg, black pudding, mushrooms, fried apple, and some interesting fried roots from New Spain via Newcastle, he felt quite sleepy but knew better than to take a nap yet. So he called Nixon to back him and strode on down into the town to the more respectable English Street, where Thomas the Merchant had his quite impressive three-storey house with carved beam-ends and smart saffron-yellow paint.

  Thomas the Merchant was in front of the house talking to the Carlisle steward.

  “I’ll take the kine without brands that ye dinna want to slaughter, of course, and what about the horses?”

  “We’re keeping those. We always need more horses.”

  “Ay well, I’ll come up and look at the beasts later…” That was when Thomas the Merchant spotted Carey and his face took on its normal wary expression.

  “Ay, Deputy Warden, can I help ye?”

  “You can,” said Carey, doing his best not to beam at Thomas. “I heard tell you had a letter for me.”

  Thomas nodded and led Carey inside to his hall, where the plate was locked tight into two large cupboards chained to the wall. There he gave Carey a large official-looking packet stitched into double thickness canvas and addressed in old-fashioned Secretary hand “to the Deputy Warden of the West March, Sr Rbt Carey, Carlisle Castle.”