He was drawn, all this while, to the letters in the glass. It was partly for the paradox; the meaning was opaque, and the medium clear. There was satisfaction too, in the knowledge they were written there to while away the time, in a leisurely resort that was a kind of tedium. But the verses that were made in captivity and exile, by the queen of Scots, had a resonance for him that was poignant and particular. She wrote her name in anagram, linked sometimes with her son’s, in brittle slender strokes Hew’s fingertips had traced. And so he had returned, and looked, and looked again, for something of significance, some message meant for him. He did not find one there. At last, he had been cornered by the keen-eyed Doctor Forrester, whose medicinal interventions he was trying to avoid.
‘I see you have been captivated by the riddles there. Alas, though they perplex and occupy the mind, I cannot think the hours spent in their execution the most beneficial exercise. They are too inward-looking to be counted wholesome, to one who is by nature melancholically inclined. You, may I say so, look pale.’
Hew had answered vaguely, reluctant to be drawn, for fear of being sent to be blistered, bathed or bled. It had struck him as singular, when the doctor went on, ‘If I may recommend to you a little light diversion, to relieve your present cares, I think that it would profit you to walk out in the gallery adjoining the bath house, this afternoon, at two o’clock. Yes, indeed, at two o’clock. Now I will bid good day to you. But I do warmly recommend that you should take that walk. Now sir, would you say, is it about to rain?’
Abruptly, he had left. And Hew, who had no doubt he had communicated secretly, had bustled William Phillips through his paces in the bath and had bundled him to bed with a hot bladder in a sack when the old man had suggested he would like to take a walk.
‘Absolutely not. You will catch a cold. The doctor said this morning it was sure to rain.’
‘Piffle. If Frances were here –’ the old man had grumbled.
‘She would say the same.’
The bath house had been closed, while the queen and her ladies took the waters there, but the keeper had allowed him access to the gallery, a long covered walkway looking to the hills. At its far end, he had found a group of children playing trou madame, throwing wooden balls into the holes cut in a board. Hew had watched them awhile, until one of the balls was bowled with such force that it broke from its boundary and rolled to his feet, whereupon he had bent to it, picking it up. The eldest of the girls stepped forward to retrieve it, holding out her hand.
‘Merci, monsieur. Pardonnez-nous.’
‘Je vous en prie, mademoiselle,’ he had answered, with a smile.
She was more than a child, fifteen, perhaps, and wearing a gown of a dark ruffled silk, that marked her at once as a person of rank. The eyes that gazed at him were challenging and curious. He was encouraged by the fact that she spoke to him in French to suppose that she belonged to the household of that queen. She had turned her back on him, returning to the children with a conscious gracefulness that told him she well aware that he still stood and watched. Another child called ‘Bess!’, a light trill of alarm, and Hew saw Bess bend down to her and whisper in her ear. A startled burst of laughter, and the children ran, chattering like birds, headlong down the gallery through an open door, which swung closed behind them. Hew walked across the hallway to the other side, and looked out at the hills, thoughtful for a while. The message had been plain enough, that he was meant to follow them. It could not have been clearer had he been Tam Lin, asleep beneath a tree, and Bess the incarnation of a faerie queen. Once he would have followed, blindly. Now, he waited patiently, as he had been schooled.
And as he had supposed, he had not long to wait, the small door was opened, and there came in Bessie’s place the elegant man he had seen in the baths, with his manicured nails and neat pointed beard, discreetly presentable in his court clothes. The man had approached him. ‘Tell me, monsieur, do you speak French?’
‘Certainly,’ Hew had replied.
‘You are Hew Cullan, come from St Andrews.’
‘That is correct.’
‘I am Claude Nau de la Boisseliere, secretary to the queen of Scots.’
‘Très bien, monsieur. I have read your verses, written in the glass. I admire your Greek. I was under the impression that your name was James.’
‘Jacques is a name I was given as a child. We have something in common, you and I. We are both men of the law.’
Hew had said, he did not practise now.
Nau had smiled at that. ‘And, sir, nor do I. Let me come to the point. The queen is made aware of your name in the register, and is much intrigued at it. She does not often have the chance to discourse with strangers, and would like to speak with you. She is occupied at present, but tomorrow at this hour, I will meet with you here.’
There was no implication that he might refuse, nor did such an answer even cross Hew’s mind. He had simply nodded. ‘I will be there.’
‘Her Majestie will speak with you in French or in Scots, whichever you prefer. Never, though in English, which she does not understand.’
‘They are not so very different, as I thought,’ Hew had answered.
Nau let slip a smile. ‘To my French hearing, also. But she will not have it. Tell to me, monsieur, what is it brings you here?’
‘My master, William Phillips, suffers with the gout.’
‘No, I mean to England.’ Men of all cloths came to Buxton to take the water, and that queen had met with them, in less troubled times. Therefore it was not strange to Nau that Hew had chanced to come there; for one who trusted God, it seemed a stroke of grace, an insubstantial spark to brighten those dark days. Nau had been aware the visit was her last. And Nau had told the queen of Hew’s name in the register, which Sir Francis Walsingham had surely hoped he would.
‘I am an exile, monsieur, fallen from grace with the king,’ Hew had said.
This answer satisfied. Claude Nau had replied, ‘Ah, your country is a cold and thankless one, monsieur. Myself, I had no quarter there.’
And Hew had marked him then, a gentle, civil Frenchman, faithful to his queen.
Chapter 6
La Reine Marie
Tom was writing furiously.
Hew said, ‘You are not thinking straight.’
‘The post will be here soon to pick up the letters.’
‘If you send Mary a by-letter, it will not reach her for weeks.’
By-letters, as they called them, were carried by discretion of the queen’s own posts, and at a heavy price. They mouldered for months in the post masters’ bags, if they were not abandoned somewhere on the road.
‘At least, let me take it to her, if you will not go yourself.’
‘No.’ Phelippes had completed his few lines, blotted them with paper, too peremptory for dust, warming up the wax for the impression of his ring. He had written the direction on it, spiderish and cruel. ‘I have enclosed it in a note I have addressed to Laurence Tomson, who will redirect it, without alerting Walsingham. She will have it in good time.’ He had closed down the expression on his face, to infuriating blankness. Only for a moment had he let it slip. Now, he had recovered, perfectly controlled.
‘You will break her heart, Tom. It is not her fault.’
‘Did I say it was? I never said, nor thought, that any fault was hers. She is my wife. And I will share her sorrow, if she cannot have a child. Yet that is not the end and purpose of her life. She knows I love her well, and will see her when I can. So much she understands. I am grateful to you, Hew, for coming with this news. But you must understand that you should not have come. And now that you are here, I cannot let you go. There are matters here outstanding, pertaining to that queen.’
The second time that Nau had met Hew in the gallery, he had taken him down through the heart of the baths to the underground trance leading back to the hall, descending a short flight of steps. That queen had her chamber on the lower floor, closest to the bath, since she was not well enough to climb
up many stairs. There Nau had paused, and said reassuringly, ‘We are not solemn here. You need not stand on state.’
It had not been true. That queen made her court inside a vaulted tiring chamber, slightly damp and chilly from its closeness to the baths. Perhaps she could not help but replicate the stage on which she faced the world, however far withdrawn from it, so much of her nature, it was in her blood. It struck Hew that her son might say, that he had no more liberty nor pleasure in his life than she had on that day, and that the king himself was not so blessed with people who well loved him, as the cast-off queen. She won their love, with constant show of courtesy and kindness, and through her assumption that it was her due. And there was no question that they were devoted to her. Some of them, who came to her as children, knew no other lives; some had formed alliances, in that closed-off world, like the purpled paroquets in the king’s menagerie, breeding in captivity. Their offspring were the infants playing in the gallery.
She was sitting on a stage, in a high-backed chair, and for those short weeks that she was at the spa, had rigged up in a canopy the cloth of her estate. She wore a gown of dark green velvet, falling to a single, jewel-encrusted slipper of a matching shade. One foot was raised, resting on a stool, and she was swaddled from the waist in a swathe of blankets. Nestled in her lap, in lieu of a hot water bladder, was a little dog. On cushions flanked on either side, her gentlewomen sat, and bowed their heads to stitch and work at bright embroideries, while a maiden sang to her, the young girl from the gallery, in a clear, sweet voice.
Hew knelt as he approached her, thankful for the coolness of the stone, feeling on his face the fierceness of her fire.
‘Hew Cullan, of St Andrews,’ Claude Nau had announced.
That queen had smiled at him. ‘It is some while since we had a visitor from Scotland. It was kind of Claude to think to fetch you here. Do you know, Master Cullan, that we have to do such things by a kind of subterfuge? It is a tedious necessity. But, when it succeeds, it brings with it a consummate and simple kind of pleasure.’
He had wondered then, how much she understood. He came to the conclusion she had been outplayed, a novice in the test of wits she pitched with Francis Walsingham. She could not hope to match the cunning of his game.
She had spoken French. And Hew had been taken with the lightness of her voice, which he had supposed to have been embittered, sad and sour, but which he found was humorous, lively, and affectionate. There was life still in her eyes, inquisitive and keen, and quick to rouse. He sensed that there was laughter sometimes in that place, that whatever she had suffered, still her spirit had survived, and still could be rekindled with a spark.
The girl had completed her song, and had bent down her head to receive that queen’s blessing, which was bestowed with a kiss. The queen had spoken something in her ear, for the girl had nodded, lifting up the little dog, and brought it to the door, where she took it out with her. She did not glance at Hew, but made curtsy to Claude Nau, who had seemed to frown a little.
The queen had smiled at Hew. ‘Come, and sit by us. You may kiss our hand. We do not stand apart, for we are nothing here.’
Her looks and manner gave the lie to everything she said, in her display, a queen. ‘Our little family here has to entertain itself. We do not say, in truth, they are the poorer for it. Did you like Bessie’s song?’
‘Very much, your Grace.’
He had sensed there the slightest of movements from Claude, who stood close at his side, as though something tensed in him. Was it the girl? The queen had said, ‘She has been a comfort to us, since she was a child. She came in to our service when she was four years old. We love her as our own. Yet we must wonder if the time has come when we should look to part with her. Perhaps, she could be found preferment at the English court. What do you think, Monsieur Nau?’
Hew had thought the Frenchman seemed a little hesitant. Something in him strained. ‘I cannot say, your Grace. But I should think that it would grieve her very much to be parted from your company.’
‘As it would grieve our heart to have to part with her. But sometimes, we must set aside our feelings in considering such things, and do what may be best. That, Master Hew, is our responsibility. Bess is the granddaughter, besides, of the countess of Shrewsbury. And as she grows older, we wonder if she does not show a little of her grandmère’s disposition, which makes us, we confess, less inclined to keep her here.’
‘I had not noticed that, your Grace,’ Nau said.
‘No, indeed. You are a man.’ Though the queen’s tone was light, Hew had sensed a deeper nuance in her voice, a clear note of command. He had wondered, for a moment, what it must be like, to have served her through the years of captivity and exile, living in her court, a shadowed sort of life. Her servants doubtless suffered with their own concerns, as they were her satellites closed off from the world.
Nau had brought a stool for Hew, that placed him sitting closest to her swollen foot, gross beneath its cloth. He trained his eyes away from it, with nowhere else to look, fearful he might somehow knock it with his own.
The queen had said, ‘You speak very good French. But would you prefer we spoke Scots?’
He had chosen French. She spoke Scots with a subtle accent, prettily refined, and he found it hard to hear it spoken here, stripped bare of its life.
‘In St Andrews,’ she informed him, ‘we were happy once. And you are a lawyer there?’
‘I was.’ He told her he had given up the law, that he had found no justice there.
‘Justice is a matter we should fight for, should we not? It is sometimes hard to find. If you do not practise law, what is it that you do? A young man of your kind must have certain talents.’
Did she take him for a spy? He had told her of the work he did, in keeping the king’s peace. He had told the stories, of a merchant and a weaver and a dyer who was drowned; of a lawyer who was caught up in a deadly game of chase; of a windmill that was washed up in a shipwreck on a shore, while they had sat and listened, quiet in that place, her maids with open mouths. He had told that queen the story of the tree that she had planted, that had blossomed for the first time after twenty years. She did not recall it; she had planted many trees. But her eyes opened wide at the trick that had been played on it. ‘Mon Dieu!’ She had smiled. ‘We should have liked to see your Master Melville’s face! That was a wicked boy. We trust he has been punished for the ill deeds he has done.’
‘I cannot say, your Grace.’ The thought of home, of things undone, came flooding to his heart, and the queen took note of it. ‘What brings you here, my dear?’
He had told her the truth, or a version of the truth that would not anger Walsingham, since anyone among them might have been his spy. ‘I am in exile, your Grace, and sorely sick at heart, to have lost the faith and favour of my king. False men spoke against me, and won him with their lies.’
She had nodded. ‘Then, we may be sorry for your plight. The king our son is young, and he is ill-advised. We pray to God that he may come to better judgement. Yet there have been times when we were moved to doubt it.’
One of the ladies who sat by her side had cried out at that, ‘Ma Reine, keep strong your heart, and do not say alas, for God will hear your prayers.’
That queen had said simply, ‘Perhaps. Tell to me, monsieur, do you know our son? Have you met with him?’
‘Once or twice, your Grace, when he was still a boy. Before the lord adventurers had placed their hands on him.’
She had shuddered at that. ‘Praise be to God he is free of them now. We pray he will come to know his own mind.’
Hew had said amen to that. Then, she had held hopes still of the king her son, which now were surely dashed. James had signed a pact with Queen Elizabeth, on which, as Phelippes rode to Chartley, the ink had still been wet.
She had spoken then, with a mother’s wistfulness. ‘Tell us what you saw in him. For we should not know him now if he stepped into this chamber.’
‘Fo
r certain, you would know him then, ma Reine,’ her lady had exclaimed, ‘as well as any mother knows her son, and if he saw you in this place then he would kneel and weep, and beg your Grace’s pardon for the hurt that he has done, in sway of those whose minds are evilly disposed to you, who turn his heart against you.’ The queen had smiled at her.
‘God grant him the eyes and the heart to see, now that he is grown.’
‘God,’ the queen corrected, ‘grant him the will. They tell me,’ she had put to Hew, ‘that he is ungracious and unmannerly. Do you find him so?’
He had struggled for a way to answer this. The young king had a restlessness, and could not sit at ease. His mother, by contrast, held a quiet dignity that marked her for a queen, however low she came, and however ill she looked.
‘I have not, your Grace, seen the king at the court, but in such places where he has shown skill as a scholar; he has a sharp and clear, a penetrating mind, and is well-accomplished at his books,’ he had replied at last.
‘Then he is not a fool?’
‘Not by any means.’
‘But with the kind of books that they have filled his head, twere better for his own sake and that of the world, that he had been a dunce. Does he ride, and hunt?’
‘As I understand.’
‘Then he were advised to make most of that liberty, and use it while he can. We have a little picture painted in a glass, but we have not seen another since he was a child. They tell us he is loath to sit still for his likeness. Is he truly such a fidget?’
‘He has, it may be said, a roaming sort of mind.’
She had seen through the flattery. ‘That is a kindness, we think. Does he grow fair? Does he favour his father, Lord Darnley, at all?’
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