Queen & Country

by Shirley McKay

  ‘You can sell me your horse,’ the mercer answered back.

  Hew hesitated then. He caught sight the innkeeper shaking his head, and knew that if he did, he could not have another one. With regret, he said. ‘I cannot, sir. I would, but I must go at once to the court.’

  ‘For certain, sir, you must. Why should it be otherwise? For no doubt this whole city has to go to court today. We should be thankful, I doubt, ye rebuff us politely, and do not kick us down, to crawl off in the dust,’ the mercer said to that.

  The young boy whispered urgently, ‘Whist, will you, Faither, we should.’

  The keeper shook his head to watch them straggle off, hampered by their load of trinkets, jingling in the dust, a wry, discordant trail. ‘That man has been coming here for nigh on twenty years. I count him as a friend. God speed him safely home. He will not come again.’

  ‘Then why, in God’s name, did you treat him so harshly?’ asked Hew.

  ‘Because, when I woke up this morning, I found this was pinned up on my door. “A letter to be borne abroad, by traitors harboured here”.’

  The innkeeper opened his hand and showed Hew a small piece of paper crushed in his palm. Wrapped up inside was a noose, made from a thin cord of hemp. On the paper was written a verse.

  ‘To jezebel that English whore

  Receive this Scottish chain

  As presage of her great malheur

  For murthering of our queen.’

  ‘I cannot have them think I let my rooms to Englishmen. Or else, I am undone.’

  Chapter 15

  The Lion’s Den

  The king was in the deer park of the Douglas family, at their castle at Dalkeith. In mourning clothes, in Lent, his band of men and dogs were sorely out of place. His servants warned his Grace, for he had grown beyond the bairn who might have been refused. The keeper of the Douglas game was grieved to see his startled does drop out their lifeless fawns. ‘All things have their season, sire.’

  James could not be swayed. He knew that this perverse anomaly of men, cloaking nature’s greenery in uncouth swathes of black, was moving to the time. What was that compared to the killing of a queen, where God’s rule was reversed, and natural law sent spinning, burled upon its head? Dark, portentous times, when storm clouds would eclipse the cold conflicted skies, and split them from the earth, overturning nature by those cruel events.

  His people would have frowned, to see him at the hunt. They would not have understood. For that reason, he had left the King’s Park, and come to Dalkeith, where the walls were high, and the walks obscured. He put on sombre dress, reflective of the mood, and a convenient mask, hiding from the world. Mourning clothes were conscious, clever in their kind; the wearer wore his heart pinned upon his sleeve, or as he preferred it, buried in his cloak. Those who were the closest to him did not know his mind. It was not want of purpose that drove James to the field. It was not distraction from affairs at hand. It was not that he yearned for the taste of fresh meat, not that he had wearied, so early on in Lent, of the fish and fowl his cunning cooks prepared for him. Nor was it his intent to deplete the Douglas stock, which he would replenish gladly from his own. But the sharp morning air, the crisp wind of March, the sliver of bone and the necklet of blood, that circled the throat of the delicate hind, the droplets of dew on its gingerline hair, all of those cooled and stilled in his mind the tremble of passion, and power and excitement, the leaping and flux of his own beating heart. An exaltation clarified, and helped to hold his mind in that place of balance where his course was clear, where he kept his nerve.

  ‘Enough,’ he told the gamekeeper. ‘And sin it is the Lent, this deer shall feed the dogs.’ He walked back to the house, his carnage left behind.

  At Dalkeith, he had assembled with a small band of men. Maitland, the foremost in his government, secretar and chancellor, rarely left his side at this exacting time. There was set up a council chamber in the hall of the castle, where the lords could meet, and where Maitland read and attended to the business of the court. Beyond that were more private chambers, reserved for the use of the king, for what purpose could console him in his present grief. Here the king retired, to rest and change his clothes, which were a little spotted from the bleeding harts. On an ordinary day, he would not have cared. But he had lately learned, from a lady at the court, that the kings of France wore purple mourning dress, ‘pour encourager les pauvres, your Grace. A king should be solemn; he should not be sad.’ He was struck by the idea to adopt it as his own, and his new velvet suit had only just arrived. He trusted it would lift him high above the crowd, and send a flutter of dismay to the English Queen Elizabeth.

  Maitland came in, with papers in his hand, and if he was disturbed by the king’s display of plumage, he was practised not to show it. ‘We maun answer, your Grace, to the English queen’s ambassadors, whether we will meet with them at Berwick. As I contend, we must.’

  ‘We must, of course,’ the king agreed. ‘Not yet. This smart is too sore, too poignant and too raw to us. Tell them, we are thrawn by it, that we are compelled to settle the unrest it stirs up in our people, who marvel that a queen and mother of this house, thrown upon the mercy of a foreign state, should be captive there, and murdered by its prince, against the laws of nature, and of hospitality. Say, willing though we are to hear Elizabeth’s excuse – for none shall be condemned, by us, without a proper trial – we cannot read her letter, at the present time. Nor, in good conscience, can we see her ambassadors, or allow them to pass, where we cannot vouch for safety of their lives.’

  ‘Do I dare to ask,’ the chancellor enquired, ‘how long you intend to refuse the queen her letters?’

  ‘As long as shall seem strange to her, and good enough to us. An envoy will be sent to the border in due course. But we shall not be quick to come to terms. The people would resent it, for one. And while their hot blood cools, her Grace shall have more time to think upon her fault, and how she may amend her broken trust with us,’ the king replied, aloof. He was at that moment in complete control.

  ‘Very good, your Grace.’ Maitland hesitated. ‘They tell me that the man is here, you were keen to see. I have the picture, too, sent down to us from Holyrood. But, sire, I cannot help but fear you think too much of it. It is a thriftless, trifling thing, of no import or consequence. Ye mauna be distracted by it, at this present time.’

  James said, ‘Believe me, we would not. But it is a thing that creeps into our mind, and causes the distraction there. And, as I believe, it cannot be assuaged, until the cause is found, and forcibly removed. You tell me, tis of no account. And yet, you cannot give me any explanation for it, to dispel the doubt. Your investigations, all of them, are worthless in this case, and your pleas are trumperous.’

  Maitland said uneasily. ‘We have tried, your Grace.’

  ‘I did not say you had not tried. I said that you had failed. Wherefore, I have called a man who has a searching intellect, more acute than yours. Please me. Show him in.’

  Hew was shown at last into the presence of the king. He had waited for three hours at the castle at Dalkeith, before he was admitted there. At the close of each hour, he was taken further in, and allowed to come a little closer to that place where he would be received if the king allowed him audience. It did not make a difference that he had been called.

  He understood, of course, that this was more than he deserved. It was nothing untoward, and was not meant as an expression of the king’s displeasure at his time away. It was not, in fact, to do with Hew at all, but simply the reflection, rather than reminder, that he was there to await the king’s will, outranking any pleasure of his own. He was left to stand, and no one spoke to him, after he had passed through every level of obstruction, and cohort of defence, between him and his goal.

  At the West Bow inn, he had dreamt, the night before, of a trance of doors, through which he had passed, endlessly and on, each one with a lock in which a key had turned, and each key had turned with a single sound that he ha
d strained to hear, like a beetle’s click that moving further off came quieter and quieter, until the key clicked soundlessly, but left an echo still, when all the doors were closed, and all the beetles gone. And where he came at last, he had found the king, standing on a box. The king had been a puppet, worked by Francis Walsingham.

  This dream came back to him, so vivid in its shape as he knelt down to his lord, that he was grateful for the floor to swallow up his smile. He waited for the king to speak, to beckon and to welcome him, to offer him the wafting air around his hand to kiss, or to call in the guard, to have him clapped in irons. What happened next was none of those things. For it was Maitland who spoke. ‘Mind me, your Grace, who is this man?’

  The chancellor had come to power after James had freed himself from the lord enterprisers, and from Gowrie’s governance. Most of the court was under his control; he would not lose his grip, nor permit a danger to pass by undetected, at this taxing time. The council was at best an uneasy coalition, on the brink of fracture; now it had been driven to the brittle edge. Maitland kept the whole intact, never lax or absent, so that nothing was put past without his seal or ken. It had brought him to exhaustion, wrung out in the interests of his country and his king. Then it was little wonder he suspected Hew.

  ‘Your Grace maun have patience wi’ me. I was not in office when this man defected. I have no understanding, what were his crimes.’

  ‘He committed no crime. It was a misunderstanding. He was indicted on a false charge brought by John Colville. It was not maliciously meant. Since I have pardoned Colville, I have pardoned those lords who overstepped their mark to assist the earl of Gowrie, I have pardoned the irksome and unruly presbyters, and I have pardoned Hew. We have moved on,’ the king said, and Hew, as he knelt on the cold of the stone, found his heart leapt at the words.

  ‘Not without a trial,’ Maitland insisted. ‘None has been restored, without examination. He must go to trial. Or, at least, must give an account of himself, before the Privy Council.’

  The king dismissed this, with a wave of his hand. ‘Aye, I shall consider it, at some other time. My lord, and I thank you, you must go home. I fear you will fall ill for lack of rest. Go, and I pray you, good Maitland. I will do nothing, you maun ken, without your counsel. Our minds are alike, be assured.’

  ‘As your Grace commands. I will wait without, for I shall not leave your side.’ Maitland, as he bowed, turned his eye to Hew, critical and sceptical. ‘Tell me, sir, were you one of those who followed after Ruthven, or one of those who threatened the episcopacy?’

  ‘He was neither,’ smiled the king. ‘He is a lone adventurer, who follows his own heart, and is no one’s man. He has shown himself full of spirit and courage. He has a knack of finding things out. And I mistook for treachery, what was the perplexity of a searching mind.’

  Maitland said dryly, ‘I look forward with some pleasure to hearing his adventures, in the council chamber. Where, I have no doubt, he will illuminate us all.’

  As the chancellor departed, James regarded Hew, kneeling on the floor, several feet in front of him.

  ‘Well. Here you are,’ he said. Will you not rise up, and let me see your face. You mauna mind Maitland. He is perplexed, at this vexing time. As to whether you will go to face him at your trial, that must be a question for another day. I have something first that I would have you do. I ken no other man that shows himself as fit for it.’

  The king had grown up from the bairn that Hew had known before. He had seen him last, a scared boy of sixteen by the lion house at Holyrood, cowering from the lords who harried him like crows. Now he sat in the house they had called ‘the Lion’s Den’, when Morton had command, strategy, not cowardice, marking his retreat. He had grown through the years of frustration and rebellion to a shrewd, patient prince. He was nervous, slight, fair and slender still. Yet this was a young man on the verge of flight. The nervousness in him was no longer fear, but the pulsing of excitement. In three or four months’ time, he would come to his majority. The queen of Scots was dead. He was owed a debt of conscience by Elizabeth; he saw the world ahead, tantalising, glinting, just beyond his grasp. If he kept his nerve, his confidence, and waited, it would come to him.

  ‘I am glad to see you here,’ he said. ‘For you have the wit to solve a certain matter, troubling to my mind. Run boy,’ he told a little page, who waited on his word, ‘and bid the Lord Chancellor send in the picture.’

  ‘What picture, your Grace?’ Hew felt a shiver of fear. He could not have explained it. This was a calmer, more confident king, whose demeanour did not cause alarm.

  ‘You shall see it, when it comes. Tell me, sir, is it not strange, that a queen take the life of an anointed monarch, trusted to her care?’ the king turned back to him. ‘They tell me, she will plead her innocence in this, that though she signed the warrant leading to the death, her council went against her, for it was not meant to be acted on presumptuously; it was but an assurance, to secure herself. So it is reported, for I have not found the time to attend to her ambassadors, to hear in her own words, how she might defend the singular unkindness of this wicked crime. You were in England. What have you heard? This wound is fresh to me. They telt me, they severed her neck, at the blow of that English queen’s axe. Can it really be so?’

  Hew could not meet his eye. ‘I do not know, your Grace. It grieves my heart, to think it. When I was in England, I met with her Grace.’

  ‘You met with Queen Elizabeth?’

  The king’s interpretation showed his true intent, where his thoughts had strayed, to that greater prize. And Hew did not know how to answer him.

  ‘Not the Queen Elizabeth.’ He thought, but could not say, I could not meet Elizabeth, for she moves in such spheres so far above my own – and yours – that I should be eclipsed by her, or dazzled by her sun, for such a frank confession would not sit well with the king. Hew had once caught a glimpse of the queen of England’s barge, sedate and gilded paragon, gliding down the Thames, and that was bright enough. ‘I was never,’ he excused himself, ‘at the English court.’

  ‘But you served her, did you not, in the Netherlands? We had despatches sent, from her Secretary Walsingham. Will you tell me now, you never met with him?’ James demanded then.

  This was awkward too. But Hew could answer truthfully. ‘I met with Frances Walsingham. He did not like me much.’

  His answer pleased the king. ‘Shall I confess a secret to you? Nor does he like me. Then we shall bask together, in the glare of his displeasure, for we do not like him. So. You did not meet Elizabeth. Who else did you meet?’

  ‘Your Grace . . . the queen of Scots.’ Hew stumbled with the words. He could not think how to style the dead queen to her son. He had begun to say, to mean, ‘Your Grace’s lady mother,’ when he realised that he could not call her that, that mother was too rude, too intimate a word, to say to such a king, of someone he had never loved, and barely ever met. He was twenty years old. His bairnly affections had grown, to a young man’s indifference. His callousness had reached its prime; he had not been so hard before, nor would be again.

  It was reckless, he knew. The king did not want to hear his mother’s name, to fill the empty letters with her flesh and blood, not kenning her before, would want it all the less, now that she was dead. But Hew could not forget the shadow on her face, the shape of her voice as she spoke of her son. And James, despite himself, was readily enthralled, with a kind of horror, easily drawn in. ‘Tell me.’ All men follow ghosts, when they do not want to see, when they do not want to hear the whisper of their breath. They cannot help themselves. Hew felt that queen’s hand, puffy, soft, on his. He felt upon his head the blessing she bestowed on him.

  ‘It was at a place called Buckstanes, where folk go to take the waters. She had come there for her health. My employer, William Phillips, was afflicted with a palsy, and he required of me to take him to the baths. The guest house there belongs to the earl of Shrewsbury, who at that time had the keeping of her. I m
et her at the bath. She saw my name in the book, and asked to speak with me.’

  ‘And I suppose,’ James scowled, ‘she made complaint to you. For what she wrote to us, was fulsome in complaint. Did she complain of me?’

  ‘No, your Grace.’ Hew was at a loss what to tell the king. He could not say, ‘For when I saw her there, she still had hopes of you.’ There seemed no tactful answer to the question. He answered therefore with another kind of truth. ‘She asked after the health of your Grace. If you were well, and grew strong. She said she had your picture in a glass, but it was very old, and she would like another.’

  ‘Did she say that?’ James reflected, ‘That is oddly pertinent. We had pictures made last year. As I believe, she asked for a copy through the French ambassador. I do not recall if one was ever sent. We had one of her. It was done some years ago, when I was a bairn. But no one seems to ken now where it might be kept. Put away, perhaps.’

  His cool indifference to it moved Hew to remark, ‘My mother died when I was six. I have no picture of her.’ He could see that queen still, vivid in his mind.

  James raised an eyebrow. ‘So?’

  ‘They say my sister Meg is the living image of her.’

  ‘Well, then.’ James did not say, I do not care about your mother, or your living sister. For he did not have to. ‘This is better than I thought. Since you have seen the queen, more recently than most who are present at the court, you can offer an opinion on a matter of contention.’

  He beckoned to his page, who had returned with a packet tied round with string. ‘This is how it came to us. Take it up, and look. It was sealed with a small lump of wax, that bore no impression, and was broken off. All else about it was exactly as you see.’

  Hew turned the packet over in his hands. A smudge of the wax remained still, daubed like a thumb prick of blood. Besides that, the paper was clean. It bore the direction, in a clear neat hand, ‘To his mjty the king, in hansell for this good new year’.