‘He cannot hear,’ said Hew, ‘so he will not heed you when you rail at him. And he cannot speak, so he will not cheek you, like your own boys do. He cannot trim a brush, or wash a board with size. He does not ken at all, how to grind the colours to make into paint. But, he can draw.’
He gave Vanson the books with the drawings and signs, and Vanson turned the pages, looking through the drafts. He was quiet for a moment. Then he answered. ‘So. Drawing is a start.’ He looked at Susanna, and smiled. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think,’ Susanna said, ‘that he must be hungry. Boys are always hungry. And, since our dinner is done, he has come at an opportune time.’
Hew went to Heriot’s shop, to collect his wedding ring. And Heriot told to him the story he had heard, about a seeker after gold who was taken by the devil from a mine at Largo Law. It seemed Sir Andrew’s tenant had not been the only man that Pieter Kemp had fleeced, for there were several more. ‘The devil claims his ain, then, after all,’ Geordie said.
‘I should have heard you, then,’ said Hew, ‘and spared myself a trail.’
He put the ring in its pouch in his pocket to keep safe. They had come no closer to the calling of the banns, for he had made no progress at all in finding out the source of the king’s pleated picture. He made extensive enquiries, at Holyrood and Canongate, but to no avail. And he was forced to acknowledge that Maitland had been right, the council had already made a searching inquisition, there was no stone in that city that had not been overturned. It irked him when he found a dead end to each path, not willing to admit his failure to the king. He felt he had to prove himself, his faith and trust, to James, and that he owed a debt of some sort to that queen, that he could not explain. He was certain, in his heart, that the answer lay with Bronckhorst. But Bronckhorst had left Scotland years before, and all trail of him had long grown cold. At least, the picture had not caused the death of Pieter Kemp, in any crucial sense.
For Frances’ sake, he was less alarmed. The king had moved towards a concord with Elizabeth, and Andrew Wood believed it likely they would come to terms. Whatever Hew felt privately about the crownar now, he was a useful source of information, from both the Scottish and the English courts. It seemed likely that the law would be relaxed in time, as the people’s heat and temper simmered down, and that he and Frances would be let to live in peace. And Frances, if not welcomed, had at least been tolerated, when she went to town. St Andrews had relaxed, he thought, the fierceness of its ministry, had mellowed in the plague. Perhaps the town would let, and leave the lovers be? So he had hoped and thought, as he returned back home. So did he misjudge the temper of that Kirk.
Chapter 22
Letters Home
At the chapel of St Leonard’s in St Andrews, the principal arose, uneasily, from prayer that brought his troubled mind as little resolution as if he had said bah to it, and spent the hour in bed. As the students filed before him, to begin upon their day in a muddled morning haar, he pushed past them to waylay the regent Robert Black, before he opened up his Aristotle. ‘I wanted to ask you,’ he said, ‘whether you were free to take the prayers tonight. There is, you see, an extraordinary meeting this evening of the kirk session, that I am compelled to attend.’
Robert said, of course. The implication that he might not have been free, to attend to an event that circumscribed his waking life, was so preposterous he felt there must be something more his principal had meant by it, and that it was a cloak, for what he had to say to him. And so he waited, meekly there, in certain fear and hope the principal would wrestle out the substance of a closer confidence. His patience was rewarded when the master said, ‘The truth is, if I could, I would rather stay, for the matter is a case that is vexing to me. It concerns the household of a friend of yours, Hew Cullan, up at Kenly Green. You may have heard, or not, that he is home again. That young man courts trouble as a papist courts controversy.’
‘I heard that he was home. I have not seen him yet. What has he done now?’ asked Robert Black.
‘I do not have the details, yet, to hand. But it concerns, it seems a case of fornication, that is far from straight, and marriage of a sort, not entirely regular, and an errant stranger, harboured in his house. I have to say, I do not like it much. He is a contentious soul, and his wrangling in the past has brought a trouble here, I would not well contend with in the college. And yet, I do confess, there is some goodness in him. Do you recall that boy, the wry unruly student we expelled from here?’
‘Roger,’ Robert said.
‘Aye, twas Roger Cunningham. We all were quite convicted that he was a hopeless case, but Hew kept faith with him, and took him to St Salvator’s, and now, I understand, his honour is restored. Giles Locke thinks the world of him. It was the elder brother had us all deceived. You heard how he turned out? And butter would not melt, in that sly limmar’s mouth, sleek fish as he was. Hew is quite a searching kind of man, to flush a matter out, and I am inclined to trust his better judgement. My worry is, you see, that his involvement in this case will bring us in dispute, and worse, to disrepute, in kirk and university. Then will Andro Melville wag his lofty brow at us, and say that we are wanting in our own morality.’
‘But surely,’ Robert said, ‘it is matter for the parish, not the college. Hew Cullan is no longer an assistant here.’
The principal was gratified. ‘You are right, of course. And I maun thank you, Robert, that you bring it to my mind. He shall be treated as a member of this kirk, and not of our community, which will free my judgement from preferential prejudice. Thank you for your help.’
It occurred to Robert Black that he might send a word to Hew, in order to prepare him for unpleasantness to come. On balance, he decided, he would rather not. When Hew required his help, he sought it soon enough, and not without a cost of inconvenience to him. Robert was a man who liked a quiet life. He had stayed a regent there for many happy terms, without aspiring ever to progress to a professor, and he believed that stagnant waters should be left unstirred.
At six o’clock, the principal left St Leonard’s college for the Holy Trinity. In the absence of its own incumbent, he was called to moderate the session of the elders of the parish kirk. It was not a role that he had entered warmly, or with relish. The kirk session had not met through the months of plague. When the threat died down, the court had met sporadically, and without conviction. Perhaps the people who survived were too afflicted to offend, or perhaps the session felt they had been scourged enough, by the effects of the plague. Their own chastisements were eclipsed and all but made superfluous, trumped in scale by God’s. They were hindered, too, by the lack of a minister. The bishop had stepped in, but found himself at odds, and often excommunicated by the vengeful presbyters. The principal lost track of whether Patrick Adamson was lately out or in. Whatever stage the bishop reached, in favour or disgrace, did not deflect him from his preaching in the kirk. But it did deter some of his flock, who drifted away to hear Andrew Melville, even though he had not been ordained. The fabric showed signs of a fracture. To keep the kirk whole, and to restore morale and spirit in the gloomy town, the elders of the kirk had endeavoured to restore those lively entertainments which had been the highlight of the Sunday service, the cuckstool and the jougs and the parading there of penitents, and the fleshly celebration of the people’s sins. The St Leonard’s principal did not care for that. He had no will to see a lassie shiver in her shift, all for the sake of a man she had kissed. The people would have said, he looked down his nose; but he was better suited to his dead philosophy than to the rough and rumpus of a living kirk.
Therefore, he had qualms when he came to Holy Trinity, where the elders met. The case they put before him was delicate and strange and not at all what he had been expecting. He tried, in vain, to cite Leviticus, ‘And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you, shall be as one of yourselves, and thou shalt love him as thyself.’ Leviticus had opened up Pandora’
s Box of tricks. And he could not deny that action must be taken. They could not allow such flagrant immorality to go unobserved.
‘They are living openly, and as man and wife,’ an elder said.
‘But,’ he countered feebly, ‘how can we sure the act has taken place?’
The man to his right, a broad-shouldered baxter, leant over to him kindly, and whispered in his ear, respectful of his feelings as the sort of clergyman who had spent his whole life sheltered in a college. He blinked at the words. ‘Ah, then, I see. Does she indeed. Then I approve of it, quite.’
A summons was drawn up, and the principal agreed, heavy in his heart, that he would go himself, to serve it in the place complicit in offence. The house at Kenly Green was within his parish boundaries, and all of its inhabitants fell under his own charge.
Hew, not expecting this visit from the master of the college that was close and dear to him, received him well and cordially. He allowed the man to say what he had to say, without attempting to distract him, or to put up a defence. And when, at the last, the principal concluded, ‘And there it is. I must say, I am sorry for it. But it can’t be helped.’ Hew acceded quietly, accepting the summons that was in the master’s hand.
When the man had gone, Hew turned the letter over in his hand. He sat thoughtful a moment. When resolution came, he did not call to Frances, who had gone upstairs, nor indeed to Meg, but left the house, and walked, by the garden walls, to the Kenly stable, where his horse was kept. There, he found Robert Lachlan talking with the groom. And he served Robert Lachlan with the summons from the kirk, to compear before the session on the first of May, where he stood accused, of carnal conversation with the servant, Bella Frew.
Canny Bett, in the kitchen, scolded the serving maid. ‘You silly bisum, Bella, why would ye tell them that ye were with child?’
Bella answered, with a flounce. ‘Mebbe, I am.’
‘You cannot ken that yet.’
‘Aye, mebbe not. But, if I am not, I will be in time. The kirk will not hurt me for it, if I am with bairn. And he will have to marry me.’
‘He is marrit now, you silly, silly loun.’
Canny Bett had witnessed, when Robert married Maude, the keeper of the harbour inn, before they left for Ghent. There, he had entrusted her to the Flemish nuns. But only Hew knew that.
‘Aye, to a nun. It was never consummated.’
‘He telt you that? Then you are dafter, Bella, even than I thought.’
But Bella was not daft.
Robert Lachlan came to the kirk of Holy Trinity, to compear before the session, as the court required, on the 1st of May. Some among the council were surprised to see him there. Others were dismayed. And one or two were quickened to exaggerated pride and pleasure to have caught so fierce and stout a fish, in their hopeful net.
Robert was a stranger there. And as a stranger to the parish, of a rough demeanour and a tendency to drink, and to corrupt the lassies, powerless to his charms, some had held the hope their writ would see him off, without he had to linger there, to darken their bright kirk. The hammer in the spoke had been Bella Frew, who if she had a bairn, would look to some support. And whatever sustenance could not be squeezed from him, would default on them.
The sight of this soldier, captive like Samson, shorn in their midst, caused the fainter-hearted there a frisson of alarm, and the braggardly, a pride that blew out in a blast. They could not conceive that they had caught him quietly.
Some of them, indeed, were put out to discover that he had not come alone, but had brought a friend to speak in his defence. It was not usual for a man to come before the session with his lawyer with him. ‘Do ye think,’ one of the elders had put to him, ‘you will hae an advocate, in your final judgement, when you come to God? When you greet and tremble, on your knees before him, to quimper in the dust? Believe me, you will not.’
But Hew had put the case. Since Robert Lachlan was a stranger to the parish, he required a person of estate to vouch for his good character. Such a one was he. Secondly, he refuted, absolutely, the accusation of adultery, that was put to him. The session kent full well that Robert Lachlan had a wife, for he had married in that parish, five years before, Maude Benet of the harbour inn. Unless he could show proof to them that the wife was dead, he was an adulter, and a villain therefore of a heinous kind. Hew bore witness that the premise to this charge was false, with what appeared to be an extraordinary defence. Robert Lachlan’s wife had left him on his wedding night, and gone to be a nun.
The elders were blawn out at this, deflated of their wind. ‘Dear me,’ one consoled, ‘a most unhappy man.’
Robert Lachlan hung his head, and did not say a word.
At last, when Hew concluded making his defence, and bumbaized and bemused them with piercing points of law, they were agreed, that in view of the delinquent’s plain and abject penitence, and Bella’s parlous state, the charge would be reduced, to the lesser one of anti-nuptial fornication, and the couple would be married, after standing up on seven separate Sundays, repenting, at the kirk. This sentence Robert Lachlan took upon himself with so calm a meekness it drove many from their pleasure at it to a silent fear, and those who saw him standing, naked in his shirt, thoughtful as the lion chained up in its stall, did not stop to stare, but hurried past uneasily. Bella, for her part, stood by him bold and proud, and not a bit abashed.
Robert Lachlan’s answer had astonished Hew, for never had he known him turn off from a challenge or resist a fight. ‘What will you do?’ he had asked, when Bella’s indiscretion first had come to light. And Robert had replied, ‘Marry her, I doubt.’
Robert was, quite plainly, not the marrying sort. His marriage to Maude Benet had been a convenience, which, as it turned out, was not convenient now.
‘Do you think,’ Hew pressed, ‘tis true that she’s with child?’
Robert had shrugged. ‘Probably not.’
‘And you do not care?’
‘Probably not.’ Robert had leaned back against the stable wall, sucking at a straw he bit between his teeth, as though he had no trouble to disturb him in the world.
‘The truth is,’ he allowed, ‘I like the little lass. She has a kind of spark to her.’
‘But she has trapped you here. She has telt tales on you, to the kirk session,’ Hew had pointed out.
‘Aye, I ken.’ Robert grinned. ‘Canny, is she not?’
And so he held his peace, and stood to bow his head, for seven Sundays dry and wet, barefoot in the church. The avaricious kirkmen triumphed in his fall. But it was not their kirk, that held him humbled there. It was Bella Frew.
For Hew’s own case with Frances, peaceful resolution did not come so easily. At the close of Robert’s trial, Hew had begged a word, private and in confidence, with the college principal. What he had to say there darkened that man’s face. ‘I cannot help you, Hew. I will not read the banns without the king’s consent, and while we are at odds with all who are from England, I cannot marry you. I cannot, do you see, implicate the college. The best I can do, is to turn a blind eye. And since you are remote, and do not live in town, the chance is you may live there free from jealous scrutiny, unless and until your wife should fall with child. For then, I think, some questions may be asked.’
There was little Hew could do, and he left there malcontent and furious in mind, that he could not solve the riddle and appease the king. The weeks he spent with Frances, closed at Kenly Green, were heady and idyllic, and for a snatch at paradise, might well have sufficed. But they were both aware, they did not make a life.
It was Frances who resolved it, in the end. It was early June, and the lace and silks that she and Meg had brought home from the Senzie fair had long since been cut up and stitched into a dress, that was put away, with petals and sweet herbs to chase away the moths. She and Hew were lying, close in bed together, in a still contentment that required no words, and where, for several minutes, neither of them spoke. Then Frances mentioned, quietly and tentative, ‘I have foun
d something out. And, you were right. Bronckhorst is the answer to your pleated painting.’
Her husband smiled at her. He had begun to grow used to her shy intelligence. Frances was thoughtful, quiet, and contemplative. She noticed and observed, and over a long while, worked out her thoughts. But he did not expect much to come of this. There was no scrap or clue he had not worked up in his mind, thoroughly and endlessly. ‘And how have you done that?’ he asked.
She hesitated then. ‘I wrote of it to Tom. I have written to him several other times. The first, when you went south to see the king.’
‘You wrote to Tom? To Tom?’
And though he understood it was not meant for treachery, he felt, with every stretching sinew of his heart, betrayed.
‘And what were wrong with that? He is my cousin, Hew,’ Frances said defensively.
‘A cousin such as that . . . you do not like him, Frances,’ he exclaimed.
‘I had not thought I did. But things take different colours far away from home.’
He saw her tremble then, and was overcome with pity and with guilt, to hide from her his fears. ‘Of course they do. Forgive me. Tell me, Frances.’ He dared not conceive the damage she had done. For none knew more than he, the end result of letters that were sent to Tom, what weapons they became, in Thomas Phelippes’ hands. Had Frances fallen in, so helplessly and guilelessly? ‘Why did you write to him?’
Frances said, ‘It was not him, at first. I wrote to my uncle and aunt. I asked for their forgiveness, which they did not grant. Only Tom replied. He wrote such words of kindness, Hew. He said he understood, and he admired my courage. I think it did amuse him, that we snatched away behind my uncle’s back. He promised he would treat for me, with my aunt and uncle, and that in due course, we might be reconciled. He gave me his support, and encouraged me to write.’
‘Of course he did.’ Hew suppressed the bitter words that gathered in his mind. He understood her homesickness, had gone through it himself. Then Frances had helped him. When she was alone, he had been absent, looking for painters. And Phelippes understood, precisely how to prey upon that vulnerability. It made Hew sick at heart. ‘The most revealing letters,’ Laurence had once told him, ‘are those of the wives.’ And none was more adept at reading them than Phelippes.
Queen & Country Page 26