Queen & Country

by Shirley McKay

  ‘She has been living with her brother George, since her husband died.’

  ‘Yes, I see. That makes a certain sense. That is such a consequence, as happens in the plague. People are displaced, and caught up in the flux, and it is hard to ken, what has truly happened to them. Did Andrew Wood not say?’

  ‘We did not discuss it,’ Hew reported shortly.

  ‘Yes, I see, I see. But Roger, perhaps, was mistaken too? He fell ill himself. He could hardly ken, what became of Clare, when even I did not,’ Giles conceded then. And Roger at his pleading let slip a small smile, unhidden from Hew.

  ‘He knew,’ Hew said starkly. ‘He writes letters to George.’

  ‘Roger, is this this true?’ Giles asked.

  ‘I do not recall,’ Roger answered, ‘that I ever telt him that. What, sir,’ he asked Hew, ‘were the actual words, that you believe I said?’ He could not keep his pleasure in his subtle triumph meekly there subdued, and Hew was astounded at the malice in the boy.

  ‘You said you were with Clare, when she had the plague, and stayed there till the last.’

  ‘Stayed there till the last,’ Roger mimicked carefully. ‘Is that the same as saying, “Clare is dead?”’

  ‘You knew it was. It was your intention to deceive. You allowed me to think . . .’

  ‘Allowed you to think, sir?’ Roger’s tone now was scornful, superior. ‘I did not tell you Clare was dead. And I cannot be held to account for it, if that was what you thought I said, in your disordered mind. You might as well say, it was you who murdered the painter, when you put the picture there that tipped him into madness. And we both ken, sir, that was not the case.’

  Giles said, ‘Stop,’ in a voice of such cold restraint and rage as Hew had never heard from him before. ‘Stop. For I will listen no longer to this sophistry.’

  ‘It is not sophistry.’ Roger turned to him. ‘It is disputation. And you teach it in your schools, though, as I contend, you do not teach it well. I do not understand,’ he said again, to Hew, ‘why you are upset. You have a wife, of your own. Or is it that you want Clare to be dead?’

  ‘That is enough. Pack your bag, and go. For you are expelled,’ Giles said. A look of abject weariness settled on his face.

  ‘Do you mean,’ Roger asked, ‘I shall not progress to my examination?’

  ‘That is what I mean.’ Hew had never seen his old friend so unmoved, no hint of vacillation in his kindly eyes, resolute as stone. This sentence seemed harsh, even to him, and he was almost moved to speak in his defence, when the boy said feelingly, ‘Thank you. Thank you. For, sir, I did not know how to tell you. You have been so kind. But I did not intend to attend the laureation. The surgeon has offered to take me on as his apprentice, and I have agreed to it. It is far better suited to my knowledge and my skill. I have, sir, no desire for any further study to become a physician. I have no interest in Galen, or in Paracelsus, or all the other paragons among your dead philosophers. And what good is your philosophy, if it cannot put its hand inside a living head, and mend a broken skull? What use are your signatures, then? That sir, is what I would do. I would hold a living heart, while it is beating still, and mend it with the mettle of my own ingenious hand. You have been generous, in sharing your knowledge, and I have been grateful for that. But you should ken, that what you believe, for the most part, is worthless, and wrong.’

  ‘This is sublimely arrogant,’ Giles retorted then, choking on the words. ‘What, Roger, would you be God?’

  Roger grinned at that. ‘I will let you know. For in our line of work, our paths are sure to cross. I am grateful to you both, for all that you have taught me. It has been illuminating.’

  He bowed to them, and turned to leave the tower, before he was dismissed. At the door he said, ‘I will tell the porter where to send my things.’

  Giles concluded, ‘Well!’

  Hew found himself convulsed, inexplicably, with laughter. He felt he could not stop. Giles, whose face had transformed itself through a series of conflicting and comical emotions, glared at him severely.

  ‘This is not the reaction I expect from you. I thought, at one stage, and from the look on your face, you would strike him down.’

  ‘And so I should have done, had I not felt it would give to him a kind of satisfaction. I am sorry, Giles. I do not mean to laugh. But I cannot help it.’

  ‘So do I see. Your humours are quite thrawn, and dangerously unbalanced. If you do not stop, I will have you purged; precipate, and from both ends at once.’

  Hew composed himself. ‘Thank you, I am balanced now, I promise you, quite well.’

  When he was quite sober, he described to Giles everything that Clare had told him in the street. At the end he said. ‘Though I do not like to say it, Roger may be right, I have no cause to feel concern that Clare lives still, and well.’

  ‘Do you have feelings for her, still?’ Giles asked, ‘Conflicting with the feelings that you have for Frances?’

  Hew did not reply. Instead, he said. ‘Do you realise what this means? I telt you Roger’s letter had no bearing on my going down to London. But the truth is, that it did. It was the moving force, that made Clare use her influence to charm Sir Andrew Wood to keep me safe from harm. And so it was the force that brought me close to Frances. Roger was, in this respect, the efficient cause.’

  Giles snorted. ‘Stuff. Then we can only hope that Roger never hears of it. For he is quite puffed up and surquidous enough.’

  He came home, to find Frances at last. If there were to be no secrets between them, then he knew he must tell her about Clare. That would be hard. He did not know where to begin. And he could not trust his powers over his feelings, for he was not sure what those feelings were.

  She read, at once, the tremor of disquiet in his face. He could guard his passions well enough. He had been schooled in it at Seething Lane. But not from her. Not from her.

  ‘Is something wrong? Did your suit go badly with the king?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not at all. All is well. We have leave to be married in the kirk, in three weeks’ time.’

  ‘Then that is good. For, I have something to tell you.’

  ‘Yes.’ He felt a dullness in his heart. ‘I, also.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You shall speak first.’

  She nodded. ‘Very well. We have not spent much time together, in the last few months.’

  He swallowed. ‘No. I have neglected you. And I am sorry for it.’

  ‘I do not blame you, Hew. You have been finding things out. And while you have been occupied, I have found things out too.’

  ‘What have you found out?’

  ‘I have been talking with your servants, and the factor here, about the running of this household, and of your estate. For Meg will leave here soon, and it will fall to me. I hope you do not mind.’

  ‘Mind? Why should I mind?’ This was not at all what he had expected. From a clear relief, he could barely take it in.

  ‘You have a lot of land, but not all of it is put to good effect. The factor thinks it could be more productive. There are fallow fields, that could be given over to more sheep.’

  ‘Sheep?’ he echoed foolishly.

  ‘You could increase the yield threefold. Tibbie Strachan says that she can find a market for the wool.’

  ‘Tibbie Strachan. Does she?’

  ‘Yes. I think one of the flocks you should give to Robert Lachlan. He will need something to occupy him, to keep him at home and constant to Bella. Else he will stray again. The miller’s boy’s pigs are a start, but not enough, I think.

  ‘Your factor is a good man, and willing, but he is growing old. He feels he will no longer be able to manage your estates to their best efficiency, and it is a concern to him. He served your father a good while.

  ‘He says that you have little interest in the management of your estate, and leave it all to him. He has kept it well, but now it grows too much for him. He wants an assistant.

  ‘I hope you
will not think it presumptuous, but I have someone here in mind. John Kintor, the miller’s son. I have spoken with him. He is about to be apprenticed to a stonemason, for his brother’s mill cannot sustain two millers. He tells me, he does not wish to be a mason, but to stay on the land, where he was born. He knows a great deal about your estate.’

  ‘That is true,’ reflected Hew. ‘But he is only thirteen.’

  ‘Thirteen is a good age to begin. You should send him to school for two years, to teach him to read and to write, and in particular, to keep the accounts. Then he can be prenticed to your factor, and eventually, in some years’ time, take over the management himself. His young age is an advantage, since he can be trusted in the post for many years to come. He has an affinity for livestock, and he knows the land. He knows all the plants that grow in Meg’s garden, and he can help to look after them, after she has gone. The surplus he can take to the town, and sell to the apothecar. He is not, I know, the best of apothecars, but with a little supervision he may yet be amended. The money that John makes will help to pay for his schooling. He will be an excellent factor. And an advantage is that he is very fond of you; he will not let you down. And it will a comfort to Matthew, as he grows older, to have his advice in running the mill. The facts and the figures I have worked out myself. How many sheep will be wanted for what quantity of land, and what will be the yield. The cost of John’s schooling, and the value, as I count, of the return on it. You will want to look at them.’

  She showed him a book, with the figures worked, which he accepted with a look of astonished blank bewilderment. ‘You have done all this?’

  ‘Yes. Are you cross?’ she smiled at him, confident and pleased, for she was in her element.

  ‘Not cross, at all. I am delighted, and amazed, that you have found so much to do,’ he answered honestly. ‘Tell me, is this all?’

  ‘Well,’ she hesitated, ‘it is not quite all. I thought that you could employ Gavan Baird, to work in your library.’

  This he did object to. ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘Because you want a secretar. The books are in disorder there, and you do not have time, or the inclination, to sort them out. Nicholas Colp began to make a catalogue, but he could not finish it. There are the books, too, that you brought back from the Low Countries, which are still in their boxes. They need to be unpacked, and put on the shelves. They need to be found a place in their new home,’ she told him.

  ‘But why Gavan Baird?’

  ‘Gavan Baird is clever, humorous and kind. He can keep a confidence. No one in the kirk will employ him as a minister. And he is a friend. You will like him very much, when you overcome your prejudice.’

  Frances was so earnest, so serious in this that he burst out laughing. ‘Should I be jealous of him?’

  ‘You should not. I do not love Gavan Baird. But he has been a friend to me, as Laurence was to you. He was the first person, outside your own family, who made me feel at home here.’

  ‘In that case, I shall set aside my feud, and make peace with him.’

  Though he was teasing now, she did not smile. ‘You should. For Meg, and Giles, and the children will be gone from here soon. They will take Canny Bett. This house will be empty without them. These are large estates, and they will not look after themselves. We need to people them, with people we can trust. We need Robert Lachlan and Bella Frew. We need John Kintor and Gavan Baird, who will look after the things that you love and hold dear, while you are away, chasing after mysteries, as I know and trust that you will always do. While you are in peril there, these things will endure, kept constant, waiting for you, when you will return for them. They will be secure, and kept safe for our children. For this land and estate is more than we can be. It was here before, and will be here after, long after, we have both gone.’

  He felt, at her words, inexplicably moved, and to hide from her the flood of feeling he could not explain, he caught her in a kiss.

  ‘Do I take it then,’ she asked of him, unfolding from his arms, ‘that you have approved of it?’

  ‘You can take it for approval,’ he informed her gravely. ‘Though I will, of course, have to look more closely at your figures, later on in bed.’

  ‘What was the thing,’ she said, ‘you had to say to me?’

  ‘It does not matter, now.’

  In the chapel of St Leonard, on a fair summer’s day towards the end of June, they made their covenant with God. And the Scottish kirk looked kindly on a stranger there, and shuffled over, gruffly, to let her slip among them, quiet in their midst. There was little ceremony, and little to deflect from the common ordinary, but the vows they made, quiet in their hearts, and open to that God, whose minister accepted them, hopeful and bemused.

  And after, when they came again to Kenly Green, they found the house prepared for them. They walked together through an avenue of trees, the holly and the rowan boughs that bent their watchful branches, heavy with their leaves, and where the drooping rose distilled its heady scent, lifted by the bees, and came to the house that was filled with flowers, and with row upon row of honeycomb candles, to colour dark corners in sweet friendly light. And Frances wore a gown the colour of the sea, of blues and greys and turquoise greens all shimmered in a watered silk, falling into waves, that flowed and gathered perfectly. The house was filled with people then, and with talk and laughter, and the trestles groaned with syllabubs and tarts, capons, salmons, roasted kid and laprons in a green herb sauce, gingerbreads and marchpanes, sugared flowers and fruits, strawberries and biscuit bread, with mound upon mound of butter and cream that Canny Bett and Bella Frew had whipped up to a froth; and there were wines and aquavite, of the finest sort.

  And then, when all was gone, the guests went home to bed, the servants slipped away, and they were left alone, quite still, and centred in that house. The bed was turned back, sprinkled with lavender; rose petals perfumed the sheets. Hew crossed to the window.

  ‘Leave the shutters open,’ Frances said. ‘For I want the moon to look at us.’

  ‘How wanton you become,’ he laughed. ‘I have something for you, here. I found it at the krames.’

  ‘It is a lute!’ Frances cried, as he brought it from its box. ‘I did not think,’ she teased him, ‘a lute would be allowed here.’

  ‘There is nothing,’ answered Hew, ‘that is not allowed here. For this is our place.’ He took her hand in his, and by her mother’s ring, closest to her heart, he slipped on his own, and the sliver of moonlight that fell through the window fell softly, askance, on the pale band of gold, with its clasp of two hands, and its bright lines of flowers. ‘There is a verse inside.’

  ‘Is it a riddle?’ Frances smiled. ‘A cipher, to be solved?’

  He did not reply, but showed her what was written there, that was true, and plain, and spoken from the heart.

  My hand in yours shall never roam

  In fear of lands that lie unseen

  For where thou art, that place is home

  Thou art my country, and my queen.

  Notes and Attributions

  The earl of Shrewsbury’s guest house in Buxton spa survives, in part, in the Old Hall Hotel, which claims to be perhaps the oldest in England. In 2012, the hotel commissioned a reproduction feature window to illustrate the writing on the glass left by Mary, queen of Scots and other noble guests between 1573 and 1584, based on a handwritten copy of the original, kept among the Portland papers at Longleat in Wiltshire.

  A transcription and translation of the writing there was also published by Patrick Chapman in the same year, in his Things Written in the Glasse Windowes at Buxstons.

  My translations of the two proverbs quoted here differ very slightly from his.

  The title of Chapter 7, ‘Frost of Cares’, is taken from Chidiock Tichborne’s elegy, ‘My prime of youth is but a frost of cares’. Tichborne is the young poet who made the longest speech upon the scaffold, and who, according to report, took the longest time to die. The conspirator who came ‘not
to argue but to die’ was Charles Tilney. There were in all fourteen executions, on the 20th and 21st September 1586.

  The title of Chapter 8, ‘The Opened Bud’ is an allusion to Robert Southwell’s poem depicting Mary, queen of Scots as a Catholic martyr: ‘the bud was opened to let out the rose’.

  The often-quoted ‘In my end is my beginning’ is from Mary’s cloth of estate, embroidered by her in captivity.

  The wording of the proclamation at the mercat cross in Edinburgh, and the squib against Elizabeth, in chapters 13 and 14 are quoted verbatim from contemporary letters in the Elizabethan state papers. The Latin verse quoted by Laurence Tomson in chapter 2 is alluded to in a letter by Thomas Phelippes, written in his final days at Chartley.

  The ‘turning picture’ is inspired by the one currently on display in the library of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Queen Street, Edinburgh.

  The text and translation of ‘Ars naturam adiuvans’ is quoted, for convenience, from the 1591 edition of Alciato’s Emblemata, but Glasgow University offers digital access to 22 editions, from 1531–1621, in their fantastic Alciato at Glasgow project: http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/alciato/index.php

  The samples of verse in George Heriot’s shop are from actual poesy rings. But Hew’s is entirely his own.

  Historical Figures

  Mary Stewart, queen of Scots

  Mother of James VI. Exiled and imprisoned in England from 1568. Implicated, in letters to Anthony Babington, in conspiracy against the English queen Elizabeth. Convicted in October, 1586 and executed at Fotheringhay Castle on 8 February 1587

  James VI of Scotland

  Son of Mary Stewart and Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley. Born 1566. King of Scotland from 1567–1625. King of England (as James I) from 1603–1625

  Patrick Adamson

  Archbishop of St Andrews

  Anthony Babington

  Catholic conspirator against Queen Elizabeth whose letters to Mary, queen of Scots were intercepted by Sir Francis Walsingham. A page in the household of the earl of Shrewsbury at Sheffield. Executed September 1586