The Queen's Lady

by Shannon Drake

  As they neared Castle Black, where they hoped to take refuge, they paused, hearing a cry in the night. It was a messenger sent from the Wauchope family, neighbors and supporters of Bothwell.

  When the horseman reached them, Mary was ready to fall.

  “Is it the queen?” the man asked anxiously, and he dismounted quickly, looking at Gwenyth.

  “Aye. You must take her, and quickly. She is about to faint,” Gwenyth advised him.

  “What of you, m’lady?”

  “I will be fine walking, if you will but set me upon the right road.”

  Gwenyth watched as the fellow gallantly set the queen atop his horse, then mounted behind her. He looked back anxiously at Gwenyth, then along the road on which they had been traveling.

  “Go quickly,” Gwenyth ordered him.

  “I will come back for you.”

  “I thank you, and God bless you,” she told him.

  He was quickly gone, and Gwenyth was grateful the queen was in good hands, but she found herself sorely afraid, alone along the trail. She walked with speed, suddenly aware of every whisper of wind, of the sighing of the trees and the snap of every branch.

  Night, she told herself, nothing but the noises of the night. There might be boars in the forest and other fearsome creatures, but there were no creations as frightening as ambitious men.

  There was a sudden loud crack to her left. It was no forest sound, and she started to run.

  And then it seemed that the woods came alive. There were men everywhere.

  “The queen!” someone shouted.

  “We have found her!” came another shout.

  “Don’t be daft, it isn’t the queen. She hasn’t the height.”

  She ran, but it didn’t matter that her heart pounded, or that her legs burned. They were everywhere, and she could only pray that Mary had made it safely through the forest before their arrival.

  At last, no matter how she zigged and zagged, seeking to disappear through the trees, she was caught, slammed to the earth and held there by a man’s foot planted upon her chest.

  Her cap had fallen, and now her hair spilled free on the ground. She could do nothing other than stare up at her captor in defiance. To her horror, she knew the man. It had been a very long time since she had seen him, but she hadn’t forgotten him.

  Nor had he forgotten her.

  “Why, ’tis the Lady of Islington, Gwenyth MacLeod,” he said.

  The man above her was broadly built, his face heavily bearded. It was none other than Fergus MacIvey, he who had tormented her so long ago, on the day she had ridden out from Castle Grey.

  Rowan had come to her rescue then.

  He would not come now.

  IT WAS WHAT ROWAN FEARED, always, deepest in his heart.

  Civil war.

  Queen Mary had been rescued and brought to Castle Black. There, she had met with her husband and, with him, had made her way back to Dunbar, where Bothwell had left her, riding out again to gather more supporters.

  In the end, Mary had been betrayed.

  Laird Balfour had urged her to return to Edinburgh, where she would find greater protection. When she left the defense of Dunbar, she had several hundred supporters, as did the rebels. Rowan was certain that Mary had not been afraid; she would have believed in the love of her people, and expected to be reunited with Bothwell on the field of battle.

  The armies faced each other eight miles outside Edinburgh, and many of the lairds Mary had so trusted abandoned her cause. Mary, with Bothwell, was at the head of her own defenses, with her new husband. Balfour, too, stood with them.

  Lairds Morton and Home led the rebel cavalry; the lairds of Atholl, Mar, Glencairn, Lindsay and Ruthven led the opposing troops.

  Rowan was not on the battlefield; he had already returned to Castle Grey, where he had taken stock of his own men-at-arms, preparing for whatever course of action he decided to take. He was anxious to reach the capital, anxious to find Gwenyth now that it seemed he had officially been pardoned, but he had learned through bitter experience that he had to take care. Especially now. The country had gone insane following Bothwell’s abduction of Mary, and then his marriage to her. Rowan wrote to London, to Thomas and Annie, and to Elizabeth. He asked the Queen of England to provide safe escort for the two faithful servants to bring Daniel to Lochraven.

  In the end, no major battle occurred. Mary’s supporters simply began to shrink away, so she, ever convinced of the underlying decency of her subjects, stopped the bloodshed by demanding that Bothwell be given safe conduct. She herself offered to return to Edinburgh, there to face all inquiries.

  But she was not treated like a queen. The lairds feared her, and Rowan knew why. They were crying out against the murder of Darnley—but many of them had taken part in it and feared to be accused, should the queen gain the ear of the populace. And so Mary wasn’t allowed to stay in Edinburgh but was taken to a Douglas holding for incarceration.

  Rowan himself had not believed the lairds meant harm to their queen, but as the dire news continued to arrive, his fears grew, and he rode to Edinburgh, where he met with Maitland. He hadn’t believed that the man had been involved in the original revolt against the queen, but when Maitland couldn’t face him at first when they spoke, Rowan realized the man was indeed guilty.

  “No wonder we have been vanquished time and time again throughout history,” Rowan told him. “We can’t even be loyal to one another.”

  “Rowan, please, I feel badly enough,” Maitland told him. “Do you know the years I have served Queen Mary? Far longer than her stay here. I am sick at how she suffers, but you must understand. Even her French ministers pleaded with her to abandon Bothwell when she had the chance, but she would not do so.”

  “Let me speak with her.”

  Maitland hesitated. “The lairds will demand that Bothwell pay for the death of Darnley. The rumormongers were right. The evil deed was his.”

  “Then let Bothwell pay, not the queen.”

  “The lairds wish for the queen to abdicate and pass the crown to her son.”

  “So that they can rule.”

  Maitland was quiet for a moment. “She turned on you, Laird Rowan. She had you imprisoned. She had your marriage declared null and void.”

  “She is the queen, and my name was cleared.”

  “You are probably the only man who is trusted by both sides. Morton, Glencairn and Home are the men responsible for the queen’s warrant. They’ll give you leave to see her.”

  Rowan met with the rebel lairds. He knew that he had but one chance to save Mary. He had to convince her to turn her back on Bothwell.

  He was amazed when he reached her. She had been rudely captured and ill-used, and her prison could not be a happy one. She had none of her ladies with her, imprisoned as she was in the home of James Stewart’s mother, Lady Margaret Douglas.

  Lady Margaret resented the fact that her son’s illegitimacy had been held against him. She was firmly of the opinion that the throne should have been his, not Mary’s.

  However, she had offered no real cruelty to Mary, who, when he saw her at last, rose gallantly to the occasion of his visit, though she was pale and gaunt. “Rowan!” she greeted him with her natural affection, then told him with a smile, “You know, I totally absolved you of all sins long before this charade began. Now here I am, begging your forgiveness.”

  He took her hands, kneeling before her and seeing a slight sheen of tears in her eyes. “I have always served you to the best of my ability.”

  “I know. I have been deceived so many times.” She drew him to his feet, smiling. “I have put my trust far too often in the wrong men.”

  He took a deep breath. “That is why I’m here.”

  “Ah, yes, I know why you are here. Everyone trusts you. I have fallen on the harshest of times, while you are lauded throughout the country. I cannot even suggest that you find Bothwell and join with him on my behalf, for he has been detained in the north.”

  �
��My queen, you must allow the marriage to be dissolved. There will be no reconciliation with your lairds if you do not.”

  “I cannot,” she said softly.

  “You must,” he urged.

  “I cannot, and I will not,” Mary said, and her answer was surprisingly firm. “I am with child, and I will not allow any child of mine to be born illegitimate.

  His heart sank. He knew he would not dissuade her.

  “So…they allow so little news to reach me here. How does your lady? Have you sent for your own babe as yet?”

  “What?”

  She smiled. “Never have I seen a woman so fierce in defense of someone she loves. Surely, you have reconciled whatever differences I caused with Gwenyth?”

  “I had thought she was still in your service, held with your other ladies.”

  Mary frowned deeply. “I last saw her as I escaped to Castle Black.”

  It seemed that every muscle in his body turned to water. “You have not seen her?” he asked in disbelief.

  “Or heard aught of her, Rowan. If she was captured…surely none would offer her harm.”

  He could say nothing on behalf of Scotland at that moment, for he very much feared that Mary’s assessment of her people was dangerously wrong.

  He bowed, shaking. “Forgive me, Your Grace, but I must go. I have to find her.”

  ONCE SHE HAD DREAMED. Now she had only nightmares.

  She could not have been captured by a man who despised her more. When the good fighting men around Fergus MacIvey and Michael, brother of the slain Bryce and now Laird, would not allow her to be treated too roughly, Fergus found a new method of revenge.

  It started with her fury and her fear.

  As men shouted that Mary was a whore and a murderer, she damned them all. “The queen has never been anything but moral and good. You have no right to speak of her so. God will not forgive you this mockery and cruelty.”

  “God has turned his back on ye, whore of Satan,” Fergus told her. He had the eyes of a true maniac, and his words were filled with a chilling glee. “God and man both. The whole country knows yer great protector has taken an English wife, and even he—especially he—has turned his back on ye.”

  Was it true?

  Did it matter?

  In Rowan’s eyes, she had turned away from him.

  She tried not to think about Rowan, tried not to long for the time when happiness was all around her, and it had seemed that it could never be ripped away.

  At first she was treated well enough, taken to the home of a Sir Edmund Baxter and confined there. She was guilty of crimes against Scotland, she was told, because she had been helping the queen to escape. Fergus and his men left, and that in itself was a relief.

  She was there for several weeks when, from the room where she was confined, she heard men talking excitedly in the parlor. The queen was imprisoned; she had given herself up rather than cause bloodshed, but she had not been returned to Edinburgh. Instead, she had been taken to a Douglas holding.

  It was after that news arrived when Fergus MacIvey returned.

  When he dared to return, she thought.

  And he did so with another man, a man she had nearly forgotten.

  Reverend David Donahue.

  Even when she was brought before Donahue, she didn’t fear for her life. It wasn’t until he lifted a finger, pointing at her, that she realized the true severity of her position.

  “Witch!” he cried. “Aye, I knew from the moment I saw her. She spoke for the Catholic whore then, as she does now.”

  “She bewitched Bryce MacIvey and killed him,” Fergus said. “Then she bewitched the Laird Rowan and now pretends to be his wife.”

  “You are an idiot!” Gwenyth cried. “How can you believe such idiocy?”

  She saw their faces. They believed. Or they hated her, and so they wanted to believe. In the end, it was the same thing.

  “Bring her to the kirk. Now,” Donahue commanded.

  Fergus MacIvey and Laird Michael looked eager to drag her, but she disdained to give them that satisfaction.

  “I will walk wherever you will have me go. If it is to the kirk, so much the better. I have nothing to fear from God.”

  Her words infuriated them further, but they did not lay a hand on her.

  When she walked from the house, though, her heart sank. The path was lined with people, men in armor, women, children, farmers, craftworkers. Pitchforks were raised against her, and a rotten tomato was even thrown her way.

  “Whore witch of a whore queen!” someone shouted.

  She stopped walking. “A good and decent queen ever,” she calmly defended Mary.

  Another tomato flew her way. She ignored it. If she stopped walking too long, Fergus would set a hand on her, she knew, so with her chin held high, she kept going.

  When she came to the kirk, there was another reverend there. He stared at her as she arrived, and she knew that he’d been expecting her.

  “I am Reverend Martin, official witch-finder, child, and you will confess your sins,” he told her.

  She looked around. There were hundreds of people there. They had all been told that the queen had been instrumental in the murder of her husband, Laird Darnley, and that she was a whore who had slept with the man who had committed the murder.

  They were all ready to believe that Gwenyth, who had served her, was a witch.

  She was shoved rudely inside by Fergus’s hand at her back. Four women were waiting for her there. Four strong farm women. She gritted her teeth, holding very still as they seized her. Instinctively, she tried to cling to her clothing. It was no use. In a moment, she heard fabric ripping, and then one of them cried out, “There! ’Tis the mark, the devil’s own mark!”

  Reverend Martin stood over her, a knife in his hand. She thought that he meant to end her life then and there. She didn’t struggle, knowing it would only please them if she did.

  “She doesn’t cry out, doesn’t deny. It is indeed the mark of Satan,” he agreed, then wrenched her around, jerking her up by the hair. “Confess!”

  She grasped for her clothing, for decency, and stared at him. “Shall I confess to loving a good and moral woman who wanted nothing more than to govern well? Aye, that I confess.”

  “You have made a pact with the devil,” he said sternly.

  She looked around and saw the fear and hatred in the faces of those surrounding her. There had been hundreds of men in the village, all of them now fired up by the call for revolution against a woman they believed guilty of murder. She had served that woman, and so she was guilty, no matter what she said.

  “I am God’s creature,” she whispered.

  Reverend Martin’s hand cracked hard against her face. She tasted blood. “Do you care nothing for your immortal soul?” he demanded.

  She was silent.

  He shrugged, smiling slowly. “I have at my disposal, for I never travel without the tools of my trade, many ways to save you from the ultimate fires of hell.”

  She held her head high but continued silent.

  Once again his hand shot out. Her ears rang; it felt as if her head had split. When she would have fallen, he caught her.

  “What? What?” he said loudly, leaning down as if listening, though she had said nothing. Then he allowed her to slip to the floor, everything around her blackening, but she was conscious long enough to hear his triumphant claim.

  “She has confessed! The witch has confessed!”

  And she knew, as well, that she heard the laughter of Fergus MacIvey.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  MARY OF SCOTLAND HAD LAST SEEN Gwenyth on the road to Castle Black, so Rowan first rode there, and he rode hard. His personal forces, well-trained in his long absence by Tristan’s careful hand, numbered in the hundreds, but to move quickly, he rode only with Gavin, Brendan and his customary ten men.

  At Castle Black, he met with the lad who had rescued Queen Mary from the road. He hadn’t known Gwenyth’s identity, though he had known
she was one of the queen’s ladies.

  He was heartsick at the losses sustained by the queen, but he was eager to help Rowan. “The rebels were hot on the tail of our dear queen that night. I tried to go back to help the lady, as I had promised, but the woods were full of men, and I could find her nowhere.”

  Rowan felt ill, knowing she had been taken by someone under the confederacy of the barons, and he was no closer to knowing who, specifically, had captured her. The man from Castle Black seemed at a loss on that topic, but then one of his fellows stepped forward.

  “They were a mixed group, that I know, fer I was ordered to backtrack and spy. There were Highlanders among the group, I know, for I remember thinking it curious that they moved on to the southeast, rather than heading toward their homes.”

  And so they rode southeast. Rowan tried to use reason, rather than let a growing and frantic fear seize control of him. He ordered his men to dress as weary travelers, and they split up to roam the countryside, stopping at farm houses, villages and towns.

  At last, at a public house, they joined with a group drinking in a pub. Rowan cast a glowering glance at Gavin when he appeared about to rise to fight at an insult to the queen.

  “I hear,” Rowan said casually, “that one of her ladies was seized, as well, but none of them know of her in Edinburgh.”

  An older man lifted his ale, shaking his head. “I know of her, and a sad story it is. She was seized on the road but stood loyal to her queen. There were some of the MacIvey clan among the group, and seems there was some grudge.” He shook his head, lowering his voice. “Madness! They brought in a witch-finder, claiming that the woman’s witchery had brought about the murder of one of their clansmen, the laird that was.”

  Rowan fought desperately to maintain a sense of calm. “They condemned one of the queen’s ladies as a witch?”

  The old fellow nodded. “It would nae ha’ happened here. We’re quiet folk, and we have sense in the heads upon our shoulders. But there is no help fer it. There’s laws against witchcraft.”