‘You’re … you’re not going to interfere in this matter?’ asked Martin.
‘We do as we like,’ said Hardie. ‘You’d do well to remember that. And to keep out of our way.’ With that, he tucked the stray lock of hair behind his ear again, turned, and strode away, his cloak billowing. Simms gave Martin, Danforth, and even Mathieu a long, hard look before following him.
‘Shit,’ said Mathieu, at length.
‘You see what you have taught the lad?’ snapped Danforth. ‘Watch that mouth.’
‘Douglases,’ Mathieu said. The name came out starkly. In the pearly winter light, the boy looked almost blue. ‘The dowager fears Douglases.’
‘A slippery breed, right enough,’ said Martin. ‘Ripe for a bursting, that lot. Here, Mathieu, you shall ride with us.’
‘I have to get back. To the palace. I’ve got duties.’ The little chest protruded.
‘They can wait another day or two. We’ll be going there anyway. You can stay with my mother whilst we see if there’s anything to discover about Mr Fraser there. I don’t much like the thought of you riding on the road with those ruffians abroad.’
‘Ruffians. Aye, they are that, I’ll give you. Ruffians, runagates, and scoundrels, all,’ shrugged Danforth. Martin had a knack for adopting waifs and strays. He had mentioned once that he had always wished for a little brother. Well, the boy could be his responsibility. ‘And I would as soon be out of their clutches. Come, let us – the three of us – make haste. To Edinburgh first, and then with speed to Linlithgow. They cannot touch us there.’
3
They found Fraser’s house on the outskirts of Edinburgh, clinging close by the town wall like a wart. It was a meagre affair, partly constructed of timber and partly of wattle and daub. In the street outside the open sewer was clogged, and a variety of flying insects competed for the best scraps, swatted at by the occasional dog or cat. Across the road some shoeless boys were huddled in conversation, casting occasional greedy glances up at them.
‘What a place,’ said Martin. ‘A cardinal’s man living like this.’
‘He lived well enough in the castle at St Andrews,’ said Danforth. ‘Perhaps he saw no need to keep his own home up when he could live better at his master’s expense.’ Stumping through the muck whilst Martin skipped, he chapped on the door. ‘Probably we shall find no one. His Grace affirmed that he had no–’
The wooden door sagged inwards. A sallow woman in her fifties stood, a look of fear intensifying her surprisingly delicate features. ‘Aye?’ she said. ‘What is it?’ Her gaze fell on their liveries. ‘Aw, you must be friends of Shug. Come away ben.’ She stood back to let them in.
Danforth and Martin followed, removing their hats. The woman spoke brightly. ‘He’s no’ in. He went to Linlithgow, to the palace there. Well, you’ll ken what an important man he is, working for the lord cardinal. For the old queen. I can keep a letter for him if you’d care to write one.’
‘Mistress,’ began Danforth. He floundered. ‘You are housekeeper to Mr Fraser?’ He almost said ‘the late Mr Fraser’.
‘I … aye. I keep house. I’m his wife.’
‘What?’ asked Martin. ‘I didn’t know he had a wife.’
She stood with dignity. On the inside, the tiny parlour was extraordinarily well kept. On every surface and hanging on every hook were household tools and furnishings – cheap, but clean and well-kept. With a slight stab of guilt, Danforth realised he had expected Fraser to live in filth. ‘We … never according to the church. Never got ‘round to that. But we were hand-fasted. So aye, I’m his wife.’ A note of challenge rose at the last.
‘Then, mistress, I must–’ Again, she interrupted him.
‘Can I give you a cup of wine, or some bread? I don’t – we don’t – get visitors. Just the rough men sometimes banging on the wrong door when they’re full of ale. Shug’ll be right glad to know his friends came for to see him.’
To Danforth’s relief, Martin did not take her up on her offer. ‘We thank you,’ he said, ‘but I am afraid we are here on a matter of some … well, I am most sorry to say it is of some delicacy … I – we have been commanded by his Grace to …’
‘Your husband, dear lady, has met with an accident,’ said Martin. Danforth frowned. The younger man had a frustrating ease with people. It was something he had never mastered. Already he was crossing to take her hand.
‘What? What do you mean an accident?’
‘He is dead,’ said Danforth, regretting it as her eyes widened.
‘Pray sit.’ Martin guided her to a chair, kneeling by her. ‘On behalf of his Grace, we are deeply sorry. All … arrangements will be taken care of, at the cardinal’s expense. We shall have him returned to you.’
‘What happened?’ she asked, looking up at Martin with appeal. ‘It wasn’t some brawl on the road? He used to carry money for the cardinal, deliver it. I told him not to. I told him to say no. It’s a job for two men, that, carrying money.’
‘We don’t know yet,’ said Martin. ‘But we shall find out. His Grace has bid us go to Linlithgow and discover what happened.’
‘Did your husband have any enemies?’ asked Danforth.
‘En … he was killed? Someone killed him?’ She half rose, and Martin shot up a warning look.
‘Ah – as my colleague said, we do not yet know the full nature of the matter. Yet we have been asked to look into every possibility. Do you know of any enemies, mistress?’
‘No,’ she said, sitting back down. She half-closed her eyes and lowered her head. ‘No, Shug was an honourable man. Oh,’ she added, letting out a sob, ‘I know he talked too much. I know that. And he had a wee bit of a temper – who doesn’t? But no man hated him. No, no, no enemies. Oh, Shug.’
‘Believe us,’ said Danforth, forcing authority into his voice, ‘we shall see justice done.’
‘Justice,’ she echoed, looking up at him. ‘Justice. If my man’s been slain, sir. If he’s been murdered. I want the men who did it slain too. That’s justice.’
‘We shall see to it,’ said Martin.
‘By your leave,’ Danforth added, bowing, and replacing his hat. Still Martin was kneeling.
‘If you need anything, write or … well, if you can’t, then come to the lord cardinal. Send someone even. His Grace will look after you.’
‘Justice is all I need. I need to know what’s happened. Why my husband won’t come home. And if you can’t deliver it … Shug might not have had much in the way of kin, from a shiftless lot he was … but my folk are his folk. They’ll avenge him if you don’t.’
Danforth cast one last glance around the little hovel before stepping back out into the street. When Martin joined him, closing the door, he drew a hand over his nose. ‘You went rather far there,’ he said. ‘Promising her the cardinal’s favour. All of that about us returning the body to her, at his Grace’s expense. Our master is a prisoner still, not a fountain of charity to the poor and downtrodden. She is not even properly the dead man’s wife.’
‘She is,’ said Martin, ‘his wife. She believes it. So will his Grace.’
‘Well,’ said Danforth, after a tut. ‘Better she get herself to church and …’ he trailed off, remembering that the churches still offered nothing, their services suspended whilst Beaton was kept in thrall. Changing the subject, he added, ‘gather the boy. He shall become soft spending his time with your mother. We shall leave for Linlithgow at once.’
‘Tomorrow,’ said Martin, stretching. ‘I want to wash this muck off my boots before riding to that place. One more night in Edinburgh won’t hurt. Me, you, or Mathieu. I’m off, Simon. I’ll see you in the morning.’
Danforth watched as Martin strode off, leaving him standing alone, sinking to his ankles in other people’s filth.
***
‘No, Mistress Pollock, I must be on the road again first thing,’ he said. His housekeeper, her face stretched tight by the severe bun she wore, shrugged.
‘Dalkeith, is it? Seton or
Blackness?’
‘No,’ said Danforth. News seemed to travel fast. He briefly debated whether to tell her of his plans. ‘To Linlithgow. There to attend upon the queen dowager.’ Though he managed not to smile, he felt a little glow creep across his cheeks. It was sad, he supposed, that he had only a servant to share exciting news with. It was sad that he felt the need to impress.
‘Royal service?’ she asked. ‘Well, there’s a good thing. She always looks such a sad woman, I think.’
‘Sad?’ asked Danforth. ‘She has cause to be, having lost a husband.’
‘Aye, and with a bairn too.’
‘That bairn is the Queen of Scots,’ said Danforth. The conversation had gone far enough. ‘All I shall require is something small in the morning. Kindly see that my clothes look their best.’
‘Aye. Is young Mr Martin going with you.’
Danforth shrugged noncommittally. Then he added, ‘Yes.’
‘Good. Might do you a bit of good. Still, a woman about the place would be better.’ Before he could ask her what she meant, she disappeared out into the yard. The next thing he heard she was barking orders at his stable boy. Scraping back his chair, Danforth rose. He had been sitting at the same chair Fraser had once sat at. Looking around, he compared his own things to what he had seen in Fraser’s house. His were of higher quality, undoubtedly – but there was no one else to see them but himself and his servants. He wiped the back of his breeches with his hands, shivering, before going up to his private chamber.
As he sat on the edge of his bed, he looked at the portrait of his wife, Alice Danforth. It was a faded, poorly-done effort, produced by a friend in London. He had, he realised, been looking at the picture for more years than he had ever looked at the living woman. In her arms, a baby was swaddled, its features indistinct, the white of its wrappings faded to sepia. How long had it been now since he had fled England, leaving their bones in their unmarked grave in a London parish graveyard? More than he cared to think about. How many summers had withered? One year seemed to melt into another. Yet something had changed in him recently. Martin, of course, had joined him in friendship. On balance, that was a good thing. But his mind had started to look forward, not back. What waited in his future? Year upon year of service, of fasting and praying and waiting for the grave to welcome him.
He would, he realised with a shiver, leave behind less than Fraser.
Is that what Alice would have wanted for him, he wondered. Is that why God had made him, to love briefly, lose, and then work himself to death? In the past – in the recent past – he would have unthinkingly said yes. He ran his finger over his illuminated Book of Hours. If his mind had changed course and started considering a different path … well, surely that was alright. Despite what Martin might say, he was a young man yet. It was not too late for him. He looked around his little chamber as though seeing it for the first time. Shuttered and secretive, it was the room of an elderly man.
The mind, he thought wonderingly, was itself like a great palace, full of rooms, hidden chambers, great galleries. Bad memories might be locked away, the key discarded, only to batter at the door crying for release. So might a man confine himself to one room, especially as age beckoned, fearful of getting lost, of what might lie beyond the next door and the next. What a waste, he thought. What weakness it was to let dust gather in all of those halls and chambers, where great treasures might lie. Sometimes all one needed was to be shaken, woken up, handed a key and pushed through those doors.
Tomorrow would be a new day, he thought, slipping off his boots and swinging his legs onto the bed. The first of many new days. The sun had set on one cold, frosty evening, but a new one would rise to melt away the ice and bring up the bluebells.
***
Danforth travelled from Edinburgh with Martin and Mathieu, the three of them making the journey with minimal stops. It was a good thing, he supposed, to be a company of three. It was a lucky number. The roads were surprisingly quiet. Travellers, he reasoned, must have been avoiding them. The threat of armed bands of roving bandits must have grown in the telling, being more a thing of the imagination than reality. Danforth rode at the head, with Danforth and Mathieu riding side by side behind. Along the way Martin bantered ceaselessly with the little page. Danforth had rarely involved himself, content enough with the way the boy seemed to be bringing something light and airy out in his friend. On Mathieu’s chest a little tin thistle flashed – a gift, he said, from Alison, Martin’s mother.
‘We are nearly upon the town,’ said Danforth, turning his head as he rode. ‘I commend you again on making the journey to Dalkeith alone, Mathieu. Is it not better to ride in company?’
‘Aye. Thank you, Mr Danforth.’
‘Aye, well done, wee man,’ said Martin.
‘Wee … I’ll be glad to be quit of you, sir, when I’m home. I’m a royal page, not a … not a bairn, not a babe in arms. And you live with your mother, not me. Mr Danforth tell him!’
‘Stop teasing the young man, Mr Martin.’
Mathieu smiled at Martin, his jaw jutting in triumph as he bounced along on his little horse. ‘Don’t make me strike that look from you, laddie.’
‘I’d like to see you try, actually. Why didn’t you burst those Douglases the other day?’
‘Because, you young daftie, if you touch one of them the whole pack descends, like wild dogs.’
‘The truth,’ said Danforth, turning again, ‘is this: that Mr Martin here has a stout mouth and only little courage. It might be measured in a soup spoon.’ He waited for the rebuke, but the little troupe kept trotting along. ‘Martin, did you hear me?’
As they passed singing fishwives and hucksters, Danforth noticed that Martin had lost interest in the conversation entirely. He had turned sharp eyes on the crowds of locals, scanning and moving on. ‘Arnaud, have you seen something?’ Danforth’s voice had the edge of a blade. ‘What did you see?’
‘Huh?’ Martin refocused on him, before shaking his head. ‘See? No, I … I was only … It’s nothing. Come on, we’re not far from the palace.’
Danforth turned forward, settling again in the saddle as Woebegone picked the way through hard-packed, partly-frozen muck. Odd, he thought.
4
The palace of Linlithgow reared up behind a sculpted loch, a fairy-tale image of polished, yellow-painted sandstone. A great drawbridge led into it from the east but, to Danforth’s disappointment, the late king had been a moderniser, and a new gateway had been built in the south range. Instead they had to take the road called the Kirkgate from the burgh, a narrow, cobbled street that led past the Tolbooth and the Song School. As the trio fell into single file, they spotted a figure heading towards them, skirts held up with one hand and a basket over her arm.
As they drew closer, Danforth reined in before the most striking woman he had seen in years. From underneath a white cap, a riot of curly, shimmering black hair curled all-ways, and her skin was not the usual milky white of Scottish women, but a deep golden-brown tan. Not Moorish, like the strange men called Ethiops he had sometimes seen in London, but some mellower hew, neither one thing nor another. He drew off his cap, Martin and Mathieu doing likewise, as she walked sedately towards them.
‘Good morrow to you, mistress,’ he called down. Woebegone ruined his formal greeting by stepping backwards, making him wobble. The woman jerked in surprise at the sudden movement and then laughed, showing neat, white teeth. She looked directly at Danforth, her gaze penetrating.
‘What news, gentlemen? Would you care to buy? For your sweethearts?’ She thrust forward her basket, filled with violet and purple shades of heather, and similarly-coloured flowers.
‘You are a seller of flowers?’ asked Danforth. He wondered where she found them. As they had travelled, he had noticed that winter seemed to have the country in a resolute grip, leaving its shavings across the land despite spring’s eagerness.
‘You are observant, sir,’ she smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘I – we – h
ave no need of your wares. Do you sell much up yonder?’ He had no idea why he felt the urge to keep the woman engaged in conversation. Ah, his mind added: a murder might have occurred, and she was an unknown, and therefore suspect. He had learned to question everyone. One never knew who might reveal something seen or heard, even if an innocent themselves.
‘Not so much as I’d like. The queen favours the colours, you see.’
‘The queen is barely two months old,’ he said, raising his chin. The one-upmanship was automatic.
‘The old queen, I mean. Surely that’s quite clear.’
‘It … yes, it is. I apologise for my rudeness, mistress. Of course, I shall buy a small sprig of heather, by way of recompense.’ He fumbled at his purse, a difficult task with his riding gloves on, and gave her a coin.
‘Thank you for your patronage,’ she said, an amused look on her face. Her eyes, he noticed, were dark enough to be almost black. She selected the smallest bunch of heather from the basket and handed it over. ‘And good day to you.’
‘But stay,’ he persisted. ‘We have business in the palace.’
‘I’ve done with mine.’
‘Might I ask you some questions?’
‘Are you men of the law? No,’ she said, letting her eyes run over his doublet. ‘You’re … not royal servants …’
‘We’re the cardinal’s men,’ Martin called out. ‘Danforth, let the pretty lady go forth, I’m sure she can tell us nothing and would like to be on her way.’
‘Thank you,’ she smiled. ‘But what is it you want?’
‘Is there any talk up there,’ asked Danforth, ‘of death?’
At this, she tilted her head and gave him a cockeyed look. ‘Death? Of the king, you mean? Only what’s being said everywhere, that it’s a shame a good man went to his grave so suddenly.’ Danforth relaxed a bit. The dowager must be keeping news of Fraser’s death quiet. That was wise. If it became widely known, she would not be listened to, but hustled about at the command of any man in power. The whole matter, whatever it was and whoever was behind it, should be dealt with quickly and quietly. But she could not keep it covered up forever. Such things always leaked out, and more often than not invited different takes on them over every hearth, the truth getting buried deeper and deeper under layers of nonsense.
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