Fire & Faith

by Steven Veerapen

  ***

  They entered into a haze of cinnamon scent, the air dull with the weight of it. Marie’s bed dominated the wood-panelled room, covered in crimson velvet with phoenixes and tears picked out in silver and gold thread. Danforth averted his eyes from it. He knew it was the practice of the Stewarts, like the French kings, to entertain private audiences in their bedchambers. He doubted they even slept in the great beds, likely having some even more private inner sanctum somewhere, but still – the sight of a lady’s, of a queen’s, bed, even with its red drapes closed, was … discomfiting.

  She sat now not on a throne, but on a more comfortable seat on a raised dais, underneath a cloth of estate emblazoned with the arms of Scotland and Lorraine. Flanking her were two women in purple velvet, their faces chalky. Together, the three of them made a tableau: the imperious queen and her ladies, posed fixedly. The light of the smaller fire in the room flashed and danced on them. It was impressive. ‘Gentleman,’ said Marie, all trace of the heavy French suddenly gone, ‘won’t you come forward and speak. I can scarcely see you. Come, come, we have much business to discuss.’

  Martin led the way this time, and the two stopped before the dais, falling on their knees and removing their hats before looking up at her. ‘You will not get uncomfortable like that? I can have Madame LeBoeuf fetch you a cushion. Mr Danforth?’

  ‘You Grace is most kind, but I should be content as I am.’ The very thought of lounging on a cushion before the queen affronted him.

  ‘As you like it. Mr Martin?’

  ‘A cushion would be welcome, madam.’

  Marie smiled and nodded at the stone-faced woman on her right, who stepped down from the dais and disappeared into the shadows, bringing back a plump pillow and handing it to Martin. ‘You like French comfort, Mr Martin,’ Marie smiled. ‘We shall not judge you for it.’

  Danforth’s felt sweat pop out in his forehead, indignance at Martin’s behaviour pushing it. To think he had seen the worst of the foolish boy’s behaviour already – this was a new low. He tried to twist his head and give Martin a quick, angry glare. Marie seemed to spot the tension. ‘Mr Danforth, I commend you also on your good manners. But pray turn your mind to more serious matters. Gentlemen, shall we proceed in Scots or French? Oh, pay no mind to my speech out there. I can never be sure who is listening, or to whom they might speak. Better they think me a foolish Frenchwoman with but little understanding.’

  The word ‘dissimulation’ formed in Danforth’s mind, and his respect for the elegant woman sitting before him increased. It was hard to believe she was a couple of years younger than him, and he had always thought of himself as grave beyond his days. ‘Which language do you prefer?’

  ‘I am comfortable in French, your Highness,’ said Martin. ‘Yet I think Mr Danforth here might prefer Scots.’ Danforth’s bottom lip popped out, but he said nothing. Yes, he preferred Scots, his years of immersion bringing ‘braw’ to his mind and lips more swiftly than ‘belle’. But, as befitting his curtailed English education, he spoke reasonable schoolroom French. Admittedly following the spoken language could be a trial, but there was no need for Martin to advertise the slight deficiency.

  ‘Very well. Scots. You know, I think, what has befallen your Mr Fraser?’

  ‘We do, your Highness,’ said Danforth, trying to deepen his voice.

  ‘It is terrible, shameless. It is, you understand, an attack on your master. And an attack on the queen my daughter.’

  ‘With respect, madam,’ said Martin, ‘it might be that Mr Fraser had enemies.’

  ‘Enemies? Know you of any?’

  ‘… No.’

  ‘Enemies who kill him as he was killed, and in such a place, so near to our own presence? No, this is something aimed at us – your master and myself. You are aware I am a captive here? A captive, though I was your sovereign lady six months since, and my daughter is that even now.’

  ‘Now, your Highness,’ said Danforth, ‘you are surely no captive. My advice is to get you and the queen to some place of greater safety. Take your household further into the realm. This is what the cardinal wills also. It is his advice.’

  ‘My household? Gentlemen,’ she said, before giving each of them measuring looks. ‘Can I trust you, your master aside?’ Danforth was unsure how to react, weighing up loyalty to Beaton with the look of weakened entreaty on Marie’s face.

  ‘You can, your Highness,’ said Martin. ‘Our master’s advice was to serve you as best we can.’ Her shoulders relaxed, the black material sparkling, and Danforth could see any resolve she might have had to play-act falter and crumble. To her, he dared hope, he and Martin had become islands of rock in turbulent seas. Martin had spoken well, and Danforth felt the urge to make his own contribution. Inspiration struck him.

  ‘Madam,’ he said, reaching into the pocket of his outer robe, ‘please, accept this small token of our honesty and affection for your estate.’ He withdrew the sprig of heather he had bought and held it out, his head still bent. The woman, Madame LeBoeuf, stepped forward and took it, sniffing it with narrowed eyes before handing it to the queen. ‘It is fine,’ she said. Her voice was deep, almost mannish.

  Marie’s, when she spoke, was earnest. ‘My humble thanks to you both. It is my favourite colour. I welcome you to my service, my friends, and open my mind to you. You spoke of my household? My household has turned to Edinburgh, to serve that little man, Arran. Governor of Scotland? Protector? Hah! Protector of himself. I hear how already he empties Scotland’s treasury buying his family trinkets.’ Danforth again pictured the lord protector, his face still swathed in puppy fat. It was said he was weak and stupid, ruled entirely by Archibald Douglas, the Earl of Angus, and his brother, George. But what if he wasn’t? ‘And I can do nothing, make no move, but send my things in secret to Stirling. He has commanded that the queen and I stay in this place, this unsafe place. He, that was once my subject, has commanded me, until he hears what King Henry’s wishes are. The governor of Scotland waiting for the wishes of the English king.’

  ‘Madam, our master has commanded us to take your part. To find out what has become of Mr Fraser and ensure your safety. And the queen’s.’

  ‘Safety … We will neither of us be safe as long as we are trapped in this palace.’ Marie’s voice betrayed no anxiety, but Danforth noticed that the long, slim fingers of one hand drummed volubly on the arm of her chair. Her other hand picked at a piece of thread on the cloth covering it. ‘We must move – but to where? Stirling? How? And now that dratted madman in England writes saying he is sending forth an emissary, and I must feign friendship.’

  ‘An English emissary?’ asked Danforth. ‘Who?’

  ‘I do not yet know. I should imagine that Sadler. He was here before, some years ago. To make discord between my husband and your master – to turn the king’s mind from France. He failed. Do you know him?’

  Danforth had frozen, a chill running through him at the name. Ralph Sadler. He had not met the man on either of his previous missions to Scotland, but he knew him to be in Thomas Cromwell’s service. Or, his mind added, to have been in it. Strange – the politics of England had moved with startling rapidity since he had fled the country, monasteries falling and King Henry racing through wives, and yet a sudden name could overturn the clock. It could bring back the dead. ‘I have heard the name,’ he said, ignoring the look Martin gave him, half-intrigued, half-impressed. ‘I do not know him.’ Nor wish to, his mind added with a grimace.

  ‘You know why England sends a man, though? To seek,’ Marie went on, not waiting for an answer, her hands growing frantic, ‘my daughter. Henry thinks he can win this realm by marriage with his son. The Douglases act as his servants, and bend Monsieur Arran to their will. Cheaper than winning it by the sword.’

  ‘Your Highness would never allow a sovereign princess of Scotland to be given to England,’ said Martin. ‘France, surely, not England.’ Marie drew back a little at the presumption. ‘My apologies, your Highness.’

&nbs
p; ‘No, speak your mind. I must only entertain this Sadler. Keeping Henry’s hopes alive will keep him from our postern gate. I think. I hope. I –’

  A knock made Danforth and Martin jerk, but Marie seemed unmoved. It was followed by another two, and Danforth had time to silently curse Guthrie before the door opened, admitting a pretty little wench in a violet gown and headdress.

  ‘Yes, Mademoiselle Beauterne?’ said Marie. ‘All is well?’

  ‘Very well, your Grace. The queen has supped of the wet nurse. She is in perfect health.’ The girl spoke as though scripted, and her smiling gaze was fixed on the kneeling men rather than her mistress. Danforth looked up at her, noting the small features, the stiff, posed way in which she stood.

  ‘And delighted I am to hear it. You may go, mistress.’

  Danforth noticed Martin’s puzzled gaze as he twisted his neck to see the girl retreating from the bedchamber, but he had realised instantly what was happening. Marie did not entirely trust them yet. The little intrusion had been staged, organised beforehand, undoubtedly, so that they might carry back to the cardinal – or anyone else they might report to – that the infant queen was not a sickly child. Politics, he thought.

  ‘My apologies, gentleman. But before I am a queen mother I am first a mother, and before the queen is Queen of Scots she is my daughter.’ Her words had a touching sincerity to them. ‘At any cost to myself I will protect my daughter.’

  ‘Madam, do you suggest that the death of Mr Fraser was aimed at the queen, somehow?’ asked Martin, his voice a little doubtful. ‘Even if someone has killed a lousy old man, that doesn’t mean they could take the life of a child. A sovereign child at that.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Martin. I wish that this matter was simple. That your man Fraser had been robbed, or else killed by some creditor. You will soon see that it cannot be so, if you would but inspect his corpse. Before that, though, I must ask you a question, both of you. Gentlemen, do you believe in ghosts?’

  6

  Silence spun out in the bedchamber. Danforth and Martin both shivered, despite the thick tapestries and the leaping flames in the grate. The light they cast on Marie and her waiting women had now become sinister, making odd shapes on the trio of pale faces. Danforth had a brief image of three witches, beautiful and deadly, wreathed in the light of hellfire. Stupid, of course.

  Ghosts. He had considered the question before – having so much time to himself in the past, he had allowed his mind to turn to all kinds of questions, from the scientific to the theological. There were certainly plenty of reports of ghosts through the ages. He had discounted the old notion of spirits which took on corporeal form and wrestled with priests – those were the ignorant imaginings of his great-great-grandfathers. Mouldering corpses did not rise from the grave to terrorise the living. He knew, from experience, that only the memory could play such tricks; the power of the dead lay in the memories of the living, haunting them in dreams.

  Yet, he thought, his hand reaching to the medal he wore around his neck, there were reports enough of the spirits of the dead returning to warn of doom. So too were there stories – credible stories, he thought – of the ghosts of the slain visiting relatives and friends to encourage vengeance. Even the pagans recounted them. Pliny told of a spirit which could not rest until its murdered bones had been found and given proper burial. Odysseus was said to have met the ghost of Elpenor in Hades, with Elpenor advising him that he would be trapped there until his undiscovered corpse was found and buried. The Church did not condemn such beliefs, and that was enough to give him pause.

  ‘Ghosts, your Highness? I don’t believe in them. But I’m scared of them,’ smiled Martin. Marie did not return his smile this time.

  ‘Do you believe that they can do harm to the living? That they can draw our blood and break our bones?’

  ‘I do not, madam,’ said Danforth, with finality. ‘Men draw blood and break bones. Ghosts – if there are ghosts – seek vengeance through men.’

  ‘And yet this palace – this very palace – is said to be haunted,’ said Marie. ‘Oh yes, I have heard of it from my first visit. Underneath the paint and the glister there is something rotten. The late king my husband’s mother, Queen Margaret, told me she was visited by a blue-robed spirit who warned King James IV not to venture to England. That spirit, if it truly spoke, was right to warn him, and King James wrong not to heed him.’

  ‘That spirit, then, did no harm. It sought to do good.’

  ‘Perhaps. It knew the future.’ She trailed off, her eyes looking above them into the ceiling shadows.

  ‘Madam, forgive me, but why this talk of ghosts? We are here, as we understand, to encourage you to move from this place to safety, and to look into the circumstances of our colleague’s death.’

  ‘Quite right. Forgive me. You will understand better when you look upon him. Tell me, do either of you recall the late king’s traitor, James Hamilton of Finnart? The one they called the bastard of Hamilton?’

  Danforth recalled the man, a relative and sometime friend of the cardinal as well as an illegitimate cousin of the king. Together Finnart and Beaton had sat in judgement of heretics … in Linlithgow, as it happened. Yet Beaton had turned his back on him when King James decided to rid himself of his former friend. Did that signify anything? ‘Finnart,’ he said, ‘was half-brother to the governor. Dead these last …’

  ‘Two years, or thereabouts,’ finished Marie. ‘Dead, but not forgotten after death. You might have heard of my husband’s terrors afterwards? His … his dreams.’

  Yes, thought Danforth. There had been rumours flying around Scotland about the king waking in the night in fear of Finnart’s ghost. But that was as much as he knew. In some versions, Finnart had sliced an ‘H’ into the King’s cheeks; in others, James had been thrown off the battlements of Stirling castle by the ghoulish demon. What the king had actually dreamed, no one really knew. ‘The king,’ said Marie, ‘woke many nights, sometimes abed by me, sometimes alone or with his own servants, having seen Finnart draw his sword and strike off first one arm, and then the other, and then his head. His Grace took it as prophecy that each arm represented the late Princes. My sons.’ Her voice grew soft, catching in her throat. She held out a hand and, instantly, the gentlewoman at her side crossed to a side table and poured a cup of wine, passing it over. She sipped at it before continuing. ‘The loss of his head, I thought, might mean the end of the king’s life. With his Grace now in Heaven, I had thought an end to all danger of prophecy. Yet now I see that the head is my daughter, for it is she who wears this country’s crown.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ she said clearing her throat and passing the cup back, ‘your Mr Fraser’s arms were cut clean off, in the manner of my husband’s dream. Whatever killed him also cut into the back of his head, not quite severing it, but close to it. I take by this a warning, a message. My sons have been carried off, and my daughter, our queen, is next.’

  Danforth and Martin drew their breaths. ‘Madam,’ said Danforth, ‘do not think me a braggart, but I have some experience in cases of murder.’

  ‘It’s true, madam,’ said Martin. ‘He attracts corpses like dunghills attract flies.’

  ‘What? Is this a good thing?’

  ‘My colleague,’ said Danforth, side-eyeing Martin, whom he had not yet forgiven for the affront of the cushion, ‘means that I have had some occasion to discover murderers. Recently we saw two rogues hang in Stirling for their crimes.’

  ‘What, Stirling? My little Striveling? Pray God, do not tell me that even that place is not safe. I have been sending my chattels there.’

  ‘The castle ought to be, madam,’ said Martin. ‘And the town a thing safer than it was before us.’

  ‘At any rate, what I have found always to be the case is that men are behind sudden violent death,’ said Danforth. ‘Always. If there is any to gain by Fraser’s death, or even by the death of our little sovereign lady – and God forbid it – then he is our man.’

  ‘And you discount so
me ghostly or hellish hand?’

  ‘Until I see proof, yes. I do.’

  ‘We shall look into Fraser,’ said Martin. ‘See if he had any enemies his woman did not know of. And Finnart, too – if he had any friends who would want vengeance on the crown. On your family. The Hamiltons are thick with the Douglases still.’

  ‘The Douglases,’ spat Marie. ‘That man has stuffed this palace with Hamilton and Douglas kinfolk – all that rabble out there. Spies, all. All working to take my child from my arms and sell her to that old man in England. My child, wed to the English prince, that is what they drive at. And then where am I? Yet … yet Monsieur Le Lord Protector, that foolish Arran … he has a little boy also. Hopes might yet be bred in him of his own line as would turn him away from King Henry and his Douglas slaves.’

  ‘Such a thought should keep Arran from giving the little queen to Henry,’ said Martin.

  ‘Our master would approve,’ added Danforth.

  ‘Yes. I see. Ahh, but sometimes I think my girl would safer in the care of my cousin, le roi de France. To be given in marriage to some great Frenchman.’

  ‘Not France,’ spat Danforth. Then, seeing Marie’s head draw back imperiously, he quickly added, ‘I mean, Queen Mary is our sovereign in Scotland, latest of that noble race of Stewarts. Scotland is her kingdom, and in Scotland she shall be safe. Made safe. Parliament would not allow her to be sent out of the realm.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Marie put a finger on her chin. ‘I think that is all, gentlemen. I would that you should deal with the matter, whatever its nature, quickly. Now. Please. I am a patient woman, but this great affront touches me too near. I have given orders already that you be lodged downstairs for the time you are with us. We have increased security around the nursery already. If you think of anything else that might be done, it shall be. For now, I give you leave. And for God’s sweet sake, keep this case as quiet as possible. That cursed Arran shall love an excuse to take my daughter into his own custody. For her protection.’ She raised the hand that had been doing service as a bundle of drumsticks and Danforth crept forward to take it in his and brush his lips over it. His heart thrilled – a royal commission, a royal command. It offset the pain that shot through both knees.