Dagger in the Crown (Tam Eildor mystery no.1)

by Alanna Knight

  Tam bowed. ‘And what is that, Your Grace?’

  The Queen’s eyebrows raised mockingly. ‘Why, that you are a wizard.’

  Tam bowed. ‘Alas, madam, I make no such claims.’

  Fleming was not to be put off. Determinedly she came forward. ‘We have heard rumours that you can foretell the future,’ she insisted. ‘Beaton told us that you also share her aunt’s gift of palmistry.’ So saying she thrust her hand toward him, palm outstretched. ‘Come, Master Eildor. Tell me what marriage holds. Will I be happy? Will my husband always love me?’ she asked softly.

  ‘Alas, no one can tell you that.’

  Fleming darted a tight-lipped look of reproach in Beaton’s direction, while the other two Maries sighed deeply.

  But Marie Seton smiled at him, albeit with a touch of anxiety in her expression, as if she was apologizing for having enjoyed and helped spread a little too much harmless gossip about him.

  The Queen put a hand on his arm and said gently, ‘Come, Master Eildor, satisfy my dear Maries. Tell them what you think you can see.’

  Tam bowed but shook his head. As he opened his mouth to protest that this was beyond his powers, Mary looked at him sternly. ‘Tell them,’ she insisted. ‘It is but a game we wish to indulge in.’

  ‘Is it your command, Your Grace?’ When she inclined her head, smiling, he sighed. ‘Very well.’ He took the hand of each in turn, while the others looked over his shoulder, eager and watchful, as if they too might interpret what he saw.

  He saw marriage for Fleming, a happy marriage, but the line was short. They would not have many years together. This he did not tell her. There was marriage for Beaton. For Livingstone, now Lady Semply, a long life and many children.

  For his Marie, he could predict love, yes, many men would love her.

  ‘You see no marriage for me then?’ she whispered, gazing into his eyes.

  ‘I see you refusing many suitors,’ Tam replied. ‘Many men will love you. You will have a long life.’

  ‘But no marriage.’ Something in her sad voice told him of her hopes too, that he might marry her. Said in no words: Do you not want me as I want you?

  Aware of the Queen's intent gaze upon him, he was saved further confusion when she thrust out her hand. 'Now it is my turn, Master Eildor. I have been pleased to listen to these others. Now tell me what is in store.'

  What was in store? He panicked as he held the delicate hand in his. A daunting prospect indeed. Men had died for less than a royal prophecy that went wrong. He gazed at her palm. The life-line was not long, but there was much suffering, much separation from those she loved. There was confinement - prison. But over all there was blood.

  Blood to be shed. Death.

  He had not guessed any of this.

  He knew.

  It was one of his terrifying leaps in the future, as if he was reading all he knew of this lovely woman in a book still to be written, where Mary would go down in history as Scotland's tragic queen.

  The burden of such knowledge was intolerable. But the Queen was awaiting his reply. He had to tell her something. He touched her hand to his lips. 'History will tell better than my humble efforts, Your Grace. Your fame, your glorious name, will become a legend among men. It will last for ever. You will be revered by generations of men yet unborn whose sole regret in life is that they never knew you. Men through the ages who would have died to serve you.'

  It was quite a speech and she looked at him gravely from under those pale gold eyebrows, her eyes tear-filled as she pulled her trembling hand from his.

  How much, he wondered, of her future does she already know or guess?

  At that moment a welcome interruption, the sound of a crying baby. Livingstone, with a glance at the Queen, rushed to the door and ushered in the wet-nurse proudly holding a shawled bundle of small yelling humanity.

  As Livingstone curtsied to the Queen, who held out her arms for the baby, for a moment Tam wondered if the babe was Prince James, brought to Craigmillar from Stirling Castle. There the Queen had placed him last summer in the safekeeping of the Erskine family, with his wet-nurse Lady Reres. Present at his birth in Edinburgh Castle, she and her family were hereditary governors of Stirling, known to generations of Scottish kings as 'the royal nursery'.

  This decision was against Mary's better judgement, for she was in perpetual longing for her tiny baby. But she succumbed to the advice of her council, since the prince's safety might well be in jeopardy until matters were sorted out between herself and Darnley.

  Now it was the Queen's wish, confirmed by Marie Seton, that Livingstone's baby daughter was brought to her mother every afternoon at four of the clock, so that the Queen could enjoy vicariously the pleasure of a tiny child the same age as her own.

  As Tam looked at her, she was transformed into tender motherhood as she rocked the infant in her arms.

  'Cela, id votre tante, my wee lamb,' she crooned, kissing the rosy small face into an amazing silence.

  Bowing himself out with an ominous feeling of disaster, Tam was reminded of that other Mother and Child, the Virgin Mary and her son, Jesus Christ. And neither the Queen of Heaven nor the Queen of Scots was destined to see her son in old age or hold grandsons in her arms.

  Chapter Five

  Wednesday 4 December 1566. Morning

  Tam's search for Will Fellows had had to be set aside. Matters concerning his role as steward of Branxholm had him closeted hour upon hour with legal documents Janet had brought with her. Documents relating to estate matters long neglected by her bedridden steward, whose failing eyesight and lack of mobility sapped the energy to interpret the more subtle implications of life rents and legacy clauses.

  Perhaps he also lacked, thought Tam wryly, the education and knowledge of law which came quite naturally to him, a bequest no doubt from his former life.

  Outside Janet's apartments, the court's departure for Stirling Castle signalled frantic activity. Corridors echoed with the noise of scurrying servants as they balanced trunks of clothes and staggered under favourite items of furniture that accompanied the Queen from residence to residence. Loud voices shrilled orders and urgent messages as if departure was imminent and not, as was actually the case, more than a week ahead.

  Meanwhile, anxious eyes were turned towards the weather, since a grey November had become an even colder, more miserable December. As the first gentle snowflakes fell, there was a new worry. Would their long journey to Stirling be delayed by a heavy fall, blocking narrow roads on their route? Groaning, servants considered the hazards of carts loaded with trunks and furniture, the uncertain tempers and whips of benighted courtiers.

  Then one morning another flurry of activity around the Queen's apartments, with frantic scurryings and shrill voices subdued.

  Whispers: 'Her Grace is indisposed.'

  That was all, but it was enough. Her Grace's indispositions were wont to decline swiftly into serious illness, where her life was despaired of. She had been plagued since adolescence with recurring bouts of a strange illness with hysterical and physical symptoms, particularly severe bouts of vomiting.

  Bothwell, who was a man of action, of sudden decisions and hasty exists, was frustrated, constantly interrupting Tam and Janet as they seized the lull to sort out Branxholm affairs.

  'We cannot leave until the Queen is recovered, Jamie,' said Janet calmly.

  'Ye ken what this means,' said Bothwell. 'The date of the christening might have to be changed.'

  There was nightmare enough in that thought, since the godparents had been summoned. Soon after the prince's birth last June, messages had been sent to the King of France, who would be represented by the Count of Brienne, in whose arms Prince James would be carried to the font, the christening present of the baby's godmother, Queen Elizabeth of England, who would be represented by the Queen's Catholic half-sister Jean, Countess of Argyll, while ambassador M. du Croc stood in for the Duke of Savoy.

  'Their arrangements for travel by land and sea will have be
en made long since and it is vital that I have time in Stirling to make sure arrangements go smoothly,' Bothwell moaned.

  Janet was remarkably unmoved. By her reckoning and from long experience, crises tended to sort themselves out quite nicely if left alone. In truth, she was growing impatient with her role of ministering angel to Jamie, constantly at hand with soothing advice.

  'Most of these arrangements can be left to your minions. All that is required of you is to oversee the final ceremony,' she told him sternly several times a day.

  'What ails her this time? Is it serious?' Bothwell demanded.

  'A disorder of the stomach, I fear.'

  'Poison?' Bothwell's eyebrows shot up. Had word of the conspiracy leaked out and Darnley stolen a march on them?

  'I think not,' said Janet, but she wondered too.

  What about symptoms of other mysterious illnesses, never fully explained by royal physicians and beyond her own herbal remedies, in which the Queen had so much faith? The remedies were, she suspected, her sole reason for inclusion in the Queen's court, for she had achieved notable success when summoned from Branxholm to Jedburgh, where more chaotic methods of bleeding and purging almost killed the Queen.

  'You might use the time to see the court tailors, Jamie,’ Janet said, looking him over dispassionately, for although he had abandoned her gift of a velvet doublet with pearl buttons after two wearings and had resorted to leather jack and woollen hose, he could hardly decline the magnificent attire of blue satin and silver the Queen had promised for the prince's christening.

  'Regard this delay as a gift,' she urged. 'For preparation. You must not displease Her Grace.'

  This changed a scowl from Bothwell into a smile. Janet had noted for some time now that this self-satisfied expression was his reaction to the Queen's name. God only knew, she had seen it many times before. He might well have inherited the unfortunate tendency from his late father, the 'Fair Earl', who had unsuccessfully wooed Mary's mother.

  Wooing the still-married Queen of Scots was a more dangerous pastime and Janet felt certain that Jamie's feelings were being reciprocated. How the Queen melted when Bothwell was announced. How the Maries exchanged glances and sly smiles. No one in their presence could long be unaware of the spark that was ignited between the two.

  And watching them together, Janet, who had been in and out of love many times, recognized the symptoms. What had been a mere spark of hero-worship in Hermitage for the wounded man who had once saved her own life showed every indication of turning into a very different flame in Craigmillar. A fierce unquenchable flame that would eat them up, destroy them both.

  Perhaps Mary had had more than enough of simpering courtiers and an unconsummated child marriage to a boy Dauphin, then to a bonny but vicious pervert like Darnley. She had never forgiven him for his part in Riccio's death and that wild ride to Dunbar with their rescuer Bothwell. How, when she had complained about endangering their unborn child, Darnley had screamed at her, 'Never mind. If we lose this one, we can soon make another.'

  Mary might be seeing Bothwell through a young woman's romantic eyes, but for him it was something else. As well as the charismatic charm he held for all women, ambition also drove him. The Queen presented the greatest challenge yet and would be the greatest conquest of all.

  Janet groaned inwardly, wishing she could warn him of the dangers, when all her instincts cried out, not only as one whose psychic powers could sometimes penetrate the future but also from sheer common sense. 'Don't do it, Jamie, don't do it. For sweet Jesu' sake, step back before it's too late.'

  For loving the Queen of Scotland was a death sentence. If the Conspirators' plot was successful and Darnley disappeared from the scene, by fair means or foul, then the powerful Scottish nobles, in need of a scapegoat to save their own skins, would most surely have Bothwell's blood, and with Mary's ambitious half-brother's blessing, they would send the Queen to hell with him.

  Janet sighed. She loved Mary and owed her loyalty, not only as Queen but as kin, but she loved Jamie Hepburn more and had loved him for a very long time. She knew his sexual power even as a nineteen-year-old youth, when she first took him to her bed, aware that she was far from the first in a long line of amours.

  She also knew the secret of his 'wizard's enchantment' for the Queen. He could make her laugh, and in the sadness of betrayal, how she must have welcomed some lighter moments. He talked to her in French, unlike the other Scottish nobles, for he had served in the Garde Ecossais and spoke the language well. But now and again Janet had watched him abandon his courtly speech and lapse into broad Border Scots, coarse-tongued, outrageous.

  It made the Queen gasp, hoot with laughter as she said, 'Explain, my Lord Bothwell, explain.'

  When he did so, she would scream with mirth, clasping her hands to her sides like a fishwife, pleading with him to stop. And that was more effective than any passionate declarations of love.

  More lasting too, thought Janet grimly, for in those short hours Bothwell gave her release, helped her escape from affairs of state and from a sullen, brutish husband. Laughter more than anything else could win her love. There was no other magic like it.

  And so Janet trembled for them both. The fact that the Queen had honoured Bothwell with the Prince's christening was clear indication, for those who watched and made note, that she held him in the highest regard. And jealousy was swift to revive old slights and add fuel to new rumours.

  Heads were shaken wisely. There might be some truth in those hints that they were lovers after all when she rushed to his side in Hermitage. No smoke without fire!

  'Ye'll be off back to Branxholm,’ Bothwell said to Janet.

  'Nay, I am to accompany Her Grace to Stirling.' She smiled. 'I thought that would please you.'

  Bothwell nodded absently. She noted a lack of his usual arousal in her close presence, as he said lightly. 'I dare say yon Eildor will keep an eye on things in your absence.'

  Janet shook her head. 'He comes with me. I need him at Stirling.'

  She hoped that she did not have to explain that she felt safer these days with Eildor around. At any other time, she might have been flattered that the idea obviously displeased Bothwell, who was now frowning. Her withdrawn expression, however, said that the subject was closed and brooked no further discussion.

  As for Bothwell, he had a sudden longing for his Borders homeland again, for his more modest peel towers. He was sick of royal residences, of the formality and daily regimes. He needed the freedom of a man's world again, the rough but sensible soldier's attire of shabby comfortable thigh boots, jack and morion helmet. He had little taste for velvet doublet and these damned absurdities of padded hose. I'm forever looking like a popinjay, he thought contemptuously.

  Most of all he needed the company of his own undemanding clansmen, with their loud talk and coarse humour, their drinking and wenching, instead of the stifling court atmosphere. Having to watch his speech and manners, while taking good care not to step out of line by taking precedence over some other noble lords who jealously guarded such privileges.

  'Ah, to hell wi' these formal bowings and scrapings.'

  He sighed, looking out on the bleak landscape of East Lothian. Even in winter there was colour and a certain splendour in the wild lands and cloudscapes stretching to eternity, and majesty in the formations of geese flying to far-off places. A man could draw a deep breath beneath an empty sky and not be suffocated by the noxious odours that seemed to surround the castle indoors and out like some evil miasma.

  After a month of confinement for an entire royal court of noble lords with their retinues of servants, as well as a small army of retainers, it was almost a necessity of survival to move on.

  Keeping the bitter weather out - sleet and snow and fierce winds - meant airless rooms and the smells of sweat and bodily functions, stale food and worse, bearable in the country and swifter to be wafted away by sharp clean air.

  Small wonder his delicate Queen had a stomachache.

&
nbsp; But there was another, more pressing reason for leaving court. Meeting a known enemy head on he had never feared, used from boyhood to the feel of an oft-bloodied sword in his hand. That was his life, a situation he could deal with. However, this ever-present vulnerability in the area between his shoulder blades, the cry in the dark, was another matter.

  Especially now that Janet had, without her usual tact, brought up the subject of Anna Throndsen. Maybe it wasn't all innocence on Janet's part either, he thought moodily, looking for ulterior motives. Was this her way of getting her own back, for though she had said it all with a sweet and understanding smile, he knew she had never quite forgiven him for taking up with Anna Throndsen and her dowry, still sentimental - and resentful - about their own earlier handfasting?

  Aye, women, even the clever ones - or especially the clever ones - had long memories for slights, more than any man.

  No doubt about it, Janet had certainly succeeded in raising his fears of Anna as the unknown assassin. He was no fool and realized now how simple it would be for a woman to mingle incognito in a castle full of female servants. Teams of them had been rounded up from the neighbouring villages for casual employment, with the domestic life of the castle under extra strain when the Queen and court were in residence. Bothwell had witnessed it all before. The clamour for places. No questions beyond a name and details of any special skills were asked, as they lined up in the courtyard, eager to serve for those few extra coins.

  Twice since his narrow escape from death and Janet's painful hints about Anna he had glimpsed a woman who, although he had almost obliterated that whining face from his mind, bore a faint resemblance to Anna in her walk and height.

  First, there was one who might have been her in disguise as a serving-wench. Head down, buried in a pile of bedlinen! He had rushed after her, along the castle's twisting dimly lit corridors and spiral stairs. When he called out, she ignored him at first and then, glancing over her shoulder, instead of waiting, curtsying politely, she took to her heels. Ignoring his, 'Wait - wait, I command you!' she had bolted round the next corner and sought trembling refuge in a group of maids emerging from one of the rooms.