The Wisest Fool

by Nigel Tranter

  "Her Grace perhaps has not got quite such a short memory as your sire implies!" Heriot observed to Mary Gray, as he stood with her and Alison Primrose, watching from a suitably retired position. "I wonder where the money came from for those gifts?"

  "Not from Patrick Gray's coffers, you may be sure. Nor yet, this once, from George Heriot's. But it is a good sign—my father covering up any lingering memories of a supposed plot, the royal family's most faithful servant!"

  "You think the plot quite abandoned. There is still Prince Charles left in Scotland. Might not he serve as puppet King of Scots, instead?"

  "I think not. He is too sickly and feeble. Fyvie believes that he will not live. He would be no use for Patrick's purposes—disaster if he died in his hands. No, I believe that plot is dead, and now being effectively buried. But my father will yet have his revenge on the King, if he can—nothing surer. So I will watch closely here in Scotland—and do you so in London, Geordie. Patrick will have his minions there also, you may be sure." Mary was not travelling South with Lennox—of her own sorrowful but sure decision. The Duchess was going, inevitably, part of the Queen's train. Moreover, Mary had her young son to look after at Methven Castle, little John Stewart of Methven, to whom his ducal father had made over his Scottish home and lands—in reality as a gift to his mother. Ludovick would hasten North from London just as frequently as he could, that was certain; and, who knew, once James was well settled on his English throne, he might well have less need of Lennox, and he could come back to Scotland more or less permanently.

  And so formal farewells were taken, and amidst more cannonade the royal column set out from Holyroodhouse, the great coach creaking and mmhling, drawn by eight matching white horses, George Heriot and Alison Primrose riding together well in the rear of the brilliant company. The Chancellor and many of the nobles would see the Queen on her way as far as the Border.

  But not Patrick Gray, he already had a bellyful of Berwick-upon-Tweed. As they watched the others go, he and his daughter turned and exchanged a long glance.

  "As our beloved monarch would say—absens haeres non erit! the man observed conversationally.

  "Or again, perhaps—aut non tentaris aut perfice!" she capped

  it

  "My clever daughter 1" he acknowledged, bowing. "If you and I could but work in harness, what might not we achieve?"

  * * *

  After an overnight halt at the Hamilton castle of Innerwick, they came to Berwick on a dove-grey, windless noon, to more cannon-fire—and a confrontation. Here, George Heriot moved up the column discreetly, near to the Queen's side, where Lennox welcomed him thankfully. For here, held back from Edinburgh, waited the aheady offended Earls of Sussex and Lincoln, with the Countesses of Worcester and Kildare, and the Ladies Scrope, Rich and Walsingham, sent North by King James. With the newly knighted governor, Sir William Selby, they waited in a brilliant group at the Scots Gate of the old grey-walled town.

  Anne, who had been at her most gracious all the way, bowing and waving to the people, beaming on local demonstrations, kissing children, at sight of this party, and of the canopied horse-litter, splendid with the royal arms, which accompanied them, froze in her saddle—for she had quickly found coach-travel on bumpy, dusty roads uncomfortable in the early June heat, and reverted to horseback like the rest of the company. As they reined up only a short distance in front of the bowing magnificos, she called, in clear, ringing tones, "Who are these, Duke of Lennox ? Not Berwickers, I vow! I told you—I will have no more women imposed upon my household by His Grace, or any other. I have had a sufficiency of that!"

  "H'rr'mm." Lennox cleared his throat "It is a welcome, Highness..."

  The Earl of Sussex intervened smoothly, but authoritatively as befitted one in blood relationship to the late Elizabeth. "We warmly greet Your Majesty, on His Majesty's royal commands, to this your kingdom of England, the fairest jewel of Christendom's crown, opened like a pearl-oyster for your royal delectation. A pearl without price set in a silver sea, to which nothing you has ever seen may compare. To ascend this jewelled throne is a bliss beyond all sublime..."

  "Your rhapsody, sir, does you credit—but I think you exaggerate!" the Queen broke in briskly. "How know you that your England is so much better than other lands ? Have you visited them all? You came to Scotland, yes, for my son's christening— where, I would remind you, I have been Queen for a dozen years! Did you mislike it so? And have you been to Denmark? To Norway, where my brother is King. Speak to that which you know, my lord."

  Sussex was far too great an English nobleman to look put out, but he could and did look pained. "I rejoice that at least Your Majesty recognised me, Sussex," he declared stiffly. "And this is my lord Earl of Lincoln, Henry Clinton, member of the Privy Council and valued servant of Her late Majesty. And here is the Countess of Worcester and the Countess of Kildare, appointed Your Majesty's principal Ladies-in-Waiting by King James. And the Ladies Scrope, Rich and Walsingham, also of your new household..."

  "No, my lord," Anne said briefly.

  He stared. They all did.

  "I... I do not understand, Madam ?"

  "I would have thought it sufficiently simple, sir. I choose my own ladies." "But... His Majesty..."

  "I do not seek to help choose the King's gentlemen for him!"

  The other earl, Lincoln, an older man, spoke up. "Majesty— these ladies only desire to serve you. They are of the most eminent in England."

  "No doubt, sir. Or, leastways, serve the King. I thank them— but have my own ladies. If I wish to add to their number, I shall make my own choice."

  The youngest of the waiting ladies, a dark-haired, vivid creature, tried a different approach. "Majesty—I am Frances Howard, daughter to Effingham—or Nottingham, as he now is—the Lord Admiral. Wed formerly to Kildare. We have brought with us a great store of the late Queen's gowns, dresses, robes for your use. Rich clothing of notable worth. I was Her Majesty's Mistress of the Wardrobe."

  "Indeed, Countess? And you conceive me, Anne, to be the repository for your late mistress' cast-off clothes?" the Queen asked, coldly. "Must I, your Queen, wear another's discarded wardrobe? 'Fore God, woman—watch how you speak!"

  "No, Madam—no! I swear that is not the way of it." The Countess looked shaken. "Believe me, these are not cast-off. Many have never been worn. Her Majesty was, was improvident in this. She ordered great numbers of gowns, three of a kind most frequently. Wore one once and discarded the others..."

  "So may a queen behave. If Elizabeth, why not Anne? Am I to play the frugal hausfrau of this so rich jewel of Christendom's crown, to make up for Elizabeth's improvidence ?"

  "Not so, Majesty. But..."

  "Your Highness," the older Countess of Worcester intervened hurriedly, "these gowns are very splendid. Seeded with pearls, hung with jewels, decked with gold and silver..."

  "Were they laden with the riches of the Indies, I would not wear another's clothes !" Anne declared. "I am the Queen."

  A little back from her side, George Heriot coughed. "Your Grace —these gowns may have their uses," he suggested, in a murmur. "You need not wear them. You could bestow them as gifts. Cut up, they might serve many purposes. As at masques and entertainments. The jewels you could have cut off. Used otherwise. Jewels are never at second-hand—as I should know! Indeed, you could perhaps sell them to me! And thereby, h'm, something improve our account 1" That was little more than a whisper.

  "Ah," Anne said.

  "Master Heriot speaks good sense, Cousin," Lennox put in, lightly confidentiaL "You could start by giving one of the gowns to me! I swear I'd find a use for it! I am not so rich that I could not do with a few English pearls."

  "You have a rich wife, Vicky."

  Lennox glanced round to see how near was his Duchess. "Jean's riches are her own, Cousin, not mine."

  "Very well," the Queen decided. "I accept the gowns. See you to them, Master Geordie. But—I will have no ladies-in-waiting other than my own choice. All-understan
d it."

  Sussex bowed. "As you will, Majesty. Now—may I present to you your Chamberlain, Sir George Carey," and he waved a hand towards a resplendent youngish man, of a pale beauty, standing a little apart. "Son to my Lord Hunsdon, in cousinship to Her late Majesty, and brother to Lady Scrope here..."

  "God's death, sirrah!" the Queen exploded. "Have you taken leave of your wits! There is my Chamberlain, Sir John Kennedy, riding behind me."

  "The King, Madam..."

  "The King is in London—and I am here! Remember it, my lords. Enough of this. Vicky—we have lingered sufficiently long. Have our trains move on. Bestow these, these emissaries from His Grace somewhere. They may join us. But not over close to my person! Let us be on our way..."

  Anne of Denmark's crossing of the Border was almost as dramatic as her husband's own—and just as alarming for her English subjects.

  6

  THE QUEEN'S SWOLLEN cavalcade reached "Windsor, in the Thames valley, on the last day of June, after a leisurely progress down through England. If King James's entourage had increased on his southwards journey to his alarm and disapproval—because of the cost—it was as nothing to Anne's enlarged company. Expanding at York, Worksop, Nottingham, Leicester, Althorp, Grafton and the rest, by the time Amersham was reached the party had become an army, a great sprawling host that covered the land for many miles, its progress inevitably slower and slower. Heriot counted no fewer than two hundred and fifty carriages now, following the Queen's, and assessed those on horseback to be not far off five thousand.

  It was largely Anne's own doing. After the contretemps at Berwick, she had apparently decided to change her tune somewhat. Or, more probably, it was always her intention to present a gracious and amiable front to her husband's new subjects, and only James's appointments to her household upset her. At any rate, thereafter, all the long road southwards she was at her kindest and most friendly, delighting all who gathered to greet and entertain her, lavish with gifts, accessible, patient, charming —and obviously welcoming the popularity indicated by the ever-enlarging of her train. If she did not actually urge lords and ladies, knights and squires and their females to follow her to London, she certainly did not discourage them, nor would allow the apprehensive Lennox and Heriot to do so. The Duchess of Lennox declared that she was doing it deliberately to spite her husband, that the King might see how popular she was with the people—and that she might cost him as much as possible of the money he valued so highly. Admittedly she did not thaw much towards the illustrious group which had met her at Berwick, keeping them rather at arm's length—to their great offence; but that clearly was also more of a gesture to James, that her days of being a pawn for him to move at will, were over. A new start was being made, for her equally with himself. And that the English in general should not be offended, she made much of the Countess of Bedford, Lucy Russell, whom she picked up at Woburn, young, lively and of a ready wit, grand-niece of Sir Philip Sidney, with her protege Ben Jonson, a notable deviser of plays and masques.

  At Amersham in Buckinghamshire, envoys from the King met the entourage, to change its course to Windsor. The hot summer weather was exacerbating the plague in London and people were dying like flies. King James would by no means set royal foot in his new capital in these circumstances and was having to postpone his coronation in consequence. Instead, as a sort of stop-gap, he was going to hold a great investiture of the Order of the Garter at Windsor Castle, the Order's seat. The Queen and her suite were commanded to hasten there with all speed—for His Majesty had expected her to have arrived long ere this—as the Prince Henry was necessary to the occasion, to be installed as one of the new knights.

  Anne, nettled that it was apparently her son rather than herself whom the King was anxious to see, agreed to turn the column due southwards to Windsor but firmly refused to hurry; indeed she seemed to go even more slowly, spending more time over wayside receptions and the like—to the increasing concern of Lennox and others.

  In this spirit the vast concourse descended upon the lovely and sylvan vale of Thames on an afternoon of scorching heat Unfortunately, at this stage, James sent to meet them, of all people, John Earl of Mar and young Sir John Ramsay, chief page— a move scarcely well received. Mar at least had the wit not to address the Queen personally, bowing distantly to her from the saddle—and receiving not so much as a flicker of an eyelid in response. Ramsay, one of the King's pretty boys—though a vicious one, who dirked to death the Ruthven brothers at Gowrie House three years before—was left to address flowery greetings to Anne, and got little better acknowledgment

  Mar reined round beside Lennox. "God, man!" he said in his choleric way, "What's this ? An invasion ? James will take ill out o' it—he will so. Where did you get a' these? This host? Aye— and where have you been? You were expected days back. A week and mair."

  Ludovick did not often play the duke, but he did not like Mar and conceived him a bad influence with the King. "I think you forget yourself, my lord," he said stiffly. "Her Grace does not have to account to you for her actions. Nor do I."

  "Humph! Hoity-toity!" Mar growled. 'You'll no' bide that way long, Lennox. No, nor the Queen either! I warn you, James is right displeased. Hot, he is. You'll discover it"

  "Then he ought not to be, sir. Unless someone has been poisoning his mind! He has his wife and son safely here—when she was at death's door, and the boy in danger of being taken and set up as King of Scots against him. James should be a thankful man —and I will tell him so. And small thanks to you!"

  "The laddie was held safe in my castle, was he no' ?"

  'The thing could be described otherwise!"

  The Earl of Mar removed himself to more congenial company.

  George Heriot and Alison Primrose—who, despite twenty-five years discrepancy in age, had become close allies on the prolonged journey—watched this charade from behind.

  "I fear our pleasant easeful dallying is over, Alison," the man said. 'Now for the reckoning."

  "The reckoning may have its own amusements, Geordie," she pointed out. "The Queen has discovered her hardihood. Aye, and much more. She may hold her own. It will be as good as a playacting. I vow! Holy Matrimony and the Lord's Anointed!"

  "You are an irreverent child!" he asserted. "Is nothing sacred to you?"

  "Much," she conceded. "But hot this royal comedy of the Lion and the Unicorn!"

  "Ha!" he said. "The Lion and the Unicom! That is an apt title, to be sure. England's lion and Scotland's unicorn—with the unicorn rampant! Yet—which is which, in fact? Which the noble beast and which the laughable creature that never was !"

  "Ask His Grace himself, some time," that shrewd juvenile suggested lightly. "Our learned liege might be the only one who could tell you, I think."

  As the head of the cavalcade wound its way through the narrow streets of Windsor town, Anne chose to ride a saddle-horse between Lennox and his sister Hetty. Ahead, the huge mass of the castle dominated all, not in soaring aloofness like Stirling or Edinburgh on their rocks, but crowning a slight eminence in sheer, massive bulk and serried, towered masonry. The newcomers could not but be impressed.

  At the great new gatehouse to the Lower Ward, built by the late King Henry Eighth, before a large and colourful concourse of fine folk, two thrones had been erected on a dais covered with cloth-of-gold. Higher, behind these on the sloping ramp, were grouped all the English great officers of state, from the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice to the Garter King of Arms and the principal Secretary of State, Sir Robert Cecil. But the King was not sitting enthroned amongst all this array of resplendent dignity; he was hobbling up and down and around, not on the dais at all, leaning on the shoulder of a long-haired, handsome young man, with the other hand wielding a long white stick, almost as tall as himself, beribboned and with a golden ferrule. James was very fond of this stick, despite its donor—the Master of Gray had in fact brought it to him from France—but in the present circumstances it was something of a menace to all concerned,
even to its royal wielder, all but tripping him up time and again. But he found it convenient to poke with while he waited—for passive waiting was anathema to James Stewart So he hobbled about and poked, poked at dignified men's feet, at fine ladies' ankles, even higher on occasion—for he was a man of catholic interests—at the heralds' tabards and Yeomen of the Guard's halberds. He muttered panted pleasantries as he poked, panted because he was puffing and sweating profusely in the heat Everyone was hot, but James was hottest, his heavily-stuffed and padded clothing ensuring that. Always the King's clothes made him look twice the size he was, so filled were they with padding as protection against the thrusts of cold steel, the thought of which ever haunted him.

  He had found an interesting thing to poke at, the loose silver shoe-buckle of a Yeoman of the Guard which made a pleasant clinking sound and delightfully embarrassed its wearer, when the Queen's procession turned into the wide forecourt from the street. At the arranged sign from the Garter King, the ranked trumpeters raised their gleaming instruments and blew a mighty fanfare. James, wholly preoccupied with what he was doing and unprepared, all but leapt out of his bejewelled, slashed and padded doublet at the sudden blast His high ostrich-feathered hat was knocked askew and the stick fell with a clatter—posing another agonising problem for the unfortunate Yeoman, whether to stoop and pick up the King's staff or to retain a suitably stiff and upright stance. The Earl of Southampton—on whom the King was leaning—it was who retrieved the stick, while in stammering choler James turned and shook his freed fist at the musicians.