He would not think of her. There were other women to think of, God knows!
And, as if to exorcize the spirit of that importunate lady, there rose in his mind the image of three Queens: Elizabeth of England of whom they had just been talking scandal, taut, erect, alert, with ever wary eyes; the gross Dowager Catherine de Medici with whom he had talked this evening; and her daughter-in-law, Mary Stewart, a young shining figure that looked as though it were made of Venetian glass.
Chapter Two
The court went to Fontainebleau, and Bothwell followed. He also followed the royal hunt in the forest there, but he was hunting another quarry than the stag, a slight figure in dull green velvet on a dapple-grey horse, who kept well to the fore of the riders, even of that urgent, desperate boy, King François. If he rode furiously, that companion of his rode superbly, with unconscious daring and swiftness, never noticing the strain her rivalry was laying on the panting boy. Her firm hands and easy seat, the grip of the long lithe thighs, showed her more than a pretty horsewoman; the wind tossed aside her skirts and gave a glimpse of the strong young knee in a turquoise silk stocking. ‘By God, but she’d manage a raid as well as any lad in my train!’ thought the Borderer, who followed behind.
‘Your hair is coming down again,’ said King François.
‘Bah, let it!’ exclaimed Queen Mary.
A long strand of it had slipped from beneath the little jewelled and feathered hat perched like an impudent bird on the side of her head; it tossed out like a torn banner on the wind, a banner of pale shining chestnut, the colour of the blown autumn leaves that scurried past her, more and more of it rippling down in haste to join that truant wisp. If only her hat would blow off and give him the opportunity to return it! It gave a leap, a flutter, it was just about to fly into the free air when her whip hand shot up to catch it and crushed it in a secure hold against her hunting-crop. No chance there for the opportunist behind.
If only his luck would stand in and help him to rescue her from something! She had outstripped that over-impatient boy by now and left him winded while she sped on. She rode too well for an accident to be likely, but perhaps some assassin – a lurking Huguenot now –?
But his luck wasn’t in. It was no Huguenot that came galloping after her, but a tall slender figure in green velvet hunting-dress and soft white leather boots, with a ruby cross blazing on his breast, who laid his hand on her rein to bring her horse to a standstill, and scolded her for outriding the rest.
Bothwell pushed his horse alongside. ‘I was taking care to keep abreast with the Queen, Your Eminence.’
‘Who is this gentleman?’ the Cardinal de Lorraine asked of his niece, not too cordially (The proud rascal, the sneaking red fox, thinks he can keep a girl like that in the family, does he?). Still, he had got his chance to introduce himself to his young Queen in an unconventional and therefore interesting manner, though not near as good as he’d have made for himself if this jealous guardian hadn’t come to spoil sport.
‘I have not yet introduced myself to Your Majesties’ Court,’ said he, ‘but I am James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, whom Your Grace’s mother—’
He had hoped for some sign of recognition at the name, but he was not prepared for the delight that leapt up in the girl’s face – he positively saw it flushing through the transparent skin of her little throat up into her now rosy cheeks.
‘My Lord of Bothwell!’ she cried. ‘Oh, but indeed I know you well. It is the Lord High Admiral of Scotland, whom my mother appointed Lieutenant of the Border,’ she told her uncle eagerly, and hurried on to Bothwell; ‘she gave me your name in a list of those nobles in Scotland that I was to trust. Guess how high it was placed! Higher than—’
‘The Queen’s pleasure is no less than mine,’ the Cardinal interposed, too smoothly and cordially for it to seem an intentional interruption. It was no wonder he checked the lass’s imprudent tongue – God’s blood, will she often let it wag so freely?
The little Queen, well aware of her uncle’s unexpressed rebuke but by no means taking it to heart, sped on, though on a less dangerous path, her manner as boyish, free and casual as ever:
‘You have been helping her cause in Denmark and Norway – yes, she told me in the very last letter she wrote. So you were not there when she died? I wish you had been – she had so few friends by her.’
‘I was with her when she fell ill,’ Bothwell answered, ‘but it was not much I could do then to help. We stocked Edinburgh Castle well with provisions for her lying sick there and in a state of siege – plenty of the French peas and figs and medlars she loved, and salted fish from Leith. One of my sailors caught a sea monster and begged leave to send it up stuffed to show the good Queen. I let him. It made her laugh.’
Her daughter laughed too, though at the same moment the tears rushed up into her eyes, chasing that warm flush of pleasure at their meeting. She was suddenly white, sad and drooping all in an instant, and had to turn away her horse to hide the fact that she was crying. This was no Court mourning, it was uncontrollably genuine. But she tossed her head to shake off her sudden sadness, and turned back to him with a smile so brilliant it made the tears still in her eyes shine like jewels. ‘You must come and see me tomorrow,’ she said, ‘and tell me of my mother and all you have done for her. Please do not be modest, it is so tiresome when brave men will not tell the exciting things they have done; I have often had to speak to my uncle the Duc de Guise about it.’
It was certainly the first time James Hepburn had ever been asked not to be modest, and the bold laugh he gave showed it.
‘Madam, your request has done so much to overcome my modesty that I shall swagger for the rest of my life.’
The smile she now flashed at him from under her long eyelids was full of amusement. ‘Do not put your nature to too severe a strain, my lord. It is dangerous to change the course of one’s life too abruptly!’
Damn her, had her mother said he was a boaster? He felt himself flushing, not under the girl’s merry glance, but under the subtle eyes of the Cardinal. He’d never trust this girl to the ‘Pope of France’! He knew what priests were like – he had not been brought up by his great-uncle, the Bishop of Spynie, for nothing. He had once heard him coyly confessing after dinner to a round dozen of mistresses, and seven of them other men’s wives.
He could make friends with the Queen in spite of that flick of mockery, indeed it acted like a spur, but her uncle was leading her away and here came her ‘husband’, wan, puffy, woe-begone.
‘Marie, where were you? I lost sight of you – but all the rest lost sight of me,’ King François added in quick determination to prove himself the leader.
Nor would she disprove it. ‘You have tired them all out, sir,’ she said. ‘And look at your poor Bayard, he is sweating all over,’ but as she said the tactful words, her eyes widened in frightened question on that bluish distorted face.
‘François! Are you well?’ she asked.
‘Of course I am well. For the love of heaven, don’t pretend that I am ill again,’ the boy answered pettishly.
They rode on together, the Cardinal beside them. Just before the trees swallowed them up, the Queen turned to wave her hunting-crop to Bothwell, and with it the little feathered hat crumpled in her hand. He heard King François say, ‘Who is that?’ in his rather nasal thick voice that sounded like a perpetual cold in the head, and the Queen’s answer, clear as the note of a bird, ‘A faithful servant of my mother’s,’ all very right and proper; and then the green and golden beech trees hid from his sight that pair of royal children, the one so sick and sorry, the other – but here Bothwell’s admiration took a form very unusual in him when dealing with a woman. ‘By the faith of my body, it is a pity that one was not born a boy!’
Mary Stewart had a small adventure to tell her four Maries when they dressed her for the Court that evening. They were four girls who had been chosen from noble Scots families to be her companions from early childhood, of near the same age as herse
lf and of the same Christian name, so that to distinguish them they called each other by their surnames, which was apt to give a jaunty mock-masculine air to their conversation.
Mary Beton with her frivolous curls, her bright watchful eyes, her mocking smile, was the most excited to hear of the encounter in the forest. ‘Oh, but, Madam, I can tell you all about the young Earl of Bothwell. You must be careful of him! They call him the Galliard in his own country.’
‘But that is a French word.’
‘Many Scots words are. They use it for a gay rascal – as he has proved himself.’
‘And it is the name of the Dance Royal. But I promise you he shan’t lead me one,’ laughed Mary.
‘As he did my aunt, Madam! Yes, he is, or was, the lover of my wicked aunt, the Wizard Lady of Buccleuch—’
‘Sorcery – you?’
‘It’s in the family,’ said Mary Beton, unabashed, for sorcery was not yet a pervading terror in Scotland. ‘Her father learned it in the University at Padua, where the Devil held a fencing class and nearly caught him, but only got his shadow. That was why my grandfather cast no shadow to the day of his death. And Janet, my aunt, learned magic of him and has taught it to Bothwell, they say, but all the proof she’s given of it that I ever heard is her power to win a handsome young lord for her lover—’
‘Handsome? No, I’d never call him that,’ murmured Mary.
‘Monsieur Brantôme says he is hideous!’ exclaimed Livingstone.
‘That is probably because he has triumphed over Brantôme in some love-affair,’ said Beton wisely. ‘In any case, it is good proof of magic power in my aunt to win him when she’s past forty, and has already had three husbands and a lover whom she called her husband in the sight of God.’
‘God must have squinted then,’ observed Mary Stewart. ‘And is my lord of Bothwell her husband in the sight of God?’
‘Oh no, the affair is over, I believe, though they said he was handfasted to her.’ Her mistress looked rather thoughtful; was she disapproving? She hastened to tell her that her aunt had a great spirit. ‘She took a battleaxe and broke open the church door with her own hands when Kerr took sanctuary at the altar, after he’d murdered her husband, Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch.’
Ah, that might explain the affair! That dark, bold glance that had scanned her so keenly in the forest would appreciate a daring and revengeful temper. Mary herself felt a thrill of pleasure. If anyone dared hurt her poor François she would much enjoy breaking in a church door to get at them! (Her image of the malefactor was no ferocious Scot, but a stout lady in black with a flat blank face and receding chin – to wit, her mother-in-law.) But all she said in a cool, purring little voice was: ‘How encouraging are your glimpses of family life in Scotland! I am glad I have a husband in France and no chance of going back.’
Mary Livingstone disclosed more up-to-date gossip of Bothwell.
‘He’s left a woman behind in Flanders, though he really is handfasted to her, so I’ve heard.’
‘What varied tastes the man has! A great Flemish mare, I suppose, as a change from Beton’s aunt.’
‘No, she’s a Norwegian lady of good family who followed him from Denmark.’
‘The more fool she!’ observed their Queen. ‘I’ve no patience with women who make such fools of themselves over men. Look at Queen Elizabeth – she has lost her head so completely that she is likely to lose her crown as well.’
‘And we all know where that crown should be!’ cried Livingstone, and the rest of the dressing time was taken up with discussing Elizabeth. But Mary was still thinking of their gossip of Bothwell. All this tittle-tattle of women here, women there! What did it matter to her how many ladies of quality Bothwell had seduced in France, Flanders, Denmark? What she had to consider was that her mother had proved this young man so staunch and able in her service that she had found she could trust him as she had been able to do no other of her nobles. The damage he had done her enemies had been valued by the French Ambassador to Scotland at as much as £1,400.
That was the way a Queen should think of her servants, not as lovers, as that uncontrolled Tudor woman was doing.
Chapter Three
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
Silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row.
James Hepburn was reminded of the English song when he was brought to his private audience with Mary Stewart, whom he found singing Italian madrigals with her Maries, sitting in a circle on bright cushions like the five petals of a flower. They sang of ‘passion’s burning sighs’ in voices cool as drops of water ‘Ardente miei sospini.’ He stepped back as though afraid he might tread on them, and certainly his boots seemed far too heavy in that company.
Mary put up a warning hand to him till the tiny song floated away like a thread of gossamer on the scented air; then they uprose with a winglike flutter and rustle of silks and she seated herself gravely, very much the Queen, on a gilded chair, with the other girls behind her in a fan-shape of wide coloured skirts and young slender bodies rising from them in their tight stiff bodices like the sticks of the fan. Their Queen seemed the youngest of them. He stood looking down on her, scrutinizing her as they talked.
Indoors she was different – he would scarcely have recognised her for that radiant creature he had met in the woods. She sat in that high-backed chair and pulled a gleaming silver thread in and out of some damned church embroidery. Was it, then, a waste of time to talk with him unless her hands were also occupied? With her head bent to her work and her eyes downcast to it she looked like a demure schoolgirl – the thing he detested most in women. He discovered at this close range that she did not attract him physically, she was too young and slight, unformed in every way, unaware of his manhood.
His taste, like most young men’s, had been formed on much more mature charms – on those, first and chief, of Janet Scott of Buccleuch, née Beton, the aunt of one of these girls – (and there she was, he’d know that impudent chin and cool stare anywhere, the living spit of Janet!). That extraordinary woman had been old enough to be his mother, but had an inexhaustible vigour and zest, whether in love or blood-feud or forbidden learning. She and the foreign Anna, left behind in Flanders, his two most permanent mistresses, would make a round dozen of this variable, unawakened creature.
‘The man’s a fool that would think either to get or hold you easily,’ he thought, and quickly added to himself, ‘or to want you.’
But in one respect she was wholly admirable; she wanted to hear all about his exploits on the Border.
‘My mother has told me—’ she began, but, too quickly for good manners, he broke in:
‘Aye, Madam, and her enemies could tell you even better. The proudest testimony I bear is their proclamation a year ago that “the Earl Bothwell and Lord Seton are the only two of all the nobility who keep company with her”.’
His flash of angry pride made her flinch; he seemed to feel no pity for her lonely mother, surrounded by her enemies, only pleasure in his prowess on her behalf.
He glanced round that audience of smooth pretty faces, eyes and mouths all ready to open in admiration like daisies in the sun. How the hell was he to make them understand the wild joy of those silent watches in the winter dusk, and then the sudden onslaught, the crash of armed horsemen meeting like the clap of a thundercloud?
He drew a deep breath. ‘Well,’ he began, ‘you’ll have heard how the Percies all but grabbed old Huntly, so slow he was to get his bulk across the saddle, though all the corn-bins of Duns and Langton had gone up in flames to warn him?’
It did not seem to have been quite the right beginning. But he was not going to be put off by the faint lowering of the temperature.
We got the news of that English raid by beacon – not much needed, since the corn-bins looked as though a dozen towns were afire! I got two thousand horse together, dashed across country through the night, and cut off the Percies’ retreat
at Swinton just as the dawn as breaking. There they were, straggling home with their spoil – herd after herd of kine and sheep – never dreaming but they’d be safe in a few hours across the Border – and all their gunpowder damp in the early rising mist – hagbuts missing fire everywhere – that’s where the superior English musketry has to give way to cold Scottish steel.’
‘Oh, but my uncle says—’ began Mary, and stopped, suddenly shy.
‘Your uncle the Cardinal, Madam?’ demanded Bothwell, as suddenly grim.
‘No, my eldest uncle, the Duc de Guise. He says the musket has supplanted the arquebus as surely as the cannon will in time supplant the musket.’
‘I was not speaking of arquebuses’ – (his impatient tone was certainly forgetful of to whom he was speaking) – ‘but of getting to grips in a hand-to-hand fight when the enemy is unprepared in a misty dawn. No time then for the taking of aim, still less for slow and uncertain loading.’ (He suddenly remembered the Duc de Guise.) ‘Not but what your uncle, Madam, is entirely right. That is a giant; he belongs to a time when men were cast in another mould.’
‘Oh, you think so in Scotland too?’ Mary had flushed with pleasure.
‘How could anyone not think so after his retaking of Calais, in seven days, when England had held it for more than two hundred years? In one week he reduced her to a third-rate Power.’
‘I wish you knew him.’
‘I wish so too, Madam,’ (‘especially if I fail to find further employment in Scotland,’ he added to himself). His bold eye roved round the little group; there was one girl there that had already caught his eye, Mary Fleming, larger, riper than the rest, possibly the most beautiful. Aye, she was ‘fair o’ flesh’. His gaze, rested on her as he continued: ‘It was after the success of that counter-attack that the burghers sent a petition to your Lady-mother to appoint a nobleman for the protection of Edinburgh, and put my name first on their list. So Her Grace made me Lord of Liddesdale and Keeper of Hermitage.’
The Galliard Page 5
