Queen & Country

by Shirley McKay

  ‘But how did you send them?’ he asked. By what skew means had Frances found a post, when all lines were closed? It did not quite seem credible.

  ‘Matthew’s tutor sent them from St Mary’s College. And he brought Tom’s back with him.’

  He stared at her. ‘What? You trusted your letters to a foreign kirkman? Why would you do that?’

  ‘Because he offered, Hew. And there was no one else. You had gone away. And I could not be sure, if you would come back.’

  ‘Of course I would come back. Did I not tell you? Why not ask Giles?’

  ‘Because I was not sure that I could trust him.’

  ‘Not trust Giles? The dearest truest friend that ever lived? Yet you trust a kirkman you have barely met?’

  ‘Giles Locke was a man I had barely met. You must understand, I made a leap of faith in coming here with you. I kept my faith, but when you were not here, I was on my own. I did not think that Giles was friendly to my kind. I thought him to be . . . of that queen’s party.’

  ‘And even if he were, he would never let that colour or impair his judgement. He is not that kind of man. If you sensed a distance in him, it was that he feared some harm might come to you, troubled at the time; he never was the source of it,’ Hew cried. He was far less guarded now, less civil in his tone to her, appalled at what he heard.

  ‘I understand that now,’ she said. ‘I did not see it then.’

  ‘The tutor, who sent on your letters. What was in it for him?’

  ‘Some books in your library he wanted to read. He said they were rare.’

  ‘Did he, now indeed?’

  Frances stared at him. ‘What are you, Hew, my uncle, now? Am I not made aware, that I belong to you? That all I have is yours? And that were little, too.’ Her eyes were pricked and wet, with scathing, angry tears. ‘Are you so jealous, Hew?’

  ‘It is not that.’ He would not for the world have her reduced to tears, or bowed before his will.

  ‘Not in the way that you think. Tom Phelippes is a spy, for the English Crown. Our countries are now facing a crisis of security. If all the while, you have sent him word about our king . . . the secrets I have told you, while we were in bed . . .’

  ‘You think I have no sense, to have told him that? That I would blab and spill, the secrets of your heart?’ she cried.

  ‘Not willingly, perhaps. But he has the skill, to tease and penetrate. Your cousin Tom has strung you, like the lute you used to play.’

  It was a sharp enough thrust, and Frances flinched from it. She answered him coldly. ‘You are so fixed upon conspiracies that it has made you cruel. I did not think you cruel, Hew, else I would not have come. How did you come so cruel?’

  His heart pricked with remorse. He did not want to quarrel with her over Tom. At the same time, she cried, ‘Oh, let us be friends! I cannot bear it, if we are at odds!’

  And what did it matter, in truth? What more harm was done, now that all was out? That queen, as someone bold had pointed out to James, in nature’s course, was bound to die ahead, and leave her son to mourn; once dead, her death by weeping or by force, could never be undone. And letters that were sent, could not be unsent, what damage they might do, was already done.

  Frances thought the same. ‘Do you not want to ken?’ she asked softly, ‘What Thomas said?’

  ‘Tell me then,’ he sighed.

  ‘I told him that you had the picture from the king. I did not say, understand, what strange effect it had upon his Grace, only that you put your mind to know where it had come from. And he said, he could help you with that. He had seen something like it himself.’

  It was possible, Hew thought, that Phelippes played a game with them. It was likely too, that he might tell the truth. And he could not deny, that he would like to know.

  ‘Do you remember that he stood for Parliament in Hastings? He was put up for it by Lord Cobham, who is warden of the Cinque Ports. Sir Francis, I think, was not the best pleased with him. In September last year, after the traitors were hanged, he took Mary down to Hastings to recuperate. Do you recall?’ Frances said.

  Phelippes had absented himself, in the month of the queen of Scots’ trial, a careful retreat. His concern for his wife, and the state of her health, was poignant and fixed in its coming, more than three month after the miscarriage.

  ‘They spent some time with Lord Cobham, as his guests. And Lord Cobham asked Tom for advice, on a man who had lately come into his charge, detained at Dover as he tried to cross to France, with some papers that he had for a man called Mauvissiere, or Castelnau.’

  ‘I have heard of that man. He was once ambassador, to the queen Elizabeth,’ reflected Hew. He was listening now, his anger had evaporated, and had been replaced by a growing interest, and by hope, in the intrigue.

  ‘The man detained at Dover was a follower of his. But he was not French. He was a Dutch painter, called Aart van Bronckhorst.’

  ‘Arnold Bronckhorst,’ Hew corrected. ‘Can it be the same?’

  ‘Tom believes it was. This Bronckhorst carried, as well as the papers for Castelnau, pencils and some colours, and a small perspective painting of a woman and a skull. Lord Cobham had the picture in his house. He showed it to Tom, as a curiosity, and Tom thinks, it may be the same as ours. It did not occur to them that it was the queen, who had not come to trial. Bronckhorst said, it was a prentice piece, an essay in perspective done by a pupil of his, that he was to send to Castelnau, to see if it pleased him, to give the boy favour in France. It was a composite, he said, of the painter’s wit, and not intended to depict a woman from the life. Lord Cobham was careful, you will see, to avoid the spread of rumour or unrest to France, and for that reason he detained the painter, who was denied his passport, and referred the papers that he carried back to Francis Walsingham. In due course, he was freed, and allowed to return to his own house in London. The picture and the colours were returned to him, since they were essential to his trade. Since then, he is kept under watch, and may not have licence to pass overseas. When Tom read my letter, he took it on himself to call him in for questioning.’

  Hew interjected, still resentful, ‘That was good of him!’

  Frances said, ‘It was. Bronckhorst says he gave the picture, which he could not send himself, to a Frenchman who had leave to pass home overseas, to bring it home to Castelnau. So much he had promised to his boy, who was hoping to have made a name in France. If that Frenchman brought it here, to the king of Scots, and left it at the court, he is baffled by the cause, but solemnly avows tis nought to do with him. When Tom pressed him further, he supposed that the Frenchman, secretly of that queen’s party, found in that painting a likeness to her that the painter had never intended, and brought it to the court, hoping so to prick at the conscience of the king. Tom thinks, Bronckhorst may be more involved in this, than he is willing to admit, and meant some mischief here, to nurse a private grudge. But so much he could not make him admit.’

  ‘I have no doubt he does. But we shall never know. The man who brought the picture to the Scottish court, willingly or not, is doubtless home in France,’ Hew said. He thought it apt, and strange, the answer to it all should have come from Tom, and written in a letter, open and unguarded, by an ordinary post. He could not help but smile at it.

  Frances reached out for his hand. ‘Then are you still sorry that I wrote to Tom?’

  He let her hand settle in his. ‘I will tell you that, when I have spoken with the king.’

  He need not have feared. The king was well disposed to listen to his tale, when he gave him audience, two weeks on, in Holyrood.

  ‘It is not bewitched. And it was never meant to be a portrait of the queen. And yet, it does possess a magic, of a kind. It turns a man’s mind in upon himself, when he is perplexed, to find out what it means, and where he is disturbed, and troubled in his conscience, it will find him out. For, it will remind him of his own mortality, and what must come to him, when all is said and done.’

  So Hew did believe
. Giles Locke liked the picture, and it held no fears for him. His mind was at home in it, contented with controversy. In Hew it had produced a curious kind of peace; it mirrored and exposed a conflict in his heart, and made him more at ease, at seeing it expressed. But in the painter it had roused the torment of his guilt, that he had brought the devil to a helpless boy, and that, for his sin, he surely must be damned.

  ‘It was not the pleated picture, but the poison in the mercury, that drove the painter mad,’ as Hew explained to James. ‘And yet, I think, the picture may have had a part in it, in what turned out to be the final cause. You need not fear it, sire. For it can do no harm. It merely shows us what we know, and what was always there.’

  James was looking at the painting Hew had now returned to him, propped up on a board in his hall at Holyrood. It looked crude and small. ‘However it was meant,’ he said, ‘we do not want it here. Since it was meant for France, we shall send it there; mebbe, to the king, to work its charm on him. I never took to Bronckhorst. Tell to me, now, how you found him out?’

  Hew took a deep breath. ‘My wife . . . the woman I would marry . . . has a cousin who works for Lord Cobham, the warden of the Cinque Ports. He picked Bronckhorst up as he travelled to France. He will verify all, if you write.’

  ‘Ah, is that so?’ James smiled. ‘How useful it may be, to have an English wife. Go marry her, at once. She can spy for us.

  ‘We are grateful to you, that you do our best to put our mind at rest. But your account of the picture, your assertion that it cannot be in any way bewitched, is not, for certain, proved, for your reason has a flaw.’

  ‘What flaw is that?’ asked Hew.

  ‘You say it has no power but to stir up a man’s conscience. That cannot be true. For, it worked on me. It made me feel unease. And, as you must ken, my conscience is quite clear.’

  Hew left that place, lifted in his heart, with the Scots king’s promise safely in his hands. Returning to St Andrews, he came straight away to the college of St Leonard’s to instruct the principal to call his marriage banns. He crossed to the cathedral, and came down by the harbour, to walk home by shore, in the breezy sunshine of a summer’s day. He watched the white gulls circle, high above the cliffs. As he crossed the sands, he looked out to the sea. And there he saw a ghost.

  Chapter 23

  Queen and Country

  The image that he saw was imprinted on the landscape, fused into the line between the shore and sea, so narrow that it closed in the blinking of an eye, so broad that it stretched on, endless in extremity, the falling of the sand into the line of sea, the sea against the sky, the circling of the gulls, the water rolling back, infinite and on.

  The tide was out. And on the shoreline by the sea, in the darkling sand, a little child was crouched, her billowing white smock lifted from the water’s edge, dabbling in a pool for limpets or a crab, where sunlight caught the flaxen strands floating from her linen cap. A mother bent beside her, fixed; this picture had a fluid, transitory permanence, returning there, and on, for as long as the waters patiently revolved, for as long as the sea spray washed over the town to weather the stone to a pale yellow sand, and water pooled among the rocks and washed ashore its trail of crabs and barnacles and salt encrusted seaweeds dried out in the sun, and were drenched again, and the gulls fulfilled their circuits, mournful, round the bay, and began again.

  A woman, who had taken off her stockings and her shoes and hitched her kirtle from the sand that clung to her bare legs. Whose own pale hair streamed loosened to the bright sea breeze. Whose pale cheeks coloured in the sunlight. Clare.

  Clare.

  She looked at him, and smiled. ‘Hew. They telt me you were home.’

  He felt his voice, strange and hard, rising in his throat as if it were a rock. ‘They telt me you were dead.’

  He could feel the life in her, the soft wind in her hair, the warmth of her breath touching his. He saw every part of her, transitory, fixed, the wet sand that clung to the fold of her dress, the salt on her lips, the bloom on her cheek where the bright sun had warmed her, the slender white cusp of her bare feet and neck.

  Her eyes opened wide in wonder. ‘Who would tell you that?’

  ‘Roger Cunningham.’

  ‘Oh, that naughty boy. He was a wicked boy. But you must not be cross with him. Did Andrew not say? It was Robert who died.’

  He had never spoken of her with Sir Andrew Wood. Never to that man, would he say her name. Now he could not recall what Andrew Wood had said, could not see the sense, or shape his mind around it. He was feeling, through a fog.

  ‘Roger saved my life,’ she said. ‘And he fell sick himself. For that, we must forgive him, think you not? As soon as I was well enough, I went to live with George. For I am curator now, of the land and wealth he had from our father, and it is a task, to see he does not squander it. He is still, I fear, an unco silly boy. You should come and see him, sometime. He is fond of you. Perhaps you can persuade him to return to the college, long enough to graduate.’ Her composure and complacency astonished him. But Clare had known, always, he was there. And all that she had asked of him, when he felt so close to her, had been help for George.

  ‘Your little child,’ he said, ‘why does he keep your child?’ He could not comprehend why she sent her child to live with Andrew Wood, when she could live with George. Hew would not have wished a dog upon the crownar. And yet, he thought, and yet.

  She looked down fondly at the child, who dabbled on, oblivious to them, in her little rock pool, in a private world. The child looked well, content. Her fevered cheeks had rounded to a stolid plumpness. She was lovely, still; the paradigm of Clare.

  ‘She has lived with Andrew and Elizabeth, since she was born,’ Clare explained. ‘Robert never took to her. And, after Robert died, it did not seem right to take her from a place where she was wanted, loved.’

  ‘Then you have . . . you are . . . alone?’

  She answered him simply, ‘I have my brother George. Now, look at you. You look well, and fine. And Andrew tells me that you have a wife.’

  There was sadness in her voice. And he did not like the way she spoke the crownar’s name, the closeness it implied.

  ‘We are not married, quite,’ he felt compelled to say.

  ‘No? Then, I wish you well of it. She is fortunate, your wife. And Andrew says you met her in London. Then I doubt a good thing may have come of it. I am sorry, Hew, for what we did to you. You did not deserve that. But I knew no other way how to amend it. It was Roger’s letter cost us both, and Andrew could conceive no other way. Robert thought the bairn was yours. For though he gave no credit to that silly boy, he knew she was not his.’

  Hew echoed, uncomprehending, ‘She is not his?’

  ‘No. Did you not ken?’ She is Andrew’s child. Had Robert ever kent that, it would have destroyed him. His brother had everything, in Robert’s eyes. He has only to wink at Elizabeth, and she is full with his bairn. Andrew is a man who is strong and venerous. For that reason, only, did he stray from her, for he has needs, that she cannot always fulfil. All of us have needs,’ she admitted wryly.

  He would not believe, that Clare had carnal converse with Sir Andrew Wood. ‘No.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Hew,’ she sighed. ‘I thought you must have worked it out. Andrew said, twas certain that you would. For you are a searching kind of man.’

  ‘Then are you still . . .?’

  She shook her head. Sorrowful, he thought. ‘Not still. He was quite aggrieved. He said, I blackmailed him. For he was not inclined to save your life. I telt him, if he did not want our secret blabbed, to Robert and Elizabeth, he must make sure no harm did come to you. We owed that much to you. I did not have a say in the way that he did it. He did the best he could. But he was not best pleased, and will not trust me now.’ She laughed, lightly, and bitterly. ‘Well, he did not do so badly from it, for he has his child, and he has Elizabeth. And they are better parents to her, both, than Robert and I could have been.’
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br />   ‘I do not believe that, of you,’ he contended fiercely.

  ‘You ought to believe it. You are too good to me, Hew. Now I must take her home, for Elizabeth is fearful when they are apart too long. She loves her very much. Their last little one died, did you know?’

  Clare bent over the child, drying her hands on a cloth. Standing again, she moved towards Hew, and kissed him on the cheek. ‘You always were too good,’ she said. ‘I wish she had been yours.’

  Hew ran, his cheeks aflame, headlong up Kirk Heugh and to the college of St Salvator’s where he launched himself, in furious dismay, on Giles Locke in his tower. Giles was reading quietly, when Hew burst in upon him. ‘Where is Roger Cunningham?’

  The doctor closed his book, at once alert and curious. ‘At this hour, I should say, at his lecture.’

  ‘Send for him.’

  Taking in the look upon his close friend’s face, Giles did not resist. Roger came, as called, calm and unperturbed. He glanced from Hew to Giles, and back again to Hew, with an expression that contrived to be submissive and aloof, both at the same time. Giles leant back in his chair, and watched with careful interest what was to unfold.

  ‘Why did you tell me Clare Buchanan was dead?’ demanded Hew.

  A flicker of expression crossed the student’s face, transitory, fleet, that seemed to Hew the shadow of a satisfaction, intimate and shrewd. In a moment, it was gone, and he could not have sworn to it. Roger’s answer, when it came, was cool and supercilious. ‘I do not think I did.’

  Giles interrupted, ‘Is this true, Hew? Can it be true?’ his voice filled with trouble and doubt.

  ‘I saw her on the beach. I spoke with her,’ Hew said.

  ‘Dear God, then I am sorry. I assumed . . .’ the doctor said, dismayed.