Friend & Foe (18 page)

The blood rushed hot to James’ face, as though the coroner had slapped him. For a moment, he stood wordless, helpless as to ways to answer to this insolence. Humiliation stung, and prickled in his throat. He managed to choke out, ‘Take caution sir, and care, lest ye cause offence.’

‘That never was my purpose,’ Andrew Wood contended, ‘but to prove an honest friend, and as I apprehend, it would not serve your Grace if I should pet and flatter you, and treat you as a child. But say, sweet prince, if that is what you will, then you and I shall ride our hobbies in the hall, play football, golf, and jolie at the goose, as I do with my bairns.’

James bit back his pride, though he felt stripped and shamed. He could see no option but to bare his heart. ‘Do you not see?’ he hissed. ‘You have to see, sin ye have wit and subtlety, for all your want of grace. The good lords will suspect us if we do not play. The good lords in the rafters strain to hear our secrets. We shall drown their whispers with the thud of balls.’

The coroner looked back at him. He did not look away, as he ought to from a king, but held him in the gaze of serious grey eyes,
that verged upon a frown. And James was trembling now, as much from fear as rage. He felt as he had felt, though he had been a studious child, when called upon to answer at the master’s chair. The question, when it came, was delicately phrased.

‘What lords are those, your Grace?’

‘I call them my good lords,’ James had closed his eyes, to close off Andrew’s face. The room bloomed with his blush, the hot rush of his heart, ‘As we call
good neighbours
to the faerie folk, hoping with such flattery to fend off faerie darts. If we will not offend them, they may let us pass. Our good neighbours here are Ruthven and his spies, and all those who conspire with them. They lie behind us, in the caichpell, where you will not hear them playing, for they let their racquets fall, and press their traitorous faces close against the walls. They do not ken the stillness of the court has given them away, and I can hear through stone the beating of their hearts.’

Andrew Wood looked on. The full force of his scrutiny, sceptical and calculating, rested on the king, who dared not face its blow. But when at last he spoke, his tone was soft and mild.The mellow force of reason, tempered with his pity, brought James close to tears.

‘The court next door is empty, Sire. The page boy telt the truth. Your good lords dare not play at caich without your Grace’s leave. And were they at their play, we should not hear their sport, nor they the crack of ours, through solid walls of stone.’

Sir Andrew did not hear, for he was not attuned to it, he had not learned to strain and start, to prick at every sound.

James closed his white hand tightly round the billiard mace, as though prepared to strike with it. ‘That is the deception, sir. And surely you were not so vain and foolish as to fall for it? To think that you might come here, without you were watched? But surely you did not suppose that I was left alone with you? That I am ever let alone? That though I sleep and pray and take my meals apart, live out my life in solitude, there are no courtly interlopers, whispering in the galleries?’

The king’s cry was heartfelt. Sir Andrew was moved to take a step towards him, though whether to console or to contradict his terrors
did not come to light. James thrust out with his billiard stick. ‘No closer, sir, I charge you; but one word, one cry from me that aught is out of place, the guard will force the gaming house and bring you to your knees.’

‘Patience, my sweet lord!’ The coroner stepped back.

‘Patience?’ James returned. ‘Aye, sir, sound advice. But patience comes not readily to kings, when they are cursed and kept, and dealt with worse than dogs. We maun fool our gaolers, and annul their fears. So, sir, shall we play?’

He stopped short of pleading, for he would not plead. But his fragile state of mind had done its work upon the coroner, who conceded gently, holding out his hands. ‘Aye, then, we shall play.’

‘The truth is that I cannot blame them.’ James was calmer now. The billiards gave him back control, the narrow compass of the game composed and served to centre him,
this the field in which we play, this the port, and this the king
. . .

‘They do well to watch, for they must know the change that is to come upon them. They lie awake at night, and hear it in the wind. Their deepest guilt will burst and bubble, their black hearts exposed.’ He smiled, a little grimly. ‘That you are no player, sir, we beg leave to doubt. Take care. This table has a bias, leaning to the left. However straight it seems, an honest board is rarer than an honest friend.’

‘I fear your Highness gives away your own advantage.’ Andrew took a shot.

‘Do not count upon it. I am not a child.’ James leant across the board, to nudge his own ball gently closer to the king. ‘A penalty, if by your striking ye should knock him down,’ he quipped. ‘And
that
were bold enough.’ His conquest was complete. His strokes became methodical. Between them, he paced round the stable, craning into corners, sweet with dung and hay, poking in the rubble, where the stalls had been. This was not a ploy, to put Wood off his game. The king was rarely still. He never sat where he could stand, nor stood
where he could walk, nor walked where he could ride. And Andrew Wood, without distraction, knew that he could never win. He bore his losses patiently. Once, and once only, did his temper spark. The king had knocked him through the port, crowing with delight, ‘Now you are a fornicator!’

The coroner set down his mace, rising to the taunt. ‘I am what, your Grace?’

‘A
fornicator
,’ James explained, ‘who kens nae more his grammar, than he does his play.
Fornix
is a vault – this little port of ivory – and you have passed it retrograde, wherefore you are f
ornicate
, and so must pass it twice.’

‘Pax
, then,’ Andrew scowled. ‘Sir, our play is done, for we have played to five. Your good lords in their galleries have long since gone to sleep, lulled of their suspicions by my granks and granes, and by the chink of coin, that signals my defeat. Spill your secrets, speak.’

James stepped back, and listened, to the whisper of his heartbeat, to the quickening of the wind. Outside, he heard a pigeon call, a distant, mournful, fluting, faintly through the trees. He nodded, satisfied. ‘They say that there are brigands at Garbridge. Tell me, is it true, or is it but a tale they tell, to stay our riding out?’

‘It may be both, your Grace. I fear that there are outlaws there, though I have taken measures to contain them.’

‘Then take some measures more. For I have a notion I shall want to pass that way. I feel it in my bones.’ James let slip a smile. ‘Lay hands on one or two, and hang them by the road.’

Sir Andrew nodded. ‘And it please your Grace, I could send an escort, to convey you on your path.’

‘So much had I hoped. I will send a messenger, to tell you when to come. Then, when all is done’ – the king did not disclose the detail of his plan – ‘I have another task for you. I wish to hire an advocate.’

‘An advocate, your Grace?’

‘Hew Cullan of St Andrews.’

Sir Andrew did not start at this, but answered clear and carefully. ‘Your Highness is aware, I doubt, he does not practise law? And, as
I recall, you asked him once before if he would be your advocate. It pleased him to refuse.’

He did not dress the slight, but served it blunt and cold. ‘You have a guid lawman, in David McGill.’

‘That we do not doubt.’ James took a careful moment, sizing up the ball, before he nudged it sideways with the sharp end of his stick. ‘We shall want them both. McGill as the pursuer, and Hew Cullan for defence. And I am convicted he will not refuse me this, for he will understand it as a matter of the heart. I trust you to persuade him to it, since you know his mind. For I am well aware he has a will and conscience that will be not forced.’

‘He has a stubborn heart, that sometime works against him,’ Andrew Wood agreed. ‘But Sire, the world has altered since you saw him last.’

‘You think I do not ken? The light has blown out since. For Lennox, my Esme, is dead.’

James had bitten, accidently, deep down to the quick. The words acquired a hardness foreign to his tongue, a lesson he had learned, that he recited coldly, knowing it by heart.

The coroner accepted, ‘I had heard that, Majestie.’ He offered no condolence – he was not that kind of man – but kept a careful watch on James, alert to any change.

Gone were the floods, the raw torrent of grief, the shrill outpourings of a lost, bereft boy. James said again, ‘Lennox is dead. And I mean to have justice for him.’ Twin spots of livid colour darkened his pale cheeks. Yet he was quite controlled, spurred on by excitement, rather than by grief.

‘Your Grace, if you intend to prosecute those lords who hastened his departure, then I do not recommend it. For by your own word, you approved their action, and were well assured of their love for you.’

James received this calmly. ‘That is not what I intend. Though I am well assured, in enforcing his departure, they brought on his death.’

‘Your Majestie, he died in France, where his wife and children were. Twere more of an unkindness to have kept him from them. What cause can you have to say he was ill-used?’

‘You know how he was used, what harsh and bitter cruelties were inflicted on him, when they forced his flight. To what bitter diet he was put, and with such abruptness severed from our sight, that he withered, like a sapling starved of light and sun, forced to put its pale shoots out into the dark; he died of a disease contracted of displeasure, which is to say, his heart was broken. And it was the lords that broke him, sending him from me, with keen and poignant hardships. Yet, for all their sins, I can forgive that that. For that they knew no better of him, and believed in lies, so men are moved by envy to dispose of honest men. His death is to be pitied, not avenged.’

This answer was impassioned, but no less closely reasoned, so that Andrew Wood was baffled. ‘Then what is your complaint, your Grace? What would you put to trial?’

‘You might hazard,’ James explained, ‘that with his death, the hurt he suffered is brought to an end, and that these hooks and slanders have been put to rest. Yet still they raise their voices, when he cannot speak against them, they accuse most freely, what may not be proved. They say that he recanted all, reverting to his faith, and that he died a Catholic. That all they said and did to him was proven by this act; that he was well disposed of, having been intent to undermine our faith, and recruit our country to his hideous cause. Esme died a Protestant, honest and beloved. I know this for the truth, because I have his heart.’

‘Your Grace, it is no fault in you, that you should keep a loving heart, and in your greenness seek to trust—’ the coroner began.

James cut him short. ‘
I have his heart
, I mean to say, embalmit in a box. I do not speak in figures, like some lovesick girl. Our honest servant brought it to us, home with him from France. And since I have his heart, I mean to make a trial of it.’

That waxen sliver of the flesh, taken warm from Esme’s breast, the lifeblood and the laughter sapped and withered out of it . . . It lay
by James’ bedside, in a lead-lined casket. He had considered wearing it, sewn into a sleeve. But in a colder light, he found it more repellent, Frankish and effeminate, insolent and fleshly, like a papish relic. It served as a reproach to him. Once Esme was exonerated he would have it buried.

There was silence in the house, so still the little dog looked up, on some account disturbed by it.

‘Am I to understand,’ Sir Andrew asked at last, ‘you mean to put the heart of Monsieur D’Aubigny on trial, as though it were a living man, and not – forgive me, Sire – a dead thing in a box? So grief may move us to strange moods. For pity, Sire, the world will say—’

James interrupted fiercely, ‘Aye, no more than that. Were that so very strange? I mean to make a test of it in court, that no man hence may question or malign his faith. Hew Cullan shall defend it; my lord advocate shall be the pursuer. I ken well what the world will say. But surely, you must
see
? That when there is a trial, the world maun haud its tongue; once Esme’s faith and loyalty have been proven in the court, the rumours will be stilled. I can make a law, to stop the wagging tongues – and you may be assured that I shall make that law – but till I show them proof I cannot quell the doubts still nagging in their hearts. The trial will prove conclusive, absolute. Hew Cullan is the man that has the wit to take the case.’

‘As you will, then, Majestie.’ Sir Andrew bowed at last, persuaded by the force, if not the skill of argument. ‘I will sound him out, and let your Highness ken whether he be fit for it.’

‘Do so,’ James agreed. ‘For if he will not speak for us, his is not a voice we should like raised against us. Do you understand?’

‘Perfectly, your Grace.’ The coroner was anxious to be gone. And James, for his part, was pleased to see the back of him, a man who brought a chill wind to a summer’s day. He felt his spirits lift, the weight of Esme’s conscience lifting from his mind. ‘Go about your business now, of keeping the king’s peace. God willing, ye shall hear from us, when we are at liberty; and that will not be long.’

Sir Andrew left the gaming house, and stepped into the balm of a summer’s evening light, as dusk began to close upon the sun. The coroner had not gone far before he found a courtier standing in his path, who seemed to come from nowhere, sloping through the gloom, a plump-arsed, smooth-skinned venturer.

‘Hola, sir! What cheer? Not leaving us so soon?’

The coroner said, sheepishly, ‘His highness has dispatched me, sir.’ He cast his eyes low to the ground. ‘He did not tak it kindly that I missed the hunt.’

‘The king is sour and stomachat, and there is no pleasing him,’ the other man agreed. ‘He is out of sorts. Sometimes, he gives vent unto a passion, and a hot and trembling rage. Sometimes, he seems merry, frivolous and mirthful, snatching up at phantoms, laughing at the wind.’