The Galliard (19 page)

‘Just.’

‘Did he get you with child?’

‘No – luckily.’ She spoke with swaggering nonchalance and stole a look to see how he had taken it, but could not make out.

He said carelessly, ‘And now he’s tired of you, and you’ve got no one better than Archie Douglas to fall back on?’

She flared up. ‘He’s
not
tired of me; it’s t’other way round. Or is he? Have you seen him with anyone else? Is it true about that pink pudding – Alison Craig?’

He flung back his head in a roar of laughter.

‘You damned little fool!’ was all he would say in answer to her startled and indignant eye. It was plain as a pikestaff that the little bitch was still in love with that young rascal. If he were too, a very pretty match might be made of it; bastard royalty wasn’t aiming as high as his father had done, but all the same it would suit his game to marry his sister to the Queen’s half-brother, and the one she was fondest of too. Bothwell liked the lad himself; Lord John was as unlike his eldest brother, the Lord James, as he was like the King his father – a fair, quick-glancing, lightly moving youth, with all his father’s gaiety and love of songs and dances, and none of his melancholy.

He had shown himself eager to be friends with Bothwell, so much so that that cynic had begun to wonder what he wanted of him. If it were his backing for a match with Jan, why had he not mentioned it to her? He asked her, and found that Johnnie had done so, but there had been difficulties. James didn’t approve and kept him short of money, and she had wanted to show she didn’t care and so flirted with others, and so he did too, and they had quarrelled and he’d told her she’d the manners of a stable-boy (‘And so you have,’ growled her brother), and she’d told him he was an impertinent puppy aping royalty from a left-handed litter.

‘Did you tell him that, after he’d had your body?’ he inquired, with an admiring grin.

‘Yes, why not?’

‘And so now you’ve split for good?’

‘Oh no, we made it up and then quarrelled again.’

‘I’d like to knock your two heads together,’ was his final genial comment.

It was the Queen who unintentionally gave him his best chance to speak with Lord John.

In spite of her swift boldness in punishing the Provost and bailies, she was determined on a peaceful policy; she had resolved to make friends with her subjects, even John Knox as soon as she could get the chance; and still more to make her subjects make friends with each other. She had made James Lieutenant of the
Border instead of Bothwell – very well then, James must do his best to make it up to Bothwell, and so she told him in her frank laughing fashion, as though to make a joke of these ridiculous feuds that were always rending Scottish public life.

They should keep the Border quiet between them, hold their Courts of Justice together, and together lead a friendly deputation to Berwick to improve relations with the English officials.

So together they went, at the head of an enormous party, both Scots and French nobles. Everything went off perfectly. Mary got up specially early to see them off, waving her handkerchief till they were out of sight, and then, as it was raining, went back to bed to read a book, for there were only two attitudes in which it was possible to keep warm in Scotland, either to ride at full gallop or lie in bed. So there she stayed in exquisite solitude, with not even her Maries with her, for she had sent them to start the cavalcade on their way as far as Mary Seton’s home, where her father’s pike-like grin threatened to split his face at the sight of James Hepburn politely conversing with the Bastard.

They dined well at Seton House; they supped better at Dunbar Castle, where Lord John showed René, Marquis d’Elboeuf, how to dance a Highland fling, and the fat Earl of Huntly insisted on joining in, until he fell and put an arm out of joint. Lord James made speeches to the English at Berwick next day, and d’Elboeuf complimented them on their artillery with cheerful Gallic mendacity (to Bothwell he muttered under his smiling moustache that his brother de Guise would have had such gunners hanged). The English, by their own account, returned more solid compliments in the shape of ‘a bellyful of good cheer’ and the present to each nobleman of a gelding ‘finer than any they brought out of Scotland’.

On the way back they spent a night at Lord John’s house at Coldinghame, and Bothwell enjoyed a private chuckle with his young host over all this excellent behaviour.

‘Another of those halter-grins of James and he’ll crick his neck!’ remarked the irreverent younger brother as he kicked his bedroom door to, and carefully deposited a couple of bottles of light claret on the floor.

They were all sharing beds, those who could have any bed at all, and Lord John had invited Bothwell to his. A brace of hounds were already in occupation of it, and the host cuffed them aside to make room for himself and his guest. The room was very bare, lighted only with a glowing peat fire and a single rushlight in an iron pan on the floor; there was neither table nor chair, since all were in use below, and Lord John had to stoop to the ground to fill the two leather and silver cups he had carried tucked under his elbows.

‘This is a better way of making merry than below,’ he said with a shy, ingratiating smile, the low yellow flame of the rushlight flickering up onto his face.

‘You were merry enough leading the fling at Dunbar, and seeing fat old Huntly break his funny-bone.’

‘Wish it had been James! Wish it had been his neck.’

‘What’s your trouble with your brother?’

But Johnnie Stewart shied away like a colt. ‘Oh, he’s too thick with the ministers, foul swine that they are! I will say he stood up to them over the Queen better than I’d thought – you know, that time he kept the door of the chapel and Rob and I had to frogmarch her priest through the rioters. I said frog-march because he’s a French frog, ha ha! The ministers blame us for it too. The way they rail against the Queen is sheer treason. I sent word to the chief of ’em –
you know who
– ’ (he wagged his fair tousled boyish head portentously and laid a not entirely steady finger to his nose) ‘that if he troubled the Queen’s Majesty too far, I’d leave him stickit to his pulpit with my dirk. That’s the best way to make a stickit minister, hey?’

‘What did old Knox say?’

‘Said modesty wouldn’t permit him to repeat the filth that came out of my stinking throat and mouth.’

‘Modest fellow!’

‘Aye, he’s noted for it. When the Queen Regent lay dying last year he said a dropsy had swelled her belly and loathsome legs!’

Bothwell’s face was black with fury.

‘By the faith of my body, I’d like to make
his
belly and legs loathsome!’

‘
And
I’d help you. Do you think we’ll ever get the chance?’

‘No. The Queen wants us all on our good behaviour, saying pretty things to each other. Geordie Seton and I have promised to sign a truce in the middle of next month with the Bast– with the Lord James and John Cockburn, promising “to leave each other’s lives and property undistroublit”.’

‘Will you be able to keep it?’

‘Might be done. It’s only till the first of next February.’

Johnnie Stewart seemed to think two and a half months’ ‘undistroublit’ truce just possible.

‘You know,’ he said as he filled up their cups again at that uncomfortable angle, spilling a good deal on the floor between their legs, ‘there’s something to be said for that notion of my sister’s – and she
is
my sister, mind you, though only half and left-handed, as your sister is never tired of rubbing in – well, there’s a good deal to be said for this notion of all being friends together, don’t you think? Here Lob, here Luby, come lap this wine-puddle, there’s glory for you! Look at ’em getting as drunk as lords – as us two lords!’

His impish glee as one of the hounds slithered on the bare boards, scrabbling with his claws out to get a footing, made him look about fifteen. Bothwell got impatient of waiting for this flibbertigibbet to come to the point.

‘Why is my sister never tired of insulting you?’ he asked.

‘Oh well, you know what she is. She’s a little devil. Mind you, I like her for it. Other women are always preening themselves. Jan would clout me over the head if I paid her a compliment.’

‘Paid her some, though, haven’t you – of a kind?’

His host shot him a glance like a guilty schoolboy.

‘Did she tell you?’

‘I made her.’

There was real alarm now in young Stewart’s face. ‘Why, there’s no –? She isn’t –?’

‘With child? No. Small thanks to you, I take it.’

‘No, but – damnation! This is devilish awkward.’

‘Why? You wanted to talk to me, I suppose, or you wouldn’t have asked me to share your bed.’

‘Yes, but – it’s like this. I want to marry her – I do indeed—’

‘Mighty kind of you.’ The legitimate noble stiffened forbiddingly at this condescension from a bastard prince, but the prince was too intent to notice it.

‘I didn’t at first,’ he admitted, ‘I wasn’t thinking of marrying. I wasn’t thinking at all. She wasn’t either. But she makes other women seem like a lot of lumps. I don’t feel I could stand any of ’em for more than a bit, now there’s Jan.’

‘
Is
there?’

This time the ironic note was unmistakable.

‘You don’t mean – God’s blood, Bothwell, you’d never let her marry that blackguard, Archie Douglas?’

‘She’s got to marry someone since she’s started playing the fool like this.’

‘But I tell you I want to marry her, only she’s such a damned perverse little wretch I don’t know that I can make her – even now when most women would be grateful for it. It ought to be child’s play—’

‘It is,’ muttered Bothwell, leaning over to pick up his cup. He could not believe in this boy’s age when he thought of himself at nineteen. It had been as easy to get what he wanted from him as from Jan. Now it only remained to tackle Lord James – a very different matter. But the Queen would help. She owed him compensation over the Lieutenancy of the Border, and she liked this gay lad – he liked him himself. He’d see to it as soon as he returned from hanging thieves at Jedburgh with James.

‘You stand well with the Queen,’ he said. ‘She should be able to manage your brother. I’ll manage my sister.’ And he rolled back on the bed, kicking over what remained of the wine as he swung up his legs.

Lord John began in ruminative solemnity, ‘You know, it’s a funny thing about women—’ and saw that his guest was already sound asleep, the insensitive block, in spite of the importance of their talk.

The hounds lapped up the rest of the wine and were sick. Lord John considered calling a servant to attend to this, but reflected
that most of them would be in a like condition.
He
wasn’t going to sleep. He was going to make a song about women, like his father’s. Would he himself ‘go no more a-roving’ when he married Jan? He’d swear he would – it would be she who’d have to mind the bridle then. But would she, if he himself roved too far? He must give that up if he were going to keep his Jan – she was worth it. He must give up sweet Alison Craig, so easy-tempered and admiring, who loved him so faithfully, but never reproached him for his neglect.

Poor Alison! He must break the blow gently to her, and he thought with pitying regret of the submissive downward sweep of her eyelashes on her soft pink cheek, and of her modest ways (she’d be shocked by Jan’s speech) for all that he’d seduced her – but her boor of a husband (to say nothing of his own attractions) was good excuse for that. Yes, he must say farewell to Alison and give her a parting present, do the thing handsomely as his father had always done, whether with countess or beggar-maid.

He stretched himself back where he was sitting at the foot of the bed, wondering for one drowsy instant why it was so lumpy, until a kick enlightened him, and a deep voice growled, ‘Get off my feet.’

Lord James believed in ‘Jedburgh Justice’; it meant hanging first and trial after, a method which had the advantage of speed. Bothwell refused to allow it in the case of the Liddesdale men, but even so, the Raid of Jedburgh only took a fortnight. On his return to Edinburgh to attend a meeting of the Privy Council (he had been appointed one of the twelve Councillors), Johnnie Stewart sought him out in high excitement.

‘You’ve missed all the fun of the fair,’ he began.

Bothwell thought he meant a masquerade tourney led by the Marquis d’Elboeuf on the sands of Leith, but young Stewart exclaimed, ‘Lord, man, it’s not d’Elboeuf’s foolery I’m talking of, but the scare of Arran kidnapping the Queen.’

James Hepburn’s silence was so fiercely peremptory that the youth went on instantly: ‘You know he’s not been near the Court since he led the riot in her chapel – all the Hamiltons have kept away, in fact, but now they’re showing their face again, an ugly
one too, it strikes me. Arran’s precious cousin James Hamilton, the Primate, I mean, came riding up the High Street t’other day, and eighty horsemen at his back. Then Châtelherault himself comes and pays his respects to the Queen.’

‘And his son?’ demanded Bothwell as Lord John paused.

‘Arran? Wait a bit. On Sunday night we got an anonymous letter telling us that danger threatened the Queen’s person. Assassination was what we feared. The Court was in a panic, everybody accusing someone different, the Frenchmen foaming with rage, swearing they’d take her back to France next day – women in hysterics – not Mary herself though – God, I was proud of her! But it was devilish, feeling responsible for her. I’d never wished before for James to be there, but I did then! Well, Rob and I did what we could, set a special guard round the Queen herself, called up armed men from the town, set pickets round the Palace, sat up all night outside her door, with only water to cheer us, so as to keep our heads cool – What are you grinning at?’

Bothwell was thinking that this lad had shown a remarkably good head, for he, and not his elder brother Lord Robert, was always the leader of the two. ‘The Queen’s got reason to be grateful to you,’ he said.

‘Yes, and she is too – it couldn’t have happened more luckily for me. Besides, she likes making marriages, she called herself my “Marraine” and said she was James’ also! But she laughed over that. I fancy I’m the pet godson of the two! She’s going to talk James over and come to the wedding herself and bring him too, worse luck, but it’s a good thing, of course – can you stand the expense of a royal wedding?’