The Galliard (6 page)

So Arran was losing his head over the Queen, was he? What chance was there that he might work against himself, Bothwell, with her? But Arran, no, that gawk, with the lank untidy hair, he was too futile, Bothwell decided, to have any effect on his fortunes.

Those fortunes were surely at the crux of his career. His chances in his own country, on the face of it, were pretty small, with the Lords of the Congregation in power. The Regent had been his only powerful friend, and his faithful and forcible service of her as faithfully rewarded –

‘And well it might be!’ he suddenly broke out, as the wine glowed more and more warmly in his stomach, and the comfortable dusk dimmed the faces of his companions, so that d’Oysel’s seemed only that of a large pink moon rising through the early autumn mists, and Seton’s the sharp profile of some distant rock; ‘it’s not only
Scotland, it’s France, Denmark and Germany, aye,
and
England, to her cost, who have recognised me as the handiest servant of the Scottish Crown. But now that the Regent’s dead, all that that will do is to make me a marked man for my enemies. And they are now running the government of Scotland!’

‘You don’t suffer from too small an opinion of yourself,’ came in a growl from the distant rock.

‘It is known,’ came in soft agreement from the moon.

But the young man was hot on his career, that career of such enormous, glorious importance that it was inconceivable that the others could be with equal eagerness considering theirs. Nor could anything be strong enough to down it.

‘If Scotland’s finished for me, who cares? There is the rest of the world. My ancestors travelled to Egypt and the Holy Land, my father lived in London and Venice. And I’ve clinked glasses with the Danish King, and his was big enough to float a turbot; I’ve seen the sun at midnight and chased pirates up the Norwegian fiords. That’s a good life, a pirate’s.’

‘I’ve no doubt it would suit you fine,’ said Seton, with a wink at d’Oysel.

‘It would,’ said Bothwell simply. ‘There’s an old Roman writer in my library at home’ – he paused for the effect this should have on his companions – ‘who says of them: “The sea is their school of war and the storm their friend; they are sea-wolves that live on the pillage of the world.”’

‘I take it the book is a translation,’ came that dry, exasperating voice again.

Bothwell ignored the challenge. He tilted back his wooden seat till it all but overturned, and sang, in a powerful though somewhat husky and not entirely sober voice, the refrain of a song by the poet king, James V, father of the young Queen he had seen today:

‘So we’ll go no more a-roving

So late into the night,

We’ll go no more a-roving, boys,

Let the moon shine ne’er so bright.’

‘Well, I’ve no objection to roving farther. The world is widening. It’s a grand thing to live these days and hear every month or so of some fresh discovery on the other side of it. Why should the Spaniard and Portuguee have it all their own way there?’

‘They would not have had,’ said Seton, ‘if that stout ruffian Henry of England had had his way.’

‘Oh, he set about building a navy, but his miserable children have let it all go.’

‘Little King Edward and Bloody Mary did. We’ve yet to see what Elizabeth will do.’

‘Damn Elizabeth! I’m Lord High Admiral of Scotland and I know what I’m talking about. The English navy’s finished. There’s no reason the Scots fleet shouldn’t start again. And I’m the man to do it.’

D’Oysel still kept silence, but Seton took warning from various soft shiftings and heavings of his bulk on the hard seat. He had no wish to have to act as peacemaker again. He gave him a friendly nudge with his elbow to show his amused irritation with the young braggart, and said in a humorously sensible voice, ‘Man, you are clean daft to talk so. It’s bad luck for me as well as you that the Regent died just as we’d convinced her of our excellent qualities – but the Galliard is not the lad to think he can’t convince her daughter of that fact!’

‘If only she weren’t so young!’ the Galliard remarked pensively.

It was the last thing they expected from him, even in this winewarmed and unguarded mood, and their roar of laughter stopped any explanation from him, though they demanded, even begged it. He was too soothed and complacent by now to be furious at their laughter, but he felt he had made a fool of himself and fell into sullen silence.

But his remark had been perfectly genuine. That girl he had seen today was young even for her age, which was bad enough. He found no attraction in young girls, had no experience of them, since he had always preferred older women, and in his rough and dissolute boyhood, deprived of his mother when nine years old by a peculiarly cynical divorce suit of his father’s, he had had no chance, as well as
no inclination, to meet any such delicately nurtured and guarded specimen as now awaited him in the person of his Queen. He would do nothing to precipitate his meeting with her, but await his chance for an introduction. He planned this as policy, but in fact felt a most unwonted and uncomfortable shyness at the prospect, a sensation that would have astounded his companions could they have known it.

They were even at this moment twitting him with the latest scandal about him – what was this tale of a young woman of good family who had followed him from Denmark? Where had he tucked her away? In some country corner of France, or in Flanders on his way here through that country? ‘The farther the safer, hey? Wouldn’t help you to turn up at the young Queen’s court with a foreign mistress in tow!’

But he rapped out a surly answer, and neither was such a fool as to wish to cross his temper again.

He lounged deeper into his chair, stretched his legs out farther, enjoying his hopes, the warm night, the wine that was again benevolent, the stars that seemed brighter and bigger in this velvet sky than the stars at home, the distant harsh foreign voices, even the foreign smells. But behind this mellow present mood, and the eager visions of his future, there stood in his mind an unwilling picture of the girl of whom his companions had reminded him, Anna Throndsen, the Norwegian Admiral’s daughter.

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!’