The Galliard (72 page)

He had sent word to his hagbutters to meet him at Dunbar with all the men they could muster. And now they themselves rode there together yet again, for the third time.

‘We shall ride together again,’ he had promised her that at Hermitage. And tonight yet again they went a-roving by the light of the moon; they saw it drift in and out of the calm, towering
clouds, cast changing shadows down the deep glens, and through its flying formless glimpses moved on together, two passing shadows, conscious that they were one.

The glow-worms were all out over Crichton Moor, innumerable tiny points of greenish light beneath their feet, and the vast spangled sky above their heads. The bright dark was theirs. ‘We’re riding over the stars,’ she said, laughing low in her delight.

They did not speak again till they were clear of this part, where outposts might be lurking. They rode slow and carefully, the creak of their saddles and the thud of their horses’ hoofs making a monotonous rhythm among the wandering sounds of the moorland that followed the fitful outbreak of the wind among the hills, sounds that to the shepherds who lived on these haunted moors were the echo of bells and bridle-rings of elfin riders making

Merry and merry and twice so merry

By the ae light o’ the moon.

No good thing was it to meet such riders. A cow-herd had been thrown into Borthwick Water in spate by the dwellers on the Fairy Knowe. That great mound now raised its head above them, and then the mighty tumulus of the Mote where the Druids had once assembled; the broad brows of the Lammermuir Hills were like snow mountains when the moon shone on them. They rode over their lower slopes, far away now from the Borthwick country and Crichton, where the Lady Jean slept in her curtained bed (‘hugging that Dispensation under her pillow, no doubt’, he thought with a snort of mirth – as if any parchment could divide them now!).

She could not believe that this magic night would ever end; she knew that it would not, that they would always ride together over the stars.

The air tasted salt. They had left the hills and reached the low turf-covered slopes that stretched towards the sea, all silver-grey under the spangling of dew; some cattle stirring in the dawn-mist shone faintly luminous like dim planets moving through
the gleaming haze. Birds darted silently here and there in dark flashes, intent and secret.

He spoke of his confidence in subduing Scotland for her, of her hopes of England.

She said, ‘I would not care if I lost them both, so long as I can follow you.’

She said, ‘I’ll not have one man killed to keep me Queen. If they don’t want me, let them go, and we’ll make another kingdom. You have Orkney and Shetland. Let us build our fleet and create an Empire of the Waves – and never see Edinburgh again!’

He scouted the notion; were all the hopes she had had ever since her childhood of three great kingdoms, France or Spain added to Scotland and England, to dwindle now to those wild islands in the far North?

But he shared her pleasure in the thought; as she longed to see his swiftness and desperate will mastering the winds and tempests, so he knew her to be as proper a Queen of the Sea as of the hills. She had a royal quality of freedom. ‘You are free as air,’ he said.

‘And why not King and Queen of that too? My grandfather believed that men could learn to fly, and kept a mechanic to discover how.’

‘Aye, and he nearly broke his neck jumping off the rock of Stirling in the attempt!’

‘That doesn’t show it won’t be made again. Whatever man has dreamed, that he will do. And our dreams will live on after us when we are dead.’

He turned his head to look at her delicate face lifted against the unearthly light.

‘You should make death proud,’ he said. ‘I think you look on it as our marriage night.’

When they looked ahead again, they saw the sea. She checked her cob, rising in her stirrups with a cry. ‘Look! It has come true! I saw it like this in your arms when you first brought me to Dunbar.’

Yes, she had seen it then like this; the solan geese rising and swirling in dizzying tangle about the pearl-white rock of the Bass; while still the sea slept dull and pewter-coloured, their wings
caught that light that was over the edge of the world; they turned to fire as the first long arm of the sunrise all but touched the last lingering finger of the sunset.

There before them was the meaning of her strange overword: ‘In my End is my Beginning.’

Chapter Thirty-Three

All that morning he worked, while Mary went to bed in one of his shirts. When she woke, nearly at mid-day, the sun was on her face and he was sitting beside her.

‘You have been here all the time, haven’t you?’

He hooted with indignant laughter and told her all he had done: sending out her royal summons to all loyal subjects between the ages of sixteen and sixty to arm themselves and come instantly to her support; receiving a deputation of burgesses from Edinburgh ‘who hope to keep a foot in both camps till they see which wins’; getting messengers through to Gordon and Balfour in Edinburgh; enlisting the fishermen from Crail farther up the coast to run a service for them in case they were beleaguered here at Dunbar.

She stretched her arms above her ruffled head, the great linen sleeves falling away from their round childish curves, and gave him an odd little important smile and told him that she was certain she was with child.

There was no holding him at this news; he caught her up in that absurd flapping shirt, so much too big for her, and walked about the room with her in his arms, and crowed his triumph as though he were the only man in the world worthy to beget a child on her.

‘Aye, there’s the blood of the proud Guise and the fine, sad Stewart in you, too much so for strength. But now you’ll have Border blood to thicken the brew, and it’s many a grand lad I’ll sire on you!’

But there were to be no more pranks such as last night’s climb
from an upper window and roaming the country by herself.

And he cursed the agitation he had given her at Borthwick. From now on she must be calm and placid.

It was a pity that such excellent physician’s injunctions had to be accompanied by marching orders. But they could not leave the rebels to make more headway. These had entered Edinburgh under the Earls of Morton, Mar and Atholl, without much difficulty, and at once issued a proclamation, summoning the citizens to arms. But the people did not join as was expected. It looked as though the rebellion might fade away for lack of support.

On top of this good news came better from Balfour. If Bothwell and the Queen would march at once on Edinburgh, he would turn the Castle guns on the rebels as they marched out of the city gates. But he would have to come to terms with them if Bothwell remained inactive at Dunbar. It was the last thing Bothwell had wanted to do; but now that he knew Mary to be with child, he seriously considered their staying in this sea-fortress. They were safe at Dunbar.

She scouted the notion; a pretty pair of Sovereigns they’d be to stay skulking here instead of marching out to claim their kingdom! He had said it would never do to let themselves be bottled up in a castle instead of taking the field.

He nodded, but frowned, biting his knuckle as he always did when doubtful. Balfour was the crux of the matter. He did not trust him an inch. Might his message be a lure to get them out of their stronghold? But then there was a mysterious move of Gordon’s; he had joined him in the Castle, and must know of this offer, had probably prompted it. Yes, that must be the real reason of the message, that Gordon had established his power over Balfour and would force him to carry out his promise loyally.

So they rode out of Dunbar with as many moss-troopers as they had collected in under twenty-nine hours, their two hundred hagbutters, sixty cavalry regulars and the three siege guns that Bothwell had installed at Dunbar and made convertible into field batteries. All the way along their line of march, loyalists fell in and swelled their ranks; Border lairds, and Geordie Seton and Yester
and old Borthwick, who scolded her ferociously for the trick she’d played on him.

It would not do for her to ride at the head of her troops in boy’s dress, so she had borrowed some clothes at Dunbar: a full kilted scarlet skirt which because of her slender height only reached just below her knees, white linen sleeves tied back in points, and a velvet hat that proved too hot to wear, so she carried it in her hand. The simple dress made her look ridiculously young, not at all like the burgher’s wife from whom it had been borrowed, but rather his tall young daughter riding to school, so Bothwell told her, and chaffed her outrageously for the loss of her snood, that Scottish symbol of maidenhood. She wished she could have made a more queenly show before her hastily mustered troops; Scotland never gave her a chance to show off, she said, thinking of her first entry on a borrowed nag. But he swore that she looked far lovelier without her gauds: she was never meant to be caged up in stiff State robes; and she remembered the French courtiers had thought her ‘barbaric’ Highland costume more becoming than her most exquisite dresses.

‘So you’ll believe me, if a Frenchman said it first!’

That night they halted at Seton House. It was very late and he made her go straight to bed, and there lay with her wrapped in his arms until she fell asleep, her small round head tucked into his breast, the slight body relaxed against his in utter peace, a part of him even more than when awake and fervent with the rapture of his desire. Was it true, then, what she seemed to believe, that in death lay the fullest possession? For the first time he was torn with the poignant mystery of love. He watched the gentle breathing of her parted lips, the dusky gold of her eyelashes lying so still on her pale cheeks. He would not kiss her lest the vehemence of his tenderness should wake her, but stole away from her to rise and dress before dawn.

And he had to get her up again after only a few hours in bed to join him on horseback by five o’clock, for he had had intelligence that the rebels, reinforced with Highland troops, had marched out of Edinburgh at two that morning – with impunity it seemed, for
he could not hear that the Castle guns had ever been fired on them. What then was Gordon doing? He sent another messenger to him. Those that they had sent previously might well have fallen into enemy hands; so, almost certainly, had Gordon’s to him.

Another baffling factor was that the very important reinforcements of Lord Fleming and Lord John Hamilton had not yet arrived. They had been in touch with each other the previous day and had sent word to Bothwell that they were on their way to him. They would certainly come up some time during the morning, and he sent word back of his line of march to meet the rebels near Musselburgh.

He seemed to be everywhere at once as he rode up and down inspecting his ranks, and Mary noted his look of sardonic vigilance as he came back to her, furious that the most part of them had not brought rations as commanded, not even their water-bottles, a serious matter on a grilling day. It was Sunday the 15th of June, the day he had appointed nearly a fortnight ago for the Border muster at Melrose.

Spring and summer seemed to have stood still this year, for them to pack a lifetime within a few short weeks. But now – ‘I am not living just now,’ she thought, ‘I am only waiting till I live again.’

She sat blinking her hot eyelids to gaze at the hills that were painted flat like pale blue shadows against the noonday heat haze. The hours had droned and dozed on, and still nothing happened; still no sign of Fleming and John Hamilton, still no message from Gordon, still no encounter with the enemy; only a persistent manoeuvring of both armies all the morning for the advantage of the ground.

Bothwell had proved his quality as a general by securing his position on the high ground of Carberry Hill, and placing his field guns so that they commanded the slope up which the enemy would have to advance to the attack, after first crossing the small ravine and burn at the foot of the hill. The position was excellent for defence, and defence only was possible, for the Queen was utterly determined that she should not have the onus of opening battle on her subjects. It was sound politically, he had to admit,
though grudgingly, for honourable scruples were of small use with a dishonourable enemy.

‘My honour’s my own,’ she told him, ‘I can’t change it to suit my enemy.’

The military argument for the defensive, while waiting for his allies, had more force with him, for the confederate lords with all their retainers had the advantage in numbers, and particularly in trained cavalry. He saw too some foreign troops among them, slow solid mercenaries from the Rhine whom he had recognised by their odd custom of keeping ‘the better knee’ bared for climbing escalades. But despite their strength, their army sat on the hillside opposite about a mile away and seemed in no hurry to attack. As they were on the western hill they were no doubt waiting for the afternoon, so that Bothwell’s army should have the disadvantage of the sun in its eyes.

But there might be a thunderstorm – if only there were a thunderstorm! It was hot enough for one in all conscience; the sun had a brazen glare; a few stiffly carved clouds were moving up against the parching wind; the heat had that foreboding quality that waits for the roll of thunder and the livid flash of lightning. It was part of this strange unnatural day that after half a dozen cold stormy Scottish summers she should sit on a hillside on a rock that was almost too hot to bear, and pray for a tempest!

The water question was serious in other ways, for some of the men had slunk off to drink from the burn upstream, and got captured by the enemy. She was astonished to see how coolly Bothwell could keep his temper over this, since it was done and therefore inevitable. He had brought her water, but she felt that no amount of it would quench her thirst: her lips and throat were dry and sore, and she could eat nothing, though she pretended she had done so; any food brought on a sick and dizzy sensation. Whatever she did, she would
not
faint this day. She was feeling ill from the first effects of pregnancy; but neither that nor her anxiety depressed her; she was strung up to a point where courage comes without effort, and all the men who saw and spoke with her believed her entirely confident.