The Queen's Lady (29 page)

“If it is the queen's pleasure that I should be under arrest, then I submit to your authority, good sirs,” he said.

Alan Miller let out an audible sigh. “You will be taken to Edinburgh Castle, and there held, until trial.”

“At your leisure, Sir Alan.”

The man rode closer to him. “I must take your sword and your knife.”

Rowan handed over his weapons. It was cold, but the young fellow was sweating profusely. His hands shook as he took the sword.

Rowan set his own hand on the younger man's arm. “You don't need to fear me. I am coming of my own will.”

Alan Miller looked at him, swallowed, then nodded. “God protect you, sir,” he said quietly.

“Shall we?” Rowan said.

And so he returned to Edinburgh and the queen's service, he thought bitterly.

W
ORD REGARDING
R
OWAN'S
incarceration in Edinburgh reached Gwenyth in a cruel way.

She knew her time of confinement was approaching soon, but beneath a great cloak, her condition was scarcely noticeable. She had trusted few people with the truth of her pregnancy, due to the strangeness of her situation. She had never known that such an about-face could occur, that she could be so “loved” by the queen she served that she could only find safety by being imprisoned by another.

After the first anxious, torturous months, she had learned there was nothing to do but practice patience and find activities to keep her occupied. The only word she had at first came from Mary herself—who bade her to remember obedience and ordered her to continue to keep reminding the English queen at every opportunity that the fate of England rested on recognizing Mary as her heir. Mary wrote to her that she was a good and beloved friend. She didn't mention a word about Rowan or her marriage.

The four Marys kept up with letters to her, as well, but they tended to be very chatty, and offered no real information. She wondered if they were afraid their correspondence might be read.

Time passed so slowly, and she received no word at all from Rowan, which disturbed her greatly. But she had to make the time pass, and, despite her own sick fervor and worry, she couldn't allow herself to fall ill.

She had the babe to think about. And when she felt too sorry for herself, she unwaveringly ordered herself not to die in childbirth. She intended to make nothing easy for those who were tormenting her—which, she sadly admitted to herself, meant Mary of Scotland. In her own letters she took great care with her words, going back and forth daily on whether or not to pour out her heart to the queen, to appeal to the woman who was so madly in love with Darnley that she should have been the first one to understand similar feelings in a loyal subject.

But she hesitated, afraid to speak freely to Mary after what Elizabeth told her and after learning more and more about the situation from Maitland. Mary was no longer the woman she had known; Darnley had changed her.

So Gwenyth sought to pass the time well, walking in the courtyard, tending to her mind, her spirit and her health. She knew that Mary of Scotland passed many a government council meeting by sewing or embroidering, but those were arts that, sadly, she had not mastered herself. Instead she kept a journal. Her life as a prisoner wasn't entirely wretched. She was being held in the Beauchamp Tower of the great fortification, and she was free to attend services in the White Tower on Sundays, and free to roam the halls there. The wardens had begun to display arms from throughout the centuries in the Tower, and she could roam at will and study the various forms of defense, and the ways they had changed over the years. There was an excellent library, and she was welcome to make free use of the books.

Elizabeth was not at all a cruel jailer; she even sent for Gwenyth upon occasion, though she did so in secret. As time passed, she grew less and less prone to discuss Mary Stuart and her husband. Gwenyth knew, however, that Elizabeth did not wish her ill.

Then, as Gwenyth walked the Tower grounds with Annie one day, she walked straight into another of the “guests.”

She hadn't known Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox and the mother of Lord Darnley; she hadn't even known the woman was back in England until she had heard, through gossip, that the woman was in the Tower, as well, arrested on the queen's order due to her son's marriage, which Elizabeth had not sanctioned.

Margaret Douglas was a woman with her own connection to the throne of England. Her mother had been Margaret Tudor, Queen Mary's grandmother, through Margaret Tudor's second marriage to a Scottish earl. She was still a grandchild of Henry VII, and therefore had her own place in the line of succession.

These days, she was certainly feeling extremely bitter about her “cousin” Elizabeth's ill treatment of her. Slim, agile, still attractive, with a strong face and a stronger stance, she strode toward Gwenyth with long and furious steps.

They had never met, but Gwenyth instantly realized who she must be and would have greeted her politely, but she was given no chance.

Lady Margaret Douglas raised a finger and pointed it at her. “You! They say the queen writes more letters on your behalf than any other. But that cannot be true. I am Henry's mother! I have royal blood in my veins, while you…you are whore to that wretched man who spurned his righteous queen and took up with the likes of James Stewart, the ungrateful bastard child of the king who was my half brother's child. Wretched little witch, you must have the queen enchanted. But trust me, you will rot in hell, just as he rots in Edinburgh Castle now. They will proclaim him a traitor, and he will die a traitor's death!”

The maid who was walking with the countess quickly set a hand upon the woman's arm, while Annie stepped in front of Gwenyth like a bulldog, as if expecting the other woman to attempt physical violence. One of the castle guards came rushing forward, as well.

The countess had evidently not lost her mind entirely, even if she dared much because of her Tudor blood. She satisfied herself by spitting on the ground at Gwenyth's feet and walking away.

“M'lady!” Annie said, turning to her.

Gwenyth knew she had gone pale. No one had told her that Rowan was being held in Edinburgh. That he had been accused of
treason.

“I'm fine,” she told Annie, and stared at her maid, “Why didn't you tell me? You had to know. Someone out there had to know!”

Annie's face betrayed her. She had known.

Just as Queen Elizabeth had known.

“You can't be upset, my dear, dear lass,” Annie insisted. “Think of the babe…” She trailed off, staring at Gwenyth, who stared back at her, a crooked grin of pain and irony upon her lips.

“The babe?” she said, as if in question. “The babe is coming.”

 

G
WENYTH ACTUALLY WELCOMED
the pain of childbirth; it kept her from worrying so frantically about the fate of her baby's father.

Treason.

It was a dire accusation. Men and women were executed for such a crime. He might die never knowing his child. In fact, she thought wildly, she didn't even know if he had been told that she was expecting.

Then, when her child was born, when he gave out a lusty wail and Annie announced that she had a beautiful and healthy son, she forgot even the father as she cradled her infant with awe.

He had come with a full head of hair and blue eyes. Ten fingers, ten toes. She counted. He was miraculous. He was so perfect. He was…
hers.

And Rowan's.

She forced herself to banish fear from her mind for just a moment and lay in pure wonderment, watching him greet his new life, adoring him when he cried, falling in love with him all over again as he suckled. She wouldn't let Annie take him away until the midwife insisted that she must have some rest, and even then, it was only due to the hefty brandy she was given that she was able to sleep.

When she awoke, she cried out, and Annie saw to it that the babe was brought instantly to her side. Once again she counted his fingers and toes, stared into the grave little eyes that seemed to return her stare, and lay amazed.

It was only later that worry slipped back into her mind with a vengeance.

What if his father was about to lose his head, or hang by the neck? Worse, Scottish traitors sometimes had to face the horrible fate of being drawn and quartered….

When she cried aloud, Annie hushed her with a stern warning. “You'll make the babe sick. You'll not be able to nurse him yourself, if you ruin your milk by growing so upset.”

Gwenyth didn't know if such a thing was possible, but she dared not ignore the warning, so she tried to reassure herself by insisting that they could not execute Rowan. They could not possibly believe him a traitor.

But she knew that they could. How many had died near the very place where she had birthed her child? Tyburn tree sat just beyond these walls. Thousands had died there. Thousands who were surely innocent of the charges they had faced.

This was England, but Scotland, her beloved Scotland, could be just as cruel. Laws and lands were only as just as those who ruled them, and Mary—this Mary—was not the even-handed queen she once had been.

Thomas came to see the babe, and as he tenderly held the child, he, like Annie, tried to reassure her.

“The Queen of Scots will not dare harm Laird Rowan. She continually postpones his trial, knowing that far too many nobles will rally to her brother's side if she raises a hand against a man who has been known as nothing but fair, who has never done anything other than fight for Scotland. You'll see, m'lady. The lad's father will be fine.”

“Thomas, you have to tell me. What was his crime? Did he take up arms against the queen?”

“No, he did not. He was arrested merely for his association with James. The people are for him. He might have run, might have fought, but he did not. He trusted in his queen. She will not execute him. He has never grasped for power, has refused to kill when there was no battle. Neither the nobles nor the people would stomach his execution, and the queen well knows that.”

“You told me none of this,” Gwenyth said accusingly.

“There seemed no reason, my lady,” Thomas said. “We didn't want you upset. It could have been dangerous for the babe.”

“He needs a proper name,” Annie reminded her. “We must all think of a perfect name for a perfect child.”

“Rowan, for his father,” Gwenyth said.

“Ah, perhaps, just perhaps, it's not my decision…but my laird's father was called Daniel. Perhaps Daniel Rowan,” Thomas suggested.

Gwenyth said the name aloud. “Daniel Rowan Graham.”

“You must do as you wish,” Thomas said.

“Daniel Rowan Graham,” Gwenyth repeated. “That is his name. And he must be baptized here, and quickly, as well as quietly.”

Both Thomas and Annie were silent for a moment, knowing it was sadly true that the child should be baptized quickly. Infants died easily, and none would have a child depart to the next life without being duly baptized.

Arrangements were quickly made. As they had stood to witness her wedding, Gwenyth knew none but these two must stand as her son's godparents.

“Ah, dear lady, you need finer folk than us to be godparents to this child,” Thomas told her. “You need godparents with power and riches—”

“No,” she informed him bitterly, for those with power and riches had seemed to turn on her. “I will have you, who love him, stand for him before God.”

Thomas and Annie looked at one another, and it was agreed.

 

D
ANIEL WAS BUT A FEW
days old, a beautiful, sound, lusty baby, when he was brought to the chapel and duly baptized. The ceremony was performed by Ormsby, the same minister who had spoken her wedding rite, and she was pleased.

At the last minute they were startled by a noise at the back of the chapel. When Gwenyth turned, afraid—and instantly ready to do battle for the life of her infant son—she saw that Elizabeth had come. “Proceed,” Gwenyth told Ormsby, unsure what the queen's advent presaged.

In the end, the Queen of England did not partake in the ceremony in any way, but she was there, just as she had been for Gwenyth's marriage to Rowan.

And when the baptism had ended, Elizabeth told Gwenyth that a small supper had been set up in the Beauchamp Tower, and she would speak with her there.

As they sat together over the meal, Elizabeth did not touch the babe, but she admired him. Gwenyth wondered if she looked at the child and perhaps wondered what it would be like to have such a son herself, an heir to the English crown. But there was something in her stance and resolve that told Gwenyth she was determined to manage her world alone in her lifetime. As she watched her cousin's difficulties across the border, no doubt Elizabeth realized anew that she was a female ruler in a man's world. She was tenacious, and she didn't mean to allow anyone to dispute her claims, her decision on a mate. Therefore, there would be no mate.

Beside the cradle, which had belonged originally to the first Daniel Graham and had been brought from the town house, Elizabeth handed Gwenyth a rolled parchment, complete with the royal seal.

“Thank you,” Gwenyth murmured, curious at the gift, too well-mannered to open it then.

Elizabeth smiled. “It's a land grant. A tract in Yorkshire. Safe behind well-established English lines, close enough to your native Scotland. It is his—” she said, nodding toward the baby “—and his alone. He is the newly created Lord of Allenshire.” She inhaled. “I think it best
not
to announce his birth now. But, due to the service and pleasant company of both his parents, I am delighted to offer him my protection.”

Gwenyth was silent, feeling both gratitude and a chill sweep over her. His father might have perished already. She herself might never be able to return home.