The Spitfire (29 page)

“Your majesties,” the Earl of Dunmor said, bowing to his half brother and sister-in-law, “may my wife and I have yer permission to withdraw from the royal presence?”

The king and queen nodded in unison, and as the earl and his countess departed, Margaret of Denmark said, “He is so very much in love with her, I feel almost sorry for him.’’

“Why, Mother?” demanded Prince James.

“No man, or woman for that matter,” the queen said softly, “should love another person so deeply. When ye love that much, ye are more often than not doomed to disappointment because ye make yer lover someone or something he isn’t. Eventually ye realize it, and then ye must come to terms with that disappointment, Jamie.”

“It seems a small price to pay, Mother,” the prince said wisely, “for the pleasure that love brings.”

“I speak of love, my son, but ye speak of something entirely different,’’ the queen told him, and then she ruffled his red hair. “‘Tis not important, laddie mine. Ye’ll go yer own way in any case.”

“Is that nae how it should be, Mother?” he asked her with a smile.

“Aye,” she told him, returning the smile, her eyes straying beyond him to Tavis and Arabella, who were just now departing the Great Hall of Stirling Castle.

“Yer a wicked, wild wench,” the earl told his wife as they hurried to gain their coach. “I hope that Angus does indeed think yer jest a good one, for I dinna need a feud upon my hands right now.”

They entered their vehicle, and no sooner had the door been shut upon them than Arabella slid into his arms, her face raised to his, her lips soft and inviting. “Let’s go back to Dunmor,” she murmured against his mouth, setting the hair upon the back of his neck a-prickle. “I sense winter about to strike us a fierce blow, and I would be happiest locked away from the world with you, my lord.” She kissed him a long, sweet kiss.

“Madame, ‘twas ye who wanted to come to court. I should have been just as happy remaining at Dunmor,” he said, one hand sliding into the neckline of her dress to cup a breast, even as he nibbled at her lips.

“Mmmmmm,’’ Arabella sighed, pressing against him. “Can a lass nae change her mind, my lord?” she teased him, using the Scots idiom for the first time since he had known her.

“We hae no good excuse to leave court right now, lovey,” he said with genuine regret in his deep voice. “In the spring, perhaps, we can return home, for traditionally the English come raiding in the spring, and I must be at Dunmor to help defend the border.”

But they did not go home in the spring, for Henry Tudor, unsure upon his throne, was as interested in keeping peace along the borders as was James III. For the time being the English king did not need a war with Scotland, and to the disgust of many of his earls, Scotland’s king would not let his people make war upon the English.

“This could be the beginning of total peace between us,” Jemmie Stewart told his younger brother, Tavis Stewart. “I must bring Scotland into the modern world, but as long as she wastes her few resources and the lives of her sons in useless wars, I hae nae a chance. Why can they nae see it as I see it? Why must they live in the past? I need peace, and I need time to accomplish it all, but if nae me, Tavis, then my Jamie! He’s a braw bairn and they like him, but I’ve taught him well, for though they think he’s like them, he is nae. That was my mistake. Letting them see me as I really am. I was too honest, but I’ve taught Jamie better.”

“Aye,” the earl agreed. “He’s got charm, my nephew, and he’s strong as well.”

“He’ll be a good king when he’s old enough, Tavis, but I must hold on until he is. I know, I know,” the king told his brother. “There are those who agitate to overthrow me and put my son upon the throne, but Jamie will nae betray me ever.”

“Nay, he will not, Jemmie, for he loves ye even if he doesna understand ye.”

“Do ye understand me, Tavis?”

“Sometimes, in some things, but not always in all things.” The earl grinned, and then he took a deep swallow from the goblet he was holding. “But I love ye too, Jemmie.”

“Would ye ever betray me?” the king asked quietly.

Tavis Stewart thought a moment, and finally he said, “I dinna know, Jemmie. Not as ye are now, certainly, but time and circumstances change. I honestly dinna know, but this I can tell ye, Jemmie, I will nae ever betray Scotland.”

The king nodded. It was an honest answer, and more than he would have gotten from any other man. “Yer wife says that I am Scotland,” he told his younger brother craftily.

“Arabella is young and driven by passions I am only just beginning to explore,” Tavis Stewart told his brother. “I do not, however, admit to understanding them or her in the least.’’

The king laughed. “What man really understands a woman’s mind?’’ he replied. “There are many, Angus for one, I suspect, who think women dinna hae minds. Only bodies like that pretty drab of a cousin of his, Sorcha Morton. Even my laddie hae plowed in that well-tilled field.”

“And paid dearly for the privilege, I can assure ye, brother,” the earl said. “Sorcha hae expensive tastes, and like an alley cat who will go to whoever will feed it, nae true loyalty. I had a taste, but found it not to my liking. I dinna imagine Jamie stayed too long in that pasture.”

“Nay,” the king chuckled. “Then, too, he feared his mother would find out. Angus encourages the lad to carnality, and I canna stop him, for my son seems to hae a natural bent for the ladies.”

The earl grinned. “He’s a true Stewart.”

“Yet yer faithful to yer wife, Tavis, as I am to Margaret.”

“Perhaps we are unique amongst our family,” the earl replied.

The king smiled to himself. His younger brother, with a Stewart mother and a Stewart king for a father, was the quintessential Stewart. He seemed to possess all of the best qualities inherent in the Stewarts. He was handsome, loyal, intelligent, a good horseman, a good soldier, and if his reputation might be believed, a good lover. He was charming, and kind and politic.
Very politic.
The king knew his own total fidelity to his queen, coupled with the pleasure he gained from the company of artistic men, had given rise to stories that left his reputation less than savory. He would neither deny nor confirm those rumors, for he felt to do so was to give them credence, but he realized now that even Tavis Stewart was not certain of the truth of those rumors. Still, his brother was too loyal to even voice his concern in this one matter, and whatever answer James Stewart might have given to the question, should the earl have asked it, the king knew his brother would still continue to love him. There were precious few, he realized, that he might depend on to that extent.

“
Indeed,’’ he agreed with his brother, “I think we are unique, Tavis. It is unfortunate, however, that that quality is nae appreciated by the highland earls and their ilk. They will be the death of me yet, I fear. Though the lowland lords and the bonnet lairds complain, they remain loyal to me nonetheless.”

“Yer like a bloody rope dancer, Jemmie,” the earl remarked. “Ye must step carefully at all times.”

“Pray God I dinna fall, brother,” the king said. “At least not until my Jamie is old enough to rule wi’ out the interference of rash and ambitious men.”

Chapter Eleven

The queen was dead.
Suddenly, and without any real warning. She had awakened early on the morning of July fourteenth with a sharp cry, and the lady who had hurried to the queen’s bedside had heard her say even as she fell back upon her pillows, “God and His mother, Mary, have mercy on me.” Then she was gone, and as word of her unexpected death spread throughout Stirling Castle, the town below, and the very realm itself, the reaction was the same. Total astonishment and disbelief.

Margaret of Denmark, daughter of King Christian I of Norway and Denmark, was only twenty-nine years old. She had come to Scotland as James III’s bride at the age of twelve. No one in Scotland, even her husband’s fiercest critics, had a bad word to say about the young queen. She was universally loved by all, for her nature was sweet, her heart good, and her piety legend. She had borne her husband three sons, the eldest two of whom were named James, because when Jamie the elder had been a small child, it was thought he was ill unto death, and so the son his mother had borne shortly after his illness began was also christened James, ensuring that Scotland’s next king would have the same name as the previous three. The queen’s third son was called John.

The king was in a state of total shock, more so than any of the others, for whatever might be thought of him, he had loved his wife. He sat silent and staring at a wall in his beautiful rooms, deaf to all pleas, unable to even give orders for his wife’s funeral. James Stewart had never been the most decisive of men where his duties were concerned, but at this particular moment he was virtually useless. Even his young favorite, John Ramsey of Balmain, whom he had created Earl of Bothwell, could not reach him.

The king’s family, the Stewarts, with help from the kingdom’s greatest lords, planned the queen’s funeral, offering a final and perfect tribute to a gracious lady who, while she lived, had spurred her husband on in his efforts to put the affairs of his half-savage realm in order. Now it was wondered what would happen without her, and those more practical and less sentimental than others considered a suitable replacement for the grieving royal widower, amongst the candidates, the dowager queen of England, Elizabeth Woodville.

The day of the queen’s funeral dawned gray and bleak. All along the road between St. Michael’s Chapel at Stirling to the Abbey of Cambuskenneth where the burial would take place, the way was lined with hundreds of common folk, many of whom wept openly for the queen. The black-draped coffin was drawn by black horses caparisoned in black and gold. Before it went black-clad riders upon black horses bearing the flags of Scotland and Denmark, dipped in respect. Other riders carried banners with the quartered Arms of the Danish Royal House and the Lion Rampant of Scotland. The clergy, all of Scotland’s bishops and abbots walking side by side in pairs, the lesser priests—their vestments, their jeweled mitres, their croziers blazing with precious gemstones, making an almost painful flash of color amid all the black—preceded the coffin.

The coffin itself with the queen’s own arms upon it was carried by Scotland’s six senior earls, and after it came the king, bareheaded and all in black, followed by his sons, the youngest of whom was carried by his nurse, his two younger sisters, Margaret the spinster and Lady Mary Hamilton, the queen’s own ladies, the lords and ladies of the court, the royal servants, and all others who had official reason to be there.

“Why are there so many simple people?” Arabella asked her husband. “Surely they cannot have known the queen, and yet their grief seems genuine.’’ The Countess of Dunmor had never before taken part in such a great occasion, and she was not certain if it was all usual.

“The queen,” replied her husband in a low voice as they walked, “was generous wi’ her time and gave audiences to any who asked. When this was known, the ordinary folk began bringing their complaints to her. She never turned them away, and she never hurried them in their tales. She was also open-handed wi’ those in need, although she hid both her charity and her willingness to listen well, that she nae be taken advantage of by those who didna really need her. She was truly Jemmie’s better half, and God help Scotland now that she is gone.”

The high requiem Mass and the many prayers for the repose of the queen’s good soul took up most of the day, which, despite its gloomy outlook, was also warm with unusual midsummer heat. In the hours that followed, the press of too many people jammed into the abbey’s small church caused many to faint or even grow ill with the heat and the stench. The stench came from the court’s mourning clothing, which were so elegant and expensive that the garments were passed down from generation to generation. Most of the garments were made of velvet, which was too heavy a fabric for a summer’s day, and all of the doublets, robes, and gowns were heavy with embroidery. In the interim between important funerals these clothes were stored in airtight chests and dusted with pungent spices to kill several generations of body odors.

There was no air in the abbey church, and eventually, as the bodies of the mourners grew warm, not even the frankincense and myrrh wafted from the censers could overcome the rank reek of ancient sweat mixed with new. Arabella could feel the roil of her belly, and tried desperately to concentrate upon the mourning rosary of jet beads that the king had given members of his family, which now hung in her hands. Her head had begun to ache, and although food had been the furthest thing from her mind this morning when she had arisen, now, even with her upset stomach, she was beginning to feel quite hungry.

At last, to the grateful thanks of the many mourners, the state formalities were over. The king could not at this time abide the thought of returning to his beloved Stirling Castle, and so the court was to move to the place he disliked above all places, Edinburgh Castle. It was as if James Stewart felt in some way responsible for the death of his dearly loved spouse and was punishing himself.

The Stewarts of Dunmor moved along with the rest of the court to the capital city, where they had another town house, which was located on the High Street. Arabella liked Edinburgh, which she found an exciting and colorful place with its open markets and many merchant shops with their wide variety of goods from all over the known world. She did not, however, enjoy traversing the city streets, which were virtual open sewers, populated not only by respectable citizens and not so respectable citizens, but by dogs, pigs, and rats, as well as other assorted vermin. Arabella, like other ladies of the nobility, blocked the stench of the town by carrying a clove-studded orange called a pomander ball.

“Let’s go home to Dunmor,” the earl suggested to his wife as they idled away the early hours of the morning in their bed some two weeks after the queen’s funeral. It was the beginning of August.

“What of the king?” Arabella asked her husband. “He has virtually shut himself away from everyone in his grief. Is it wise to leave him to the mercy of his opponents now?”

“Jemmie must come to terms wi’ himself sooner than later, lovey. He will nae even see us now, and the court is in mourning for the next few months. Even the most militant of the earls will nae act against the king for the time being. It is a good time for us to leave, and besides, Arabella Stewart, there is something ye hae nae shared wi’ me yet that ye should,” the earl said, kissing the tip of his wife’s nose.

Arabella blushed prettily. “My lord, I am not certain of your meaning,” she answered him.

“Are ye nae with child?” His dark green eyes searched her face.

“I am not quite certain,” she said. “I must speak with your mother first. How did you know?” Her cheeks were still pink.

“Because everything about ye is important to me, lovey, and I have noted that ye hae nae had yer link wi’ the moon broken in at least two months now.”

“But perhaps ‘tis something else, my lord,” Arabella said. “I need very much to speak with your mother before I am certain. I have never had a child before, and I was but a wee girl when my mother was last with a child by my father and I did not know she was quickening with Sir Jasper’s child last summer.”

“Ye hae other symptoms, lovey,’’ he said with a doting smile. “Yer belly hae become fussy of late, and yer pretty titties are growing plumper and rounder. I hae planted my seed deep wi’in ye, and yer already quickening wi’ my son.’’ His big hand cupped her head, and he kissed her mouth warmly.

Her blush grew deeper, for even after having been married to this man for over a year, and having cohabited with him for the past eight months, she was still a little shy of him. She was embarrassed that he should know her so intimately that he could be certain of her condition even before she was. It was almost a violation, she thought irritably.

He saw the annoyance springing to life in her eyes, and he quickly said, “I am my mother’s eldest son, and familiar wi’ a woman’s habits when she is first wi’ bairn.’’

“Could you not have waited at least until I told you myself, my lord? I think it indecent that a man should be so aware of a woman’s habits!’’ She could feel her temper beginning to tug at her. “How like a man, so caught up with the superiority of his overweening pride that he would know such things as you do, and further would assume the babe I carry is a son!’’

He wanted to laugh, for she was so like a small and golden-furred spitting kitten in her outrage. “Lovey,” he told her, controlling his amusement, “I love ye, and everything about ye is important to me. Why sometimes I awake in the night and listen to ye breathe to be certain that ye are all right.’’

“I wanted to surprise you,” she pouted, not quite ready to forgive him despite his declaration of love.

“There are many ways in which ye surprise me, madame,” he said softly, and he kissed her once again.

She slipped her arms about his neck and drew him closer to her, pressing the length of her naked body against him. “Take me home, my lord,” she said with double meaning.

“Witch,” he growled into the golden tangle of her hair, feeling little hands seeking him. With a half groan he rolled over onto his back, taking her with him.

Laughing, Arabella caressed his manhood until he was aching with his eagerness to possess her. Shy in many ways with him, he had discovered, to his amazement, that she had no such reticence when it came to the act of love. It was almost as if she were a different person. In time, he suspected, he would be able to teach her certain refinements of passion that many women would not tolerate. Mounting him, Arabella began to ride her husband, gently at first, more wildly as her own passion increased, her head thrown back, her lips slightly parted, her green eyes half veiled.

Reaching up, he grasped her breasts, teasing at the berry nipples, caressing and fondling the silken flesh. He half sat, leaning his head forward to take one of her nipples into his mouth so he might suckle upon it. Gently he bit down on the tender tip and was rewarded by a soft moan of unmistakable pleasure from his wife. He pinched the other nipple equally gently, for pain was not his goal, only an enhancement of desire. He was rewarded when her sweetly tight little sheath contracted about his throbbing manhood, and Arabella shivered violently the beginning of her own fulfillment. Releasing her nipples, he took control of the situation, gently turning her over upon her back and finishing magnificently what she had so gallantly started.

They lay together in the afterward, feeling the heat of not only their mutual passion, but of the new day as well. In the garden of the town house a thrush sang, even as from the front of the house the cries of the flower seller in from the country sounded. “Sweet lavender and Mary’s gold. Roses half a copper penny! Who’ll buy? Flowers! Fresh flowers wi’ the dew yet upon them! Who’ll buy?”

“Jemmie will nae miss us,” the earl finally said, breaking the silence between them. “He canna deny me the right to take ye home when yer quickening wi’ my heir and before it becomes too dangerous for ye to travel. Besides, the city is an unhealthy place for ye, particularly now.”

“Aye,” Arabella agreed, stretching her limbs with contentment. She no longer felt angry with him, for he was really most considerate of her. Then she said, “I cannot wait to see the look upon the face of that alley cat, Sorcha Morton, when she learns I am with child. I do not like the way she eyes you, my lord. As if you were a particularly delectable bit of sweetmeat.’’

“There is nothing between Lady Morton and myself, lovey, but if the truth be known, I dinna like the way my nephew looks upon ye.”

“Are you jealous?’’ she teased him.

“Aye!”

She laughed, pleased. “Jamie is a boy,” she said. “I have a man!”

He was flattered by her quick reply, but still he said, “He may be a lad, but he’s got a man’s hard cock already, and he well knows how to use it, Arabella Stewart. Remember that lest ye ever underestimate him.”

“I shall be safely at Dunmor, my lord,” she said sweetly. “The prince shall be gone from my life, even as Jasper Keane is gone from my life.”

The king acceded to their wishes to return home to Dunmor, though he would not see either of them, so deeply did he mourn his Margaret. He remained for most of the time within his own apartments, praying for his late wife’s soul and generally ignoring the business of his realm. A treaty for a solid peace with England was being negotiated between the two countries in London, and James III was little needed elsewhere. There was no army to lead against the age-old enemy, and if there was discontent among the Scots nobility, it was, for the time being, set aside out of respect for the late queen.

The Earl and Countess of Dunmor came home to the border country on a bright mid-August day. They had been away eight months. The Flemings of Glen Ailean were there to greet them, both Ailis and Meg plump and close to delivering their first children. Happily, Arabella confided her suspicions to them all. Her mother-in-law, after asking her several pertinent questions and discussing Arabella’s habits with Flora and Lona, confirmed her son’s verdict. In the early spring of the new year, Dunmor would have an heir.