Friend & Foe (17 page)

He wanted her to say, of course, of course she had not. She could not frame the lie.

‘Robert, on my life, I swear I never meant . . . but he did overcome me . . . I was fruel and weak.’

The blood rushed to his head. He felt a cold wind grip his belly, squeezing out the words. Clare had clasped his hands. She drowned his hopes in kisses, sweet and heavy tears.

‘Forgive me, Robert. Ah, my love, do not cast me out.’

He put her from him, cold. ‘You are not mine.’

‘Sweet, I am yours.’

She had no wit to stray or wander free at will; whoever took advantage of her stole from Robert Wood. He came to his decision then. ‘You are weak and foolish. It is not your fault.’

Her sobbing was so frantic it brought in the maid. ‘Your mistress is not well. I will call the surgeon.’

The servant hesitated. ‘What disorder ails her, sir, that she writhes mad with grief?’

‘A disorder of the matrix, brought on by the pregnancy. Help her to her bed.’

It took four solid serving men to hold the patient down. The surgeon was concerned.

‘Are ye quite sure that ye want her so profusely bled? It is not the common course for a woman in her state.’

‘Look at her, man, she is out of her mind. This is not a common case.’

Clare was exhausted, worn out from weeping and her travails in the bed.

‘What does her physician say? For sin she is with child—’

‘He says she must be bled, for both their sakes. There is a black corruption, seething in the blood.’

‘Ah, I do not ken. If I could have his name?’

‘Ye shall have it in the morning, when you come again.’

At last, the man agreed, for double his account, if Robert signed a paper that he understood the treatment might prove harmful to the child.

‘I will sign what e’er ye will. I do not care about the child.’

‘Sir!’ The man was shocked.

‘I care about my wife. You can see that she is ill.’

Robert had his way, and it seemed that he was right; for once the blood was taken Clare fell in a sleep, and to a heavy quietness, all throes of passions stilled. Robert closed the drapes and lay with her all night. When morning came, he rose and dressed. Her eyelids fluttered feebly. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To see my brother Andrew. You must lie and sleep. The surgeon will be back soon. You will want your strength.’

‘Robert, you must not . . .’ She put out her hand, too weak to call to him.

‘Ach, you need not fear. I will find a way to make the limmar pay, that leaves no spot nor stain, no blemish to reproach you. Since he is Andrew’s man, Andrew will avenge this. He will see him hang.’

‘Who will Andrew hang?’ Her wits were not awake. ‘But surely, you do not mean Hew?’

He stilled her with a kiss, so hard and fierce and cruel it bruised her bloodless lips.

‘I will keep you by me, Clare. For you are my wife. But you will never hear, nor speak that name again.’

Robert flayed his red horse through the morning air. By the time he came to Largo it was lathered in a sweat. He left it with the groom. The family were at breakfast still, seated in the hall.

Elizabeth observed the look upon his face, and took the children out. Andrew folded up his napkin. ‘Your coming is untimely. I am leaving now for Falkland. I have business with the king.’

‘You have business here.’

The brothers were not friends. They had certain business interests, which it suited them to share. Andrew Wood, as coroner, was well versed in the law. But Andrew would not shed a tear to see his brother hang. ‘I will hear your plea tomorrow, at the sheriff court.’

The sheriff court was held at Cupar, several miles away. It irked Robert that his brother failed to put his family first. His father’s birthright and his bairns’ were mortgaged to the Crown.

‘It is not a public but a private matter, that must not be aired.’

‘What is it?’ Andrew scowled. ‘For, I have telt ye before, I will not be drawn into your scheme to inveigle your wife’s brother George out of his rightful inheritance.’

‘Oh aye? And you had any feeling for what was rightfully inherited, you would not squander yours, and that of your poor bairns, to serve a wastrel king.’

‘I will look to my ain bairns, Robert, you may look to yours.’

‘So do I intend. I have come about your man, the lawman at the college.’ Still Robert could not bring himself to speak of Hew by name. ‘He has done me wrong, and you must put him down.’

The coroner allowed a smile, a small thin scar of pity, tempered with contempt.

‘If you mean Hew Cullan, he is not my man. Though he has sometime worked with me, he is not for hire. Wherefore, I regret, I have no control of him. If he has vexed ye in some course, some sleight of dealing underhand, then it were right and just, and you have no redress. I cannot help it, Robert, if he thwarts your fleecing of the foolish George. He is an honest man.’

‘Honest, is he? Aye, to couple with my wife!’

‘What do you mean by that?’

In answer, Robert showed the letter, ragged and ravaged in his hands. As Andrew read, a dark confusion masked his face, and as quickly cleared.

‘But you do not believe,’ he scoffed, ‘this bairnlie piece of spite? For it is plain as day this letter has no substance, but a coward’s trick. Hew Cullan ruffles feathers further fledged than yours. He has been investigating tricks that were played on Andrew Melville. Tis likely he comes close to finding out the perpetrator, and the silly wretch has turned the trick on him. I will call him in, and find out who it is.’

‘You will do nothing of the sort.’ Robert snatched the letter from his brother’s hand, and threw it on the fire. Andrew looked on, curious, as the flames took hold.

‘But surely,’ he repeated, ‘you were not deceived by this?’

‘You think I am too quickly taken in? So it would seem. Brother, she confessed to it.’

Andrew stared. ‘She lay with him?’

‘Swears it, on her life.’

‘Jesus, Robert,’ Andrew swore. ‘Then I am right sorry for it. I had not thought that of her.’

‘Do not think it of her. Think it of him. He has stolen what was mine. I want him punished for it.’

Andrew rubbed his beard. ‘What does she say? That she forced him?’

‘It is no matter what she says. She has no voice to speak.’

‘Robert . . .’ an unhappy thought had crossed Sir Andrew’s mind, and he eyed his brother warily. ‘Where is Clare? For you must
understand, if you have overstepped the law, and put her life in jeopardy, then I maun detain you here. Brother or not, I will do my duty by the law.’

‘Aye, very like you,’ Robert mocked. ‘You would not blink an eye to see a brother hanged. I left her with the surgeon. But you need not fear. I have not harmed a hair on her.’

‘God be thanked for that. Do you want him to be charged with raping her?’

‘Nothing of that sort. The world will never hear that he has made a cuckold of me. But sin you have control – ah, do not lie to me, I ken you have control of him – I want you to pursue him, and bring the devil down.’

Andrew shook his head. He was plainly thrown by this. ‘I am sorry for this pass. I should perhaps have tried—’

‘What should you have tried? Had you some word of this?’

‘As I confess, a hint. I felt there was some feeling there. I had in mind to part them, when I sent Hew out to Ghent. I warned him off; and I had thought—’

‘You warned him off! Yet gave no thought to warning
me
.’

‘I took it for infatuation, schoolboy grening, nothing more. Beside which, you forget, you were suspect then of a momentous crime.’

‘Aye, and thanks to him, his slanderous imputations . . . I am sorely wronged.’

‘As I do confess,’ Andrew answered, heavily.

‘I would see him gone.’

‘Trust me, so you shall, without hurt to Clare. I will put this right, in my own way, and in my own time. It may take a while. But leave it in my hands.’

Robert left appeased. For Andrew made no promise that he did not keep.

Elizabeth came softly to her husband’s side. She had left the children in the care of the servant. The boys, in particular, were
inclined to rough play, to wrestle with their father and come pulling at his sleeves. Magdalene, the baby, had been wakeful in the night. Now she was fretful, and refused to feed. Elizabeth was worn out since she kept no nurse, had borne too many bairns in too short a time.

‘Is all well with Clare?’

Andrew did not look up. He buttoned up his coat, turning back the sleeves, where a line of lace lay neatly at the cuff.

‘Why should it not be?’ Andrew’s face was dark. Whatever thoughts had clouded it he did not share with her.

‘Your brother seemed distracted.’

‘He is exercised upon a legal matter. It need not concern you.’

‘But if he is vexed . . . Perhaps I should go to her?’

He glanced at her then. ‘You are wanted here, with the little lass.’

And that was true, of course. Elizabeth was glad, for she did not, in her heart, want to go to Clare. She would do what he willed, all that he required of her, but she was worn and tired. Andrew buckled on his sword, and turned to kiss her cheek.

‘I must be gone,’ he said. ‘The king is at Falkland, for his recreation. He has asked me there, to join him at the hunt.’

‘Why would he ask you? He has courtiers enough, and he kens you are no flatterer. Surely he knows you have work to do. What does he want?’ She answered her own question. ‘Money, I suppose.’

Her husband had paid the king’s debts, thousands of pounds, from his own pocket and from her own dowry. She had become resigned to it, though fear of what might come to them kept her awake at night.

Andrew said, ‘I do not know.’ So seldom did he share with her the workings of his heart.

‘He will not thank you for it. When he is king . . .’

‘He is king now,’ he reminded her.

‘Aye, but in name. King in his own right, I mean.’ The king was under governance of the earl of Gowrie. And that was a good thing, Elizabeth thought. He was kept from his old friends, his profligate
spending kept under check; his debts at least were reined in for the while.

Andrew was thoughtful. His words brought no comfort. ‘Lennox is dead, and the king is distraught. God alone kens what he intends.’

‘Lennox?’

‘Esme Stuart, his cousin, that was closest to his heart. He died of a fever in France.’

It was rare that Andrew explained things. The confidence emboldened her.

‘But that maun be a good thing, must it not?’ Lennox was the profligate who led the king astray. ‘He cannot back an army then, against the earl of Gowrie.’

‘He cannot do that,’ her husband agreed. ‘And yet I think this news will move the king to act. He will not be content to submit to Gowrie’s will. And I am convicted, there will be a change.’

‘The court will be restored?’

‘I have no doubt of that. The king has other friends.’

‘He will not like you, then,’ Elizabeth predicted. ‘When he is restored. He will not like to be beholden to you, to be in our debt. And he will resent the way that you have spoken to him, openly, and plain. He will fill his court again with parasites and flatterers. He will do nothing for our boys.’

‘Speak not of that!’ he turned on her. ‘The boys are safe. For do I not provide for you?’

‘Aye, but Andrew, all our fortunes . . .’ All her worries welled against her. She broke down in tears.

‘Enough,’ he said, ‘No more. Or you will make me late.’

Chapter 17

Trials of the Heart

The king rode to the hunt without Sir Andrew Wood, driving with his hounds and falcons deep into the forest, where he walked on foot. His water spaniel, Jasper, flushed out the first bird. Jasper did not shiver at the snapping of a neck, or fear the pulse which steadied to a thudding disappointment, the heady thrill too brittle and too brief. Sure-footed and inquisitive, he brought the corpse to James. Routed, Pen rose up. She circled once and came to rest, high up on a hawthorn branch.

‘Two sparrows for a farthing,’ Peter Fleming said.

‘Aye?’ James rounded dangerously. The falconer was unconcerned. He turned his back upon the king and offered up the lure for Pen to fly back down. The bird condescended to acknowledge Peter’s claim and settled on his arm, accepting a sliver of green flesh.

‘Will you not take her, your Grace?’

James had removed his left glove. He picked up the sparrow in his white, naked hand, with the softness and the shyness of a woman or a child. The dead bird curled into his fingers like a leaf. ‘No,’ he answered shortly, ‘I am weary of the sport.’

Peter Fleming sighed. He dismissed his sullen highness with a shrug, turning his attentions to the hawk. ‘Pen has a broken plume.’

‘Pen
is
a broken plume,’ suggested James, diverted for the moment from his sulk. Peter gave no answer to this show of wit. He opened up a pouch and dipping in his fingers, stroked the bird with liniment. ‘Yon spaniel came too rough to her.’

The king was irritated. ‘It was not the dog’s fault. Pen flew up into the tree. The hills are o’ergrowin here. Ye cannot see the quarry for the leaves; no more can Pen.’

‘That’s true enough,’ the falconer admitted. He soothed and smoothed the hawk, crooning to her as he worked the wax into her wings, which Pen suffered to be oiled and stroked until they glistened like the morsels of sleek flesh with which he still appeased her, and at which she picked fastidiously. ‘I doubt she is done for the day.’

‘You
may be done,’ James informed him, ‘while Pen may be done for. She has the heart of a pigeon. A timorous pluck of a fowl.’ He looked down at the sparrow in his palm, and something in the slight corpse stirring to displease him, he tossed it back into the thicket with a gesture of disgust. He took no care to wipe the thin trail of blood from his white hand before he thrust it back into his glove. Jasper, for whom instinct overrode discretion, retrieved the bird at once and dropped it at his feet. James ignored them both.

‘She is a young bird, sir, not yet come to her prime.’ The falconer defended Pen.

‘She is past her prime,’ corrected James. ‘A toothless, quailing fazart, quaking from her prey. No matter, now. This bolt is shot. So let us change our course.’

‘Where would you go to, your Grace?’ Peter Fleming found a plug of wool to wipe the blood and feathers from Pen’s beak. Pen shook out her feet, a quivering of bells. She turned her blind eyes upwards, to the cloudless sky.

The king considered this. ‘God knows, far from here. Go, bid the hunter blow his horn, and sound an end to foolish questions. Close this knotless chase!’ He called out to the huntsmen returning from the hills, ‘My Lords, a change of plan. We ride out to the east toward the Eden estuary, in search of water fowl.’

‘That we cannot, Majestie. We maun keep at Falkland.’

The hunters closed in quietly, circling at his back. Gowrie, Angus, Mar and Glamis, those lords who had control of him, had set a
careful watch, a cold and curious company to guard against his will. James looked to Peter Fleming for support, but Peter was preoccupied, attending to Pen’s injury, pretending not to hear. The king could not command. His voice pitched shrill and querulous, fragile in his grief, ‘Who dares say
we must
?’

They stood a moment still, embarrassed for the bairn in him, too quickly drawn to tears. Someone cleared his throat. Then a voice spoke out. A young man in a bright green coat stepped forward from the crowd. James glimpsed a piercing likeness in the ripple of a sleeve, white ruffles at a throat, a bright jewel on a cap, a delicate, cruel trickery of light. So they did taunt him, with ghosts.

The young man in the green coat bowed, and risked a smile at him. James forced a thread of coolness through his high hot voice. ‘I do not know you, sir. Nor see for what good cause you move against our will.’

The green boy said simply, ‘I am Rauf Stewart, your Grace.’ He knelt before James, open fingered, in the damp green grass. James flexed his own fist nervously inside its leather glove. Rauf Stewart’s looks were delicate and soft, his manners shaped for flattery. Jasper and Jem, the king’s beloved dogs, ran fawning to his side. But James was not deceived. He whistled, and the spaniel Jem came trotting to his heels. The turncoat Jasper licked the devil’s sleeve. James saw he was a devil, in his fair false looks. He set his own wits bodily against those of his king.

‘Not every Stewart,’ James remarked, ‘may call himself our kin.’ He made the words composed, aloof, despite his trembling heart.

Rauf Stewart shook his head. ‘Your Majestie, I never made such claim. I am in the service of the earl of Gowrie. It pleases him to send me here to wait upon your Grace.’

‘It pleases him,’ translated James, ‘to have you spy on us.’

Rauf coloured at the charge. ‘For pity, Sire, why should you think so? I am his servant, as he is yours.’

‘You are his spy,’ declared James. He let the words hang heavy in the air, the green boy kneeling in the grass, until a second courtier came to plead the devil’s case.

‘This is sound counsel, for we maun keep close. There are yet too few of us to keep your Grace from harm, if ye would ride abroad. There are thieves at large, and brigands at Garbridge, for these are lawless times.’

His highness answered coldly, ‘So have I observed, how lawless is the kingdom under Ruthven’s rule, and all those who subscribe it, as Angus and Mar, and the
master of Glamis
.’

He knew the man, Sir Thomas Keith; the thrist would not be blunt to him. Glamis was his kinsman and laird.

The hook had found its mark. ‘Those lords, who love you dearly, Sire,’ Sir Thomas Keith defended. ‘None that dares to speak for them would see your Highness harmed. Pray, do not let sour humours spoil a summer’s play. Red trout are leaping from the lake, the deer roam through the forest, keeking through the trees, the grassy banks and meadows run alive with hares. Let us make our sport upon the Lomond hills, this fine fair day in Falkland. And it please your Highness, you shall have my lord’s best hawk, to race against your Pen. Whichever bird flies faster shall be yours to keep.’

He showed up a hawk in a red velvet hood, its white and brown plumage the colour of Jem. As bairns with sticky fingers reach for shining things, the king put out his hand.

See the goshawk flutter, helpless to the lure
. The whisper came so fast and faint that James could not be certain of its source. Rauf Stewart knelt before him, silent in the grass, and in the shadows falling back, the quiet hunters watched. He saw them trade glances and smiles. With a wink, they could prick him to tears. He answered them hoarsely, biting his lip. ‘Let us be done here, for Pen is not fit to fly.

‘Sir Thomas, we shall take your bird,’ he nodded to the courtier, ‘and rest her in our mews, to try another day. Since hawks are given freely, and are welcome gifts, your laird will want no recompense,
save for our grace and favour, which we give to you. Sir Thomas, you may ride by us. You others, fall behind.’

The hunters blew their horns, calling in the hounds, soothing tense, taut falcons, highly strung for flight. Rauf Stewart scrambled to his feet, his green coat tipped darkly from the dampness of the grass. ‘One of us should ride ahead.’

‘Then let it be you.’ The king swore. ‘God knows, I do not want you at my back.’ He watched the boy ride out, until the smooth black mare became a shadowed streak, the bright green silk a dot, beneath the Lomond hills. Then brooding, he reined in his horse, and rode back to the palace, with dark and thoughtful looks, and did not speak a word to Sir Thomas as they went.

At Falkland, he dismissed the lords, retiring to the billiard hall, in company with Jem. The hall backed onto the tennis court, and once had been a stable block; it smelled of horses still, a sweet dry pungent earthiness mellowing the gloom. High windows facing westwards seldom saw the sun, and games were played by candlelight on dreich damp afternoons, or in the glow of lantern horn, on nights too dark for caich. There were no vaults or vennels where a man might hide.

Though James was sick at heart, he did not break down in tears, but concentrated fiercely on the game in hand. He took the pieces in his hand as though he made a weight of them to anchor down his grief. He set the port and skittle out upon the cloth and leant to take his shot, to test the secret slant and bias of the board. His first strike missed its mark, rebounding sharply from the wooden rail, and rolled into a pocket on the other side. Jem, at the chap of it, shifted and stirred, let out a fart, and returned to his dreams. He did not raise a whimper at the coming of the coroner, whose left foot caught his tail. ‘That is a patient wee dug.’

At his back a page boy hurried, half a step too late. ‘Sir Andro Wood o’ Largo, and it please your Majestie,’ he amended breathlessly, ‘waits upon your will.’

James retrieved the ball, allowing it to settle for a moment in his hand. ‘Though ivory is fair and fine, it never forms a perfect sphere,’ he answered to the page. Sir Andrew he ignored, for speaking out of turn.

The boy looked in a box. ‘Here is
lignum sanctum
that may serve your Highness better.’

‘So we dare to hope. What think ye to it, Andro?’ James was flyting now, for
lignum
was the Latin word for wood.

The coroner, undaunted, answered with a smile, ‘Perhaps the imperfections turn a profit in the game?’

‘For one who is a player,’ James agreed. He glowered at Andrew Wood, to see how this might sit with him, and took another shot. ‘We missed you at the hunt.’

Wood’s black coat and britches bore no speck of dust, no sign that he had hurried, riding hard or long. His bending at the knee was formal and perfunctory, for he was not a flatterer. There had been a time, and not so long ago, when James had been afraid of him. The bluntness of his manners rasped and rankled still.

‘Some business kept me from ye, else ye should have found me there.’ Wood made no apology, but turned to pet the spaniel, pulling off a glove for Jem to take the scent of it, stroking his soft muzzle. James was irked by this. ‘Business of the Crown?’ he snapped.

‘Not exactly.’

‘What, exactly?’

The coroner glanced sideways, where the page boy gawped, following the patter like an umpire in an argument. He was eight or nine years old, the son of some ambitious lord, and quick to spill a tale. James caught on at once.

‘Go run into the caichpell, boy, and wait upon the lords. They will want new balls.’

The gawping boy said foolishly, ‘There are none there, your Grace.’

‘I think perhaps,’ said Andrew Wood, ‘you did not hear your king.’ His words had depths of meaning that were difficult to plumb, for
they were quiet, mild and thoughtful, and yet they brought a shiver to the child, and a moment of reflection to the king himself. The small boy blushed and fled.

‘Your pardon, sir, your Grace.’

‘Aye, sir,’ James approved, ‘you do well to warn of it. That quelp may well be Ruthven’s boy. How sick am I at heart of renegades and spies.’

The coroner said simply, ‘Every boy is someone’s boy.’

‘So I have come to fear.’ James dropped his voice, to ask again, ‘What business was it kept you, sir?’

Again, Sir Andrew hesitated. ‘Nothing to concern your Grace. It was . . . a family matter.’

He glanced up at the young king’s face, quietly appraising him, sketched paler in the shadows of the darkening afternoon. The king was in his hunting clothes, and in his hand the billiard club swung like a shepherd’s staff. Since turning seventeen he had tried to grow a beard, and the fluff of down and stubble left a rash upon his chin. He looked less like a monarch than a schoolboy on a stage, who comes in on his cue but cannot mind his part.

‘A family matter,’ James repeated, sounding out the words, as something new and strange to him. He accepted the excuse with a light flick of his hand, that left a trail of air for Andrew Wood to kiss. ‘Since we are aware that you have paid our debts, your absence here this morning may be overlooked. Now that you are here, we shall play at billiarts. Look into the box there, and find yourself a ball. Ourselves, we have determined we shall keep the ivory; the
lignum
wants a lick of polish, it wants turned and buffeting, and shorn of its rough edges, else it rolls no better than a lump of wood.’

He turned back to the table, pleased with this rebuke. James found satisfaction in compelling men to play with him. Those lords who had not hesitated to lay violent hands on him, depriving him of liberty, authority and friends, were anxious to distract him now, tempting him with toys, as though he were a mewling infant, plucking at the sleeve of those who took upon themselves his
rightful role of government. It pleased him to enact upon them small acts of revenge, to win from them their hawks and horses, cups and cloths of gold, though in his heart he kent it for a hollow prize. Had George Buchanan, his old tutor, caught him at his tricks, he would have served his master with a slaffert to the lug.

Did I learn ye nothing? Wad ye be a tyrant now, or would ye be a king? Ye think your duty is to them, that they maun nod and skip to thy daft bairnly tune?

The pedagogue was dead, yet James shrank from the echo ringing in his ears. He coloured at the shame of it. And he was not prepared for Andrew Wood’s response.

‘Your Highness maun excuse me, for I am no player. I do not think you called me here, nor take me from the service I perform on your behalf, for that you want a billie for your barnelike games. There are wasters enough here to play with your Grace.’