Gemini (63 page)

‘That’s because we’re sitting on saddles,’ Jodi said. ‘If we were fighting, we’d drink out of helmets, and give our swords to the smith while we eat. Tam says he can put up a hut in an hour, and plait a horse shelter as well. They train teams and race. They train teams of gun-wagons too. Tam says it’s just as important as training archers, for there’s no use having a gun that can’t go anywhere.’

‘Would you like to build camps?’ asked the Bishop.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Jodi. ‘I think houses are better.’

‘I’m inclined to think so as well,’ said Bishop Spens. ‘Tam Cochrane has given me some very good advice in his time. He likes his joke as well. Get your father to take you to Roslin Chapel. You’ll see my face there. Next to the gargoyles.’

Then came the meal, at which everyone worked hard to make the thing a success. At the end, someone called, ‘Nicol? Well, how about it?’

At most gatherings, Gelis had discovered, sooner or later, silence would fall, and someone would say, ‘Nicol! Well, how about it?’ Every Court had entertainers. Only Scotland possessed a highly trained adviser and business manager whom they also relied on for excitement. It sprang, she supposed, from his original concoctions of music and drama, and had progressed as his inventiveness became known. He didn’t seem to mind. She couldn’t remember if Jodi had ever seen his father in action before, and wondered whether or not to be worried. It was the kind of question that Kathi could have answered at once.

The same thought had occurred briefly to Nicholas, in so far as he weighed up most audiences beforehand. Leithie Preston’s birthday inside a locked custom shed on the wharf was a different matter from a novelty to divert Alexander Leigh after supper at Avandale’s. Colin Campbell was something other again, and he had all these Highlanders.

Colin Campbell had already obtained from Nicholas the return he
expected on more serious matters. It had been done, smoothly, at another break in the journey, and away from the Preceptor, and the Bishop, and especially away from the royal half-uncles. When, in a private room, the Earl of Argyll said, ‘Well, Nicol?’ he was not looking for jokes. He wanted to know whether the English peace might be threatened because the King’s sister had become secretly pregnant.

It was too important to conceal, if you knew. Kathi had agreed. Nicholas reported it without stress, as one would any fact affecting the wellbeing of a nation. ‘The pregnancy is of about five months’ duration. The father is married, young Will Crichton. Grandson of the Chancellor; connected to the Dunbars, and to Luss and to Huntly. His wife is Marion Livingstone, and the child will be born before he could be freed of the marriage on any grounds. For what it’s worth, my lord, it doesn’t smack of personal ambition. The Princess is by nature indiscreet and defiant. He is young. Both are attractive. Flung together by someone like Simpson, they were very likely to go to extremes, especially if they believed, as two of her brothers did, that the English marriage was wrong and the King was not to be trusted. Although Crichton could hardly have put any reliance on my lord of Mar. Cochrane’s tales of what happened up north are quite disturbing.’

‘I’ve heard them,’ Argyll had said. ‘And what happened in Edinburgh. That’s why he isn’t here. Andreas volunteered to look after him. Otherwise every envoy from England and beyond will learn about the fallen bride of Earl Rivers from Johndie Mar’s frenzied lips.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Nicholas.

‘So am I.
Is mairg aig am bi iad
,’ had said Colin Campbell. ‘But that is what we have to work with, and we must do it. When we are back in Edinburgh, we shall confer. And meanwhile, what else?’

He told it, concisely, for what it was worth. Before the snow sealed the highways, there had been some unexplained movements among the friends of Archibald, Earl of Angus, who had been such a good ally to Sandy on the last Border raid.

‘He is planning something?’ Argyll had said.

‘They think so, in Berwick. Perhaps you would care to speak to Bertram and Yare. Yare might also advise about Crichton. They do business together.’

‘Tom Yare would do business with Lucifer. So what is de Fleury’s advice?’

‘Not to worry,’ had said Nicholas. ‘With snow like this, nothing can happen. Make the most of it.’

And, since he thought that was true, here he was, in a circle of bonfires, dragging a performance out of just about every man, woman and child of those whose shining faces surrounded him; juggling torches while men leaped over hurdles, and others danced to the pipes, and wrestled,
and battered each other with poles while balancing on high, twanging ropes tied to roof-poles. Tom Yare sportingly repeated a long piece of verse with a lot of Rs in it, and children chanted and skipped. And finally MacChalein Mor his own self, stripped to the waist, long pale hair whipping, cartwheeled into the centre and danced, with high-flung hands and arched feet, while his men made mouth-music; the sound of it flittering over the snow, light as a wagtail in drink.

When it was over, and the camp was quiet, Jodi drew close to his father. ‘Could I do that?’

‘What?’ said Nicholas cautiously.

‘Make dancing-music with my mouth.’

‘If you’ve got enough breath. Two people are better.’

‘Could Margaret do it?’ Jodi said. ‘If you showed her?’

Pity who have them. Pity who have them not. What are they?

Children.

N
EXT MORNING, THE
messenger burst into the camp, shouting for their lordships of Buchan and Atholl.

Bare in the crackling snow, Colin Campbell got there before they did.
‘Be quiet. What?’

Nicholas, equally unclad, came running.

It was what they had feared. Johndie Mar, knife in hand, running wild.

I
N EDINBURGH, AS
yet, no one knew. Enclosed in its frozen countryside, the town clung, silently smoking, to its long slope, with the Castle stark and detached on its height, guarding its secrets.

The day before, provoked into a quarrel by some impatient remark of the King’s, John of Mar had drawn steel on his brother. Drawn it, distressingly, not as a murderer with a grievance or an assassin for some noble cause, but as a spoiled lad, frustrated, looses a whip at a horse. The blade had pricked the King’s skin, that was all, before the Guard had dragged off the Prince and taken his dagger. The King, overcome, had collapsed and lain shivering on his bed ever since, with Conrad at his side. The Earl of Mar had been locked in his room, with Dr Andreas in attendance. Will Scheves, with Master Secretary Whitelaw and the Governor
of the Castle, had sworn to silence all those who knew, and had sent to find the King’s chief advisers and, of course, his uncles.

Because, perhaps, it was thought unsafe to leave him outside, Nicholas was with that first small party which entered the Castle, and which, as time went on, was augmented by other arrivals as messengers reached those whom the King trusted: his Burgundian councillor, Lord Cortachy; his Chancellor, Avandale; his efficient master of defence, Tam Cochrane. The outlying members of the Archers were called back to duty, among them Henry de St Pol of Kilmirren, whose grandfather also returned, to occupy his Edinburgh house. Gelis van Borselen and her son returned, at a more moderate pace, in the suite of Bishop Spens, talking occasionally of what they had been told, but most often silent, while behind them, marring the snow, lay the churned mud and smoking embers which were all that remained of the hard work and goodwill of the previous night.

While still confined to the Castle, Nicholas went to Dr Andreas’s small room, sat down and said, ‘Tell me.’

And Andreas, pulling off and flinging aside his red robe, said, ‘I can’t predict what he’ll do. It’s what we all feared. It’s worse.’

‘How is he?’ Nicholas said.

‘Drugged. Before that, he never stopped shouting and talking. He had pains like an old man in his joints, or his stomach doubled him up. The attacks have always been much the same, but now they’re more frequent, and worse. Will and Whitelaw are concerned because the French envoy is almost due. He mustn’t learn that the Prince is under duress, or that the King was in danger. At the same time, we can’t let the lad loose. You know why. You’ve found out, I hear, about the Princess Margaret. Mar knows about it as well.’

‘It would certainly cheer up the French if Mar told them,’ said Nicholas. ‘No English marriage for Meg.’

‘It wouldn’t cheer the English as much,’ Andreas said, ‘when the French accidentally told them exactly why Margaret can’t marry. So Lord Mar has to be kept out of sight, but under medical care, and near enough to be monitored. Blackness is for criminals. Lord Cortachy could keep him at Linlithgow. Or there is Roslin, or Craigmillar. Dundas? Haining? Torphichen?’

‘You’re not happy,’ said Nicholas.

‘It is not my unhappiness that matters,’ Andreas said. ‘As I told you, I don’t know what this poor fellow will do. And no one knows whether his siblings are tainted.’

There was a silence. Nicholas said, ‘I got to know Sandy quite well. He’s not especially bright, and that in itself makes him short-tempered: princes don’t like to seem slow. But that said, what he does isn’t senseless.
Even the killing of Scougal came from a long-standing quarrel, and frustration over everything else. And there are no physical symptoms that I know of, so far.’ He waited, then spoke directly again. ‘About the King, I don’t know, but his physicians must. If you or the others suspect anything, you will have to tell someone. I don’t think they hang doctors nowadays.’

‘Avandale and the rest know all we can tell them,’ Andreas said. ‘Scheves has seen similar cases. So has your Dr Tobie. Like Albany, the King can’t stand being thwarted, but that’s understandable. There are times when he can’t keep his hands off women, but then his Queen is in Stirling, preparing to bear him a child, and he is alone. Also, at other times, she isn’t generous with her favours. We should be grateful there isn’t a stable of mistresses. Lastly, and this is what worries his Councillors, he does retreat from affairs very often to sink into lethargy. He needs to be amused when at leisure. A competitive game, some versifying, some banter, does more good than a powder.’

‘I thought you looked exhausted,’ Nicholas said. ‘What can I do?’

‘For the King, nothing,’ Andreas said. ‘You went to France: he’s not convinced of your loyalty. But, for the same reason, the time may come when you could help me with Mar. You saved his life in that tavern.’

‘If he remembers. He also connects me with Argyll and the rest. But of course, if you want me, I’ll come.’

They let him leave the Castle when Adorne had arrived and after they had had a private council of war. Kathi, Adorne said, was safely at home. Riding out between Archers, and under the ice-hung portcullis of the Castle, Nicholas was conscious of nothing so freezing as the stare of his son, his nephew, his enemy Henry.

T
HEY MOVED THE
King’s brother to Linlithgow, and then to Roslin, from which, although closely supervised, he escaped. He was found again, with cries of pleasure, by Nowie, and cajoled into staying at Newbattle, from which he departed again. Since by this time the French envoy was at Blackfriars, the lord of Craigmillar Castle once more admitted John of Mar as his guest, but this time, on orders, locked him into his rooms. For the second time in four weeks, John of Mar fell into a frenzy, and Dr Andreas was called. The family chaplain was already there, to pray for the servant Mar had killed, and comfort the girl he had attempted to force. Dr Andreas sent for his Italian colleague, Tobias Beventini, formerly of the Charetty company, and for Nicholas. They arrived together.

Mar’s room was not the cell of a prisoner, it was furnished as for a prince, although the shutters were closed and there was a guard at the locked door. Inside, it smelled like a prison cell, for shock and pain led to
incontinence, and Mar’s dress and his bedding were soaked. His hands were tied, and he was weeping, his eyes swollen, his red-head’s skin blotched. Tobie swore under his breath and went forward, but Andreas spoke quietly. ‘He is violent. If you untie him, he will attack you.’ And indeed, at the sound of his voice, the sobbing stopped and the bound man turned, painfully and malevolently, glaring at Andreas and then at Tobie. His eyes, reaching Nicholas, remained on him.

Nicholas said, mildly, ‘Do we want the doctors?’

Tobie made a cross sound. Mar kept his eyes open. Then he shook his head.

Andreas said, in the same quiet voice, ‘You need witnesses.’

‘No, I don’t,’ Nicholas said. ‘I need a blanket, and two chairs by the fire and—what? Something to eat? Something to drink?’

‘You will send me to sleep,’ Mar said. His teeth were chattering.

‘Not intentionally,’ Nicholas said. ‘We’ll drink from the same cup, and eat the same food. Tobie will bring it.’ He knew, all the time that it was being arranged, that he was being an idiot. He wasn’t a doctor, and what Mar needed were doctors. But while doctors were anathema, the patient might talk to a layman. The danger, as Andreas had hinted, was that anything might happen, and there would be no witnesses.

It seemed worth the risk. He went ahead anyway, talking in a rambling way all the time the door opened and shut until at last he and Sandy’s brother were alone in the candlelit room with the firelight in their faces, the young man wrapped in his blanket and sharing a bowl of sops in wine, passing back and forth from his freed hands to those of Nicholas.

After a while he said, ‘I’m going to be sick,’ and was.

Nicholas said mildly, ‘Well, that’s all right,’ and cleaned it up.

After another while, Mar said, ‘Will you stop talking?’

‘All right,’ said Nicholas. ‘Imagine I’m God. What do you want from me?’

Later, there was a mild scuffle which Nicholas, being large, resolved without injury. By then, he had started talking again, and once things had quietened, he produced the wine once more, made a little stronger. He could feel Tobie’s anxiety shuddering in waves through the door. Andreas, with a different outlook, had probably gone somewhere to sleep.