The Flower Reader (10 page)

“All the more reason for me to be there.” I had made a place inside myself, a smooth stone-hard bubble like the chamber under Saint Margaret’s, and to that I had banished my grief and guilt and terror. No one, not even my dear Tante-Mar, would know they were there. “Someone must mourn him properly.”

“Oh, my dear.” Tante-Mar put her arms around me. Perhaps she saw more than I gave her credit for seeing. “Very well, go and bury your dead. But take care, and mark me—if you want to go home to Granmuir, the less Huntly sees of you, the better.”

“I do not want to go home to Granmuir,” I said. I surprised myself, saying it out loud for the first time. “Not yet. I am going to make a place for myself here at court, and I am going to find out who killed Alexander and why. Then we can all go home together.”

T
HE LONG NAVE OF
H
OLYROOD
A
BBEY
, so dark and empty the last time I had seen it, was filled with light streaming in from the rows of pointed windows. People crowded the church, far more than would have come for Alexander Gordon’s sake alone. They were divided into two groups—plainly dressed townspeople at the back, and courtiers at the front, around the bier. Alexander’s body had been placed in a coffin, and the coffin covered with a pall bearing the arms of Gordon and Glenlithie, hastily and crookedly embroidered in azure and gold.

Wearing my own borrowed black dress and a white mourning veil, with Jennet at my side to steady me, I walked down the south aisle. No one paid any attention to me.

“We will suffer no idolatry in this church. It is now the parish church of the Canongate, and it has been cleansed of popish beads and prayers, once and forever.”

I recognized the speaker by his long and luxuriant beard: it was Master John Knox, the leading evangelist of the Protestants. At his right stood the Earl of Rothes, head of the Leslies, with a cadre of his own supporters.

“This is a private obsequy.” That was Huntly, head of the Gordons and the greatest of the Catholic lords, thick-muscled and running heavily to fat, his reddish mane and beard grizzled with white. The Cock of the North, his Highlanders called him, and his face was red as a cock’s wattle. In the High Street, Jennet had heard whispers he was disappointed by the queen’s lack of Catholic zeal; he was disappointed as well by her appointment of her Protestant half brother, Lord James Stewart, as her chief councilor. The word
rebellion
had not actually been spoken, not yet, but Huntly was a grandson of James IV by the king’s natural daughter Margaret Stewart, and if he could take the Highlands with him, he might even lay hands on the crown itself.

“’Tis bad enough the queen bows down to the idol in private,”
Knox said. He had an orator’s voice and it carried throughout the nave. “This church has been purified and is now used for proper services, and we will not see it defiled again, queen’s household or no.”

“The queen has proclaimed,” Huntly said, “that no one should molest her private household in their practice of the true religion, on pain of death.”

Blessed Saint Ninian. Tante-Mar had been right—Huntly was using the occasion to challenge Master Knox over religion. Grief and outrage overcame my good sense and I stepped forward, straight between the two men.

“It is my husband who lies murdered in his coffin there,” I said. I could speak clearly and strongly because my feelings were safe in their stone-hard bubble. “Would you defame his memory by coming to blows over his very body?”

They were shocked into silence for just a moment, all of them. I walked on past them and knelt at the bier. Jennet knelt beside me.

Of course, they began to shout at each other again the moment I had passed by. I did not turn around to look, but from the noise I could tell fights had broken out. The mass was never said. I never saw the queen’s poor priest, but afterward I was told he fled for his life. I concentrated my thoughts, like the light of the sun through a piece of curved glass, and focused them on my husband.

Alexander, I thought. I do not know how you betrayed the secret of the silver casket or why, but betrayal or no, you did not deserve to die for it. I will find the man who murdered you and I will see him hang for it. You will rest peacefully, my love, I promise you.

A hand came down on my shoulder, heavy and possessive.

“Get up,” said the Earl of Huntly. His voice was deep and gruff, nothing like a cock’s raucous crow. “They are gone. You are a brave lassie, and a credit to the boy.”

I rose. My knees hurt, and Jennet steadied me. When I turned to face the nave I saw that although Knox and his townspeople had gone, a considerable crowd remained. Huntly, of course, with half a dozen stout Gordons. Rothes and his Leslies. Lord James Stewart, the queen’s half brother. I wondered whether it had been his presence that had quelled the fighting. Behind him stood Nicolas de Clerac. One might say he was effacing himself, but for the fact that with his height, his russet hair, and his outrageously rich clothing, such an effacement was impossible.

“I will go now,” I said.

“I will take you home to Aberdeenshire,” the Earl of Huntly said. He sounded inordinately pleased with himself. “You and the babe, Mary Gordon. Your husband was my ward, you know, and he held Glenlithie in fief to me. You can rest at Strathbogie Castle until a new…arrangement…can be made for you and your estates.”

“She is a Leslie of Granmuir.” It was the Earl of Rothes, the opposite of Huntly in every way, younger, leaner, his eyes set close together and his light brown hair cut short and neat around his ears. Unlike the others he was clean-shaven but for a narrow mustache. To my horror I saw Rannoch Hamilton of Kinmeall, with his permanent scowl, among the cadre of men behind him. “Gordon child or no, I will take her to Leslie Castle, and if any arrangements are to be made for her and for her daughter’s inheritance, I will make them.”

But take care, and mark me—if you want to go home to Granmuir, the less Huntly sees of you, the better.

Wise Tante-Mar.

“I will go nowhere,” I said. My own coolheadedness amazed and rather frightened me. “I will consent to no new arrangement.”

Arrangement, of course, meant marriage. How dared they speak so casually of a new marriage for me, over my Alexander’s very coffin? Outrage stiffened my spine, and gave me the will to set my own wishes against the wishes of great noblemen.

“I want to stay here, at court,” I went on. “I will remain at Holyrood for now, and petition the queen for a permanent place.”

“That you will not,” Huntly said.

“You will do as you are told,” Rothes said, at the same time.

“You are fighting over her like two dogs over a bone,” said Lord James Stewart. “It is unseemly in the house of God.”

His voice was crisp and autocratic, and silenced them both. I remembered I had once seen snapdragons and narcissus as his flowers, for deceit and self-interest. He had changed in the year I had been away at Granmuir. He had been king in all but name, after all, being both a Stewart by blood and the secular head of the Lords of the Congregation. Snapdragons and narcissus still, but intermingled with them cinquefoil for worldly power.

“If I may make a suggestion, my lords?” It was Nicolas de Clerac. He sounded like every diplomat in the world ever sounded, graceful and diffident. I wondered why he always seemed to be at hand to engage himself in my affairs. “The queen has taken an interest in the matter of Madame Gordon and her child,” he went on. “Although, of course, she could not be present here today, I am certain she will have something to say about Madame Gordon’s future. It might be wise to wait upon her judgment.”

I did not particularly want to be the chattel of Queen Mary, any more than I wanted to be the chattel of Huntly or Rothes, but for the moment that seemed to be my best chance of staying in Edinburgh and gaining access to the court. I said, “Monsieur de Clerac is right. The queen is my daughter’s godmother, and has preserved my life with her kindness. I cannot leave Edinburgh unless it is by her order.”

“The more fool you,” the Earl of Huntly said. “I will have a few Gordons about, regardless, just to be certain there is no connivance to abduct you or your babe.”

“I will match every Gordon with a Leslie,” said the Earl of Rothes between his teeth. “Granmuir has been a Leslie demesne for two hundred years, and I will not see it fall to the Gordons because of one foolish girl. They were married without my permission—I will have the marriage set aside and the brat made a bastard. Then you can whistle to the wind for your claim.”

“Enough, my lords.” Lord James stepped between them. Bastard though he was, he had royal presence; I could almost understand his mother’s obsession with making him king of Scots. “Monsieur de Clerac is correct—it is for the queen to decide. You, Mistress Rinette.”
He gestured imperiously to me, and I could not help but admire how neatly he had avoided identifying me as either Gordon or Leslie. “Return to your apartments in Holyrood. Remain there, if you please, until the queen summons you.”

I curtsied with every appearance of obedient docility. “Yes, my lord,” I said. “By your leave, my lord earls.”

I leaned heavily on Jennet’s arm—only partly for effect, as I was beginning to feel light and shaky again—and started down the nave. I had not taken three steps when a dark figure overtook me and stepped into my path. With the light streaming in from the west door of the church and outlining the thick-muscled, threatening figure of the scowling man, I was transported briefly back to Saint Ninian’s, when he had broken down the doors of the ancient chapel and stormed in to stop my wedding.

“This woman is a witch,” said Rannoch Hamilton of Kinmeall.

There was nothing but emptiness in him, whereas I would have ordinarily sensed a flower essence. I had never met any other person who did not have some correspondence to a flower or plant, however faint it might be. He looked me in the eyes and smiled and said, “Better to burn her, and her brat with her, and take her godforsaken castle by right of arms.”

All of them stepped forward, Huntly and Rothes, Lord James and Nicolas de Clerac. None of them wore arms in the church, and if it had not been for that there would have been steel drawn. Even Jennet put one arm around me and clenched her other fist as if to fight. I myself felt as if I would fall over on the paving stones.

“Hold, Kinmeall,” said Rothes. He sounded as if he were calling off his man for form’s sake only, and one day might actually find his vicious threat a suitable alternative. “The queen must have her say, but afterward we will have our say as well.”

“You will have no say—” Huntly began.

“While all you fine gentlemen brawl and brangle,” Jennet More said in her broad Scots, “my lady is a-fainting. Make way, if you please.”

It was the one thing that could break the impasse, barring my actually falling down and cracking my head on the stones. None of the men would give way to the others, but they all stood back in the face of a determined, sharp-tongued Aberdeenshire maidservant who cared nothing for courts or lords.

Together we made our way out of the abbey. Every step left Alexander farther behind me. I wanted to stop time somehow, but of course it ground on relentlessly, breath by breath, minute by minute.

I will never agree to marry again, I thought. Never, no matter what they do. I will never marry again, and I will never give up Granmuir, and I will have justice.

T
hey left me alone for the rest of the week, and past another Sabbath; Jennet told me Mr. Knox had preached a thundering sermon vilifying the mass, and the queen had summoned him to court to account for himself. I knew a similar summons would eventually come for me, but I put it out of my mind. I held my Màiri, my bitterness, and told her every story I could think of about her father. The Earl of Huntly made arrangements for Alexander’s body to be sent to Glenlithie and entombed there with his father and mother; I had wanted him at Granmuir, but my wishes were not consulted. I ate, and slept, and walked in the gallery morning and evening. By the time the queen’s summons came, I had recovered much of my strength and clarity.