The Flower Reader (13 page)

He bowed and went out. I stood looking after him, too stunned even to call for Jennet.

Did you know, Mistress Leslie, that your husband was in possession of a…relic…of the late queen regent, Mary of Guise?

It could not be true. Alexander would never have said such a
thing, never have claimed the casket as his own, much less offered it for sale. One of the queen’s ladies had listened at the door during my audience with the queen, and whispered a tale of a silver casket to the English agent Randolph. Randolph had put his head together with the silvery head of his lackey, Wetheral, and they had concocted a tale out of the whole cloth, of correspondences and meetings with a murdered man who could not give them the lie. They had hoped their tale would shock and unnerve me so much I would simply hand the casket over, take their damned English gold, and disappear over the border to some dreary English manor.

The more fools they.

I told the queen’s men, my two upright thistles, that I wished to receive no more visitors until the queen returned. Perhaps a changeless round of days was not such a bad thing after all.

“Y
OU LOOK WHITE AS NEW
cheese,” Jennet said, when I went back into the bedchamber. “What did he say to you?”

“He told me…things.” I wanted to call them lies but I could not quite force myself to do it. I sat on the bed and Jennet put Màiri into my arms.

“What kind of things?” she asked.

“Jennet.” I bent my head and touched my lips to Màiri’s forehead. It was warm and soft, so soft. She smelled of soap scented with wild roses. She looked so much like him, with her golden hair and fair skin. “What did you think of Alexander?”

There was a long silence. Màiri gurgled and made bubbles with her lips.

“Jennet?”

“He was beautiful as the day was long,” she said. “I’ll give him that, and gladly. He meant well, I think—he loved you, as much as he could love anyone other than his own self.”

I swallowed. I could not look at her.

“I know how much you loved him, Rinette. But you were a
twelve-year-old girl when you met him first, and he was a sixteen-year-old boy—you thought he was a hero, the sun and moon and stars. You nursed him with his broken arm—what girl wouldn’t have loved him, helpless and handsome as he was? I was half in love with him myself.”

“But you did not stay in love with him.”

“There was no one telling me I couldn’t love him, as your Grannie and Madame Loury were doing with you. Nothing makes a girl love a boy more than telling her she can’t have him.”

I thought about that for a while. It was true. First Grannie and Tante-Mar, then the old queen—they had separated me from Alexander and it had only made me want him all the more.

“He came to Granmuir when I needed him,” I said.

“That he did. But in Saint Ninian’s Chapel…Madame Loury told me. He didn’t fight for you.”

Tears burned in my eyes.

“No,” I said. “He did not fight for me.”

“There’s something you’re not saying.” Jennet wrapped a curl of Màiri’s golden hair around her fingers. “It’s been a-poisoning you, Rinette, and it’s something to do with your Alexander.”

I took a deep breath. If I said it, I would have to believe it. I still had time to stop. I still had time to tell Jennet it was nothing, nothing to do with Alexander.

“Rinette,” she said. “Tell me, hinnie.”

“He betrayed me,” I said. After those first words the rest of it came pouring out. “Jennet, do you remember the silver casket the old queen gave me, the night she died?”

“I do.”

“Alexander took it from my secret hiding place and opened it and made notes about the contents and he wrote
letters
, Jennet, letters to Lord James, to the queen of England’s ambassador; I do not even know who else, great people. He asked them for money and favors. He tried to
sell
the old queen’s silver casket and he put himself in danger and he may have put us all in danger and if I cannot ward
them off, the queen can force me to marry where she wills and
I could lose Granmuir
.”

I realized I was screaming at the last. I was shaking with anger. Màiri started to cry; Jennet took her from my arms and tucked her into her cradle. Then she came back and put her arms around me, as gently as if I, too, were a tiny child.

“Mary Mother, Rinette, I’m sorry—you know we’ll all help you however we can. But truth? I’m not surprised. He would never have been happy at Granmuir, your Alexander. And he would have worked it around in his own head to where he was doing it for you. He would have believed it himself, in the end.”

“It has to be why he was killed,” I said. “Perhaps he betrayed someone else. Perhaps someone betrayed him. Perhaps someone just wanted to stop him. Oh, Jennet, I loved him so much. I see him every time I look at Màiri.”

“And so you should. Still, it’s a good thing to face the truth, Rinette, because then you can decide what to do and it’ll be a clean choice.”

“I will never stop loving him, no matter what he did.”

“First love is first love. No woman ever forgets.”

I looked up at her. “Who is your first love, Jennet?”

She smiled. “I haven’t met him yet. I’ve dreamed him, though. Do you think I’ve never gone into the fields at midnight on Saint Agnes Eve, and thrown my grains of wheat, and said my prayer? ‘Bonny Agnes, let me see the lad who is to marry me.’”

I smiled through my tears. “I hope you meet him soon.”

“So do I.”

“I will still have justice for Alexander. Whatever he did, he did not deserve to die like that, with his throat cut in the High Street.”

“Justice is a fine thing,” Jennet said. “But take care how you go after it. It’s not worth dying for.”

T
he queen’s party returned to Edinburgh at the end of September, and she settled herself into her tower again. Holyrood Palace sprang to life from one day to the next, with courtiers and ambassadors, workmen with tapestries and carpets and paintings, laughing ladies and gentlemen who stood in twos and threes and sometimes exchanged forbidden kisses when they thought no one was looking. Mary Livingston came to see me, and helped me embellish my wardrobe so I would not look like an Aberdeenshire country lass when I took up my promised position among Queen Mary’s ladies. She brought lengths of silk and velvet that were gifts from the queen, laces and ribbons and even a cloth-of-silver forepart and a pair of black velvet sleeves sewn with tiny pearls. As she laid it all out on the bed she told me the gossip of the progress—the queen’s bedcurtains set afire in Stirling Castle, and later the queen collapsing in a fainting fit in the streets of Perth.

“You should have seen Lady Huntly at Stirling,” Mary said. “Once we’d put the fire out, she told a story of an old prophecy that a queen would be burned alive at Stirling. Lady Huntly keeps
familiars, you know. It is she who will be burned alive if she does not take care.”

“Was the queen actually burned?”

“Only a little—not even enough to leave a mark. Jean Argyll tipped over a candlestand and the bedcurtains caught. The queen was more excited than frightened—she said the fire and the prophecy proved she was the rightful queen of Scotland.”

“Of course she is the rightful queen.”

“Not to everyone. Not to the Protestants. People meet her in the streets with dead cats dressed up as priests, and their poor little heads shaved.”

“Is that what happened at Perth?”

“I am not sure—I was far enough behind her that I did not see. It was Sieur Nico de Clerac who was close beside her, and carried her into a house when she fainted away. He was in great favor just then—the queen was angry with Lord James for interrupting her mass at Stirling.”

I put my left arm through one of the sleeves. It was worked with couching in silver thread, and the pearls were sewn at each point where the lines of the pattern intersected. It was too long for me but it could be altered. “Is the court all still in black?” I asked.

“Yes, until the anniversary of the French king’s death in December. Although one sees a great deal of silver and pearls and white as well, and all shades of gray from willow to dove color to isabelline. There is to be a great banquet and masque this Sunday, to wish farewell to the queen’s uncle the grand prior, the seigneur de Damville, and some of the others who are going back to France. The queen wishes you to be present—your forty days, your first
deuil
, have been accomplished and it is perfectly seemly for you to return to the world as long as you remain in blacks and whites.”

“Who else will be there?” I laid the sleeve against the length of black velvet. The blacks did not quite match, but, of course, black was irksome.

“Oh, everyone.” She laughed. “Master Buchanan has written the
masque all in Latin, about Apollo and the muses, with ten speaking parts. The queen herself will play Apollo, and the grand prior will play Clio—he says the Knights of Malta go back so many hundreds of years he is perfect for the muse of history. Monsieur de Damville is Erato, for he is always writing love poetry to the queen. They rehearse every day, and we all laugh so much to see them tripping over their silken draperies.”

“The queen is playing Apollo? A man’s part?”

“Oh, yes. That is the joke, you see—the queen plays Apollo, and all the muses are played by gentlemen. The Marquis of Elbeuf is to play Thalia—he is the youngest and most charming of the queen’s uncles. Sir John Gordon, Huntly’s son, has a part as well, as does the queen’s half brother Lord John Stewart of Coldingham. Then there is Sieur Nico, and of course the two poets, Brantôme and Chastelard. The queen coaxed and coaxed to get Lord James to take part, but he’s far too much of a Calvinist to wear a dress, even in a masque.”

I felt a pang of heartache. How Alexander would have loved such merriments. How perfectly he would have played the part of Thalia or Erato.

“There will be more thundering sermons from Master Knox, I think.”

Mary Livingston laughed. “That is what Bothwell said. You would know Bothwell, I think? He was a great supporter of the old queen, and his sister Janet is to marry Lord John Stewart around Epiphany. It will make him part of the queen’s kin, which of course annoys Lord James no end.”

I remembered Bothwell. He made me think of comfrey—hairy and just poisonous enough to make one’s skin itch, with tuberous flowers in clusters like the fingers of grasping hands, so astringent there was an old tale they could restore a woman’s virginity. Bothwell could have made good use of that, with all the virgins he was said to have despoiled. He had rough manners and an even rougher way of speaking—he knew obscenities in at least four languages, and he was liberal with them—but Mary of Guise had liked and trusted him. I
tried to imagine Bothwell in feminine draperies and found myself laughing aloud. It was the first time I had laughed since Alexander’s death.

“Surely Bothwell is not wearing a woman’s costume?”

“
Mon Dieu
, no. Although he laughed, just as you did.”

“So if all the gentlemen are wearing women’s draperies, what is the queen wearing?”

“She has directed the construction of the most beautiful costume—a short draped boy’s tunic in pure white, with taffeta hose in a pale tawny color so that at first you think her legs are bare.”

“Surely not!”

“Oh, yes, surely so. She looks exactly like a beautiful Greek boy on the side of a vase. She will be masked as a swan—the swan is Apollo’s bird, you know—and the swan’s great wings sweep out from her shoulders and trail behind her, all made of white silk and feathers and spangles. Wait until you see. It is
magnifique
.”

I knew I was gaping at her, but I could not quite swallow my amazement. I tried to imagine such a costume at the court of Mary of Guise, and of course I failed. At last I said, “Do you have a part?”

“No. No other ladies. Only the queen and her gentlemen muses.” She hugged me, one arm around the shoulders in a friendly, careless way. “Do not look so shocked, Rinette; such masques are all the style in France, and the whole evening is arranged to honor the queen’s French uncles. The rest of us will wear our own clothes, and perform the important
rôle
of the amazed and entertained and oh-so-pleasantly-shocked audience. Do you have black slippers to wear with all this black?”

“No. Only these russet ones.”

“I will lend you a pair of my own. You must look
à la mode
for your first appearance as one of the queen’s ladies.”

And so I wore the queen’s gifts of black velvet and cloth of silver and Mary Livingston’s black satin slippers on the Sunday night when the masque was performed. The queen was the cynosure of the piece, tall and slim and straight, her long legs perfect in their boy’s hose of
tawny taffeta, her eyes glittering with pleasure through the slanting eyeholes of her swan’s mask. The wings were dazzling—great sweeps of snow-white feathers, jeweled and sparkling with crystals, framing her face and drifting out behind her, trailing languidly as she moved along the blood-red Turkey carpet that had been laid out in the gallery. She spoke Apollo’s part in perfect Latin—well, it sounded perfect to me, although, of course, all the Latin I knew would fit into a tillie-pan, and a small one at that—and danced with unearthly grace and dignity. She could not have been more French at that moment, and I saw Lord James watching her, a disdainful look on his dark Scots face. Of course, he was her brother. Every other man in the room, Catholic and Protestant alike, watched her with simmering desire.