The Flower Reader (36 page)

The Lords of the Articles, the queen’s council, and everyone else in the three estates who had packed into the Tolbooth out of ghoulishness or curiosity shouted their agreement. The earldom of Huntly was no more; the banner was pulled off the coffin and taken away. There was a cry of fascinated horror as those closest to the front saw what remained of the earl himself.

“I wish to withdraw.” The queen rose suddenly. “I cannot bear this.”

“You must bear it,” the Earl of Moray said. He had directed his servants to place his chair quite close to the queen’s, so his left arm at least was under the cloth of estate. “There are more attainders still to be pronounced. You must be present.”

“Delay them. I will return in an hour or so, when I have refreshed myself.”

She swept out, with all of us scrambling to follow her. I was not quick enough, and the crowd around the door blocked my passage.
When I turned to search for a different way I found myself facing a short, compact man in black with cropped gray hair and bleached-bone eyes.

“Madame,” he said. “A moment, if you please.”

“Monsieur Laurentin.” I was surprised to see him; by his own admission he had no official standing with the French ambassador. “I must follow the queen, monsieur,” I said. “Will you let me pass?”

“You follow her like a lapdog, after what she has done to you?”

I should have smelled the miasmic scent of wild white bryony, the devil’s turnip, but I did not. Married to Rannoch Hamilton, I had no connection with the flowers, no floromancy anymore. Perhaps it was all sucked into the empty blackness inside him.

I said, “You are offensive, monsieur.”

“I do not mean to be. It is common talk about the court that you were unwilling to marry Rothes’s bastard brother-in-law. As well you should have been—you are a granddaughter of a Duke of Longueville. You would be better treated in France, madame, where your blood would be appreciated.”

I felt a surge of…What did I feel? I was gratified, of course, that he thought me too good for Rannoch Hamilton. I was pleased to be reminded that my grandfather was a great duke in France, so high that his legitimate son had been married to Mary of Guise herself. But I disliked and distrusted Blaise Laurentin, and I knew he was saying these things deliberately to produce just the feelings that I was feeling.

“My blood,” I said, “and my possession of Mary of Guise’s silver casket.”

He leaned forward. I could have sworn his ears actually swiveled slightly and pointed toward me, like a demon’s ears. “You admit that you have it, then.”

I had to be careful—I did not know who really had the casket. I did not want to be caught in an outright lie.

“Perhaps,” I said. “Perhaps not. You believe I have it, however, and that is why you are flattering me.”

All around us people milled and swarmed, chattering about Huntly lying half-rotten in his coffin, his titles stripped away. No one paid us the slightest attention.

“I am not flattering you,” he said. “Is it not true that you are the Duke of Longueville’s granddaughter? Queen Catherine herself is perfectly well aware of this, and of the fact that your marriage was a Protestant ceremony, performed without your consent. If you were in France, under Queen Catherine’s protection, an annulment from the true Church would be a simple matter. You could choose your own husband from the flower of the French nobility, or resume your status as a widow with a fine estate of your own. In Normandy, perhaps, beside the sea.”

“These annulments and noble husbands and fine estates depending,” I said, “upon my putting the silver casket into Queen Catherine’s hands.”

He smiled and spread his hands apart. “But of course.”

“And if I did not wish to leave Scotland?” I said. “If I required gold instead? What price, do you think, would Queen Catherine place upon what I have?”

He stepped closer. I stepped back involuntarily.

“A very high price,” he murmured. “I should have to consult with her.”

“Do so, then.”

“I would have to be certain that you are telling the truth. Perhaps you could show me the casket? It is the prophecies of Nostradamus that Queen Catherine particularly desires to have.”

“I am afraid you will have to depend upon my word alone.” I felt a quickening of panic as he continued to move close to me, pressing me toward the edge of the crowd. “Monsieur Laurentin, step aside, if you please, so that I may go out and rejoin the queen’s party.”

“I think not,” he said. “I think you will be much more willing to show me the casket if you and I are alone together,
n’est-ce pas
? Let us just go down this passageway. I have horses waiting—”

I threw back my head and screamed.

The expression on his face would have been funny if I had not been so genuinely frightened. Perhaps in France ladies were too elegant or too polite to scream like a farmwife when men threatened them at public gatherings.

“Is this fellow a-batherin’ you, mistress?” It was a stout townsman, easily twice the size and half the age of Blaise Laurentin. Two or three more men had turned their heads and started toward us.

“I cede the day to you, madame,” Laurentin said. “But Queen Catherine will have that casket and all it contains, one way or another.”

He looked at the townsman briefly and scornfully, then went off down the passageway alone.

“Thank you, sir,” I said to the townsman. “I have become separated from my husband in the crowd. I believe he is—”

“Here.”

But it was not Rannoch Hamilton. It was Nicolas de Clerac, richly but severely dressed in black and silver. His eyes were outlined with kohl; he wore diamonds and pearls in his ears, and his fingers glittered with rings.

“Take better care of your wife, me lord,” the townsman said. “That fellow meant her no good.”

I saw gold coins slip from Nico’s fingers into the townsman’s palms. They laughed together, man-to-man, at the foolishness of women, and the townsman went away.

“I was managing perfectly well by myself,” I said.

“So I see. Even so, I am sorry I could not fight my way through the crowd quickly enough to put a dagger between Monsieur Laurentin’s ribs.”

“At which point my real husband would most likely put one between yours, for your presumption.”

I had been avoiding him. It had not been easy; the queen called upon him constantly for advice, conversation, companionship, and at the same time she kept me so close I felt as if it would suffocate me.
Was she sorry for what she had done to me, and trying to make amends? Whatever the reason for my sudden return to favor, I did not want to talk to Nicolas de Clerac. I felt sick and shamed at the thought of him looking at me, face-to-face, eye-to-eye, and imagining me in Rannoch Hamilton’s bed.

“Your husband has already gone outside with the Earl of Rothes,” he said. His voice was light and gentle, as if he knew what I was thinking. He probably did. “So I am safe for the moment. What did Laurentin want?”

“Nothing. I must find the queen’s party—she will miss me.”

“If she were going to miss you, she would have done so already. Better to stay here and resume your place after she has returned for the rest of the proceedings. She will be distracted by her dislike of this whole business of the attainders, and forget anything else.”

He was right, of course. I said nothing.

“Come up into the gallery with me,” he went on. “I would like to talk to you for a moment.”

“No.”

“Please. It is not what you think.”

I wanted to strike him. I wanted to shake him. I said, in an unsteady voice, “You do not know what I think.”

“Forgive me. Of course I do not. Listen to me—this business with Laurentin disturbs me, and you know why. I want to know what he said to you. Tell me here if you wish. There are plenty of gentlemanly townsmen about to save you if I become too importunate.”

“Do not be ridiculous,” I said. “Very well, let us go up on the gallery.”

We walked up the stairs. He took exquisite care not to touch me. Even the slashed and embroidered fabric of his paned trunk hose did not touch my skirt. He was right—the galleries were almost empty. There were just enough people to make it clear to anyone who looked that we were not alone.

We stood there for a moment. Then he leaned over the railing, resting his forearms on the wooden ledge. Without looking at me, very quietly, he said, “Rinette.”

How could there be so much sorrow, so much regret, so much intensity of feeling in a single word? It struck me to the heart. I felt sick and dizzy, hot and cold. I felt…the loss, the loss. As if I would die, there in the gallery
of the Tolbooth, from the emptiness and hopeless sorrow.

I could not have spoken, even if I could have thought of something to say.

After a moment he straightened. His face was drawn tight and blank of any expression. I thought, That is what he will look like if he is ever wounded unto death.

“Tell me what Laurentin said to you.” His voice was quiet and formal. “Tell me exactly what he thought to do.”

“It is none of your affair.”

“He believes you still have the silver casket, does he not?”

“He does.” Even though it was not a lie—Laurentin truly did believe I had it—I could not look at Nico de Clerac when I said it.

After a moment he said, “You do not have it, do you?”

I looked down at my hands. My wedding ring felt heavy as a fetter, for all that it was made of polished gold.

“I do have it,” I said. “Moray was right—I hoped if I took them on a wild-goose chase, they would believe someone had stolen it, and would allow me to go home in peace.”

He looked at me. His eyes, golden hazel, so similar to the queen’s that if I looked at his eyes alone I might be looking at the queen herself, were steady and clear. “So,” he said. “You say you have it. Were you offering to sell it to Laurentin?”

I could feel myself flushing.

“I was not,” I said. It was hard to lie to him—it hurt me to say untrue words, and it frightened me because I knew I was transparent to him.

“Laurentin is a dangerous man. He is almost certainly a member of the
Escadron Volant
. If you attempt to trick him in some way, you could pay dearly.”

“It is not your place to fear for me.”

His hands tightened on the rail. He looked away and said, “Even so, I do.”

I could not bear this. I had to stop it somehow before it tore my heart out of my breast.

“Leave me alone, Nico.” I struggled to keep my voice low and steady. “You cannot help me now. I will do whatever I must.”

I felt him flinch. After a moment he said, “You say you want your freedom, and your estate.” His voice was different, harder. “What of justice for Alexander Gordon—are you abandoning that, despite the love you professed for him?”

“I loved him. He betrayed me.”

More silence. Why did he not just go away and leave me to my anguish?

“I will pursue the assassin,” he said. “Rinette, forgive me. I could not help you escape this marriage, but I can do one thing for you, and that is find out who killed your Alexander.”

I said nothing. I did not know what to say.

“They are coming in again. You had best go downstairs now, so the queen and your husband do not wonder where you are.”

I went down a step, and then another. Without turning around to look at him I said, “Nico. I know there was nothing you could have done to prevent the marriage, once the queen set her mind to it.”

“I would have given up my life,” he said, “if I could have stopped it.”

“I know.”

“I would take you away now, to France, with Màiri and all your people. I would—”

“Stop
.
”

He stopped.

I could taste bitterness like sea wormwood in my mouth and my
heart. When I could speak I said, “You say you will take us away, Nico? What of your vow?”

He said nothing. There was nothing he could say to that.

“Good day to you, Monsieur de Clerac.”

Very softly he said, “God go with you,
ma mie
.”

I
SLIPPED INTO THE QUEEN
’s train in the midst of the crowd, and I was only just in time. Rannoch Hamilton pushed his way through a phalanx of townspeople from the other side of the room and took hold of my arm. I flinched, and he loosened his grasp.

“I did not see you outside the Tolbooth,” he said.

“Nor did I see you.”

“The queen and Mary Fleming started to scream at each other, all of a sudden out of nowhere. I swear by that Green Lady of yours, they almost came to blows. The Fleming wench has been sent away in tears.”

“I did not hear what they were quarreling about,” I said, perfectly truthfully.

“I didn’t hear it, either. Stay away from the queen, though—she’s going to be looking for another lady to sleep in her bedchamber with her, and I don’t want it to be you.”

“That would be terrible.”

He gave me a shake to emphasize his command, then let go of me and went back to the group of men surrounding the Earl of Rothes. I immediately made my way as close to the queen as I could get. She was still angry, high color in her smooth cheeks and her amber eyes glittering, berating poor Lady Reres about some imagined unevenness in her cloth of state. All the other ladies were hanging back and avoiding the queen’s attention, fearing more explosions of royal temper.

“Madame,” I said in my sweetest voice. “Perhaps I can help Lady Reres adjust the cloth properly.”

“It is past time someone offered to help,” the queen said. She
threw herself down in her chair in a very unqueenlike fashion. “When you are finished, Marianette, fetch me something cold to drink.”

“Of course, madame.”

For the rest of the afternoon, while the Earl of Huntly’s eldest son and other lords who had allied themselves with Huntly’s rebellion were attainted and condemned—young George Gordon’s life was spared, at least, and he was sent off to Dunbar to be kept in confinement there—I made every effort I could think of to make myself charming and indispensable to the queen. By the time we left the Tolbooth again, I was her new bedfellow. She laughed at the thought of Rannoch Hamilton sleeping alone and disgruntled, deprived of his wife.