The Flower Reader (37 page)

I did not exactly laugh, because I knew I would pay for it in the end. But I smiled. I would have some nights, at least, of blessed freedom.

J
ust drink the tea, Rinette,” Jennet said. “It’s getting cold.”

I concentrated on folding a coverlet. “It is too late.”

“There’s still time. You taught me the plants yourself, and I picked them careful. Pennyroyal, tansy, and rue, steeped gentle-like in fresh-fallen rainwater, long enough to say the Miserere three times all the way through.”

“I do not doubt you picked the right plants and made the tea correctly.” I put the coverlet in the queen’s traveling chest. “But it is too late. I could do harm to myself and the—” I could not say the word
baby
. “I could do harm.”

“Rinette, the tea will bring your courses down. It will not harm you. Do you want the seed of that cluitie-foot Rannoch Hamilton growing inside—”

“Stop it.”

She stopped.

I was shaking. I closed my eyes and counted my breaths, deep and even. I did not know what I was going to do, but drinking the tea was not the answer.

I opened my eyes.

“Oh, Jennet,” I said. I went across the queen’s bedchamber to her and hugged her. “I am sorry. I know you mean the best. But I do not think I can drink the tea safely. I am so thin; I have been so thin since I was sick with the New Acquaintance at Christmas. I cannot seem to eat properly. And I cannot sleep—the queen sleeps so little herself, and she expects to be amused whenever she awakens in the night.”

“All that’s true enough,” Jennet said. She patted my hair like she might pat a child’s, although she had a mulish look about her.

“We are to set off for Glasgow tomorrow. I have to ride with the queen. You know the tea will make me sick, and if I am sick they will leave me behind. He—” When Jennet and I were together I never called my husband by his name. “He will stay behind, too, because he will take it as a chance to have me to himself again. Oh, Jennet, I could not bear the next two months here in Edinburgh with no company but his.”

“No, nor I, either.” Jennet picked up the noggin of pennyroyal tea and started out of the room. “I’ll be having a wee word with Lilidh, though, and telling her to give you a sair rough ride from here all the way to Glasgow town.”

W
E SET OFF ON OUR
progress in the morning, riding west along the shore of the Firth of Forth. It was the first day of July, clear and dazzlingly beautiful, the sun climbing behind us, the sky cloudless and endlessly blue. Over the firth the cormorants and kittiwakes and guillemots swooped and glided, shrieking at one another and diving for fish.

The queen’s personal party might have been off on nothing more than a pleasure ride. The queen herself was dressed in a scarlet velvet riding habit with glinting gold-and-pearl embroidery and a jaunty little feathered cap. No one else wore red, or even a bright color. We ladies were dressed in muted colors of blue and gray, our riding habits cut out and sewn from fine Flemish cloth provided as a gift from
the queen. Mine was a soft speedwell blue that might have been a reflection of the sky—not very practical for a riding habit, but we wore what the queen directed. The gentlemen tended to browns and russets and dark greens and blues. Thomas Randolph was with the party, as was the French ambassador Castelnau; I caught a glimpse of Blaise Laurentin among the French.

We stayed in Glasgow for three days. There was no trace of my courses, and every time Jennet looked at me I looked away. I kept close to the queen, who received Protestant officials from the college and made them a gift of thirteen acres of land. Most of her council was in attendance, with Moray looking grave and self-important and Rothes hiding a yawn behind his hand. Nicolas de Clerac and David Riccio, the foreign Catholic favorites, were much to the fore, although the Protestants whispered against them. I kept away from Nico as best I could, and he seemed to do his best to keep away from me as well. It hurt me like a knife in my heart every time I looked at him. I wondered whether it hurt him in the same way.

From Glasgow we rode on to Dumbarton. We crossed Loch Long and hunted our way through the forests of Argyll, deep and sun-spangled green, with huge oaks that might have been a thousand years old amid copses of willow and hazel, beech and rowan trees. Seilie was in hound heaven, and for the first time I heard the high singing baying that meant he had found a coney or a squirrel. At dusk we crossed Loch Fyne to Inveraray, where the Earl of Argyll and his wayward countess, the queen’s half sister Jean Stewart, received us at Inveraray Castle’s gatehouse with blazing torches, ceremonial cups of fine French wine, and six pipers playing the great Highland pipes.

“Welcome to Inveraray, madame,” the Earl of Argyll said, once the horses had been led away and the pipers had finished their piping. “I have supper prepared for you and all your party. Or would you prefer to retire after your day of riding?”

“Retire?” the
queen said. She embraced her sister affectionately—Jean Stewart, for all her willfulness, had always been one of the queen’s favorites. “Do not be ridiculous, brother. Of course we will eat your supper, and afterward we will dance all night—assuming you have a proper consort of musicians to play, and not more of that wretched piping.”

Everyone laughed, flatterers that they were. The cups were passed around and each of us drank some of the wine. It was cold—what had it cost the Earl of Argyll to obtain ice in July?—and deliciously, deceptively sweet. I drank again the second time the cup was passed, and felt a wave of light-headedness.

“Let us go in,” the queen said. “Brother, sister, lead the way. I would like to wash and change my dress, and then you may serve your supper.”

They went off up the stairs. I could not help but feel sorry for the pipers, and I stopped to speak a word with them.

“I am Marina Leslie of Granmuir, on the coast of Aberdeenshire,” I said. “So I cannot claim to be a Highlander. But the great pipes always thrill my blood, and your piping was wonderful.”

“Thank ye, lassie,” said the leader of the group. “Ye have a kind heart to go with that sweet face. The earl, he loves the pipes, being a Campbell and all, but o’ course he couldnae say so in front o’ the queen.”

“It was, as the lady says, quite wonderful.”

A familiar voice, behind me.

Nicolas de Clerac.

The wine was singing its way through my veins to my fingers and toes, and however much I had been avoiding him since the progress began, I was happy, so happy, to hear his voice.

“Thank ye, me lord.” The piper bowed, quite creditably. “I dinnae blame the queen, poor lassie—’tis nae her fault she was brought up in France.”

“A great handicap for her,” Nico agreed gravely, “in terms of her musical education. Mistress Rinette, will you walk in with me?”

I could hardly refuse him in front of the pipers. I said, “Of course, Monsieur de Clerac.”

I had enough sense left not to put my hand on his arm, and he made no attempt to touch me. We walked across to the stairs, close enough to speak to each other, but separate in every other way. He was dressed in hunter’s green, the color of the forest, with a russet leather belt and breeches; a diamond brooch the size of a gull’s egg was carelessly pinned in his hat. It was his only jewel—no earrings or rings or trinkets today. No maquillage. He was playing the part of the queen’s huntsman, perfectly contrived down to the bow and quiver slung over his back.

“I have been attempting to find out if there was an
Escadron Volant
assassin placed in the queen’s household when she returned to Scotland,” he said. “Or perhaps sent to Scotland ahead of her, while your Alexander was writing his letters. As you might imagine, such questions are dangerous.”

“Very dangerous,” I agreed. “Have you learned anything new?”

“There were, at one time, three separate
Escadron Volant
assassins in Scotland, in service to three separate persons.”

“Three,” I said. “I did not think so many. Were they all…?”

I could not finish the sentence.

“Were they all sent to assassinate Alexander Gordon?” he said gently. “I am not yet sure. I am not even certain of their identities, although I believe poor Monsieur Chastelard was indeed one of them.”

“Oh, Nico,” I said. I fought with the effects of the wine, which made me want to put my arms around him and lean against him and cry until I could cry no more. It was hard, so hard. I kept hearing what he had said in the gallery of the Tolbooth in Edinburgh.

I would take you away now, to France, with Màiri and all your people…

And my bitter response:
What of your vow?

Stiffly I said, “Be careful, I beg you.”

“I will.” He was remembering, too. I was sure of it. “You had best run up by yourself,
ma mie
. The queen said she wished to change, and you know she will be looking for you.”

T
HERE WAS A GREAT DEAL
more wine that evening, a lavish supper, and music and dancing. Inveraray Castle was a tower house, new compared to Granmuir—it had been built by the first Earl of Argyll and was only about a hundred years old. The great hall was enormous, with a huge fireplace at one end and a high barreled ceiling painted with pictures and Gothic characters. Hundreds of candles blazed up and down the length of the hall; music was provided by a consort of fiddles, lutes, and viols whose members certainly made up in enthusiasm what they may have lacked in fine technique.

The queen had put on what she called her Highland dress—a bodice, sleeves, and vasquine of embroidered black-and-white silk with a headdress and a looped-up overskirt made of the striped material the Highlanders called tartan. She was romping like a child, laughing and singing with the music as she danced. She did not know or care, I was certain, where each of her ladies happened to be at any given moment.

In the confusion, noise, and drifting candle smoke it was easy to separate myself from Rannoch Hamilton as well; he was much more interested in acting the lackey to the Earl of Moray and the Earl of Rothes, and certainly had no intention of dancing. I made my way around the edge of the hall and finally came upon the English agent Thomas Randolph, making conversation with young John Sempill of Beltrees, Mary Livingston’s sweetheart. Master John wasted no time in taking advantage of my approach to extricate himself and go in search of his lady. So easily it was arranged, then, for me to have my talk with the representative of the English queen.

“Good evening to you, sir,” I said politely. “I trust you are finding the progress agreeable?”

I did not like Randolph; he was a Protestant and had encouraged the Lords of the Congregation to rebel against Mary of Guise. He was brown-haired and brown-eyed, with arched brows that always
gave him a look of surprise; he combed his hair down over his forehead as Julius Caesar was said to have done, to hide his balding pate.

“Indeed I am.” He smiled with a remarkable lack of sincerity. “I might ask you the same, Mistress Rinette, regarding your new estate of marriage.”

I imagined myself striking him, disarranging that fringe of hair he seemed so proud of. As I did, I smiled. I suppose I looked just as insincere as he did.

“Very agreeable,” I said. “Although as I am sure you know, there are always some things a wife does not entirely give over to her husband.”

His eyes sharpened. I saw him glance over my shoulder, and to the left and right. He lowered his voice. “Or to her queen, I understand.”

“You understand quite correctly.”

He rocked back on his heels for a moment. I could almost see the plots and conspiracies forming in his head. “It occurs to me,” he said, “that a wife who is married against her will might seek asylum far from her unwanted husband. In another country, perhaps, where the husband and his law could not touch her.”

“Perhaps. She might be more likely to wish to stay on her own lands here in Scotland, and use good hard gold to purchase a divorce and protection from her enemies.”

Enemies such as you and Blaise Laurentin, I thought. Even as I thought it I kept my expression frank and earnest.