The Flower Reader (54 page)

T
ante-Mar still could not manage the long ride from Edinburgh to Granmuir, but we could wait no longer. Nico arranged for a ship to take us all from Leith harbor to Aberdeen, with Wat Cairnie’s lead coffin in the tween-deck and the horses, Lilidh and Diamant, stabled in the hold. Seilie stayed with Tante-Mar and Jennet, Una MacAlpin, and my babies and me in the women’s cabin; Nico and the boys Davy and Gill remained on the decks with the men. Once we were all in Aberdeen it would be only a short ride south to Granmuir, and we could take it in easy stages, with Tante-Mar in a litter. Jennet could ride, if we rode slowly.

We crossed the causeway from the mainland on a brilliant June day, the sky speedwell-blue, the sun sparkling off the sea. Granmuir Castle stood on its great rock as it had done for four hundred years. The blue and gold colors of the Leslies of Granmuir were flying from the gatehouse.

Home. Oh, home.

There was no rush to the church to be married, not this time. Père Guillaume could not marry us until the dispensation arrived,
and that could take months—years, even. I had no intention of waiting so long, and neither did Nico, but there were other things to be done first. I saw Père Guillaume and Nico with their heads together, speaking softly in French, and I suspected they were coming to some sort of agreement.

I established Tante-Mar in her sunny room in the southeast tower, and made sure Jennet understood she was to undertake no heavy work until her wounds had completely healed. On the second day we all crowded into Saint Ninian’s for Père Guillaume to celebrate the funeral mass for Wat Cairnie; Nico, Norman More, and old Robinet Loury dug his grave in the tiny cemetery behind the church. Dear Wat, the closest thing I had ever had to a brother, who had died trying to protect my little girls. I wept until I had no more tears. At least here at Granmuir where he had been born he would rest peacefully, lulled by the endless waves of the sea.

“What did you say to Père Guillaume?” I asked Nico, on the third day.

We were in the garden, looking over the ancient wall at the sea. It had been almost three years since the first time we had stood there, when he had told me about his childhood with the Benedictines and the death of his mother. Everything that had happened—could it really have happened? Were we really here safely, the two of us, after we had come through it all?

“I suggested he hear our espousals
de futuro
—our promises that we will wed when the dispensation arrives. It will not marry us in the eyes of the Church, so his conscience will be clear, but it will create a betrothal. What you in Scotland call a handfasting.”

I put my hand on the wall, and he put his over it. “So we will be handfasted,” I said. “That is something, I suppose.”

He laughed softly. “It is more than something. If we pronounce our promises
de futuro
before a priest, and afterward live together as man and wife, we have shown consent, and in essence, we will have married ourselves. It is irregular but perfectly legal under canon law, and binding unless you later choose to sue for an annulment
on the grounds that we are related within a forbidden degree of affinity.”

“You know I will not!”

He laughed again. “When the dispensation arrives, Père Guillaume will call us before him, hear our confessions, and marry us properly. After that,
ma mie
, you will have no means of escape.”

“I will want none. When can these promises…
de futuro
…be pronounced?”

“At Vespers, if you wish it.”

“I wish it.”

He lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles gently, then turned my hand over and kissed my palm. The cuts from Blaise Laurentin’s
Escadron Volant
dagger had healed, but I would have scars for as long as I lived. I wondered what Queen Catherine de Médicis had done when she had received the dagger. I wondered whether she had shrugged and smiled and given it back to the leaders of the
Escadron Volant
, to be used by another hired assassin.

“Ugly,” I said, curling my hands closed.

“No. Brave battle scars.”

“They will always remind me of Laurentin, and of Alexander.”

“Alexander is Màiri’s father. You will never forget him; nor should you.”

I put my hand on the garden wall again. The stone of Granmuir, warmed in the sun. “What will our life be like, Nico? Will we just live here and be country people?”

“Is that what you want?”

“I think it is. For a long, long time, at least. Although—”

“Although what?”

“Do you remember when you asked me whether I would ever want to go to Montmartre? Ever want to see my mother again?”

He looked out at the sea, toward the south. Toward France. “I remember. You said you might go to Edinburgh, to Joinville, to Clerac—but never to Montmartre.”

“I have changed my mind.”

“So you do not wish to be an Aberdeenshire farmer’s wife after all?”

I had to smile at the image of Nicolas de Clerac as an Aberdeenshire farmer. “Perhaps I shall be like Proserpine,” I said. “Half the year here, and half the year in the world.”

“Barring the fact that if you are Proserpine, I shall have to act the part of Hades, I think that is an excellent plan,” Nico said. He was smiling, too. “We will make a quiet life here,
ma mie
, with our crops and our sheep and your gardens, and make occasional visits to the outside world. Short visits.”

Visits,
I had said.
Short ones. My father and mother lived at the court and visited Granmuir upon occasion. I would like to do just the opposite.

He remembered.

“Will you stay with me tonight in the Mermaid Tower, Nico? After we make our promises?”

“I will stay with you,” he said.

N
ICO CARRIED
T
ANTE
-M
AR INTO
S
AINT
N
INIAN
’
S
, and situated her comfortably in a chair with half a dozen cushions. Jennet scornfully refused any such coddling. Bessie More, Annis Cairnie, Una MacAlpin, and the girl Libbet stood with them on the women’s side of the church. Norman More, old Robinet Loury, and the boys Davy and Gill stood on the other side. Gill had Seilie in his arms.

We left the doors open. The afternoon sun was bright as polished gold on the sea. I would not let myself think about the other time, or what followed. The one thing that was the same was that I had my mother’s turquoises around my neck. Other than that I might have been a woman from the village, in a linen dress and a plain gauze veil.

Père Guillaume kissed his stole and put it around his neck, then opened his missal.

“Before these witnesses,” he said, “I would hear your promises that you intend to wed.”

He nodded to Nico.

“I,” Nico said in a clear, grave voice, “Nicolas de Clerac, promise to take thee, Marina Leslie, to be my espoused wife as the law of the Holy Church prescribes, and thereto I plight thee my troth.”

Père Guillaume then nodded to me.

I said, “I, Marina Leslie, promise to take thee, Nicolas de Clerac, to be my espoused husband as the law of the Holy Church prescribes, and thereto I plight thee my troth.”

We joined our hands.

“I betroth you,” said Père Guillaume, “and bear witness to your promises to take each other as espoused husband and wife, upon such day as you are dispensed by the Holy Church from the affinity between you.”

Jennet made a snorting sound. She thought little of affinities and dispensations.

“Now,
mes enfants
,” Père Guillaume said, with every appearance of sternness. “You are espoused
de futuro
. Take care you do not come together as husband and wife, because if you do, you will no longer be handfasted, but married, legally, bindingly, and for life.”

“We will take care,
mon père
,” Nico said. He did not specify what we intended to take care to do.

“Great care,” I added.

And with that it was done. We went back into the great hall and ate a betrothal supper, pies of lampreys with pepper-spiced winesops, a roasted lamb, and a soup of venison with wine, cloves, and mace. Afterward we ate cakes Bessie More had baked with fine white flour, butter, and sugar, and custards with violet petals. The table was heaped with windflowers, wild roses, and maiden pinks, and wreaths of purple-flowered trailing nightshade.

We left everyone else eating and drinking wine and singing, and slipped away up the ancient stone stairs to the Mermaid Tower.

“Are you certain?” Nico said. He ran his hand over my forehead and gently pushed back my veil. “If we come together tonight we will no longer be handfasted, but married.”

“I am certain.” I pulled the veil free and let it fall to the floor. “My hair has grown out a little.”

He smiled. “So it has. Do you know what it feels like?”

“What?”

He closed his eyes and stroked my hair again. “A sleeping fawn’s fur. Silky and tranquil and yet awake in an instant if it is stroked the wrong way.”

“You have never stroked a sleeping fawn.”

He laughed. “True,” he said. “But I can imagine it.”

He began to unbutton his doublet. I took off my belt and untied the drawstring at the neck of my dress. Such was the advantage of country clothes—they were easy to put on and take off without assistance. I pulled the dress over my head and stood there in my thin shift, my arms and shoulders and most of my bosom bare. I closed my eyes and breathed the scent of the sea.

After a moment I felt the backs of his fingers moving very lightly along the line of my jaw. He turned his hand and drew one fingertip from the squared corner of my jaw to my chin to my throat to the hollow between my collarbones. He paused, then very slowly moved his finger lower, to the point where the loose round neck of my shift began. There he stopped.

“Your skin,” he said, “is like the inner surface of a seashell. Transparent and white and luminous, all at once.”

“You are very gallant tonight, monsieur. Do you think you are back at court?”

He touched his lips to my temple, just at the corner of my eye. I could feel the warmth of his breath. “Do you not like compliments?” he said.

“It has been so long since I have had any.”

“From now on, you will have a hundred every day.”

He took my face between his hands and kissed me very gently on the mouth. Involuntarily I lifted my own hands, caught at his arms, his shoulders, the hair at the back of his neck. Sensation
contracted and then expanded, strong and warm and undeniable, in the very heart of my body.

“I love you, Nico,” I said.

“I love you, too,
ma mie
.”

“You need not take such care with me as you did the last time.”

“Indeed?” He smiled. “It will not distress you, then, if I do this?”

I cried out. It was not pain or fear. It was pure piercing sensation, and in the sweet silver moonlight it delighted my heart.

“Oh, no,” I said. “It does not distress me in the least. And I am sure it will not distress you if I do
this
.”

He gasped with pleasure.

“Sainte-grâce
,
ma mie,”
he said. His voice was breathless. “Is this shameless sea witch the same Rinette Leslie I have loved all this time?”

“The same,” I said, “and not the same.”

By morning we were no longer handfasted. We were married, legally, bindingly, and for life.

“M
AMAN
,”
MÀ
IRI SAID
. “Why does Lilidh have a horn on her forehead?”

I laughed and hugged her tightly. “That is not Lilidh, Màiri-rose,” I said. “Although I agree it does look like her, the way Monsieur Nico drew it. It is a unicorn. Can you say that? U-ni-corn.”

We were reading one of the tales in Nico’s copy of my mother’s book. Both Màiri and Kitte loved it, and Màiri already knew most of the stories by heart. She liked to repeat them and claim she was reading them. Seilie was curled at our feet.

“U-ni-corn,” Màiri said. “Is it called that because it eats corn?”

“It eats stars,” I said.

“And it drinks angelica wine.” Nico came into the garden with a packet of papers in his hand. “May I steal your
maman
away from you for a little while,
ma belle
?”

“I will read to Kitte,” Màiri said. She took the book and ran out of the garden. “Kitte!” she cried. I could hear her voice growing fainter as she ran toward the castle keep. “Tante-Mar, where is Kitte?”

I smiled up at Nico. I had no sense of foreboding at all until I saw his face. “You have letters,” I said. “Has Bessie given the messenger something to eat and drink?”

“Yes and yes.” He sat down on the ancient wall beside me. “Rinette, she has married him.”

“The queen.”

“Yes. She has made him king by proclamation. Look.”

He handed me a silver coin. I turned it to catch the sun. It was a ryal, worth about thirty shillings, and it showed the heads of Mary Stuart and Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley—King Henry now—facing each other with Darnley on the left, and around them engraved the letters,
HENRICUS
&
MARIA D: GRA R
&
R SCOTORUM
.

“Henry and Mary,” I said. “King and queen of Scotland. His name first. She is mad.”

“Moray and Rothes have been outlawed, with all their adherents. She is seizing their properties.”

I jumped up. “But Rothes is chief of the Leslies,” I said. “I hold Kinmeall as his vassal.” Rannoch Hamilton’s plot to take Granmuir in baby Kitte’s name had been turned on its head by his death, and now it was I who managed Kinmeall as Kitte’s mother and guardian. “Oh, Nico, I do not want it all to start again. I thought we would be safe here.”

He laid the packet of letters down on the wall and put his arms around me. “We are safe,” he said. “I will go down to Edinburgh and see the queen. The king and queen. She is anxious for support—she has released young George Gordon from Dunbar, pardoned him, and restored him to the earldom of Huntly. She has welcomed Bothwell back into her favor. She will welcome me, too, and my assurance of our allegiance.”