The Galliard (55 page)

It was Gibby Elliot of the Shaws who saved the situation and, for the time anyway, the life of his neighbour: he had accompanied that sad returning party and so was able to make the very practical suggestion that the Armstrongs should be given their liberty and safe departure to their homes if they consented to give up the keys of the fortress. This they did, and Bothwell was at last carried into the Castle and put to bed to be nursed of his wounds, which were said to be mortal.

‘But would he go through all that to die after all?’ exclaimed Fleming. ‘No, he’ll live, if only to catch Jock o’ the Side all over again – yes, and Little Jock o’ the Park too, for though they all said at first that
he
was dead of Bothwell’s dying stroke, yet now there’s a rumour that the Elliots carried him off the moor alive and with a good chance to be hanged for sheep-stealing next year instead of this. You see how it is – rumours always put the worst first. My lord is dead; then, my lord’s wounds are fatal; then we’ll hear there’s a chance of recovery after all!’

There would be, if only she could go and nurse him! She had nursed François, she had nursed Darnley, but now she could not go to Bothwell to nurse him. She could only wait and wonder who was by his bedside to give him life and hope and determination to live, as once he had given her. Would Jean do that? She could not believe it. But perhaps he would do it himself; he would surely fight for his life on a sick-bed as on the moor.

And now they heard that he was hanging between life and death
– that he was in grave danger from his wounds, but not, it seemed, that he was dying.

His condition had prevented the wide attendance at the Assizes that had been hoped for. As before, the thieves of Liddesdale felt they could ride safe now Bothwell was not there to deal with them. And a mass of business was silting up that could not be done without him. The Court had been at Jedburgh a week when a message came from Hermitage that Bothwell insisted he was now well enough to see visitors and discuss business. A visit of the Queen, George Gordon Earl of Huntly, and the two chief officers of the Assizes, Lord James and Mr Secretary Lethington, was instantly proposed for the very next day if the weather held tolerably fine, for weather made a deal of difference in travelling across country at this time of the year. They must start at daybreak in order to return by the same evening, for there was no accommodation for women in that massive fortress.

Was the Queen in a fit condition for riding sixty miles in all, across trackless moors and swamps, with the chance of getting wet to the skin, when she was by no means fully recovered from her agonizing labour of four months ago and had been often ill since then with that mysterious sharp pain in her side? Mary Fleming was very doubtful of her taking the risk of so much exertion ‘for what will after all only be an official visit of a couple of hours at most, and then talking business all the time with your officers of justice.’

‘And are
they
to pay my official visit for me? Is my brother the Lord James and your husband, Mr Secretary Lethington, both of them, as you well know, his unfriends, to convey a patronizing royal message of thanks for his service and condolence for what it cost him?’

‘No, Madam, I will,’ was the answer with a roguish glance.

‘Devil doubt you! Here I am beginning to talk like my lord of Bothwell already, so potent in his influence even at this distance! No, Fleming, you shan’t steal a march on me. We’ll ride together, and thank God for one whole day on the hill and the heather after holding justice in a stuffy court day after day.’

So they rode together, across Swinnie Moor down into the dale of Rule Water towards Windburgh Hill where the fairies were often heard piping and holding their revels at night. From a small pit-murk loch high up on the hill, haunted by a water-kelpie, rose the stream of the Slitrig which they now rode through at the shallows after crossing Earlside Moor, and then up, up the broad hillsides, with Black Agnes’ hoofs squelching into the soaking mosses, and the heather swept back by the wind, its shining grey stems writhing and twisting like wreaths of smoke in the sunlight; up over the crest till they saw the Allan Water run like a sparkling ribbon on the other side; then up the Priesthaugh Burn until the mighty heads of Cauldcleuch and Greatmoor Hill reared themselves up like thunder against the white towering clouds.

‘This is the country I am Queen of!’ thought Mary with a rush of such pride and joy in her land as she had never known till then – perhaps because of her chief servant in that land, who more than any other had shown her what it was; and to whom she was riding.

They crossed the dyke of the Catrail high up on the hills, that Border more ancient than any between Scotland and England, made by the Picts centuries before the Romans came, to mark off the boundary between kingdoms whose very names were long forgotten. Now, as they neared Hermitage, they peered down into more than one deep and sudden hollow, gashed into the hills by narrow streams that ran almost hidden by the steepness of the slopes that they had carved. ‘Beef-tubs’ these were called, very handy for hiding cattle.

They were coming down on to Hermitage Water, when suddenly before them in that wide and lonely place there stood a circle of hoary stones, their shadows attendant on the bright grass; so still, so silent and aware, they seemed to have been waiting there from before the beginning of time for the Queen of Scots to come riding down over the moor towards them. Involuntarily she drew rein and sat looking at that Druid circle that had once peopled this solitude with its strange company of worshippers. Human sacrifices had been made on these stones:
‘They look as though they remember,’ she said low to Gordon as they rode on.

And then they came in view of the Castle, a huge old granite block on the banks of the stream that brawled and tossed over its rocky bed just below those mighty walls. She drew a deep breath as she rode in under that towering grey arch. So this was Bothwell’s chief fortress: she would have known it.

‘So you came by the Nine Stone Rig – didn’t you count them? Yes, there are nine. Human sacrifice? – I don’t know about that, but they boiled Lord Soulis in a cauldron slung between them, so it’s said – it was he who built most of this castle, years before the Bruce, so that’s long enough ago for you. Why boil him? Why not? He deserved it, no doubt. The holders of Hermitage have been great rascals most of ’em. And it’s a queer thing, but no spreat nor bent has ever grown within the Nine Stone Rig since then until this day. I’ve noticed it myself Madam.’

‘Spreat and bent – that’s hair-grass, isn’t it? – I remember you and your sister telling me – but how are you, my lord? You’ve never answered.’

‘I’m as weak as a horse,’ he said, grinning, and she laughed with such sheer happiness in her voice as he had not heard since she had cooked eggs for them at Dunbar.

They must talk sense, they must talk business, but it did not matter; whatever they said, or was said by the sage faces round them, seemed said in joke to amuse only them.

‘So it’s been a douce quiet Assizes without me – not a hanging among the lot, only fines!’

‘Well—’

‘Well indeed for them when the Queen holds justice! But you’ve had a poor show of prisoners, I’ll say that, and that’s my fault, laid low here like a forfoughten hound and letting Little Jock o’ the Park and Jock o’ the Side and every man Jock of them all slip through my fingers. My wounds? They’re nothing, they’re healing fast now and I’ll be in Jedburgh within the week. It was the thought of my folly in letting the Night Hawk bog
that kept bursting them open – that I should give him Tam o’ the Linn’s stabling! – what, don’t you know how

Tam o’ the Linn gaed over the moss

To seek a stable till his horse,

The moss was open and Tam fell in,

“Dod! I’ve stabled myself!” quo’ Tam o’ the Linn.’

A gaunt dark woman, whom Mary remembered to have seen at his sister Jan’s wedding, leaned over him and laid a hand on his arm and told her son he’d talk himself into a fever again at this rate; and certainly the one unbandaged eye was very bright as it fastened on the slight figure sitting beside him in the amber velvet riding-dress.

Very French she looked and fashionable, and like a dashing page, the padded shoulder-puffs of her dress sprouting upwards, as cock-a-hoop as a pair of budding wings, and so he all but told her in front of them all! She looked like a golden pheasant with that amber light in her hair and eyes as well as on her dress, and the curls clustering so neat and close and tight to her gallant little head – the head of a boy, he’d always seen that, and like a boy’s her stiff collar went high up to her ears. The ruby buttons were unfastened at the neck, where the narrow ruff of creamy linen inside the collar rose up on either side of that small firmly rounded chin, and the tender line of the throat showed just as far as the absurdly childish hollows of the ‘salt-cellars’ at its base.

His eyes devoured every detail of her sitting there dandling her silly little golden-feathered cap on her knee, a cap just big enough to cover the tip of her ear, and how much good would it be to her if she ran into a storm of rain on the way back? So she had put on her prettiest Paris gauds to come riding over the moor to him in his grim fortress in Liddesdale. He lay here on a rough bed strewn with deer-skins, and these stark old walls towered behind her, and that slit of a window let in a slanting beam of light on her velvet sleeve, and her eyes laughed at him and the corners of her closed mouth curled up as though every
moment it would break open in laughter. ‘Why do you laugh, Madam?’

‘I am glad to see you better, my lord.’

No, it did not matter what they said or didn’t say nor who heard them; they were speaking together without that.

He heard himself arranging for a Court of Oyer and Terminer to be held here by him, authorized by the Queen, and settling what papers must be brought over for it by messenger from Jedburgh tomorrow; he heard Mary conferring the post of Keeper of the Seals on his mother’s brother, George Sinclair, with pretty graciousness.

And then his mother turned them all out in her uncompromising fashion, just as she had turned out the Lady Jean when she bore down upon them a few days ago and disapproved of the way in which her son’s wife was nursing her son. Hermitage could hold fifteen hundred men at a pinch, but there was not room enough in it for two women when they were Jean and the Lady of Morham! He chuckled over this as he watched his mother move about his bed, bringing him a cooling drink, seeing to fresh bandages for his wounds, and all the time he still saw beside him that gallant figure with the boyish head, and now muttered to himself as he had done to her when she leaned over him to say goodbye, ‘we shall ride together again.’

The weather changed soon after they had started back on the return journey: the rain-clouds marched up terrible as an army with banners, ragged black banners that overwhelmed all the sky; the rain charged down in hosts of ice-cold arrows; the streams shouted and tossed their white manes under it; the ground swelled with it, the glittering mosses bubbled as though the whole round crust of the earth were breaking, and the water below pushing through again to flood the world.

And below the towering bulk of Cauldcleugh Head that stood black behind the driving rain, between Liddesdale and Teviotdale, Black Agnes bogged. They dragged Mary from the saddle, her golden dress smeared thick all over with black peat mud, and herself drenched to the skin with the icy bog water. She called to them to
save Black Agnes, and would not leave till they had succeeded in hauling out the plunging terrified mare.

As she rode on again, drenched and frozen, a shuddering began to run through her veins and left her now hot, now cold, and the pain in her side stabbed like the thrust of a knife, yet her wild gaiety cheered on the whole miserable soaked party, even poor Lethington, who shivered like a wet cat. His nose was blue, and James’ red and raw, and Fleming’s hair all out of curl. Only the Gordon enjoyed the ride as Mary did, holding his proud head aloft like a wet eagle, though even he could not touch her strange exultation. She was being christened anew to her country, she told him, laughing as the rain ran down her face.

She was riding in spirit with the man she had left lying wounded on his bed, riding through the land he watched and guarded for her, that sweeping waste of moorland, now silent of all but the rush of rain and river and the long cry of the curlews tossed in the storm-wind, but ready always to leap into furious life, into fiery cressets on the peel towers blazing their warning from hill to hill, into the thunder of galloping horses, the war-shouts of their riders, the clash of arms.

The sky did not clear again till the first star peeped out and the young moon swung between the flying clouds and they saw the ruined arches of Jedburgh Abbey like lacework against the pale evening. They had reached the end of the ride. But she was deadly cold and they had to lift her down from the saddle.

Next day she lay in the tapestried room upstairs, so ill that already the doctors were despairing of her life. Violent sickness and vomiting of blood and a raging fever continued for some days; she could not live, they said, and when on the seventh day, after long delirium, she became conscious for a time, she knew it from their eyes and her own heart.

The little room was filled with the golden quiet of the late October evening. Cows lowed, going by below to be milked; birds twittered, flitting among the fruitful apple boughs; the river rippled and murmured under the old stone bridge; like the echo of the sea in a shell, the room took the echo of these sounds into the heart 
of its stillness. Behind the silent, frightened faces round the bed hung the figure of Jacob, come to claim his reward after seven years’ service.

She lay there, waiting to speak for the last time. When she had made her confession and received unction, she felt strength ebbing from her as the warm light ebbed from the room. She whispered that her nobles should come to her bedside; they gathered round her, James nearest to her, his long yellow face hovering over her; now close above her, now so far away she could scarcely distinguish it among the clouds that drifted before her eyes.