Nigel Tranter - Past Master

'Love!' he exclaimed. 'A strange love this, which knowing nothing yet threatens and counters me…'

'I know enough, knowing you, to feel already that cold shadow which you can cast, Patrick! I feared this, and would have stopped you coming, if I could. Although I longed to see you, God knows! No – hear me. Let me say my say. Now that you are here, I must give you my warning. Do not entangle Vicky in your schemes again. That before all. Do not injure or betray the poor silly King…'

'God help me, girl – it is to save him that I am come!' the Master cried. 'Aye, and Vicky too. This conspiracy is against them…'

'Aye – that I believe! But, Patrick – from what Vicky has told me of it, the same conspiracy is far too clever, far too deep-laid, far too intricate for my Lords Bothwell and Huntly to have contrived. Or any of their friends. Any man in all this realm… save Patrick Gray!'

He drew a long breath, looking at her steadily. 'You believe that?'

'I believe that,' she nodded. 'Oh, some of it – much, perhaps – may be based on a true design of these wild and arrogant lords. They are capable of great villainy, great ambitions. But not of the ginning interweaving of artifice, the subtle stratagems, the close-knit scheming perfection of this master-plot! That would demand a mind infinitely more talented -with the evil talents of the Devil himself!'

'On my soul – I do not know whether to be flattered or affronted!'

She ignored that. 'This I see clearly. What I do not know is your object. Your main object, Patrick. Whether it is all just a device to win you back from banishment into a position of power, with the King much dependent upon you? And having gained this, little more will come of it? Or whether there is more than that? That you have worked up this conspiracy in order to betray it, so that there will be great upheavals, great troubles, which you may seek to control for your own ends? I wish that I knew.'

He swallowed. 'This is extraordinary!' he declared, turning to pace the two or three steps Which was all that tiny chamber would allow. 'Are you out of your mind, Mary? What sort of creature did I beget on your mother those twenty years ago?'

'One too like yourself for your own comfort, perhaps! Or her own! One who can plot and plan also, if need be. And, as you have learned, betray! So heed me well, Patrick. For I have much more to scheme and fight for. More than formerly.' 'As…?'

'Ludovick. Our son, John. John Stewart of Methven. All that Methven means to me…'

'You call that much, Mary? Mistress to Vicky, Duke though he be! To be cast off at will? Damme, child – I could make you better than that! With your looks and wits, and my influence, you could and should go far.'

'I desire no better than Vicky and Methven. His love – and its peace. These I have. I am secure in Vicky's heart. He would marry me – but I know this to be impossible. I know what I want, Patrick. I do not want position at Court. You will not make me one of the Queen's ladies again. For your own ends…'

'That is a royal command, girl. You cannot ignore or avoid it. You must obey – you have no choice.'

'I shall obey for a short time. Till the child is born. Then I shall take leave of the Queen. She will let me go. She does not love me greatly. Nor I her. So heed me. Do not seek to entangle Ludovick or myself in your schemes – or you will find me a more certain foe than Chancellor Maitland!'

'And what are you now?'

'Your daughter, Patrick, in bastardy and unacknowledged -who would love dearly to be your friend.'

So Patrick, Master of Gray3 returned to the left hand of the King of Scots – and it was not long before all Scotland was aware of it. The new hand bearing on the helm of the ship of state was not to be mistaken, a firm hand, assured as it was flexible – but flexible as is a Ferrara rapier blade.

The Chancellor, of course, remained the right hand of the Crown, the official agent of authority. That Lord Maitland of Thirlestane did not relish the return of his long-time foe went without saying: but he was too shrewd a man to fail to perceive that for the meantime he had been out-manoeuvred, and that he must bide his time if he would restore the situation. He made no secret of his distrust and dislike of the Master – but he did not deliberately put himself in the other's way or seek to provoke an open clash.

This situation was much facilitated by the immediate removal of the Court to Stirling. The very day after Patrick's arrival the move was made. James had always preferred Stirling to the Capital. He had been brought up there, in the castle of which Johnnie Mar's father had been Keeper; from there he was closer to his beloved Falkland, where this most unmanly of monarchs yet doted on the manly pursuits of the chase – hunting, hawking and coursing. Maitland, however, a Lothian man, had in the past years centred nearly all the agencies and offices of government, that were not there already, in the Capital; he was now more or less tied to Edinburgh – where also the Kirk leadership was ensconsed. All this the Master knew well, and had allowed for.

King, Queen and Court, therefore., travelled the thirty-five miles to Stirling, in the waist of Scotland, leaving the Chancellor and his minions behind. The young Queen, although nearly five years married, was still not nineteen, and looking somehow, with her great belly, even more physically immature than ever, however shrewd of eye and sharp of tongue. She rode, complainingly, in a horse-litter, with her ladies on palfreys all around her, a colourful, chattering, giggling throng. The King, all clumsy and excessive attention – for though he lacked enthusiasm as a husband, he had been anxiously awaiting this heir and proof of his manhood for years – kept close by. The Duke of Lennox also rode with the ladies, to be near Mary Gray, who carried her baby in a wicker pannier behind her. Mar, however, and most of his nobles, kept as far away as possible -with the Master of Gray circulating around all groups of the strung-out cavalcade, throughout the entire protracted journey like an elegant but genially authoritative sheep-dog. He was noticeably more welcome with the ladies than with the men. And he was very urgent that the escort of two hundred men-at-arms of the Royal Guard should maintain a tight circle at all times round the Queen's litter – although it seemed unlikely indeed that any kidnapping attempt could have been organised so quickly after this change of programme, and anyway it was notorious that members of the Royal Guard were usually the first to be suborned in any major conspiracy.

The journey was accomplished without either attack or premature birth, and the great fortress-castle of Stirling, towering above the climbing grey town and shaking its fist at all the frowning bastions of the Highland Line, received them into its security. But even before they reached it, Patrick Gray went to work, having a messenger despatched, in the King's name, to the young Earl of Argyll at his Lowland seat of Castle Campbell at Dollar, a dozen miles away, to summon him forthwith to his monarch's side. In the event, the young man was at Stirling soon after the King, and after being kept waiting for an hour or two was highly astonished to have James inform him in a fractious and preoccupied fashion – for he was distracted by the loss of a couple of sheets of his poem which must have been left behind at Holyroodhouse – that he was herewith appointed Lieutenant of the North, in the place of the Earl of Huntly, and was to be given a commission of fire and sword against that nobleman and his treasonable Catholic associates. More than this the bewildered youth could not get out of the King – whereupon Patrick took him in hand, explained the position privately and approximately, informed him that Maitland was plotting his downfall and the seizure of his lands, but that he, Gray, was his friend and had engineered this situation in order to bring to justice the murderers of the Earl of Moray, Argyll's cousin and guardian. This was the opportunity for which Clan Campbell had been waiting. Mac Cailean Mhor, to give him his proud Gaelic patronymic, set off for his West Highland fastnesses there and then, eyes glowing, to raise the clan, on the Master's assurances that he would inform his Campbell uncles, his present guardians, of what was toward.