Nigel Tranter - Past Master

James was warming to his theme when a servitor pushed his way to where Ludovick was standing, with Mary.

'I come from the Queen's Grace,' he said, low-voiced. 'She orders that you attend her forthwith, my lord Duke. By her royal command.'

'Command…?' The young man bit his lip. 'James will not like this. Why should she want me? But – I cannot refuse her command.'

'No. You must go. The poor Queen -1 am sorry for her. But she has her own dangers, Vicky. Be careful with her…'

Patrick returned soon after Ludovick had left the Hall.

'You are elevated and informed, I hope, Mary?' he murmured.

'I am a little weary,' she answered.

He looked at her quickly. 'I don't think that I have ever heard you admit as much, before. Do not say that our puissant monarch is too much for Mary Gray! But it is near done now, lass. And the final act will revive you, I swear!'

'There is more to come?'

'A last tit-bit. That only His Grace would have thought of. Meanwhile, let us see if we may anywise shorten this homily.'

Patrick waited until the King's next needful pause for breath. Then he nodded to his man at the door. Just as James was about to recommence, music struck up from outside, fiddles, lutes and cymbals. A protesting royal gauntlet of steel was raised, but it was too late. In filed a column of sweet singers, the former Neptune's acolytes, now decently clad in black, reinforced by a number of older vocalists and instrumentalists. They were chanting the hundred and twenty-eighth Psalm, in fourteen-part harmony.

The King, whom life had made a realist of sorts, accepted the situation, and switched from declamation to lusty psalmody:

For thou shalt eat of the labours of thine hands O well is thee, and happy shalt thou be… he boomed from within his helmet, waving to all his astonished guests to raise bodies and voices in vigorous worship. 'James, by the grace of God, King. Protector of Christ's Kirk here on earth!' the Master of Gray observed. 'Look at Master Melville, my dear! And Lindsay. And Galloway. They are srniling, all. For the first time this night. The day is saved. The True Faith triumphs. King and Kirk are one, after all!'

' You, then, did have a hand in this, also?' Mary charged him. 'I? I do not even know the words of the psalm,' he said.

The Lord shall bless thee out of Zion: and thou shalt see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life… the King shouted, strongly if tunelessly:

Yea, thou shalt see thy children's children, and peace upon Israel…

Falkland was the smallest of the royal palaces, and the little grey-stone, red-roofed Fife town which huddled round it, beneath the green Lomond Hills, as ever when the King was here, was bursting at the seams, every house, cottage, room even, taken up and overflowing with the host of nobles, envoys, courtiers, ministers, their families, retainers and servants. On this warm evening of early September, everyone seemed to have surged out of the crowded houses into the narrow streets and wynds, the gardens and pleasances and encroaching woodlands, for air and space. Ludovick Stewart, hot and tired after his long ride, pushing his way through the throng with only a groom in attendance, frowned at the milling crowds distastefully, wrinkled his nose at the stink, and cursed again the fate of birth which enforced on him a life for which he had no desire, amongst people with whom he had little sympathy, when all that he wanted was to live quietly, simply, at Methven with Mary. It was all wrong, and the sort of grudging affection he had always had for his cousin the King was suffering under the strain. He had hoped and expected that now that there was a prince, and he was no longer heir to the throne, the situation might have improved. But things were in fact worse, with James demanding ever more of his time and company – whilst yet finding fault with him constantly.

Just across from the palace gates, he was held up by a herd of bullocks being driven down to the slaughter-houses by the waterside, and further congesting the already crowded streets of the little town. The feeding of the Court here was ever a major problem, for Falkland was a hunting palace, set down in an area of forest, marsh and wilderness with no farming country nearby, and the influx of hundreds, even thousands, presented great difficulties of commissariat. Yet it was James's favourite house, and once the stags were in season and the threat of attack apparendy receded, nothing would do but that the move from the confining fortress of Stirling twenty-five miles away must be made. But not for the prince; that precious babe's safety was not to be risked outside the castle walls. Therefore Alary Gray must needs remain at Stirling also, plead as Ludovick would. Hence his almost daily rides of fifty miles, and his monarch's oft-expressed complaint.

Before ever he reached his modest room in the palace, Peter Hay, Ludovick's page, met him.

'The Queen again, my lord Duke,' he announced. 'You are to go to her. At once, she says. For hours she has been having me seek you.'

Lennox groaned. 'What ails her now? What does she want with me, this time?'

'I do not know. But she is most strong. I was to bring you to her forthwith, she said. She is in her bower…'

'She can wait until I have washed, at least,' the Duke growled. 'Where is the King? Still hunting?'

'Yes. Since morning.'

When, presently, Ludovick presented himself at the Queen's apartments however, Anne had him kept waiting for a full half-hour in an ante-room, making the stiffest of talk to her ladies and ill concealing his impatience – for he was both hungry and tired. At length a bell tinkled to admit him to the presence.

The Queen stood with her back to him, facing a window of her boudoir looking out on the palace gardens. 'You have been long, Ludovick,' she said, without turning. 'Too long. On my soul, you pay a deal more respect to that by-blow of Gray's than you do to your Queen! I have been left alone all this day. Must you be off to Stirling all and every day, sir?'

'Had I not gone to Stirling, Ma'am, I would have been required to go hunting with His Grace.' That was gruffly said, it is to be feared.

'Aye – chasing stupid deer! The folly of it. Always chasing deer!' Anne's voice, still with traces of its guttural Danish accent, was accusing, petulant.

Lennox did not comment on that. 'You sent for me, Your Grace?'

'Yes, how is my child? How is the Prince Frederick?' 'Well, Highness. Never better.'

'Is that all you have to tell me? To say to me? His mother!'

Ludovick was not a hard-hearted young man and he did sympathise with Anne in her unhappy situation with regard to her baby. He cleared his throat. 'The child seemed happy. Contented.' Perhaps that was not the right thing to say to the deprived mother? But what could he say about an infant, that was merely a bundle of swaddling clothes and a pink screwed-up face? 'He is fatter a little, I think. Mary looks well to him.' That also might not be what she wished to hear? 'You need have no fears for the child, Highness.'

She did not directly answer that. When she spoke, however, her voice was quite changed. It had become soft, girlish, almost playful. 'Ludovick,' she said, 'come and sit here by me. I have tidings for you.' She sat down on a cushioned window-seat.

Without enthusiasm he had moved forward obediently before she half-turned towards him on the seat, and he perceived how she was dressed. Embarrassed, he faltered.

The Queen wore a long bed-robe of blue silk, but underneath it she was bare to the waist, below which there was some sort of underskirt. The robe was hanging open, and Anne was making no attempt to hide her body. Always she had had a figure more like a boy's than a woman's; but motherhood had developed her breasts. They were still small, but pointed. It seemed that she was proud of them, for the rest of her remained slender to the point of thinness.