Nigel Tranter - Past Master

'You are not in Fast Castle now!' Lennox reminded.

'I faith – that is true,' the other nodded. 'But Patrick is my friend, see you. As well as my cousin. A man must take a risk for his own blood, his friend. Or no?' He looked from one to the other.

'What does he want with me?' Ludovick asked heavily. 'He wants you, my lord Duke, safe in Fast Castle before the morning's light.'

'God in Heaven! Are you mad, man?' 'Save us all…!'

'With fresh horses, I can have you there before cock-crow. Ninety miles. Hard riding – but you are no shrinking lily, my lord. And I have already ridden that ninety here. None will see you, by night. Ride back tomorrow night. None will know that you have been to Fast.'

'Why should I do any such thing, sir?'

'Patrick would speak with you. Urgently. And since he may not come here..'

'But; dear God – I cannot do this! Is he crazed, or you? I am Chamberlain of this realm, one of the King's ministers. Of his Council. I cannot wait secretly upon one banished the realm as an enemy of the King! It is treason for the Master of Gray to be back in Scotland, at all. For me to ride to him at Fast would be treason likewise. He knows that.'

'Nevertheless, my lord, that is what he's sent me to bid you do. He said – "Tell the Duke that the Protestant cause, the throne itself, may hang on this. And the English succession".'

Mary Gray emitted something near to a groan. 'This again! The same fell game!'

'This is no game, lassie! You ken the state o' the realm. Near enough to outright war, wi' our slobbering King pulled a' ways! A blow is to be struck that will topple Jamie into the Catholics' arms first of all. And then off his throne. And that will mean real war. Civil war. Aye, and invasion too.'

'I understood that you were of the Catholic persuasion yourself, sir?' Lennox charged him.

The other shrugged. 'You may say, like Patrick, that I dinna take religion ower seriously. Not to discommode me. That I'm fine and content to worship God in my ain way, and let other folk do the like. A plague on them both, I say… wi' due respects to your Dukeship that's of the Kirk party!'

'M'mmm…'

'There is nothing new in all this,' Mary put in, wearily. 'It is all as it was – ever the same. My father has been playing the Protestants against the Catholics and the Catholics against the Protestants for years. There is nothing new here, that should send the Duke hurrying to Patrick's beckon…'

'Aye, but there is. That's where you're wrong, Mary – there is. Patrick said to say that it was life and death. For the King. Aye, and for yourself, my lord Duke. Because you're near the throne. He says both your deaths have been decided upon.'

'Vicky!' The girl stepped close, to clutch the Duke's wrist with her free hand. 'Sweet Jesu-no!'

'Heed nothing, Mary,' Lennox told her, encircling mother and child with a damp arm. 'Nobody is going to kill me. It is but one of Patrick's alarums. My death would serve no cause, benefit none. I take no part in any of their affairs, neither Catholic nor Protestant. Besides, no one would dare…'

'Not even the Earl o' Bothwell?'

'Bothwell! But… Bothwell is of the Kirk party. A Protestant.'

'Patrick says that Bothwell is about to change sides. To turn Catholic. And Bothwell, like yoursel', my lord Duke, is the King's cousin – though on the wrong side o' the blanket. A right bold and fierce man!'

'By the Powers – Bothwell!' There was no doubt about the Duke's perturbation now. Yet he shook his head. 'I do not believe it!' he declared. 'Bothwell has always been a Protestant… if he has any true religion at all. Devil-worship and witchcraft, perhaps. But to turn Catholic-no!'

'If religion matters little to him, and this changing could give him the sure rule of Scotland, think you he'd scruple? Patrick says that he is changing – and have you ever kenned Patrick Gray wrong in his information?'

Mary Gray had, but not often – and she was in no state to contest Restalrig's claim. 'Why should he, Bothwell…' She swallowed. 'Why should he seek Vicky's hurt? Or the King's?'

The other shrugged. 'It's no' me you've to ask that, lassie -it's Patrick. I'm but his messenger in this, see you. To bring the Duke to him.'

'It is but a device. This threat to Vicky. To entice him to Fast Castle. To seek to entangle him once again in Patrick's evil affairs. Do not go, Vicky. Even if it is true about Bothwell, if you stay quietly here at Methven, far from Court, you can be of no danger to him. Why should he seek your death?'

'But James, Mary – the King? Is my duty not to the King? If he is threatened? Am I not sworn, as a member of the Council, to defend him, my liege lord, with my life? If Patrick has discovered some desperate plot against the King, am I not in duty bound at least to hear of it, for James's sake?'

'He canna come near to the King himsel',' Restalrig pointed out. 'He is banished the realm. Oudawed. He needs an ear close to Jamie's. That the King will heed. If his warning is to be in time. And there's no' much time, he says…'

Lennox took a few paces away from the girl, and back, staring at the floor. 'I believe that I must go, Mary,' he said, at length.

She emitted a long quivering sigh, but inclined her lovely head.

'I shall hear him – no more. Do not fear that he shall cozen me, carry me off my feet, Mary. I know Patrick for what he is…'

'Would that I could come with you, Vicky! Two heads are even better than one, in dealing with my father! But… Johnnie, here. Nursing the child, I cannot leave him.'

'Nor would I let you ride ninety miles through a winter's night, lass…'

'I could, Vicky. You know that I could.'

'May be. But you will not. This is not for you.' He turned to Restalrig. 'When do we start, sir? I have fresh horses.'

'The sooner the better. Give me an hour, my lord. It will be full dark by then…'

'You will be careful, Vicky? Oh, you must be very careful! Watch Patrick. Do not let him deceive you, charm you, hoodwink you…'

For fully an hour none of the three men had spoken – save to curse their weary drooping mounts when the all-but-foundered brutes slipped and stumbled on the rough and broken ground, benighted and water-logged. Coldingham Moor was no place to be in the dark, at any time – but especially not at four o'clock of a winter's morning, with a half-gale blowing sleet straight off the North Sea in their faces, and after having ridden across five counties.

Though he had no fondness for Logan, Ludovick Stewart's opinion of the man's toughness and vigour could hardly have failed to have risen during those past grim hours. Although of middle years and notorious for gross living, he had led the way, and at a cracking pace, right from Methven in Strathearn, across South Perthshire, Stirlingshire, the three Lothians and into Berwickshire, on a foul night, and having already ridden the entire journey in the opposite direction. Not once, despite the thick blackness of the night, had he gone astray to any major extent.

The last lap of that long journey was, as it happened, the most trying of all. Coldinghamshire, that ancient jurisdiction of the once princely Priory of Coldingham, thrusts out from the rest of Berwickshire eastwards like a great clenched fist, where the Lammermuir Hills challenge the sea. At the very tip of the resultant cliff-girt, iron-bound coast, amongst the greatest cliffs in the land, Fast Castle perches in as dizzy and savage a situation as can well be imagined, an eagle's eyrie of a place – and a particularly solitary and malevolent eagle at that. No other house or haunt of man crouched within miles of it on the bare, lofty, storm-battered promontory.

Even high on the moor here, amongst the whins and the outcropping rocks, Ludovick could hear the roar of the waves, a couple of miles away and four hundred feet below. Heads down, sodden cloaks tight about them, soaked, mud-spattered, stiff with cold and fatigue, they rode on into the howling black emptiness laced with driven sleet. The Duke imagined that hell might be of this order.