Nigel Tranter - Past Master

He was silent.

'So now,' she went on, 'Patrick and his father hide from each other in separate castles a dozen miles apart, frightened that they may cross each other's paths! Have ever you heard such folly!'

That was indeed the position between the Lord Gray and his heir. While Patrick was holding his justice ayres in this his sheriffdom of Forfar, he stayed in his strong castle of Broughty on its jutting rock in the Tay estuary, while his father abandoned his house of Castle Huntly a few miles away to retire to Foulis Castle amongst the Sidlaw Hills. That the son had been granted the sheriffdom in place of his father, some years before, by no means assisted amity.

Mary herself, of course, was also avoiding the Master of Gray this breezy spring morning, keeping well clear both of Broughty Castle and of Forfar town in her ride north. She could scarcely hope that her sire would be as understanding as was her foster-father over this expedition of hers.

David Gray, though scarcely approving of the girl's project, had done what he could to aid her in it. He and her mother, Mariota, had welcomed her warmly to her old home at Castle Huntly the previous evening, and knowing their Mary had made no major attempts to dissuade her from her chosen course. The Lady Marie had been right, of course; David Gray would not hear of his daughter riding to Aberdeen alone, and now accompanied her himself on the seventy-mile journey.

They went by Auchinleck and Guthrie and Brechin, through a bare treeless land of rolling pastures, heath and isolated grassy hills, and they were thankful that the weather had improved, for it would have made grim travelling with no cover from wind and rain. By midday they were back to the coast at Montrose, and thereafter were never far from the white-capped sea. In the late afternoon they passed near the Earl Marischal's great castle of Dunnottar on its thrusting promontory, before riding down into Stonehaven. After that it was barely two hours more to the Dee, through a cowed and ravaged country, with Aberdeen town rising beyond. Saddle-sore and weary, and depressed by the evidences of men's passions and savagery which they had ridden through, the travellers were mankful indeed to reach the end of their journey.

And now Mary had reason to be grateful for David Gray's presence – for Aberdeen in 1595 was something of which she had had no experience, an occupied city in a conquered countryside. The place was full of soldiers and men-at-arms with not enough to do, men but little amenable to centralised authority and discipline, being in the main the retainers of individual and often jealous lords and the clansmen of fierce Highland chiefs. A woman riding alone through the crowded evening streets of Aberdeen would have been fair game indeed; even with David's masterful dourness they made a difficult and sometimes alarming progress. Only by dint of much shouting of the name of the Duke of Lennox did they gain passage.

The Duke's headquarters were in the Bishop's palace in the Old Town, and this being to the north of the city, reaching it presented the greater problem. When eventually they arrived, it was to discover that Lennox was away investigating some disturbance in the Skene district, but was expected to return before nightfall. Fortunately Master David Lindsay, the King's Chaplain, one of the group of ministers appointed to the Council of Lieutenancy, well knew Mary in Stirling – he it was who had conducted the Prince's baptism service, and was now much enjoying occupying the hated Bishop of Aberdeen's palace; while strongly disapproving of ducal concubines, he recognised that Lennox would expect the lady to be well treated.

When Ludovick duly arrived, therefore, himself somewhat tired and travel-worn, it was to find his visitors washed, fed and refreshed. At sight of Mary sitting in smiling anticipation at the table in his private room, he was quite overwhelmed. Never one for ducal dignity or any sort of public or private pose, he shouted aloud his joy, and ran across the chamber to pick her up bodily out of her chair and hug her to him in an embrace which would have done no injustice to any bear, gasping incoherent questions and exclamations in the process of covering her face and hair with kisses. It was some time before he even realised that David Gray was also in the room.

That sobered him only a little, although from boyhood he had always been slightly in awe of this strangely humble man with the almost legendary reputation for competence and effectiveness, the only man of whom Patrick Gray was said to be afraid. Still clutching Mary to him, he more or less carried her over to where David stood, to take the other man's hand and wring it warmly.

David Gray was no more enamoured of Mary's peculiar relationship with the Duke than was Patrick or other members of the family – than indeed was Ludovick himself; but he recognised that they loved each other deeply, in fact looked upon each other as man and wife in the sight of God. He knew that any such unsuitable marriage for one so close to the throne would be immediately annulled by King and Council, undoubtedly. Faced with this fact, therefore, and out of his great love for Mary, he had accepted the situation with the best face possible, and sought to disguise his heartache for the girl.

After the first brief and disconnected explanations, and while Ludovick ate the meal which the servants brought him, Mary told him of the treachery to Argyll, and how she had sought to use her knowledge of it to persuade the Earl to come and take up his still official appointment as Lieutenant of the North. Long before she was finished this part of her story, Ludovick had his chair pushed back, his food forgotten, and was striding about the room in indignation and near-despair.

'I need not ask you,' he interrupted the girl, at length, 'whose hand was behind this infamy! There is no lack of dastards and betrayers in this Scotland of ours, sweet Christ knows! But only one, I swear, who would think of such a thing as this! Of such extreme perfidy. It is his doing, I say, as though all signed and sealed with his own hand!' He swung on David Gray. 'You, sir – have you any doubts as to who was responsible? For this evil betrayal of Argyll?'

'None/ the other answered gravely. 'Although no doubt my brother would justify it to you in most convincing fashion!'

'Aye – for the King's and the realm's weal! Necessary, for the good steering of the ship of state! That, to Patrick, is justification for all. Hundreds may die, men behave worse than brute beasts, good faith be spat upon…!'

'I do not excuse any of it, Vicky, God knows,' Mary interrupted, 'but Patrick does care about bloodshed. Of that I am sure. I think that he truly believes that much of what he does is to spare worse things. Worse bloodshed. It may be folly, but it is his belief.'

'Aye, I have heard him at that, Mary! He is the chirurgeon! A little judicious blood-letting, here and there, to save a life! But it is ever Patrick who wields the knife, who chooses the victim!'

'Yes – but Vicky, had he not arranged the betrayal of Argyll, had he allowed the battle to go on, would there have been less bloodshed or more? Might there not have been a great deal more? In a full battle between two armies, as was planned, might not thousands have died? Instead of a few hundreds. Not only Gordons. As many and more Campbells might well have been slain in a true battle as in that rout which he contrived.' She shook her head, as the men stared at her. 'Oh, I may be wrong, wicked, to think such things. I may be too like Patrick, my own self! But – if we would contain and counter him, halt him in any way, we should at least seek to understand how he thinks, why he acts as he does! Is that not so?'

Ludovick did not answer, but David Gray nodded slowly.