Nigel Tranter - Past Master

Mar shrugged. 'I have not Your Grace's gift for words,' he said shortly. 'I'd name her a dirty bitch and h' done with it!'

'Shameless and shameful;' James muttered to himself. 'Aye, I could use that…'

'Sire – may I conduct you to my lord of Orkney?' Lennox urged, and the King allowed himself to be escorted along the dimly-lit and echoing passage. In dark corners and recesses couples clung and wrestled and panted, and if James seemed disposed to linger and peer, his companions marched him along to the great hall from which light and music and shouted laughter streamed forth.

It was a lively and colourful scene that met their gaze, from the arched doorway of that abbey refectory. Three sides of the huge apartment, where hundreds of candles flared and wavered and smoked, were lined with tables where men and women sat or sprawled or clutched each other, amongst a litter of broken meats, flagons of wine and spilled goblets. There were many gaps at the tables, some represented by snoring figures who lay beneath. Dogs, great deerhounds and wolfhounds, were successfully taking over the remains of the repast unmolested either by the diners or the servants, themselves apt to reel, who still plied a proportion of the guests with fresh flagons. In the central space a group of gipsy fiddlers played vigorously, and to their jigging music a dark, flashing-eyed girl, diaphanously clad only in veiling, danced sinuously, voluptuously, to a great solemn dancing bear, which lumbered around her suggestively graceful posturings with a sort of ponderous dignity. And along the table-tops themselves, a man stepped and picked his way amongst the platters, bottles and debris, himself tripping a step or two of the dance now and again, skipping over some diner fallen forward with too much hospitality. He was a portly, florid, elderly man in disarrayed finery, who played a fiddle the while in tune with the gipsies, though occasionally using the bow to poke shrewdly at certain of the ladies below him – the Lord Robert Stewart, Earl and Bishop of Orkney.

It took the Earl – or anybody else, for that matter – some little time to notice the newcomers. When he did, he produced a great resounding crescendo of screeches from his fiddle, and flourished the instrument, to end by bowing low over it in an exaggerated genuflection which drew all eyes capable of being drawn in the direction of the doorway. What he said was of course lost in the general hubbub. He did not descend from the table-top. The lady and the bear continued to dance.

James had no eyes save for the bear, his expression registering a mixture of alarm and unwilling admiration. Indeed he backed a little against his companions each time the brute turned in his direction. Quite clearly he had no intention of advancing further into the hall until the creature was safely out of the way.

When, presently, the young woman reached a climax of hip-twisting, stomach-gyrating and bosom-shaking ecstasy, and thereafter slipped in close actually to embrace and rub herself against the burly upstanding shaggy animal, and its great fore-paws closed around her twitching, fragile-seeming form as the music sobbed away to silence, the King all but choked.

'Waesucks! Look at that!' he cried, in agitation. 'Look at the lassie! And yon horrid brute-beast. Och, foul fall it – the nasty great crittur! It'll… it'll… och, save us all – this isna decent!'

'It is but a ploy, Sire. There is no danger,' Mar assured. 'The gipsies tame these brutes from cubs. They come from Muscovy or some such parts. She'll come to no hurt – not from the bear, leastwise!'

James shook his heavy head. 'She shouldna ha' done that,' he declared, frowning. 'I didna like that. Na, na – it's no' right…'

With the musicians for the moment silenced, and the girl disentangling herself from the bear without difficulty and mincing off, the creature resuming all fours and waddling after her meekly enough, Orkney from his raised stance lifted his richly-seasoned voice.

'Our gracious lord! Most noble and revered liege and suzerain. Welcome to my humble house and board, Sire! Come, Majesty, and honour this poor company.' The Earl, whether deliberately or by accident, ended that with a notable belch.

With an eye on the disappearing bear, James nodded, and began to move forward. 'Aye, my lord – but no more o' yon, mind. No more wild beasts, see you.' Compared with his uncle, he had a singularly squeaky, and thick uneven voice.

Most of those in possession of their wits had got to their feet, or approximately so, though not without some stumbles and collapses. A place was cleared for the monarch and his two companions at the centre of the high transverse table at the head if the chamber, Orkney arranging this with the aid of his fiddlebow. The officer of the Guard who had accompanied the King detached himself and made a circuit of the tables, knocking off the hats of such revellers as had so far forgotten themselves as to remain covered in the presence of the Lord's Anointed.

James had difficulty with his stave, as he sat down, not knowing quite what to do with it and apparently reluctant just to lay it on the floor. Eventually room was made for it to lie along the table itself – where unfortunately its bunch of ribbons lay in a pool of spilt wine. Lennox hoped that it was a good omen that the King had brought that staff tonight; it had been a present from the Master of Gray, brought on the occasion of his last return from banishment, as unauthorised then as now, five years before.

James, waving aside the food and drink set before him, drew out from within his doublet a crumpled bunch of papers, which he spread carefully on the table before him. At sight of them Orkney groaned, and hastily signed to the musicians to strike up once more.

'My new ode, my lord,' the King revealed, patting it proudly. 'More properly, an epode. Aye, an epode. To the new prince, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick and Lord of the Isles. Or, alternatively, to the Princess of Scotland, as the case may be. I'ph'mm. Just some wee bits of changes, here and there, will serve. Near finished, it is, but for a verse or two. Aye, and it goes excellently well, I warrant you. I have seldom wrought better verse. I will read it…' He looked up in annoyance as the gipsy players broke into full fiddle. 'A plague on that ill squawking!' he exclaimed, and flapped a paper at the musicians as one might shoo away a wasp. 'I say that I'll read it. I am prepared to honour this company wi' the first reading o' this most royal epode! Hush them, man – hush them.'

'Your Grace – perhaps later?' his uncle said urgently. 'When all is quiet When the servants ha' removed the meats, the eating over.'

'Tush, man – am I, the King, to wait for scullions and lackeys? And these scurvy Egyptians wi' their caterwauling!'

'No, Sire – not so. I but suggested that it would be mair seemly suitable, to hear your verses later. After you've partaken o' my providing.' Orkney's voice was rich, thick, and just a little slurred. He was not drunk – he was seldom actually drunk; equally seldom was he sober. 'I'm no' hungry. Nor thirsty.'

'A pity, Sire. But the maist o'my guests are both! To read this… this effusion now, could be but casting pearls before swine, I say.' He had a little difficulty with that phrase. 'I had thought, later. When all are eaten. In a small privy room, maybe…'

'No' here? No' to a' the company? But I came to read it, man! It's a right notable rhapsody…'

'No doubt, Jamie – but it's no' a' folk who can take in the like, see you. There's a wheen o' them here'd no' appreciate it. There'd be no keeping them quiet. Better to have but a few. In a small room. Presently.'

The King was offended. 'We are displeased. Much displeased,' he said. 'Vicky Stewart said I should read it.' He gathered up his papers, and pushed back his chair. 'Where's this room thens my lord?'