Nigel Tranter - The Courtesan

A further dispensation of your liberality would much aid me, I would mention.

Meanwhile, may the good God prosper all your affairs, as they now prosper here, and grant you health and well-being to match your wit and beauty. Until these poor eyes feast upon your loveliness again,

I remain, sweet lady, your humblest and most devoted servant and adorer,

'Well?' Hay demanded, when he saw that she had finished reading.

Mary moistened her lips, but for once had no words.

'You see what he says? What it means? It is lies – all lies. You know it, as do I. He knows it also – the Master of Gray. But it could mean my Duke's head, nevertheless.'

'It… is… ill… done,' the girl said slowly, each word standing alone.

'It is worse than that, by God!' the young man cried. 'This is as good as an assassination! Written to Elizabeth of England, who hates the house of Lennox. She will inform the King. Nothing is more sure. Higher treason than this could scarce be thought of. And all lies. My master no more desires the throne than, than…'

'I know it,' Mary said quietly. 'This shall not be.'

Something about her voice calmed him. 'What can we do?' he asked.

'I shall do what I should have done, long since,' she told him, levelly. 'God forgive me that I have waited this long.' Doubtfully he eyed her.

'Patrick is still at Hailes, with the King?' she asked.

'Yes.'

'I shall see him, then, tonight. You said that you escort the Queen there, forthwith? This afternoon?' 'Yes. But what can you do?'

She did not seem to hear him. 'Peter,' she went on, 'take these letters to Sir Richard Bowes. All save this of Patrick's. Tell him what happened.' She leafed through the other letters. 'These are no concern of ours. Do not tell him of this one. If he knew aught of it, and asks you, you know nothing. The robbers must have taken it. You understand?'

'Aye. You will keep it?'

'Meantime, yes. And, Peter – when you have taken us to Hailes, I think that I may have a further task for you. If you will do it? Weary as you will be…?'

'Anything, Mistress Mary,' he assured her.

'My thanks. Now, to the Queen. And then, while she prepares to ride, to Sir Richard Bowes' lodging.'

'Aye. You know what you will do?'

'God granting me the resolution, I do,' she said. 'Come.'

In a stone garden-house of the pleasance of Hailes Castle, in the gorge of Tyne, the only place it seemed in that crowded establishment where she could be assured to privacy, Mary Gray turned to face her father, pale, set-faced.

This will serve I think, Patrick,' she said.

'I should hope so!' Patrick, although he laughed, considered her shrewdly. 'I warrant half the Court is watching this so secret assignment! And debating the wherefore of it. As I do also, moppet, I confess. Rejoice as I do in your company therefore, my dear, I bid you be discreetly brief. In here. Lest your reputation suffers – and I, I am labelled even worse than I am! A man who would corrupt his own daughter!'

'Would that was all that you could be labelled!' she told him flatly.

'Eh…?' Startled now, he stared. 'What a plague do you mean by that?'

'I mean, Patrick, that I have come to know you for what you are. At last. I can no longer blind myself.' Still-faced, he waited, unspeaking.

'Davy warned me,' she went on, in a curious, unemphatic, factual voice. 'Others also, to be sure. Times a-many. But I believed that they wronged you. Deep down, they wronged you. I believed that I knew you better – because I knew myself. And loved you. We were out of the same mould, you and I. So that I understood you, as others did not. I saw the gold beneath the tarnish. But it was I who was wrong. There is no gold there. Only… corruption!'

Taut-featured now as she was herself, he stood motionless, scarcely seeming to breathe. Only his delicate nostrils flared, as a spirited horse's will flare. As did her own, indeed. Never had they seemed more alike, those two. 'Yes?' he said.

'You betray all with whom you have dealings,' she told him, and the unemotional, level, almost weary certainty of her utterance made the indictment the more terrible. 'You betray always, for love of betrayal. Davy said that you were a destroyer. I know now that you are worse than that. A destroyer can at the least be honestly so. A lion, a boar, a wolf – these have their parts. But you – you seek men's trust and love, in order to destroy them. You charm before you betray. You, Patrick, are not even a wolf. You are a snake!'

'God's passion!' Blazing-eyed the Master took a step towards her, fists clenched, knuckles white. Almost it seemed that he would strike her. Only with a tremendous and very apparent effort of will did he hold himself back. Pandng, his words came pouring out, his voice no longer musical and pleasingly modulated but harsh, strident, staccato. 'How dare you! You young fool! What do you know? In your insufferable ignorance! None speaks me so – you, nor any. Do you hear? Christ – you, of all!'

She stood, head up, unflinching, meeting his furious gaze, not challenging or defiant, but with a calm resolution, sorrowful but sure. She actually nodded her head. 'I know – because this time you have betrayed yourself,' she told him. 'This time it is your own words that condemn you. Written testimony.'

That gave him pause. He drew a deep quivering breath. 'What mean you by that?' he asked thickly.

'I mean that you have gone too far in betrayal. Even for my indulgence, Patrick. I did not believe that you had betrayed Mary the Queen, to her death. Now I do. For I have proof that you have betrayed the King. And intend to do so further. You betrayed Moray, again to his death. Bothwell here, also. The Hamiltons. Even Huntly, and your Catholics. For money. For power. For revenge. For amusement, sport, no less! And now, God forgive you if He can, you have betrayed Vicky.' 'A-a-ah!'

'I warned you,' she went on inexorably. 'At Dunfermline. I warned you to cast down no more men. If you touched Vicky, I said, I would no longer forget my duty.'

'Vicky!' He spat out the name. 'That young blockhead! For him you speak me so! For that ducal dolt you would discard me? Me, your father! He has turned your silly head.'

'Not my head, Patrick,' she corrected. 'My heart, perhaps, but not my head. The head that I heired from you. The heart, I pray God, I heired from my mother!'

'You insolent jade! You interfering hussy! Foul fall you -are you out of your mind? Are you, girl…?' The man's words faltered, however, as something of the quality of his daughter's strange certainty tempered the heat of his fury. 'What is it? Out with it! What lies has Lennox been spilling into your foolish ears?' he demanded.

'None,' she told him. 'I have not seen Vicky for three days. The lies, Patrick, are all your own! Written lies. In your letter to Queen Elizabeth.'

His lips parted, and he drew a long breath, but spoke no word.

'That evil letter will not reach Elizabeth,' she went on. 'It was… intercepted. I have read it…'

'Great God! Who…? Who intercepted it? Who has seen it?' Patrick grasped her arm in his sudden urgency. 'Where is it, Mary? Not… not Bothwell? Or the King…?'

'Would you be here, a free man, this night, had either of these seen it?'

He moistened his lips. 'Who then? I warn you, girl – do not seek to cozen me!'

'Who intercepted it matters not, Patrick. Only one other, and myself, have seen it… as yet.'

'Where is it, then? Who holds it?'

'I hold part of it.'

'Part? Only part?'

'There were two sheets, you will recollect. Within the plain outer paper. Written with your own hand, and sealed with your seal. That in which you betray Vicky, I hold. The other is… elsewhere.'