Nigel Tranter: The Courtesan

The man stepped over to the table, and took the letter out of her hands. He was a stocky plain-faced youngish man -extraordinarily young-seeming to play the father to this burgeoning beauty. At thirty-two, indeed, he showed no single grey hair, no sign of thickening about the belly, no physical corroboration of the staid man of affairs, the schoolmaster, steward of a great estate, father of three, the man who had shortly rejected King Jamie's proffered accolade of knighthood but a year previously. Somewhat blunt-faced, heavy-browed, strong-jawed, grey-eyed, his hair worn short, and dressed in simple and well-worn homespun doublet and breeches and tall riding-boots, he looked perhaps a harder man than he was. Swordless despite his position of steward to the fifth Lord Gray, his father – and despite all the notable swording that was credited to him in days not so long past – he looked like a man who might be seeking the sober, the settled and the respectable rather before his time, and by no means always finding it.

'I shall tell you no such thing,' he said. 'On my soul, did you not hear me? I said that it was not for your eyes. It is naught to do with you.'

'It is from him. From my Uncle Patrick.'

'Aye.' For some reason his glance dropped before hers. 'Aye, more's the pity! But what he speaks is of no concern of yours, child. Nor…' David Gray sighed heavily, 'nor of mine either, indeed. Nor of mine!'

'Surely it is, Father? For I think that it concerns the King. 'Young J.' – that is King Jamie, is it not? Who else would he name our errant young friend J.? He is to be informed after these others. It is what he is to be informed that I do not understand.'

'God be good, Mary – I… I…!' Her father swallowed. 'Have done, girl, I tell you. Will you never heed what I say? You are too young. Fifteen years – a mere child…'

'At fifteen years you married my mother, did you not? Carrying me within her.' That was calmly, factually said.

David Gray drew a deep quivering breath, blinking grey eyes quickly, but found no words.

She went on, as calmly. 'I am not a child any more, Father. I am a woman now. You should know that.'

'I know that you are an upstart, saucy malapert, a hussy, a baggage! And that my letters are no concern of yours, d'you hear?'

'This letter greatly concerns my Uncle Patrick.' She paused on the name, and then repeated it carefully. 'My Uncle Patrick. Therefore it concerns me, does it not?'

David Gray opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again. He turned away from her, and took a few paces across the bare wooden flooring to the window, to stare, not down into the cobbled courtyard of the great castle, but out over the wide, grassy, cattle-dotted levels of the Carse of Gowrie and the blue estuary of Tay beyond, gleaming in the brittle fitful sunlight of a February noon stolen from spring. South and south he gazed, as though he would look far beyond Scotland, beyond England even, to sunny France or Spain or wherever his damnable, disgraced and yet beloved half-brother presently spent his banishment. And however hard he frowned, his grey eyes were not hard, at all.

In three light running paces, Mary was at his side, her hand on his arm, her lovely face upturned to his wistfully, all winsome tenderness now. And in such mood no man whom she had yet encountered could resist her.

'Forgive me, Father,' she said softly. 'You are my true father, my only father. And always will be. You have my devotion always. You know it. But… I must know of him. I cannot help myself, you see. What concerns him, I must know. Do you not understand?'

'Aye.' Licking his lips, David Gray turned to her, and his arm slipped up around her slender shoulders. His voice shook a little. 'Aye, lass. He is… what I can never be. Well I know it. And you are so like him. So… so devilish like him, child. Sometimes I am frightened…'

'I know,' she whispered: 'I know it. But never be frightened, Father. Never – for me. There is no need, I think.'

He considered her, all the quality of her that made him feel like a plough-horse beside a Barbary, a bludgeon beside a rapier; that made her unassuming country wear of scarlet homespun waisted gown, aproned and embroidered underskirt and white linen sark or blouse, in fact as simple as his own attire, appear as apt and as strikingly delectable as any court confection. He sighed.

'Aye, Mary – you are a woman now, in truth. Folly to shut my eyes to it. Yet, all the more you need guidance, counsel, protection, my dear.'

She nodded her dark-curled head, accepting that. 'But not from Uncle Patrick, I think?'

He hesitated a little before answering her slowly. 'I would that I could be sure of that.'

She searched his face intently. 'Mother says that you always have been less than fair to Uncle Patrick,' she observed. 'Do you think that is true?'

'Your mother knows him less well than I do, girl.'

'And yet… you love him, do you not?'

'Aye.' Sombrely he said it. 'Although it might be better -better for us all, I think – if I did not.'

'No.' She shook her head decidedly, rejecting that. 'No.' Then she smiled again, in her most winning fashion. 'You love me, and you say that you love him, Father. Yet you will not explain his letter. To me. When he says not to deny me and Mother his worship and devotion. And responsibility also, does he not say?'

David Gray ran a hand over brow and hair. 'Och, Mary, Mary – the letter is an ill one, a dangerous one. Better that you should know naught of it..

'But I do know some of it. Much of it, I think. I know that it concerns King Jamie, and therefore that it must concern us all, all Scotland. And if young J. is indeed the King, then will not the accursed woman be the Queen of England? Elizabeth? And will not that make the other unfortunate lady, on whom the fates waged war, our own good Mary the Queen, whom Elizabeth murdered? If I know all this, is it not better that I should know the rest? And I know that it is dangerous, for does he not say to doubt it all at your peril?'

'That is not the danger that I meant,' the man said. 'But let it be.' He shook his head over her again. 'I sooth, you are shrewd, child. Quick. Sharp as a needle. Your… your father's daughter, indeed!' He shrugged. 'I suppose, yes, having gleaned so much you may as well learn all. Mayhap it will teach you something… something about the Master of Gray. That you ought to know.' He spread out the letter. 'But… this is for your ears alone, mark you. You understand, Mary? No one else must know of it. Do not discuss it, even with your mother. She knows of the letter, but not all that it portends. She has ever misliked secrets. Nor would she understand much of it, besides. She frets. Some things it is better that she should not know.'

"I do not mislike secrets,' the girl said simply. 'And can keep them.'

He glanced at her sidelong, almost wonderingly. 'That I believe. Else I would not tell you this.' He tapped the much-travelled paper, soiled by the tarry paws of seamen and heaven knew what furtive secret hands in France or Spain or Italy. The missive bore no address.

'Patrick – your uncle – has not changed in a year,' he said heavily. 'Nor ever will, I believe. Ever he must dabble in affairs of state. It might have been thought, to be condemned to death for treason and only to have escaped with his life by the breadth of a hair, that he might have been cured of such folly. But, no. A few brief months after his banishment for life – eight months, no more – and he is back at it. I suppose that to have ruled Scotland in all but name is too much for him to forget, to renounce… although he said that never did he wish to bear the rule. And that I think he meant, in truth. And yet… I do not know. I cannot understand him, what makes him what he is…'