Nigel Tranter - The Courtesan

Pensively the two women watched the man and girl ride off eastwards, thinking their own thoughts.

The larks carolled, the sun shone, the countryside basked, and Patrick Gray seemed to have not a care in the world this fine morning. He was barely out of earshot of the castle gatehouse before he began to sing. He had an excellent lightsome tenor voice, and plunged straight into some gay and melodious French air which seemed to bubble over with droll merriment. It took only a few moments for Mary to catch the lilt and rhythm of it, and to add her own joyful trilling accompaniment, wordless but effective. Thereafter they sang side by side in laughing accord, clear, uninhibited, neither in the least self-conscious, caring naught for the astonished stares of the villagers of Longforgan or the embarrassed frowns of the two Orkney servants who rode well to the rear as though to disassociate themselves from the unseemly performance in front.

After the village there was a long straight stretch of road before it reached the coast at Invergowrie, and with a flourish Patrick smacked his horse into a canter. Not to be outdone, Mary prompdy urged her own mount to a round gallop, passing the man with a skirled challenge, hair flying dark behind, her already short enough skirt blown back above long, graceful legs. Shouting, the Master spurred after her, gradually overtaking, until neck and neck they thundered together, raising a cloud of brown dust all along a couple of miles of rutted highway, whilst cattle scattered in nearby fields, folk peered from cot-house doors and the grooms behind cursed and made pretence of keeping up.

Just short of Invergowrie they pulled in their frothing beasts to a trot once more, the girl panting breathless laughter and pulling down her skirt. Patrick reached out, to run a hand down her flushed cheek and over her shoulder and the heaving curve of her young bosom.

'We are sib… you and I… are we not?' he said.

'Indeed, yes,' she agreed, frankly. 'Would it not be strange if we were not… since you sired me?'

'M'mmm.' Sidelong he looked at her, silenced.

She turned in her saddle. 'You did not think that I did not know, Uncle Patrick?' she wondered.

'I… I was uncertain. Your father… h'mmm… my brother, Davy Gray – he has never said…'

'Not to me. But I knew, years ago. Many made sure that I knew.'

'Aye, many would! But… ' He smiled again. 'God bless you – it was the best thing that ever I did, I vow!'

'A better would have been to wed my mother, would it not?'

It took him a moment or two to answer that. 'Perhaps you are right, my dear,' he admitted, quietly for him. 'I… I do not always choose the better course, I fear.'

'No,' she agreed simply. 'That I know also.'

Again the swift sidelong glance. 'You are like me, child, God knows. But… in some ways, curse me, you're devilish like Davy also! Like your, your Uncle Davy.'

She nodded seriously. 'I hope so, yes. For he is the finest man in this realm, I do believe. But… he is Father, not Uncle Davy. He, he fathered me, whilst you but sired me, Uncle Patrick. There is a difference, is there not?'

The Master of Gray looked away, his handsome features suddenly still, mask-like. 'Aye,' he said.

They rode in silence, then, through Invergowrie, and kept down by the shore-track thereafter to avoid the climbing narrow streets and wynds of hilly Dundee.

As they went, they could see men busily engaged in building up the broken town walls, and at the boat-harbour others urgently unloading vessels.

'It is an ill thing when people must fear their own folk, their own countrymen, because of the way that they worship the same God, is it not?' Mary observed. 'I do not understand why it should be.'

Tt is one of the major follies of men,' her companion acceded. 'A weakness, apparently, in all creeds.'

'Yes. A weakness that, they say, you use for your own purposes, Uncle Patrick. Is it so, indeed?'

He puckered his brows, wary-eyed – for Patrick Gray seldom actually frowned. 'I must use what tools come to my hand, my dear.'

'For your own purposes, always?'

'For purposes that I esteem as good, child.'

'Good for whom, Uncle Patrick?'

'Lord, Mary – what is this that you have become? You talk like a minister of the Kirk, I swear! How old are you? You cannot be more than just sixteen – for I am but thirty-one myself! Here is no talk, no thoughts, for a girl. You should be thinking of other things at your age, lass. Happier things. To do with clothing and pretty follies. With lads and wooing. With courting and marriage, maybe…'

Direcdy she turned to face him, clear eyed. 'Like King Jamie, perhaps?'

Patrick touched mouth and chin. 'The King's wooing is of rather more serious import, my dear. So much may depend upon it. An heir to the throne, the peace and prosperity of the realm, the weal – perhaps even the lives – of many.'

Gravely, almost judicially, she inclined her head. 'That is what I thought, yes. That is why, Uncle Patrick, I sent word to the King about the Princess of Navarre.'

'You… what?'

'I sent word to the King. Through Vicky. Through the Duke of Lennox. Vicky does what I say, you see. I sent him word that the lady was ill-favoured and old and would bed with any. As the Lady Marie told Father.'

'Precious soul of God – you! It was you? You who turned James against the match? After all my labour, my scheming…!'

'Yes.'

'But this is beyond all belief! That you, you my own daughter, should think to do such a thing! And why? Why, in God's name?'

'Because it was not good. Surely you see it? The Lady Marie is true and honest She would not lie – not to Davy

Gray. If the Princess is bad, and old, and ugly, then she should not be Queen in Scotland. King Jamie is but ill-favoured himself. With an old and ugly queen, would not the Crown be made to seem the more foolish? Weak, when it needs rather to be strong? If she is old, it might be that there would be no child, no heir to the throne. And that is important, is it not? Did you not just say so? Moreover, if she is but a whore, it could be that if a child there was, none would know who sired it. I think that would have been but an ill turn to Scotland, Uncle Patrick. So I sent word to Vicky. And that the little picture was ten years old, and a flattery.'

The Master of Gray let his breath go in a long sigh. He did not speak.

'I am sorry that you are angry,' she went on, reaching over to touch his arm. 'Do not be angry. Was what I did wrong?'

Slowly he turned to consider her, all of her, vital, lovely, pleading, yet somehow also compassionate, forbearing, so unassumingly sure of herself. Swallowing, he shook his head.

'I am not angry,' he said. 'And, Heaven forgive me, you were not wrong!'

Mary smiled then, warmly, nodding her head three or four times as though in confirmation of what she already knew.

They were not much more than half-way to Broughty Castle, but already they could see it rearing proud and seeming defiant on its little peninsula that thrust out into the estuary four or five miles ahead. Something of a fortress this, rather than an ordinary castle, the Grays had used it for generations, in conjunction with another at Ferry-Port-on-Craig on the Fife shore opposite, to command the entrance of the Tay, thus narrowed by headlands. Theoretically it was for the defence of Dundee and other Tay ports, but in fact had been used to levy tolls and tribute from all shipping using the harbours – a notable source of the Gray wealth. My lord's father, the fourth lord, had shamefully surrendered it to the English under Somerset nearly forty years before, during a disagreement with the Queen Regent, Mary of Guise; and my lord himself, two years later, had gained his limp and almost lost his life seeking to retake it. The damage done then, by cannon-fire, had never been fully repaired – hence the present crisis.