Nigel Tranter - The Courtesan

'My lord – I'd urge you to mind that you speak to my wife!'

'D'you think I forget it, man? Waesucks, yon's no' a thing any o' us could forget, I swear!'

'Then I'd have her spoken to with the respect that is her due. And mine. Or…'

'Aye, then… or? Or what?'

'Or you can seek a new steward, my lord.'

'Ho, ho! So that's it, by God? Hoity-toity, eh? I can, can I?'

'You can, yes. Nor find one so cheap, who will save your precious siller as I do. Nor write your letters to certain proscribed and banished lords!'

His father's swiftly indrawn breath all but choked him.

Both women turned to him, as quickly – Mary keen-eyed in speculation, her mother unhappy, alarmed.

'No, no, Davy!' Mariota cried. 'Not that. Pay no heed to it…'

'I heard him. Not for the first time. And paid heed. As I urge my lord to do now!'

Mary spoke. 'Granlord – you are tired. From your journey.

And hungry. I can hear your belly rumbling, I vow! Come you. Mother and I will have your table served before you have your harness off. Come.'

Lord Gray looked from her, past her mother, to his son, and meeting David's eye directly, swallowed audibly.

'Och, be no' so thin-skinned, Davy!' he said huskily. 'You're devilish touchy, man, for a… a… Houts, Davy – let it be, let it be.' The older man flung his arm around the girl's slender shoulders. 'Aye, lassie – you have the rights o' it. As usual. Come, then – and aid me off with this gear. Aye, and feed me some victuals. Thank the good Lord there's one with some wits in her head…!' And muttering, the Lord Gray stalked off limping towards the guarded doorway of the great keep, Mary seeking to match her pace at his side.

David Gray muttered also – more to himself than to his bonny agitated wife. 'Patrick! Patrick Gray!' he whispered. 'Still you can do it. Set us all by the ears. Every one of us. Wherever you are. Still you pull the strings, be it from France or Spain – and we dance! Damn you – are we never to be quit of you?'

But that last was breathed on a sigh.

It was evening before Mary Gray saw her father alone again, with my lord safely carried to his bed in a drunken stupor, and the girl on her way to her own little garret chamber high within the keep's dizzy battlements. On the corkscrew stone staircase they met.

'I know how we must gain the King's ear, Father,' she said, without preamble. 'With Uncle Patrick's tidings. I had thought that my lord would be able to speak with the King. He is great with the Kirk and the Protestant lords. But he is so bitter against Uncle Patrick… ' She took David's arm. 'You have not told him, I think? Of the letter?'

'I have not. Nor shall. But what of it, girl? It is no concern of yours.'

She ignored that. 'Moreover if Granlord has been writing letters to banished lords – that is what you said, is it not? To banished and proscribed lords? Or, since he writes but ill, you wrote them for him? That could be treasonable, could it not? So my lord may not stand over well with the King, after all.

Any more than do you. Father. So…'

'Lord!' the man gasped. 'What has come into you, child? All this of statecraft and affairs of the realm! Grown men's work, lords' work – not lassies'. Put it from you, Mary. Forget that you ever saw yon letter. Off to your bed, now…'

'Somebody must do something, Father,' she insisted. 'And I know what to do.'

Uncertainly he stared at her, by the smoky light of the dip that he carried, flickering in the draughty stairway and casting crazy shadows on the bare red stone walls.

'We must tell Vicky,' she said. 'And he will tell the King. Vicky Stuart, the Duke of Lennox.'

David Gray blinked rapidly, and moistened his lips. He did not speak.

'Is it not the best way, and the surest?' she went on. 'Vicky liked me well. And King Jamie likes Vicky. He is closer to the King than is anyone else, he says – even the Chancellor. And he sides with the Protestants – though he knows not the difference in one belief from another, I vow! And he was brought up a Catholic, was he not?' She smiled.

The man pinched his chin. 'All this may be true, girl. But… the Duke is ever at the King's side. To reach him will be as difficult, belike, as to come to the King himself. And he is young, little more than a laddie – young even for his years…'

'Is that not all the better, Father? He will do as I say.'

'As you say! You flatter yourself, child, do you not? Lennox likes you well enough, in a way, I dare say. You are bonny, and you played together as bairns, yes. Although, then I mind, you thought him dull…'

'He still is dull,' she agreed, frankly. 'But he is kind and honest.' Mary Gray's dark eyes gleamed amusedly. 'And he says that he would die for me!'

Her father gulped. 'Die! For you? Lennox? What… what nonsense is this, mercy on us?'

'It is not nonsense, Father. At least, he swore it on his heart and the cross of his sword!'

David Gray sought for words. 'I… I… you… Dear God – he must be clean daft! Duller even than we knew! But this would be but child's talk – when he was a laddie indeed?

Bairns playing together.'

'Not so. It was not long since. And does he not write it anew, in each letter?'

'Letter…? Lennox? The Duke writes letters…?'

'Indeed, yes. He is a better writer than a talker is Vicky! He writes very well.' She laughed. 'As do I, of course, likewise.'

The man shook his head, completely at a loss. 'You? How can this be? Letters! You… you are cozening me, child. How can you write to the Duke? 'Tis more bairns' make-believe…'

Almost pityingly she regarded him. 'It is the truth.'

'But… how could you send letters? Have you a messenger, a courier? You?'

'No. But Vicky has. Indeed, he uses the King's couriers, and so do I.'

'On my soul, Mary… you… ' Her father had difficulty with his respiration. 'You use the King's couriers? For your exchange of letters? You – Mary Gray – and young Ludovick of Lennox! Lord – this is beyond all belief!'

'Why should it be? It is very simple, Father. The King, or the Council, are ever sending couriers to the Master of Glamis, that is Lord Treasurer, at Aldbar. Or to the Sheriff of Forfar. Or to my Lord Ogilvie at Airlie. These must needs pass here. Vicky, who is on the Council likewise, gives the man a letter for me, also. He leaves it at the mill at Inchture. Cousin Tom there brings it to me. I leave mine at the mill for the courier to take up, on his way back. Could aught be more simple?'

The other's head wagged helplessly. 'I' faith, it is beyond me! Beyond all. Tom Affleck in it, too – and therefore his father. Whom I shall speak with, 'fore God!' David Gray's own mother had been Nance Affleck, the winsome daughter of the miller of Inchture. 'And does it… does it stop at writing letters, girl?' he got out.

'Oh. no. We meet. But only now and again. Not so oft as Vicky would have it, I assure you.'

'You… meet!' Easy simple words to make such a croaking over. 'He was here – Lennox was here – three months past, yes. On his way to my Lord Innermeath at Redcastie… '

'He was here last week,' the girl amended demurely. 'We have an arrangement. The King is often at Falkland, hunting. Vicky can ride to Newburgh in little more than an hour, he says, from Falkland, cross the ferry to Enroll, and be here in another hour. He rides fast horses – the King's own. It takes him but little longer from his own castle of Methven, the other side of Saint John's town of Perth…'

'Damnation – will you be quiet, girl! I care not how long it takes him, how he comes hither to you! Do you know what this makes you, child? You – our daughter? Meeting secretly with the second man in the realm, the King's cousin? You, a common clerk's daughter – at least, in the eyes of men. A bastard's daughter. It makes you a… a… ' He stopped, regaining partial control of himself somehow – and it was seldom indeed that David Gray required to do that. 'You have not…? He has not…? Och, Mary lass – he hasna…?'