Nigel Tranter - The Courtesan

'Moreover, have they not his Countess with them, Sire. Have no fears.'

'Yon addlepate…!' the King muttered.

'Sire – is not this profidess talk?' Mar interjected. 'Moray can wait. He will deny this signature, anyway. Is it not more needful to be considering Bothwell? What he will do. He will be an angry man – and he is crazed enough when he is not! I wager he will now be a man beside himself. And only Huntly can field more men-at-arms.'

'Aye – I ken, I ken!' James quavered. 'Is that no' why I called this Council? He'll be rampaging the Borders, now. Raising the Marches against me!'

'Or nearer – at Hailes Castle, raising Lothian and the Merse.'

'Or nearer still, at Crichton, ready to descend on this Edinburgh!'

'My lords – Your Grace!' Patrick protested. 'Bothwell only made his escape last night. He can raise many men, yes -but they are scattered. It will take him time. He is hot-headed – but despite some of the testimony we have listened to, he is but human! He cannot descend upon His Grace, whether from the Borders or Hailes or Crichton, today or tomorrow – if such is his intention. Men take time to assemble – as most of us know from experience. We have time, therefore – a week, at least.'

'Aye, maybe,' James conceded. 'But time for what, man Patrick? I canna trust my Royal Guard, after this. Can I assemble men as quick as can Bothwell? And whose men…?'

'Have I not ever urged, Sire, that you should seek to enroll many more men? Not merely to increase the Royal Guard, but to have a force always ready. Your own men, for the sure defence of your realm. Other monarchs have such, and do not depend only on the levies of their lords…'

'But the siller, man – the siller! Where's it to come frae? To pay them. Elizabeth's that mean…'

There is siller, Sire in your own Scotland – not a little. And there are means of winning it. But now is not the time for that…'

'I rejoice to hear the Master of Gray admit that, at least!' Maitland remarked.

Patrick ignored him. 'Increase your Guard, yes. Appoint a new Captain. Have the Provost call out the City Bands.' 'I misdoubt if I can trust them!'

'They hate Bothwell, Sire. He has ridden roughshod down their High Street too often…'

The Lord Chancellor intervened again. 'Highness – all this will be done, without the Master of Gray's advising. You may entrust your safety to my hands.'

'Ooh, aye,' James acknowledged doubtfully.

'Heigho – then all is settled securely!' Patrick laughed, pushing back his chair. 'All will now be well. We have the Lord Chancellor's word for it! Surely we need no longer delay our breakfasts, gentlemen?'

Uncertainly they all looked at each other.

'Na, na,' die King objected. 'What's been decided? I dinna ken what's been decided?

Orkney guffawed. 'Why – that we adjourn. Maitland, here – a pox! I forgot. My Lord Maitland o' Thirlestane. My lord will attend to all. He kens our mind. To breakfast, then -before our bellies deafen us!'

The Privy Council broke up forthwith, however uncertain the monarch or frosty the Chancellor. As the members streamed out, Patrick stooped to the crouching King's ear.

'Sire,' he said quietly, 'the stags are fat and free of velvet in Falkland woods. You have been neglecdng them! Overmuch study, overmuch witchcraft, overmuch work, is serving you but ill. Move the Court to Falkland, Your Grace, and chase the deer again, instead of warlocks. You are further from Bothwell there. The Queen then can watch her house abuilding at Dunfermline, without bedding away from your side. And my lord of Moray, at Donibristle, is under your eye. To Falkland, Sire! Leave this Edinburgh to my Lord Chancellor.'

James Stewart looked up, and almost eagerly he nodded his heavy head.

MARY GRAY pulled up her sweating, foaming mount, and peered from under hand-shaded eyes into the already declining October sun. This ought to be the valley, surely? She had forded the River Earn fully five miles back, at Aberdalgie, and the land was obviously falling away, in front, to the next strath, that of the Almond she had been told, with the Highland hills rising beyond. Methven was this south side of the Almond, all agreed. Where then was the castle? This green land of wide grassy slopes and identical rounded knolls was confusing.

Stroking the mare's soaking quivering neck, she urged the tired beast on. She herself was tired, but this was no time to acknowledge it. For almost five hours she had been in the saddle – for foolishly, she had got lost amongst the Glenfarg foothills.

Rounding one more of the grassy knolls a mile or so further, she heaved a sigh of relief. Ahead, the hillocks seemed to draw back to leave a broad open basin of fair meadowland, cattie-dotted, and gently rising pasture, wide to the south but hemmed in and guarded on the north by the frowning ramparts of the blue heather hills. And on a tree-scattered terrace between meadows and upland, bathed in the golden rays of the slanting autumn sunlight, stood a large and gracious house, its red stonework glowing like old rose.

At first sight of it, Mary found a lump risen in her throat. Often she had visualised Methven Castle, Vicky's home, the place that he had besought her so often to come and rule as mistress. In her mind's eye she had seen it as little different from all those other castles which she knew so well, Castie Huntly where she had been born, Broughty, Foulis, Craigmillar, tall frowning battlemented towers of rude stone, small-windowed, picked out with gunloops and arrow-slits, stern, proud, aggressive. But this was quite other, a smiling place of pleasing symmetry, of slender turrets and many large windows reflecting the sun. A sort of royal dower-house for generations, and never a grasping lord's stronghold, James had given Methven to Ludovick in a fit of eager generosity on his first coming to Scotland from France, as an eight-year-old boy. Like a magnet it beckoned to the lone rider now.

Nevertheless, as Mary rode into the fine paved courtyard on the north side of the castle, enclosed by wings of domestic buildings, she gained no sense of welcome, no feeling of reception of any sort. The house itself was nowise unfriendly, quietly detached, serene, rather; but of human reaction there was none. No grooms came churrying to her horse's head, no men-at-arms lounged about the yard, no faces looked out from the ranks of the windows. The great front door stood wide open, certainly, and white pigeons strutted and fluttered and cooed about the courtyard, but otherwise the place might have been deserted. Autumn leaves had drifted in heaps in many corners, and no single plume of smoke rose above any of the numerous chimneys.

Mary's heart sank, as she dismounted stiffly

Leaving her mare to stand in steaming weariness, she moved over to the open doorway. After a moment or two of hesitation, she raised her voice in a long clear halloo. Other than the echoes, and the sudden alarm of the pigeons, there was no response.

She stepped in over the threshold, into a wide vestibule. It was lighter, brighter, in here than in any of the houses that she knew, with their thick walls and small windows. At either end of it a broad turnpike stairway arose – two stairs, an unimagined luxury. Yet even in here dead leaves had blown. The great house was entirely silent; only the soft murmuration of the pigeons broke the quiet.

Somehow Mary could not bring herself to shout out again, inside that hushed place. Biting her lip, she was moving over to one of the stairways when she perceived a cloak thrown carelessly over a chair in a corner, most of it trailing on the floor. Her heart lifted at the sight. She recognised it as one of Vicky's cloaks, and certainly it was thrown down in his typical fashion. The familiarity of it, so simple a thing as it was, warmed her strangely. Kilting up her riding-habit, she ran light-footed up the winding stair.