Nigel Tranter - Lord and Master

'No?

'You do not doubt my ability?'

'I do not doubt your ability, Patrick.' Sombrely she said it 'If I have doubts, they are… otherwise.' 'I shall prove them baseless.'

'Perhaps. I hope so. So be it Go back, then, Master Patrick, and fail me not. For I have a long arm!'

'And a divinely fair hand at the end of it, Gloriana!' he whispered triumphantly, and raised her unresisting fingers to his lips.

MARIOTA GRAY nibbled her lip and shook her head in indecistion, her deep soft eyes troubled. 'What should we do in Edinburgh, Davy – in a great city? The children and I? We should be lost in the streets and wynds, choked amongst all those houses, in the stench. It would be worse than St Andrews, much…'

'It is not so ill as that, my dear,' David protested. 'Edinburgh is a fair town. We should have a house high in one of the tall lands, where we can look out far and wide. Patrick is generous with his money – wherever he gets it We can pay well for a house such as we want.'

'What would my lord do without us?' Mariota shifted her ground. 'You know how he dotes on Mary. He requires me to look to his needs…'

'And do not I – your husband? My lord managed very well before you came to Castle Huntly, girl. He will again. You are my wife, not my lord's. We have been apart too much, I tell you. Do you not wish to be with me, Mariota?'

'Aye, to be sure, Davy – you know that I do. You know weU how I have hated all this parting. But… need you go? Must you be off to Edinburgh, at Patrick's whistle? You are but newly back from England. Has he not used you sufficiently? Can you not stay at home, now? Is Castle Huntly no longer good enough for you?'

David ran a hand through his unruly hair. 'It is not that I would that I could return now to my old life here. It is what I intended, and looked to do.' Even as he said that, he knew that it was both truth and a lie. While one part of his mind longed for the simple country life and the verities and satisfactions of home and family, another was appalled at the thought of spending the rest of his days teaching unwilling and uncaring scholars in this quiet backwater, after the excitements of life with his brother at the centre of events. 'But Patrick needs me. He insists that I stay with him, in his present need.'

'And is Patrick your keeper, your master, now? Must he rule our lives?' Mariota's voice quivered a Uttle, strangely, as she. said that

'No. No – but… he is next to ruling Scotland, now.' David took a pace or two back and forth, in the room that was now theirs in the main keep of Castle Huntly. He had been back less than a month from the London embassage, and there was no hiding his restlessness. 'You know how it is, lass – how I am placed. I believe that Patrick does need me. Och, I know that it is little enough I can do, and that there is nothing so notable about Davy Gray. But the truth is that in some things I can affect Patrick, sway him. Not much, but a little. And, 'fore God, I need not tell you that often he needs the swaying! There's nights I canna sleep for thinking of what is in him, what devilish force, what power for ill. And good, too, I suppose – for he is the ablest man that I have ever known. But it is the ill that I ever fear will prove the stronger…'

'But is much of it not in your own mind, just, Davy? Always you have seen Patrick so, as though he was some sort of a monster. About him you are a little crazed in your mind, I think. Long I have felt that…'

He frowned, shaking his head impatiently. 'That is nonsense. I know Patrick – know him better than does anyone else. I tell you, I have felt the evil in him, again and again. It has done much harm, already. One day, I fear, it may destroy him – and God knows what else with him! If I can save him from that, even a little…'

'And so you must follow him, always, like a cow's calf? Oh, Davy – must you go?'

Stubbornly he jutted his jaw. 'Aye, I must. He is doing, now, what he has never done before – taking more and more of the rule of the realm into his own hands. Why, I know not – but he is. The King and the Privy Council are not stopping him. He needs a helper, a secretary, as never before. And there is still Mary the Queen to think of. If there is anything that I may do for her, it is with Patrick that I shall do it, That is certain. The LadyMarie says…'

'Aye – the Lady Marie says! She says aplenty, no doubt, And you heed her well, both of you! She… she is to be in Edinburgh also? Then – then perhaps I had best come with you, indeed!'

David smiled then. 'Och, do not say that you are jealous, lass? Of the Lady Marie! Save us – what next?'

'What next, indeed! You are ever speaking of her – and uncommon highly! I know her kind. Men are easily led astray by a pretty face…'

'Lord – then what about your pretty face, my dear? You are more beautiful than Marie Stewart, by far. 'Who are you leading astray? Only your poor husband, I hope?'

She still flushed like a girl when he spoke that way, and was the more lovely for her blushing. 'Do not think that you can cozen me, Davy Gray! Nor wheedle me into going to Edinburgh…'

'I neither cozen nor wheedle, woman – I command!' he declared, straight-faced, loudly. 'It is high time that I asserted myself, I see. You are my wife, and you will do as I say. You come to Edinburgh, and look after me, and warm my bed for me these winter nights, as is your plain duty… and keep me out of the clutches of the Lady Marie Stewart!'

She swallowed. 'Very well, sir,' she said.

And so, that winter, the David Grays were installed in three rooms high in a tall tenement in Edinburgh's Lawnmarket, near to the great house, former town mansion of the Earl of Gowrie, which his nephew Patrick had taken over. From their north-feeing windows they could look out over lesser roof-tops and smoking chimneys, over an almost illimitable prospect, over the Nor' Loch and fields beyond; across the silver Forth to the green uplands of Fife, to the soaring Ochils and the blue bastions of the Highland Line. Directly between, if far behind, the thrusting breasts of the twin Lomonds, David pointed out, lay Castle Huntly beyond the Tay, and often Mariota gazed thitherwards and could feel that she was not so very far from her own place, after all. She did not love the city life, as she had feared, nor indeed did her husband; but she made the best of it; and the children revelled in it. They were all quite proud, moreover, of this, – the first house that they had really been able to call their own.

David, at least, did notfind time to hang heavily. Never had he been so busy. Patrick was responsible, of course. Indeed, ever since the day of his return to Scotland from London, Patrick had been a changed man. Gone, apparently was the idling gallant' the trifler with poetry and play and women, the dallier with only the graces of life. Instead he had swiftly and deliberately become the active man of affairs, the vigorous and tireless statesman, drawing the reins of government ever more tightly into his own hands. Circumstances aided him in this. The King was delighted with him and the results of his mission-particularly the pension, provisionally set at?2,000 a year, which Elizabeth had reluctantly agreed to produce. Also, privately, the fact that he heed no longer worry about his mother corning back to take part of his kingship away from him. The Privy Council, as it was now composed, welcomed the improved relations with England and the Protestant alliance which Patrick had negotiated. They were more than ready to allow him to take on further responsibilities, for Arran's regime was lax, ineffective, appallingly corrupt, and growing ever more unpopular. His notorious Black Acts had turned the Kirk solidly against him, and much of the people with it; his boundless.appropriations of lands and wealth, and his open contempt of the laws, were too blatant even for Scotland, while his wife's rapacious bribe-taking, office-granting, and wild orgies offended all save the utterly depraved. Arran was essentially a lazy man, however ambitious, and it seemed that he was well enough content for Patrick to pick his chestnuts out of the fire for him, to put right much that was going wrong, and to accumulate numerous offices of state. He himself remained secure in the key position of Chancellor and President of the Council – and in James's affections, and, as was generally assumed, his bed. Certainly no open rupture occurred between the two men during this quiet but steady transfer of power.