Colin Campbell had already obtained from Nicholas the return he expected on more serious matters. It had been done, smoothly, at another break in the journey, and away from the Preceptor, and the Bishop, and especially away from the royal half-uncles. When, in a private room, the Earl of Argyll said, ‘Well, Nicol?’ he was not looking for jokes. He wanted to know whether the English peace might be threatened because the King’s sister had become secretly pregnant.
It was too important to conceal, if you knew. Kathi had agreed. Nicholas reported it without stress, as one would any fact affecting the wellbeing of a nation. ‘The pregnancy is of about five months’ duration. The father is married, young Will Crichton. Grandson of the Chancellor; connected to the Dunbars, and to Luss and to Huntly. His wife is Marion Livingstone, and the child will be born before he could be freed of the marriage on any grounds. For what it’s worth, my lord, it doesn’t smack of personal ambition. The Princess is by nature indiscreet and defiant. He is young. Both are attractive. Flung together by someone like Simpson, they were very likely to go to extremes, especially if they believed, as two of her brothers did, that the English marriage was wrong and the King was not to be trusted. Although Crichton could hardly have put any reliance on my lord of Mar. Cochrane’s tales of what happened up north are quite disturbing.’
‘I’ve heard them,’ Argyll had said. ‘And what happened in Edinburgh. That’s why he isn’t here. Andreas volunteered to look after him. Otherwise every envoy from England and beyond will learn about the fallen bride of Earl Rivers from Johndie Mar’s frenzied lips.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Nicholas.
‘So am I. Is mairg aig am bi iad,’ had said Colin Campbell. ‘But that is what we have to work with, and we must do it. When we are back in Edinburgh, we shall confer. And meanwhile, what else?’
He told it, concisely, for what it was worth. Before the snow sealed the highways, there had been some unexplained movements among the friends of Archibald, Earl of Angus, who had been such a good ally to Sandy on the last Border raid.
‘He is planning something?’ Argyll had said.
‘They think so, in Berwick. Perhaps you would care to speak to Bertram and Yare. Yare might also advise about Crichton. They do business together.’
‘Tom Yare would do business with Lucifer. So what is de Fleury’s advice?’
‘Not to worry,’ had said Nicholas. ‘With snow like this, nothing can happen. Make the most of it.’
And, since he thought that was true, here he was, in a circle of bonfires, dragging a performance out of just about every man, woman and child of those whose shining faces surrounded him; juggling torches while men leaped over hurdles, and others danced to the pipes, and wrestled, and battered each other with poles while balancing on high, twanging ropes tied to roof-poles. Tom Yare sportingly repeated a long piece of verse with a lot of Rs in it, and children chanted and skipped. And finally MacChalein Mor his own self, stripped to the waist, long pale hair whipping, cartwheeled into the centre and danced, with high-flung hands and arched feet, while his men made mouth-music; the sound of it flittering over the snow, light as a wagtail in drink.
When it was over, and the camp was quiet, Jodi drew close to his father. ‘Could I do that?’
‘What?’ said Nicholas cautiously.
‘Make dancing-music with my mouth.’
‘If you’ve got enough breath. Two people are better.’
‘Could Margaret do it?’ Jodi said. ‘If you showed her?’
Is mairg aig am bi iad
Is mairg aig nach bi iad; co iad?
Pity who have them. Pity who have them not. What are they?
Clann.
Children.
NEXT MORNING, THE messenger burst into the camp, shouting for their lordships of Buchan and Atholl.
Bare in the crackling snow, Colin Campbell got there before they did. ‘Be quiet. What?’
Nicholas, equally unclad, came running.
It was what they had feared. Johndie Mar, knife in hand, running wild.
IN EDINBURGH, AS yet, no one knew. Enclosed in its frozen countryside, the town clung, silently smoking, to its long slope, with the Castle stark and detached on its height, guarding its secrets.
The day before, provoked into a quarrel by some impatient remark of the King’s, John of Mar had drawn steel on his brother. Drawn it, distressingly, not as a murderer with a grievance or an assassin for some noble cause, but as a spoiled lad, frustrated, looses a whip at a horse. The blade had pricked the King’s skin, that was all, before the Guard had dragged off the Prince and taken his dagger. The King, overcome, had collapsed and lain shivering on his bed ever since, with Conrad at his side. The Earl of Mar had been locked in his room, with Dr Andreas in attendance. Will Scheves, with Master Secretary Whitelaw and the Governor of the Castle, had sworn to silence all those who knew, and had sent to find the King’s chief advisers and, of course, his uncles.
Because, perhaps, it was thought unsafe to leave him outside, Nicholas was with that first small party which entered the Castle, and which, as time went on, was augmented by other arrivals as messengers reached those whom the King trusted: his Burgundian councillor, Lord Cortachy; his Chancellor, Avandale; his efficient master of defence, Tam Cochrane. The outlying members of the Archers were called back to duty, among them Henry de St Pol of Kilmirren, whose grandfather also returned, to occupy his Edinburgh house. Gelis van Borselen and her son returned, at a more moderate pace, in the suite of Bishop Spens, talking occasionally of what they had been told, but most often silent, while behind them, marring the snow, lay the churned mud and smoking embers which were all that remained of the hard work and goodwill of the previous night.
While still confined to the Castle, Nicholas went to Dr Andreas’s small room, sat down and said, ‘Tell me.’
And Andreas, pulling off and flinging aside his red robe, said, ‘I can’t predict what he’ll do. It’s what we all feared. It’s worse.’
‘How is he?’ Nicholas said.
‘Drugged. Before that, he never stopped shouting and talking. He had pains like an old man in his joints, or his stomach doubled him up. The attacks have always been much the same, but now they’re more frequent, and worse. Will and Whitelaw are concerned because the French envoy is almost due. He mustn’t learn that the Prince is under duress, or that the King was in danger. At the same time, we can’t let the lad loose. You know why. You’ve found out, I hear, about the Princess Margaret. Mar knows about it as well.’
‘It would certainly cheer up the French if Mar told them,’ said Nicholas. ‘No English marriage for Meg.’
‘It wouldn’t cheer the English as much,’ Andreas said, ‘when the French accidentally told them exactly why Margaret can’t marry. So Lord Mar has to be kept out of sight, but under medical care, and near enough to be monitored. Blackness is for criminals. Lord Cortachy could keep him at Linlithgow. Or there is Roslin, or Craigmillar. Dundas? Haining? Torphichen?’
‘You’re not happy,’ said Nicholas.
‘It is not my unhappiness that matters,’ Andreas said. ‘As I told you, I don’t know what this poor fellow will do. And no one knows whether his siblings are tainted.’
There was a silence. Nicholas said, ‘I got to know Sandy quite well. He’s not especially bright, and that in itself makes him short-tempered: princes don’t like to seem slow. But that said, what he does isn’t senseless. Even the killing of Scougal came from a long-standing quarrel, and frustration over everything else. And there are no physical symptoms that I know of, so far.’ He waited, then spoke directly again. ‘About the King, I don’t know, but his physicians must. If you or the others suspect anything, you will have to tell someone. I don’t think they hang doctors nowadays.’
‘Avandale and the rest know all we can tell them,’ Andreas said. ‘Scheves has seen similar cases. So has your Dr Tobie. Like Albany, the King can’t stand being thwarted, but that’s understandable. There are times when he can’t keep his ha
nds off women, but then his Queen is in Stirling, preparing to bear him a child, and he is alone. Also, at other times, she isn’t generous with her favours. We should be grateful there isn’t a stable of mistresses. Lastly, and this is what worries his Councillors, he does retreat from affairs very often to sink into lethargy. He needs to be amused when at leisure. A competitive game, some versifying, some banter, does more good than a powder.’
‘I thought you looked exhausted,’ Nicholas said. ‘What can I do?’
‘For the King, nothing,’ Andreas said. ‘You went to France: he’s not convinced of your loyalty. But, for the same reason, the time may come when you could help me with Mar. You saved his life in that tavern.’
‘If he remembers. He also connects me with Argyll and the rest. But of course, if you want me, I’ll come.’
They let him leave the Castle when Adorne had arrived and after they had had a private council of war. Kathi, Adorne said, was safely at home. Riding out between Archers, and under the ice-hung portcullis of the Castle, Nicholas was conscious of nothing so freezing as the stare of his son, his nephew, his enemy Henry.
THEY MOVED THE King’s brother to Linlithgow, and then to Roslin, from which, although closely supervised, he escaped. He was found again, with cries of pleasure, by Nowie, and cajoled into staying at Newbattle, from which he departed again. Since by this time the French envoy was at Blackfriars, the lord of Craigmillar Castle once more admitted John of Mar as his guest, but this time, on orders, locked him into his rooms. For the second time in four weeks, John of Mar fell into a frenzy, and Dr Andreas was called. The family chaplain was already there, to pray for the servant Mar had killed, and comfort the girl he had attempted to force. Dr Andreas sent for his Italian colleague, Tobias Beventini, formerly of the Charetty company, and for Nicholas. They arrived together.
Mar’s room was not the cell of a prisoner, it was furnished as for a prince, although the shutters were closed and there was a guard at the locked door. Inside, it smelled like a prison cell, for shock and pain led to incontinence, and Mar’s dress and his bedding were soaked. His hands were tied, and he was weeping, his eyes swollen, his red-head’s skin blotched. Tobie swore under his breath and went forward, but Andreas spoke quietly. ‘He is violent. If you untie him, he will attack you.’ And indeed, at the sound of his voice, the sobbing stopped and the bound man turned, painfully and malevolently, glaring at Andreas and then at Tobie. His eyes, reaching Nicholas, remained on him.
Nicholas said, mildly, ‘Do we want the doctors?’
Tobie made a cross sound. Mar kept his eyes open. Then he shook his head.
Andreas said, in the same quiet voice, ‘You need witnesses.’
‘No, I don’t,’ Nicholas said. ‘I need a blanket, and two chairs by the fire and—what? Something to eat? Something to drink?’
‘You will send me to sleep,’ Mar said. His teeth were chattering.
‘Not intentionally,’ Nicholas said. ‘We’ll drink from the same cup, and eat the same food. Tobie will bring it.’ He knew, all the time that it was being arranged, that he was being an idiot. He wasn’t a doctor, and what Mar needed were doctors. But while doctors were anathema, the patient might talk to a layman. The danger, as Andreas had hinted, was that anything might happen, and there would be no witnesses.
It seemed worth the risk. He went ahead anyway, talking in a rambling way all the time the door opened and shut until at last he and Sandy’s brother were alone in the candlelit room with the firelight in their faces, the young man wrapped in his blanket and sharing a bowl of sops in wine, passing back and forth from his freed hands to those of Nicholas.
After a while he said, ‘I’m going to be sick,’ and was.
Nicholas said mildly, ‘Well, that’s all right,’ and cleaned it up.
After another while, Mar said, ‘Will you stop talking?’
‘All right,’ said Nicholas. ‘Imagine I’m God. What do you want from me?’
Later, there was a mild scuffle which Nicholas, being large, resolved without injury. By then, he had started talking again, and once things had quietened, he produced the wine once more, made a little stronger. He could feel Tobie’s anxiety shuddering in waves through the door. Andreas, with a different outlook, had probably gone somewhere to sleep.
Eventually, Nicholas went himself to the door and tapped softly until it opened. The guard brought Tobie, who saw the two empty chairs and went straight to the bed, on which Mar’s body lay motionless, its eyes shut. He lifted its wrist.
‘It looks like sleep,’ Nicholas said, ‘but I think it’s some kind of a faint. He was rambling a lot. The trouble is partly this place. It’s linked with what happened before, with poison and violence and murder and all the Prestons’ various brushes with the occult, not to mention my divining. The trouble is, where else could he be kept? He does need doctors. But wherever Andreas goes, he attracts attention.’
‘There’s my place in the Canongate,’ Tobie said. ‘You bastard. You meant me to say that.’
‘You would have said it anyway,’ Nicholas said. ‘But if you mean it, could we do it now, while he’s like this? A horse-litter so far, then a handcart with a few people around it. Cochrane, if you can get him, would disguise it. It’ll be dark. Andreas can go to warn Clémence. Then Avandale will have to know, and the King. You’ll need protection. Perhaps Preston’s men can stay till you get some. And, of course, Robin and Kathi are in the next house. Perhaps Wodman could come down to stay with them.’
‘Or Lang Bessie,’ said Tobie dryly. ‘I have to tell you, I wouldn’t mind some bought-in diversion for Johndie, if he’s to stay till the French envoy goes. And where after that?’
‘I was thinking of the Knights Hospitaller of St John,’ Nicholas said. ‘But I don’t think Johndie’s rich enough.’
‘YOU’RE GOING where?’ Gelis said. Jodi had gone back to Cadzow, after waiting in vain for his father to dance or walk tightropes.
Later, she said, ‘Don’t you think Tobie and Clémence will manage without you? They’ve had a lot of experience. You might have harmed Mar, in Craigmillar, without knowing it.’
He said, ‘That’s why I stopped. I can soothe him, but I can’t keep his attention long enough to do anything with it. It’s as if he has his head full of crickets, and he can only capture a thought when they’re quiet.’
Gelis said, ‘If he were an ordinary person, it wouldn’t matter.’
And Nicholas said, ‘He struck the King. If he were an ordinary person, he would be dead.’
BECAUSE OF THE weather, the French King’s emissary stayed ten more days. Being, like Monypenny, a Scotsman converted to France, he took the chance to see a few kinsmen and fellow graduates, and presented himself, in a well-mannered way, at all the entertainments belatedly devised for him. These were adequate, but less than remarkable, since the excellent de Fleury (at the King’s urgent behest) was absent on business, and Will Roger with him.
This at least was true: they were both on a healthy régime in the Canongate, being sustained by Tobie’s wife while helping to keep John of Mar out of sight. Occasionally they would cross the yard to spend a short interregnum with Robin, testing one another’s wit and eating less healthy food sneaked in by Kathi. These sessions usually ended with music, and when they returned to their duty, Nicholas sometimes found himself continuing to argue across Johndie Mar’s bed, on the other side of which Whistle Willie, instead of soothing harp music, would begin to produce angry bits of lined paper, upon which questionable progressions stood in challenge among batteries of even more questionable rests, dug into the page, as if ready to fire.
But that was at the beginning, before Mar fully emerged from his strange, drowsing coma. In fact, music itself was the best antidote; better than the board games, the card games, the dice; the singing and reading which followed. But even music could not succeed when, very soon, their prisoner began to rebel. While the French envoy still remained, Mar demanded to see him and the King. Refused, h
e smashed and ripped his way through every article in the room. Soon, if left alone for a moment, he would overturn the brazier, or fling the lamps into his pillows, or continuously bang his own head on the door.
Thinking, with Tobie, that confinement itself was the problem, Nicholas arranged for Wodman and Cochrane to arrive with a guard, and devised secret forays at night: a sail, a ride down to Leith, an evening in Sinclair’s big house next the Cowgate with Betha, his familiar Betha in the room. From everything, with disbelieving anger, Mar tried to escape; and again, a man died at his hand. It was not the fear of confinement, it was the loss of free will that he found intolerable. The doctors conferred. Their next message, of the daily bulletins sent to the Castle, was different in content. The King’s brother’s health was not improving. They suggested that, despite the hazards, the King should come to see him for himself.
That night, James descended the hill from the Castle to Tobie’s house, walking incognito with a handful of men, and avoiding the great sprawl of Blackfriars where the French envoy slept. The King sent no warning ahead. Thrusting aside his brother’s guard at Tobie’s doorway, he marched into the house, throwing back his icy cowled cloak and demanding Andreas, who was absent in the sickroom with Tobie. Clémence, explaining, guided the King’s grace into her parlour and sent for the best glass goblets, and wine. He knew her well enough. She advised the Queen on the care of her children. De Fleury and good Tam Cochrane and the royal chapel musician Will Roger were already there in the parlour, and rose, until signalled to stay. The King, after chatting perfunctorily, grew fretful at the delay, and proposed to make his way to his brother’s chamber, if either Andreas or his brother did not come.
De Fleury said, ‘Your grace, my lord of Mar would be ashamed to be seen at less than his best. His doctors will prepare him. Perhaps indeed—Ah. Here is Dr Andreas himself.’
Softened a little by wine, the King was not displeased to see Andreas again. The man was worth his keep. Every Court in Europe knew how he had prophesied the Duke of Burgundy’s death. He was esteemed by Adorne, whose opinion the King valued. It was a pity that neither medicine nor astrology seemed able to make a proper man out of Johndie. The King greeted the doctor, and listened with patience to some rigmarole about what he might or might not be pleased to say, as if one required to be told how to address one’s own brother. Then someone went off to fetch Johndie. His chamber, it seemed, was not deemed fit for the King’s grace to visit. The King’s grace believed that. Any room of Johndie’s looked like a pigsty. Then Johndie limped into the room, with the doctor Tobias behind him. His skin was rough, but his hair was neat under his cap, and he was properly dressed, although he looked narrow inside his doublet. The King said, ‘Well, John. Not about to cut our throat this time then, you young ruffian? Have we to immure you for life, or do you expect to get your wits back one of these days? We are beginning to wonder.’