The Flower Reader (15 page)

“I did not look inside, madame.”

“I do not believe you. You had the casket and you had the key—how could you resist? Do not lie to me, Marianette.”

I hesitated for a moment. Then, with a sense that I was casting dice blindly into a void, I said, “Very well, you are right, madame. I did open the casket. But the pages your mother wrote were all in cipher. I could not read them, and I am sure Alexander could not read them. Whatever the secrets are—”

“I have my mother’s ciphers, all of them.”

“She meant the pages for you, so I am not surprised.”

“Marianette.” She stood up, still wrapped in the plaid, her magnificent hair glimmering like a faery’s hair in the firelight. I could feel the glamour she was casting over me like a golden net. “Give it to me now. I swear to you I will do everything you ask—bring your husband’s murderer to justice, confirm your estates to you as a royal fief, protect you from any marriage you do not want. Give me the
casket, so I can learn my mother’s secrets and put James in his place and keep him there. So I can control the Lords of the Congregation. So I can have the power she wanted me to have, and be more than just a puppet with my brother pulling my strings.”

If I had had the casket in my hands at that moment, I would have given it to her.

Fortunately I did not.

“And the prophecies.” She leaned toward me, her voice soft and coaxing. “Tied up in scarlet cords, your husband’s letter said, and sealed with Monsieur de Nostredame’s own seals.
Les quatre maris
. That is what was written on the outside. Four husbands. Eventually I must choose one, and with the prophecies I can choose rightly. It will make all the difference.”

She grasped my wrist. I sucked in my breath as she sank her nails into my skin.

“Give it to me now,” she said again. Suddenly her voice was sharp as a blade. “Who are you to keep from me what is mine?”

The change startled me, and brought me back to myself. She was like Proteus, the ancient shape-changer of the sea. And like Proteus, she would keep none of her sweet promises unless she was forced to do so.

“We have a bargain, madame,” I said in a steady voice. “I will keep my side when you have kept yours.”

She threw my wrist from her and cast off the plaid. “We shall see,” she said. “Call Fleming and Seton. I will prepare for my brother’s wedding.”

T
HE WEDDING WAS PERFORMED IN
the long banqueting hall of Crichton Castle, according to Protestant rites. Who could tell anymore, from one day to the next, what form of religion any given person professed? The Earl of Bothwell was nominally a Protestant, although he had supported the Catholic Mary of Guise and was high in favor with the young queen as well. Power, that was what Bothwell
worshiped—I always saw him wreathed in his comfrey leaves like the Green Man of the Picts. All sorts of strange things were whispered about Bothwell’s religion—or lack of religion—and some even said he practiced witchcraft.

A thousand candles blazed, and the sweet golden-honey scent of beeswax floated up to the high hammerbeam roof. The huge fireplace at the far end of the hall crackled and glowed; I could smell rosemary and marjoram in the smoke, the herbs of love and marriage. The queen sat next to the fire in a fine chair under a cloth of estate; there were warming-pans at her feet and heated stones tucked into her sleeves. She was wrapped in a cloth-of-silver mantle embroidered all over with more silver and lined with white fur. I, on the other hand, stood far off at the back of the hall in my own less glittering gown and mantle—no fur for me, sadly, and my hands were stiff with cold. The court had gone back into colors following the anniversary of the little French king’s death in December, and the queen had arbitrarily cut short my own year of mourning black; she wanted no black crows around her, she said. Tonight my dress and sleeves were spring green, the color of new leaves. I longed for spring. Last spring, I thought, I was with you, my Alexander, my garden by the sea was flowering, and Màiri was still safe under my heart.

I felt tears sting. I blinked fiercely.

Mr. Willock was preaching on endlessly about the evils of idolatry and I wondered what the queen was thinking. After all she had suffered for her Catholic mass in the five months she had been in Scotland, after the humiliating street demonstrations, the tearful confrontations with Mr. Knox, the shaven-headed cats and plundered chapels, it was surpassing strange to see her smiling and to all appearances giving her close attention to a Protestant sermon. Lord James stood close at her right hand, looking unbearably smug. Was she simply trying to conciliate her brother and the rest of the Lords of the Congregation? Or could she be seriously considering—

“Look at Randolph. He is measuring her for Elizabeth Tudor’s shoes, and she knows it.”

I did not have to turn around to know who it was—the light, edged voice and the bittersweet scents of nightshade and myrrh were unmistakable. He was right. Thomas Randolph, the English queen’s agent, was indeed eyeing our queen with an appraising expression. I said, “To the best of my knowledge, Monsieur de Clerac, Elizabeth Tudor is still wearing them.”

“Queens’ shoes have been treacherous in England since the day Elizabeth’s mother first cast eyes upon her father.” He stepped up next to me, a long-legged, angular peacock in blue-and-gold damask, his feathered cap worked with pearls the size of a nightingale’s eggs. Why was it that no matter what flamboyant finery he wore, there was always a thread of darkness woven in with the gold and silver? It was not crude violence or menace as it was with, say, Rannoch Hamilton—although I was well aware Monsieur de Clerac could be dangerous enough when he chose to be—but a shadow of asceticism that no jewels and laces could quite obliterate.

“I see Master Wetheral is also here with the English delegation,” he said. “He is an acquaintance of yours, is he not?”

It took me by surprise at first. Then I remembered that he had come up behind me when I was speaking with Blaise Laurentin at the masque of Apollo and the muses. Laurentin had mentioned Richard Wetheral. Monsieur de Clerac, it seemed, had long ears to go with his peacock colors and pearls.

“I would not call him an acquaintance. I have spoken with him once.”

He said nothing for a moment. Mr. Knox was reading scripture, something about a woman named Maachah who was removed from being a queen because she worshiped an idol in a grove.

“If I am to help you in your quest for justice,” he said at last, “you will have to tell me the things you learn. I promise you I will do the same.”

He was right, of course. I did not trust him, and I was reasonably sure he wanted to help me only for his own hidden motives, but if he
thought to use me, I could use him as well. I said, “You already know Alexander sent letters, offering the silver casket for sale.”

“I do.”

“One of them went to the court of England—perhaps to the queen herself. Master Wetheral claims to have met Alexander twice in Aberdeen, and to have actually concluded an arrangement.”

“If that is true, one of the other prospective purchasers could have killed your husband to prevent the arrangement from going forward. Is Wetheral now attempting to make a new arrangement with you?”

“He is.” Suddenly I realized what he meant. “You think the assassin may try to kill me as well.”

“Possibly. It depends upon whether he—or she—wants the casket itself, or wants only to keep it from the hands of the others.”

“There was a letter sent to the French court as well. That is what Laurentin was telling me, at the masque.”

“And one to Lord James, who of course shared it with his mother, Lady Margaret. The English, the French, and the Lords of the Congregation—who else do you think he would have written to?”

“You are asking a good many questions, Monsieur de Clerac, and answering none. Have you discovered anything useful?”

“One thing,” he said. “There was someone in the church the afternoon you discovered the ruby, and it was not a ghostly Augustinian monk.”

I felt a lurch of apprehension. “How do you know?”

“After I saw you safely back to your rooms, I searched the church carefully. The choir has been unused since the abbey became the Protestant church of the Canongate. Yet there were fresh footprints in the dust.”

“So someone knows about the ruby.”

“Someone knows.”

Was he telling the truth? I could not be sure.

“Is there anything else?”

“Nothing else, for now. I must be very careful, of course, how I ask my questions.”

“We must both be careful.”

“Then let us talk about the wedding.” There was a glint of humor in his eyes. “Let us enter into the spirit of the thing, and tell tales about the bride and groom.”

How silken-tongued he was. I would have walked away, but the hall was crowded and I did not want to make a scene. Grudgingly I said, “The bride is lovely. It is unusual for a woman grown to have such fair hair.”

“Her father was called the Fair Earl for his light-colored hair. But, of course, you would have known him—he swore Mary of Guise promised to marry him, not once but twice.”

“I knew of him. He put aside his perfectly faithful wife on trumped-up grounds to court the old queen. Even today Lady Bothwell is immured in her tower at Morland and not here to celebrate her own daughter’s wedding.”

“So you knew Lady Bothwell, too?”

“No, I did not know her, other than in the tales the other ladies told. I was kept much apart from the rest of the court when I was in the old queen’s household.”

“I remember. You were like a virgin in a secret bower, untouched by the world.” He smiled. When he smiled like that he softened all my spikiness. “This bride, on the other hand, has been all too touched by the world. Master Randolph knew the scandal, and called it a merry story, worth repeating.”

“Well, I do not wish to hear it repeated,” I said. “Not on her wedding day.”

“You are good-hearted,
ma mie
.”

“Do not call me that—I am not your dear one.”

He smiled again and said nothing more. Mr. Willock at last finished his sermon; the rings were exchanged and the marriage was done. I thought of Alexander and pushed the thought away.

The queen rose. Her ladies clustered around her with baskets of
dried flowers, rose petals, and forget-me-nots, and they all began pelting the bride and groom, laughing. Janet Bothwell’s rich fair hair, falling loose and twined with emeralds and amber, made green and gold flashes in the candlelight. Pipers began to play, and the crowd surged toward the archways, probably to avail themselves of the necessaries. Servants came in and began setting up trestle tables for the wedding feast.

“Will they be happy, do you think?” Nicolas de Clerac said. For once he sounded perfectly serious. “They do not know each other well—the marriage is simply to bind Bothwell to the queen’s interests, his sister to her brother.”

“Or to bind the queen to Bothwell.”

“A different thing, I agree. He’d marry her himself, if he could. She could make worse choices, if she wishes to remain in Scotland.”

I looked at the queen thoughtfully. She seemed to glow in her cloth-of-silver, reflecting the candles and the firelight; impromptu dancing had begun and she was matched with the Earl of Bothwell as her brother was matched with Bothwell’s sister. The earl, in mulberry-colored velvet, was half a head shorter than she was; she was so exquisitely slender and gossamer and he so broad-shouldered and thick with muscle that they might have been different species altogether. The fragile long-stemmed peony and the hairy, black-rooted comfrey with its grasping fingerlike flowers—I could see no possible point of connection between them.

“Fortunately she does not wish to remain in Scotland,” I said. “I suspect she will be on the throne of Spain before the year is out.”

“Perhaps,” said Nicolas de Clerac. “I know it is what she hopes for, but she has been married to one frail child-king already, and Don Carlos is said to be mad as well as in delicate health. Not the most prepossessing of bridegrooms.”

“You sound as if you think she should actually be happy in her marriage.”

He smiled. “A great weakness in me, I know. Rinette, if she does leave Scotland, you must give her the silver casket whether your
conditions have been met or not. She will require its contents to be safe.”

I had begun to feel…not friendliness, exactly, certainly not real affinity, but the slightest sense of a rapprochement with him. I felt it no longer. I said in a hard voice, “And what do you know of the casket’s contents, monsieur?”

For quite some time he said nothing. The pipes and rebecs played on, and the dancers weaved in and out among the harried servitors trying to lay out the long banqueting trestles. At last, all seriousness gone from his voice, Nicolas de Clerac said, “Oh, only what gossip whispers. Magic amulets. Charms and relics. Secret writings. A fortune in jewels.”

Again I could not tell whether he was lying or not.

I knew. In my heart I knew. But I did not want to believe it, so I pretended it was only my dislike for Nicolas de Clerac that made the brilliance of Crichton’s grand hall turn dark.