The Flower Reader (16 page)

L
ater we flocked around the trestles for the marriage feast; I saw a few couples slipping away into the shadows, perhaps inspired by the thought of the bedding to come. I wanted nothing to do with such illicit pleasures and certainly no more to do with Nicolas de Clerac; I pressed my way to the head of the room so I could sit among the queen’s ladies. Mary Livingston was there, as was Mary Fleming, who was called Flaminia; it was a merry conceit of the queen’s to surround herself with young women who bore her own name. One who was not young and not a Mary was Lady Margaret Erskine, who looked at me narrow-eyed and turned away. Malice exuded from her, rank as the scent of the wild arum; it did not seem to be directed particularly at me as it was at the queen and Lord Bothwell and the bride and the groom and everyone who stood at the center of the celebration, eclipsing her beloved half-royal son.

My poor breasts ached. Màiri had been left behind at Holyrood with Tante-Mar, Jennet, and a wet nurse from Granmuir village named Annis Cairnie, a cousin of Wat’s. I wished I were with them,
eating a cozy basin of oatmeal by the fire, and not here at the queen’s brother’s glittering wedding.

Servitors brought in platters of sliced venison stuffed with cheese and chestnuts, plus rabbits cooked in savory pies with eggs, honey, and spices. These were followed by whole partridges, plovers, and moor fowl, then ducks and several enormous geese, roasted with ginger, pepper, cinnamon, and salt. Lady Janet ate next to nothing—my own wedding supper at Granmuir had been much smaller and humbler, but I knew exactly what she was feeling, excitement and anticipation and an absolute certainty that she would never eat again. Lord John, on the other hand, ate heartily and laughed as he was doing it. The feast proceeded to cakes stuffed with fruit and drenched with brandywine, and ended with an astonishing maritime subtlety—the Earl of Bothwell was the Lord High Admiral of Scotland, after all—in the shape of three ships painted with gold leaf, silver sails unfurled as they scudded over a blue-green ocean with white sugar sea foam.

After the subtlety was served there was more music and more dancing. The younger men—and some of the more daring ladies—began to play raucous and openly suggestive games. Many wagers were cast, both on the games and on the sports that were to follow the next day. Several fights broke out; I caught a glimpse of the Earl of Rothes’s man Rannoch Hamilton brawling drunkenly with a man in the colors of Clan Forbes. It was all just a prelude to the most anticipated entertainment of all—the bedding of the bride and groom. I found a shadowy corner and kept to myself. The queen certainly did not need me, and it was too soon, too soon. I wondered whether I would ever wholeheartedly join in a wedding celebration again.

“It is time for the bedding.” Mary Livingston skipped up beside me. She was flushed and panting, and a string of fine pearls was hanging dangerously loose from one side of her elegant little French hood. She loved to dance, and young Master John Sempill, who had played Terpsichore in the Apollo masque, had become her favorite partner. “What are you doing standing here all by yourself, Rinette? Go
gather up some cakes—we must have something sweet made of wheat flour to crumble over Janet’s head once she is settled in the bed.”

She danced away again. Reluctantly I made my way to one of the tables and collected a few spice-and-honey cakes in a napkin—how sticky they would be in poor Lady Janet’s hair! But at least she would be fertile, as the grains of wheat that made up the cake had been fertile, or so the old wives’ tale said. Surely the poor wheat’s fertility had been long lost in the grinding and baking it had undergone.

I could not stop thinking such dark thoughts. How little any bride would want me near her as she was undressed for her wedding night—I was like an evil fairy in a folktale with my sorrows. I spent a great deal of time wrapping the cakes just so, and so fortunately when I followed the rest of the women up the tower stairs to the bedchamber, Lady Janet was undressed and safe in the great bed with its topaz-colored velvet hangings. The queen sat on the bed beside her, laughing like a child. Her cold and unhappiness seemed entirely forgotten.

“Here are the cakes, madame,” I said. “I will just—”

The gentlemen burst in behind me, and someone—the Earl of Bothwell? Lord John himself?—put two large strong hands on either side of my waist and lifted me bodily out of the way. When my feet touched the stone floor again I stumbled and dropped the napkin full of cakes.

“Heigh-ho! Take care, my pretty lassie.” The same hands steadied me. It was Lord John, the groom himself. Once he had me on my feet, he slapped my buttocks in a shockingly familiar manner. “What have you there? Cakes! Gather them up, sweeting, and let’s give Lady Janet a good pelting.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Swiving, I’d call it!”

The men all laughed and shouted other suggestions, each one more obscene than the last. The women squealed and blushed—or tried to look as if they were blushing—and Lord John began to throw
the cakes. Lady Janet caught one and threw it back, to the cheers of the other ladies. The queen, not to be outdone, picked up two or three cakes of her own and began to break them in pieces over Lady Janet’s fair hair and her naked breasts; the honey stuck to her fingers and she licked it off, laughing. Three or four men caught hold of Lord John, lifted him bodily by his arms and legs, and slung him onto the bed like a log onto a fire.

In the shrieking and thrashing that followed I stepped backward, meaning to slip away upstairs to the quiet and solitude of the queen’s chamber. To my surprise—I had thought I was on the outermost fringe of the crowd—I collided with another person behind me, and when I turned to ask pardon I was grasped hard around the waist and jerked outside onto the stairway. The smell of wine and rutting male made my stomach convulse. I screamed.

Which did no good at all, of course, considering the hubbub in the bedchamber.

“Jealous of that naked slut in the bed, witch-girl?”

It was Rannoch Hamilton, and he was vilely drunk. I did not waste my breath arguing with him, but stamped my foot down hard on his. He grunted with pain but did not let me go.

“I should have done this in that tumbledown church at Granmuir, before the very eyes of your pretty young lover and the old priest. I’ll show you I’m not afraid of that woodbine goddess of yours.”

He tore off my cap and grasped a fistful of my hair. I screamed again. He swung me around so my back was against the rough-cut stone of the tower, then leaned against me, pinning me with his weight. With his free hand he jerked at the neckline of my bodice, tearing the fine gauze of my partlet. It hurt—how it hurt, with my breasts so swollen and tender. I could not get my leg free of my twisted skirts to jolt my knee up into his groin as Jennet had taught me. I clenched my teeth against his wine-rank mouth and drove two stiffened fingers into his right eye.

He jerked back with a bellow of pain and let me go. I could not
get past him to run up the stairs to the queen’s chamber, so I turned to fling myself down into the grand hall again, and instead cast myself straight into Lady Margaret Erskine.

“What is this?” she said. Her fingers closed around my arm like a hawk’s claws. “Master Hamilton, what is this girl about with you?”

“What am I about with him?” I cried. “I am about getting away before he rapes me on the stairwell. Let go of me.”

“Be silent.” She shook me hard. Aged and ruined in her beauty she may have been, but Lord James Stewart’s mother was strong and her nails were hard and sharp. In her dark eyes I could see plots forming patterns, one then another, as she considered them and discarded them. “Master Hamilton, where is the Earl of Rothes?”

“Up there, with the rest of them, putting the queen’s brother to bed with his new wife.”
Rannoch Hamilton had one hand over his eye; shock and pain had sobered him and made him ten times as dangerous.
If you kick them in the balls or poke them in the eyehole, be sure to do it hard enough to knock them down,
Jennet had said.
Otherwise they’ll hurt you all the worse for hurting them
. “This is no concern of his, nor of yours, my lady.”

“Oh, but it is.” She caught hold of my other arm and pinned my elbows behind me. “Take out your dagger, if you please, Master Hamilton, and cut the lacings of her dress.”

Rannoch Hamilton had taken his hand away from his face. His eye was reddened and swollen but intact, for which I was passionately sorry. “If you touch me I’ll kill you,” I said. “Lady Margaret, are you mad? Let go of me.”

“I am not mad and I will not let go of you. The queen may have thought to set you aside from any marriage, but she will sing a different tune if Master Hamilton has you in public for everyone to see. Are you going to strip her, you milksop coward, or must I do it myself?”

I kicked at her, but what with my skirts and her skirts I could not manage to hurt her. “What does it matter to you if I am married or not? For the love of Saint Ninian, let me
go
.”

Rannoch Hamilton suddenly came out of his trance. He drew his dagger and slashed the neckline of my bodice. I felt a hot streak of pain and knew he had cut my skin as well, but I would be naked and damned before I would give him the satisfaction of screaming again.

“It matters that you are married because my son requires control of your estate and the silver casket you are concealing.” Her voice was cruel and singsong, lessoning me as if I were a child. “He is the Earl of Rothes’s overlord, and Rothes is Master Hamilton’s overlord, and when you are married to Master Hamilton, you and your Granmuir and your casket will all be in my son’s power. And then we shall see what the queen has to say.”

“What the queen has to say about what?”

It was a musical, French-accented voice, still a little breathless with laughter. I looked up and saw the queen herself, framed in the wedding bedchamber’s doorway a few steps above us on the stairs. Behind her clustered a mass of glittering gentlemen and ladies. The aura of wedding-night sensuality hung over them all; the ladies’ eyes were heavy and their lips soft. The gentlemen, by contrast, seemed sharpened and predatory.

I recollected myself first. “Madame!” I cried. “Help me!”

Lady Margaret let go of my arms and embraced me with all the sweet protectiveness of a mother. “I have you, my dear,” she said. “Shush, shush. Do not cry.”

Her terrible arum-lily aura dizzied me. Could the queen not see what had been happening? “I am not crying,” I said. “Let go of me.”

“I came upon her, madame, in Master Hamilton’s arms,” Lady Margaret said to the queen. Her voice seemed to come from far away. “All the wine and celebration— They seemed to be playing a small game with Master Hamilton’s knife, and it went a bit awry.”

I wrenched myself away from her. “That is a lie,” I said. I was shivering all over and my teeth were chattering. I probably sounded exactly as if I actually had partaken of too much wine and celebration, and the thought made me shake even more with sheer fury.

“Marianette, I am surprised at you,” the queen said. “I do not care for such improprieties in my household.”

“Perhaps you should reconsider your edict regarding Mistress Rinette’s marriage.” That was Lord James, coming up beside his sister. His eyes flicked over my shoulder to his mother, then returned to me. “A husband would steady her.”

“And Master Hamilton would be an excellent choice.” That was the Earl of Rothes, toadying to his overlord. They were all there, Rothes, Lord James, Nicolas de Clerac, goggling at me with my arms crossed over my breast to hide my slashed bodice. “He is loyal and a good Protestant, and there would be no further question of Granmuir falling to the Gordons.”

“You would have to bind and gag me and drag me to the altar,” I said. “I will not marry again, and most particularly I will not marry Rannoch Hamilton.”

Rothes glowered at me. He was my clan chief, after all. “Binding and gagging can be arranged,” he said.

A moment of utter silence. I could hear Rannoch Hamilton breathing hard. One of the women laughed, high and excited.

“Forced marriages are against the teaching of your own Church, my lord earl,” Nicolas de Clerac said in his silky diplomat’s voice, to all appearances untouched by any genuine emotion. “Not to mention the queen’s and Mistress Rinette’s own.”

“And we gave our royal promise she would not be compelled to wed,” the queen said. She put her hand on Nico’s arm with possessive affection, and I saw black hatred pass over Lord James’s face. “However, Marianette, if we continue to find you in stairways in such
déshabillé
, perhaps we shall reconsider our promise.”

“I did not choose to be here in
déshabillé
,” I said.

The queen only laughed. She said, “Go upstairs, if you please, and remain there—you may build up my fire and see that my bed is aired and warmed. Lady Margaret, Master Rannoch, you may come downstairs with the rest of us. I wish to resume the dancing.”

Lady Margaret curtsied. Rannoch Hamilton, who had clearly
recovered his senses far enough to practice animal self-preservation, bowed. I could see he was flushed—did he have feelings enough to feel shame that he had been caught out in his attempted rape, or was it simply the wine? I flattened myself against the wall as they all swept past and went downstairs. I wondered—if I had a dagger in my hand right now, which one would I stab? Rannoch Hamilton, or Lady Margaret, or the queen herself?

A dagger in my hand—

A dagger with a missing ruby—

I should have looked at Rannoch Hamilton’s dagger when I had the chance.

Upstairs the fire was out and the queen’s chamber was icy cold. I threw myself down on the bed—how furious the queen would be if she could see me!—and pressed my face into the velvet coverlet. I wanted to go home. I wanted to collect Màiri and Tante-Mar and Jennet and Wat Cairnie and my white mare, Lilidh, and ride home to Granmuir and never see the court again. Why did I care what happened to Mary of Guise’s silver casket, with its mysterious writings, pages in cipher with the names of Scotland’s greatest lords at the top of every page? With its strange packet wrapped in red silk cords, sealed over and over with Nostradamus’s seal, with
les quatre maris
scribbled on the outside in Mary of Guise’s own hand?