The Flower Reader (30 page)

“What say you, Sieur Nico?” she said. “Should the silver casket and the prophecies of Monsieur de Nostredame be mine?”

“In the end, madame, they are meant to be yours,” he said gravely. “But I have pity on Mistress Rinette as well, who loved her young husband and longs to see justice done.”

“One cannot help but wonder, Monsieur de Clerac,” said Lady Margaret, in a voice like poison, sugar-sweet, “if selfless pity is the only reason you have for coming to Mistress Rinette’s defense.”

The queen withdrew her hand suddenly.

“It is my only reason,” Nico said, without moving. “Pity, and sorrow for her loss.”

“Then it should please you to know,” the queen said, “that a new husband has been chosen for her.”

I dropped the sugar-grater. It clattered against the hearth stone. Everyone else in the room was suddenly silent.

“No,” I said.

“A stout Protestant husband,” said the Earl of Moray, “who will satisfy Master Knox’s objections to Mistress Rinette’s presence by putting an end to her flower-reading. And such a husband will also…persuade her…to give up the casket and the prophecies to you, madame, so you can choose your own next husband rightly.”

“No,” I said again. I felt a sudden sinking terror. Please, Saint Ninian, let this not be why he brought Rannoch Hamilton to Lochleven. Green Lady of Granmuir, protect me.

“That is an excellent solution, brother,” the queen said. She was looking straight at me, and I saw a glitter of knife-edged amusement in her eyes. This was all planned in advance; I was sure of it. “Whom have you chosen?”

“My Lord Rothes?” Moray said. “Will you tell us?”

“A kinsman and loyal man of my own, madame,” Rothes said. He would not look at me. “And through me a vassal of my lord Moray. Master Rannoch Hamilton is a good Protestant and will brook no nonsense from a wife. He is also much enamored of Mistress Rinette, and has been since the first moment he saw her.”

The first moment he saw me, in the chapel at Granmuir.

When I threatened him with the vines of the Green Lady.

Enamored
was not a word I would have used to describe Rannoch Hamilton’s feelings toward me.

I said, dry-eyed and hard-voiced, “I will die first. I will tear Granmuir down stone by stone and throw the stones and myself into the sea.”

“How very impassioned of you, Marianette,” the queen said.
“But impractical. You will not be the first woman to marry a man chosen for you by your betters; nor will you be the last.”

“A moment.”

It was Nicolas de Clerac. He had risen to his full height; one of the reasons the queen loved dancing with him was that he was one of the few men at the court who was taller than she was. His russet hair shone like fire in the flickering light. His eyes were narrowed, the fine flat muscles beneath them drawn tight. He wore no maquillage tonight, but a fine square-cut emerald flashed in his left ear.

“Marriage is a sacrament in your Church, madame,” he said. “And a covenant in yours, my lord Moray—Master Knox himself calls it a blessed ordinance of God. Would you now besmirch this sacrament, this covenant, with force?”

Silence.

I remembered what he had told me in the gardens of Granmuir—how his mother had been forced into marriage, and how he had run away from the Benedictine monks who were the only family he had ever known, to try to save her.

How he had failed.

Lady Margaret Erskine was the first who dared break the silence. She-wolf though she might be, she had courage. “I will ask you again, Monsieur de Clerac,” she said. “What is your interest here, and why do you argue that Mistress Rinette should not be married to the man her clan chief has chosen?”

“Is it perhaps,” the Earl of Moray said, “that you wish to marry her yourself?”

My heart stopped. Everything stopped, for the space of a breath.

“That is ridiculous.” The queen had come to her feet again, anger flaming from her as heat radiated from the fire. “What are you thinking of, brother? Sieur Nico is speaking out of the pity of his heart, and no other reason. Is that not so, Sieur Nico? The pity of your heart.”

Everyone began to talk at once.

Nicolas de Clerac was the only one who said nothing—the only
one, that is, other than I myself. He looked at me. I looked at him. His face looked naked, down to the bones.

It was a promise in blood, over true relics of Saint Louis. It binds me to support the queen and remain in her favor…even when I do not agree with her or do not want to support her
.

Nico moved at last. He turned to face the queen.

How much alike they were, with their height and slenderness and bright hair—the queen’s slightly more golden, Nico’s more reddish. They might have been brother and sister, much more so than the queen and Moray. Moray was shorter, more thickly made, dark-eyed and dark-browed. I wondered why I had not noticed it before.

“I would see no lady forced to marry,” he said. It was his courtier’s voice again, smooth and practiced, warm with emotion that might or might not be genuine. “Not Mistress Rinette—not even you, madame. Even a queen should be permitted to follow her heart.”

He held out his hand. After a moment the queen put her beautiful white fingers in his, and he lifted them very gently to his lips.

“Even a queen,” he repeated.

I wanted to strike him. I wanted to strike her. I felt panicked and desperate as a wild doe surrounded by hunting hounds.

“I do not want to marry anyone,” I said. My voice sounded unnaturally loud. “Not Rannoch Hamilton, not Monsieur de Clerac, not anyone. Even if I am dragged to the altar in chains, I will refuse.”

“You misunderstand, Mistress Rinette,” Lady Margaret said. “No one is proposing you be dragged to the altar in chains. Is that not so, madame?”

The queen withdrew her hand from Nico’s—her reluctance was clear in every line of her body—and seated herself. She stopped being a woman and made herself into a queen again. Nico himself did not move.

“Indeed it is,” she said. “If Marianette does not freely agree to the marriage, she will certainly not be compelled.”

“Good,” I said. My voice was thick with tears I would never never never shed.
“Then I will not marry Rannoch Hamilton.”

“However,” the queen went on, “there is your daughter, Mary. She is my godchild.”

“It is Màiri,” I said. “None of this has anything to do with her.”

“Oh, but it does. If you are to continue as you are, unmarried and practicing your witchcraft, my godchild must be removed from your malign influence. It is perfectly legal—she can be made a royal ward and brought up in one of the royal castles far from the court. Perhaps even here, at Lochleven, with Lady Margaret as her guardian.”

“No,” I said. “She is safe at Granmuir, in the care of my own people, and at Granmuir she will remain.”

“Your own people,” said the Earl of Moray thoughtfully. “They should be questioned. They themselves may be practicing witchcraft as well, or may be your familiars.”

“That is an outrage.” I turned to the queen. “Madame, I beg you.”

She looked at me. Her eyes were half-closed, heavy, and she was smiling. “I cannot help you,” she said. “Unless, of course, you wish to give up the casket. The casket would change everything.”

I looked at them, each of them. The queen would not help me—she wanted the prophecies, and to get them she had planned this device with her brother and Lady Margaret. Nicolas de Clerac…he was bound by his unfathomable vow. His face did not even look like his own, but like an enameled mask. Lady Margaret was smiling. The Earl of Moray was smiling, too, the same smile—how much they looked alike, mother and son. The Earl of Rothes’s bony face with its light eyes and narrow mustache was avid, as if he were about to make the last move of a game and win a rich prize. Rannoch Hamilton— No. I stopped there. I could not look at him. He had no flower in his heart or soul, nothing but black emptiness, and he would make me pay for what I had said to him at Saint Ninian’s. Pay and pay and pay.

And Màiri. Màiri and Tante-Mar, and Jennet and Wat, and all my household. Even Seilie, accused of being my familiar.

I had no choices left.
Alexander’s assassin was beyond my reach. I had to keep my daughter out of Lady Margaret Erskine’s clutches, and myself out of Rannoch Hamilton’s bed.

“Leave Màiri and my people safe at Granmuir,” I said aloud. “Let me go home in peace. I will give you the silver casket.”

“D
O YOU HAVE IT WITH YOU
?” the Earl of Moray said. “Is it here?”

“No.”

I was numb. I felt as if some vital part of me had been cut off.

“Is it at Granmuir?”

“No. It is in Edinburgh.” I turned to the queen. “Madame, the casket is for you, not for the Earl of Moray or the Earl of Rothes or anyone else. I will put it into your hands alone. And I ask you to swear on your word as a queen that I will be allowed to go home in peace and my daughter and my household will not be mistreated or interfered with in any way.”

“I swear it,” the queen said. She was as excited as a child. “In fact, we shall write a bond, and we will all sign it, all of us. Brother, will you draw it up?”

Moray exchanged glances with his mother. “When she tells us more about where the casket is. Just to say it is in Edinburgh means nothing.”

I nodded. He was right. He was nothing if not hardheaded and practical, the Earl of Moray. “I will tell you this much—it is hidden in a secret vault within the castle rock, under Saint Margaret’s Chapel. I will not tell you how to find the vault, not yet. That I will show you when we have returned to Edinburgh, and when I have the bond in my hands.”

“I know there is a maze of old vaults under the castle,” Moray said. “Can you draw a map, Mistress Rinette?”

“No. I only know…where the entrance is, and what signs to follow to reach the vault.”

Even if I had been able to draw a map, I would not have been fool
enough to do so. Not until I had the bond in my hand with the queen’s own signature upon it.

“We will leave for Edinburgh in the morning, then,” the queen said. “And you will show us. Come; let us have some wine and some music to celebrate such a happy conclusion to this business. Sieur Nico, I would like to dance. Marianette, finish mulling the wine, if you please.”

Nicolas de Clerac was looking at me with an indescribable expression on his face—surprise, anguish, mystification, comprehension, regret, all at once. What had suddenly broken the polished surface of his mask? I wondered whether he wished, as I did, that we could go back to the beginning of the evening and start over. I wondered whether he wished he had never bound himself to the queen with a mysterious secret vow, on true relics of Saint Louis.

The queen tugged at his sleeve and he turned away to give her his attention.

Moray and Lady Margaret withdrew slightly and whispered together. The Earl of Rothes danced with Lady Moray as Mary Fleming played on her lute. Once again it was an evening just like all our other evenings at Lochleven. Had anything happened at all? If I closed my eyes, could I pretend that everything was back the way it had been?

Rannoch Hamilton did not dance, or sing, or drink wine. He left the great hall without a word, and to my great relief no one called him back.

W
e started for Edinburgh at first light the next morning. The loch was knee-deep in spring mist as we crossed to the mainland in two boats, the queen with the Earl of Moray, Mary Fleming and me in one, the Earl of Rothes, Rannoch Hamilton, and two of the queen’s gentleman ushers in the other. Lady Margaret Erskine remained behind with her legitimate son, William Douglas, and his wife; and Nicolas de Clerac had sent word by one of the household servants that he was unwell and would follow us in a day or so. I did not believe that for a moment—I could not imagine Nico unwell, and in any case he had been perfectly well the evening before. I wondered whether Lady Margaret had entrapped him somehow, or whether Moray and Rothes had contrived some way to keep him away from the queen. Perhaps he simply could not face me after abandoning me for the queen the night before. I held tightly to my resentment against him, because it was the only way to keep from admitting to myself that I felt isolated and terrified without him.

The sun was just rising behind us, silhouetting Lochleven Castle
in gold and blue, burning off the mist even as we watched. Our horses were in Sir William Douglas’s stables in Lochleven village; Wat Cairnie had been staying there with Lilidh. He saw at once that something was wrong, but Moray and Rothes were keeping a very close watch on me—did they think I would somehow escape? Where did they think I would go?—and I did not have a chance to explain to him. I wondered what he would think of my capitulation. I wondered whether I would ever actually tell him and Jennet and Tante-Mar that I had surrendered in part to save them from imprisonment or worse.

We rode straight south, pressing our horses, and reached Queensferry by noon. From there we crossed the firth and went to Holyrood Palace, where the queen refreshed herself with dinner and clean clothes. I could not eat—my hands were shaking and I felt sick to my stomach at what I was about to do. Moray and Rothes repaired to the west tower, where the queen kept her library, in order to draw up the bond we were all to sign before I led them to the secret vault and the casket. I stood behind the queen’s chair like a condemned prisoner as she ate with the greatest of relish.