The Flower Reader (4 page)

I
did not keep my promise to hide the queen’s silver casket in the secret vault under Saint Margaret’s. Not that night, at least.

I had a little household of my own within the court—my aunt Margot Loury, my mother Blanche of Orléans’ legitimate half sister, whom I called Tante-Mar; and my maidservant, Jennet More, my own age, the daughter of the castellan of Granmuir. They could not have been more different. Jennet was tall, stout, freckled, and outspoken; Tante-Mar was tiny, frail, and ferociously devoted to proper manners, always contending, I think, for some sort of equality with my mother’s grand birth as the bastard daughter of the Duke of Longueville. I had never known my French
grandmère
Agnès Loury, the farmer’s wife who caught the duke’s eye so briefly, but I suspected my mother was like her—dazzlingly beautiful, passionate, devoted to one thing and one thing alone. For my mother it had been my father, Patrick Leslie of Granmuir. After his death at the end of that terrible year in France, I might never have existed for her at all. She disappeared into the abbey of Montmartre in Paris to spend her life
in prayer for him, and I was left to the queen regent to foster, and to Tante-Mar, who loved me as my mother never did and came home to Granmuir with me for the sake of it.

I had barely reached my tiny chamber and begun to tell them of the queen’s death when a blow on the door behind me swung it open, hard enough to crash against the wall.

Tante-Mar screamed. Jennet knocked over the one candle; it rolled across the stone floor, making grotesque streaks and flashes of light on the face of the man in the doorway. For a moment he looked like a hobgoblin from hell; then the candle went out and in the light of the small fireplace he was an ordinary man-at-arms again, snub-nosed and ruddy, wearing the Earl of Rothes’s livery.

Tante-Mar clutched her rosary. Jennet stared, openmouthed. I put the casket and the trailing flowers down on the table. There was a three-legged stool pushed up beside it.

“The Earl of Rothes wants Lady Marina Leslie brought back upstairs right away,” the man said. He put one hand on his sword hilt. “To protect her, like. That’s you, am it not, my lady?”

I caught up the stool, swung it hard by one of its legs, and knocked him stone-cold unconscious.

“Sainte Mère de Dieu,
Rinette
!”
Tante-Mar cried. “Have you gone mad?”

“I have not,” I said. “Get your things, whatever you want to keep. Money, too, whatever we have. We are off to Granmuir and we do not have long until the earl sends more men. Where is Wat?”

Jennet, pragmatic as the day is long, knelt beside the unconscious soldier and began tying his wrists and ankles together with his own bootlaces. “Stables,” she said. She bounced up and began collecting a bundle of clothes for herself and one for me. “You want that frippery casket in here?”

I handed it over—there was no time for hidden crosses and secret vaults, but would not the casket be just as safe at Granmuir?—and wrapped poor trembling Tante-Mar in her heaviest mantle. I took her bundle and muffled myself up in my own cloak. “Ready, Jennet?”

“Ready.”

We ran for the stables, the three of us. They were across the upper ward and past the gate, and poor Tante-Mar was half fainting by the time Jennet and I dragged her to the door of the wattle-and-daub stablemen’s hut and pounded on it vigorously.

“Wat!” I cried. “Wat Cairnie!”

He opened the door at once—he, too, had been awake, then, waiting for Mary of Guise to die. He was stout and sunburned summer and winter; I had grown up with him, and he was the closest thing I had to a brother.

“The queen?” he said.

“Dead.
Requiescat in pace
.” I crossed myself. Wat and Jennet did the same. Poor Tante-Mar just gasped and wheezed and clung to her rosary. “Rothes wants to take me now—we have to run for Granmuir.”

“She’s already cracked one of the earl’s men over the pate with a stool,” Jennet said. “More’ll be coming.”

“I’ll saddle the horses.” Wat, thank God, was as pragmatic as Jennet. Both their families had served the Leslies of Granmuir for generations, and not much surprised them.

“Jennet, you take Lilidh,” I said. Lilidh, sweet-tempered namesake of white valley lilies, was my own mare, half-Andalusian and the fastest horse in Aberdeenshire. “Ride for Glenlithie and tell Alexander what has happened—beg him to ride back with you to Granmuir as fast as ever he can.”

“Aye.”

“Wat, take Tante-Mar pillion—she cannot manage on her own, and we have only two more horses. Bad enough the Earl of Rothes is after us without having the sheriff of Edinburgh chasing us down for horse reiving as well.”

Jennet was already in the saddle. Lilidh tossed her head and whickered. “We can’t hold Granmuir against the earl,” she said. “Young Master Alexander’s got no soldiers to bring, and you’ve got only Wat and Master Norman and Robinet and the boys.”

“I do not need soldiers,” I said. I swung up astride on the hammerheaded chestnut, tucking my skirts around my legs. Thank God the gray camlet was thick and serviceable. “Just Père Guillaume.”

“The auld priest? You think you can pray away the earl’s army?”

Wat was mounted as well, with Tante-Mar behind him clinging fast. He wheeled his gelding and the three of us clattered out toward Foog’s Gate. It was a dangerous ride down from the castle rock, and none of us spoke as the horses picked their way.

“I do not have to pray them away,” I said, when we’d reached the bottom. I kicked the chestnut to a canter and we swept down the West Bow and through the Grassmarket three abreast in the moonlight. At the West Port a watchman stepped out in front of us; I threw him a coin and he opened the gate. “All I have to do is marry
Alexander. Then neither Rothes nor Huntly will have power over me, or Granmuir, ever again.”

W
E REACHED
G
RANMUIR IN THREE DAYS
. Jennet and Alexander were a day behind us; the sun was setting behind the forest when they arrived at last, bursting free of the trees and galloping hard along the clifftop causeway connecting Granmuir to the mainland. I knew him instantly, Alexander, my Alexander, by the sun striking gold from his hair like the gold of a yellow iris, a fleur-de-lis, the flower of princes, of beauty and light. He rode wholly at one with his long-legged Spanish stallion. No one rode like Alexander Gordon.

No other riders. No pursuit. For the moment, at least.

I ran toward the gatehouse. Young Davy More waved the blue-and-gold colors of Granmuir and shouted in Gaelic as the riders thundered through. A flash of mud-spattered white—Lilidh, pacing the stallion, with Jennet More dragging back on the reins. For a few moments there were trampling hooves everywhere, iron shoes sparking against stone, heads tossing and foam flying. Alexander kicked his feet free of the stirrups and slid out of the saddle like an acrobat. I threw myself into his arms.

“Alexander,” I cried. “Alexander, Alexander, my darling—”

He cut me off with a kiss, then another and another, hard and exuberant. He smelled of sweat and male and excitement. I wrapped my arms around him, dazzled.

“They are close behind us,” he said. “Rothes’s men. Is the priest ready?”

“In the church. Hurry.”

Hand in hand like children we ran for the church, with Jennet behind us shouting orders for the care of the horses. Tante-Mar and Wat Cairnie were waiting to witness our vows. Just as we reached the ancient chapel, Davy More shouted again.

“Men a-coming, flying the Earl of Rothes’s colors! Good ten or twelve, closing fast.”

We crowded into the church. Wat Cairnie shut the doors—the wood was strong enough but worn; light showed through the planking; would it hold?—and pushed a heavy bench up against them. Père Guillaume had lit two candles on the altar and laid out his stole and missal; the scent of beeswax and primordial holiness inside the little stone structure was greater than any incense. My exhilaration turned to solemnity.

“This is not the wedding I would wish for you,
ma douce
,” Tante-Mar said. There were tears in her eyes. “You have no proper dress or veil, no procession, no maids to attend you. But look, I have brought a bit of lace—it was your mother’s. And her turquoises. They will protect you from evil, and at the new moon—”

“I want nothing of hers,” I said. “Just as she wanted nothing of me.” To soften the ruthless truth of it I hugged Tante-Mar’s shoulders. Her bones were thin and pointed as birds’ bones.

“Step forward,
mes enfants
.” Père Guillaume was a tiny, fragile-looking man, his cassock and surplice made of undyed wool from Granmuir’s own sheep. What little hair he had was the same color, thin and curling. “I am prepared. Monsieur Alexander, have you a ring?”

“I have this.” Alexander took his own signet ring from his forefinger—heavy gold incised with the three boar’s heads of Gordon and the tree trunk cut into five pieces that represented Glenlithie. “A bit large for my lady’s finger, but it will have to—”

There was a hammering on the door—fists. Booted feet, milling about and kicking. A voice cried out, “Ho, there! Open the door!”

Wat Cairnie stacked a second bench atop the first. “I’ll hold the door as long as I can, Rinette,” he said. “Get on with your marrying, but best be quick about it.”

“Oh, Alexander.” I clasped his hands in mine and kissed the ring with passionate intensity. “Oh, my dear. I do not care how big it is; I want no other ring. Thank you. I love you.”

“I will have a true marriage-ring made for you later, gold with sapphires and pearls from the River Tay by Glenlithie. I love you, Rinette.”

Sword hilts and clubs began crashing against the door. Someone cried, “They’ve got it blocked! Get a ram!”

Père Guillaume kissed his stole and put it around his neck, then took up his missal. His hands shook. “Alexander Gordon and Marina Leslie,” he said, raising his voice against the clamor outside the church. “Have you come here freely and without reservation to give yourselves to each other in marriage? You must each answer separately.”

“I have,” I said. I felt as if I were filled up with love to the top of my head, as if it were shining forth like light from my whole face. I held tightly to Alexander’s hands.

“I have,” Alexander said.

“Will you love and honor each other as man and wife for the rest of your lives?”

“I will.” We both said it at the same time.

A great crash against the door, and splintering wood. Tante-Mar screamed and ducked back against the wall. I jumped. Alexander dropped the ring; I caught it only at the last moment.

“Join your right hands,” Père Guillaume said, “and declare your consent before God and his Church. Be quick,
mes enfants
.”

“I take you to be my husband,” I said. I had the ring tight in my left hand. There was more—better and worse, sickness and health, in bed and at board—but no time for it. Who needed it? It was all there in the word
husband
.

Alexander was breathing hard. He began, “I take you—”

Another crash, and the doors burst in. Wat Cairnie was thrown off his feet and fell, stunned by a flying piece of the splintered wood. Alexander and I turned in one movement—half-married, oh, Saint Ninian protect us; give us just a few moments more—to face the soldiers.

“This is a house of God,” Père Guillaume said. He could barely make himself heard. “Take yourselves off at once, lest I pronounce the anathema upon you.”

“I hold with no such papistical notions.” One man stepped through the ruins of the door ahead of the others, dark and rough-hewn, with a brutal look about him. He was dirty and unshaven—so is Alexander, I thought, and yet he looks like an angel—and there was a deep crease between his brows, a perpetual scowl. “We are here in the name of the Earl of Rothes, clan chief of the Leslies, to take his vassal Lady Marina Leslie under our protection. Do not oppose us in this and no one will come to harm.”

“Protection!” Alexander stepped forward, drawing his jeweled filigree dagger with a flourish. He was so tall and light-footed and shiningly golden, so opposite the thick-muscled gracelessness of the soldier, that my heart broke with the sheer beauty of him. “Abduction would be a better word. I am Alexander Gordon of Glenlithie, near kin to the Earl of Huntly, and this lady is my affianced wife. Touch her if you dare.”

The dark man looked at Alexander for a moment. There was silence in the little church. Then, with one well-practiced and ringing arc of movement, he swept his sword from its scabbard, plain workmanlike steel with no jewels or fancywork. He leveled it at Alexander’s
heart. The dying light of the sun through the broken door edged the glittering blade with blood-red.

“I am Rannoch Hamilton of Kinmeall, and albeit I’m wife’s kin to the Earl of Rothes, I wouldn’t call it near,” he said. The mockery was heavy in his voice. “I dare. And I have ten men at my back to dare with me. Put by your blade, laddie.”

I felt Alexander’s arm tremble. Eleven men, I thought. Eleven men with swords against Alexander with only a dagger. Wat down and unconscious. Tante-Mar and poor Père Guillaume frail and terrified. Alexander, my love, stand strong, stand strong. I closed my fist around the ring as if I could give him strength and nerve by means of it.

The dagger dropped and clattered on the floor. One cabochon ruby broke loose and skittered over the worn stone like a shining ladybird beetle.

“Good.” The dark man sheathed his blade with the same careless, economical skill he had used to draw it. “Now, my lady, we’ll trouble you for food and ale and a night’s rest, and you’ll be accompanying us back to Edinburgh in the morning.”

“That I will not,” I said.

My blood was pounding in my ears and my hands were cold as ice. I could still feel the ring in my left fist, the gold suddenly cold, too. I thought, It is not Alexander’s fault. He is alone against them all. I love him. It is not his fault.

I lifted my head and stepped forward. I meant to smile, but I felt my lips draw back to bare my teeth like an animal. Straight into the eyes of this Rannoch Hamilton of Kinmeall I stared; what I saw was blackness. Surface glints of cruelty, sensuality, and animal self-interest. Crude amusement at first. Then the beginning of wariness.