The Flower Reader (5 page)

I said in a voice that did not sound like my own, “I am the lady of Granmuir by blood descent, and I hold Granmuir as a royal fief—the Earl of Rothes has no authority here.”

“The queen is dead,” Rannoch Hamilton said. “Your royal fiefdom means nothing now.”

I had known he was going to say that, and I had my answer prepared. “Then I claim sanctuary here in this holy place, in the name of God and Our Lord Jesus Christ, and Saint Ninian who built this church with his own blessed hands.”

The men outside the door began to murmur and shift their feet. The Lords of the Congregation might be telling themselves they had outlawed the old religion, but men’s hearts and souls did not change so quickly. The followers would never break the law of sanctuary—they would withdraw. It was only their commander who mattered.

“Saint Ninian is nothing to me,” Rannoch Hamilton said. His voice was hard. “And I have my orders. Back to Edinburgh you go, my lady, will you or nill you.”

He stepped forward, deliberately kicking aside Alexander’s dagger. Alexander and Père Guillaume stepped back. Tante-Mar had made her way across to where Wat Cairnie lay and was tending to him. He was moving, lifting his head—he was not dead, thank God. I stood my ground, feeling faint and sick with the effort of it.

“And will you strike me down?” I said. “Will you bind and gag me like a criminal? Because you will have to, Rannoch Hamilton of Kinmeall. I will never set foot out of this church willingly. I have claimed sanctuary at God’s own altar, and sanctuary I will have.”

“I care not for your papist God. I’ve bound and gagged women before, and will do it again with pleasure.”

He stepped forward again. I did not move.

“You do not care for God?” I said. “Care, then, for the old gods of the Picts, who were worshiped in this very spot before the Christians came. There is a sea god who will drown you if you touch me, and creatures with claws and teeth who will eat your eyes. There is a god of this rock who will call the cliffs themselves to shred your flesh from your bones.”

“Ma fille, ma fille.”
It was poor old Père Guillaume, behind me, tugging at my sleeve. He sounded as if he were crying. “Do not say such terrible things.”

“I care for no gods at all,” Rannoch Hamilton said. He sounded less sure than he had before. Behind him, the soldiers were slipping away, one by one.

“Then take care for the goddesses.” I was just as terrified as the others, but I would have died before I let him see it. The only goddesses I knew were the gentle spirits of the flowers, but even gentle spirits could be dangerous when threatened. “You take pleasure in binding? There is a Green Lady of Granmuir who will come in your sleep and wrap her woodbine around your cock and balls and pull it tighter and tighter until
they turn black and fall off
.”

Involuntarily Rannoch Hamilton crossed himself.

“There!” I could have screamed with exultation. “You dare sign yourself with the Christian cross in full Catholic fashion, and deny me sanctuary when I have claimed it?”

The man’s face reddened. Like most of the others who supported the Lords of the Congregation, he would have been born and brought up a Catholic, and his Protestantism was a thin polish on instinctive old ways. He looked around to see whether his men had caught the forbidden gesture, and saw they were gone. The jingling of bits and clattering of hooves in the distance made it clear they were making for the mainland, away from churches and gods and women who dared claim sanctuary in their own names.

“Have your sanctuary, then, and be welcome to it,” he said. There was a dangerous glitter in his dark eyes, and the line between his brows might have been cut with a knife. “This will not be the last of it. The Earl of Rothes will have your damned sea-rock in the end, my lady, and when you go to the stake for your heresy I’ll be there to cheer you to hell.”

He turned and walked away. I could hear him shouting for his horse. All the anger and power drained out of me. I turned and threw myself into Alexander’s arms.

“Finish it.” I started to cry. “Finish it now, oh, my love, and never, never leave me.”

He put his arms around me but I could feel distance in him. I looked up. His face was white. Behind him Père Guillaume was doubled over, gasping for breath, as if he had been struck hard in the chest.

“I am sorry,” Alexander said. “I should have— I should have—” He did not seem to know what he should have done.

“No! Oh, no, Alexander, my love. He had ten men. They would have killed you. I could talk to them, trick them—I am a woman; I am the one they wanted; they did not dare do harm to me.”

A little color came back into Alexander’s face. “You are a woman,” he said slowly. “Yes, of course they did not dare touch you. I drew my steel on them. It is not my fault I had only the dagger and he had a sword and ten men.”

Suddenly I realized I still had Alexander’s ring clenched in my fist. I took his hand and pressed the ring back into his palm. “Take it,” I said. “Père Guillaume?”

“Ma fille,”
the old priest said in a shaky voice. “The soldiers are gone. There is no need for hurry now. I would hear your confession first, and give you penance—you are in a state of mortal sin, to say such things as you said to that man.”

“But I saved us.” I was surprised and hurt, and I only wanted to be Alexander’s wife, now and forever. “I saved us all.”

“Even so, you cannot be married until you do penance.”

“He is right, Rinette.” Alexander was himself again, tall and golden and full of lordly confidence. “Confess and do penance, my love, and we will forget all this. You cannot be a proper wife with such…thoughts…in your head.”

I stared at them, one to the other, speechless. How could they be wrong, the holy old priest who had christened and confirmed me, the beautiful man I loved with all my heart? What would they do, what would they think of me, if I refused?

“I will do it,” I said, “because I love you, and because the only thing I want in the world, the only thing I have wanted since I was twelve years old, is to be your wife.”

Alexander kissed my forehead and slipped his ring back on his own finger. “Tomorrow, then,” he said. “Père Guillaume?”

“Yes, tomorrow. Come,
ma fille
.”

I clasped my hands together and followed the priest with every appearance of meekness. I love you, Alexander, I thought. I will do anything for you. But still—it was I who saved us all.

T
hat night I did my penance kneeling on the cold stone of Saint Ninian’s, my arms outstretched, trembling with strain and fatigue as I recited the
Pater
one hundred times. Old Père Guillaume would have remitted the penance if I had wept and begged, but I would not beg, because I was not sorry. In fact, I was proud of what I had done. I had driven the enemy from Granmuir and I was willing to pay the price.

And my reward, oh, my reward—my reward came the next day when Alexander and I were married at last, with the sound of the sea ruffling gently through the broken door of the church and with all Granmuir’s people gathered round to bear witness: Tante-Mar, of course; her cousin Robinet Loury, who had come from France with her and acted as Granmuir’s master-at-arms; my dear Jennet with her father, Norman More, the castellan, his wife, Bessie, and Jennet’s younger brother, Davy; Wat Cairnie with a bandage wrapped pirate-style around his forehead. I imagined Grannie in the shadows, upright as a poker, and my beloved Gran’auntie with her arms full of windflowers. I imagined my father, handsome, dark-haired,
laughing, his eyes the color of the sea. Leslie eyes, like mine.

My fine court gowns of silk and lace had been left behind in Edinburgh; I wore a plain high-necked dress of sea-green Florentine serge with only one petticoat. For Tante-Mar’s sake—and only for Tante-Mar’s sake, not because I missed my mother, no, not at all—I wore my mother’s lace veil, with her chain of turquoises braided in my hair and looped over my forehead. I wondered whether she would sense, in her convent far away in Paris, that my father’s presence had come home to be with me.

Afterward we feasted. Everyone from Granmuir village on the mainland was invited into the castle’s great hall for roasted mutton and pork pies, stewed chickens and braised pike in spicy-sweet cinnamon sauce. We danced to the harp and pipes—not the mannered dances of the court but the boisterous jigs and reels of the countryside.

Then as the moon rose my husband—my husband!—and I walked up the ancient circular staircase to the chamber at the top of the Mermaid Tower, the northeast tower of Granmuir castle. It was all so unlike the court weddings I had seen—no processions, no ribaldries, no chattering ladies and gentlemen. Just the two of us. We undressed each other slowly, so slowly. The shutters were open to the sea and the stars and the sweet June darkness.

“Alexander,” I whispered. “Oh, my love.”

He was beautiful. Can a man be beautiful? Alexander Gordon was. He was like an archangel, his golden hair silver in the starlight, his shoulders broad and elegant, fine muscles marked out in perfect intertwinements under the smooth skin of his arms and chest. But no archangel was ever so naked. No archangel was ever so male.

“Do you like looking at me?” he said.

I reached out and touched his left forearm. There was still a slight irregularity in the line of the bones; I would not have noticed it if I had not known it was there. “Yes,” I said. “Do you remember the first time we saw each other? Grannie had just finished splinting your
arm. You were naked then, too, or at least partly naked. She told me not to come in, but I did anyway. I loved you then, the moment I saw you.”

He laughed. “You were only a little girl.”

“I was not. I was twelve. Some girls are married when they are twelve.”

“Only princesses.”

“I have royal blood—somewhere, I think. Perhaps on the French side. I loved you, but you did not even notice me. You were only afraid your horse had been hurt when you fell.”

He threaded his hands through my hair and drew my face close to his so he could kiss my mouth. “It was a Glenlithie gray,” he said. “I loved it like you love your flowers. Do you remember the first time I kissed you?”

“Do you think I would ever forget? We were hiding in the garden. Grannie had made me swear I would not let you touch me or kiss me—”

“—and so of course you came straight to me and begged me to touch you and kiss you,” he said. I slapped at him in mock indignation and he laughed. “We planned to run away together that afternoon. I had come of age by then, and we could have gone to Glenlithie. You showed me some yellow flowers you’d planted, and told me you could dig them up and carry them with you.”

“Irises. Golden flags. Your flower, Alexander.”

He caught me up in his arms. “You are my flower,” he said. “My beautiful wife.”

I kissed him. He tasted like wine and cinnamon. I wanted him so much I was afraid I would faint with it. I was afraid—suddenly I was terrified and I did not know why.

“Where would we be tonight,” I said, “if the Earl of Huntly’s party had not stopped to hunt at Granmuir that day, and if your Glenlithie gray had not fallen with you? Oh, Alexander, it frightens me. Such a small thing, and our whole lives were changed. What other small things—”

“Shhh.” He put his finger against my mouth. “It did happen, and we are here.” Slowly he drew his finger down over my chin, along the line of my throat, to the hollow between my breasts. “We can touch and kiss each other now, all we want.”

I gave myself up to him, and we did everything we had ever wanted to do.

W
E LIVED IN THAT TOWER ROOM
, Alexander and I, for the next few days. We learned each other’s bodies down to the last scent and texture and curve and fold. We sat cross-legged on the bed, giggling like children, and ate honey-soaked cakes until the counterpane was covered with crumbs and we never wanted to see honey again. We drank wine until we were dizzy. We watched the sea, the sunrises, the stars, the change in the moon from a gibbous half-circle to a waning crescent. And on the last day, I showed him the queen’s silver casket.

“What is in it?” he asked.

“I do not know. She told me not to open it—whatever is in it, it is for her daughter, the French queen, if she ever comes back to Scotland.”

“Do you have a key?”

I opened my hand to show him. “Yes. But the key is for the French queen as well. I must not open it. I promised, sweetheart.”

He leaned forward and kissed my mouth, slowly and deliciously. “The old queen is dead and the French queen will never know,” he said. “Open it. I want to see.”

“I promised.”

He licked the corner of my mouth, then kissed his way along my jawline. My whole body quivered and tightened. “Open it,” he whispered, close against my ear.

“We will just look. Nothing more.”

He laughed and sat back. “Nothing more.”

I fitted the key into the keyhole. The scents of hawthorn and woodbine and briar rose suddenly seemed to fill the room. I shook
my head. Not real. Just memories. Mary of Guise was dead and that was what the hawthorn had foretold—
but the blood, what about the blood?
—and the woodbine meant entanglement, binding, my promise. Yes, I had promised. But what harm could it do to look, just look, nothing more?