The Flower Reader (8 page)

“Alexander Gordon of Glenlithie,” Lady Margaret Erskine said, “is lying before the altar in the nave of Holyrood Abbey, his throat cut to the bone.” She bent closer, her eyes burning. Her breath smelled of wild arum lilies, sulfurous and overripe. “Your Alexander is dead.”

Your Alexander is dead.

I knew it was true.

The baby wailed and my body hurt and I knew she was right. It was my baby. A daughter. I did not care. I did not want her. I did not want to live in a world without Alexander Gordon.

So this is what my mother had felt. This is why, when my father died, she had abandoned me to pray her life away in a French convent. I had cried for her and missed her and hated her for so long, my beautiful, evanescent mother who had lived at court with my father and descended on Granmuir two or three times a year like a dayflower suddenly blossoming, to read me stories. Now—now I understood. The dayflower was sometimes called widow’s tears. Her widow’s tears had blotted her out. I felt a wave of love for her, love I had not felt since before we went to France, before the year that cut my childhood in half.

There were no convents left in Scotland. I would die. It would be easier.

I turned my face away but cold fingers forced me to turn back. Nails pointed as claws sank into my cheeks and the wild-arum scent was hot in my face. Wild arums, cuckoo-plants, devils-and-angels—whatever they were called they meant hidden things, sexuality and the boundary between life and death. If you stirred a cup of rainwater sunwise and dropped in a wild-arum seed, it would tell you how long a sick person would take to recover, by the number of times it circled. If you stirred the water widdershins and dropped in the seed—

“Where is the casket?” Lady Margaret Erskine whispered. “I will
not let you die, Rinette Leslie, until you tell me where you have hidden the old queen’s silver casket.”

—where you have hidden the old queen’s silver casket.

But she had not seen me take the casket.

How did she know?

I did not care. It did not matter. No one would ever find the casket, safe underneath Saint Margaret’s Chapel, wreathed in flowers in that mysterious bubble in the ancient rock. I could slip away into soft black unremembering and no one would find the silver casket until the last trump sounded.

Shocks of pain, sharper than the rest. I opened my eyes again. She was slapping me, the old witch. I saw her hand come down again and heard the cracking sound and felt the sting and the jolt of my head on the pillow.

“You have a daughter,” she hissed. “Alexander Gordon’s daughter. She has been baptized, with the queen herself as godmother—Mary Gordon she is, now and forever. Are you coward enough to leave her an orphan?”

Mary Gordon. It made her real and I did not want to think of her as real. Mary Gordon of Glenlithie and Granmuir.

“She will have Granmuir,” I said. “And Glenlithie.”

“She will not. The Earl of Rothes will have it, and Huntly will have Glenlithie, and she will be a beggar with no place in either household.”

For the first time I felt a thread of feeling, pulling me back to life. Granmuir, my Granmuir, my garden by the sea. Rothes wanted it and I had thwarted him when I ran away and married— Oh, Alexander, Alexander. My beloved, my husband. So much blood. And we had been quarreling. Stupid, senseless, meaningless anger the last thing we both felt, and then the knife flashing—

“Rothes will have Granmuir,” Lady Margaret said again. She had found a weapon and clearly she meant to use it. “He will marry your daughter to one of his retainers. Or who knows, she might die—babies die so easily. She is a Gordon and that gives Huntly claim. He
and Rothes hate each other. How easy to put a pillow over her face in the night. Then Granmuir will be Rothes’s forever.”

I opened my eyes. She had shaken her headdress crooked, slapping me, and I could see streaks of white in her hair. Streaks of white in an old woman’s hair—I had seen it before but I could not remember where.

“Granmuir is mine,” I said.

“If you die it will be yours no longer.”

I hated her and I did not want to live, but she was right. The thread of feeling twisted itself with another, and another, and became a living cord drawing me back to the world.

“Tell me where you have hidden the casket.”

Another thread, braiding itself with the rest. How did she know? No one knew, no one but Alexander and me. Tante-Mar and Jennet might have guessed, but they would never betray me. How did Lady Margaret Erskine, the old king’s mistress, the bastard pretender’s mother, creature of courts and plots and power, know what I had hidden at Granmuir for a year, what I had brought to Edinburgh to give to the young queen?

“I do not know what you mean,” I said.

She put her hand on my forehead, suddenly gentle. Had she realized, perhaps, that threats and slaps would never persuade me? “You will understand,” she said, “when your daughter is older. A mother will do anything for her child. We are not so different, you and I.”

I turned my face away, but she bent closer. “My son was born to be king,” she whispered. “His father wanted to legitimate him; did you know that? He petitioned the pope to dissolve my marriage to Robert Douglas, so we could marry and I could be his queen and James could be his true heir.”

“He married Mary of Guise instead,” I said. “Leave me alone.”

“Mary of Guise is dead and her daughter will bring nothing but conflict and sorrow to Scotland. We will send her home to France—she will be happier, in the end. Give me the casket—my James will use the contents wisely.”

“I do not have it.”

“Your Alexander died because of that silver casket. You will be next. Tell me where it is and save yourself. Save Scotland. Tell me, and James will arrange everything—you will be safe to take your daughter and live on your sea-rock in peace.”

Your Alexander died because of that silver casket.

Because of that silver casket.

It stunned me. It was like a knife to my own heart.

Was she right—was it about the casket, then? Not some random footpad in the crowd intent on Alexander’s purse, but a deliberate assassination, a murder, ordered by—

By whom?

Why Alexander? Why not me?

A final thread, stronger than all the rest, hot as flame and red as blood.

I would live, then, and I would find out who killed Alexander Gordon. I would find out, and before I went home to Granmuir with his daughter in my arms, I would have revenge.

A
lexander Gordon of Glenlithie,
Lady Margaret had said in her fetid wild-arum whisper,
is lying before the altar in the nave of Holyrood Abbey, his throat cut to the bone
.

Then to the nave of Holyrood Abbey I would go, as soon as I could stand on my own two feet.

Lady Margaret thought I had chosen to live because of Granmuir and my daughter. She was partly right and I would let her continue to think that. I even allowed her to put the poor screaming babe to my breast, although it hurt when she sucked and there seemed to be precious little there for her. At least afterward she stopped crying and slept.

I allowed the serving-women to give me meat broth and a few sops of bread in wine. I continued to swear I knew nothing of any casket. Lady Margaret knew I was lying, of course, but what could she do? At least I was making an effort to live. The knowledge of the casket’s hiding place would not die with me, not yet.

After an hour or two she went away. She would come and speak with me again when I was stronger, she said. I did not answer her,
and off she went. Three women remained. One was richly dressed in black with pearls in her ears, and gave orders in Scots with a distinct French accent; the other two were stout Edinburgh girls who did as they were directed and said nothing.

“I am Mary Livingston,” the Frenchwoman said. “I am in the queen’s personal household, and she herself has charged me with your care. I grew up in France with her and it is so strange to be back in Scotland again—I hardly remember it and I can barely speak Scots anymore.”

“My name is Marina,” I said. I could not bring myself to say either Gordon or Leslie. “For the sea, because my home is by the sea. I’m called Rinette.”

Mary Livingston smiled; her round freckled face was much better suited for smiling than for looking serious and sad. Then she remembered I was new-widowed and made herself look sad again. “You must rest and get better,” she said. “This is Alisoun and this is Elspeth. If there is anything you want, you must tell us.”

“I would like more broth and bread, please. Help me to sit up.”

I did not really want the food but I knew I had to eat. They piled pillows behind me. I was dizzy for a moment, but I ate more bread soaked in rich meat broth and my head cleared.

“What day is it?” I asked.

“It is Friday,” Mary Livingston said. “Your babe was born very early Wednesday morning, and this is Friday night. It will be time for vespers soon.”

The queen had arrived on Tuesday morning. It had been Tuesday night when—

I could not think it.

“Where are we?” I asked instead. “How did I come here?”

“In Holyrood Palace. The queen has settled here for the moment—her apartments are in the northwest tower, just at the end of the gallery.” She gestured to the door of the tiny room. “Her own physician has been charged to attend you, and of course I myself, and Alisoun and Elspeth here. Monsieur Nicolas de Clerac carried you here—he
was passing by in the High Street when you fell, and rescued you from the crowds.”

“Nicolas de Clerac,” I repeated. “He was the old queen’s French secretary.”

“He returned with us from France. He is a great
ami
of the young queen, who loves him for her mother’s sake.”

“And the baby.” I still could not quite call her by name, or say the word
daughter
. “She was baptized?”

“Oh, yes, after such a birth, the queen felt it was best to baptize her at once. She held your beautiful little girl in her own arms and spoke the responses as godmother, while Père René performed the ceremony.”

“Lady Margaret said—” I stopped. I closed my eyes. It was easier to say it in the dark. “She said my husband had been— Had been taken to the abbey.”

Mary Livingston took my hands in hers. She had warm, strong hands. I felt a sense of white violets about her, simple and joyous, although with the deep purple of mourning in the center hinting at darkness to come. “He lies in the abbey,” she said gently. “With all honor. The queen has seen to everything.”

So I knew where I was, and what day it was, and what time it was. I knew where they had taken him. I had the twisted cords binding me to life—Granmuir and Mary Gordon, guilt and vengeance. All I wanted now was to get up and walk to the abbey and see for myself that the terrible thing I remembered was in fact the truth.

I opened my eyes. I took a deep breath and shifted myself in the bed, stretched out my legs, and put my feet on the floor. It was plain stone, and cold. I straightened my knees and stood up. My legs trembled and I could feel the blood seeping out of me.

“Please help me get dressed,” I said. “My own people, from Granmuir—have they been sent for?”

“They have,” Mary Livingston said. “The queen sent a messenger the very night the babe was born. They should be here in a few
days. Rinette,
ma chère
, please lie down again. It is too soon for you to be out of your bed.”

“I want to be dressed. I want to go to the abbey.”

“Oh, Rinette.” She put one arm around me. “You will never be able to walk so far. You have had fever; you have lost so much blood. Stay here with your babe and rest. He will understand.”

“I want to go to the abbey. Please help me wash and dress.”

I saw her look at the other two women. They all thought I was mad with grief. Well, let them think so. I had to see him.

Reluctantly they fetched warm water and fresh linens and a clean dress I had never seen before. It was black silk with a stiffened collar in the French style, the sleeves faced and lined in white linen embroidered with blackwork. Which one of the queen’s ladies had been judged close enough to my own height and size and so been ordered to give up one of her dresses? Not Mary Livingston—she was considerably shorter and broader than I.

At last I was ready. Elspeth was chosen to remain with the baby. I leaned on Mary Livingston’s arm with Alisoun on my other side, and with both of them protesting at every step we made our way along the gallery and through the palace’s private entrance to the ancient nave of Holyrood Abbey.

It was long and narrow, with rows of columns like clustered flower stems on either side of the nave, creating two aisles. The tall pointed windows beyond the aisles were ghostly dark; the sun had long since gone down. At the crossing between the transepts a bier had been set, with two candles burning, one at either end. Yes, there was a body on the bier; I could see that much. But I could not recognize it as Alexander unless I went closer.

“I will go in alone,” I said. “Please wait here.”

“You cannot walk that far.”