The Mer- Lion (12 page)

Seamus, whenever able, attended the lesson, volunteering to be the practice piece of the tutor. Although he took many a buffeting and to begin with showed much clumsiness in addition to great strength, he learned. Jamie, who loved him like an older brother, never laughed, nor did Drummond, who followed Jamie's lead, nor Gilliver, who knew better of his own conscience. Nor did Angus and Ogilyy, who, except for their own eternal internal feudings, were basically taciturn.

Only Cameron and Menzies—a natural pairing—made fun of the good-natured giant. But more than once Jamie and Dnimmond took on the pair—Gilliver not joining in, three against two not being fair—find pummelled them well. That stopped them.

Seamus took his own revenge when the boys came to learn horse care under his command. The horses whose stalls Menzies and Cameron must tend were not of the neat, cleanly kind who soiled in only one corner of their stall. Instead, they wallowed in their own droppings. The mucking out was a long onerous chore for the boys.

Over the next ten years, their education continued in schoolroom, in the castle courts, in the hills and country beyond.

They learned to ride the most infractious of horses—Seamus attending horse fairs to seek them out. Later, they were charged with the actual buying of mounts. The horse-dealers put clever tricks upon them—with Seamus's blessing—pulling a colt's teeth to make it appear older, making a dull jade kick and curvet as if he had spirit by placing a burr under the saddle, attempting to foist off a dumb horse, or a deaf one, or a night-blind one as perfect specimens. The boys learned by these tricks, and then were set to selling back their bad purchases at other fairs. Menzies, with frank and honest air and boyish innocent looks, was best at such chicanery.

A knowledge of all weapons must be acquired, including those used in the tourney, both traditional and modern ones: to run fair at the tilt or to skewer the ring; to draw the bow—sighting below the target for distances up to sixty yards, and above it for longer shots. Angus was the best longbow man, loosing a dozen arrows in a minute at a man-sized target 240 yards away and hitting the mark with all twelve. Ogilvy was easily his match with crossbow, especially the prodd bow, which was light enough to set by hand and fired clay pellets. No moving target, not even the smallest bird that came within 120 yards, was safe from him.

Purely physical pursuits were encouraged, too: vaulting, running, leaping, wrestling, and swimming. Here, Cameron with his extremely long legs had the definite edge. Surprisingly enough, when it came to dancing—which every courtier must learn from almost the time he can walk—Cameron was the least adept and not at all graceful. Whether he was called upon to dance the allemande, the quick courante, the slow sarabande or the lively gigue, he simply had no music sense.

The making of music took up much of their time, all having to learn to sing—a delight before and after their voices changed, a mockery while puberty intervened. Yet the Lady Islean insisted her all-male chorus continue. And soon, she demanded that they learn to accompany themselves as well—on lyre and lute and cittern, a similar instrument but wire-strung and higher pitched.. .the harpsichord family including virginals and clavichord
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the sackbut and trumpet and bombard. And each had his own flute, choosing either bass treble descant or soprano. Gilliver seemed to have the most musical bent except in one area: Cameron found his only kindred musical spirit when first he attacked the Scottish bagpipe.

Not just of wars and music did they learn, but sport as well. At hawking, Drummond, with his quiet, reasoned nature, struck a response in the fierce-tempered imperious birds of prey. Let him and any other cast the lure, and the bird—whether gerfalcon, merlin or kestrel—was sure to choose Drummond's. Tricking the birds by having Drummond scent another's lure never fooled the long wings. And the shortwings—eagles, sparrowhawks or buzzards—always returned to his outstretched fist, sometimes even screaming and refusing to land until he proffered his gloved wrists. Even Jamie's peregrine, a slate gray and white beauty raised from a fledgling, went as willingly to Drummond as to her master.

To play at tennis and to bowl on the lawn was demanded of them and to hunt not just for sport but for food on the table, using one day spear, another lance, a third bow or arquebus. And when the weather was inclement, they amused themselves learning all manner of cards and dice—from Trump and Primero to Hazard and Treygobet.

They learned to play clean, and to figure the odds. And one day, they were introduced to the scurriest rascal Seaforth could find, who taught them how to shave the six the so as to bar treys or cinques and to load the to make a high fullam so as to cast cinques or sixes.

At cards, they were taught how to cut, misshuffle, mark, or misdeal—to cheat as thoroughly as they had been taught how to play by the rules. Gambling, the Lady Islean gave them to know, was foolhardy unless one knew all the odds, including the black ones.

Beyond all this, the boys learned table manners, including the serving of their elders at table as pages do in a royal household. The art of conversation—both empty and enlightened—was not neglected. And although Seaforth Castle lacked for young maidens of the same breeding and age as the boys, Lady Islean's ladies-in-waiting were not at all loath to polish the charms of these young men. Older women can teach young males much, and at Seaforth they did. Between these ladies and the serving women, all of the boys were properly bedded early in their young lives and quite frequently after that.

But not Seamus. His Nelly saw to that. His was the task of fending off females. For all the freedom Nelly allowed him, they might as well be married. Then, within the year after Fionn was born, Nelly gave birth to another child, a girl whom the Lady Islean named Devorguilla after the patroness of scholars who founded the Scots college at Oxford in the thirteenth century and whose beauty was such that 250 years later, girls were still being compared to her.

Devorguilla lived up to her famous name. A fair-haired, green-eyed, oval-faced beauty, she won the hearts of the whole of Castle Seaforth, especially that of the Lady Islean, who found the little girl an antidote to the masculine features of the military camp that her husband was fashioning for his heir. When the boys sought out the countess, they were just as apt to find a young blond-haired head bent over the embroidery frame as an older dark-haired one. The boys, fierce warriors that they were becoming, made much of this winsome lass, and she became their mascot. She cheerily ran errands for them, interceded, in their behalf when they'd offended the Lady Islean, acted as foil for their pranks and jokes.

Because she showed no favorites, loving them all equally, they made her one of them, accepting her presence wherever they were and including her in their games, explaining to her their jokes, and even confiding in her their dreams.

When she was tall enough to learn to ride, they combed the horse fairs for the perfect pony for her, gentled and schooled it just so, made its tack themselves, including a smaller version of their own workmanlike saddles, and men fought with one another for the dubious privilege of holding its bridle and leading the pony round and round the dusty tiltyard.

Once she had mastered the basics of riding, however, they made no excuses for her being a girl and insisted if she wished to ride with them, she must ride like a man and keep up with them. She did, and mastered the bow too, learning to falcon with the best of them. No delicate little thing, Devorguilla was growing up to be a long-limbed, statuesque beauty equally at home with the pursuits of the out-of-doors and with women's tasks indoors.

It was only natural that when the Lady Islean undertook to teach her seven male charges the art of writing love letters, all seven of their efforts were addressed to the beautiful Devorguilla. Only in the classroom was she left behind, and that because of the age difference. However, the Lady Islean undertook to teach the child herself. Her only rule: she must not let the boys do the lessons for her.

Although much of the emphasis at Castle Seaforth was on warfare and weaponry, the countess was adamant that the boys' minds not be neglected, and the earl seconded this. Everyone, including Seamus, learned that turning a good rhyme was as much required of them as was reading and writing in at least three languages: Scots, French—the language of courtiers—and Latin, the language of the Church* and literature.

Those with any gift for foreign tongues were encouraged to master more: English, Italian, Spanish, even Greek. The courts of Europe being so inbred, a knowledge of languages was more than an asset, it was an absolute necessity for the up-and-coming young man. Seaforth and his lady never forgot that six of these young men had their fortunes to make.

As life would have it, the boy whose future was best assured, who needed to excel at this training the least, did the best. Perhaps because his parents expected no less of him. The others at first excused their own lack of success by claiming that the tutors gave more than a fair share of instruction to the son of the lord; eventually they had to admit that James Mackenzie succeeded because he willed himself to, working twice as hard as the rest. He was a natural athlete, one who never went through the gangly, awkward stage, having been born with the natural grace of a cat, and he was the masculine embodiment of his mother's dark-haired, blue-eyed beauty. Introspective, he had inherited a certain sternness and reticence from his father, which could dissolve readily enough, if the situation presented itself, into infectious merriment.

He lived, he loved (very well, judging from the sighs and glances of the serving maids), he led. To be with him was an excitement, a source of endless innovative delight, for his was a curious mind that perceived possibilities for fun or fantasy in the most mundane situation. He was daring but not usually foolhardy, asking nothing of his fellows that he did not demand of himself more rigorously, and accepting on his own head responsibility for all of his and his fellows' actions. The earl and the countess gloried in him, losing themselves in the wonderment every parent feels at seeing dreams fulfilled, immortality promised, but at the same knowing that bittersweet feeling that comes in watching one's only child grow to manhood.

As was the way with all noble households, the family moved frequently, dividing their time among Rangely and Alva and Edinburgh, but always coming back to Seaforth. Even there, however, they were not unaware of the doings in Scotland, although the mood of court and country was less cosmopolitan, more insular. Because of the Lady Islean and Jamie's proximity to the throne, much of their attention was focused on the doings of the royal family, specifically Margaret Tudor's. Like the rest of the nobility, they were astonished by her wedding the head of the Red Douglas clan, Archibald Douglas, the sixth Earl of Angus. In so doing, she forfeited her regency, according to the terms of the late King James's will. Thus, when the Estates summoned John Stewart, the Scots Duke of Albany, from his home in France to be regent, the boys understood . And, versed as they were in heraldry and genealogy, they understood too why the Estates confirmed him as hereditary second in line to the throne.                   

They were, in their familiarity, not at all impressed by the knowledge that Jamie Mackenzie, their playmate, was fourth in line, through the bar sinister, before his mother and behind her brother, to that selfsame throne. They understood why Albany had beheaded Lord Home and his brother, both of whom were believed to have murdered James IV at Flodden. But they could not fathom why he had eventually agreed in 1517 to the return of the exiled Margaret and her husband to Edinburgh.

Indeed they were ready, three years later, to proclaim "I told you so," when word came of a fight in April 1520, between James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, and the Queen Dowager's husband. Almost nine hundred men faced each other on the streets of Edinburgh that day. Before they were through, blood greased the cobblestones of High Street, the noble thoroughfare that led from castle to palace. For a while the battle seemed to favor the Hamilton? who in turn favored the Scots Duke Albany, now in France negotiating a treaty. Then another Home, he of Wedderburn, at the head of his own Border clan, charged through Netherbow Fort and threw his weight in with Douglas.

The Hamiltons broke and ran, between tall houses, down meandering wynds, through narrow closes. Who it was that first called this bloodletting fracas
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' Cleanse-the-Causeway'' no one knew, but the term was too apt to disappear. It stood in typical Scots contrast to mat sophisticated ensemblage of pageantry and pomp that took place the same year across the German sea in France, the Field of Cloth of Gold, where Henry VIII and Francis I first met in a most ostentatious display of wealth and jewels.

Fortunately, for Scotland's sake, the peace between England and France did not last. Each monarch took umbrage at the other's flaunting of riches; and shortly thereafter, the Scots Duke of Albany returned to Scotland, with France's blessing and a token force of men-at-arms, to drive the English south of Scotland's borders.

For three years more, the country enjoyed the blessings of good, solid, capable government under the wise eyes of this gallicized ruler, who spoke not a word of Scots. He managed temporarily to throttle the gross ambitions of the Marrying Douglas.

Sometime in 1524, the earl and countess judged, things went sour for Scotland. An army of Scots being led against the British refused
to follow Albany beyond the Border. Angus and his wife, Margaret Tudor, who had seemed on the brink of divorce, reconciled. Henry Stewart, Earl of Moray, brother to the Lady Islean and third person in the realm after Albany and the child King James V, was set upon by persons unknown as he was leaving St. Margaret's Chapel near the palace's yard. Left to bleed from more than a dozen wounds, his death seemed inevitable.