The Mer- Lion (29 page)

Good, honest Drummond, thought de Wynter. I wonder how well it will sit on him, this jaunt I propose. But if only one man I can
have, this is he. That foolish Armstrong. A gem he had if he'd only listened to him.

Now, all eyes were upon him. It was de Wynter's turn. He knew once he removed the cap that whatever else he said would fall on deaf ears. Which was best. There were parts of his life that would not stand close scrutiny and which he preferred not be dealt with in any depth. Thus, in the most casual way he knew, he swept off his bonnet. The reaction to his silvery crest was as he had expected, he had seen it before. Then, while they attempted to digest that, he launched into his tale.

He covered his whole life, briefly, tersely, touching only high points, since his departure from Scotland. His life with Albany, his service in Italy, his ransoming, his return to France, his dubbing, his reputation with the ladies, in part unearned. "Unlike Cameron here, I have sired me no daughters. But I do have one son. That's why I sent for you."

While de Wynter explained his task, Islean left the room to return shortly with a young Jamie Mackenzie holding tight to her hand. Sleepy-eyed, he looked what he was: helpless and threatened, as all these men had been, with making his own way in the world. The sight of the child was all that was needed to set and strengthen men-resolve. If they must capture Margaret Douglas—rape her, kill her, torture her, or whatever to protect the child's inheritance—they would.

Finally Drummond asked, "What do we call you? Jamie, or Seaforth or this new title of yours?"

For only a moment their leader paused, then looking at them, one by one, in the eye, he said, "Call me Jamie if you love me. To all others, I go by de Wynter."

The troop rode out three days later, but a much smaller group than the Lady Islean had envisioned. For many of the tasks that she had wanted to assign to servers the companions themselves felt they could perform. Thus was Gilliver the secretary and Devil's own chaplain: Bonn the barber, Drummond the farrier; Cameron the cook; Menzies the dresser, Angus and Ogilvy the provisioned. Only three of Alva's servants did they take, and those were essentially as men-at-arms, each to hold three horses if need be.

BOOK
 
TWO

The Companions 13 Muharram,
a.h
. 940 /
27
August,
a.d
. 1532

England

Chapter 11

The two were going at it again, this time as cohorts, in a room on the inn's second floor.

"Why the hell doesn't Margaret Douglas stay put?" Menzies complained.

"Aye," Cameron agreed. "Three times now we've drawn up our plans, bribed the servants and-r—"

"Plans, hell!" Menzies interrupted, rising angrily to his feet and knocking over the wooden bench alongside the trestle table. "Three sets of jakes I've explored from the moat. Short straw or no straw, no more stinking jakes for me."

Cameron ignored Menzies but righted the bench and straddled it "Each time we've everything set, she ups and moves away to 'visit' somewhere else."

"Maybe 'twas only coincidence," Gilliver interposed hopefully. If anyone else but gullible Gilliver had made the remark, he would have been greeted by hoots and laughter.

Instead, Drummond said kindly, "Nay, Gilly, I fear they have a point. Three times is too many times for mere coincidence."

Menzies eased himself up to sit atop the table. "I tell you, she knows we're after her!"

"She couldn't," argued Gilliver, never discouraged by being taken lightly. "None of us would tell and who else knows?"

Menzies snorted in answer, but Cameron replied, "Her mother and half brother, for two."

*The Queen Dowager wants her daughter back," Drummond reminded him patiently.

"A
lot of other Scots don't," Menzies countered quickly. 'And if Maggie's in her cups and in bed, she'll tell anybody anything."

Cameron laughed. "If we have to worry about all her drinking and bedding mates, we've half the males in Scotland to concern us."

Drummond coughed. The one thing they need not do was waste time on the royal lady's sleeping habits, especially with de Wynter present. "If James did not want his half sister back, why send us for her?"

De Wynter didn't turn from his spot near the window overlooking the irmyard. "To give him an excuse, perhaps, to seize Seaforth and mother's estates."

Menzies slapped hand on thigh. "Of course! Look what he did to the royal architect, Hamilton of Rnnant. The man was making a conimission on every timber sold, every brick made, every pane installed. Mother of God, he grew richer with every palace James redid: Falkland, Stirling, Linlithgow—"

"Spare us a recital of the royal register," Cameron begged.

Menzies gave his friend a scathing look, then continued on. "The king would have us believe that instead of making plans for the new palace in Edinburgh that James commissioned, the architect was making plots to kill James. I thought at the time that Hamilton wasn't rightfully executed but that he was murdered. Now I know why."

Gilliver broke the silence that followed. "That doesn't make sense to me."

De Wynter turned and smiled on his naive friend, "Since he was childless, Hamilton's extorted money and lands reverted to the king. Yon must remember, Gilly, as far as the law of rmmogeniture is concerned, if we fail here, I too remain childless."

"All
right, Jamie, let's assume someone—James, Margaret, whoever, it makes no mind at the moment—someone in Scotland wants us to fail. How do they
r
. up there, warn Margaret Douglas down here?"

"I don't know that they do," de Wynter replied. "Maybe we're not being avoided. Maybe we're being lured into a trap. Putney,

Mortlake, now Barn Elms—each move progressively farther inland and farther away from a fast escape by ship."

De Wynter's theory started a flurry of conversation. None had considered tins possibility. Angus's voice cut through the noise; "What would you have us do, then? Trip the trap like simple dawcocks?"

"No. I do suggest we test my theory. Make no play to capture her this time, and if she moves anyway, then we'll know for sure."

Cameron nodded agreement. Now was his chance to try out on de Wynter an idea already broached to his fellows. "Might there not be another way? Couldn't we persuade her to go with us willingly?"

"Go on."

"She's a lass. We're men..." A leer completed the statement.

If the rest expected de Wynter to laugh, they were disappointed.

"Possibly. Are you volunteering?"

"Well, me being a proven stud and all—"

Anything else he might have said was drowned out by a chorus of jibes with Angus getting the last word. "I bet your wife was not sorry to see you go, you pecker-pusher."

De Wynter ignored the laughter, gathering up his cloak and cap preparatory to going. "Best keep your breeches on for a while, George. When I presented myself with the letters from the Queen Dowager, she couldn't have been more proper.. .nor more poisonously cold. In the meantime, let's see if she stays put if we do not try anything. Now, I must be getting back to Scotland Yard. I am invited to join king and court when they change residences tomorrow. He leaves Richmond for Hampton Court to check the progress of construction on the Great Hall. I suggest you follow his example and change inns."

Sending Fionn before him to make sure the way was clear, de Wynter swung his great cloak about him and settled his plumed cap more closely about his head, making sure not a wisp of white hair showed. 

Drummond, following after for last minute words, couldn't resist . the opportunity. "Jamie, why not dye it?" "What? And go unremarked?"

"Seriously. What will you do when those French caps go out of fashion?"

"I should just have to start another fashion. No, I do not joke. You either make necessity work for you or you end up catering to it"

Drummond changed the subject. "We've been here more than a fortnight. You said we had to be back in Scotland by mid-September. Are you sure you're playing the waiting game for the right reasons?"

"You mean the Boleyn?"

"I mean nothing." Clear brown eyes met blue ones; the blue ones could not sustain the gaze. De Wynter turned and was about to step from the cover of the stairway and into the busy common room but a hand on his shoulder stopped him. "One more thing. A matter of curiosity. You seem preoccupied with the window. Did you see something?"

De Wynter shook his head. "No, but I should have. My ghost apparently has deserted me for the first time since we arrived in London."

"That'
s
a good sign. You must have lost him." Drummond looked and sounded relieved.

De Wynter favored him with that rare, beautiful smile that made him look again like the Jamie of the past. "Let's hope so. By the way, if you are changing inns, you might try the one near Teddington. I hear their food is good, and you would be close to me at Hampton."

Drummond shrugged. English food could never be called good as far as he and his men were concerned. "You know us, one inn's the same as another. We'll leave on the morrow."

De Wynter nodded his approval, then checked his cap once again and wrapped his cloak tighter about his herald's tabard and left the room. Few noticed either his entrance or his passage, the room having grown hazy with smoke from a fire built up a few minutes before by a most helpful Fionn
...
using green wood just as he had done at the Castle Dolour two months before.

CHAPTER
IS

The following morn, Henry VIII awoke long before dawn to the imperious, irritating pealing of church bells summoning him to matins.

Now mat he had broken with Catherine of Aragon, his wife of twenty-two years, and toyed with breaking with the Holy Mother Church, he resented these pre-dawn awakenings. The din of the bells sharpened the pain in his head. What he would not give right then and there for a whole raw egg in a glass of Madeira. As hangover cure, it never failed; but no, the Church demanded fasting before Mass.

That was not his only deprivation. His bed, too, was empty, thanks to the Church. He heaved himself up into a sitting position. The movement set his head to throbbing, not imrjroving his dyspeptic outlook oa life in general and Anne Boleyn in specific. Not once had she shared his bed, preferring that he be celibate until divorced and she be chaste until queen. He had decided ruefully that Mistress Anne wanted him, but wanted his kingdom more. This well may be the supreme trade, he thought, a crown for her maidenhead. At least I'd be first Let those others flock about her like dogs on the scent of a bitch in season. Get rid of one, another pops up: Percy, Ormond, that damn fool poet Wyatt, and now that young Scot herald. Sniff as they may, I, Henry VIII, shall pluck that maiden's head, or the man's! I swear it!

The bed creaked sympathetically as he swung his feet over the
edge, gingerly resting them on the floor. But the cold of the bare wood soothed the fire in his gout-ridden left foot.

Setting his nightcap aright over red curls streaked with gray, and tugging his nightshirt down about his hairy haunches, he stood up; and as abruptly sat down again, grunting with pain.

"Damn foot," he muttered, looking down on the offending member with its purplish sausage where the big toe should be. "Damn king," he corrected himself, the waves of pain in his head making him wince. Nothing like pain to force one to be objective about oneself. This morning Henry suffered pain in double doses, head and foot. Not all of it was his own fault. Glutting himself at supper, draining all those tankards of ale, topped off with goblets of wine—these were his own doing. But not the dancing. That Anne and de Wynter's partnering had caused.

He gritted his teeth in unregal envy. Those two made a pair, both exotically colored, tall and slender, with an elegance and catlike grace his own ponderous body could never duplicate. As Anne and de Wynter demonstrated the latest dance from France; his sister Mary had sighed and whispered something to her husband, Suffolk. But Henry had overheard: "Such a study in contrasts—he light where she is dark and vice versa." When she added, "What a beautiful pair, so of an age," that had done it.

Spurred by the need to prove himself still young, Henry rose. Ignoring the warning twinges in his foot, he claimed Anne as his partner "Come, mistress, master me this dance." The court applauded his wit; de Wynter, relinquishing her, bowed and withdrew.

What else could the bastard do? Henry had thought, gallantly accepting and returning the bow. Anne, delighted, led him through the steps of the pavane. He, like some young cockerel, must step out lighter and livelier with more elegandy pointed toe than had her previous partner. This morning he paid for last night's folly.

Henry groaned. He could imagine Anne's reaction to his suffering, her light, bright voice cataloguing his sins of last evening, leaving out no foolish or embarrassing detail from her diatribe.

Then, just when he was losing patience with her tongue, her throaty voice would change
...
her black eyes lose their snap
...
her red mouth curl into a smile. Then she would say something like,
"Mon pauvre roi.
No wonder your head aches. Outdrinking those