The Courtesan mog-2 Read online

  The Courtesan

  ( Master of Gray - 2 )

  Nigel Tranter

  Nigel Tranter

  The Courtesan

  Chapter One

  THE girl picked up the much creased and battered looking letter, smoothed out the folds, and began to read the dashing, sprawling handwriting. She knew that she ought not to be reading it; but equally she had known that she was going to do so from the moment that she caught sight of the broken-sealed paper lying there on the table. She had seen the shipmaster from Dundee handing it to her father in the castle courtyard that morning – and had cried out then, was it from her Uncle Patrick? David Gray had turned away abruptly, thrusting the letter deep into an inner pocket of his doublet, jerking a rough negative. And few people ever found it in themselves to be either rough or negative with Mary Gray.

  Her slightly pouting red lips silently formed the carelessly vigorous letters into words as she read – such different writing from her father's own neat and painstaking hand, so much more difficult to read. Yet how vividly it spoke to her of her Uncle Patrick himself; all the gallant, mercurial, laughing brilliance of him, casually masterful, shatteringly handsome -beautiful indeed, the only man that she had ever seen who could be so called and yet remain indubitably and essentially masculine. If there had been a mirror in that purely functional modest chamber in the north-west flanking tower of Castle Huntly – which of course was unthinkable in a room solely her father's – Mary Gray would have had little need to conjure up any mind-picture of the writer of that letter, as she spelled out the words, for what she would have seen therein would have served better than any such year-old memory, better than any painted portrait however expertly limned.

  The girl knew that she was quite fantastically like the absent Master of Gray, and in more than mere features, colouring and expression – embarrassingly so to a great many who saw her, though never to herself. Mary Gray was not readily embarrassed, any more than was her Uncle Patrick.

  Slightly but gracefully built, at fifteen she was nevertheless already showing more than the promise of a lovely and challenging young womanhood – for women as well as men ripened early in the vehement, forcing days of James Stewart the Sixth, and of Elizabeth Tudor. Dark, of a delicate elfin beauty, she was exquisitely made alike in face as in figure, great-eyed, lustrous, with that highly attractive indeed magnetic expression, unusual as it is apparently contradictory, which seems to combine essential, quiet gravity with a more superficial gaiety, even roguery. Mary Gray left none unmoved who saw her; that would be her burden as well as her guerdon all her days. Only some few women are born with that fatal stamp upon them – including that lovely and unhappy royal Mary after whom she had been named. The girl read with a sort of still absorption.

  'My good and respected D.,

  Will you hear a sinner's plea? I write in all humility, not to say trepidation – for you did not answer my last. It is important that you heed me now, I assure you. Important for your upright self, for both dear M.'s, for whom – dare I say it? – you will not deny me some mede of devotion if not responsibility? Even for our noble progenitor – whom, however, God may rot if so He wills!

  Heed then, good D. The glorious and utterly accursed lady whose price was above a ruby will, within a three-month, meet her deserts. This beyond a peradventure. The two most catholic have decided it at last, and all is in train. Your humble debtor has the ear of H.C.M., if not of H.H., and is satisfied that this time justice will be done. These eyes have indeed looked on the ready-forged sword of that justice, and are content. Here is no plot, no conspiracy, but invincible persuasion sufficient to the task. More than sufficient, craft replacing craft, nota bene. You have doubted my word times a-many, D. Doubt it now at your peril. You are a deal less dull than you seem, and it will not have escaped you, I vow, that H.C.M. is testatory heir to that other unfortunate lady, against whom the fates waged such unrelenting war. Now, great as must be our gratitude to this paladin, I judge that you will agree with me that an overdose of good things is seldom a kindness. Moreover we have our errant young friend J. to consider. Accordingly certain precautions will be advisable.

  Here they are. Inform our blustering northern cousin H. of all this forthwith. Urge that he brace himself, and swiftly. Likewise S. and the C. and others of that kidney. A month must suffice them. Then, only when they are ready, inform young J. But not his tutor and servitors, lest the lad be unduly distracted. J. to write to H.C.M. offering a mutual arrangement, satisfactory to both – pointing out, needless to say, that short of some such convenient understanding, it might be necessary for him to go to the thrice-damned woman aforementioned. He will take the point, I have no doubt.

  This should serve, I think. See to it, D – and swiftly. Not for my sake but for all you hold dear – lest the office be set up on Castle-hill! Do not doubt the choice before you.

  My own M. would send you all too much of love, I fear, if she knew that I wrote. She is well, as am I.

  Do not withhold my worship and devotion from those whom I also hold so dear and on whom I pray God to smile – though your stern Reformed God never smiles, does He? Who knows, I may see them, and your own sober visage, sooner than you think. Salutations.

  P.'

  Mary Gray had worked her way once through this peculiar epistle, and, wide brows wrinkled slightly, was part-way through a second reading, when a sound from the open doorway drew her glance from the paper. David Gray stood there, frowning, lips tight, a more formidable figure than he knew.

  The girl did not start guiltily, nor drop the letter. She did not even look discomposed. That had ever been the problem with her from earliest childhood – how to assert parental authority and suitable sway over one so strangely and basically assured, so extraordinarily yet quietly judicial, so patently quite unassertively master of herself and her immediate situation. Even my Lord Gray himself did not attempt to impose his imperious will on her; indeed, he had always spoiled her shockingly.

  'What do you mean by reading that letter, girl?' David Gray demanded, jerkily. 'It is not for such eyes as yours. Is nothing private to me, even in my own chamber? Can I not leave my table for two minutes, but you must come prying, spying? I did but go to speak to the foresters…' He stopped. Not for him to explain to this chit of a girl. 'Put it down, child! Think you that all my affairs must be business of yours? I will have you know otherwise, 'fore God! I lock my door from such as you?'

  He went on too long, of course – and knew it. Too much school-mastering, too much the petty tyrant as my lord's steward. At the clear and unwinking regard of those deep dark eyes, he cleared his throat loudly and rubbed his cleanshaven chin.

  She ignored all that he had said – or perhaps not so much ignored as listened to it, considered it, and dismissed it as irrelevant.

  'What does Uncle Patrick mean, Father, by the lady whose price was above a ruby? He calls her accursed. And the ready-forged sword of justice? I think that I understood some of his letter – but not that. Nor this, where he writes of craft replacing craft? What means that? And who is H.C.M. and H.H.? And all those others? "Both dear M.'s", of course, means Mother and myself. But these others? Tell me, if you please.'

  There it was, the almost imperious demand, none the less infuriating for being quite unconscious, quite devoid of any undutiful intent, any impertinence, yet ridiculous, insufferable in a girl still in her teens. So might a born queen speak and look – not the bastard daughter of a bastard, however lofty the standing of three of her grandparents. Davy Gray's problem, self-assumed, for fifteen years. Or one of them.

  The man stepped over to the table, and took the letter out of her hands. He was a stocky plain-faced youngish man -extraordinarily young-seeming to play th
e father to this burgeoning beauty. At thirty-two, indeed, he showed no single grey hair, no sign of thickening about the belly, no physical corroboration of the staid man of affairs, the schoolmaster, steward of a great estate, father of three, the man who had shortly rejected King Jamie's proffered accolade of knighthood but a year previously. Somewhat blunt-faced, heavy-browed, strong-jawed, grey-eyed, his hair worn short, and dressed in simple and well-worn homespun doublet and breeches and tall riding-boots, he looked perhaps a harder man than he was. Swordless despite his position of steward to the fifth Lord Gray, his father – and despite all the notable swording that was credited to him in days not so long past – he looked like a man who might be seeking the sober, the settled and the respectable rather before his time, and by no means always finding it.

  'I shall tell you no such thing,' he said. 'On my soul, did you not hear me? I said that it was not for your eyes. It is naught to do with you.'

  'It is from him. From my Uncle Patrick.'

  'Aye.' For some reason his glance dropped before hers. 'Aye, more's the pity! But what he speaks is of no concern of yours, child. Nor…' David Gray sighed heavily, 'nor of mine either, indeed. Nor of mine!'

  'Surely it is, Father? For I think that it concerns the King. 'Young J.' – that is King Jamie, is it not? Who else would he name our errant young friend J.? He is to be informed after these others. It is what he is to be informed that I do not understand.'

  'God be good, Mary – I… I…!' Her father swallowed. 'Have done, girl, I tell you. Will you never heed what I say? You are too young. Fifteen years – a mere child…'

  'At fifteen years you married my mother, did you not? Carrying me within her.' That was calmly, factually said.

  David Gray drew a deep quivering breath, blinking grey eyes quickly, but found no words.

  She went on, as calmly. 'I am not a child any more, Father. I am a woman now. You should know that.'

  'I know that you are an upstart, saucy malapert, a hussy, a baggage! And that my letters are no concern of yours, d'you hear?'

  'This letter greatly concerns my Uncle Patrick.' She paused on the name, and then repeated it carefully. 'My Uncle Patrick. Therefore it concerns me, does it not?'

  David Gray opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again. He turned away from her, and took a few paces across the bare wooden flooring to the window, to stare, not down into the cobbled courtyard of the great castle, but out over the wide, grassy, cattle-dotted levels of the Carse of Gowrie and the blue estuary of Tay beyond, gleaming in the brittle fitful sunlight of a February noon stolen from spring. South and south he gazed, as though he would look far beyond Scotland, beyond England even, to sunny France or Spain or wherever his damnable, disgraced and yet beloved half-brother presently spent his banishment. And however hard he frowned, his grey eyes were not hard, at all.

  In three light running paces, Mary was at his side, her hand on his arm, her lovely face upturned to his wistfully, all winsome tenderness now. And in such mood no man whom she had yet encountered could resist her.

  'Forgive me, Father,' she said softly. 'You are my true father, my only father. And always will be. You have my devotion always. You know it. But… I must know of him. I cannot help myself, you see. What concerns him, I must know. Do you not understand?'

  'Aye.' Licking his lips, David Gray turned to her, and his arm slipped up around her slender shoulders. His voice shook a little. 'Aye, lass. He is… what I can never be. Well I know it. And you are so like him. So… so devilish like him, child. Sometimes I am frightened…'

  'I know,' she whispered: 'I know it. But never be frightened, Father. Never – for me. There is no need, I think.'

  He considered her, all the quality of her that made him feel like a plough-horse beside a Barbary, a bludgeon beside a rapier; that made her unassuming country wear of scarlet homespun waisted gown, aproned and embroidered underskirt and white linen sark or blouse, in fact as simple as his own attire, appear as apt and as strikingly delectable as any court confection. He sighed.

  'Aye, Mary – you are a woman now, in truth. Folly to shut my eyes to it. Yet, all the more you need guidance, counsel, protection, my dear.'

  She nodded her dark-curled head, accepting that. 'But not from Uncle Patrick, I think?'

  He hesitated a little before answering her slowly. 'I would that I could be sure of that.'

  She searched his face intently. 'Mother says that you always have been less than fair to Uncle Patrick,' she observed. 'Do you think that is true?'

  'Your mother knows him less well than I do, girl.'

  'And yet… you love him, do you not?'

  'Aye.' Sombrely he said it. 'Although it might be better -better for us all, I think – if I did not.'

  'No.' She shook her head decidedly, rejecting that. 'No.' Then she smiled again, in her most winning fashion. 'You love me, and you say that you love him, Father. Yet you will not explain his letter. To me. When he says not to deny me and Mother his worship and devotion. And responsibility also, does he not say?'

  David Gray ran a hand over brow and hair. 'Och, Mary, Mary – the letter is an ill one, a dangerous one. Better that you should know naught of it..

  'But I do know some of it. Much of it, I think. I know that it concerns King Jamie, and therefore that it must concern us all, all Scotland. And if young J. is indeed the King, then will not the accursed woman be the Queen of England? Elizabeth? And will not that make the other unfortunate lady, on whom the fates waged war, our own good Mary the Queen, whom Elizabeth murdered? If I know all this, is it not better that I should know the rest? And I know that it is dangerous, for does he not say to doubt it all at your peril?'

  'That is not the danger that I meant,' the man said. 'But let it be.' He shook his head over her again. 'I sooth, you are shrewd, child. Quick. Sharp as a needle. Your… your father's daughter, indeed!' He shrugged. 'I suppose, yes, having gleaned so much you may as well learn all. Mayhap it will teach you something… something about the Master of Gray. That you ought to know.' He spread out the letter. 'But… this is for your ears alone, mark you. You understand, Mary? No one else must know of it. Do not discuss it, even with your mother. She knows of the letter, but not all that it portends. She has ever misliked secrets. Nor would she understand much of it, besides. She frets. Some things it is better that she should not know.'

  "I do not mislike secrets,' the girl said simply. 'And can keep them.'

  He glanced at her sidelong, almost wonderingly. 'That I believe. Else I would not tell you this.' He tapped the much-travelled paper, soiled by the tarry paws of seamen and heaven knew what furtive secret hands in France or Spain or Italy. The missive bore no address.

  'Patrick – your uncle – has not changed in a year,' he said heavily. 'Nor ever will, I believe. Ever he must dabble in affairs of state. It might have been thought, to be condemned to death for treason and only to have escaped with his life by the breadth of a hair, that he might have been cured of such folly. But, no. A few brief months after his banishment for life – eight months, no more – and he is back at it. I suppose that to have ruled Scotland in all but name is too much for him to forget, to renounce… although he said that never did he wish to bear the rule. And that I think he meant, in truth. And yet… I do not know. I cannot understand him, what makes him what he is…'

  Gently she brought him back to the letter. 'He says that the accursed lady will meet her deserts within three months, does he not? What is this of a ruby? A price above a ruby?'

  'That is Elizabeth Tudor, yes. The ruby was one that he sought to buy her with. A great gem. Elizabeth had ever a passion for such things. It was Mary's of course – our own Queen's. Sent her by the Pope, years before. First he used it to discredit Arran, when he was Chancellor, and then he took it to Elizabeth. She accepted it… but she did not keep her side of the bargain.'

  'He bargained it – this jewel – for Queen Mary's life?'

  David Gray looked out of the window again. 'No. Th
at is not what Patrick bargained for, I fear. Something… other! But that is an old story. He mentions it here only that I should know for whom he speaks. This letter – I know not where he writes from. The last was from Rome…'

  'And you did not answer him.'

  'No. I… it was better that I should not. Better for all – himself also, I think.'

  'You mean that it is dangerous? To deal with one who is convicted of treason? If the letter should come into the wrong hands? The King's hands? That then you would be endangered?'

  'No, it is not that…'

  'But that is why Uncle Patrick writes as he does, is it not? In this strange concealed fashion. So that you shall not be implicated…?'

  'It is not for fear of implicating me that Patrick writes so! Indeed, he means that I shall be implicated – very much so. He would avoid evidence – written evidence he fears. He has tasted of its dangers, already! Written evidence can condemn, where nimble wits and a honeyed tongue would otherwise save. It is himself that he seeks to spare – not me!'

  'But he is safe. In France. Banished…'

  'Aye – so it might be thought. So Scotland thinks. But… does he not say that we may see him sooner than we think? Where he may be, even now, the good Lord knows! I know not where he writes from – notably, he does not say. The last letter was from Rome – but clearly he has been in Spain but recently. And what he has seen and heard in Spain convinces him that Queen Elizabeth's days are numbered.'

  'Spain? Not France? Always it was France, was it not, Uncle Patrick dealt with. The Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine? Our Queen Mary's cousins. I thought that it would be these, perhaps, whom he meant by the two most catholic…?'

  'No. The two most catholic are just what he says – H.C.M., that is His Most Catholic Majesty, the King of Spain; and H.H., that is His Holiness the Pope of Rome. It is of these he speaks. They have decided it, he says – decided that justice, as he calls it, will be done, and that Elizabeth of England will meet her deserts.'