The Courtesan mog-2 Read online

  'Aye. May he continue to do so, then – or he will have me to deal with!' his half-brother declared, unsmiling still. 'Where is he, Marie?'

  'Closeted with the English envoy. Across the yard yonder. As so often he is.'

  'M'mmm. With Bowes? I see. Then you will give him my message, Marie. He will know that I mean it.'

  'You will not wait, Davy? Stay with us? Even for this one night…?'

  'No. You forget perhaps, my lady, I am a servant and no lordling. My lord of Gray's servant. My time is not my own. My lord does not so much as know that we are here. He would never have permitted this – and it may be that he is right. I must be back to Castle Huntly this night – or Mariota will suffer his spleen…'

  'Very well, Davy.'

  They went down and out of the pend with him, to bid him farewell and watch him ride off with Mary's garron led behind, a sober, unsmiling, formidable man whose level grey eyes nevertheless gave the lie to most of what he appeared to be. There were tears in the Lady Marie's own eyes as she watched him go. Mary Gray's were not so swimming that they did not note the fact.

  Coming down the narrow vennel from the street were three gallants escorting on foot a young woman whose high-pitched uninhibited laughter came before them to rival the pealing bells. One was but a youth, one a young man, and the third somewhat older; all were over-dressed. David's two horses, in that narrow way, inevitably forced them, from walking four abreast, to leave the crown of the causeway for the guttered side of it, choked with the filth of house, stable and midden. Whereupon the two younger men shook their fists at the rider, cursing loudly, but the older took the opportunity to sweep up the lady in his velvet arms and carry her onwards – albeit staggering not a little, for she was no feather-light piece. Moreover neither his pathfinding nor his respiration was aided by the fact that he likewise took the opportunity to bury his face deep in the markedly open bosom of his burden's gown, so conveniently close. Whereupon the laughter pealed out higher than ever.

  Davy Gray rode on without a backward glance.

  Breathless and stumbling, the gallant precipitately deposited his heaving, wriggling load almost on top of the Lady Marie, and would have fallen had he not had the girl to hold him up. He sought to bow, but the effort was ruined by the eruption of a deep and involuntary belch; whereupon his charge thumped him heartily on the back, all but flooring him once more. The vennel rang with mirth.

  This, my dear, is my young sister Jean,' Marie informed, unruffled. 'Did I not tell you that she had an empty head but excellent lungs? Of these gentlemen, this, who is old enough to know better, is Patrick Leslie, the Commendator-Abbot of Lindores. The child there is my lord of Cassillis my nephew, and far yet from years of discretion. Who the other may be, I do not know – but he does not keep the best of company!'

  'That is Archie, Marie,' the Lady Jean Stewart announced, giggling. 'Archie Somebody-or-Other. Very hot and strong! Like me!' She was a tall, well-made young woman, high-coloured, high-breasted, high-tongued, bold alike of eye and figure and manner, dressed somewhat gaudily in the height of fashion – an unlikely sister for the poised and calmly beautiful Marie. 'Who have we here?' She was staring now at Mary. As indeed were her three escorts.

  'Somebody whom you are going to love, I think, Jeannie. Mary Gray.'

  Mary sketched a tiny curtsy, and smiled. 'My lady.'

  Impulsively the Lady Jean went up to her and threw her arms around her. 'Lord – how like him you are!' she exclaimed. 'You are lovely. I am crazed over him – so I shall be crazed over you, I swear!'

  'Gray…?' Leslie jerked. 'This, then, is…?'

  'Someone for such as you to meet only when you are sober, my lord Abbot!' Marie declared firmly. 'Be gone, gentlemen.' And, turning Mary around, with an arm about her shoulder, she led her forthwith back through the dark pend. Jean Stewart followed, laughing, leaving the three men gazing after them, distinctly at a loss.

  Patrick Gray, roused by all the laughter and shouting, came out of another little house in the yard as they crossed the cobblestones, a tall bland-faced and richly-dressed gentleman at his side. Mary restrained her impulse to run into his arms, and dipped low instead to the gentleman, before searching Patrick's face from warmly luminous dark eyes.

  The Master of Gray, who had been starting forward, likewise restrained himself, actually bidng his lip. Which was not his wont, for seldom indeed did that man require to amend or adjust his attitude, his comportment. Marie perceived it, with something like wonder.

  'My dear,' he began, and paused. 'I… this is my brother's child. My half-brother, Mr Bowes. Mary Gray. Of whom I have told you. Come to Court. Mary – Mr Robert Bowes, Her Grace of England's envoy.'

  'Ah? So! I congratulate you. Congratulate you both!' The tall suave man bowed, his smooth pale face unsmiling. Mary, meeting his glance, decided that his eyes were both cold and shrewd, and that she did not like him. 'Master Davy we know. And the Bishop of St Boswells we know likewise. His grand-daughter, I think?'

  Patrick raised one eyebrow. 'You are well-informed, sir,' he observed lightly.

  'As you say,' the other acceded. 'And as is necessary.'

  'I believe that the Bishop of St Boswells would scarce thank you, sir, to remind him of the fact,' Mary said, without emphasis but seriously. 'Nor would such as I think to disagree with him.'

  Patrick drew a quick hand down over his mouth, as his eyes gleamed. Lady Marie smiled, and her sister whinnied laughter. 'Indeed!' Mr Bowes said. 'Umrara… ah… is that so?' Demurely Mary moved over to the Master's side, and rising on tip-toe, kissed his cheek. 'I hope that I see you well, Uncle Patrick?' she asked.

  The man tossed discretion overboard, swept an arm around her slender waist, and lifted her off her feet to kiss her roundly. 'Bless you, Mary lass – you see me vastly the better for the sight of you! Mr Bowes, I pray, will excuse us?' And nodding to the envoy, he reached out for Marie's arm also, and led them all over to their own little house.

  Queen Elizabeth's representative looked after them thoughtfully.

  All Falkland, it seemed, had been talking of the masque for days. Other intriguing matters occupied busy tongues of course – the King's unaccountable leniency towards the Brig o' Dee rebels, Huntly in especial, allied to his notable harshness towards my Lord of Bothwell; the rumours that Huntly was indeed a convert to Protestantism; the highly indiscreet behaviour of the young Countess of Atholl. The masque, however, maintained pride of place. It was being devised and was to be staged by the Master of Gray – and undoubtedly nothing like it had been seen in Scotland since those spectacular days of nearly ten years before when Esme Stuart of Lennox Duke Ludovick's father, and the young Patrick, had ruled the land in the name of the boy King James. Details were being kept a close secret, but it was known that, weather permitting, it was to be held out-of-doors on the night of the ninth, and that outrageous requests had been made to shocked Reformed divines to pray that it did not rain. Who was paying for it all was a matter for much speculation – for the Master himself, having been stripped of all his properties at his trial, was known to be in dire financial straits, and the King certainly was much too fond of gold to waste any of it on such nonsense.

  Mary Gray's arrival only the day previous would not have precluded Patrick from inserting her conspicuously into the scene somehow, had not Marie put her foot down firmly, declaring that, knowing her husband, this affair was unlikely to be a suitable launching into Court life for the girl, and that also, any so early thrusting of her into prominence might seem ostentatious and unseemly. Reluctantly he bowed to his wife.

  In another matter he was adamant, however. Mary should be dressed as she merited – or he was not the Master of the King's Wardrobe! One glance at the girl's best gown, extracted from her bundle, assured the need of his services, however gentle he was towards her susceptibilities in the matter, and however hard he was on the Lady Jean for her shrieks of laughter at the thought of anything so simple and plain being worn at Court. So, since t
ime was short and the royal wardrobe not yet geared to the proper provision of clothing for women, the King's tailors and sempstresses were brought over to the falconer's house to adapt and cut down one of Marie's own dresses. Mary was almost overwhelmed by the situation – but not sufficiently to prevent her from selecting quite the least elaborate and unaffected of the choice before her, a creation of pale primrose satin, closely moulded as to bodice, with little or no padding on shoulders and sleeves, a high upstanding collar rimmed with tiny seed-pearls to frame the face, and skirts billowing out from padded hips, slit to reveal an underskirt of old rose. Marie recognised the unerring instinct and taste, however much her sister might decry this as feeble and exclaim over more ambitious confections. The neckline provoked a further clash, Mary being quietly insistent that it was much too low for her, an attitude which both Jean and the dressmakers declared to be patently quite ridiculous in that bosoms were being bared ever more notably each season – and this gown was fully three years old. No prude, Mary nevertheless maintained her stand, hinting that a little mystery at her age could be quite as effective as any major display, especially if display was otherwise the order of the night. Jean eyed her more thoughtfully, then. A yoke of openwork, diaphanous lace was therefore contrived, which had the desired effect, by no means hiding altogether the shadowed cleft of firm young breasts while at the same time intimating a suitable modesty – and which Jean cheerfully pointed out could conveniently be whisked out and discarded when the evening really got into its stride.

  Marie smiled her slow smile from the background.

  The evening sky was cloudy but, since rain withheld, Patrick declared this to be all to the good, providing a more effective dusk to screen preliminary activities and better to show off the fireworks. Patrick took a vociferous Jean away with him early, in noisy company. Mary, in due course, with Marie, found herself being escorted over to the palace gardens by the English ambassador and one of his gentlemen, Mr Thomas Fowler, a broadly-built Yorkshireman whose small round eyes lit up at the sight of the girl and who, while conversing with her politely enough in his strangely broad-vowelled lazy voice, almost seemed to devour her nevertheless with his busy unflagging gaze. Mr Bowes himself did not prevent his own glance from sliding very frequently in Mary's direction, the Lady Marie noted. The young woman's combination of modest discretion, youthful eagerness and calm assurance was as singularly engaging as it was unusual. She made no enquiries about the Duke of Lennox.

  The gardens presented a kaleidoscopic and animated scene that set Mary actually clapping her hands, to the amusement of her companions. The shrubberies and fruit trees were hung with myriads of coloured lanterns of every hue and size and shape, and a double row of hundreds of pitch-pine torches blazed right down a long arboured rose-walk that led from the great gates directly to the lochside. Up and down this weirdly illuminated avenue, as well as on the grass and amongst the trees, the gaily-dressed crowd sauntered and eddied, presenting an ever-changing chequer-board of light and shadow, of pattern and colour and movement. Shining fabrics, gleaming bare shoulders, glittering jewels, and the motion of long silken hose, swaying skirts and glinting sword-scabbards, made a fairyland scene. Two great bonfires flamed at either end of the balustraded terrace between the long north front of the grey palace and the loch, casting ruddy leaping reflections on the dark water. Music drifted from hidden groups of instrumentalists near and far.

  Mary, wide-eyed, seeking to miss nothing, yet careful to heed her escort's rather difficult conversation and suitably to greet those to whom the Lady Marie presented her, moved down to the loch, a broad shallow expanse of water, reed-fringed and dotted with many little islets. Here were tables laden with cold meats, cakes, sweets and fruits and flagons of wine and spirits – from which a pack of the royal wolf- and deer-hounds, as well as lesser dogs, were already being fended off by anxious servitors.

  A fanfare of trumpets announced the King's arrival on the scene. James, clad in an extraordinary superfluity of velvets, fur, ostrich-feathers, gold-lace, filigree-work and jewellery, came down the steps from the palace, preceded by his own torch-bearers and heralds and followed by his great nobles, high clergy and ministers of state. Lolling his head in all directions, he waved an apple that he was munching towards sundry of the bowing and curtsying guests, but paused for none. Straight down across the grass to a sort of roundel or bastion of the lower terrace he hurried, throwing excited gabbled and unintelligible remarks over his grotesquely padded shoulders to his almost running retinue. At the roundel he gave his apple to the red and perspiring Earl of Orkney, his uncle and Marie's father, grasped a torch from one of the bearers, and promptly applied it to a large and ornamental rocket erected there especially on a wooden stand. Distressingly, in his trembling haste, James knocked the firework off its stand as he lit its fuse. Fumbling, he stooped to right it, thought better of it, and agitatedly signed to the torch-bearer to do so instead. That unfortunate hesitated in some alarm, but at his monarch's imperious urgings, gingerly picked up the spitting spluttering object, holding it at arm's length, to return it to its stand. Unhappily he held it fuse upwards, and thrust it thus on to the stand, leaping back therefrom immediately as though scalded. But even as James, voice rising in a squeak, pointed out the error, with a sudden whoosh the fuse ignited the charge and the thing went off. Sadly, of course, it went downwards, not upwards. It struck the paving of the roundel in a shower of sparks, and proceeded to dart and whizz and zig-zag furiously, unpredictably, like an angry and gigantic hornet, amongst the royal, noble and ecclesiastical feet, with notable effect. King James danced this way and that, cannoning into his supporters, seeking to get out of the way and the range of the erratic missile. Inevitably his entourage blocked the way of escape from the roundel – though not for long. Yelling with fright the King cursed them, and in as wholehearted and unanimous retiral as had been seen since the Rout of Solway Moss the flower of Scotland scrambled and scampered out from that corner of the terrace, stumbling over one another, leaping the fallen, some actually throwing themselves over the balustrade, more than one landing in the shallows below with a splash. Fireworks were as yet something of an unknown quantity in Scotland, and this rocket a large one – indeed the signal rocket for the entire masque. The monarch and the torch-bearer vied with one another to be second-last or better still, out of that distressingly confined space, and had only partly achieved this object when the unpleasant pyrotechnic blew up with a loud bang, exploding a galaxy of coloured stars about the heads and shoulders and persons of the royal retinue. King Jamie's screech could be heard shrilling above the uproar, mingled with the yelping of one of the shaggy wolf-hounds which somehow had got a proportion of the burning phosphorus embedded in its coat, and went bellowing through the gilded throng into the night.

  The noise was quite phenomenal, what with the shouts of the fleeing, the cursing, the plethora of commands, pleas and invocations, the baying of hounds and the vast and unseemly mirth of the scores not actually involved – in which, it is to be feared, Mary Gray's girlish laughter pealed high and clear.

  Higher and clearer still, however, above all the babel and confusion below, rose the pure and silvery note of a single trumpet, turning some eyes at least upwards towards the topmost lofty parapet of the palace's flag-tower. Here a cluster of lanterns had been lit to illuminate the royal standard on its staff, and beneath it, standing balanced on the crenellated paparet itself, an extraordinary partially-robed figure, luminously painted, with gleaming helmet sporting wings, a staff with an entwined serpent in one hand and a voice-trumpet in the other, notably large white wings also sprouting from bare heels. This apparition, through the speaking trumpet, announced in high-flown terms to all mere mortals there below that he was Hermes or Mercury, messenger of the gods, and that to their unworthy earth-bound eyes would presently be revealed the fairest and greatest of all the heavenly host, Zeus himself, in search of love. Another ululant trumpet-note, and the vision pointed outwards, lochwards,
commandingly, and thereupon faded into the darkness as his lights went out.

  It is to be feared that less than the fullest of attention was paid to this supernatural manifestation, in the circumstances.

  Indeed no great proportion of the company was able to hear what was said on account of the noise below, where a more terrestial potentate was providing his own commentary, and earls, lords, bishops and dogs were in loud process of reinstating themselves in their own estimation. Even amongst those who received the announcement from on high, it produced only a mixed reception, guesses at the identity of Hermes vying with the loud assertions of a dark-clad divine near the English ambassador's party that this was shameful, a work of the Devil, sheerest paganism if not what worse, popery.

  In consequence, no very large proportion of the assemblage at first perceived the dramatic developments proceeding a little way out on the loch. Hidden lights came on, one by one, amongst the many islets about one hundred yards out, lighting up the dark water; and out from behind a long and artificial screen of reeds and osiers and willow-wands there floated a silver galley rowed by hidden oarsmen, ablaze with lights. On a raised dais at the stern stood a tall slender woman, rhythmic-all brushing her long fair hair. It did not take a great many moments, thereafter, for this lady to draw most of the inattentive and preoccupied eyes in the sloping gardens in her own direction, for she was entirely naked, apart from a silver mask over her eyes, her body glowing greenish-white with luminous paint – although certain prominences were picked out in scarlet. Crouching at her feet but otherwise unclothed likewise save for masks, were three maidens, who stretched up willowy waving white arms towards their principal in adoration.

  Music swelled from the islands as the silver galley moved slowly in towards the watching throng.