Queen & Country (16 page)

Hew asked for an account of the land at Kenly Green, and how the tenants there had prospered in his absence, conscious that their welfare might depend on his.

‘There, you have been fortunate. For, as you recall, the title to the land was given to your sister Meg, when you were arraigned, to guard against the risk of seizure by the Crown. When that danger passed, it was put back in your name, and since your sister and her husband made no claim upon the rents, except what was required to keep up the estate, they also have accrued. They are good people, Hew. The rents from the mill have been placed in trust for your nephew Matthew Locke when he comes of age. All else there returns, in good sort, to you.'

‘Tell me,' Hew asked then, ‘for it never was made clear to me, how it was my father came to have that land.' This question had troubled him, even before he had met with the queen. Alison Peirson, the wife from Boarhills that Archbishop Adamson cried for a witch, had told him that his land had belonged to the archbishops, and would return to them yet. Though he gave little credence to that sad wifie's curse, he had feared that the land might be tainted with blood. And now that it
was
, through the death of that queen, he did not feel at ease in his claim to it.

The lawyer cleared his throat. ‘The records do not show. As I understand, it was in payment of a debt.'

‘What kind of debt? Was it money he had given? Or some kind of service?'

‘I'm afraid I cannot tell you. My father may have known. But such small events of fact are buried in the past. The
de facto
case, is that it is now yours, and so may be left to your children.'

‘Children?' Hew repeated. Children were a thing that never had occurred to him, despite his fondness for his godson, Matthew Locke.

‘Should you be so blessed.'

‘I confess, I did not think of that.' Had Frances, wondered Hew.

‘For most men, when they marry, children are the matter foremost in their minds. The more so when they have possession of a large estate.' The lawyer had shaken his head. ‘You, though, are perverse. There is, as I observe, a stubborn inclination to controversy in you, that your father, were he here, would no doubt have deplored, and which I cannot hope to ever understand. Though given all the trouble that your marriage has entailed, lack of any issue from it may prove an advantage.'

Hew departed there, cross and ill at ease, with this cold endorsement ringing in his ears. He had walked to town that morning, in company with Giles, coming to the harbour as the watered sunlight etched upon the bay its level greys and blues. There they had an argument, which threatened his affections for his closest friend. They had not gone far beyond the Kinkell Braes, when Hew had told Giles the matter on his mind. ‘I learned something lately that I did not know before. My father obtained Kenly Green in the gift of the late queen of Scots.' He did not say how he had come by this information, and was thankful that Giles did not ask. His friend was silent for a moment; remembrance of the Scots queen's death was painful to him still. Then he said, ‘I did not ken that. But though I did not know your father well or long, it does not surprise me, for he did not disguise the fact that he was of that party, God rest her Grace.'

Nor, at that moment, did Giles, who wrestled with a grief that showed clearly in his face. Hew was moved by his passion to admit, ‘Had he lived to have looked on these recent events, they would have broken his heart. And had he ever thought that I might play a part . . .'

‘Why should he think that? What part could you possibly play?' Giles interrupted, and the look in his eyes stopped Hew short.

‘I could not, of course. But Giles . . . I hope that you will not count Frances as somehow to blame. Because she is English, she is not England,' he said.

‘You thought I felt that?' Giles shook his head. ‘I should not for
the world have you think me so uncivil, or in any way unkind, to fix that fault on her. If she felt a coolness in me, then I do confess, it comes upon my fear for her, not from mine own prejudice, but from that of the world.'

Hew answered, unconvinced, ‘Do you not think, though, they might be the same?'

‘They are not the same. You were not here, in the months after the late queen's arrest. And in that time, a great bruit and cry was raised among the people, on behalf of a monarch, whom they never loved, nor championed so well when she lived among them; and, at that same time, was brewed a hatred and abhorrence of all England and the English, and especially Queen Elizabeth. At our last winter fair, a pitiful old pedlar was pummelled to a pulp, because he did his prattling in an English tongue, and the powder court decided that there was no case to hear. The news of the queen's death spreads slowly, and has not yet been broken out in the streets. And, when it does, you may be sure that those who were the fiercest in calling for her blood, when she was hounded here, will be first to cry vengeance and to spill blood in defending her, now that she is dead. Your Frances is caught up, right at the heart of it. And I can only fear, that we cannot keep her safe,' his friend put forward, forcefully.

‘That,' Hew accepted, ‘must be my concern. But it is none of yours.'

‘Stuff!' retorted Giles. ‘And if you think for a moment we should leave you to it, you should not have come home. You are not blind to it, Hew. You have come here expecting a fight. Else why would you bring Robert Lachlan? But tell me, does Frances know? Has she the smallest idea, what she has come to?'

‘I will tell you the truth, and only to you. The whole thing was not well thought out. And had I, for a moment, thought about the consequence, I should not have bought her so far from her home. But I do not repent it. I will not repent it. I love her, Giles.' Hew had meant it then, fierce and full in heart.

His passion reassured, and softened his old friend. ‘Meg says, she
is right for you. And if anyone knows, it is Meg. God love you, Hew, you never come but you bring trouble. And the trouble that you bring quickens my slow heart, and makes my spirits leap; it stirs a purpose in me that I would not be without, an energy of sorts, and meaning to this life. Our cares would be dull ones, without you.' They had parted friends, and close to their old terms, arranging to confer together later in the day.

Hew left the lawyer's house, and crossed into the South Street by the Holy Trinity. He had time to spare before he met with Giles, and chose to spend it walking round the town, to see how much had changed. The kirk, that was its heart, where all its people met to deal with their concerns, both spiritual and practical, was strangely quiet now, and its main doors closed. From a man that he met in the yard, Hew learned that the minister had died in the plague, and the kirk itself, lacking an incumbent, was closed for some repairs, open for the service at set times in the day, or when the kirk session convened to its court. It had lost its purpose as a meeting place. The services themselves were delivered by the readers, or by Patrick Adamson, when he put his mind to it. But the people, though they came, as kirk laws obliged, were fearful of a crowd, and did not linger long. The kirk had lost direction, and the town its soul. What solace for the fold, from the creeping peste, when God's only shepherd was the first he snatched away? And what hope of God?

Hew saw, for the first time, the force of the peste, and the devastation it had left behind. It had left its mark in the shuttered faces of the women and the men, their shrunken shoulders hunched, who hurried to their work, and did not break their step to gossip in the street, whose children had been swept and ravaged by that plague. It was Antwerp, again, though on a smaller scale. For the plague had an effect on the fabric of a town, and left it battle-scarred. Buildings, once abandoned, quickly fell to ruin, and on the leafy South Street, where bare branches trembled over tender buds, several homes stood derelict, stripped and gaping open to the bitter wind. The College of St Mary, opposite the kirk, had suffered with the worst. A chasm had
appeared in Andrew Melville's roof, as though it had been smitten by the fretful bolt, of an indignant god.

St Mary's had been closed, long before the plague, by those Black Acts that had driven Andrew Melville to the south of England. His nephew James returned, to find the whole place gripped by God's revengeful scourge, while Andrew had been punished by a futless goose hunt, chasing after Jesuits in the wilds up north. He was not long back, and the college had begun to show some cautious signs of life. Students re-emerged and did the best they could, to patch the damage done to furniture and hope, with plaster, paint and truth.

Further to the east, the College of St Leonard had not fared so badly, sheltered from the storm within its high enclosing walls. Hew had been a student here; its chapel served the purpose of his country parish church, and would serve him now, to hear his wedding vows. Yet he had no will to share this world with Frances, until she was prepared to beard the Scottish Kirk, and hardened to its scrutiny. He was mindful of what Giles had said. And the lawyer had not kent the Scottish queen was dead, when he had dispensed his words of worldly gloom. How much more profound his prognostications then? A muddy surge of feeling swilled up in Hew's heart, complex and confused, for this place, that was dear to him, and harsh and strange to her. He hurried past it now. At this end of the street were new building works, and at the cathedral, where three streets converged, the spires had been stripped to a stark winter shadow, bearing up bleakly against the grey sky.

Hew turned in to the North Street at the Fisher Cross. The market had waned to a few listless haddocks, the fisher wives, hoarse and despondent, stood by their baskets blue-lipped. Soon, it would be Lent, and the fishermen would cast their newly mended nets and duck among the waves in freshly painted boats. For now, it was too cold, and no one wanted fish. Doubtless it was winter kept the children in, buttoned from the wind and off the quiet streets. The town was smaller and more desolate than Hew had remembered it, washed out in the sea spray to a sullen brown.

Giles was in St Salvator's, delivering a lecture. Hew spent half an hour in a lecture of his own, delivered by the porter who kept the college gate. Giles Locke had been elevated, to a living saint. ‘He saved that many lives. And no one in the college fell except Professor Groat, who wouldna leave this place, so would he remain here, body and soul. His relict is here still, God rest him.'

‘His relict?' echoed Hew. Poor Bartie had little to leave, but his books and his handkerchiefs.

‘I mean, his spirit, sir.' The dereliction of its kirk had left the town free to revert, to what superstitions it chose for its comfort. The new minister, when he came, would have his work cut out.

‘The pity is, we dinna have him here, to put him in the hall,' the porter said.

Hew asked, ‘What do you mean?' He was relieved, when the porter replied. ‘I mean, sir, his likeness to hang on the wall. Professor Locke would like to have his picture with the rest. Alas, it is too late, to take it “from the life”, as the painter says. Did ye ken, there is a painter here? A likely, lusty fellow, doing up the walls. And I cannae tell ye why, but I dinna like him much.'

The porter's intuitions to one side – he was ill-disposed to strangers in the college – Hew could understand the importance of the painter, though Giles had played it down. His purpose was to bring back colour to the town, to restore a brightness that the peste had wiped from it, lifting up its spirits in a lick of paint.

Hew waited for his old friend in the turret tower, that housed the doctor's rooms. All that was familiar there, and much more that was strange, reminded him of Giles. He amused himself in looking round the shelves, to find a cornucopia of implements and instruments, pickle jars of body parts, entrails and an eye, grinning at him glassily from a butcher's block. Then there were the books, ranks of tall anatomies, lapidaries, herbals, travelogues and grammars, old religious tracts, all the lore and language of the natural world.

There was nothing in this place that did not hold a narrative, a history encased in paper, wood or brass or bone. There was nothing
in this plethora of antic curiosities that did not have a purpose there, and nothing came by chance, but the objects held the measure, that was scattered, deep, of a scientific soul. On a folding table by the doctor's gossip chair lay a human skull and a little book, Alciato's
Emblemata
, which Hew recalled from childhood. He picked the volume up and settled down to read.

Returning to the tower, the doctor was confronted with the picture of his friend, carelessly disported in his favourite chair, buried in a book, as though he had been waiting for him all those absent years, and never left the place. Hew looked up and grinned. ‘I had this, when I was a boy. Not this same edition, but a less explicit one. My father bought it for me, when I first learned Latin. It did not, as I recall, include this rather singular verse,
“contre les bougres”
, as the French say. I have the copy still, somewhere back at home. Matthew might have it, for the pictures.'

‘It is for the painter,' Giles explained, ‘to make a series of panels for the dinner hall. I had thought, six virtues, on the one side, and six vices, on the other. As to the vices, you may be sure, the sin against nature will not be among them, nor any others rooted in the baser flesh, beyond a simple gluttony; for even what is meant to be prohibitive, our students are inclined to interpret as encouragement. And that, to be sure, is not what our benefactor has intended here. The work must be clean, to pass the provost's test.'

Alciato's
Emblemata
was a book of pictures, each one coupled with a Latin verse or epigram, which offered to the curious and contemplative eye a simple moral text, or sometimes a more complex one. The picture and the text became a kind of riddle interspersed; each showed up its meaning in the other's light. Sometimes, it was used as a painter's pattern book, in decorating ceilings, tapestries and walls.