The Flower Reader (18 page)

“Fine promises, my lord earl,” I said. It was hard to keep my voice from shaking. “What of Alexander Gordon’s murderer?”

“It has been five months, Mistress Rinette, and the truth will never be known. Let the boy rest. Give up your inquiries, trust the casket to me, and you will be free.”

Is it shameful to say that for a moment I wavered? I missed Granmuir so much, my Granmuir, my garden by the sea, my home. I missed Màiri—I hated the fact that I had been forced to give her over to a wet nurse, that she knew Tante-Mar and Jennet better than she knew me. I hated the court and how it was changing me. But I knew I would be as much a fool to trust Rothes as I would be to trust Lord James, or Nicolas de Clerac, or the queen herself.

I stood up. My knees shook. I took a breath and steadied myself.

“I thank you for your offer, my lord earl,” I said. “But until Alexander Gordon’s murderer is discovered and tried and hanged outside the Tolbooth, I will not give up the silver casket.”

W
ould the weddings never end?

On Sunday the eighth day of February, the queen’s half brother and closest adviser, Lord James Stewart, married Lady Agnes Keith with great splendor—well, as much splendor as Master Knox would permit—at Saint Giles’s Kirk in Edinburgh. Easter was to be early this year and so Lent began early as well; the next Wednesday was Ash Wednesday and that left the court only three days to celebrate. We started out to make the most of them with a magnificent banquet that night in the long gallery at Holyrood Palace.

Lord James—newly created Earl of Mar, which had been a royal title since James II—presided with the queen at his right hand and his new countess at his left. Also at the high table were Lady Margaret Erskine, Lord James’s mother; she was alight with pride, and for once it was easy to see how she had entranced the king, Lord James’s father. On her other side, and somewhat to my surprise, sat the Earl and Countess of Huntly. Huntly had been out of favor with the queen for his agitation on the behalf of his Highland Catholics, but his wife, Elizabeth Keith, was the bride’s favorite aunt—everyone in Scotland
was related in some way to everyone else, by blood or by marriage or both—and so there they were, at the high table with the rest of the queen’s inner circle, eating peacocks in galantine sauce and a pie of wine-seethed figs, pine nuts, and salmon, seasoned with cinnamon, pepper, and ginger.

I had begged the queen to allow me to remain in my apartments with Màiri and my own little household. I would have been better off begging for a place at the feast, because then she would certainly have denied me—after everything that happened at Crichton I was more out of favor than ever. As it was, I stood behind her in my mended green dress, providing a basin of warm scented water and a clean towel whenever she lifted her imperious white hand.

I was invisible, as all the servitors were invisible, and at least it gave me a good opportunity to study the Earl of Huntly. He himself could not be the murderer—he was old and slow-moving and as slabbed with fat as a grizzled bear in the wintertime. But his son, young Sir John—Sir John, with his father’s dash of royal blood—was wild and reckless and aimed high, some said as high as the queen’s own person and the crown matrimonial. If Rothes was right and Alexander had offered the casket to the Earl of Huntly—his own clan chief? Would he have had such audacity?—Sir John would have known. And like the French and the English, the Lords of the Congregation and the Huguenots, he might well have wanted to prevent the casket’s falling into enemy hands almost as much as he wanted it himself. Perhaps more than any of the others—if he dreamed of marrying the queen, he might not have wished her to read Monsieur de Nostredame’s prophecies of her four husbands.

Unless he was one of them.

The sweets had been served, winter fruit baked in almond milk, little rosewater-flavored bridal cakes spiced with cloves and mace, and stacks of gilded gingerbread. The queen had rinsed her hands and dried them one final time and risen—there was to be dancing and she always loved dancing. Sir John Gordon, meanwhile, was bending over his father’s chair, whispering in his ear, but all the while his eyes
followed the queen; she was perfectly well aware of it and preened herself for him like a long-necked swan. I took a step to one side, where I could observe Sir John more closely. He was richly dressed and wearing a gilded leather belt with a painted dagger sheath; I could see the glint of jewels. If I could only work my way closer—

“Mistress Rinette.”

I jumped and almost spilled the water in my basin. I knew the voice, of course. A man’s hand, long-fingered, perfumed and glittering with rings, steadied me.

“Monsieur de Clerac,” I said. I felt a rush of contradictory feelings—resentment, fear, pleasure, anger, caution.

He lifted the basin from my hands, put it gently on the table, and stepped up beside me. “The queen is wrong to relegate you to such menial tasks,” he said. “What is it that interests you so about Sir John Gordon? If I notice you staring, others will as well.”

“It is only that—” I stopped myself. If Nico de Clerac was a Guise agent, I certainly did not want to share further information with him. What else could I say about Sir John? I went on, as if it did not matter in the least. “One hears the most scandalous gossip about Sir John—supposedly he has married the widow of Alexander Ogilvie, and yet he courts the queen quite openly.”

“So he does.” Nico had a trick of looking at a single person while appearing to gaze carelessly out over an entire room. He was dressed in a velvet doublet of crimson so dark it appeared black until he moved and the candlelight caught glints of color; the sleeves were cut away to reveal tight undersleeves of golden-scarlet silk, slashed and ribboned. His trunk hose were rich watered silk and velvet in a darker scarlet color. All the crimson and scarlet should have been painfully mismatched with his red-gold hair, but somehow they were not.

His eyes were outlined with kohl. He wore more maquillage than I ever did, more jewels, more silks, more perfumes, so much so that he seemed to be making a deliberate effort to appear effeminate.

For me, at least, he did not succeed. I remembered him standing over me with a sword.

“It is the dagger, I think,” he said. “You are looking for a missing ruby.”

“Perhaps.”

The tables had been carried out and the musicians had begun to play; the queen had gone out to dance a galliard with Lord James while Lady Agnes was partnered with her father, the Earl Marischal. The queen was a bravura dancer, her height and slenderness giving her striking elegance as she performed the steps; Lord James was stiff and sober beside her. Nico and I both watched Sir John Gordon for a moment as he stood by, awaiting his own opportunity to dance with the queen.

“He is hungering for her,” Nico said at last. “And not only because she is queen.”

“He will be disappointed.”

“I hope so. A Catholic marriage would be a disaster for her. Do you dance, Mistress Rinette?”

“No,” I said shortly. In truth I loved to dance, although I had never truly appreciated the intricacies of court galliards and pavanes, stylized high dances and low dances—my arms and legs always seemed too long and I could never manage my skirts correctly. I preferred the country dances I had learned from Jennet and Wat in Granmuir village, and I certainly could not picture myself, in my mended dress, dancing with Nicolas de Clerac in all his finery. I, a seaside windflower, and he, the trailing nightshade, dark and rich, sweet and poisonous.

“A single dance? It is only courtesy to the bride and groom, to show our good wishes for their happiness.”

The galliard was finished, and the musicians were playing an interlude while the dancers chose new partners. Lord James and Lady Agnes chose each other, of course; Sir John Gordon and the French poet Pierre de Chastelard appeared to be arguing over which one of them would next partner the queen. She herself was drinking wine proffered by Mary Seton and laughing at the two gentlemen.

Nicolas de Clerac put his hand under my elbow. I felt urgency in his touch.

“Dance with me,” he said. “Listen to the music—the next figure will be a pavane, and what better way to talk a bit with no one paying attention or listening at the keyhole?”

“Why would I want to talk with you?”

He looked at me thoughtfully. “We are no longer allies, then, in your search for your husband’s murderer?”

I was already sorry I had been so sharp with him. If he was a Guise agent and had a hidden motive for pretending to help me, I should be encouraging him with soft words and learning what I could, while keeping my own secrets to myself.

“Forgive me,” I said. “It is difficult being out of favor with the queen. Of course I will dance with you.”

He took my hand. His skin actually touched my skin, and I felt a shock—his hand was warm and for some reason I had expected it to be cool. Of course, he had touched me before—he had carried me from the High Street to Holyrood on the terrible night of Alexander’s murder. But that was a different thing. I had been a different person. This was the first time he had touched me as I was now, palm to palm, nightshade to windflower, and I knew with the absolute certainty of the flowers that he was to be important in my life.

Important how?

Friend? Lover? Betrayer? Murderer?

We stepped into our places in the procession. The consort of musicians halted for a moment, and then the flutes and the plucked strings, the viol and the tabor launched into the music for the pavane itself. The queen had chosen Sir John as her partner, and they had taken their places at the head of the dance figure.

We stepped forward. A pavane was to be danced, the books and dancing masters taught us, with decorum and measured dignity. I had performed it many times under Mary of Guise’s exacting eye, and Nicolas de Clerac paced off the steps in perfect time and with grave stateliness as well.

“I have nothing new to tell you,” I said, under the cover of the music. “I spoke to the Earl of Rothes, and tricked him into allowing me to examine his dagger, but other than that he could tell me nothing.”

Nothing but that the Earl of Huntly and Admiral Coligny, the leader of the French Huguenots, had also received letters from Alexander. Nothing but his suspicion that you yourself, Nicolas de Clerac, are an agent of the Guises.

Single step. Single step. Double step.

“I see,” he said. “Well, it is something, to prove Rothes himself is not the assassin.”

His fingers remained warm and firm around mine. The other dancers, in front of us and behind us in the procession, paid us no particular attention.

“He could have hired it done,” I said. “Or sent one of his vassals. It could have been Rannoch Hamilton, who seems perfectly willing to perform any sort of evil deed.”

“A hired bravo would not have a jeweled dagger.”

That was true. I said nothing.

After a moment he said, “Has Master Wetheral called upon you again? Or Monsieur Laurentin?”

“No.”

“You suspect Sir John Gordon—you were craning your neck like a bean goose to look at his dagger.”

Single step. Single step. Double step.

“I suspect everyone,” I said. “Even you.”

He did not say anything for a long time. I wondered what he was thinking. We reached the end of the hall and performed the conversion, the series of steps that reversed the direction of the dance.

“I was there,” he said at last, “because I had heard rumors that one Alexander Gordon had Mary of Guise’s casket and was offering it for sale, and I wished to see this foolhardy fellow for myself. When you left Holyrood that afternoon, I lost track of you in the crowd, and so I went to Huntly’s house and waited outside. I was fairly certain you would eventually come back there, and you did.”

“Were you one of the potential buyers?”

“I was not. I am not. I had heard the tale and I was curious, nothing more.”

The dance came to an end, and in the final figure after the music stopped the gentleman was to execute a deep bow and the lady a low curtsy. I tried to perform the curtsy but I was so shaken I lost my balance. Nicolas de Clerac steadied me and at the same time bowed to me as if I were the queen herself. Fortunately the queen was too absorbed in charming Sir John Gordon to notice.

Palm to palm, nightshade to windflower.

The flowers were wrong sometimes. At least, sometimes I interpreted them wrongly. Perhaps I was misreading them now.

“There is something more,” he said. “You are the one—”

“Sieur Nico!” It was the queen. Sir John and Monsieur Chastelard were trailing behind her like hopeful ducklings, but she clearly had her eyes on Nicolas de Clerac. “I wish you to be my partner for the next dance. It is to be a galliard again, and I desire you to perform
la volte
with me.”

The ladies all screamed in mock surprise and indignation.
La volte
was considered scandalous for the close way the gentleman held the lady, lifted her, and actually for a moment touched his thigh to her thighs. Of course, we were celebrating a wedding, and soon the bride and groom would be put to bed—perhaps that is what put the idea into the queen’s head.