The Flower Reader (32 page)

T
hey took me to the old Tolbooth. I expected chains and rats and dripping stone, but ended up locked in a tiny but perfectly ordinary front room on one of the upper stories. There was a small window covered by a rusted iron grille, a pallet with a single dubious blanket, a stool, and a necessary-pot. I dragged the stool to the window and sat there, looking out to the west at the castle on its rock.

“Where did you go?” I whispered to the silver casket. “How long have you been gone, and why has no one come forward to claim their possession of you?”

The casket, of course, did not answer.

The darkness fell quickly. Stars pricked out in the clear black sky. A gaoler brought me an oatcake and a cup of reasonably clean cider; I ate and drank because there was nothing better to do, and because whatever happened, I would need whatever strength I could muster.

Would Moray really carry out his threat to have me executed if I did not submit?

Probably not. The queen had said she did not want any more executions, and now that he was back in favor, Moray would not
again make the mistake of offending her sensibilities. But the queen was like a gilded weathercock, pointing this way one moment and that way the next.

Moray believed I knew where the casket was. Another reason his threat was empty.

So if I continued to refuse to marry Rannoch Hamilton, what would happen?

I would stay here, of course. Or perhaps I would be moved to a cell where there actually were chains and rats and dripping stone. Moray would find a way to take Granmuir for the crown, and Màiri would be made a ward of the queen. Lady Margaret Erskine had threatened to take her to Lochleven, and the thought of my beautiful little daughter, Alexander’s golden child, in Lady Margaret Erskine’s spiteful hands made me blind with anger.

Tante-Mar would be left helpless and beggared. Surely Norman More would take her in. Jennet would see to it. But what would happen to Norman More and his family if Granmuir were no longer mine? He would lose his place, lose his home. Old Père Guillaume and my mother’s elderly man-at-arms, Robinet Loury, what would happen to them? What would happen to the people in Granmuir village?

If I agreed to the marriage, at least I would be alive, out of prison, and still lady of Granmuir. I would be able to fight for my daughter and my people and my home.

Or would Rannoch Hamilton kill me, taking his revenge for what I said to him in the chapel at Granmuir, and how it had unmanned him?

No. He would not dare kill me. He would believe I still had the casket hidden somewhere, because Moray believed it. He would have to keep me alive and in my senses as long as he believed I knew, and as long as I did not tell him.

And of course I would not tell him. I could not tell him, because I did not know.

A fine jest that was.

So I had…how long? Until the person who had truly taken the casket made it known that he—or she—had the sealed packet of prophecies from Nostradamus, and the ciphered pages with Mary of Guise’s secrets? Too many people wanted them. Someone would eventually reveal where they were.

What would I do then?

I did not know.

Even if I could escape this moment, even if I could make my way to Holyrood, even if I found Wat and Jennet and Lilidh and Seilie there—and I did not even know whether they had followed us from Lochleven or not—even if we found a way to flee to Granmuir together, what then? Granmuir castle, on the seaward side of its narrow causeway, could be defended until the end of time. Or at least until we all starved.

I did not know what to do.

The thought of being Rannoch Hamilton’s wife made me sick and shaky.

I longed for Alexander. I longed for— But I would not even admit to myself whom else I longed for. I longed for Seilie, at least, faithful Seilie with his solid warm body and his satin-soft ears and his freckled paws.

I looked out at the stars, and I wept.

M
ORNING CAME
.

Two men wearing the Rothes badge took me to Saint Giles’s. I had been given no water to wash with or even a comb to tidy my hair. I was wearing the same plain gray-blue fustian riding habit I had put on at Lochleven—could it have been just yesterday morning? It was stained and wrinkled and hardly suitable for a wedding, but I did not care. Even if I had been offered a gown of scarlet Venetian silk with slashings and couchings and pearls, a shift of the sheerest lawn and chains of rubies and citrines to wear in my hair, I would not have worn them.

We stepped into the church through the great rounded arch of the west door and passed through the nave, the western part of which had been partitioned off by the Reformers as a meeting place for the Parliament and the lords of the session. It was early morning on a Friday and everything was empty and dark and smelled of stone. No candles, no incense for Master Knox and his Protestants. Further on in the nave of the old church itself there were many small chapels, and in one of them a group of men waited. Moray. Rothes. Rannoch Hamilton. A man I did not know, small and fat, in the black gown and cap of a Protestant minister. Half a dozen men stood outside the chapel wearing Moray’s badge. They wore their swords and daggers even inside the church. The queen was not present; nor were there any other women at all.

“Mistress Rinette,” the Earl of Moray said. “I take it you have decided in favor of godly marriage instead of the fire or the sword.”

I looked straight into Moray’s hooded dark eyes and said to the minister, “Master Minister, you hear what the Earl of Moray says. I am being constrained into this marriage by threats, which is against the law of your Church.”

The poor minister said nothing. I had not expected him to.

“There have been no banns,” I said.

Still nothing.

“I have no women to support me, and no witnesses of my own.”

Rannoch Hamilton himself stepped forward. He was well dressed in a brown wool doublet and black hose, his shirt spotlessly white, his dark hair short and neat under a plain brown velvet cap; beside the Earl of Moray and the Earl of Rothes he might have been a rough-coated, wild moor stallion among refined and domesticated coursers. If I had not known him, had never faced off against him in Saint Ninian’s Chapel, I would not have found him uncomely. But there was nothing behind his eyes, no flower, no symbol of life. The black emptiness of him made me dizzy.

He said, in a terrifyingly reasonable tone of voice, “Be silent, woman. Our marriage has been arranged by the Earl of Rothes, clan
chief of the Leslies, and by the Earl of Moray, the leader of the Lords of the Congregation. No other witnesses are required.”

We faced each other. His expression was controlled. The deep cleft between his brows made it look as if he were scowling, but he was not. I tried to breathe but I could not seem to fit the air into my chest. What was I going to say? What?

“Beloved brethren,” the minister began. He gabbled through the exhortation. He was sweating despite the chill inside the church, and I knew he wanted only to be done with this hole-and-corner marriage and gone as quickly as he could be.

I still did not know what I was going to say when the moment came for me to speak.

“I require and charge you,” the minister said, “as you will answer at the day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you do know any impediment why you may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, that you confess it.”

I made up my mind all at once and said, “Stop. I am not willing, and that is the—”

Rannoch Hamilton drew back his hand and with no change of expression at all struck me hard across the mouth.

I staggered back, tasting blood, covering my mouth with my own hands. One of Rothes’s two men caught me from behind and pushed me back to my place. I stood there. I felt tears welling over and streaking down my cheeks. I hated the tears but I could not keep them back. My mouth stung.

“We know of no impediments,” Rannoch Hamilton said calmly.

The minister swallowed, looking from Moray to Rothes and back to Moray. Moray gave a small, tight nod. The men-at-arms standing outside the chapel shifted their positions slightly, the leather of their belts creaking. One man put his hand on the hilt of his sword.

“If you believe assuredly these words that our Lord and savior did speak,” the minister said very fast, “then may you be certain that God has even so knit you together in this—”

“I know of an impediment.”

We all jumped. One of Moray’s men-at-arms drew his sword with a rasp of metal against metal.

Outside the chapel, in the dark, empty nave of the church, one man stepped forward as if he were materializing out of the shadows. He wore plain black riding clothes covered with dust, and unlike the Earl of Moray’s men he had respected the church enough to leave off his weapons. His head was bare and his russet hair glimmered with gold as if it had been touched by an illuminator’s brush.

“The lady is unwilling,” said Nicolas de Clerac. He did not speak loudly or harshly, but with four words he commanded the attention of every single one of them.

I shivered all through my body, as if I were suddenly both cold and hot at once.

The Earl of Moray broke the spell. “This is none of your affair,” he said. “The marriage is being made at the queen’s own command.”

“So she told me, the very moment I arrived back at Holyrood.” I could see him shift his weight forward to the balls of his feet; he had done it so often in dancing and in masques. The blade of the man-at-arms’ sword was pointed straight at his heart, and his hands were empty. “Even so, someone must say it. A marriage is not a marriage if both parties do not consent.”

“Nico,” I said. I could still taste the blood on my lips as I said it. “There are six of them, and they are all armed.”

He smiled. “So they are,
ma mie
,” he said. “But that does not—”

The sword blade sliced through the air; it made a sound like a great bird’s wing. Steel rang as the rest of them drew their blades. I screamed—I could not help myself—and struggled frantically to escape the hold of Rothes’s two men. Rannoch Hamilton himself grasped my arms from behind and held me.

Nico did not move. There was a slash in the black fabric of his doublet. The six men with their naked blades surrounded him.

“This is God’s house,” he said. His voice was perfectly steady. “Would you profane it with spilled blood, my lord Moray, as well as with a forced marriage?”

Moray made a gesture. The men stepped back and lowered their weapons but they did not sheathe them.

“The marriage will go on,” Moray said. “It is the queen’s will and by the queen’s command. If blood is spilled, Monsieur de Clerac, it will be by your choice, not mine.”

“I support the Earl of Moray,” said Rothes. “I and my men.”

“A pox on all this fine talk,” Rannoch Hamilton said viciously. “I’ll meet you blade to blade, Frenchman, just the two of us, once I’ve married your witch-girl and—”

“Master Rannoch.” Rothes interrupted him. “Remember your purpose here. You are marrying Mistress Rinette for the good of her soul and in support of the Lords of the Congregation.”

Rannoch Hamilton’s fingers tightened on my arms until the pain forced a gasp from me, however much I might have tried to suppress it. Nico stepped forward. Moray’s men raised their swords again. Rannoch Hamilton laughed.

“That’s nothing,” he said. “She’ll soon be screaming—”

“Master Rannoch.”

He said nothing more. I clenched my teeth together. If I could grasp one of the men-at-arms’ blades, could I thrust it into Rannoch Hamilton’s black heart before they stopped me? I would be willing to have my own head struck off, be willing to burn— But, of course, that was not true. I could not leave Màiri behind.

“Now, Monsieur de Clerac,” Moray said, in his most unctuous voice. “Would you like to remain and witness the marriage between Mistress Leslie and Master Hamilton? You are quite welcome to do so, if you wish.”

Nico looked at me. He was thinking the same thing I had been thinking—
if I could grasp one of the men-at-arms’ blades
—I could read it in his face. But if he did, even if he killed one or two or three of them, the other five or four or three would cut him down. And I would be married anyway. I would be left with no one, no one.

Go away,
I thought to him.
I do not want your blood on my hands. If you want to help me, see to Màiri and my family. See to Seilie and Lilidh.

He stepped back. “Rinette,” he said. He did not sound like himself. “Rinette, forgive me.”

I said, “It is not your fault.”

“Yes,” he said. “It is.”

He turned and went out of the church.

T
HE MARRIAGE WENT FORWARD
. When Rannoch Hamilton was asked for his protestation of consent, he answered firmly. When I was asked for my protestation I said nothing. No one cared. He forced a plain gold ring onto my finger. I tried to clench my fist but he squeezed my wrist bones together until my whole arm turned numb, and I surrendered and opened my hand.

“Therefore,” the minister said, “apply yourselves to live a chaste and holy life together, in godly love and Christian peace.”

Both the Earl of Moray and the Earl of Rothes listened to this without so much as a flicker of expression at its irony. I did not look at Rannoch Hamilton’s face and so I do not know whether he found it incongruous or not. All I could think was, They have threatened them all. Everyone I love. Màiri. Tante-Mar. Jennet and Wat and the Mores, old Robinet Loury and Père Guillaume, everyone at Granmuir. Granmuir itself. Lilidh and Seilie. Even Nicolas de Clerac.

Even Nicolas de Clerac.

And the moment I realized that, realized I loved him whether I wished it or not, the memory I had been struggling to capture clicked into place, neat as a pebble in a cup—the corridor at Holyrood, me collapsing with the queen’s bread and milk in my hands, and then Nico pulling me up. I remembered his soft, deep voice as he cradled me in his arms.

You are burning up with fever.

I am bound by a holy vow and I have no right to say it, but you will not remember.