The Flower Reader (34 page)

Gill jumped, and when he saw it was me he ran to help me up. “Mistress,” he said. “You gave me a fright, you did. Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes, I am sorry—I am perfectly well; I did not see that hole.”

He went back to the horse’s head. “Shush, shush, my laddie,” he said. “’Tis only the mistress, come to meet you. I should’ve raked up the straw, mistress. Please dinnae tell the master.”

He calmed the bay with words and a touch. The horse settled immediately. Seen close by, Gill was only twelve, fourteen at most, but clearly he was good with horses. He did not seem at all surprised to see me, or uncomfortable with what he had seen the day before.

“I will not tell,” I said. My ankle was throbbing, but I was embarrassed to have been so clumsy. “What is his name?”

“Diamant. For the mark on his face. He’s the master’s favorite riding horse, and fast! You should see him run.”

“I have a horse, too. A white mare. Her name is Lilidh.”

“Where be she?”

“At Holyrood Palace, I think. I hope…the master…will have her brought here, and I know you will take good care of her.”

“Never had a white horse to tend before. Lilidh, that’s a good name.”

I stepped closer and held out my palm to Diamant. He snuffled at it, his whiskery muzzle like velvet stuck with pins. “Gill,” I said. “Have you served your master for long?”

“All my life, mistress, and my da before me.”

“Did he come to Edinburgh when the queen came back from France?”

“We all did, mistress, master, and my da and me. The Earl of Rothes called all his people to come, and we’re the earl’s men, we are.” He seemed pleased to have someone to talk to, and I kept quiet, wanting to learn as much as I could. “My da, he died last year, but he always said he was glad he lived to see the young queen come home. He never gave up the old religion, though the earl is reformed and so is the master.”

“So you saw the queen on the first day? You saw her ride from Leith to Holyrood Palace?”

“Nae, mistress, not that part. We was a few days late arriving. But the master stood with the earl the day she entered the toun ceremonial-like, pretending it was the first time, with fifty men dressed up like Moors and wine a-pouring out from the spouts on the Mercat Cross. I was standing right behind them that day, the master and the earl.”

“Then your master was not in Edinburgh on the queen’s first night here.”

“Nae, mistress, we hadna even left Kinmeall on that day.”

So Rannoch Hamilton had not killed Alexander. In a way I was glad, but in a way almost disappointed. If he had been Alexander’s murderer, I could have found a way to kill him and free myself. My conscience quivered a little at the coldness of the thought. I pushed it aside. I had no more need for a conscience.

“Thank you, Gill,” I said. “I will come and talk with you again, if the master allows it.”

“He’s nae so bad, mistress, long’s you dinnae cross him.”

I felt myself turning red, and I pulled the hood of my mantle closer around my face. I wondered whether there were bruises other people could see. I had no mirror, and I would never ask. “Good day to you,” I said.

“Good day, mistress.”

I limped back out into the garden. The sun was coming up over the roofs of the tall narrow houses, and the sky was a cloudless April blue. I would have to go back upstairs to that terrible room—the Green Lady help me, I would have to live in those rooms now, away from the queen and the court, with no one but Rannoch Hamilton for human companionship—but I would steal a few minutes, at least, to speak with the flowers, the herbs, the pear tree.

I touched the tree. The bark was rough and scaly—it was an old tree, then. It had begun to blossom. I wanted to know what it would say, whether its meaning of separation and loneliness would cling to me forever.

It was silent. I could touch it, I could smell the sweetish, slightly
musky scent of the flowers, but it was…only a tree. It did not speak to me.

I walked over to the herbs. There was mint and mallow, rampion and rosemary, clary and thyme, all grown together cottage-garden style with pinks and daisies and columbines. I crouched down—how strained and sore my muscles were, how bruised I felt—and ran my hand over the leaves, releasing their scents. Sweet, spicy, fruitlike, resinous. Their textures velvety, crisp, spiky, smooth. And that was all. They were only plants.

I cried for a moment or two, all alone in that tiny courtyard behind a seedy tavern in the Cowgate. I longed desperately for Granmuir and the sea and my gardens there, for Màiri and Tante-Mar, for Seilie and Lilidh, and yes, to be completely and humiliatingly honest, for Nicolas de Clerac, who had saved my life that night in the High Street, who had helped me search for Alexander’s murderer, who had told me the secret story of his mother’s tragic forced marriage, who had whispered
Je t’aime, ma mie
and then abandoned me to be wed to Rannoch Hamilton at the queen’s command. I wanted to cry in his arms. I wanted to kill him.

Forgive me, Rinette.

For one blinding, blood-red moment I wanted to kill them all.

Fortunately the moment passed. At least it burned the tears from my eyes.

I had cried enough.

Now I had to keep a cool head, and think, and plan.

First. It was foolish and dangerous to think about killing Rannoch Hamilton, no matter what he did to me. I did not want to hang at the Tolbooth myself, so for now he held the upper hand. Very well. I would bend beneath his hand and wait for Fortune’s wheel to turn. Because it would turn. And perhaps I could even find a means of pushing it on its way.

Second. Everyone believed I still had the casket, or at least still knew where it was, hidden away in some secret place. Very well, let them believe it. I would stop denying it. I would find ways to use
their belief against them. I could turn Rannoch Hamilton against Rothes, Rothes against Moray, Moray against the queen herself. I could do it because the only person who knew the truth was the person who had taken the casket.

If that person had taken it in order to sell the contents, the truth would come out quickly. But if the person who had taken it meant to use the contents to gain knowledge and power inside Scotland…well, then, they would be keeping their possession of the casket as secret as secret could be, and I would have some time, at least, before any whispers began.

So who had taken it?

Who had known about the secret vault?

I could eliminate the poor doddering abbot of Dunfermline in France. Mary of Guise—had she told someone else? Could she have written the secret to her own mother, Duchess Antoinette of Guise in France?

King James would have known. Lady Margaret had known. If it was Lady Margaret who had the casket, she would keep it the deepest and darkest of secrets. She would use it to make Moray regent, use it to make him king, and she would let him believe it was his own power, his own royal blood, effecting his rise.

I passed my hand over the plants again. If they had spoken to me, would I have heeded them, softened my heart, done anything differently?

I will never know, because they did not speak. I drew myself up to my full height, scrubbed the tears from my face with the backs of my hands, and went inside.

W
HEN
R
ANNOCH
H
AMILTON FINALLY AWAKENED
, I was sitting by the window, gazing out at the sun rising. I heard him stretching and yawning, then the creak of the uneven floorboards, and I turned my head.

He had a fine, powerful body, I would grant him that, long legs,
heavy shoulders and arms, the shape of each muscle clearly delineated. His skin was swarthy even where it was not exposed to the sun; the hair on his chest and arms and legs was thick and gleaming as a black wolf’s pelt. He made no attempt at all to cover himself.

“Well, wife,” he said. “What say you now about your pagan goddess and her woodbine?”

“I would say you have escaped her.”

He laughed. If a vicious wolf could be said to preen itself, he preened.

“I would also say she has lived at Granmuir for a thousand years, and will live there for a thousand more, and that if you think to take Granmuir for your own you had best make peace with her.”

“I make peace with nothing female, goddess or human. This Green Lady of yours is the one who will surrender to me, just as you have done.”

“A forced surrender is no true surrender.”

He laughed again. “I’ll force it until you forget anything else but that I’m your master, and in the end you’ll crawl to me and beg me to take the old queen’s casket.”

“I will never give you the casket.” As I said it I looked at him and made my eyes say,
I do have it, and if you betray Rothes and Moray perhaps I will give it to you; who knows?
“And I will die before I crawl to you, or anyone else.”

He laughed. I could see he had understood my wordless suggestion and it had excited him.

He went to the door and shouted for hot water and food. I turned away and looked out the window again. Behind me he splashed in the water and pulled on his clothes. I heard metal clink as he buckled on his belt with his sword and dagger. I had put the key back in his pouch and with luck he would never know I had gone downstairs.

“I’ll spend the day attending upon my lord Rothes, as usual,” he said, as he gobbled up coarse oatcake and drank ale. “Stay here. I’ll have the room watched, so don’t think to slip away. Try it and I’ll beat you within an inch of your life, casket or no casket.”

“I will not try to escape. Where would I go?”

He looked at me. I wondered whether he himself felt the emptiness I saw in his eyes, or if he thought everyone was as empty as he was. “You can call for hot water if you like,” he said. “Women always seem to want hot water and soap. And Gill will bring you food.”

I said nothing. The crease between his brows deepened and he went out.

Hot water. The Green Lady be thanked, hot water and soap.

I waited just long enough to be sure he was away, then went to the door and called for Gill. He willingly brought me clean hot water, a little pot of rosemary-scented soft soap—where had it come from? I was not going to question it—and clean towels. I stripped myself and washed, then washed again, washed my body and my hair and kept washing until the soap was gone and the water was cold. The rosemary scent was medicinal and comforting. I sponged my riding habit and underclothes, too, as best I could, and toweled my hair. Then I dressed myself and pinned up my hair and called for Gill again. He brought me hot fresh oatcakes, an egg custard, and wine caudle.

“Gill,” I said. “When I have eaten, I would like to sleep. Can you send someone to warn me before…the master…comes up to the room?”

“I’ll try, mistress. I’ll watch for him myself, and send Bel up to wake you.” He did not seem at all puzzled as to why I did not want Rannoch Hamilton to come upon me unawares.

“Thank you, Gill.”

For the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon I slept.

A
SOFT KNOCK ON THE DOOR WOKE ME
. I had been dreaming of the ancient garden wall at Granmuir, overgrown with nightshade and— But it was gone before I could make sense of it. I scrambled up out of the bed and went to the door.

“Master be coming, mistress.” It was a scrawny, dirty little girl of ten or twelve. “Gill askit me to wairn ye.”

“Thank you, Bel,” I said. I wished I had a penny to give her. She did not wait, but ran down the stairs and disappeared.

I settled myself in the chair by the window, just as I had been when he went out. A few minutes later he came in the door, shouting for wine. He looked pleased with himself.

“A fine thing it is,” he said, “to come home to a wife. I have news for you.”

“What news?”

“The Earl of Moray and my lord Rothes have assigned me an apartment in Holyrood. Two rooms and space in the stables, and—”

Gill came in with a beaker of wine and two cups.

“We’re going to live at the palace, Gill,” Rannoch Hamilton said. “What do you think of that?”

“All o’ us?” the boy said. “Horses ’n’ all?”

“Horses and all. In fact, you’ll have another horse to look after—your new mistress’s mare.”

I closed my eyes and prayed the boy would not say anything about Lilidh that would reveal we had spoken together that morning. He was obviously cleverer than I gave him credit for, because he made a great show of pouring the wine without spilling it. Then he said, “That’s guid, master, and I’ll wager the stables at the palace are better than the ones here.”

“That they are. Now off with you. Bring some supper in an hour or so.”

“Aye, master.”

Rannoch Hamilton gave me one of the cups and drank off his own in a single draft. “So are you pleased?” he said. “You’ll be back among your fine folks of the court with barely a day away, and I’ll be knocking elbows with them as well.”

I took a sip of the wine. It was cheap and sour. “I do not want to be back among them,” I said. I could not face them, the queen and her court, and see in their eyes that they knew I was Rannoch Hamilton’s possession.

“I thought you’d be pleased,” he said. The line between his brows deepened.

“Very well, I am pleased.” I took another swallow of the wine. “What about my own people? Jennet More and Wat Cairnie? Are they back in Edinburgh from Lochleven, and safe? And Seilie, my little hound?”

“They’re there. The woman’s moving your clothes and chests to my rooms tonight. The dog’s been a-whining, she says, and pacing in the night, looking for you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

His brow smoothed a little. Good.

“The Earl of Moray will be regent in a year or two; you watch—the queen will go traipsing off to Spain to marry the king’s daft son and one day be queen there.” He poured himself another cup of wine. “Then my lord Rothes will be higher than high, and I’ll be at his right hand, wife’s kin to him. That’s why he wants me close by.”

“He wants you close by because he does not trust you. Neither one of them trusts you. They are afraid you will find out where I have hidden the casket and will keep it for yourself, and they want you close, where they can watch over you.”