The Flower Reader (35 page)

He drank the second cup of wine. I could see doubt in his expression, and I felt a grim pleasure that I had sown it.

“I’ll prove myself to them,” he said.

“Perhaps.”

“You’ll tell me where the casket is and I’ll place it into my lord Rothes’s own hands.” He began to unbutton his doublet. “You’ll tell me.”

“I will not.” I looked away, and glanced back at him from the corners of my eyes.
Maybe I will. Maybe you can be higher than high on your own merits, if you think twice before placing the casket in Rothes’s hands. Earl of Kinmeall, how do you like the sound of that?

“You will,” he said. “And you’ll give up your talk about Green Ladies and woodbine and doing magic with flowers.”

Little did he know I had tried to do magic with flowers that very morning, and failed. The flowers had abandoned me. Little did he know that even so, I’d be praying to the Green Lady with all my heart and soul, every time he laid his hand upon me.

I said nothing more. I had planted enough seeds for one day. I drank my wine, made myself into a fanciful mechanical device with no feelings or fears, and took off my clothes again.

N
ine days later—and I knew it was nine because I counted them, day by joyless day—Rannoch Hamilton brought me a court dress, bodice and sleeves, skirt and overskirt, all in dark blue velvet slashed and trimmed with pale turquoise silk. The velvet was embroidered with gold thread and trimmed with pearls and crystals; there was a headdress in the same dark blue velvet sewn with tiny pearls in the shape of my own device, the sea wave. There was also a long gauzy white veil in the same style the queen affected.

It meant I would have to go back to court.

“Where did you get the money for all these things?” I asked.

“I am not a pauper,” he said. “I have a strongbox full of gold at Kinmeall.”

Probably stolen, I thought. “When are you taking me to court?”

He grinned at me. He knew it would be agony for me, and he was looking forward to it. “Tomorrow,” he said. “And I expect you to smile sweetly at the queen and tell her I am the best of husbands.”

* * *

T
HE
E
ARL OF
R
OTHES ESCORTED
us into the queen’s little supper room.

“Madame,” he said formally. “I present to you my wife’s kinsman Master Rannoch Hamilton of Kinmeall, and his wife, Marina Leslie, daughter and heir of Patrick Leslie of Granmuir.”

I looked straight into the queen’s eyes. I would not show fear and I would not show deference and I would not show the shame and misery that prickled all over my skin as I felt everyone in the room looking at me.

The queen smiled. “Good day, Master Rannoch,” she said. “Good day, Marianette.”

Rannoch Hamilton bowed. He had shaved himself and cut his hair and bought fresh clothes for himself as well; they had not yet settled to fit his body. He moved like a wild animal, a wolf or a wildcat, every step smooth, collected, and wary.

“Good day to you, madam,” he said.

I curtsied, my dark blue skirts belling out around me. I kept my head up and my eyes fixed upon hers. “Good day, madame,” I said.

“Tell me, how do you find married life?”

Rannoch Hamilton said nothing. He could probably think of nothing to say that was suitable for refined company. After a moment I said, “It is as you might imagine, madame.”

The first shock of humiliation was over. I had survived it. Little by little I let myself look at the other people in the room.

On either side of the queen, Nicolas de Clerac and a small dark man—I had seen him about the court, but I could not remember his name. Nico was looking down at a lute, fingering a chord with great care. I could not look at his face; I looked at his hands, the smooth sun-browned skin, the courtier’s nails trimmed and buffed to a shine, the light and decisive way he placed his fingertips on the lute’s strings. Nico, Nico. Silently I thanked the Green Lady he was not looking at me. I could not have borne it if he had looked up into my eyes at that moment. Did he know that? I suspect he did.

In a carved chair by the fireplace sat the Earl of Moray. It was
easier to look into his eyes, because I hated him and he hated me. The hatred gave me strength.

Behind the queen stood Mary Beaton, Mary Fleming, and Agnes Keith, the Countess of Moray.

I would be all right. I would be able to bear it. As long as Nico did not look up, I would be able to bear it.

“I do not wish to attend the trial of the Earl of Huntly,” the queen said.

Clearly she was picking up the thread of her previous conversation. Rannoch Hamilton squeezed my forearm, causing a jolt of hot pain to sizzle up my nerves, and pulled me to one side.

“He has been dead since last November,” the queen went on. “Why does his poor body have to lie in its coffin in the court? You cannot tell me it will not stink, however hard the embalmers may have worked on it.”

“It is Scots tradition, sister.” Even coming into the conversation in the middle as I was, it was easy to tell that the Earl of Moray’s patience was wearing thin. “A peer of the realm to be attainted must face his accusers.”

“He is
dead
. He cannot face anyone. I will open the Parliament and I will make a very fine oration, but I will not stay for the trial. What say you, Sieur Nico? Signor Davy? Do you believe a queen should be forced to sit face-to-face with a rotting corpse?”

Signor Davy. Of course. David Riccio. Rannoch Hamilton had railed against him—another foreigner, another Catholic to encourage the queen in her heresies—a papal agent, even, some whispered. Another foreigner. Another
Escadron Volant
assassin, perhaps, placed at the court by the French or the English or even the pope himself?

He was small, dark, and simian, and looked like a sad-faced monkey next to Nico’s fair-skinned, elegant height. I was surprised to see him so intimate with the queen, although he was said to be a charming conversationalist and a singer with the most glorious deep bass voice imaginable. Perhaps the queen liked the contrast between
the two men, Nico and Davy. They were like midnight and noon, Vulcan and Helios.

“You should not be forced to do anything you do not wish to do,
Sua
Maestà
,” David Riccio said. “You are too fine, too delicate to be subjected to such unpleasantness.”

“On the other hand,” said Nico de Clerac gently, still avoiding my eyes, “because you are the queen, madame, you are honor-bound to abide by the ancient traditions of your people. Remember the world is watching you here in Scotland, and taking note of how you discharge your royal obligations.”

“Sieur Nico, how is it that you can tell me what I do not wish to hear, and at the same time make it sound so sweet?” The queen tapped him playfully on the arm with the enameled case she used to hold her embroidery scissors. “The world is watching! What a diplomat you are. But I suppose you are right. Very well, I shall preside over the Earl of Huntly’s trial next month. Livingston, you shall keep me liberally supplied with pomanders.”

All the ladies giggled.

The queen set another stitch in the piece of embroidery she was working. I could see the device was a French anagram of her name.
MARIE STUARTE. TU TE MARIERAS
.
Mary Stuart. Thou shalt marry
. That, of course, was why the world was watching. Whom would she marry? Who were the
quatre maris
in Nostradamus’s prophecies? Were they four men she should marry, or four men she should not?

I wondered if either one of us would ever know.

“
C’est cela
, then,” the queen said in a bright voice. She turned to me again. “Marianette, you have had enough of a
lune de miel
, I think. I wish you to return to my service, married or not—I myself will marry again soon, and I think it will be a good thing to have more married women around me.”

I was not sure I wanted to take up another position at the court. Face Nico every day? Did I have the strength to do it? On the other hand, a place at court would take me away from Rannoch Hamilton’s presence, and that was certainly a good thing. Most important
of all, if I wanted to find out who had taken the casket, I had to be at court.

If I appeared to want to be at court, Rannoch Hamilton would almost certainly forbid it.

I said, with every appearance of meekness, “That is for my husband to say, madame.”

“Surely he will not gainsay me.” The queen looked at Rannoch Hamilton and smiled. “You will be much occupied in the affairs of the Earl of Rothes, is that not so, Master Rannoch? I understand he has installed you and your wife in rooms here at Holyrood, so you will be close at hand.”

Once again Rannoch Hamilton said nothing. He looked as if he wanted to say,
I’ll do what I please with my own wife, madam, and I’d do it to you, too, if I had the chance
.

“I had intended,” Rothes put in hastily, “for Mistress Rinette to serve my own wife.”

“Surely the countess can find someone else,” the queen said in her sweetest voice. “Very well, it is settled. Marianette, you and your husband shall move back into the rooms you occupied before you were married, which will be more convenient for me. You had a maidservant, I believe? Where is she?”

“She is here, madame. So is my groom.”

“And your little Seilie?”

“He has been staying in the stable, with my groom and my mare, Lilidh.”

“Bring him back into the palace, so I can enjoy his company as well. I always found him particularly charming.” The queen smiled. “
Voilà
. All will be just as it was.”

At that moment Nico turned his head and looked at me for the first time. I knew he had to do it eventually, but that did not make it easier. It was as if he had struck me. I felt shame and anger and misery scald me, from my pearl-embroidered headdress to the tips of my toes.

Shame and anger and misery and hopeless, hopeless love.

To the queen I said only, “All will never be as it was, madame.”

A
ll will be as it was.

Was she mad? Nothing was as it had been.

Although that was not entirely true. Jennet and Wat were back in attendance upon me; Wat took the boy Gill under his wing in the stables. Seilie was back as well, following me up and down the corridors of Holyrood Palace with his little claws clicking, sitting close at my feet, delighting all the ladies as he had always done.

At night Rannoch Hamilton hovered over me like a hawk with its prey, stooping and grasping me as the darkness fell. He could not seem to get enough of his dominance over me and the Green Lady. Sometimes he spoke to me, taunted me when he had me pinned beneath him, as if I actually were the Green Lady in the flesh. Jennet loathed him and kept out of his way as much as possible.

I missed Màiri so much. It was coming up to the end of May, and in August she would turn two. She had taken her first steps for Tante-Mar, not me. She had spoken her first word—
oatcake
. Tante-Mar had sent me a length of ribbon to show me how tall she had grown, and an ivory ring with the marks of her tiny teeth—she had twelve now,
six on top and six on the bottom, and one back tooth was beginning to come in. Every night I prayed for her. I still had the ruby from the assassin’s dagger, and I had not given up hope of finding the truth and seeing justice done and going home. For the time being, however, all I could do was endure.

Today we were clustered around the queen as she sat under her royal cloth of estate in the great hall of the new Tolbooth, presiding at the ceremony of attainder to be performed over the Earl of Huntly’s corpse. All the estates of the Parliament were there, sitting solemnly. The galleries above were packed with city folk in serviceable browns and grays and a few bright holiday colors; in the front rows were such representatives of foreign governments as happened to be in Edinburgh. The preserved remains of the dead earl lay in a wooden coffin under a banner worked with his arms and escutcheons.

“Say you,” cried out the Lyon King of Arms, “that said Earl of Huntly’s treason has been declared proven, and that his forfeiture is good, and that his arms shall be riven off and deleted forth of memory?”