The Flower Reader (46 page)

“On the contrary,” Darnley said with honeyed venom. “Rannoch Hamilton says what he told the queen that night was a lie. He says he never had the casket and never destroyed anything.”

At first I did not put the words together with the meaning. John Sempill was slipping a gold ring on Mary Livingston’s finger, and appreciative whispers were rustling around us like the sound of the sea. Then it came together and I said, too loudly, “He says
what
?”

Darnley chuckled, clearly pleased with the fact that he had finally broken through my reserve. “Shush,” he said. “Everyone is looking. Step outside a moment, Mistress Marianette. You should know what else your husband is saying about you in the taverns of the High Street.”

The priest was blessing the bride and groom preparatory to offering the nuptial mass. The Protestants were shifting their positions, looking about, preparing to leave before the Catholics practiced their idolatry. I gestured to Davy to follow close behind me and slipped through the crush of courtiers and out into the huge, shadowy nave of the abbey church. To the east, before the altar, Alexander’s body had lain, and here in the church I had found the ruby fixed fast in his blood—

But I would not think about that now.

I did not walk more than a step or two from the chapel. Even with Davy to support me, I was not fool enough to go so far that I could not easily call for help.

“Very well, my lord,” I said to Darnley. “I will go no farther. Tell me what Rannoch Hamilton has been saying.”

He rocked back on his heels, smiling. His fair hair made a halo around his head, and I could almost see the outline of the yellow cockscomb superimposed over his tall, slender figure. It made me feel sick and dizzy.

“He says you still have the Guise woman’s silver casket yourself, hidden away at Granmuir, and are only waiting for the right moment to sell it to the highest bidder.”

“That is a lie.”

“He says he will agree to the divorce only if you give him the casket. He believes it will make him the richest, most important man in Europe.”

“
Listen to me, my lord,” I said. I was so shaken and furious that the dimness of the abbey church seemed to have closed in around me, with Lord Darnley and his mirror-image yellow cockscomb far away in a pinpoint spot of light. “I do not have the silver casket. I do not know who has the silver casket. I have not seen the silver casket since the day I left it in the vault under Saint Margaret’s.”

“All perfectly true.” A different voice, French-accented, heart-sinkingly familiar, directly behind me. “And yet you are the one person who will put the silver casket into my hands.”

Blaise Laurentin seemed to materialize out of the cold abbey stone itself, as if he were an effigy come to life. Darnley laughed, high as a girl, said something in quick gutter French to Laurentin, and started back into the chapel. I turned to follow him. I was not fool enough to stand out in the shadowy nave alone with Blaise Laurentin, even if I did have Davy to protect me.

“Do not go,” Laurentin said in a pleasantly conversational tone. “If you do, I will strangle your two little girls as if they are unwanted kittens.”

I stopped.

He held out a tiny white linen cap embroidered with roses. Two or three shining strands of golden hair were caught around the button.

Màiri’s cap.

At first I was immobilized, not believing. Then hot tears of terror and rage flooded up into my eyes, and my heart felt as if it would burst into a thousand pieces within my breast. I snatched the cap from him and said, “I will kill you.”

He smiled. His eyes were like stones, hard and colorless. “Best not, for the moment at least,” he said. “Or you will never see them again. Come with me, madame. No theatrics, if you please, if you want your two little girls to live. Send your boy back into the chapel, and tell him to wait. Tell him to say nothing to anyone, particularly Monsieur de Clerac.”

“Davy,” I said. I clutched Màiri’s cap tightly. “Go back into the
chapel, please. Nothing is wrong—I only wish to speak with Monsieur Laurentin for a moment.”

“Wat said I wasn’t to leave ye, mistress. Not even for a meenit.”

“I understand. I will explain to Wat. Go back in the chapel, please, and say nothing to anyone, particularly Monsieur de Clerac.”

He looked puzzled and uneasy, but he said, “Yes, mistress.”

He went back into the chapel.

I said to Blaise Laurentin, “What do you want?”

“The silver casket, of course.”

“For the love of God.
I do not have it
.”

“I know.” He took my arm. “But I also know who does. Come with me now. Quietly. I will take you to your children.”

I clutched Màiri’s cap hard in my hands and walked beside him. My knees felt like water. “You know who has the casket,” I repeated. I was determined to work it all out for myself. “You must think it will help you somehow to have my babies and me as prisoners.”

“Exactly so.”

“Rannoch Hamilton is part of this, somehow.”

“Perhaps.”

“He would love to see me dead. Màiri, too. Then he could claim Granmuir in Kitte’s name.”

He laughed and said nothing more. I could not imagine who it was he believed had the casket after all this time, or what his plan was.

“How did you get into our chambers?” I wanted to scream for help so badly my voice was thin and shaky. I did not dare. I did not dare. I pressed Màiri’s cap to my heart. “The children were guarded. My people would have protected them.”

“Your people are as susceptible to trickery as any others.”

“Trickery or no, they would have died before they gave up the children.”

“Oh, yes,” said Blaise Laurentin lightly. “You are quite right about that. They did.”

T
he filthy storage shed smelled like a stable. Màiri was huddled in one corner with Kitte clutched tight in her arms, like a tiny lioness with a single cub. Kitte was curled in a ball, her baby eyes squinched shut. Màiri’s eyes were white all the way around with terror and defiance; her golden Gordon hair was loose and tangled. Her little kirtle was covered with blood.

“Màiri!” I cried. I ran across the packed-dirt floor to them and flung myself to my knees. “Kitte! My precious girls, are you all right? Màiri? Are you hurt? Show
Maman
where.”

“Maman.”
She gulped. Her voice was shaky. “They hurt Wat and Jennet. Seilie cried. Tante-Mar fell down.”

“Oh, God. Oh, no. Blessed Saint Ninian, no.” I could not think it, I could not bear it. I embraced them both fiercely. “Let me see. You are sure you are not hurt, Màiri-rose?”

“Tante-Mar fell down,” she said again. Then she threw herself against me and began to sob in great heartrending sobs.

I held them both close to my heart and looked up at Blaise
Laurentin. “You black-hearted bastard,” I managed to say through my gritted teeth. “You devil’s seed. What have you done?”

“It wasn’t him.”

I jerked around in horror. Rannoch Hamilton grinned at me from the corner like a hobgoblin from the blackest pits of hell.

“It was me,” he said.

I would have leaped at him and torn his face like a wild animal, but I could not leave my babies unprotected.

“I killed them all,” he said. “And now I am going to kill you, too, wife, and Alexander Gordon’s spawn, and when I have been invested with the lordship of Granmuir in my own right I’ll throw the other one off the cliff face into the sea. Stand aside, Frenchman.”

“I think not,” said Blaise Laurentin. He drew his dagger. “You have served your purpose, Monsieur Rannoch, and for the moment I require Mistress Rinette and her children alive.”

My husband swept his own dagger from its sheath. He was still grinning. He was mad—he had to be mad. “Play me false, will you?” he said. “I’ll kill you, too.”

They lunged at each other. I ducked away and put my own head down and gathered the girls against my breast so they could not see. Kill each other, I prayed. Saint Ninian, Green Lady of Granmuir, make them kill each other. Màiri and Kitte sobbed against me.

The two men grappled and panted, swearing at each other in French and Scots. One of them cried out. I smelled hot fresh blood.

“Kill each other,” I said aloud, through my gritted teeth.

I heard a grunt of pain, a sickeningly filthy epithet in Scots, the creak of the door’s hinges. Footsteps, slow, staggering, then faster. The door crashed shut.

I looked up.

Blaise Laurentin stood with his back to the door, his dagger in his right fist, blood running down his left arm.

“I will find him and kill him later,” he said. “You are no good to me dead.”

He came up to me. I threw myself down over the babies. He grasped my hair from behind, veil and turquoises and all, jerked it out of its pins, and to my shock and horror began to hack at it with the dagger. I reached up involuntarily—what woman would not reach up to protect her hair?—and felt the knife cut indiscriminately into my fingers and palms. I struggled to grasp hold of it. What did I care if the blade cut my fingers to the bone? If I could wrench it away from him I would kill him inch by shrieking, shuddering, bloody inch.

“There,” he said. He stood back, holding up the tortoiseshell coils of my hair like Perseus holding the head of Medusa. The hair and the veil were bloodied—my own blood—and in the twists and braids my mother’s turquoises glinted. My head felt unbalanced, too light and too cold.

“Maman,”
Màiri sobbed. “The bad man cut your pretty hair.”

I clenched my fists to stop the bleeding and held her closer, Kitte along with her. I had to be calm. I had to be brave. If I gave way to my terror it would only frighten the girls all the more.

“Now what are you going to do, Monsieur Laurentin?” I said, with all the scorn I could muster.

“Give me the child’s cap,” he said.

I picked up Màiri’s cap. At first I tried not to mark it with blood, and then I thought, Whoever it is, they should know this monster would hurt a child to get what he wants. I closed it in my fist slowly, letting my blood sink into the fabric, then threw it at Blaise Laurentin’s feet.

He laughed grimly and picked it up.

“Excellent,” he said. “Enjoy this space of time with your children, madame.”

He went out. I heard the clink of metal—a key, then, and a metal lock in the hasps of the door handle. We were locked in, but at the same time Rannoch Hamilton was locked out, if he should decide to come back. There were no windows, no chinks in the wooden walls, no possible means of escape. The little room was
black dark but for a knife-thin tracing of light around the top and sides of the door.

“Maman,”
Màiri whispered. Her voice was shaky. “Kitte is afraid of the dark.”

My brave, brave girl. She herself was piteously frightened by the dark, but she would never admit it.

“It is all right, Màiri-rose,” I said. “Monsieur Laurentin will come back for us soon. We must be brave, for Kitte’s sake. Will you sing me a song?”

“The counting song?”

“
Bon
. In English and in French, my precious.”

Màiri began in English, her voice tiny and sweet and true. After a moment Kitte joined in with her baby nonsense syllables. I sang with them, straining to be calm, to soothe them, all the while trying desperately to think of some way to save them.

I
T WAS THE SMELL THAT DID IT
, the plant-and-stable smell—horses and oats and musty straw. Even as they moldered away, the oat grains and the barley and the stalks of the straw spoke to me.
Remember. Remember. Remember the morning after you were married to him, remember the hidden hole, and how you stumbled…

The shed did have an earthen floor. If I could dig a hole, just in the spot where Laurentin would step when he returned, dig a hole and disguise it with a few fronds of straw, he would stumble. If he were taken by surprise, and if I was expecting it, I would have a single moment to jump at him and snatch his blade and stab him.

A single moment. If I hesitated or fumbled, or did not find an immediately vulnerable spot with the knife, I would fail.

I had to try. I would succeed. The thought of sinking Laurentin’s own dagger into the pulsing vein of his throat filled me with a sense of unholy anticipation.

As my little ones sang their way through every song Tante-Mar had ever taught them—Tante-Mar, Tante-Mar,
Tante-Mar fell down
; I
could not think about that now—I got up and flattened my back against the door and took a step into the room. The placement of the trap had to be just right—since the door was hinged on the right, it should be a little to the left of center. Since he would be standing outside when he unlocked the door and stepped in, perhaps two-thirds of a step’s worth into the room. I chose my spot and I began to dig.

My slashed hands made it agony. My fingernails cracked and tore. I barely managed to scrape up an inch or so of the packed earth.

I sat back, panting. A loose strand of raggedly cut hair fell over my cheek and stuck to the sweat and tears. The children had stopped singing and had actually fallen asleep, worn out by fear and shock. My mother’s pomander made a clinking sound as it fell to my side.