The Virgin's War (Tudor Legacy #3)(61)
22 January 1586
Wynfield Mote
We are riding tomorrow to Compton Wynyates to spend a week with Lucette and Julien. If the weather holds, Pippa and Matthew intend to join us. I don’t know which topics will be the most delicate—political or personal.
After that, Elizabeth wants us back in London. Spring will be here before we know it. We must be prepared for whatever comes.
The Sinclair mercenary company spent nearly a month in Dumbarton after reaching the Scottish port in December. Officially, to ensure against reckless action before someone in authority could give orders as to what to do with Mary Stuart. With a complement of Spanish officers from the unlucky ship under uneasy confinement as well, the governor was glad to have additional military support, and Stephen was happy enough to offer help. It couldn’t hurt to do anything that might dispose King James to gratitude just now.
Behind his professional demeanor, Stephen was savagely glad that Mary Stuart was once more under threat of confinement. She deserved that and more for the deaths of Renaud LeClerc and Duncan Murray.
The delay in Dumbarton gave Stephen and Maisie time for their banns to be posted the required three Sundays in the local parish of the Church of Scotland. Stephen spent nearly every day of that wait certain that Maisie would change her mind. But soon enough, on a day of high winds and freezing snow, the two of them stood before a Calvinist priest and made their vows. The marriage service of the Scots church was not as appealing or musical to Stephen’s ear as that of Elizabeth’s prayer book, but the essentials were the same. Perhaps a little more dwelling on the physical nature of their vows—ironic, Stephen thought, for a church that seemed to find such relations distasteful.
One body, one flesh, one blood…the husband has no more right or power over his own body, but the wife…and therefore to avoid fornication every man ought to have his own wife…and they twain shall be one flesh, so that they are no more two but are one flesh…
Stephen preferred the Church of England service, which dwelt with rather more tolerance—even joy—on the union of husband and wife. With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship…
Just as well to have the sterner version, since there was little chance of him being allowed to worship Maisie in that particular manner. If his bride was at all worried about the service’s command to keep each other from harlots—after she had given him carte blanche to seek them out—she gave no sign of it. From the subdued wardrobe she’d taken to Dublin, Maisie had chosen a gown of wintergreen more suited to a sermon than a wedding. But her hair was dressed less severely than normal, and the silver gilt fairness was a celebration of its own.
She allowed him a brief kiss after they were pronounced man and wife, but other than the pearl ring he’d purchased in Dumbarton for her to wear, their relationship resumed its normal businesslike course without disruption. Maisie wrote and received letters—taking care not to announce her marriage to Edinburgh; she preferred to do that in person—and Stephen trained his men as much as possible in the January weather and sent a brief notice to his parents of the wedding.
At last, a royal clerk arrived with instructions from King James.
As you are in Dumbarton with a military company under your command, we desire you to protect and guard our mother, Mary Stuart, from Dumbarton to Blackness Castle near Linlithgow. We trust you to keep the journey swift and quiet, as it would not do to cause Her Majesty trouble along the way. Keep her apart from the people; there will be royal guards to provide discreet shelter and aid along the way.
We urge you to remember her feminine nature, her false charm, her perversity in acting from impulse. Do not be swayed.
That was hardly likely, Stephen thought grimly. In fact, he would wager the Scots king knew perfectly well the history between his mother and Stephen Courtenay. During the last months of her imprisonment in England, Mary had welcomed him into her household and shown every sign of liking him. Then she had recklessly and carelessly put both Anabel and Lucette in grave danger, and Stephen had revealed himself in the aftermath to be Walsingham’s agent.
I was always your enemy, lady. Never more so than now, with the murders of two innocent men sacrificed to her pride. No, Stephen would not be susceptible to Mary Stuart’s charms. Which argued that this would be a particularly unpleasant journey across Scotland in the snows and biting winds of winter.
He was not wrong.
At first Queen Mary flat-out refused to leave Dumbarton with Stephen. Or, as she called him haughtily to his face, “a false-tongued heretic with the heart of a serpent.”
When he informed her that her assent was not required, she switched tactics and decided she wanted nothing more than to see her son, and treated Stephen and his company as a royal escort of honour. If Maisie had not also been traveling with them, Stephen would have lost his temper before the first day was scarcely begun. But Maisie’s dry wit and mordant sense of humour pulled him back from the edge of rage and outright insubordination.
It took eight miserable days to cross Scotland. He grudgingly admitted that it must be painful for Queen Mary to return to the landscape of her nation, despite the fact that she had spent far more of her life outside Scotland than within it. She became quieter the closer they drew to Edinburgh. On the last day, as they approached Linlithgow, she clearly expected that palace to be her destination.