The Virgin's War (Tudor Legacy #3)(62)

When they passed it by, she sent a guard for Stephen. With a sigh and a curse for King James, who had cravenly left this final announcement to an Englishman, Stephen halted the company. He dismounted to speak to the queen.

“Why are we not entering Linlithgow?” she demanded imperiously. “It is nearly nightfall and we must recover before going on to Edinburgh.”

“We are not going to Edinburgh.”

“Has my son come to meet me? If so, surely it is at Linlithgow Palace. He knows it would mean much to meet him again where I myself was born.”

Mary Stuart had indeed been born at Linlithgow in December 1542, and it was there just six days later that word had come of her father’s death and her new role as Queen of Scotland. A significant place. Too significant to allow Mary entrance.

“The king is in Edinburgh,” Stephen said curtly. “He has prepared quarters for you at Blackness Castle until such time as decisions are made as to your meeting.”

“Blackness!”

Well might she look horrified, for Blackness Castle was best known in this century as a state prison. Cardinal Beaton, the Earl of Angus…Blackness was not a comforting destination for a woman whose last months in Scotland had been spent either as a prisoner or on the run from her own subjects.

But she had no choice. And say what you like about Mary Stuart, she was undeniably royal in her bearing. She made no further protest. It was an enormous relief for Stephen to lead the queen’s carriage and a small party of his men—and Maisie—onto the spit of land that jutted into the Firth of Forth. There, Blackness Castle perched forbiddingly.

It was known colloquially as “the ship that never sailed,” for the castle was shaped to fit its site, with north and south towers like a stem and stern and a central tower called the mainmast. Designed primarily as an artillery fortification to protect the royal port from the English, the castle was not intended as a pleasure spot. Stephen shivered as they passed through the curtain wall and rushed through the ceremony of handing Mary over to John Maitland, King James’s principal secretary. The queen did not deign to thank him for the escort.

Maitland invited Stephen to remain for the night, but he declined with almost offensive quickness. “You don’t mind?” he asked Maisie as they remounted in the cold.

Her small frame swallowed up in fur-lined cloak and gloves, she peered at him like a little owl from the depths of her hood. “If you had agreed to stay at Blackness, I would have gone on without you.”

He laughed. “I sent the sergeant to secure us chambers at an inn. I’d prefer to avoid royal residences as much as possible.”

“Hopefully the king will allow us to continue to do so.”

“Are you worried?” he asked. “I don’t think King James is the sort to lightly break a marriage. All we have to do is convince him this works to his advantage.”

“Right.” Maisie smiled wanly. “That’s all we have to do.”

—

At the last moment, Pippa almost begged off going to Compton Wynyates. Matthew would have approved. She could truthfully have claimed illness, though she had been better in the five months of her marriage than she had for a long time.

That didn’t mean she was well. The coughing fits might be in abeyance, but it was temporary. Each day she felt a little more tired, a little more unfocused, a little less pulled together. And each day, her moments of not-quite-thereness grew more frequent. Throughout her life she’d mostly been able to control them, or at least to deflect away the attention of others, but that control was slipping. When her vision grew dark around the edges and the voices of those present went mute—not once, but five or six times a day—it was difficult to pretend all was perfectly well. Matthew was the first to notice. He must have had a word with Anabel because the princess began keeping Pippa at her side as much as possible.

Matthew never forced her to talk, but he remarked as they rode into Compton Wynyates, “It will be a relief to be away from Navarro. I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

It was not jealousy speaking. No one could interpret Navarro’s interest in Pippa as sexual. He was not the handsome priest bound to vows of chastity while secretly burning for a woman he could not have. No—Navarro eyed her as a predator would its next meal.

Three months ago Navarro had stopped her on an empty staircase at Middleham and asked about the black streak in her golden hair.

“My father is black-haired,” she had answered. “My mother told me it grew from the spot where he kissed my head when I was born.”

“To bear such a mark from birth is not a blessing,” Navarro had pronounced stonily. “It is a curse.”

Bruja. He had not spoken the word, but Pippa had heard it loudly at the time—and every time he’d looked at her since.

Witch.

Lucette met them outdoors, her face glowing with the cold and her eyes lit up with pleasure. Though Pippa had been fairly confident of her sister’s healing, seeing confirmation of her regained happiness was an enormous relief.

“What fun we are going to have!” Lucette announced, laughing, as she pulled Pippa into the warm and welcoming hall. “Mother and Father are already here and she has been writing to Kit in Carlisle, asking him to come and drag Stephen with him. It seems she wants the whole family together.”

Pippa’s vision grew black and she heard what had become almost second nature to her this last year: a mix of Scots and Spanish voices, talking above and around her. But this time she could decipher a few of the words. Send for her family. They will want to say goodbye.