“If you will trust me?” I reply, and make him laugh.
He takes my hand and kisses it. “I would trust you and your son,” he says. “I would trust the dowager queen and the king. Nobody else. I cannot make promises to your husband or to any of the Scots lords. I don’t believe a word any of them says.”
“You may not criticize him to me,” I say.
He laughs. “I don’t single him out. I say no worse than I say about any of them. All of them think of their own wealth and their own power and their own ambition before anything else. All of them are true only to their clans. None of them even knows how to serve their king. None of them has any idea of their country. Few of them think of God as anything other than an invisible tribal chief more unpredictable and dangerous than any other. They have no imagination.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” I say flatly.
He laughs. “For you have no imagination either, Your Grace. You do perfectly well without it. Now tell me the scandal of the English court. I hear that your brother, the king, is in love?”
I frown. “I won’t gossip with you,” I say repressively.
“And the young lady is very, very beautiful?”
“Not particularly.”
“And very educated and musical and sweet-tempered?”
“What does it matter?”
“The king, your brother, would not consider putting his wife aside? Since God does not seem to be inclined to give them a son? His wife, the queen, would not consider withdrawing to a convent? So that he might get an heir with this beautiful young lady?”
I feel that instant unworthy flame of delight at the thought that gossip speaks of Katherine being humbled to nothing. Then, immediately, I think of how heartbroken she would be—she who cannot bear the thought of Harry even flirting with another woman. “It would never happen,” I say. “My brother is a great protector of the Church and of all the institutions of the Church. And my sister-in-law would never desert her duty. She will live and die Queen of England.”
“She has been a great enemy to Scotland,” he points out. “We might do better if he listened to a new wife.”
“I know,” I say. “It is a matter of sorrow to us both. But she is my sister. I am bound to be loyal to her.”
We plan that Ard and I should stay at Craigmillar Castle for a few weeks more and then go to my dower lands at Newark Castle. Antoine says that when we all return to Edinburgh, after the plague has passed, he will call a council of the lords and that I shall attend and address them. If I can persuade them that I should be co-regent he will be happy to share power with me. I shall have free access to my son, who is easier with me every day. I shall have a seat in the council chamber. I shall be acknowledged as dowager queen.
“And Archibald on a chair beside mine,” I say. “Equal height.”
The chevalier makes a little gesture with his hands. “Ah, don’t ask it,” he begs. “You love your husband, I know. But he has so many enemies! If you force him down their throats, they will be your enemies too. Be the mother of the king and the dowager queen in your public life. Be his wife in your private rooms. Be his slave there, if you wish. But don’t take him into the council chamber as your equal.”
“He is my husband,” I say impressively. “Of course he is my master. I won’t keep him in my closet.”
“He was granted a pardon only by the generosity of the Duke of Albany,” de la Bastie reminds me. “His cousin and fellow outlaw was beheaded for treason. There are many who think that Hume did only what your husband would have done, if he had the courage.” He holds up his hand as I am about to interrupt. “Hear me out, Your Grace. Scotland will only survive as a kingdom for your son to inherit if we can keep the peace. Your husband and his family and all his affinity are enemies to that peace. They use their castles as a base for raids, they allow their tenants to steal cattle, they disrupt the markets and they rob the tenants and the poor. They collect the royal taxes but they don’t remit them. And whenever they are in danger, they slip over the border to Thomas Dacre, who tells them to continue lawbreaking and pays them to do worse. You are going to have to find some way to confine your husband’s ambition and his violence to your bedroom where, I suppose, you like it. The rest of us don’t want him carving and dancing around us. The rest of us know that he says one thing and does another.”
“How dare you—” I start, when there is a loud knock at the door. It swings open and the captain of the castle is there, his helmet under his arm. “Forgive me,” he says with a bow to me, and then speaks to de la Bastie. “A message from the Tower of Langton. They are under siege from George Hume of Wedderburn and his affinity.”
De la Bastie is on his feet at once. “The Humes again?” he says with a nod to me as if to remind me that these are Archibald’s allies and kinsmen. “How many?”
The messenger steps forward. “Not more than five hundred,” he says. “But they say they will burn out the tower and all who are in it.”
Antoine glances at me. “We have to have peace,” he says. “D’you know George Hume?”
“Kinsman to Alexander?” I ask.
“Exactly,” he says. “An outlaw’s kinsman, continuing his work. I shall arrest him. Will your husband ride with me against lawbreakers?”
I am silenced. I know Ard will never ride against his cousins, the Humes.
De la Bastie laughs. “I thought not,” he says. “How can he be the king’s protector when he does not protect the king’s peace?”
He bows to me and goes to the door, as the captain shouts orders that the guard shall be mustered to ride out.
“How long will you be?” I ask, suddenly nervous.
He looks at the messenger for the answer. “It’s a good half-day’s ride,” the man says.
“Should be back by tomorrow,” he says casually. He bows to me with his hand on his heart, a gleam of his smile, and he is gone.
We expect him for dinner, but they serve and we eat without him. Archibald remarks that perhaps the famous French chevalier could not catch George Hume as easily as he expected. He says that jousting is one thing, a tournament is another, but riding hard across wild country commanding men little better than reivers takes courage that the chevalier would never have needed before.
“They are breaking the peace,” I say shortly. “Of course he has to arrest them.”
“They are defying the regency that sent you into exile and made you a stranger to your son,” he says. “The regency that I had to beg a pardon from before they would let me back to my own.”
“We have to have peace,” I repeat.
“Not on any terms,” my husband says. “I wish I were with them.”
“De la Bastie thought you might ride with him!” I exclaim.
Ard laughs. “No, he didn’t, he just said that to trouble you. He knows, and I know, that there will be no peace for this country until it is ruled by you, the dowager queen, for your son the king. He knows I would fight for no regency commanded by him or the other Frenchman. I am for the queen and England.”
“What’s that?” I say, starting up as I hear the portcullis chains clanking and the roller creaking as the gate is lifted. “Is he back at last?”
Together we go down to the castle door, expecting to see de la Bastie and his guard riding in. Instead there are half a dozen men with his standard. They are carrying it lowered, as if in mourning, as if there has been a death.
“What is it?” I demand, and Ard goes down to the captain of the guard and speaks quickly to him. When he turns back to me his face in the flickering torchlight is bright.
“De la Bastie was defeated. George Hume has escaped,” he says shortly.