"The Courtesan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tranter Nigel)

P.'

'Well?' Hay demanded, when he saw that she had finished reading.

Mary moistened her lips, but for once had no words.

'You see what he says? What it means? It is lies – all lies. You know it, as do I. He knows it also – the Master of Gray. But it could mean my Duke's head, nevertheless.'

'It… is… ill… done,' the girl said slowly, each word standing alone.

'It is worse than that, by God!' the young man cried. 'This is as good as an assassination! Written to Elizabeth of England, who hates the house of Lennox. She will inform the King. Nothing is more sure. Higher treason than this could scarce be thought of. And all lies. My master no more desires the throne than, than…'

'I know it,' Mary said quietly. 'This shall not be.'

Something about her voice calmed him. 'What can we do?' he asked.

'I shall do what I should have done, long since,' she told him, levelly. 'God forgive me that I have waited this long.' Doubtfully he eyed her.

'Patrick is still at Hailes, with the King?' she asked.

'Yes.'

'I shall see him, then, tonight. You said that you escort the Queen there, forthwith? This afternoon?' 'Yes. But what can you do?'

She did not seem to hear him. 'Peter,' she went on, 'take these letters to Sir Richard Bowes. All save this of Patrick's. Tell him what happened.' She leafed through the other letters. 'These are no concern of ours. Do not tell him of this one. If he knew aught of it, and asks you, you know nothing. The robbers must have taken it. You understand?'

'Aye. You will keep it?'

'Meantime, yes. And, Peter – when you have taken us to Hailes, I think that I may have a further task for you. If you will do it? Weary as you will be…?'

'Anything, Mistress Mary,' he assured her.

'My thanks. Now, to the Queen. And then, while she prepares to ride, to Sir Richard Bowes' lodging.'

'Aye. You know what you will do?'

'God granting me the resolution, I do,' she said. 'Come.'

In a stone garden-house of the pleasance of Hailes Castle, in the gorge of Tyne, the only place it seemed in that crowded establishment where she could be assured to privacy, Mary Gray turned to face her father, pale, set-faced.

This will serve I think, Patrick,' she said.

'I should hope so!' Patrick, although he laughed, considered her shrewdly. 'I warrant half the Court is watching this so secret assignment! And debating the wherefore of it. As I do also, moppet, I confess. Rejoice as I do in your company therefore, my dear, I bid you be discreetly brief. In here. Lest your reputation suffers – and I, I am labelled even worse than I am! A man who would corrupt his own daughter!'

'Would that was all that you could be labelled!' she told him flatly.

'Eh…?' Startled now, he stared. 'What a plague do you mean by that?'

'I mean, Patrick, that I have come to know you for what you are. At last. I can no longer blind myself.' Still-faced, he waited, unspeaking.

'Davy warned me,' she went on, in a curious, unemphatic, factual voice. 'Others also, to be sure. Times a-many. But I believed that they wronged you. Deep down, they wronged you. I believed that I knew you better – because I knew myself. And loved you. We were out of the same mould, you and I. So that I understood you, as others did not. I saw the gold beneath the tarnish. But it was I who was wrong. There is no gold there. Only… corruption!'

Taut-featured now as she was herself, he stood motionless, scarcely seeming to breathe. Only his delicate nostrils flared, as a spirited horse's will flare. As did her own, indeed. Never had they seemed more alike, those two. 'Yes?' he said.

'You betray all with whom you have dealings,' she told him, and the unemotional, level, almost weary certainty of her utterance made the indictment the more terrible. 'You betray always, for love of betrayal. Davy said that you were a destroyer. I know now that you are worse than that. A destroyer can at the least be honestly so. A lion, a boar, a wolf – these have their parts. But you – you seek men's trust and love, in order to destroy them. You charm before you betray. You, Patrick, are not even a wolf. You are a snake!'

'God's passion!' Blazing-eyed the Master took a step towards her, fists clenched, knuckles white. Almost it seemed that he would strike her. Only with a tremendous and very apparent effort of will did he hold himself back. Pandng, his words came pouring out, his voice no longer musical and pleasingly modulated but harsh, strident, staccato. 'How dare you! You young fool! What do you know? In your insufferable ignorance! None speaks me so – you, nor any. Do you hear? Christ – you, of all!'

She stood, head up, unflinching, meeting his furious gaze, not challenging or defiant, but with a calm resolution, sorrowful but sure. She actually nodded her head. 'I know – because this time you have betrayed yourself,' she told him. 'This time it is your own words that condemn you. Written testimony.'

That gave him pause. He drew a deep quivering breath. 'What mean you by that?' he asked thickly.

'I mean that you have gone too far in betrayal. Even for my indulgence, Patrick. I did not believe that you had betrayed Mary the Queen, to her death. Now I do. For I have proof that you have betrayed the King. And intend to do so further. You betrayed Moray, again to his death. Bothwell here, also. The Hamiltons. Even Huntly, and your Catholics. For money. For power. For revenge. For amusement, sport, no less! And now, God forgive you if He can, you have betrayed Vicky.' 'A-a-ah!'

'I warned you,' she went on inexorably. 'At Dunfermline. I warned you to cast down no more men. If you touched Vicky, I said, I would no longer forget my duty.'

'Vicky!' He spat out the name. 'That young blockhead! For him you speak me so! For that ducal dolt you would discard me? Me, your father! He has turned your silly head.'

'Not my head, Patrick,' she corrected. 'My heart, perhaps, but not my head. The head that I heired from you. The heart, I pray God, I heired from my mother!'

'You insolent jade! You interfering hussy! Foul fall you -are you out of your mind? Are you, girl…?' The man's words faltered, however, as something of the quality of his daughter's strange certainty tempered the heat of his fury. 'What is it? Out with it! What lies has Lennox been spilling into your foolish ears?' he demanded.

'None,' she told him. 'I have not seen Vicky for three days. The lies, Patrick, are all your own! Written lies. In your letter to Queen Elizabeth.'

His lips parted, and he drew a long breath, but spoke no word.

'That evil letter will not reach Elizabeth,' she went on. 'It was… intercepted. I have read it…'

'Great God! Who…? Who intercepted it? Who has seen it?' Patrick grasped her arm in his sudden urgency. 'Where is it, Mary? Not… not Bothwell? Or the King…?'

'Would you be here, a free man, this night, had either of these seen it?'

He moistened his lips. 'Who then? I warn you, girl – do not seek to cozen me!'

'Who intercepted it matters not, Patrick. Only one other, and myself, have seen it… as yet.'

'Where is it, then? Who holds it?'

'I hold part of it.'

'Part? Only part?'

'There were two sheets, you will recollect. Within the plain outer paper. Written with your own hand, and sealed with your seal. That in which you betray Vicky, I hold. The other is… elsewhere.'

'Elsewhere…?' He swallowed. 'Damnation – where?'

Mary shook her head. 'Where you cannot reach it.' Her voice quivered now. 'Patrick. I have brought you here to say goodbye.'

He stared at her. 'What nonsense is this? You mean that you are leaving Court? Going back to Castle Huntly? I' faith, it is not before time, I think! It was my folly ever to have brought you.'

'My going is of no matter. It is yours that is important. You are leaving Court, Patrick. Leaving Scotland. Forthwith.'

'Christ – are you crazed? What a plague means this? Have you clean lost your senses, girl?'

'It is my sorrow that I have been lacking my senses for so long, Patrick. That I forbore to put a halt to your evils long ere this. As I could and should have done. Because I loved you. Because I believed that there was good in you – that there must be good in you. How wrong I was! It is…'

With an impatient gesture of his hand he interrupted her. 'Enough of this puling folly! Think you I must stand and listen to your childish insults?'

'You must do more than that, Patrick. You must go. Leave all.' Almost without expression she spoke. 'I warned you. If you touched Vicky, I told you, with your, your poison, I would set my hand against you.'

'So! You esteem Vicky Stuart higher than you do me, your father?'

The word was long in coming. She raised her head until her small chin was held high. 'Yes,' she said at last, simply.

Something seemed to crumple in the man, then. He turned away from her, to gaze out of that little summer-house to the towering bulk of the great castle, stained with the reflection of the sunset, his beautiful features working spasmodically.

In her turn, Mary's own hard-won resolution cracked a little. 'Oh, Patrick,' she cried, her voice breaking, 'why, oh why did you do it? How could you? To Vicky, who was like a son to you. Or a brother. Whom you brought to this land, from France. Who worshipped you. Who used to esteem you little less than a god. How could you so turn on him? To write those lies about him to Elizabeth. Knowing that she hates and fears the house of Lennox, which is too near to her own throne. Knowing what she would do. That she would be certain to tell King James.'

'Vicky has been riding too high,' the Master jerked, thickly, still not looking at her. 'He presumes. He interferes. Since Moray's death he has set himself against me…'

'With cause, has he not? Did not you kill the Earl of Moray, Patrick – even though it was Huntly's hand that struck the blow? You planned his death?'

'Not his death. Only his fall.' The Master sighed. 'Moray had to go. For the sake of the realm. He had stolen the Queen's affections. The greatest evil could come of that. For Scotland, Even for England. Can you not perceive it? For doubts as to the father of James's heir could keep him out of Elizabeth's throne. Many in England are against his accession, in any case. Elizabeth herself is hesitant. Moray had to go.'

'His death was ordered by Elizabeth? And paid for with her gold?'

'Not his death. His fall and disgrace. Banishment, perhaps. Until James should have an undoubted heir. Huntly went too far.'

'So you betrayed Huntly, through Bothwell? You plotted Bothwell's attack on the King. Now you are betraying Both-well. Again with Elizabeth's money. He is working his own doom, you wrote. You released him from Edinburgh Castle for this! And the Lord Hamilton. He is broken and disgraced, put to the horn, for no other reason than that you could use his name to unite the Stewarts to aid Bothwell's attempt against the King…'

'Lassie! Lassie!' Patrick Gray interposed, almost wearily. 'Can you not see? Can you not understand? The rule and governance of this unhappy realm is balanced as on a sword's edge. The throne is insecure, and has no power, no strength. Any blustering lord can command more men than can King James. The country is at the lords' mercy, torn with strife and jealousy and hatred. Catholics and Protestants are at each others' throats. War is ever around the corner – civil war, bloody and terrible. Then thousands would die – innocent, poor folk. That is what I struggle and scheme to save this land from, always. Better that an arrogant lord or two should die, than that. Can you not see…?'

'I see only betrayal and bad faith, deceit and lies. Even though you name it statecraft.'

'Aye, statecraft! What else? The ship of state is an ill craft to steer when its master is a weakly buffoon and its crew pirates with every man's hand against another. For the sake of the realm, of our people, I have set my hand to steer this ship, Mary – for want of a better man, or a surer hand. Can you name any that could do it better? So I am a Catholic one day and a Protestant the next. One day I support Bothwell, the next Huntly – when either gets too strong. I cherish the Kirk -and when it becomes overbearing and would weaken the throne, I bring in the Jesuits and Spain. Elizabeth's gold I use, yes – but for Scotland's weal. The throne must be supported, buttressed, always. Somehow. For only it stands between the lords and the people. How may a king like James be sustained, save by setting his enemies against each other? How think you that James has kept his crown all these months? By my wits, girl – my wits!'

'Yet you betray James also, to Elizabeth!'

'Betray! What fool word is this that you prate like a parrot? One day, Mary, with God's help and these wits of mine, Scotland and England shall be one realm, with one monarch. Strange fate that it should be drooling Jamie Stewart! Then there shall be an end to wars and hatred and fighting. That united realm shall be great and powerful enough to hold all Europe in check. Spain shall no longer threaten it. Nor the Pope. Nor even France. Law and justice shall rule it, from a strong and wealthy throne, with nobles tamed and a church less harsh. To that end I work. For that I plot and scheme, raise men up and bring them low – that James's throne may survive until then. I would have thought, Mary, that you, of all people, would have had the head to see it! For that greater good, we must suffer the lesser evils…'

'Such as achieving the destruction of your friends? Causing the deaths of those who trust you? Selling one who is as good as a son to you?'

'Tcha! God in Heaven, Mary – can I not make you understand? Are you blind?'

'No, I am not blind, Patrick. Not any more. You have blinded and dazzled me for too long. I see clearly now. I see that my father… that Davy Gray was right. He said that you had a devil. I believe it, now. I believe now that even Granlord was right – that you were the death of our Queen Mary. And… and I swear, Patrick, that you shall not be the death of Vicky Stuart! All for the weal of die realm!'

'Tush, child – I wish no hurt to Vicky. Only a warning…'

'You accused him of highest treason, to Elizabeth – of having James declared insane, and himself made Regent. Then King in his place. Knowing that Vicky has no thought of power or rule. Knowing too that Elizabeth must tell James. And that, hearing it, he could scarce do less than have Vicky's head, for so great a treachery and threat. And none to know that you, his friend, were behind it!' The young woman's dark eyes flashed now. 'For that, Patrick, no words will suffice. Only deeds.'

'And what deeds, pray, do you intend to perform, Mary, to suffice your maidenly ire?' The Master's scimitar brows rose mockingly. 'Perhaps I deceive myself – but I believe that I may just be able to withstand your direst darts, my dear!'

She shook her head, but sadly, with nothing of triumph. 'The deed is done, Patrick,' she said. 'Past recall. You are too late to save yourself.' Mary looked out at the last of the sunset. 'Tonight, possibly even at this moment, a trusted messenger hands the first sheet of your letter to my Lord Maitland, the Chancellor, at Thirlestane Castle in Lauderdale. He will know well what to do with it.'

'Merciful Christ!' For once that melodious voice was no better than an ugly croak. 'Maitland! You did that? You sent the letter to Maitland? Maitland, of all men! My chiefest enemy…'

'I sent it to the Chancellor of this realm. He still is that. Whose duty it must be to take action upon it. I cannot believe that he will fail to do so. And promptly.'

Appalled, aghast, the Master searched his daughter's face. 'Do… you know… what you… have done?' he demanded, from a constricted throat.

'I do. I did it of set purpose. This is what the Chancellor requires. To raise himself up again. And to bring you down. It cannot fail to do so.'

'It cannot fail to lose me my head, damn, burn and blister you! In that letter I said… I said…'

'You said that you would not spare the rod, on King James. That you were the architect of his present humbled state. That he informed you of his secret mind, which you then disclosed to Elizabeth. I cannot think that this is less than treason.'

'And that you, Mary Gray, sent to Maitland! And you talk of betrayal!' The words rose to a cry that verged on the hysterical.

'I am the daughter of the Master of Gray,' she told him quietly, her voice so very flat in contrast to his. 'Perhaps betrayal therefore comes naturally to me, also!'

'Precious soul of God! This – from you!'

'Yes, Patrick. But at least I only hold the noose before your eyes. I do not put it round your neck and draw it tight! As you have done to others. I have left you with time to escape. Maitland is no young man. He will not ride through all the wild hills between Lauderdale and Hailes at night. You have time to reach the Border before he can act. England. From whence comes your gold and your orders. You will be safe there, will you not? Your fond Elizabeth will cherish you. Or may she no longer esteem you when your usefulness here is past? That you must needs discover.'

He said nothing.

'Perhaps you will fare better in France? Or Spain?' the girl went on, in the same inflexible voice. 'You will not lack employment, I feel sure. Meantime, a fast horse will take you to Berwick and over Tweed in three hours and less.'

'You… you are very thoughtful.' Somehow he got it out. 'But have you, in your lofty wisdom, considered Marie and the child? Whom you also have professed to love – God help them!'

'Marie knows all. I spoke with her before leaving Holyroodhouse. Even now she will be on her way to Berwick, with Andrew.'

'She will? Sink me…!'

'Marie agrees with what I have done. She said that I was to tell you so. That she believed it to be for the best. She longs to see an end to this evil. She has tried to halt you, but you would not heed her. It required your own flesh and blood to halt your course, Patrick – another such as yourself. So… this is goodbye.'

'You think, you believe, that you have halted me? A chit of a girl! You conceive Patrick Gray held by such as you? Lord -was there ever such insolent folly!'

Sighing, she shook her head. 'You have no choice,' she said. 'You are held. By noonday tomorrow, if you are not out of this realm, you will either be warded for treason and trial, or else outlawed, put to the horn. Your letter reveals your betrayal of all. You cannot flee north – for will Huntly or the Marischal save you now? In the south, Bothwell will hunt you down. Will Hamilton in the west spare you? Or the Master of Glamis? Or Mar? You are held, quite. When you penned that letter, Patrick, you wrote your own doom. When you turned on Vicky, you signed it.'

The man opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again. Mary Gray had him silenced.

'Goodbye, Patrick,' she said then, huskily, unevenly.

He drew himself up, to look at her, to consider her all, every delectable inch of her. And looking, his expression changed, eased, softened. 'Mary, Mary!' he all but whispered. 'What have I done to you? What have we done to each other? You and I? God pity us – what are we? So close, so close – yet we destroy each other.'

'I do not know,' she answered, emptily. 'Save that we are the Grays – and fate is hard on us.'

'A-a-aye!' That came out on a long sigh. He held out a hand, open, empty, pleading. 'May I kiss you, child? Once. Before… before…'

'Yes – oh, yes!' she cried, and without hesitation flung herself upon him, eyes filling with tears. 'Yes – for I cannot but love you. Always.'

For long moments they clutched each other close, convulsively, passionately, murmuring incoherences. Then abruptly, almost roughly, the man thrust Mary away from him, swung about, and hurried out of that pleasance-house, slamming the door behind him.

The girl sank to her knees over the carved stone bench and sobbed as though her heart would break.