“Madame, ‘twas ye who wanted to come to court. I should have been just as happy remaining at Dunmor,” he said, one hand sliding into the neckline of her dress to cup a breast, even as he nibbled at her lips.
“Mmmmmm,’’ Arabella sighed, pressing against him. “Can a lass nae change her mind, my lord?” she teased him, using the Scots idiom for the first time since he had known her.
“We hae no good excuse to leave court right now, lovey,” he said with genuine regret in his deep voice. “In the spring, perhaps, we can return home, for traditionally the English come raiding in the spring, and I must be at Dunmor to help defend the border.”
But they did not go home in the spring, for Henry Tudor, unsure upon his throne, was as interested in keeping peace along the borders as was James III. For the time being the English king did not need a war with Scotland, and to the disgust of many of his earls, Scotland’s king would not let his people make war upon the English.
“This could be the beginning of total peace between us,” Jemmie Stewart told his younger brother, Tavis Stewart. “I must bring Scotland into the modern world, but as long as she wastes her few resources and the lives of her sons in useless wars, I hae nae a chance. Why can they nae see it as I see it? Why must they live in the past? I need peace, and I need time to accomplish it all, but if nae me, Tavis, then my Jamie! He’s a braw bairn and they like him, but I’ve taught him well, for though they think he’s like them, he is nae. That was my mistake. Letting them see me as I really am. I was too honest, but I’ve taught Jamie better.”
“Aye,” the earl agreed. “He’s got charm, my nephew, and he’s strong as well.”
“He’ll be a good king when he’s old enough, Tavis, but I must hold on until he is. I know, I know,” the king told his brother. “There are those who agitate to overthrow me and put my son upon the throne, but Jamie will nae betray me ever.”
“Nay, he will not, Jemmie, for he loves ye even if he doesna understand ye.”
“Do ye understand me, Tavis?”
“Sometimes, in some things, but not always in all things.” The earl grinned, and then he took a deep swallow from the goblet he was holding. “But I love ye too, Jemmie.”
“Would ye ever betray me?” the king asked quietly.
Tavis Stewart thought a moment, and finally he said, “I dinna know, Jemmie. Not as ye are now, certainly, but time and circumstances change. I honestly dinna know, but this I can tell ye, Jemmie, I will nae ever betray Scotland.”
The king nodded. It was an honest answer, and more than he would have gotten from any other man. “Yer wife says that I am Scotland,” he told his younger brother craftily.
“Arabella is young and driven by passions I am only just beginning to explore,” Tavis Stewart told his brother. “I do not, however, admit to understanding them or her in the least.’’
The king laughed. “What man really understands a woman’s mind?’’ he replied. “There are many, Angus for one, I suspect, who think women dinna hae minds. Only bodies like that pretty drab of a cousin of his, Sorcha Morton. Even my laddie hae plowed in that well-tilled field.”
“And paid dearly for the privilege, I can assure ye, brother,” the earl said. “Sorcha hae expensive tastes, and like an alley cat who will go to whoever will feed it, nae true loyalty. I had a taste, but found it not to my liking. I dinna imagine Jamie stayed too long in that pasture.”
“Nay,” the king chuckled. “Then, too, he feared his mother would find out. Angus encourages the lad to carnality, and I canna stop him, for my son seems to hae a natural bent for the ladies.”
The earl grinned. “He’s a true Stewart.”
“Yet yer faithful to yer wife, Tavis, as I am to Margaret.”
“Perhaps we are unique amongst our family,” the earl replied.
The king smiled to himself. His younger brother, with a Stewart mother and a Stewart king for a father, was the quintessential Stewart. He seemed to possess all of the best qualities inherent in the Stewarts. He was handsome, loyal, intelligent, a good horseman, a good soldier, and if his reputation might be believed, a good lover. He was charming, and kind and politic.Very politic.The king knew his own total fidelity to his queen, coupled with the pleasure he gained from the company of artistic men, had given rise to stories that left his reputation less than savory. He would neither deny nor confirm those rumors, for he felt to do so was to give them credence, but he realized now that even Tavis Stewart was not certain of the truth of those rumors. Still, his brother was too loyal to even voice his concern in this one matter, and whatever answer James Stewart might have given to the question, should the earl have asked it, the king knew his brother would still continue to love him. There were precious few, he realized, that he might depend on to that extent.
“Indeed,’’ he agreed with his brother, “I think we are unique, Tavis. It is unfortunate, however, that that quality is nae appreciated by the highland earls and their ilk. They will be the death of me yet, I fear. Though the lowland lords and the bonnet lairds complain, they remain loyal to me nonetheless.”
“Yer like a bloody rope dancer, Jemmie,” the earl remarked. “Ye must step carefully at all times.”
“Pray God I dinna fall, brother,” the king said. “At least not until my Jamie is old enough to rule wi’ out the interference of rash and ambitious men.”
Chapter Eleven
The queen was dead.Suddenly, and without any real warning. She had awakened early on the morning of July fourteenth with a sharp cry, and the lady who had hurried to the queen’s bedside had heard her say even as she fell back upon her pillows, “God and His mother, Mary, have mercy on me.” Then she was gone, and as word of her unexpected death spread throughout Stirling Castle, the town below, and the very realm itself, the reaction was the same. Total astonishment and disbelief.
Margaret of Denmark, daughter of King Christian I of Norway and Denmark, was only twenty-nine years old. She had come to Scotland as James III’s bride at the age of twelve. No one in Scotland, even her husband’s fiercest critics, had a bad word to say about the young queen. She was universally loved by all, for her nature was sweet, her heart good, and her piety legend. She had borne her husband three sons, the eldest two of whom were named James, because when Jamie the elder had been a small child, it was thought he was ill unto death, and so the son his mother had borne shortly after his illness began was also christened James, ensuring that Scotland’s next king would have the same name as the previous three. The queen’s third son was called John.
The king was in a state of total shock, more so than any of the others, for whatever might be thought of him, he had loved his wife. He sat silent and staring at a wall in his beautiful rooms, deaf to all pleas, unable to even give orders for his wife’s funeral. James Stewart had never been the most decisive of men where his duties were concerned, but at this particular moment he was virtually useless. Even his young favorite, John Ramsey of Balmain, whom he had created Earl of Bothwell, could not reach him.
The king’s family, the Stewarts, with help from the kingdom’s greatest lords, planned the queen’s funeral, offering a final and perfect tribute to a gracious lady who, while she lived, had spurred her husband on in his efforts to put the affairs of his half-savage realm in order. Now it was wondered what would happen without her, and those more practical and less sentimental than others considered a suitable replacement for the grieving royal widower, amongst the candidates, the dowager queen of England, Elizabeth Woodville.
The day of the queen’s funeral dawned gray and bleak. All along the road between St. Michael’s Chapel at Stirling to the Abbey of Cambuskenneth where the burial would take place, the way was lined with hundreds of common folk, many of whom wept openly for the queen. The black-draped coffin was drawn by black horses caparisoned in black and gold. Before it went black-clad riders upon black horses bearing the flags of Scotland and Denmark, dipped in respect. Other riders carried banners with the quartered Arms of the Danish Royal House and the Lion Rampant of Scotland. The clergy, all of Scotland’s bishops and abbots walking side by side in pairs, the lesser priests—their vestments, their jeweled mitres, their croziers blazing with precious gemstones, making an almost painful flash of color amid all the black—preceded the coffin.
