“He’s young, and very amusing, and clever. He panders to the king’s affections; and right now James Stuart seems to need those two young men vying for his attention and his favor. He has never really recovered from Prince Henry’s death, and Prince Charles is a dour little fellow, quite unlike his elder sibling. The king doubts he will ever make a good ruler, and is not shy about saying so. Charles, of course, is fiercely jealous of both Villiers and Hartsfield. He thinks they take his old dad’s affections from him, but I wonder just how much affection the king has for his younger son. Now, Jemmie, you are going to behave yourself, aren’t you?”
“I suspect I have no choice,” grumbled the earl of Glenkirk.
Robin Southwood chuckled. “Well,” he said wryly, “we could waylay Hartsfield in a dark alley and strangle him, I suppose.”
“Now there’s a fine thought!” James Leslie said enthusiastically.
“We will have to convince Jasmine to play along with our game,” Lynmouth told his companion.
“You may have that privilege,” Glenkirk said.
“You must back me up, Jemmie!” Lynmouth said. “My niece can be the very devil to reason with, as you well know.”
“I’ll back you up,” Glenkirk agreed, “but if she’s not of a mind to do it, heaven help us all.”
“Damn, I wish mother were here,” Robin Southwood said.
“Well, she isn’t, and she’ll have both our hides if we do not make this all come out right, Robin. I hope we’re doing what Madame Skye would want us to do in the matter.”
“There is nothing to keep us from sending her a communication as to what’s going on,” the earl of Lynmouth said. “She should know.”
Glenkirk laughed. “Aye, so she should,” he agreed. “She will not be afraid to take on this king. Divine Right means nothing to Madame Skye, does it, Robin?”
His companion chuckled. “Nay, Glenkirk, it never did, and I think Jasmine is more like my mother than anyone else I know.”
“But Jasmine has always respected Divine Right,” Glenkirk said.
“She won’t when it interferes with her plans to marry you,” the earl of Lynmouth said mischievously, “She has never stopped being the Mughal’s daughter. May God have mercy on us all if the king does not cease his meddling in her life. There will be hell to pay for certain, and Hartsfield will learn to his regret that you cannot make our wild Jasmine do what she does not choose to do.”
Chapter Eight
Richard Stokes, the earl of Bartram, was extremely worried. He had served the king ever since James had arrived in England, gaining his master’s favor by his hard work and his sober habits. A protégé of Robert Cecil, the earl of Salisbury, son of Lord Burghley, who prior to his death had been the king’s most trusted advisor, Lord Stokes was content to remain in the background doing his duty for the crown. Often it had meant long hours and very little time with his family, but his wife, Mary, had completely understood. Only on Sunday was Richard Stokes unavailable to his royal master. Sunday was the Lord’s day, and he was a pious man. The earl of Bartram followed the commandment to remember the Sabbath and to keep it holy.
While openly espousing England’s officially sanctioned church, Lord Stokes was secretly a Puritan. He did not hold with popery or the superstitious trumpery he believed tainted the Anglican Church. He firmly held that the church should be free of such tomfoolery. God’s word was simple and direct, even as the church should be. The earl of Bartram did not approve of the dogma, the elegant ritual, and the businesslike organization of England’s church. People should follow the Bible and its teachings as God had meant them to do, else he would not have had it all written down. Devout simplicity. That was what the true church should be about.
Richard Stokes, however, kept his faith to himself. Faith, he believed, was a very personal and a private thing. He did not like those men who publicly screeched and shouted their creed for all to hear in the market square, demanding that others follow them. Besides, Puritans who noisily trumpeted their beliefs too loudly for all the world to hear could find themselves the center of intense persecution. Even more than those misguided men and women who persisted in continuing to follow Roman Catholicism. A discreet faith, along with adherence to the official Church of England, was acceptable. King James too well remembered his own mother’s difficulties in the matter of religion. It had cost him her company and caused him to live a basically cold, unemotional, and strict childhood devoid of either maternal warmth or any real loving affection.
Alas that Lady Mary Stokes, the earl’s wife, was not as careful as her husband in the matter of religion. A devout woman, she had of late become an impassioned proselyte of their secret faith. In part Stokes blamed himself. His business kept him in London most of the year, and their children were all grown and married. The eldest of their daughters lived down in Cornwall, and the youngest had been wed up north into Yorkshire. Their only son and his wife lived on the family estates at Bartramhalt in Oxfordshire.
In service to the king from dawn until midnight most days, the earl understood how his wife, with nothing else to do, could become more deeply involved in their faith. Mary was a woman of high morals who did not believe in the frivolity exhibited by the royal lifestyle. She had no friends at court, and, without her family, she was lonely. Now she had suddenly devoted herself passionately to religion, certainly a worthwhile pursuit for a woman, but unfortunately his wife’s enthusiastic zeal had come to the ears of the king. How this had happened the earl ofBartram could never learn, but James Stuart was not pleased by the knowledge.
“I dinna hold wi the Calvinists, Dickie,” he said to the earl, having called him into his royal presence late one afternoon. “Were ye aware of yer wifie’s nonconformism? The Calvinists dinna respect my divine rights, Dickie. Ye’ll hae to beat Lady Mary and turn her from her heresy,” James Stuart concluded. He turned to his two companions. “Is that not right, my sweet laddies.” Then he smiled at them.
“With our children gone to their own homes, I fear my good lady is bored, Your Majesty,” the earl said. “Mary means no harm.”
“She doesna come to court,” the king observed. “I canna remember the last time I saw her, Dickie. Does she hae all her wits about her?”
“She is a shy and retiring lady, Your Highness,” the earl excused his wife, wishing that she were indeed addled so he might condone her behavior in that manner.
“Nae so timid, Dickie, that she could nae stand outside of Westminster handing out seditious tracts condemning our good church,” the king said grimly.
The earl of Bartram paled.“What?”he managed to say. Mary had to have lost her wits to have done such a foolhardy thing.
“Are ye losing yer hearing then, Dickie?” The king did not look pleased at all.
“I shall certainly remonstrate with my wife …” he began, but he was cut short by the marquis of Hartsfield.
“Remonstrate,Stokes? Your wife stands on the edge of treason, and you, His Majesty’s most trusted servant, and you want toremonstratewith her? You should beat the bitch until she comes to her senses, my lord,” the marquis of Hartsfield told the astounded man.
