Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [115]
3. Another Royal Lady Enters the Game
To Lord Grey of Wilton, the Protector’s Lord Lieutenant of the North, Gideon Somerville reported in full the incident of the cattle raid and of the assault on his home and the taking of Sir George Douglas’s letter. He was frank and even pointedly detailed with one exception: he held back the name of the interloper. Gideon had no intention of being asked to reopen negotiations with him, should he be known to Lord Grey.
The interview took place in the Castle of Warkworth on the bright, bracing coast of Northumberland.
For domestic reasons, the English Protector urgently needed a splendid success at something, and his first instinct was to put a stop to the squabbling inaction in the north. This he did, characteristically, by ordering his Lords Warden to meet and devise an instant plan for, first, devastating the House of Buccleuch; second, pulverizing the House of Douglas; and third, joining the power of the three Border Marches and burning Scotland up to the eyebrows. The object of this last, as ever, was to wrest the child Queen from these antique and wiry arms and rear her, unequivocably, as the bride of the King of England. The Lords Warden, answering faintly, undertook to excel themselves and arranged to meet on this last Friday in January at the Castle of Warkworth. The Lords Warden detested each other, but they distrusted the Protector more.
Gideon was present at the historic meeting, and with him was Lord Wharton, who had spent a night at Flaw Valleys on his way. The fourth member was Sir Thomas Bowes, a large and silent man who was Warden of the Middle Marches.
As senior commander, Lord Grey chose to open the meeting with a striking list of his activities on the east of Scotland. In the front of his mind was a courteous desire to complete the military picture for his fellow officers. In the back of it marched a procession of letters from the Lord Protector, making concise reference to some aspect of Lord Wharton’s energy and initiative on the west. He went on.
“Now, what we have to do most urgently is to break this mood of optimism. This French arrival has done a lot of damage: men and money pouring into Scotland from the French king, and the promise of more—we can’t ignore that. And your friend Lennox crawling into Dumfries and home again like a half-drowned kitten, Wharton, hardly had the appearance of a military tour de force.”
“The Earl of Lennox, like the baker of Ferrara, thinks he is made of butter,” said Wharton dryly. “I am in no position to disabuse him of the idea.”
“Well, he’s no tactician: that’s obvious,” said Grey. “Figureheads are dangerous. Would never touch ’em. And if I had to, I should go with them and make damn sure they didn’t get into mischief.”
“I bow to expert opinion, of course. But the gentleman is married to the King’s cousin. The effect is to make him touchy about bear-leading.”
“Tact!” said Lord Grey.
“It is a little difficult,” said Lord Wharton, “to convey acceptably to a noble gentleman that he is an interfering fool.” And he let a pause develop just sufficiently before going on. “If I might suggest it, we should be better employed in considering just how Lord Lennox might be used—since inescapably he must be used—in the next combined raid. And how he can help us against the Douglases.…”
They had got exactly so far when Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, was announced.
* * *
Meg Douglas in girlhood had possessed the gorgeous, leonine sort of beauty that her uncle Henry VIII had frittered away, and of which her father, the Earl of Angus, was the vestigial affidavit. In sixteen years’ residence in England, careening at Henry’s whim from near-throne to near-block, Margaret had kept her splendour.
Her mother, Margaret Tudor of England, had been married to King James of Scotland nearly fifty years before; and had stayed in Scotland to become Angus’s wife when her first husband lost his life at Flodden.
Now Henry was dead; his sister was dead; Angus had married again and