Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [213]
Liddell was bitter. ‘How can it be treason? Has he tried to kill the King? Has Sandy tried to kill anyone? Colquhoun’s death was an accident, you know that.’
Nicholas said, ‘The Duke refused to stand down from Dunbar. He fired on the royal forces. He flouted the King’s orders and fought on the Border. You know what else he did. He has to be challenged, or it’s an invitation to general anarchy. Whether he will be condemned or not will be a matter for judges. And meanwhile, note, he hasn’t forfeited anything.’
‘James hates his brothers,’ said Liddell.
And Nicholas said, ‘No, he doesn’t. The King has the family temper, that’s all. He can be guided, just like all of them can. Sandy could hold the highest post in the kingdom if he could bring himself to make accommodation with England. For God’s sake, we’re not taking King Edward as overlord. We’re simply observing a useful pact between neighbours. It needn’t even stretch to another marriage, if the Princess Margaret objects.’
Liddell said, ‘According to Whitelaw, Edward will renege on the dowry for his daughter Cecilia if Margaret’s isn’t forthcoming.’
‘It’s possible,’ Nicholas said. ‘Just as it’s possible that the King will spend all the wedding taxes on cannon, or hats, unless someone persuades him otherwise. What about Ellem and the rest who held out in Dunbar? Can they be helped? Will they make representations?’
‘Do you care?’ Liddell had said.
And Nicholas said, ‘Of course I do. Sandy’s going to come back. We’re all going to have to make things work in the end.’
‘We?’ said Liddell.
‘Well. You,’ said Nicholas mildly.
JAMES, LORD HAMILTON, died during the first heavy snow, in November, and those who went to his funeral, in the collegiate church he had founded nearly fifty years previously, found themselves briefly immured in that western sheriffdom of Lanarkshire which had been his, and which now fell to his only legitimate son, his child by the Princess Mary.
There were, of course, many adult Hamiltons to receive those who came to do him honour, from his prolific brothers and their wives to his own illegitimate, talented family. Spread among the several Hamilton keeps and towers at Cadzow, Draffen and at the place now called Hamilton in his name were the well-born officers, young and old, who attended the Princess and her husband, among whom was Jodi de Fleury, brilliant of face and eye, moving decorously in his new sable dress to welcome his parents, but waiting only to be swept inside his father’s encouraging arm and to burst into speech.
The widowed Princess wept in resentful short bursts, and alternately commandeered Nicholas and shunned him. It was natural. He had engineered one aspect or another of both Mary’s marriages. She mostly felt grateful, but she did not want another.
Her Hamilton children were too small to share in the commotion, but James and Margaret Boyd, the son and daughter born to her in Anselm Adorne’s house in Bruges, were little younger than Jodi. They knew their stepfather had died, and walked about, eyes lowered, in their black dress, speaking politely when introduced. They came to life a little when Anselm Adorne himself arrived, with his niece Katelinje of Berecrofts, who had once been maid of honour to their lady aunt Margaret. They came fully alive when Jodi’s father eventually joined the company. Jodi had never understood who gave Jamie Boyd the right to walk by his father and talk to him. Mistress Clémence, tackled once, explained that it was because M. de Fleury was a friend of the Princess’s brother. The Duke of Albany was a hero to Jamie.
Jodi had thereafter followed