Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [282]
Of gud maner, and chaist of hir entent,
Borne of gud blud, obeyand to the king
And besy in her barnis nurysing.
MARGARET, QUEEN OF Scots, received the younger Burgundian in her apartments at Stirling Castle, with the three men who constituted her private council about her.
She had first met Nicholas de Fleury when she was an inexperienced little child-bride of twelve, excluded from the family games of the King and his siblings, and suffering James’s untutored petting through the long evenings when the Court entertained itself, with the help of amusing, musical friends such as the Burgundian. De Fleury could speak in the Danish-German of her father and brothers: she could converse with him. He had been very correct, but also easy to talk to. Sandy had been smitten.
After that, the Burgundian had come back at intervals, but she herself had been less at Court; and during the present long stay, she had followed the policy they had all deemed to be best, and had seen little of M. de Fleury, except on formal occasions. By this time, as he would have noticed, she had grown from a pale, sharp-eyed waif to an active young woman with a mind of her own, and an acquired grasp of statecraft. It was necessary. The King her father could hardly have realised how much. It was one of her personal weapons, along with the stock of jewels and clothes which she obtained through her excellent revenues, and also from her husband, as she presented him with each son. To begin with, she had believed that all husbands behaved as hers did. Then she had discovered what else was different about James, and his brothers and sisters.
It might have frightened someone without her kind of Scandinavian determination. Only gradually had she come to realise that the truth was also known to the old men who surrounded James, and that they were working, in ways she had not noticed, to make life tolerable for her. Then, as they saw how her nature developed, they helped her choose her own private council, surrounding herself with astute men—Shaw, Colville, McClery—who were agreeable to James, but also attached to her interests.
The King’s men had continued to be helpful. It was Dr Andreas who explained to the King how marital duty might damage a pregnancy, and who advised on the required interval of abstinence after every delivery. She was eternally grateful to Dr Andreas, and Dr Tobias, and Master Scheves, who was now an Archbishop. At the same time, too much frustration could send James into one of his painful passions, when he forgot himself. He was always contrite when it was over, and when, as was only right, she had pointed out to him what he had done. Her father—her poor father, who had just died—used to say she was a saint.
She stayed at Stirling most of the time, or Linlithgow. The boys, for their own security, were always in Stirling. All of them had received excellent fostering, and the care of a good married matron in the royal tradition—Mistress Preston, with Betha Sinclair and the wife of Dr Tobias to call upon for advice. As their mother, she herself saw her sons often enough when they were babies, but did not find them interesting, any more than she was personally devoted to important jewels and fine clothes. The production of heirs was one of the requirements of ruling. She took the oldest son in hand when he was five, and she was officially appointed his guardian. Now he was eight, he had his own household and teachers for everything: academic, religious and military. She took care to spend time with him regularly and check on his training.
He had proved brighter than she had feared, and the doctors agreed that the elder Prince, and perhaps even the second (also called James) might have escaped the blight of the Stewarts. The baby, even at eighteen months, gave less promise. The middle child, who was five, had recently been allotted the forfeited earldom of Ross, which effectively denied it to any adult and ambitious baron. Had she been the King, she would have presented the title to their oldest son, but