Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [353]
Albany’s sisters, who had received the privilege of an earlier, more private meeting, cast flushed smiles at their brother and sat. Mary, the oldest, had recently begun to look her age, which was thirty-one, a year older than the King. Meg, the youngest, had become quite alarmingly plump since her unfortunate lapse into motherhood, and seemed unaware, her eager gaze fixed on Sandy, of any reserve in his face. In absentia, perhaps, Sandy had felt closer to the girls and his poor brother Johndie than he found himself now. Yet his siblings had always represented his strength: the four of them impatient of James, whom accident of birth had made their ruler. To them, James and the Queen were now the enemy. To keep to his plan, Sandy had to make the most of it.
And to keep to their plan, the Queen had to maintain, as she was doing, a calm and friendly manner, enquiring about Sandy’s health, his marriage, and his little son John. She had a child of the same name herself. And here was her oldest son, eager to embrace his loving uncle once more. James?
Thus the Queen, calling forward the boy. She sounded confident, but you could never quite tell what James, Duke of Rothesay, would do. God knew, he had been well enough brought up, but at nine, he sometimes went his own way. On those occasions, his eyes became round and his hair, thicker and redder than his father’s, seemed to take on a life of its own. Avandale suspected that James didn’t like dear Uncle Albany. Albany’s discarded son Andrew shared a tutor with James. If Andrew was in the castle, he wasn’t on view. Nor was Jamie Boyd, who had been in York, de Fleury said. At this point, Lord Avandale became aware that the Duke of Rothesay, aged nine, had actually smiled, and was now proceeding to say more or less the right things. The person he had been smiling at, of course, was the same person that Jamie Boyd and Princess Mary his mother used to smile at: Nicol de Fleury. For a moment—only a moment—Andrew, Lord Avandale, experienced a childish twinge of annoyance. No, God save us, be truthful: of jealousy.
The first of the meetings, when it came, was a small one: the Queen, the three lords and Albany, with Master McClery taking notes. The Queen was thankful that the English threat had receded, and was indebted for the part her dear good-brother had played. Her husband, when he knew the facts, would feel the same. Alas, did she not wish, like Sandy, that the King could be freed? But the uncles would not allow it. The uncles—Lord Darnley as well—had imprisoned James for his own good. The uncles—Buchan and Atholl and Andrew—feared the hired assassins of Gloucester. The King himself, she believed, was held back by an entirely unfounded fear of Sandy himself. He feared that Sandy would wish to depose him. He feared that Sandy wished to see her son James on the throne, with Sandy himself as his Governor. And while such a thing, in the long run, was not impossible, there was no chance that the King would place himself in such a position just now. Rather he would die in the Castle.
The Queen’s eyes, at the height of her earnestness, betrayed a slight cast.
But, pointed out Sandy (after a moment), was it not necessary for the King to emerge, with the royal seals, if Parliament were to be called? And was it not true that, unless Parliament were called, all the gracious offers to restore his honours and accede to his modest requests would be in vain? In the eyes of the law, until then, he was a criminal.
In the Queen’s oval, artlessly painted face could be detected nothing but sympathy. She understood the dilemma. So did her lords. Let them seek a solution together.