The Kadin - Bertrice Small [198]
“How can you be so pleased?” asked Maria.
“Why should I care what happens to the Germans and the Italians?” snapped Janet “You know what they did in Tunis. The good Christian knights were so kind to the populace of the city that mothers with infants and children in their arms threw themselves from the walls of the town rather than submit to further savagery!”
The following year, 1539, there was some small rebellion in the north of Scotland initiated by a chieftain on the Isle of Skye. It broke the peace that had been kept for years in the highlands. None of this affected the peoples of Sithean and Glenkirk, however, who seemed to be living in an almost perfect bucolic existence. There was no war, and those families not caught up in the royal circle and its court politics, managed to live fairly sane lives.
Ian Leslie’s third son, Donald, was born and Gilbert Hay’s wife produced a second son, Francis, and Queen Marie bore Scotland another James. In 1540 James Hay’s wife bore another son, Ewan; Ruth had her second daughter, Flora; and Fiona got her daughter at long last—duly baptized Janet Mary after her grandmother, but called Heather because of the heathery blue color of her eyes.
Several weeks after her longed-for daughter’s birth, Fiona contracted milk fever. A doctor was sent for from Edinburgh. Too many children in too few years was his verdict. He could do nothing, and a few days later, Fiona died.
Janet couldn’t believe it Sweet Fiona who had been more a daughter to her than her own daughter.
Charles Leslie was devastated. He and his wife had known each other since childhood, but had been married less than nine years. He could not imagine life without his Fiona, and he had to be physically restrained from harming his aunt the countess of Glenkirk, who briskly told him, a week after the funeral, that the best thing for him to do would be remarry at once. His children needed a mother, she said. With his tide and the money coming to him one day from his mother, he could probably get himself a passable heiress. Charles damned her and her passable heiress to hell and stormed out of the castle.
“For God’s sake, Anne!” Janet exclaimed “Fiona’s scarce been buried a week! In time the pain will recede and possibly Charles will remarry, but now we must give him time to purge his grief.”
“He’d best do it quick! Those four unruly boys of his need discipline. Fiona was much too soft And what of the new baby? What kind of female will she grow up to be in this masculine household without the example of a good woman?”
Janet raised an eyebrow. “And what am I, dear sister?”
“You can’t mean you intend to raise those children yourself?”
“Until Charles remarries, why not?”
“Why not? Why not? You’re an old woman, that’s why not! You’ll be sixty at the end of this year!”
“I am younger at fifty-nine, my dear, than you are at fifty-two! What is age, Anne? It is but the passing of time. It is how you feel, and I feel magnificent!”
Anne Leslie threw up her hands in exasperation and stamped back to her own home. Janet Leslie’s mocking laughter followed her.
Janet was feeling far from brave. Dear God help me, she prayed to herself. To have this responsibility now. I have spent my life in service to others raising five children of my own, running various palaces, and finally for a time a government These last few years I have been free for the first time in my life; and, oh, dear God, how I have enjoyed