The Mer- Lion Read online

  "What of you? Of all the candidates, you have the best claim. The estates acknowledged you once. They'll do it again if you wish."

  "You miss the point. I don't wish. If I had desired to be king of this savage land, I could have been so at any time in the last nine years. A word to the right Frenchman, et voila, the child is gone. Look at the example set us by our neighbors to the south. Richard HI did not let two small nephews stand in his way when he wanted the throne. The murder happened the year I was bora and still they have not found the bodies. Ah, well, you get my message. Perhaps if I had had a son... but I too am a Stewart; my heir is a little girl. Would I wish upon her the fate I foresee for your son or the little Douglas? No, my friend, I go back to France, and there I stay where the weather is warm, the food heavenly, and we all speak the same, tongue. Your son—he speaks French? Good. Think it over. If you agree, I shall take him into my own home and treat him as if he were my son. My little Anne has always wanted a brother. The boy, I am , told, is as fair as his mother. Bon soir, messieurs."

  Sounds of the stool being drawn back and scuffling of feet on the pavement announced the interview was over. A door creaked open and closed, a bolt clanged home, and then the door to the guardroom opened wide and their guide beckoned them out. Their ride back to St. Mary's Wynd in the darkness was uneventful and silent. Each man was lost in his own thoughts. Only as they dismounted in the. courtyard did Seamus put thoughts to words: "My lord, let us go back to Seaforth. There, I swear to you, all will be safe. My life on it."

  "Seamus, you read my mind. Would it were as simple and easy as mat."

  He sighed and Seamus remembered that Seaforth was not a young man. Then the earl clapped Seamus on the shoulder. "Good night, my friend. I rely on you to keep silent about all this. Until we decide what to do, one way or another, I leave those other young rapscallions under your wing. Keep them on a close tether. I do not want them showing their faces about town as yet. No, don't see me up. We've both had a long day. Get you to your own bed."

  Seamus was glad he was not the one who must relate the night's events to the countess. What sleep, if any, the earl and countess managed that night he didn't know, but when he sought out his own breakfast, the Seaforths had already called for theirs and summoned Jamie to join them. Once the other boys were up, Seamus set Angus and Ogilvy to spying out the lay of the land from the roof of the tall house. Menzies, suspecting there was work to do, made himself scarce. Cameron and Gilliver were put to polishing weapons in the armory while Drummond, on his own, made himself helpful in the stables.

  Soon the shouting began. Exact words were indecipherable through the heavy door of the solarium, but one could tell that Seaforth and his son were arguing mightily. Now and again the shouting ceased, presumably when the Lady Islean spoke her piece. But the quiet was short-lived. Louder and louder the shouting grew. Once the door was flung wide and Jamie stormed out. But his father's "You ungrateful brat, get yourself back in here" turned the boy on his heel. His slamming of the door warned the world not to mistake his obedience for compliance. Only when word was sent upstairs that Albany's herald had arrived with a message, did the voices cease and silence reign. Soon word came to show the herald up to the solarium, an unusual courtesy rarely shown even to a herald. His stay was short; he returned downstairs almost immediately.

  On his heels came the family. The countess was red-eyed although she managed a smile. The earl was stony-faced, but no more, so than Jamie. His eyes were bleak blue, his chin set in a rare stubborn cast, and his lips, usually so generous with laughter, were tight with barely suppressed rage. Whatever the cause, obviously the younger Seaforth had not won, nor had his parents found joy in their victory. Not by word or glance did Jamie acknowledge Seamus's presence. Indeed, with head held high and shoulders squared, he marched right past his old friend as if on his way to meet the headsman in the courtyard outside. Seamus turned to follow after, but a soft hand on his arm stopped him. "Leave him, he goes to say good-bye to the boys and his own boyhood." Looking down on her saddened face, Seamus didn't need to be told; Jamie was going to France.

  Taking Seamus aside, the earl confirmed it: "The Regalia has arrived. As Albany predicted, the erection takes place today in the Chapel Royal at Holyrood Abbey. Our presence has been ordered. Ours and our boys'. Albany worded the summons so as to give us a chance to circumvent it. We have here seven boys. Only one was meant, but six of the seven will attend. The other has another destination; he is to be a gift to Albany from his loving cousin, the Lady Islean. Think you that you can find a sumpter case large enough to hold such a gift?"

  Seamus's voice shook with emotion, but he managed an "Aye, my lord. I'll find one."

  "Good. Then choose you carefully three or four of your best men, men you would trust with your life.. .and my son's. Set them the task of delivering Albany's gift. Normally, I would have you do it, but your height distinguishes you too well. Tongues would wag if you were not in attendance on the Seaforths. Therefore, you too shall be at the investiture of our young king. Wear your brightest, most eye-catching garb. If you have nothing so bold, maybe I do. Although with those shoulders..." His voice died out as he considered the breadth of the man before him. "After all, it will not be our fault if those at the court think mistakenly that one of the boys you serve is James Mackenzie, Master of Seaforth. The earl managed a smile. "God forgive me, I shall not disabuse them of that thought."

  CHAPTER 5

  For eight long, silent years, Jamie was away. As a condition of taking him and protecting him, Albany had insisted that he go incognito and remain incommunicado for the duration of his stay in France. Albany did manage, now and again, to send-word that all went well with the lad. But the Lady Islean, with feminine contrariness, lamented her son's not finding ways to circumvent her very own injunction that he never write.

  Often, however, Seaforth and his lady blessed Albany's foresight. Events had, to a large degree, worked out as Albany predicted. Douglas had indeed taken power, filling the royal household with his own Red Douglas kin, from the highest offices to the lowest. No morsel of food, stick of wood, nor piece of linen entered the castle without a Red Douglas having his hand touched with silver. Douglas reveled in the riches and in the power. Determined to keep both, he installed the young King James V in the prisonlike Constable's Tower of the Castle of Edinburgh. His wife he sent off to exile of sorts to Stirling, still very much a married woman and evidently destined to stay that Way. Shortly thereafter, another of Albany's prophecies was fulfilled: Hamilton was put to the horn for treason. The proclamation, signed "James R." in a youthful, florid script and duly sealed, was read by Marchmont and Albany heralds from above the crowd gathered at the base of the Mercat Cross outside St. Giles Cathedral. Hamilton's lands were forfeited to the king; his title tainted by corruption of blood disqualifying him, his heirs, and his heirs' heirs from inheriting it. With one stroke of the pen, James V erased Hamilton from the peerage and moved the Seaforths and his half sister Margaret Douglas that much closer to his throne.

  For four years, from 1524 to 1528, Douglas made Scotland his personal fief. The king matured but still sired no heir. Then Douglas's world fell apart. The king escaped from Edinburgh by the very same subterranean passage that Albany had used when he came to confer with Seaforth. Riding furiously, without regard for his mount, he headed straight for Stirling, almost thirty miles to the west. At Queensferry and Linlithgow and again at Falkirk, he found fresh horses waiting, the best Scotland had to offer.

  Galloping across the bridge with a hundred followers alerted and united behind his banner, he ordered the city gates closed behind him. Then he charged across the drawbridge into the castle, ordering the portcullis let down. Finally, he rode his horse up the castle stair, into his mother's chambers, and to safety!

  This was the chance for those who hated Douglas to rally about the young -king. Seaforth was among them. It was he, some said, who had been largely responsible for the king's escape from Edinb
urgh. Now was the Red Douglas's turn to be put to the horn for treason. To escape the inevitable, he slipped away with his daughter by ship to exile in England, forfeiting his estates. With her son's consent, Margaret moved swiftly to divorce and remarry; her choice—a young groomsman. Henry VTJJ, while offering refuge to his biother-in-law, refused to accept the validity of the divorce and forbade his sister to discard her husband. Now Margaret was skewered on the two horns of the bull: in Scotland she was Countess of Methven, in England still Countess of Angus. And the Pope adamantly refused to intervene.

  For four years, she lived that way until in 1532 her young husband, tiring of his aged wife, strayed. Never one to suffer an empty bed, she soon found solace in the arms of one Colin Campbell. Soon word had it that she would like to free herself permanently of Methven—a plan neither king, her son, nor king, her brother, approved. Seaforth, now spending some time at court, was designated to speak to the Dowager Queen and to convey Parliament's refusal. The woman was furious. However, like a venomous v spider, she had confidence that what escaped her net today would fall into it tomorrow. One thing was sure, she would be rid of Methven eventually.

  Seaforth had his own problems. Three times in four years he had narrowly escaped the assassin's knife. He had forced himself to become even more skillful fighting left-handed, and once this had saved his life. Twice Seamus's vigilance had protected his master. Each attempt occurred when they were in Edinburgh to attend sessions of Parliament in the intricately corbeled Banqueting Hall of Edinburgh Castle. On the castle grounds Seaforth felt safe and also in his home on St. Mary's Wynd. Between them lay the danger. Therefore, each time he traveled he took a different route. On February 11, 1532, he journeyed home by way of Roxburgh's Close. As he and his men started their horses down, an equally large group of Borderers under the banners of Kerr and Tumbull rode up. With no room to turn around, the two passed single file, each man defensively hugging the wall to his left, his unarmed side. How the disturbance started no one could remember. But a horse kicked out, jostling another, who bumped into still another. Tempers, always stretched thin between. Highlander and Borderer, flared. Words were said, blows struck, swords and rapiers drawn. Fortunately, the way being so narrow, little damage could be done. But the shouts and clash of steel on steel drew the curious to their windows up above to look down on an ill-lit group bumping and shoving and snouting as each attempted to make his way forward. When the melee was over, Seaforth's horse was there but his rider was not. Retracing their steps, they found him, lying alongside the steps leading up to Roxburgh's house, a crossbow's quarrel protruding from his eye. He had been killed instantly.-

  Straight about, Seamus, his men on his heels, charged, back up the Close to the house shared by Kerrs and Tumbulls. There in the courtyard they found the men still mounted, old man Kerr himself, coming down the stairs to welcome them. A few terse words and Kerr demanded that Seamus search his men for the bow. It was not found, neither mere nor in the Close. When questioned, the gate keepers at either end of the Close swore no one had entered or left after the two groups started in their separate ways.

  Seamus knew not what to do nor whom to accuse. The Close was lined with town houses belonging to men who might have reason to see Seaforth dead, or whose patrons might want him removed. Lady Roxburgh, for example, was lady-in-waiting to the Queen Dowager. Then again, one never knew from day to day whether the Kerrs and Turnbulls were working for or against the English. So Seamus went home, carrying his lord's body before him, cradled in Ins powerful arms. He wept unabashedly, for Seaforth, for his lady, and for himself, for he had grown to love this man like a father.

  The man he sent ahead must have prepared the Lady Islean for what had happened, for she waited in the courtyard. As best he could, he covered the dead man's gored eye with the palm of his hamlike hand—this much at least he could spare her—and clutched the body even closer to him. "Lady, I'm sorry. I tried—"

  "I know, I know. Hush, no, don't blame yourself. You saved him . for me many times before and would have done so again, but this time it was God's will—" She couldn't continue for a moment but must take a deep breath. Then, looking up at the man on the horse, towering so far above her, she smiled bravely and, tears running freely down her face, continued resolutely. "Now, that he is gone, it is time my son came home. Albany knows where he is. Send the message via him. But now, for the last time, bring my beloved upstairs. I would be with him for a while by myself to say my

  farewells …" Her voice broke, her mouth trembled, and she muffled her sobs with her hand.

  Seamus, dismounting swiftly, carried the still body of his lord up the stairs and into the bedchamber as he had done once before after Flodden. He had been younger and stronger then, and the earl lighter, but it was as if the years had never passed.

  When on the following day Seaforth was laid to rest, Lady Islean's message was ready; it was succinct: Come home. It set the place and the time for his arrival: a cave on the Firth of Forth, no later than the last day of May. That the message arrived and was received, they knew. Whether it would be obeyed remained to be seen.

  For seven days now, since their arrival on May 22, 1532, Seamus and his band of Scots kept vigil for Jamie in the dank cave on the craggy coast of the German Sea, just north of the Firth of Forth. At first, Seamus had proclaimed that the cave was ideal for their purpose. It was vast, gouged a full eighty feet deep into the rocks. And before it, on the sea's side, rose a marker easily visible from far out at sea: a mass of basalt emerging from the foam sixty feet high and shaped by nature into the likeness of a woman's spindle.

  Beyond it, out where the estuary opened wide onto the German Sea, Bass Rock rose sheer nearly 300 feet out of the water. And beyond the white precipices of Bass Rock stood the towers and turrets and battlements of Tantallon that so dominated this portion of the firth. Tantalizing Tantallon. Scene of many an unsuccessful siege, with its three sides of wall-like rock and one of rocklike wall. And Tantallon was the stronghold of Archibald, the Marrying Douglas, the man with most to gain by preventing James Mackenzie from coming home.

  To make certain no Douglas on Tantallon's battlements spotted their campfire, Seamus and his men maintained a cold, fireless camp the first night in the cave. Fortunately, the nights were growing shorter this season, and the sun did not dip below the water until long after the men's stomachs told them the evening meal hour had come and gone.

  Eventually the multicolored sky stopped reflecting off the water, and darkness settled like a black velvet bag over the bay and the cave. With darkness came an increased watch for a signal from a French ship standing out to sea.

  "There!"

  "No, there!"

  "Over there!"

  Three sightings in as many seconds. But the signal light refused to stay in one place. Shining first here... then there... it danced about just beyond the reef.

  "A ghost ship!" someone bleated.

  Even in the darkness, Seamus recognized the last voice. It was John the Small, a good man in a fight, but too much given to fanciful ideas.

  "No ship—ghost or no—could cover that much distance that fast," Fionn, Seamus's son, replied almost as soon as the frightening words were spoken. His youngest had a head on his shoulders that functioned like one more than double his nineteen years, Seamus realized with pride. '

  "Then what is it?" came the question from several puzzled and wary Scots.

  I'd best squelch this talk, Seamus thought, or these lads will be a pack of jellyfish. Before he could speak, the light moved faster and became several lights. Now, it was not just beyond the reef. It had moved in closer. Then, to the watchers' bemused horror, the lights darted toward shore... just as swiftly moved back. The effect was hypnotic. No man spoke, no man moved. A loud crack, like the slap of an object upon the water, broke the spell. Then, the lights went out, one at a time, like candles being snuffed. s "Fireflies!" said Seamus. His voice brooked no opposition, allowed for no contradiction, invited no di
scussion. The talk, at least that within earshot, ceased.

  A little later, he heard the scraping of sand behind where he sat. Then, a large familiar shape hunkered down beside him.

  "Da'," Fionn said, "fireflies are land creatures."

  When Seamus did not answer, Fionn continued, "The noise was made by a tail. I saw it, and I was not the only one." Getting no response, eventually Fionn moved on.

  There were no more strange lights that night, but few men slept; they had already slept a goodly part of the day away. Although Seamus made work as best he could, not even he could keep a hundred pairs of hands busy. When hands are idle, mouths are not. The talk ceased when Seamus approached, springing up anew the moment he passed.

  Seamus didn't have to be told of what they spoke. Mermaids and the diamonds and sapphires they wore. Jewels the size of a man's fist. Devil stones from the depths of the sea whose flashing facets were always just out of reach. Seamus knew all about it. Every Irishman had grown up to tales of men who, tempted and taunted by those elusive riches, followed the flickering lights farther and farther out to sea, there to be set upon by jealous mermen and sent to a watery grave.

  Just as sure as he was bom in a proper Irish home with two doors opposite to allow a proper fairy path through, he knew fear would keep most men ashore. The others would be planning a closer look at those jewels. Fingering the stone with a hole in the middle that he carried to protect horses from fairy harm, he prayed mat the mermaids would not come back.

  . That evening as the men choked down their cold rations with big draughts of ale, Seamus ate separately. One by one, his three sons separated themselves from the rest and came to sit or sprawl within arm's length of their father. Although born of different mothers, they were three of a kind and all of an age. Dugan, the oldest, was named for black baby hair, since fallen out and come in straw-colored like Seamus's; Derry, the middle one, for his once-red now fair head. Only Fionn, the youngest, was named fair and stayed fair. The names stuck, but no one teased the boys about their misnaming, for they, like their father, were big, brawny, giants of men. Seamus was proud indeed of these three boys, and he took them with him whenever he could.