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  "Oh, my God, no. He wouldn't, he can't You've acknowledged the boy as your own."

  "Mother, don't fight it. He's right. We can argue and protest as much as we wish, but only the king decides the succession, whether it be his own or a lowly earl's."

  She was defeated. All her plans, her plotting, her work, all of it was undone by the will of one man.

  He squeezed her hand. "But all is not lost yet, Mother. The king is agreeable to reconsidering the whole matter under certain circumstances."

  Her eyes brightened; she still believed that right would always will out. "Anything. I'll deed him my silver mines... you can turn over Rangeley to him. All we need is Seaforth."

  "That isn't what he has in mind, although I doubt that he would refuse them if offered. No, he has in mind that I personally persuade Margaret Douglas to return to Scotland."

  "You're not seriously considering it?"

  "Why not? I hear England's beautiful in the summer. Isn't it time that I see for myself?"

  "Has the whole world gone mad? The Red Douglas would never let her go... nor would Henry. He uses her to keep Margaret, the mother, under control. Whenever he wants her to aid him in some scheme that's to Scotland's disservice, he promises to disinherit the Princess Mary and name Margaret Douglas heiress to England."

  "Perhaps the daughter is tired of being elevated and then reduced in precedence. She might well wish to visit her mother. Be that as it may, I owe it to you and Father and Albany and all who have worked so hard to protect me during my youth... and to Jamie so that he takes his rightful place in Scotland. I have to give it a try."

  He was right and she knew it. But she had trouble saying so aloud. Somehow putting thoughts in words made them so final. As they rode on, the two mounts matching their paces, she tried to force herself to say she agreed. He let her take her time. He was afraid she might ask what were the alternatives.

  Finally, in so many words, she accepted the inevitable. "When do you leave?"

  "That depends. Have you by any chance kept in touch with the rest of the companions?"

  "The companions?"

  "That was the name we boys gave ourselves, after Alexander the Great and his men. Gilliver objected since Alexander was heathen, but we voted him down. If they are still in Scotland and are at all willing, I should like to enlist their cooperation in this mad adventure of mine."

  She thought a moment. "Drummond, I know, has taken service with one of the Bonnet Lairds. As for the others, I shouldn't be surprised if Seamus had kept in touch with them. You might ask him when we get back to Alva."

  They rode on silently, companionably, the enormity of the task ' facing them uniting them again. Suddenly the Lady Islean began to chuckle. As her son watched, somewhat taken aback, she laughed outright. Catching sight of his expression, she managed to calm herself, then confided, "I've not gone mad. I just saw a picture of my son robbing the Queen Dowager of what she had already robbed, and she snoring through the whole affair. Imagine her puzzlement when she goes to look for her new possessions and can't find them. Think you she'll blame you?"

  "Not funny, Mother," her son replied.

  "Speaking of fun," she countered, "did you ever get your green shoes?"

  He confessed, "Alas, I did. Unfortunately, the lady has too big an eye and the shoes would better fit Seamus."

  "Give them to him. He'd love them. The green of the emerald isle, he is oft heard to say, is his favorite color."

  "I would, but there's one problem. The green of these shoes is the most bilious I've ever seen."

  "That's no problem. Seamus is color-blind."

  Fionn, riding before them, overheard and thought to himself, Da' never told me about that.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Lady Islean was right. Seamus had known of the boys' whereabouts, at least generally speaking. That night, the three— Islean, de Wynter and Seamus—sat down to devise messages individually tailored to appeal to each of the boys as they remembered them.

  To George Cameron went word that there was excitement to be had and a woman to seduce... to Kenneth Menzies, a challenge offering some hope of pecuniary rewards... to Angus and Ogilvy, a chance to outwit the English as well as outshine a fellow Highlander...to Henry Gilliver, the opportunity to serve Scotland and discharge a debt to the Seaforths. Only to John Drummond was the message blunt and without artifice: "I am embarked on a dangerous enterprise and I need your help. Come to Alva on the 8th if you possibly can. Signed, Jamie Mackenzie of Seaforth, Rangeley and Alva." To which the Lady Islean added in her delicate hand the word "please."

  While Dugan, Deny and Fionn were off delivering the messages, those left behind began assembling the equipage the group would need for the trip. "Shall we figure on all seven of you, or how many?" asked the Lady Islean, expressing a concern all had felt.

  But before de Wynter could answer, Seamus did: "Figure on eight. I go, too."

  "Never!"

  "Nay, not you," her son chimed in.

  Their reaction was so immediate that the Lady Islean and de Wynter never knew who spoke first. But Seamus was determined. When the Lady Islean pleaded her inability to handle four hysterical women—his bedmates plus his daughter—if anything should happen to their man... and de Wynter asked who would protect the Lady Islean and young Jamie, only then did Seamus waver.

  Reluctantly, Seamus agreed that his place was in Scotland. "But then you'll take one of my sons. Never let it be said that a Seaforth went into battle without a MacDonal there to protect his back."

  But which one? All three, if Seamus knew his boys, would want to go, and each mother would demand her son stay behind. Finally, it was decided that such a decision be made by lot.

  That settled, or at least put aside until the problem arose, the discussion returned to horses and arms and the men to go with them. De Wynter agreed to leave the choice of horseflesh to Seamus. "Except for the plain mare. She served me well during the fox hunt, and I have grown fond of her."

  As for men, de Wynter saw no need for other than the original group, but the Lady Islean wouldn't hear of it. "You'll travel like a Seaforth. Let some of your friends serve as gentlemen-in-waiting if you wish, but nobody'd take Angus and Ogilvy for anything but what they are—bloodthirsty Highlanders. You'll go like a proper Scot earl. With dresser, cook, secretary, barber, chaplain—a proper entourage plus, a score of men-at-arms."

  She was determined, but de Wynter was equally so. He had to travel light. It was going to be difficult enough to get a small group safely and secretly across the border... and back.

  "Why must you go secretly?" asked the Lady Islean.

  Seamus and de Wynter looked at each other in poorly concealed amusement; then they realized she was not joking. "What do you have in mind, Mother?"

  "You're going on this mission for James. Let him afford you some protection."

  "He can't protect his own borders, lady," Seamus reminded her. "How can he protect a group of Scots once they're in England?"

  "You forget, a herald has diplomatic immunity. Let James appoint you herald, and send you in satin tabard with messages to the English Court."

  De Wynter impulsively hugged his mother. "You are a genius, Mother. Better yet, let the Lady Margaret send messages to her daughter. That will gain me entry to her presence."

  Seamus, however, dampened their enthusiasm. "And how do you get the king to agree to all this?"

  "Well," drawled de Wynter, lounging back in his chair, "I could work my charms on the Lady."

  "Lady? Royal whore, you mean," was Islean's acid rejoinder. "Save your charms for England. A little token or two would do as much good."

  Ringing for a lady-in-waiting, she sent for her jewel chest When it was opened, Seamus couldn't believe his eyes. Never had he seen so many jewels in one place. Even de Wynter, who had had occasion to see the jewels of the Queen of France, was impressed. "So this is your weakness. I should have known your royal blood would surface somewhere."

  Islea
n ignored him. She and the earl had argued about her passion for jewels too many times to allow for guilty feelings engendered by her own son. Instead, she brought out her treasures one by one. immediately rejected were all those identifiable with the Seaforths— the Mer-Lion medallion she'd worn the night of the banquet; the heavy signet ring of the Earls of Seaforth, the one Seamus had taken from a dead finger on that night in 1513 not long after Flodden. "It's yours now, Jamie," she said, fingering it sadly.

  He closed his hand about hers. "No, you keep it safe for my Jamie. Unless I succeed, it may be all the inheritance he'll have."

  Nothing more was said, but the ring was set aside.

  At last, with an exclamation of delight, Islean seized upon a bracelet a full two fingers wide—heavy with gold and sparkling with many small diamonds. "This should do it. Big, bright, and flashy. I never liked it, too gaudy."

  While de Wynter examined it, Seamus protested. "It's too fine for the woman." With his big fingers he stirred among the many items still remaining in the chest and hooked one finger through a narrow bangle, a single brown stone hanging from it like a teardrop. "Why not this?"

  The Lady Islean laughed. "That, my dear Seamus, is worth two of the other. There are few large diamonds in this world, and even fewer perfect brown ones."

  Seamus dropped the piece as if stung. De Wynter, retrieving it, examined the gem with the eye of a connoisseur, then casually dropped it back into the chest, "She'd take it for tourmaline. Better the bracelet."

  Unsatisfied, the Lady Islean rooted again in the chest and found what she sought a small, black velvet pouch. Opening it, she poured eight matched pearl studs into her hand. As she rolled them, about in her palm, they gleamed softly. Then, she suddenly thrust them at her son. "Here, they were a gift to my hither from the musselmen of Orantown on Spey. However, they might serve Scotland better if you had them."

  He was impressed by their beauty, by their history, and by their evident importance to her. Her sacrifice was unnecessary, yet she wanted to make it. One, men another, he took from her hand. "These two I'll take; keep you the others just in case."

  She pretended not to mind the loss of all of them if he needed them, but the two men could tell from the way she handled, gazed at, and fondled the six he left her that she was pleased her total sacrifice had not been needed.

  Six days later, on July 8, the companions began arriving at Alva. The first to ride up the lane was Kenneth Menzies. Mounted on a spirited gelding and dressed in fine linsey-woolsey, he was the picture of the prosperous nobleman. Before he'd done more than kissed Lady Islean's hand and been welcomed inside to refresh himself in the Great Hall, Gilliver arrived.

  He was thin and frail-looking as ever, but much of the innocence and naivete had been erased from his countenance.

  Rama- than have each tell his story and de Wynter his own to each newcomer, it was decided to save them all for supper that night No sooner had this resolve been made, than two more arrived to join the company. Racing each other on lathered horses that had been used hard, came Angus and Ogilvy. Or, wondered the Lady Islean as she watched their arrival from fhe leaning place built into the oriel window in her solarium, was it Ogilvy and Angus? Neither, she concluded, looked as though life had treated them kindly.

  Drummond came next. He looked his role as professional soldier. He was dressed in hard-surface woolens and serviceable leather. His horse wore quiltings of fabric and was not flashy. Even its gait was economical. Only his weapons were out of the ordinary; as one would expect of the Master of Arms in service to a Lowland clan chief.

  When the sun had gone down and they were into their third cup of ale with supper soon to be announced, the watchman sounded the warning, "A'horse, a'horse." Soon George Cameron strolled into their gathering with a handkerchief to his mouth and a dandified gait. "Am I late, dear me?" he said in a dulcet tenor. Then when they reacted with shocked looks among them, he laughed, amused at his jest. "Sorry, comrades. But Bertha was in labor and I was curious to see whether we'd finally get ourselves a boy."

  There was absolute silence finally broken by the Lady Islean. "Well?"

  He took the chair Seamus relinquished for him and looked about him at his fellows.

  "Well?" the Lady Islean repeated in a much more forceful voice.

  "What? Oh, the babe. Another girl. That's nine so far. Don't look at me. I don't conceive them. I'm just there for their begetting. - Besides, there were two sets of twins."

  His fellows howled. George, the ladies' man, had indeed surrounded himself with women. Nine babes and a wife. He tried to explain that he hadn't planned it that way, but the more he said, the more they laughed. Eventually, he gave up and escaped in the cup Fionn gave him. When their laughter subsided, it was his turn: "Now tell me how each of you has done."

  "In the sequence of your arrival," interposed the Lady Islean, attempting to give the proceedings some order.

  Kenneth Menzies, bowing an acknowledgment, began. "I know what I look like, but I'm not. I have me a half interest in the White Horse Inn off High Street near the Canongate. Of course, the gentlemen who come there to dice, dine, and drink don't know it. They think I'm a patron like themselves, only a bit more lucky. But I don't cheat." He bowed to the countess. "Thanks to you, I don't need to. Give credit where credit's due—it was the training I got at

  Seaforth. Of course, the constables don't believe that for a minute."

  In the silence that followed, Gilliver said, "I guess I'm next. I've just come from St. Andrews. Four years ago when my mother died, I went there to join Holy Orders. The archbishop, discovering my skills with pen and ink—I guess I owe that to you at Seaforth— excused me from many of the usual duties of a novice to make me his secretary. I wasn't quartered in the monastery. Instead, I stayed within the archbishop's residence. That gave me access to the town. There, I had the great honor to talk many times with Patrick Hamilton." He paused to lend emphasis to his words.

  "I was there in February '28 when they burned him. I heard his screams. I saw the flesh melt from his bones. I smelt the reek of his burning. When a sudden wind picked up, I choked on his ashes." Gilliver had difficulty continuing. The others respected his emotion and waited patiently. "You know, I'd heard him preach, I'd read his thesis, the so-called 'Patrick Pieces,' and there wasn't a thing in there against the church. He was simply against the corruption we see in the Church, and the immorality. Do you know a priest asked me the other day to stand godfather to his newborn child? All Hamilton wanted to do was get across the word that Man, made in the image of God, must be good... and that the power of Faith is boundless. For this and in the name of his supposed eternal salvation, they burned him."

  Gilliver looked so disturbed that Islean half rose to go to him and comfort him in her arms. Gilliver didn't notice. "What could I do? I couldn't take orders under the circumstances. The archbishop released me from them, but insisted I take service with him, my knowledge of Latin and Greek serving him well."

  The others sat silent, only the Lady Islean having a comment upon this. In her softest voice, she asked what they all wanted to know. "Are you reformed? Are you Lutheran?"

  He broke down, crying his answer. "Hamilton showed me the way... but I've lost it. Oh, God, yes. How can I leave Holy Mother Church? My mother would curse me in Heaven if I did."

  There was no answer to that. Instead, a long silence ensued while those at the table considered what he said. To most his agony seemed self-induced. Religion for them was something you were

  born into, lived with, tolerated as best you could, and, they hoped at the end, profited by. Religion was one thing there was no need to worry about

  The countess, determined to press on, broke the silence. "Angus, Ogflvy... Ogilvy, Angus... which came next?"

  "I," came the response simultaneously from two deep voices.

  Neither truly wanted to reply, but as Ogilvy used to take the lead when they were boys at Seaforth, it was to him that the rest looked.

/>   He was, to say the least, laconic. "We went back to the clans. They found a place for us. Not tine it was: herding sheep. Having trained our dogs right, like Seamus taught us, we put our minds to aught else."

  There was silence.

  Angus continued, "We make the best Scotch whiskey ever to come out of the Highlands. Five still pots we have a-burning right now on fires of peat. Like Seamus taught us. And our whole produce is spoken for, for the next two years."

  "Seamus, you didn't," was the best the Lady Islean could muster in a feeble remonstrance.

  "Oh, aye, I did. But how well, we'll no' know till we taste the usquebaugh they're bragging on."

  "You're on! Check our saddlebags."

  Drummond came next. "I've little to say. I served with John Armstrong of Gilneckie in Eskdale."

  "Were you with him at Teviotdale?" asked Gilliver, awe-struck.

  Drummond smiled. Sweet Gilliver, so easily impressed. "Nay, but I know what happened, and it was not like the balladeers said. Certainly he got a loving letter from the king, but he was not betrayed. Armstrong rode there with a score of my fellow mosstroopers with but one thing in mind: to kidnap the king. I'd hold with no such thing, so he left me behind. But his fate was fitting. He was met, treachery for treachery, and outmatched. To my mind, he deserved his visit to the dyester's pole. But not his men. I knew them well and many were good-hearted men. Anyway, the gallows put me out of work, for I'd not ride with Kerr or Scott. So, that's why I'm here."

  Good, honest Drummond, thought de Wynter. I wonder how well it will sit on him, this jaunt I propose. But if only one man I can have, this is he. That foolish Armstrong. A gem he had if he'd only listened to him.

  Now, all eyes were upon him. It was de Wynter's turn. He knew once he removed the cap that whatever else he said would fall on deaf ears. Which was best. There were parts of his life that would not stand close scrutiny and which he preferred not be dealt with in any depth. Thus, in the most casual way he knew, he swept off his bonnet. The reaction to his silvery crest was as he had expected, he had seen it before. Then, while they attempted to digest that, he launched into his tale.