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  He covered his whole life, briefly, tersely, touching only high points, since his departure from Scotland. His life with Albany, his service in Italy, his ransoming, his return to France, his dubbing, his reputation with the ladies, in part unearned. "Unlike Cameron here, I have sired me no daughters. But I do have one son. That's why I sent for you."

  While de Wynter explained his task, Islean left the room to return shortly with a young Jamie Mackenzie holding tight to her hand. Sleepy-eyed, he looked what he was: helpless and threatened, as all these men had been, with making his own way in the world. The sight of the child was all that was needed to set and strengthen men-resolve. If they must capture Margaret Douglas—rape her, kill her, torture her, or whatever to protect the child's inheritance—they would.

  Finally Drummond asked, "What do we call you? Jamie, or Seaforth or this new title of yours?"

  For only a moment their leader paused, then looking at them, one by one, in the eye, he said, "Call me Jamie if you love me. To all others, I go by de Wynter."

  The troop rode out three days later, but a much smaller group than the Lady Islean had envisioned. For many of the tasks that she had wanted to assign to servers the companions themselves felt they could perform. Thus was Gilliver the secretary and Devil's own chaplain: Bonn the barber, Drummond the farrier; Cameron the cook; Menzies the dresser, Angus and Ogilvy the provisioned. Only three of Alva's servants did they take, and those were essentially as men-at-arms, each to hold three horses if need be.

  BOOK TWO

  The Companions 13 Muharram, A.H. 940 / 27 August, A.D. 1532

  England

  CHAPTER 11

  The two were going at it again, this time as cohorts, in a room on the inn's second floor.

  "Why the hell doesn't Margaret Douglas stay put?" Menzies complained.

  "Aye," Cameron agreed. "Three times now we've drawn up our plans, bribed the servants and-r—"

  "Plans, hell!" Menzies interrupted, rising angrily to his feet and knocking over the wooden bench alongside the trestle table. "Three sets of jakes I've explored from the moat. Short straw or no straw, no more stinking jakes for me."

  Cameron ignored Menzies but righted the bench and straddled it "Each time we've everything set, she ups and moves away to 'visit' somewhere else."

  "Maybe 'twas only coincidence," Gilliver interposed hopefully. If anyone else but gullible Gilliver had made the remark, he would have been greeted by hoots and laughter.

  Instead, Drummond said kindly, "Nay, Gilly, I fear they have a point. Three times is too many times for mere coincidence."

  Menzies eased himself up to sit atop the table. "I tell you, she knows we're after her!"

  "She couldn't," argued Gilliver, never discouraged by being taken lightly. "None of us would tell and who else knows?"

  Menzies snorted in answer, but Cameron replied, "Her mother and half brother, for two."

  *The Queen Dowager wants her daughter back," Drummond reminded him patiently.

  "A lot of other Scots don't," Menzies countered quickly. 'And if Maggie's in her cups and in bed, she'll tell anybody anything."

  Cameron laughed. "If we have to worry about all her drinking and bedding mates, we've half the males in Scotland to concern us."

  Drummond coughed. The one thing they need not do was waste time on the royal lady's sleeping habits, especially with de Wynter present. "If James did not want his half sister back, why send us for her?"

  De Wynter didn't turn from his spot near the window overlooking the irmyard. "To give him an excuse, perhaps, to seize Seaforth and mother's estates."

  Menzies slapped hand on thigh. "Of course! Look what he did to the royal architect, Hamilton of Rnnant. The man was making a conimission on every timber sold, every brick made, every pane installed. Mother of God, he grew richer with every palace James redid: Falkland, Stirling, Linlithgow—"

  "Spare us a recital of the royal register," Cameron begged.

  Menzies gave his friend a scathing look, then continued on. "The king would have us believe that instead of making plans for the new palace in Edinburgh that James commissioned, the architect was making plots to kill James. I thought at the time that Hamilton wasn't rightfully executed but that he was murdered. Now I know why."

  Gilliver broke the silence that followed. "That doesn't make sense to me."

  De Wynter turned and smiled on his naive friend, "Since he was childless, Hamilton's extorted money and lands reverted to the king. Yon must remember, Gilly, as far as the law of rmmogeniture is concerned, if we fail here, I too remain childless."

  "All right, Jamie, let's assume someone—James, Margaret, whoever, it makes no mind at the moment—someone in Scotland wants us to fail. How do theyr. up there, warn Margaret Douglas down here?"

  "I don't know that they do," de Wynter replied. "Maybe we're not being avoided. Maybe we're being lured into a trap. Putney,

  Mortlake, now Barn Elms—each move progressively farther inland and farther away from a fast escape by ship."

  De Wynter's theory started a flurry of conversation. None had considered tins possibility. Angus's voice cut through the noise; "What would you have us do, then? Trip the trap like simple dawcocks?"

  "No. I do suggest we test my theory. Make no play to capture her this time, and if she moves anyway, then we'll know for sure."

  Cameron nodded agreement. Now was his chance to try out on de Wynter an idea already broached to his fellows. "Might there not be another way? Couldn't we persuade her to go with us willingly?"

  "Go on."

  "She's a lass. We're men..." A leer completed the statement.

  If the rest expected de Wynter to laugh, they were disappointed.

  "Possibly. Are you volunteering?"

  "Well, me being a proven stud and all—"

  Anything else he might have said was drowned out by a chorus of jibes with Angus getting the last word. "I bet your wife was not sorry to see you go, you pecker-pusher."

  De Wynter ignored the laughter, gathering up his cloak and cap preparatory to going. "Best keep your breeches on for a while, George. When I presented myself with the letters from the Queen Dowager, she couldn't have been more proper.. .nor more poisonously cold. In the meantime, let's see if she stays put if we do not try anything. Now, I must be getting back to Scotland Yard. I am invited to join king and court when they change residences tomorrow. He leaves Richmond for Hampton Court to check the progress of construction on the Great Hall. I suggest you follow his example and change inns."

  Sending Fionn before him to make sure the way was clear, de Wynter swung his great cloak about him and settled his plumed cap more closely about his head, making sure not a wisp of white hair showed.

  Drummond, following after for last minute words, couldn't resist . the opportunity. "Jamie, why not dye it?" "What? And go unremarked?"

  "Seriously. What will you do when those French caps go out of fashion?"

  "I should just have to start another fashion. No, I do not joke. You either make necessity work for you or you end up catering to it"

  Drummond changed the subject. "We've been here more than a fortnight. You said we had to be back in Scotland by mid-September. Are you sure you're playing the waiting game for the right reasons?"

  "You mean the Boleyn?"

  "I mean nothing." Clear brown eyes met blue ones; the blue ones could not sustain the gaze. De Wynter turned and was about to step from the cover of the stairway and into the busy common room but a hand on his shoulder stopped him. "One more thing. A matter of curiosity. You seem preoccupied with the window. Did you see something?"

  De Wynter shook his head. "No, but I should have. My ghost apparently has deserted me for the first time since we arrived in London."

  "That's a good sign. You must have lost him." Drummond looked and sounded relieved.

  De Wynter favored him with that rare, beautiful smile that made him look again like the Jamie of the past. "Let's hope so. By the way, if you are changing inns
, you might try the one near Teddington. I hear their food is good, and you would be close to me at Hampton."

  Drummond shrugged. English food could never be called good as far as he and his men were concerned. "You know us, one inn's the same as another. We'll leave on the morrow."

  De Wynter nodded his approval, then checked his cap once again and wrapped his cloak tighter about his herald's tabard and left the room. Few noticed either his entrance or his passage, the room having grown hazy with smoke from a fire built up a few minutes before by a most helpful Fionn... using green wood just as he had done at the Castle Dolour two months before.

  CHAPTER IS

  The following morn, Henry VIII awoke long before dawn to the imperious, irritating pealing of church bells summoning him to matins.

  Now mat he had broken with Catherine of Aragon, his wife of twenty-two years, and toyed with breaking with the Holy Mother Church, he resented these pre-dawn awakenings. The din of the bells sharpened the pain in his head. What he would not give right then and there for a whole raw egg in a glass of Madeira. As hangover cure, it never failed; but no, the Church demanded fasting before Mass.

  That was not his only deprivation. His bed, too, was empty, thanks to the Church. He heaved himself up into a sitting position. The movement set his head to throbbing, not imrjroving his dyspeptic outlook oa life in general and Anne Boleyn in specific. Not once had she shared his bed, preferring that he be celibate until divorced and she be chaste until queen. He had decided ruefully that Mistress Anne wanted him, but wanted his kingdom more. This well may be the supreme trade, he thought, a crown for her maidenhead. At least I'd be first Let those others flock about her like dogs on the scent of a bitch in season. Get rid of one, another pops up: Percy, Ormond, that damn fool poet Wyatt, and now that young Scot herald. Sniff as they may, I, Henry VIII, shall pluck that maiden's head, or the man's! I swear it!

  The bed creaked sympathetically as he swung his feet over the edge, gingerly resting them on the floor. But the cold of the bare wood soothed the fire in his gout-ridden left foot.

  Setting his nightcap aright over red curls streaked with gray, and tugging his nightshirt down about his hairy haunches, he stood up; and as abruptly sat down again, grunting with pain.

  "Damn foot," he muttered, looking down on the offending member with its purplish sausage where the big toe should be. "Damn king," he corrected himself, the waves of pain in his head making him wince. Nothing like pain to force one to be objective about oneself. This morning Henry suffered pain in double doses, head and foot. Not all of it was his own fault. Glutting himself at supper, draining all those tankards of ale, topped off with goblets of wine—these were his own doing. But not the dancing. That Anne and de Wynter's partnering had caused.

  He gritted his teeth in unregal envy. Those two made a pair, both exotically colored, tall and slender, with an elegance and catlike grace his own ponderous body could never duplicate. As Anne and de Wynter demonstrated the latest dance from France; his sister Mary had sighed and whispered something to her husband, Suffolk. But Henry had overheard: "Such a study in contrasts—he light where she is dark and vice versa." When she added, "What a beautiful pair, so of an age," that had done it.

  Spurred by the need to prove himself still young, Henry rose. Ignoring the warning twinges in his foot, he claimed Anne as his partner "Come, mistress, master me this dance." The court applauded his wit; de Wynter, relinquishing her, bowed and withdrew.

  What else could the bastard do? Henry had thought, gallantly accepting and returning the bow. Anne, delighted, led him through the steps of the pavane. He, like some young cockerel, must step out lighter and livelier with more elegandy pointed toe than had her previous partner. This morning he paid for last night's folly.

  Henry groaned. He could imagine Anne's reaction to his suffering, her light, bright voice cataloguing his sins of last evening, leaving out no foolish or embarrassing detail from her diatribe.

  Then, just when he was losing patience with her tongue, her throaty voice would change... her black eyes lose their snap... her red mouth curl into a smile. Then she would say something like, "Mon pauvre roi. No wonder your head aches. Outdrinking those

  young gallants. Have you no pity? They look tike milksops alongside a real man like you. Then, mercilessly to dance cinque pas about them! And you think you feel bad? Think of them, their pride made a shambles. You have outmanned them."

  To hear such praise he would gladly tolerate a thousand tongue lashings. If she'd only let him, Henry was sure he could outlove every one of them, too. Especially de Wynter. No man that slender, Henry decided, could have a proper man-sized pisser.

  On that satisfying thought, Henry blew his nose resoundingly between two fingers and hawked up spittle from his throat, ejecting both in the general direction of the slop jar. As usual, he missed. God, how he hated using that thing. Even for pissing. If only his father had loved splendor less and creature comforts more when, after the great fire of '99, he'd rebuilt this palace. Wolsey had when he rebuilt Hampton Court. That the son of a butcher could build a better palace than the son of a king disturbed Henry. But he had to admit Hampton Court Palace was a much more fitting residence for a Tudor king than was Richmond.

  It had been no surprise when the cardinal finally presented him with the palace and all its furnishings. "Wise move, Wolsey," he'd said. "Tis not fitting for a mere prelate to live better than a king." However, out of his mercy, he had allowed Wolsey to occupy and enjoy the palace for the next four years while he completed the furnishing of it. At the Church's expense, of course.

  Now, three years after that, three full years after all of Wolsey's lands were declared forfeit to the Crown, a claimant had turned up demanding ruinous back rents or return of the land under some sort of lease made with Wolsey. Henry refused to accede to either demand. Instead, he set his new archbishop to searching out a loophole. Cranmer ought be able to release his king from a simple tease, if not from marriage to Catherine.

  Elsewhere in the palace, doors banged open and closed as lackeys alerted ushers of the bedchamber to summon gentlemen of the wardrobe to attend the king. While he awaited their presence, his thoughts dwelled on Hampton Court, a truly imperial palace. An individual jake for every important apartment. Bathing closets, too. No need for the tubs used here at Richmond.

  Outside his chamber, word went down to the kitchen to bring water

  and bathing tub. Four men struggled upstairs, bearing the china-lined wooden tub with the king's royal arms engraved in the side. A stream of servants followed after, carrying pots of hot or cold water to fill it. Then this whole procedure must be reversed after the bath was over. The stairways of Richmond between kitchen and king were wet daily with spilled water.

  But not at Hampton Court. Henry stretched vigorously without disturbing the foot that had temporarily slackened its throbbing. The more he thought of his new palace the more determined he was' to keep it. If need be, he would meet the Turcopilier's demands, and pay rent monies to the Knights Hospitalers of St. John of Jerusalem.

  No, damn it, I'll see them all in hell first, he laughed unpleasantly, or better yet, in the Tower. Kings shouldn't pay rent to the Church. What gall, pressing such claims years after I've started enlarging the place. I've even affixed the tokens of royal ownership. Twenty-seven and six it cost me—each!—for that robber baron of a stone carver to carve three lions rampant, holding up shields bearing my arms.

  Then there's the cost of the bricks and the glass and everything else I've ordered. If it isn't already legally mine, Cranmer shall have to make it so, he resolved.

  As much as he'd have liked to throw the Turcopilier into the Tower, it was all bluster. He reared, righdy so, that the Grand Master had friends in high places at the Vatican. With the Pope still considering the king's petition for a divorce, it would not do to unduly upset the Church. At least right now. However, whatever Henry wanted he would have, eventually. And keep till tired of it. But he was not ye
t tired of Hampton Court Palace. He consoled himself that the Turcopilier, John Carlby, was an Englishman. A loyal subject should be amenable to some sort of arrangement. But what?

  Before Henry could decide, his attendants arrived. Truly important decisions demanded his attention: which doublet to wear, what color hose, a hat with plume or jewel or medal, and especially—his foot reminded him—what to do for shoes.

  Once the king was bathed, shaved, preached at, and fed heartily, the court prepared to move up the River Thames to Hampton.

  While Henry stood admiring the dignity of the River Thames from the steps of Richmond Palace, with Richmond Hill behind him, the gatehouse and wardrobe court before him, and the Maids of Honor row of houses just beyond, Suffolk approached him.

  The son of Henry VII’s standard-bearer, who had been killed in single combat with Richard III at Bos worth, Suffolk had dared, above his station and without permission, to marry Henry's sister. The same Mary Tudor who has been married and widowed within the previous year by that sickly dotard, Louis XII of France.

  Although her remarriage to a commoner was treasonous, Henry pardoned the pair. After all, had not Henry's great-grandfather, Owen Tudor, been a mere clerk of the wardrobe to Henry V's widow before he married her and established the Tudor's dynasty? All Henry demanded was that the pair pay a king's ransom as recompense, as well as returning all the jewels and plate given Mary as her marriage portion. With that returned to the Tudor treasury, Henry relented, allowing the couple years to pay the recompense... at the usual usury rates, of course. Meanwhile Henry and Suffolk rousted together, jousted together, and wagered together, for of all of those who attended the king, only Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, completely shared the king's love of jousting, and, because he did, shared Henry's heart.

  This morning Suffolk greeted Henry with a proposal. Let there be a race to Hampton Court: the king and those courtiers using the royal barges versus those who preferred to ride cross-country. Coming from anyone else, the idea was dangerous, pitting king against courtier, but Suffolk knew his king. /