The Flower Reader by Elizabeth Loupas

Author:Elizabeth Loupas [ Loupas, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101580172
Publisher: New American Library
Published: 2012-04-02T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-two

LOCHLEVEN

14 April 1563

“I have sweetened Master Knox’s temper considerably; do you not agree, brother?” the queen said. She was alight with self-satisfaction, and did a dance step all by herself in the center of the great hall of Lochleven Castle. “We had quite an excellent debate yesterday, and today at Kinross I begged for his help in settling the scandal between Argyll and Jean. Oh, how prettily I begged! And I gave him a watch in an eight-sided crystal—he may preach against vanity but he took the gift quickly enough.”

“I doubt much of anything will sweeten Knox permanently,” Moray said. He cut a candied apricot into four pieces with his royal dagger and ate one of the quarters. “But you argued well, sister, and showed marvelous self-control.”

As the queen danced down the hall, delighted with her own cleverness, I knelt by the hearth like a kitchen maid grating sugar to mix with cinnamon, galingale, and grains of paradise in the wine I was mulling. We had been at Lochleven for a week, guests of Sir William Douglas and his wife, Lady Agnes Leslie—she was the Earl of Rothes’s sister and so a distant cousin of my own. Sir William was Lady Margaret Erskine’s son, by her long-dead husband, Sir Robert Douglas; this made him a half brother of Moray’s.

In addition to her audience with Master Knox, the queen had sung and danced and feasted every night, and hawked on the mainland every day—the weather could not have been more perfect for April, crisp and sunny, with the waters of Loch Leven reflecting cloudless blue skies. The shallows along the shore were spangled with coltsfoot and celandine, daisies and primroses, blue marsh violets and masses of windflowers.

Moray was back in favor just as suddenly as he had fallen; Sir John Gordon’s death had been forgiven and forgotten. Nico de Clerac, however, was highest in favor of them all; Moray, Rothes, and the rest of the queen’s council were said to be disliking him more and more for his influence and his foreignness.

In addition to Moray and Nico, Rothes was there in the great hall with us, seconded by his brutal kinsman Rannoch Hamilton; I avoided the man’s devouring black gaze and wondered what he was doing here, at the queen’s lighthearted gathering. Mary Fleming and Lady Agnes attended the queen. I was still in deep disgrace, but as Jennet said, the queen was changeable as the moon, and who knew what tomorrow might bring? So I clung grimly to my place and my determination to solve the mystery of Alexander’s murder. It might be more difficult to find an assassin of the Escadron Volant brotherhood, but I refused to believe it was impossible.

“One thing you could certainly do to encourage Master Knox’s favor,” said Lady Margaret when the queen had danced back to where the rest of them were sitting, “is cleanse your household of witchcraft. He specifically said you have witches in your household.”

“I did not pay attention to that part,” the queen said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.