Виктория Холт - The Thistle and the Rose

Marian might have remained his chief mistress had it not been for Janet Kennedy.

Janet was different from any other woman he had ever known. Redheaded and tempestuous, already she had been the mistress of Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, known as the Great Earl and Bell-the-Cat, one of the most notorious of all Scottish lords. It had been an achievement therefore for James to take her from Angus, even though he was a king and Angus a mere earl.

Angus had always been a leader in the country’s affairs, and had earned the nickname Bell-the-Cat, by which he was always known, some years before when the English had threatened to attack Scotland and certain of the nobles refused to stand with James III to repel this enemy. When James had been preparing to march to the Border, certain of his own countrymen such as Huntley, Angus, Lennox, Gray and Lyle were gathering together an army to pursue the King’s and present certain demands to him before they joined forces with him against the English. When they were deciding who should present the demands, Lord Gray told the fable of the mice who planned to put a bell about the cat’s neck to warn them of its approach. All very well, was the answer, but who should bell the cat? It was Angus who spoke up: “I will bell the cat,” and forever after he was known by that name. Shrewd, brilliant, Angus never failed to seize an opportunity which would advance the Douglases.

After the death of his wife he became enamored of redheaded Janet, daughter of Lord Kennedy, and she remained his mistress until she became the King’s.

They were thrilling days and nights James spent in Janet’s company. She combined ambition with passion, and her possessiveness was a little alarming, for James was a man who liked to live on good terms with all about him. He wanted his own way and where women were concerned there was a compulsion within him to take it, but he continually endeavored to extricate himself from a difficult situation by diplomacy rather than by quarrels.

He was deep in his love affair with Janet Kennedy when Margaret Drummond came back into his life.

It was some twelve years since they had dallied on the banks of the Tay, and Margaret had grown into a serene and beautiful woman. She had never married, she told him, but there were no reproaches; she understood perfectly that a king could not marry where he wished, but the boy who had made his promises at Stobhall had not. She had never ceased to love him. “Why,” she said, “I shall always remember that I once had your love… your first love, and that is enough to make me happy for the rest of my life.”

Now James saw what he had lost, and that Margaret could make him happy as neither Marian nor Janet ever could. Serene, disinterested, she could be passionate, giving wholeheartedly of her love and never demanding any favors in return; which was, he saw now, the only way to love. It had taken him years of experience to discover this. They were no longer very young, since they were both approaching their twenty-seventh birthdays.

“Nothing shall ever separate us again,” declared James vehemently. “I am King now and shall not be diverted from my purpose.”

It was Janet who temporarily diverted him. When he tried to explain to her, she faced him with a blazing desire which he was unable to resist and that which was meant to be a brief farewell was a night of such wild passion that he began to wonder whether even Margaret could free him from the spell Janet Kennedy had cast over him.

“Can she love like this?” demanded Janet.

Janet was wily. That night their son was conceived. A lover of children could not be indifferent to his own child.

He continued to see Janet, and Margaret did not complain. She was the perfect mistress; always kind, always understanding.

I will keep that promise I made all those years ago, James told himself. I will marry Margaret.

And so they had moved slowly toward that tragic climax. He was going to marry Margaret Drummond. She had already borne him a daughter who was named after her and who James insisted should be known as the Lady Margaret Stuart. Janet’s son was born two years after Margaret’s, and James loved these two children so dearly that it was difficult for him to say which he loved the more. And if he could not discard a mistress, how could he discard a child?

Memories of his own childhood were often with him. He was not going to let his little James suffer as he had. Therefore he must pay visits to his son, and it was natural that the boy would be with his mother; so during those years of indecision, both Janet and Margaret continued to hold sway over him — Janet by the violence of her emotion, Margaret by the serenity of hers.

But it was Margaret whom he loved; and he decided that before his marriage with her he would make a clean break with Janet.

When he visited her and told her of his proposed marriage she veiled her heavy-lidded eyes and threw back her flaming hair, but she did not look at him.

“I am determined,” he told her. “And this must be the end between us.”

“And our son?”

“Do not think I shall ever forget him. He shall be created Earl of Moray; and you shall not be forgotten either. I shall bestow on you the Castle of Darnaway and the forests surrounding it. It shall be yours unless you marry or live with any other man. In which case it would revert to me.”

Janet closed her eyes and nodded. The Earldom of Moray. The Castle of Darnaway. It was a good reward.

She said quietly: “I believe there is good hunting in the forests of Darnaway.”

He smiled. Let her believe that he intended to hunt there and visit her when he did so. Better not to say he intended never to see her again when he was married to Margaret Drummond.

“It is indeed good.”

Then she threw her arms about him and laughed in her wild way. Well, there had to be a last time and he had been prepared for this. What was one more night among all the rest that were left to him?

Farewell Janet, he had said to himself when he had ridden away next morning.

He often wondered afterward what part Janet and her family played in the tragedy that followed. But he could not be sure and Janet might have been guiltless, for there were others to oppose the marriage.

When the news was brought to him he remembered the long-ago occasion when he had heard of his father’s death.

Margaret was at Drummond Castle, making preparations for her wedding. Her four-year-old little daughter, Lady Margaret Stuart, was with her there; so were two of her sisters — the two youngest: Eupheme who was married, not very happily, to Lord Fleming, and Sibylla who was unmarried.

The three sisters sat down to breakfast one morning; a few hours later all three were dead. One of the dishes which had been served to them contained a deadly poison.

So grief struck him for the second time. I shall never forget Margaret, he mourned; as once before he had told himself he would never forget his father’s death. He was distracted by his grief, but his first thought was for his child, and impetuously he set off for Drummond Castle and took the little girl to Edinburgh Castle. He himself would watch over her.

He often wondered who had done this foul murder, but there was no means of knowing. There were some who declared that Lord Fleming, heartily sick of his wife Eupheme, had intended to dispose of her and had carried off her two sisters at the same time.

No one really believed that. There were so many who were opposed to the King’s union with the Drummonds. Already there was a faction who believed that Scotland could best be served by a marriage with Margaret Tudor, the daughter of the King of England. Such ruthless nobles would not care that in killing Margaret they had to kill her two sisters also.

Lurking in James’s mind was the thought of the Kennedys. Was it possible that wild Janet and her family had found some means of destroying the woman who had displaced her? Did they plan to put Janet in her place?

He did not care; he was not a vindictive man. Nothing he did now could bring back Margaret.

He listened with indifference to the arguments which were put before him. A political marriage was the duty of a king. He must contemplate the good which could come to Scotland if there were means of making peace with the old enemy across the Border.

Nothing brought peace between countries as easily as marriage in the royal houses.

He knew they were right. Let the negotiations with Henry VII go forward.

This had been done and now, mourning Margaret Drummond as he believed he would do all his life, he prepared himself to meet that other Margaret who was journeying north to share his throne.

On a sunny June day, four months after the death of her mother, Margaret, Queen of Scots, set out from Richmond Palace accompanied by her father. Crowds had gathered in the countryside through which the cavalcade was expected to pass, and Margaret could not hide her delight to find herself the center of such pageantry.

She was young and beautiful. She still mourned her gentle mother, but she had seen little of her during her lifetime and it seemed to her quite a long time ago that Elizabeth of York had died. So much had happened in between; there had been all the excitement of preparing her wardrobe — and how she loved those silks and damasks, those purple and crimson velvets! How she enjoyed the homage which was paid to her! Life was too good for mourning.

Let young Henry purse his little mouth and tell her she was frivolous; she could not care. He would have been equally excited if all the pother was for him.