The Gowrie Conspiracy Read online

  At that same moment, out of earshot, John had been conducting some of his guests through the garden and down to the river. Suddenly aware of a hubbub and people shouting, he realised there was some terrible conflict going on in his house.

  ‘The king has been murdered.’

  Hearing the terrible words, he paused only to pick up two swords from the armoury on the ground floor before rushing up to the Gallery Chamber to find himself in the midst of fighting men.

  He shouted, ‘Where is the king? I am come to defend him.’

  Suddenly he noticed a man’s body lying in one corner covered by the king’s green hunting coat, with Tam Eildor crouched against the nearby wall, covered in blood – Alexander’s blood – and looking near to death.

  ‘Has the king been killed in my house? My God, what can this mean?’

  As Tam began to gasp out an explanation that it was Alexander lying beneath the coat, Ramsay rushed at the Earl and, raising his hunting knife, pierced him through the heart.

  Although John died at once, falling alongside his brother’s body, Tam remained on the floor, kneeling alongside the murdered brothers, wanting somehow to restore life to them, to wake up and find this was nothing but a nightmare.

  Completely unable to believe what he saw before him, that he was part of this scene of dreadful carnage, he saw James kneel on the bloody floor, heard him praying and thanking God for his deliverance. He had not a scratch on him and had stood silent through all the killings with one foot firmly on the falcon’s leash.

  Fighting for breath, in fearful agony, trying to rise, Tam would also have died in that moment, for Ramsay raised his sword and said,

  ‘This for me, Master Fisherman.’

  Tam though injured, was still instinctively capable of lightning movement. He rolled aside, and the knife that was to have been his deathblow struck him in the arm.

  A deep gash, just above the wrist bearing a small dark triangle that the king had once commented upon.

  The area that contained a microchip. The guarantee of his return to his own time.

  Ramsay loomed over him again, knife upraised. He heard the king’s voice saying, ‘Fie, leave him, Johnnie. He had no part in this.’

  The room faded and was lost.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Late that same afternoon, Tansy and Will arrived by coach in Perth. Made so warmly welcome at Simon Fuller’s home in Methlour, they had needed little persuasion to stay an extra day and night, relieved by Martin Hailes’ reception to the news of their marriage.

  Despite all his earlier misgivings concerning the rightness of Tansy as wife for his dear cousin, Martin was genuinely delighted by the surge of well-being and happiness that radiated from the newlyweds.

  He insisted, as they had hoped he would, that his house in the Lawnmarket would be at their disposal for as long as they liked, in order that they might enjoy the pleasures that the great city had to offer.

  So at last they were continuing their journey to Edinburgh, where they would spend a few days before returning to Kirktullo to resume their domestic life. Before doing so Tansy would fulfil her promise to her foster-brothers and help them with her expertise on tapestries and like matters of furnishing for their planned reopening of Gowrie House.

  On an impulse, Tansy had decided that they should look in and see the young men.

  ‘They are not expecting us,’ said Will. ‘Perhaps they will not be at home.’

  Tansy shook her head. ‘I know, Will, but I wish to see Tam. To see how he is faring with Alexander.’

  Will looked at her and smiled. ‘I am sure Tam will be well able to keep young Alexander in check. As long as we do not stay too long. I should like to be settled in Edinburgh before nightfall.’

  Tansy nodded in agreement.

  But Will was uneasy. Her mood had changed suddenly. She was no longer jubilant and carefree, with the light-heartedness that had characterised the few days since their marriage. Since setting out from Methlour, she was more silent than usual with a tendency to stare out of the window at every passing milestone and the distant prospect of Perth.

  Tansy could not tell him that last night she had had a dream.

  She had dreamt that Tam was dead.

  Much to their surprise since this was not a market day, Will and Tansy found their way to Gowrie House barred by a crowd of citizens. People who looked anxious and frightened.

  Will leaned out of the window, asked what had happened.

  A scared old man looked up at him. ‘The Earl – our Lord Provost – has been killed.’

  ‘And his brother, the young Master,’ said a woman at his side.

  ‘Both dead. Both brutally slain. In that turret up yonder,’ the man pointed upwards.

  Tansy turned white. Her hand flew to her mouth as she choked out, ‘Dear God, no! Not John and Alexander.’

  ‘Aye, lady. Both of them. And the king had a hand in it,’ he added darkly.

  ‘Aye,’ whispered another man. ‘We can be sure o’ that.’

  As if in confirmation, the gates swung open and four of the royal huntsmen pushed the crowd aside ushering ahead of them a group of terrified servants, their hands bound.

  ‘They are for the Sheriff court,’ said the man bitterly, ‘to be tried and hanged, nae doubt, for trying to protect our Lord Provost.’

  ‘Aye, treason, they’ll call it. An attempt to kill the king.’

  ‘It’ll no stop there,’ his companion predicted. ‘The king will kill them all, all our noble Ruthvens, that’s for certain.’

  Another man agreed. ‘Aye, he will want his revenge and he will get it. Who can oppose him, tell me that?’

  Tansy leaned back in the coach, clutched Will’s arm. ‘Dear God – William and Patrick. They are at Dirleton with their mother.’

  ‘They are just youths,’ said Will.

  ‘Youths or no,’ said Tansy grimly, ‘they are the next in line. We must reach them, warn them,’ she added frantically.

  ‘Tansy, we cannot get to Dirleton before tomorrow.’ Will had no desire to add that by that time, they would probably be too late. A swift horse and a messenger from James might already be on the way.

  ‘All we can hope for is that one of John’s servants was not among those we’ve just seen,’ he said. ‘That he had sense to ride off and warn them.’

  A guard rode alongside, stared in at them. ‘Move this coach. The street is to be cleared, by royal command.’

  The Kirktullo servant who was driving awaited Will’s instructions.

  ‘Perhaps you would be so good as to clear a passage for us,’ Will told the guard.

  Leaning over he looked into the coach, demanded suspiciously, ‘Your name and business?’

  ‘William Hepburn. My wife and I are travelling to Edinburgh,’ said Will, aware of Tansy trembling at his side.

  ‘Clear the way, clear the way there.’

  Moments later, they were heading past the gardens of Gowrie House towards the Speygate and the city walls.

  There Tansy commanded the driver to stop. ‘We cannot leave like this, Will,’ she sobbed. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘We are going home to Kirktullo. We can do nothing for John and Alexander, my dearest. I know how hard this is for you to bear, but my main concern now is for your safety.’

  ‘What about Tam? We cannot abandon him. And I am in no danger.’

  Will put his arm around her. ‘Dearest, that is where you are wrong. You are in the very greatest danger from James at this moment. Anyone who bears the name of Ruthven or who has connections with them will be hunted down and executed. You saw the servants, innocent men and women. You know as well as I do what will happen. You know what his vengeance is like.’

  Pausing a moment, he added quietly. ‘And you have said yourself that he hates you.’ Letting that take effect, he went on, ‘I have no wish to abandon Tam, my dearest, but you and your safety must be my first concern.’

  Obstinately Tansy shook her head. ‘I canno
t leave without knowing whether Tam is still alive or –’ Her voice broke. ‘What are we to do?’ she cried.

  ‘We must abandon any thoughts of Edinburgh and return home. That I think would be the wisest move. Rest assured that if all is well with Tam he will find us there,’ said Will, aware that his that his words sounded considerably calmer than his thoughts at that moment.

  Had the queen told James that Tansy planned to be at Gowrie House with her foster-brothers? Would the king in his search to hunt down the Ruthvens remember that Mistress Scott also had a connection with Kirktullo?

  As for Tansy, she sank back weeping helplessly, like one living in a nightmare from which there was no awakening. John and Alexander dead and that other inescapable vision of Tam, fighting to protect them, lying dead in his blood beside them in Gowrie House.

  She was quite certain that he was gone, that she would never see him alive again. And as they rode back towards the road leading to Kirktullo, Tansy knew that she had never been so shocked or grief-stricken in her whole life.

  After these terrible events she could not imagine ever being happy again. This day would remain with her forever, its remembrance a dark cloud over her future life.

  And it seemed so unfair, this cruel blow of fate when she and Will had at last achieved content in that long dreamed-of marriage.

  ‘Oh, Will, we were so happy,’ she wailed.

  The coach had stopped to negotiate a narrow bridge near the city boundary. Fearful of pursuit now, Tansy leaned out of the window, looked back along the road they had travelled.

  It was empty and down below at the river, a girl who had been filling pans with water was hurrying back up the slope.

  She looked up at the coach, shaded her eyes and then yelled,

  ‘Mistress Scott. Mistress Scott! Please wait!’

  It was little Jane Rose.

  Inside Gowrie House, King James, wearing his tall hat with its ostrich feather, sat slumped in a chair. A very angry monarch, smouldering with rage and frustration. He had been tricked, he who was born divine, God’s Anointed, had been deceived and someone, aye, countless someones, must pay for it.

  ‘What are your orders, sire, for the bodies?’ asked Mar. They were still lying upstairs in the turret room where they had been struck down.

  ‘Sire, shall you give the order of their removal for burial?’ In the normal way this unpleasant task would have fallen to the next-of-kin. But James hoped that there were no such Ruthvens alive or ever would be again, if his orders to seek out the two younger brothers at Dirleton had been carried out.

  As for the Earl, but most particularly Alexander, he would have liked to leave them up there, to rot away. But he had a better plan.

  Remove them for burial? Nay, he wanted them kept intact – more or less – but without their vital organs. Their corpses kept unburied awaiting his pleasure. Even dead they should not escape his wrath.

  He gave the orders. To be carried to Edinburgh, put on trial and tried for treason. The sentence to be hung, drawn and quartered, the end reserved for traitors. And in the Ruthvens’ case, their name extinguished, their estates and all worldly goods to revert to the Crown.

  But the main cause of James’s anger was the vital casket once in the first Earl of Gowrie’s care. The casket that Alexander had promised him, had hinted was still in Gowrie House. It must be somewhere. It must be found.

  And he thought of the document it contained, that evil genius signed by the midwives at his birth, a document which could sound the death knell of his hopes for the Crown of England.

  Now sitting alone at a table in the murderer’s house, he listened to furniture being moved, tapestries and pictures pulled from walls, sounds indicating that the search he had commanded, with results he hoped for and was impatiently awaiting, was being conscientiously carried out.

  It had begun with the corpses of the two brothers lying on the floor of the turret room. Ordering a search of their pockets for alleged conspiracy papers, naught had been found on Alexander.

  On John, the royal invitation to that morning’s hunt, that had retreated into the past like some episode from a bloody history of Ancient Greece. The invitation John had declined on account of his Tuesday sermon. But there was something else, a packet containing tiny dolls, magical characters, brought doubtless from Padua, symbols of his interest in necromancy.

  Perhaps the Earl carried them believing they would bring him good fortune. At such a thought, James suppressed a cynical laugh, his first of the afternoon.

  As the searchers returned one by one, each with a negative result, he banged his fist on the table before him. Soon every room would have been scoured as minutely as possible. It should not have been difficult when there was so little furniture for the casket to remain concealed. But in so vast a house, it was almost impossible to detect a concealed document.

  He sat isolated, the brooding heavy eyes, the melancholy expression set as if in stone and those who approached him shivered, fearing his wrath, ready to descend with unforeseeable consequences on any who displeased in thought, word or deed.

  As the two bodies were taken out of the house, so too the summer day removed itself from the royal presence. The warm cloudless skies that had seemed such an anathema to a day of terror and bloodshed suddenly gave way to a storm of great magnitude.

  Thunder rattled through empty rooms as rain-laden clouds burst over the roofs of Gowrie House. Hailstones and rivers of water streamed down the window, tapestries shook under thunderclaps and eerie winds came from everywhere and nowhere.

  As darkness engulfed the city it would have struck terror into the heart of a less sensitive man, suggesting that the earth itself cried out and mourned the slaughtered Ruthvens.

  The lords who had been his huntsmen that day were cold and weary. Since the Ruthven servants had been carried off to jail, there was no one left to prepare food for them, had any of them been hungry enough to eat anything after the events of that afternoon.

  Shivering and apprehensive, even the boldest longed to be quit of this place, to be back in Falkland and the comfort of their own apartments.

  Lennox, watching his royal cousin, marvelled at his calm, his cold and precise orders, for he was one with the noble lords in longing to be in his own rooms and to shut out the horrific scenes he had been party to that day.

  He felt sympathy for the huntsmen, forced to stand in the king’s presence unless invited to sit. And he remembered how the fisherman Eildor had sat with James as he ate earlier that day.

  Lennox presumed that Eildor was also dead, remembering the hatred on Ramsay’s face as he watched the fisherman favoured by the king. Remembering that Ramsay had killed the Earl, seeing Eildor fall under his onslaught.

  He had last seen him bleeding on the floor beside the two dead brothers. He kept visualising Ramsay with his hunting knife stabbing Eildor and now he wondered why he had hated that young man so much, for he had never really been a danger to his position in court. Not in the same sense as John Ramsay.

  Lennox had never liked Ramsay and decided philosophically that Eildor was one less favourite to worry about. There was no doubt in his mind that Ramsay had saved James’s life, had not James told him so and that he would be suitably rewarded with honours. But for Lennox there was something desperately evil about a seventeen-year-old youth with the face of an angel and a devil’s heart.

  He turned his attention to Mar who was standing near James. Was his conscience bothering him at having delivered the death stroke to young Ruthven? Sir John Erskine was a man known to keep his own counsel. James’s closest friend, four years his elder, he was son to the Countess of Mar and the two boys had been raised together in the royal nursery at Stirling Castle.

  Lennox was aware again of the striking resemblance between the two, so strong that they might have been brothers.

  The last of the searchers, Hew Moncrieff, approached James who came suddenly alive again, looked up eagerly.

  Moncrieff bowed. ‘Ala
s, sire. Nothing. We cannot find any trace of the casket Your Grace describes.’

  James impatiently rustled the pile of documents on the table beside him. Each of the searchers had been instructed to bring before him any that was found, but not one related to that damning piece of evidence James had sought so tirelessly and for so many years.

  Lennox came over. ‘Sire, the weather is worsening. Is it your wish that we remain here until morning?’

  James sprang to his feet. ‘Nay, Vicky. We are for Falkland. We have urgent matters to attend before the morn. We can do no more here. We have despatched Sir John Sandilands to Dirleton with orders to arrest William and Patrick Ruthven. We will have them brought before us for trial with their two brothers by and by. They will all be sentenced together.’

  And Lennox had a nightmare vision, quickly quenched, of two long dead corpses side by side with two lads of fourteen and sixteen. He shuddered in disgust.

  ‘What of their sisters, sire?’

  ‘We shall persuade Annie to give them up to us. She canna have any excuse to keep traitors in her household. And that goes for any who are known to have associated with the Ruthvens,’ he added grimly.

  Such as Mistress Tansy Scott, thought Lennox, who had never known how tirelessly her late husband had angled for her death through Sandy Kay. She still had one enemy left more resourceful than Walter Murray had ever been.

  There were sighs of relief quickly suppressed and changed into loyal and respectful bows as the king gave the order to leave Gowrie House.

  And so they rode out hastily like desperate men through pelting rain and darkness on the long treacherous ride back to Falkland Palace.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  ‘Mistress Scott!’

  Tansy could hardly believe she was seeing Jane, the sewing maid she connected with her lodging in Falkland Palace.

  ‘Uncle Davy and I live here now.’

  And Tansy remembered Tam telling her Davy Rose had decided to take Jane away, alarmed that the search of his house and his subsequent rough-handling might have a sinister connection with the killing of Margaret Askew.