James, By the Grace of God

by Nigel Tranter

Genres: Cultural Heritage; Historical Fiction

Synopsis

In the wake of the Battle of Flodden, Scotland was ruled in name only. The boy king, James V was at the mercy of ambitous rival factions, and beyond them, the ever-watchful, looming presence of Henry VIII of England. Escaping from the clutches of the power-hungry Earl of Angus, his most effective guides were to be two old friends, David Lindsay and David Beaton. But, impetuous and hot-blooded, James was more interested in wine and women than affairs of state, and his royal advisers faced a mighty task as they helped the king attain his regal status in a land full of treachery and danger. 'Through his imaginative dialogue, he provides a voice for Scotland's heroes' Scotland on Sunday

Release date: December 20, 2012

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 368

Sample

Half-a-dozen men were working at the hay on the slantwise, south-facing field on the lower slopes of Lindifferon Hill that June afternoon, the horseman noted; but whilst five were toiling near to each other towards the bottom end, one was by himself towards the top. And while the group worked with a slow but steady rhythm of practice and custom, swinging their sickles in smooth, even sweeps, the lone individual seemed to be labouring much harder, stooping and rising more often with more frequent strokes, head down, even at that distance a picture of tense concentration, strange in a sunny hayfield. Without much hesitation, the visitor turned his mount’s head in that direction and trotted across and up.

As he drew near, the toiling man seemed loth to stop cutting, even to glance up, although he could not have failed to hear the clip-clop of hooves and jingle of harness. The newcomer’s handsome features took on a thoughtful, assessing look.

He reined in his splendid grey stallion only a few yards from the other, who at last looked up. “So, David—you are busy, I see. God bless the work! A fair hay crop, this year, all tell me. It is good to see you, friend.”

The toiler straightened an obviously aching back, and nodded, stiff-faced. “Yes,” he said, “and you.” He did not sound overjoyed, voice level.

“They told me at your castle that you would be here,” the horseman added. “Working, always working, they said. You are well enough, David? I have seen you looking better, and with more flesh to your bones.”

“Well?” the man with the sickle repeated. “What is well? Or ill? I am not sick, if that is what you ask. Not sick of body.”

“Mmm. I am sorry, David—sorry.”

There was a pause as they eyed each other.

They made an extraordinary contrast in appearance, those two men, both in their early thirties, the one brilliantly good-looking in a strangely delicate, fine-featured way which could have been almost effeminate save for the strong jawline, firm mouth and keen, lively eyes, the other more rugged both of face and build, muscular but gaunt-looking, clad in old breeches which had been well-cut once and were now stained and worn, with a sweat-darkened shirt of linen, open to the waist, while the horseman was dressed in the height of French fashion, all but dandified, crimson velvet slashed with gold, lace at throat and wrists, the curling feather of his flat jewelled cap held in place by a great ruby brooch.

When the standing man made no further comment, indeed turned to look away down over the lovely prospect of the part of the fertile Howe of Fife known as Stratheden—gentle green swelling hills enclosing the wide farm-dotted vale, with its winding river, scattered woodlands and red-roofed villages, over a thousand acres of which, closest at hand, were his own—then the horseman dismounted and came to stand beside his friend, for these two were friends, despite all appearances. He laid a hand on the other’s arm.

“They say that time heals all, David,” he murmured. “True or not, who knows? But activity makes time pass the faster—which may help. But hay-making, now? I doubt if that is the best time-passer for such as you! Too much time to think. Not so?”

“Perhaps,” the other admitted. “But no time, however passed, will find me what I have lost.”

“No. Agreed. But you have to go on living, man.”

“Aye. All the years.”

“To be sure, all the years. You have forty perhaps ahead of you. I say that you will need more than hay-making, or harvesting, or working the land, or yourself too weary to think, to remember. You will need more than that.”

“Need? My needs are the least of it, Davie. And what I need I cannot have.”

“But . . . there are other needs than just yours, friend. My needs. Others’. The realm’s needs—this Scotland of ours. There are great and pressing needs thronging the land beyond all this.” And he waved his gloved hand to encompass that fair vista. “Beyond the Mount of Lindifferon evil stalks through this kingdom. While you make hay, David Lindsay of the Mount!”

“No doubt. It usually does, God knows! If there is a God. But I cannot help that.”

“You can, I think. You have done in the past and can do again.”

“Davie Beaton—spare me your scheming and plots and ploys! I am in no state for such, I promise you. I know you. Moving men like chessmen—as you have moved me, in the past. That is over—like so much else.”

“Is friendship over, then? Affection? Regard for others, man?”

Lindsay frowned down at his sickle. “No-o-o. Not that. You know that is not true. You know it.”

“I know that I, your friend, need you. And, more important than I am, James Stewart needs you. Your liege-lord and mine.”

That was shrewd thrusting, and Lindsay started to protest, but restrained himself with an effort. Twelve-year-old King James the Fifth was indeed his friend, as well as his monarch. “James is beyond any help of mine,” he said.

“Perhaps not. Help he must have. If he is taken to England, to his Uncle Henry of accursed name, I doubt if we should ever see him again!”

“England? What do you mean, England? How could this be?”

“We have word at St. Andrews that his mother contemplates taking him there, secretly. To prevent him from falling into Angus’s hands, she says. You have heard that Angus is back, and he and his Douglases have taken over Edinburgh town again?”

“No. No—I had not heard that. I hear but little here . . .”

“Perhaps you should hear more, listen more, David. For knowing nothing will not save any of us from trouble! Yes, the Earl of Angus and his Douglases descended upon the capital in strength some weeks ago, and took over the city. As he did once before. Arran and his son were at Hamilton, so they had an easy conquest. The Queen-Mother and young James contrived to get up to the castle from Holyrood, with the help of the English guard Henry has provided, and they are secure there, meantime at any rate. Without cannon, Angus cannot take the castle—but it is not beyond him to obtain artillery in time and bombard it. Although whether he would dare that, with the King therein, I doubt. But Margaret Tudor, it seems, thinks that he might—and she ought to know him, having wed him!—and so she is planning secretly to leave the fortress by night and flee with James to England. She has written to this effect to the Lord Dacre, the English Warden of the Marches, at Morpeth—our spies intercepted and read the letter. She asks him to be ready to receive them, and to muster all available forces to invade Scotland thereafter, with King James at the head of his army so that the Scots will be loth to take arms against their own monarch. And so to drive the Douglases out of Edinburgh and restore Margaret to power.”

Lindsay shook his head. “So—we are back to that! The same old folly and treachery. Will it never end?”

“Not so long as James is a child, I fear, and his mother holds him. And good men fail to act! It is all part of her brother, Henry Tudor’s game to win Scotland for himself.”

“Aye. Then I am well out of it all!”

“Spoken like a true friend of Jamie Stewart!” Beaton said, sourly for that honey-tongued individual.

The other drew a quick breath and the knuckles gripping the sickle gleamed white. “I was put out of it, I’d remind you!” he jerked. “Dismissed from being the King’s procurator and usher—by the Queen-Mother, seven months ago. Besides, what could I do now? The boy himself may like me well enough but his mother hates me. She certainly would not listen to me, even admit me to her presence. I am but a simple Fife laird now. I have nothing to offer in this sorry situation—even if I would.”

“I think that you mistake, David. It is not to Margaret Tudor I would have you go. But to someone who will listen to you. To Kate’s father. Your own good-father at The Byres of Garleton—Patrick, Lord Lindsay.”

His friend stiffened perceptibly at those names and turned to stare at Beaton, eyes narrowed.

Hurriedly the other went on. “The Lord Patrick is an honest man, one of the few on the present Privy Council. The Queen-Mother will have none of him, any more than of you. And that weak fool the Earl of Arran takes his line from her. So Lord Lindsay is squeezed out—like other honest men. And we have heard that Angus has twice been to The Byres to see him.”

“What of it?”

“Angus, for that hot-tempered man, has been behaving with some care since he took Edinburgh. He is biding his time, keeping his Douglases under control. He has even moved out of the city himself, to lodge with the Black Douglas chief, the Earl of Morton, at Dalkeith, even though until now they were unfriends. We, my uncle and I, have hopes for the Earl of Angus. Faint perhaps, but hopes!”

“Then I misdoubt your judgement!”

“Ah, but the judgement is not of character but of circumstances! He remains a hot-head, ambitious, untrustworthy, but . . .”

“And in King Henry’s pocket! Always he has been. If he has lately come back to Scotland, it is straight from Henry’s court.”

“Aye—but the conditions are changed, see you. Have you not heard this either? The divorce has been granted. Our friend the Duke of Albany in France has prevailed upon the new Pope to grant it. Paid all out of his own pocket, they say—Lord knows why, save that he hates Angus! So Margaret Tudor is no longer Countess of Angus, and he no longer Henry’s good-brother. Thus, you see, he is no longer of the same use to England. Henry cannot command him as he did, or use him, the most powerful noble in Scotland. He has not the same hold over him.”

Lindsay shrugged, waiting.

“So, as I say, we have hopes for Angus. In this coil. There are three great factions in this Scotland—the Queen-Mother’s, the Earl of Arran’s and Angus’s. Four, if you count Holy Church! And the young King is the prize. Whoever holds James, rules in his name, now Albany is gone and there is no regent. Arran and his Hamiltons have taken sides with Margaret Tudor, and so presently rule—or she does, since he is a weakling. Thus, Holy Church must look elsewhere.”

“You mean you must look elsewhere! Since you control your uncle, the Archbishop.”

“Crudely put, David! As the Archbishop’s and Primate’s and Chancellor’s secretary, I may have some small influence. But to control him, and through him Holy Church, is an . . . exaggeration! Incidentally, my friend, you should speak more respectfully to your old class-mate. For I am now not just Rector of Campsie and Cambuslang but Lord Abbot of Arbroath, no less!”

“You? You—Abbot? Arbroath! How can this be? You are not a priest. Not in holy orders . . .”

“Admittedly. But I am Abbot in commendam. A lay prelate, shall we say? A convenient arrangement, is it not? Since Arbroath is the second richest abbey in the land!”

“Convenient! It is shameful, rather. Disgraceful. That the Church should prostitute itself, to give such as you its high office, its wealth and power . . .”

“Sakes—you are in an ill mood this day, David, I must say! Why not me? I will use the revenues of Arbroath to better effect than any of its ordained and priestly abbots for long enough, I promise you—in Scotland’s cause. Or half of them, for my uncle would only grant it if he retained half! If I am going to do what I seek to do for our realm, I need moneys. So I have prevailed on my good kinsman—unwilling as he was, mind you—to arrange this. And what is so shameful? If the late King, of beloved memory, could make his fifteen-year-old bastard son Archbishop of St. Andrews in commendam, why not your humble servant, who has a degree in theology from the Sorbonne? I warrant no other abbot in all Scotland has that! And I was Scots ambassador to France. But, you see, it is not only the moneys and status that is important to me, but the fact that the mitred abbacy carries a seat in parliament. That is what I require. Hitherto, at parliaments, I have had to sit dumb, like yourself, listen only, and nudge my august uncle, as Chancellor, when advisable! Now, friend, I can speak and urge and vote. Which is partly why I am here.”

Lindsay nodded, almost wearily. “You will come to why, Davie, no doubt. In this flood of words. Always you could out-talk anyone I ever knew.”

“Exactly! Hence the value of a seat in parliament! Well now, simple Fife laird—here is my mission, and, I hope, yours. If Margaret’s wings are to be clipped and James saved, her own and Arran’s factions have to be reduced, out-fought. And only by the other two factions working together can this be achieved—that is, Angus’s and the Church. That is the simple fact of it. But less simple to achieve, for they have never had aught in common. My uncle and Angus have always been enemies. So—we need a mediator. Lord Lindsay should serve. Will you go to bespeak his good offices for us, David?”

“So that the Church can aid Angus to supreme power? Think you that any betterment for Scotland?”

“That is not the objective—although even Angus, suitably hobbled, might be better than Margaret Tudor, now that he is cut adrift from Henry of England.”

“Have we not had enough of faction-fighting, feud and civil war, all these last years, since Flodden?”

“It is not fighting, war, we seek, but the rule of law, the rightful authority of the realm . . .”

“From Angus and his Douglases! Have you lost your famed wits, man?”

“It is a parliament we aim for—do you not understand? Votes in a parliament. My uncle, as Chancellor, can call a parliament in the King’s name. The Church and the Douglases together could swing sufficient votes amongst the shire and burgh commissioners, I believe, to gain a majority. One reason why I wanted my abbacy—to speak in parliament. That way we could unite the nation, or enough of it to thwart Margaret and Arran. And to get the King out of her hands.”

“And into Angus’s?”

“Into the Privy Council’s, with honest additions. Will you do it, friend? Go over to East Lothian, to The Byres of Garleton. Tell your good-father what is intended. Seek his good offices. Ask that he will go to Angus and tell him what is proposed. Ask the Earl to come to St. Andrews for a conference. We cannot go to him—my uncle is past skulking travel, so gross has he become. You come from East Lothian, know your way. We would put you across the firth by night, in a boat from Pittenweem, secretly. Go to The Byres. See your own father, whilst there. Back the next night. No difficulty for you. Will you do it, David?”

“I . . . I must consider . . .”

“Aye. Do that. And whilst you consider, man, will you not prove yourself more of a host towards an old friend and offer me some small refreshment better than the smell of cut hay? After all, I have ridden fifteen miles from St. Andrews to see you.”

“Yes. To be sure. You will forgive me. I am remiss. Come—we will go back to The Mount . . .”

They walked side-by-side, leading the horse, across the field and down through open woodland where cuckoos were calling hauntingly, towards the dip between the twin hills, Beaton holding forth on the possibilities of his plans, the chances of Angus’s co-operation and the methods which he would use to seek to ensure that Holy Church gained most from the association, rather than the Douglases—whose menace he by no means underestimated. A tinkling burn ran down the green cleft in the bosom of the hills, and as the well-defined track they were on neared this, to cross it by a plank-bridge, David Lindsay turned off the track right-handed to head through the trees to a lower crossing-place some way down. His companion, who had used the track and bridge on the way out, interrupted his talk to ask why the detour?

“That bridge is where Kate fell,” he was told shortly.

Beaton asked no more. At the funeral two months earlier he had heard that Kate Lindsay, seven months pregnant, riding back from some visit, had been thrown from her shying horse at some hazard, to be eventually found dead and her part-born child with her, in some water. Her husband had been a stricken man since.

A narrower and new path leading lower indicated that David Lindsay could not bear to use that bridge any more.

In silence now they strode on round the base of the eastern hill, back on the track again.

Soon they came to the Castle of The Mount, rising before them on a sort of terrace of the hillside, a typical square stone keep of four storeys beneath a parapet and wall-walk, with a garret storey above, all surrounded by a barmekin or high defensive wall with a gatehouse, enclosing a courtyard containing lower lean-to domestic outbuildings. It had been David’s inheritance from his mother, so that he had been nominal laird of the Mount of Lindifferon from childhood, although one day, when his father died, he would be Lindsay of Garleton, in East Lothian, a larger property where he had been born. He and Kate had only come to The Mount, hitherto stewarded for him by an older brother of his mother, in the previous November on being dismissed from the position of procurator and usher to King James, which he had held for all twelve years of the boy-monarch’s life. Here he was to become the simple Fife laird he had spoken of so bitterly, and here their first child was to be born. Now he saw life bleak and grey, a changed man.

That was David Lindsay.

In the first-floor hall of his little castle, a housekeeping woman provided a cold meal, adequate but unambitious, to which Beaton did justice but at which his host merely picked. The conversation was almost all on one side, and fairly heavy going even for that most eloquent individual. It was not long before the visitor declared that he must be on his way back to St. Andrews Castle, a two-hour ride—and was not pressed to stay.

At the gatehouse farewell, Davie Beaton rode off sad and concerned for his friend. But at least he had his promise that he would go on this mission to East Lothian for him, and with minimum delay, for time was of the essence.

Three nights later they made another farewell, this time some twenty-two miles to the south-east, at the fishing haven of Pittenweem below the walls of St. Ethernan’s Priory. It was not dark—it is seldom really dark of a Scots June night—but after midnight, a strange time to be putting to sea in a small boat.

Both men had very much in mind the last time that they had been here, in similar if darker circumstances, in the previous November, but coming in the other direction—only that time there had been three of them, Kate agog at the adventure of thus clandestinely commencing a new life.

“It is a calm enough night,” Beaton said. “You should be over in little more than two hours. Then a bare three-mile walk up to The Byres. There well before breakfast.”

The other nodded.

“You have it all? What is proposed. What to tell the Lord Lindsay. What we wish him to put to the Earl of Angus. And the need for haste. A parliament takes time to mount. And Margaret Tudor might make her move any day.”

Again Lindsay nodded. “It is all clear enough. Although whether it will come to anything is another matter.”

“We must hope so, pray so. For the sake of young James and his realm, for all our sakes. Much will hang on this, I believe.”

“You do the praying, my lord Abbot!” he was told, almost mockingly. “Which will be a change, I think!”

It was on the tip of Beaton’s tongue to say that such words and attitude represented a still greater change in the David Lindsay he had known since they were youths at college, but instead he held out his hand.

“Good fortune and God speed,” he said.

“Yes. I will come to you at St. Andrews two days hence. Or three—who knows?”

“Aye. The boat will wait for you at Luffness. And the Prior here will have your horse ready whenever you arrive, and an escort.”

Lindsay stepped down into the broad-beamed coble, and the four fishermen, employed by the Priory, dipped in their long sweeps to manoeuvre the craft out from the cluster of other boats at the pier-side, to pull for the harbour-mouth. Their passenger sat hunched in the stem and did not look back.

Out in the open Firth of Forth the sea was less calm than it had seemed from the land, and the fourteen-mile crossing took longer than Beaton had estimated, largely because the oarsmen had to pull all the way, the square lug-sail being of no use to them, for the prevailing south-westerly breeze, although not strong, was in their faces going this way. The glimmer of the beacon on the Isle of May, to their left in the firth-mouth, was much paler in this half-light than it had been in the dark of November, and soon faded from sight altogether. It was chill out there on the water for the passenger who huddled in his riding-cloak. Occasionally a shower of spray came inboard. Only the creak of the rowlocks and the slap-slap and hiss of the seas broke the silence.

After a couple of hours of it, the loom of the land grew vaguely before them, but there was no certainty as to feature or distance, as the oarsmen pulled steadily, rhythmically on. It was sound rather than sight, in almost another hour, which offered any evidence of location, the continuous booming roar from half-right ahead, low but powerful, dominant. David knew what that was; strange if he did not, after all the flighting for wild-geese he had done to its accompaniment. It was the noise of breaking seas on the bar of Aberlady Bay, the three-mile-long, half-mile-wide sand-bar which all but closed the mouth of that great estuarine bight, something which was not to be mistaken in all the scores of miles of either side of the Firth of Forth.

Parallel with that daunting sound, but well back from its origin, the fishermen steered their craft for the bar’s entire length, for the navigable entrance to the bay, at whatever state of the tide, was at the extreme west end of it, where the Water of Peffer found its way to the sea from behind the bar. Twin stone pinnacles marked the opening, only some two hundred yards apart, the gateway to the channel—for Aberlady was the port of Haddington—and these stood out clearly enough in the June half-light; but of a winter’s night in a gale of wind and spume, it was not difficult to miss them, and many were the ships which had done so, to leave their timbers on that grievous submerged sand-bar.

Once within the calm waters of the bay itself, all was changed and it was like rowing over an inland loch. They turned the boat’s blunt prow eastwards again now, well away from the long jetty at Kilspindie where the port shipping tied up, to head towards the very apex of the triangular-shaped bight, the water of which covered a full fifteen hundred acres. The tide was two-thirds in, fortunately, which meant that they would not be troubled by shallows in this fairly flat-bottomed coble.

Near the very tip of the bay, where the Peffer came in from its wide, level vale, they made their landfall at a boat-strand under quite a steep bank, above which reared the lofty curtain-walls and angle-towers of the great castle of Luffness, another Lindsay stronghold owned, but seldom visited, by the chief of all that renowned house, the Earl of Crawford. Below the castle, huddling between its frowning walls and the shore, was a row of cothouses, hovels, tarred shacks for smoking fish and drying nets hung on poles, the fishing hamlet of Luffness Haven. All was dark and asleep here still, although a dog barked at scent of the visitors.

David jumped out on to the shingle, leaving his boatmen there in their craft. They would do well enough with the local fisherfolk when these awakened. He hoped to be back the following night, for the return passage, but if not they should wait another day. If still he had not appeared, and no word sent, they were to go back to Pittenweem on their own—although he did not anticipate that.

Avoiding the castle, for he was uncertain as to its keeper’s allegiances, he set off to the west of it, deliberately to pass a certain red-tiled cart-shed in a field belonging to the Carmelite monastery, sited that side of the castle, a place of bitter-sweet memories, where he and Kate had pledged their troth nine years before. Moving inland he came to the monastery chapel where they had been married. He did not go in but stood at the door amongst the ancient trees for a little, his mind a battle-ground for emotions, before sighing, and resuming his walking.

The light was growing now and he reckoned that the sun would be rising in another hour, by which time he ought to have reached his destination. Strangely enough, familiar as it all was to him, he could not remember ever having walked this way before, always having come on horseback, even as a boy.

Skirting the monastery grounds between it and its sister nunnery on the outskirts of Aberlady village, he crossed the water-logged Luffness Muir by a track which was almost a causeway, setting up quacking duck by the score and lazy-flapping herons and disturbing roe-deer and hares; a great place for hawking. Over a mile of this and he came to the hamlet of Ballencrieff, where the cocks were beginning to crow and more dogs remarked on his passage. Then the land began to rise, gently, towards the green ridge of the Garleton Hills, another mile or so. And up there, fairly close under the now abruptly soaring heights of the ridge itself, he came to the castle and castleton of The Byres of Garleton, just as the sun was rising in golden splendour above the rim of the Norse Sea, glimpsed from this altitude miles to the east, between North Berwick and Dunbar.

This place, the seat of the Lords Lindsay of The Byres, the second-most-senior line of that powerful family, and Kate’s former home, was a fine establishment, not so large as Luffness but a noble house nevertheless, within its walled gardens and pleasances and orchards, a many-towered fortalice of reddish stone lording it over its slantwise fertile lands and cattle-dotted hummocks, with its own chapel, dovecotes, granaries, mill, ice-houses, even a brewery, its castleton greater than many a village. The first blue smokes of morning fires were lifting into the new slanting sunlight as David approached.

Crossing the moat by the drawbridge, which was not raised, as the portcullis was not lowered, he nevertheless had to beat on the massive timbers of the gatehouse double-doors with the hilt of his dirk, with some repetition, before a peep-hole at eye-level was opened and he was inspected.

“Lindsay of the Mount,” he jerked, and there was an exclamation of recognition from within.

With a great creaking the gates were thrown open wide and the porter greeted him with warm respect, all incoherent half-sentences about him being a stranger, his sad loss, the earliness of the hour and where had he come from, to all of which he got little response save for a shake of the head and an enquiry as to whether his lordship was at home? He was, yes, he was told, but not likely to be out of his bed yet. No matter, David said, not to disturb him. He would go to the kitchen for some refreshment, and wait there. No need to escort him; he knew his way.

Presently, with a breakfast of porridge and cream, cold venison, oatcakes and honey washed down with ale, and not anxious to be put through an inquisition, however friendly, by the kitchen staff, he allowed his head to droop at the great kitchen table, and promptly fell asleep.

He started awake with a hand on his shoulder and looked up to find a tall woman, still handsome although elderly, and with kind features, considering him.

“David—here’s a surprise!” she said. “It is good, good to see you. But—how come you thus? Afoot, I am told. Why by night? Is it trouble, lad? More trouble?”

“Aunt Isabella!” He rose, to kiss and be kissed. Lady Lindsay was not his aunt but he had always called her that, although her husband he never named uncle. “No, no trouble. At least, not for us. Any more than for all. I come on a mission to my lord. From the Chancellor. And best that I be not seen. By unfriends.”

“Ah—so that’s the way of it! If it is the Chancellor, then it is young Beaton his nephew! And that one can mean trouble enough, I vow! But—at least it has brought you here, David. You are well enough? You look thin, lad.”

“I am well enough, yes. I came in a boat, by night. Did not sleep . . .”

Patrick, fourth Lord Lindsay of The Byres appeared, a thin, high-coloured, grizzled man in his late fifties, with hawklike face and minus an arm lost at Flodden-field. An individual of few words, he greeted his son-in-law briefly. His wife informed him of the circumstances.

David, in no mood for small talk anyway, came straight to the point. “Chancellor Beaton has it that the Queen-Mother intends to take King James secretly to England, believing that her former husband, the Earl of Angus, seeks to lay hands on him and use him for his own ends. This would deliver the boy, and the kingdom, into King Henry’s hands. It must be stopped. He believes that a parliament called could stop it. He can call a parliament, as Chancellor. But to win a vote against the Queen-Mother’s and Arran’s parties, he would require Angus’s support. Also his assurance that he would not grab the King. So he seeks a conference with Angus, and quickly. You, my lord, he has word have been seeing Angus. The Archbishop asks that you go to Angus, as mediator. He has always been unfriends with the Earl, so he needs a go-between, in this.”

T