Section CLIV: October 1540
Dingwall, October 1540
Nora knows the moment Sawney returns to their bedchamber that something is wrong. Deeply, truly wrong.
How can she not? Her husband’s face is as white as the chalk cliffs of Dover, and he plucks Jemmy from her arms, holds him for a long moment and then hands him to Mistress Lumsden without so much as a word.
Their little son is most put out at having been torn from his warm cocoon and his frustrated roars echo down the passage for at least a full minute after Mistress Lumsden leaves, making Nora’s ears ring, yet Sawney scarcely seems to hear them. He sinks back into their marital bed and opens his arms to her, clutching her tightly to his chest.
Even safe in her embrace, however, it takes several moments for Sawney to marshal his thoughts enough to be able to speak.
“There’s – There’s been a fire.”
The words catch in his throat, and Nora tightens her hold on him, scarcely daring to breathe for fear of shattering his fragile composure. Still, she has to know. Fire is the scourge of everyone’s lives, rich or poor. She has to know the extent of what they’re dealing with.
“Where?” she asks, voice little more than a thready reed.
“Holy – Holyrood.”
Sawney’s lips can scarcely form the word. Nora gasps, unable to stop herself.
“Holyrood! But isn’t that where -”
“Louise didn’t go. Isobel – Isobel was ill and she – she didn’t want to leave her. So she was at – at Stirling. But – but my brother – my brother….
Sawney’s courage fails him. He tries three times to finish the dreadful sentence, before simply giving up and laying his head on Nora’s shoulder, weeping his heart out.
Fortunately, he doesn’t have to actually tell Nora. She has known him more than half their lives and loved him every single day. She knows that there is only one piece of news so dreadful that it would unman Sawney this completely.
“He’s gone, isn’t he?” she whispers gently, stroking her husband’s bright, chestnut hair.
As her words die away, she feels the tension fall from Sawney’s shoulders and knows she has guessed correctly.
Her heart aches for him. Having lost Mary only four years ago, she knows only too well how lost her husband will be feeling right now…and he lost Mary just as much as she did, too. His scarcely-healed wounds will have been ripped open all over again.
Still, she doesn’t try to say anything more than soothing babble. Experience has taught her that condolences just ring hollow in these early days, that they just force the bereaved to exchange pleasantries that they really don’t feel.
-Instead, she pulls Sawney into her, holding him tight, trying to remind him that, however bereft he feels right now, he’s not alone. He has her, he has his mother, he has Bobby and Maggie and little Mary Katherine, to say nothing of their own Jemmy.
A stronger family unit she cannot imagine. She only prays her husband will, one day soon, feel the same way.
“Sawney, darling? Can you sit up and drink this for me?”
Nora’s voice sounds in his ears, faint and muffled. He feels himself be half-lifted, and then a cool cup of watered mead is set to his lips.
Reluctantly, he swallows, coughing and spluttering as the herby liquid makes its way down his throat. Still, the fierce reflex, painful though it is, clears his head, and he blinks, struggling into a sitting position as his vision is restored.
Nora is sitting on the bed, her hand clenched around his so tightly it is as though she is trying to anchor him in the world of the living.
A frisson of fear goes down Sawney’s spine at that. How long has he been like this? How long has his wife had to shoulder the burdens of Dingwall alone, while he lay catatonic with grief?
Still, now is not the time to have that conversation. There is an even more pressing question that needs to be asked first.
“Have you heard from Louise?”
His voice comes out raw, dry and croaky from lack of use. Still, Nora understands him – and understands his unspoken question too.
“Not personally, no, but Lady Fleming has written from Stirling. Apparently, the physicians have ordered Louise into an early confinement there. They’re worried that travelling, so soon after James’s death, would unnecessarily endanger her unborn child. Besides, being close to Princess Isobel will doubtless be of great comfort to our royal sister. So, unless things change drastically, expect Louise to be spending the next four months at Stirling."
Expect Louise to be spending the next four months at Stirling.
The words ring like bells in Sawney’s ears and he exchanges a loaded look with his fair-haired wife.
They both know that the future of Scotland hangs on the outcome of the now Dowager Queen’s confinement. If Louise is delivered of a boy, then he will be King James VI from the moment he draws breath. But, if Louise has a girl, or God forbid, suffers a stillbirth, then, per Scottish Succession Law, Sawney will leapfrog little Isobel and become King by virtue of his male sex.
He will become Alexander IV. Nora will become Queen Eleanor.
Neither of them say anything, but, in that moment, as their eyes meet, they both know, just by looking at one another, that the words, the glittering, portentous words, are hanging in the air between them.
