29. David

D AVID Greenwich Palace, Kent, 20th June 1613

H E KNEW THEY DID not have much time. The king would shortly hear that he had come, and he'd be silenced.

David took the folded papers he had carried close within his coat from Willingale, and gave them to the queen. ‘I've written all I can remember of the last year of the prince's life,' he said. ‘His habits and his health, and where he went.' He paused. ‘And where he dined.'

Her gaze was keen. She didn't ask him, not directly, but he knew she shared his fears.

He said, ‘When you've read that, then you will know all that I know.'

Queen Anna held the papers close. ‘I thank you for your trouble.'

‘It was nothing. It…' He searched for words. ‘I thank you for your son.'

She gave a short nod, as though holding back emotion. Then she asked him, ‘Do you know why I did write to you?' When David shook his head, she said, ‘A blind man spoke to me. He was some kind of necromancer, I suppose, who heard the voices of the dead. He told me Henry wanted me to find you.'

David stared at her. ‘A necromancer?'

‘Yes, I know. It sounds unlikely. But he did nearly quote Marcus Aurelius,' said Queen Anna, with a twisting smile. She told him what the blind man said, and how it so closely matched what Henry told her in private, and that seemed so remarkable that David couldn't properly absorb it in his mind.

And yet, he found it reassuring, thinking Henry wasn't altogether lost and gone. That he could still reach out and speak to them.

‘What happened to the book?' Queen Anna asked. ‘The one that Henry always carried?'

David could not lie. ‘I have it now, Your Majesty.'

She looked at him expectantly. ‘May I?'

There was no refusing the queen. David reached with reluctance into his pocket and held out the book to her.

Anna turned the pages, her eyes filling slowly as she saw the prince's writing in the margins. ‘This was always special to him.' For an achingly long moment, she held onto it. Then she passed it back to David. ‘I am sure it's special to you, now.'

He closed his hand around it tightly. ‘Aye, it is, Your Majesty.'

‘Be sure you take good care of it,' she told him, ‘on your journey home to Scotland.'

David felt sure it could not be such an easy thing to be dismissed. ‘The king may not be pleased,' he said, ‘if I return to Scotland so soon after my arrival here.'

Queen Anna, with her head high, let him see why she'd been made a queen. ‘I will deal with the king, Sir David.'

‘Your Majesty.'

He bowed, and was about to take his leave, when she stopped him, in a voice that sounded like a mother's, not a queen's. ‘Sir David?'

‘Aye, Your Majesty?'

‘I'm glad he did have you.'

And then she turned in a grand, regal swirl of skirts, and went back to her game.

In the stables of the palace, they discovered Hector sitting perched against the rail of Brutus's head-stall and chattering to David's brother William.

William greeted them with outward cheer, although his eyes raked David with concern until he satisfied himself his younger brother was unharmed. ‘I've made a friend in this young lad,' he said, to David. ‘He's been telling me the tale of how he got his scar.'

‘Ah, yes. It was most bravely earned.'

His brother looked at Logan. ‘From what I've heard thus far, it seems that I do owe ye thanks,' he said, ‘for all ye did to keep my brother safe.'

‘I did my job,' said Logan.

‘Rather more than that, I think.' With interest, William looked beyond him to where Phoebe stood within the stable doorway, keeping well back from the horses. ‘And that is your wife?'

‘Aye.'

‘She must be as brave as Hector, to have bound her life to yours.' He smiled, and turned again to David. ‘Where will ye be staying? I can make room at my lodgings.'

David shook his head. ‘I have been given leave to travel home, to Scotland.'

William said, ‘But I've proposed ye for a place within Prince Charles's household. Come, ye must at least stay till the council has decided. If they choose ye, it will grant ye some protection.'

David said, ‘I thank you for the effort, but you know as well as I do that it was a pointless thing to do. It won't succeed, you know. One of Rochester's creatures will be given the place, and the king will oppose me and never allow it. Besides, there was only one prince for me.'

‘What will ye do?' William asked.

‘I've a gelding to return to Leith. And then I was thinking of Gorthy,' said David, his mind on the Perthshire estate near where both of them had spent the years of their childhood. ‘It is a lovely place, and peaceful, and I will be free to live there as I will. And it is close to cousin Patrick, who will no doubt be glad not to have to chase over the countryside trying to rescue me.'

His brother laughed. ‘He may not be chasing all over the countryside, but I daresay you'll find that he's over that river the now,' William told him, ‘and waiting to give you an escort back home.'

David thought it possible, but privately he hoped not. He was ready to be done with escorts for a while.

He'd never liked goodbyes. With William, it was never truly a goodbye, for they would always see each other for the hunting in the Highlands come the summer's end.

With Hector, it was harder. But he steeled himself and fixed the smile upon his face and let the lad believe they'd meet again, although in David's long experience, such partings were most often final.

‘No more scars, now,' he told Hector. ‘One is all you need.'

‘Logan has more.'

‘Logan's a bigger man, and has the size to bear them.'

Phoebe, waiting at the stable door, had wished him a safe journey. Having watched him say farewell to Hector, she'd made sure that David knew, ‘We'll take good care of Hector. He will always have a home with us.'

‘I'm grateful for it.'

Phoebe had embraced him warmly. ‘I will miss you.'

‘And I you.'

But when he'd come to Logan, David had not known what words to say. He turned some over in his mind but then discarded them because they did not fit the way that he was feeling.

As the silence lengthened, David finally held his hand outstretched, and Logan shook it. It was not enough. But nothing ever would be.

William came with him to make certain he got safely to the road. ‘Be careful, now,' he cautioned David, always the big brother. ‘You're alone, and it's a long road back to Scotland.'

David took hold of the gelding's reins. The moon was very bright tonight. The sky was filled with stars. He looked up, as he'd always done, and heard a hopeful voice within his memory.

Then you will be with me all the time?

He smiled, and said to William, ‘I'll not be alone.'