'You succeeded brilliantly,' Benjamin spoke up. 'James became uneasy, indeed he may have begun to suspect that malcontents in his kingdom might use the Flodden campaign to stage his murder. Accordingly, during the campaign as well as the actual battle, James dressed a number of soldiers in royal livery so as to deflect any assassination attempt. Now, the battle was a disaster. A number of the royal look-alikes were killed – I suspect a few by assassins as well as by the English. Surrey found one of these corpses, proclaimed it was James's body and sent it south to his master, King Henry.'
Catesby glowered at Benjamin.
'That is why,' I added, 'the corpse did not have the penitential chain James wore round his waist. Or why Margaret never asked for the corpse to be returned for burial. Was she frightened,' I jibed, 'that someone in Scotland might discover it was not the King's body?'
Catesby beat his hand upon his thigh. 'And I suppose,' he guffawed, 'you will tell me that King James himself escaped?'
'You know he did!' Benjamin snapped. 'He was dressed in ordinary armour. He and a knight of the royal household, Sir John Harrington, together with Selkirk, fled to Kelso Abbey. There, King James dictated a short letter which he sealed with his signet ring and despatched via Selkirk to his wife, begging for aid and sustenance. The physician took this message to the Queen sheltering at Linlithgow but, instead of sending help, she sent assassins to kill her husband and Harrington.'
Catesby's face now assumed a haunted, gaunt look.
'The perfect murder,' Benjamin whispered. 'How can you be accused of killing a prince whom the world already reckons is dead? God knows what happened to the body but, when Selkirk returned to Kelso, his master was gone and the monks were too frightened to speak. Selkirk escaped from your clutches to France where his mind, tortured by the horror of these events, slipped into madness. Of course, you searched him out but it was too late – the Lord Cardinal's men had already found him. Naturally, you were relieved to discover that Selkirk, due to the passage of time and his own insanity, jabbered his secrets only in obscure verse.'
'James was an adulterer,' Catesby muttered as if to himself. 'He was like Ahab of Israel, not fit to rule, and so God struck him down!'
Benjamin shook his head. 'If James was Ahab,' he replied, 'then Margaret was Jezebel. She murdered James, not because she hated him but because she, too, had been a faithless spouse. She had to hide her own infidelities with Gavin Douglas, Earl of Angus.'
'That's a lie!' Catesby rasped.
'Oh, no, it isn't!' I answered. 'Margaret's second son, Alexander, Duke of Ross, was born on the thirtieth of April 1514. He was born, so I have discovered, two months early, in which case it should have been June 1514. If we go back nine months, or the thirty-eight weeks of a natural pregnancy, that would place the time of conception at the end of September, no less than a fortnight after James was killed.'
I licked my lips, watching the two clansmen who were becoming restless, as if bored by this chatter of strange tongues.
'Oh,' I murmured, 'we can play with the dates. James left Edinburgh with his army in August. The records of the household will prove the last time he and Margaret were together as man and wife was in the previous July. I am correct?'
Catesby just glared.
'Indeed,' I continued, 'we know Margaret was playing the two-backed beast with Gavin Douglas some time before Flodden.'
'You insult the Queen!' Catesby raged. He glared at us and I realised that Catesby loved Margaret and couldn't accept his golden Princess being proved a lecherous adulteress.
'We have proof,' I sang out, my voice ringing clear as a bell through that ghostly church. 'Selkirk claimed that after Flodden he, together with James and Harrington, discussed what they should do. In his confession Selkirk mentioned the King being uneasy about the malicious gossip which had reached his ears concerning Margaret. No wonder James lost his army at Flodden: visions, voices of doom, rumours about his wife, possible threats against his life!'
'I wonder,' Benjamin interrupted, 'if the King ever put the two things together: the rumours about an assassin on the loose and the gossip about his wife?'
'Mere fancies!' Catesby snapped.
'No, they're not,' I replied. 'Selkirk rode through the night to Linlithgow yet, as soon as he met the Queen, he became uneasy. Your mistress was hardly the grieving widow. Selkirk became suspicious and hurried back to Kelso but the King and Harrington were gone.'
'And I suppose this Harrington,' Catesby queried, 'just allowed his King to be murdered?'
I glanced at Benjamin and noticed his eyes flicker, always an indication that my master, an honest man, was about to tell some half-truth.
'Harrington,' he replied, 'was only one man, exhausted after the battle. He would be little protection for James. Harrington, too, was probably murdered. Do you know,' he continued, 'when I was in Scotland I saw a Book of the Dead in the royal chapel of St Margaret's in Edinburgh, a list of those who had fallen at Flodden. I can't recollect seeing the name Harrington.' My master looked quickly at me and I knew he was lying. He didn't find out about Harrington until after we had met in Paris.
'So,' I taunted quickly, 'Margaret and Douglas were lovers before Flodden.'
'That's why they married so hastily,' Benjamin added. 'To provide Ross with some legitimacy. Who knows, even the present Scottish heir may be a Douglas! Is this, together with King James's murder, the bond which still binds Margaret to the Earl?'
Catesby leaned forward, his face white and skull-like as if quietly relishing the death he planned for us.
'So,' Benjamin continued, trying to distract his attention, 'Selkirk's verses are now explained: the lamb is Angus, who rested in the falcon's nest, namely James's bed. The Scottish King is also the Lion who cried even though he died, and the phrase 'Three less than twelve should it be', together with Selkirk's mutterings about how he could 'count the days', is a reference to the secret and adulterous conception of Alexander, Duke of Ross. Selkirk, a physician, suspected that Alexander was not King James's son.'
' 'What proof do you have of this?' Catesby jibed, standing up.
'Oh,' I replied, 'as it says in the last verses of Selkirk's poem: he wrote his confession in a secret cipher and left it with the monks at St Denis outside Paris.'
'Mere jabberings!' Catesby accused. 'Of a feckless fool!'
Benjamin shook his head. 'Ah, no, Selkirk left proof. He'd kept all the warrants issued to him by King James during his reign. At first, I thought they meant nothing, after all there were scores of them, but then I found one dated the twelfth of September 1513, dated and sealed three days after James was supposed to have died at Flodden!'
Catesby just stared, dumbstruck.
'Of course,' Benjamin continued quietly, 'after James's death Margaret soon tired of Angus. She quarrelled with him, tried to seize control of the children and, when baulked of that, fled south to her brother in England.'
Catesby pursed his lips. 'Lies!' he muttered as if talking to himself. 'All lies!'
'No, they're not,' I answered tartly. 'Margaret was frightened lest her secret be discovered. Who knows, perhaps she suspected King James might still be alive, lurking in some dark wood or lonely moor. She had to be sure that Angus, who had been party to her husband's death, would also keep silent, which is why we were sent to Nottingham. We found Angus sulky,' I glanced at the two Highlanders who glared back malevolently, and Lord d'Aubigny suspicious, but no hint of scandal. Queen Margaret,' I concluded bitterly, 'now knows she is safe and has planned her return to Scotland.'
Catesby cradled his hands in his lap. 'Do you know,' he observed as if we were a group of friends gathered in a cosy tavern, 'I considered you buffoons, two idiots who would blunder about in the dark and go before us to seek out any dangers. I was so wrong.'
'Yes, you were,' Benjamin answered. 'You grew alarmed when Selkirk began to talk to me, so he had to die, though you probably planned his death before Roger and I joined this murderous dance. Nevertheless, Selkirk did talk and Ruthven began to reflect on his own suspicions so he, too, had to die.'
One of the clansmen suddenly stepped forward, like a hunting dog sensing danger. Catesby snapped his fingers. The fellow drew his dagger while his master stood peering into the darkness.
