The Royal Mile Read online

  The Royal Mile

  Mary Daheim

  Seattle, WA

  Camel Press

  PO Box 70515

  Seattle, WA 98127

  For more information go to: www.camelpress.com

  www.authormarydaheim.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover design by Sabrina Sun

  The Royal Mile

  Copyright © 1983, 2014 by Mary Daheim

  Originally printed by Avon Press under the title Love’s Pirate

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-855-1 (Trade Paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-856-8 (eBook)

  LOC Control Number: 2013954431

  Produced in the United States of America

  To Jennifer McCord: Publishing brought us together thirty years ago, but what I cherish most is her steadfast friendship and kind heart.

  Dear Readers:

  Almost 50 years ago, I spent three months in Europe with my cousin, Judy, and two of our friends. We visited Paris, London, Rome, Vienna—just about every major must-see place in Western Europe. They all lived up to expectations, but the city I fell in love with was Edinburgh.

  I’m not a Scot, though I’ve always been a history buff, especially fascinated by British and French history. Of course all the other places I saw in Europe had plenty of their own history, but Edinburgh—especially the High Street or The Royal Mile as it’s known—reeked of it.

  “Reeked” is an odd word to choose, given that one of the city’s nicknames is Auld Reekie, dating from the era when most buildings were heated by coal and wood fires that produced great clouds of black smoke. That’s gone now. The evening spent at the annual Highland Games below Edinburgh Castle was in good, clear weather. I can still see the lone piper standing on the castle ramparts, playing his bagpipe as a farewell to the audience.

  On the way back to the High Street and our hotel, we climbed up the narrow wynds, flanked by four-hundred-year-old houses that begged to be described on paper. Yet I didn’t start writing the book until another six years had passed. I’d already begun a novel set in sixteenth century England, I had a good job in PR, I met Dave, got married, our first daughter was born, and we bought a house on Queen Anne Hill.

  Not long after we moved in, I was standing at the kitchen sink, looking at the steep street behind our house and somehow I thought of Edinburgh. I have to write that book, I suddenly thought. The period of Mary, Queen of Scots was as notorious as it was compelling. I researched the period for two years. I even made a huge map depicting how the High Street and its surroundings looked in the 1560s. Six years later, after the births of two more daughters, I finished the 850-page manuscript—and put it on top of the refrigerator.

  After a couple of years, Dave got tired of looking at that pile of paper (being six inches shorter, I really couldn’t see it) and told me to move it, dust it, or sell it. I opted for the third choice—the other involved housework. After getting a New York agent—Donald MacCampbell, a crusty Philadelphia-born Scot—I made the necessary revisions, a lengthy process pre-computer. Within a month, Donald sold what I’d called The Royal Mile to Avon Books. My editor changed the title to Love’s Pirate, somewhat to my dismay. Over thirty years later, I’ve finally gotten my way. I hope you get as much enjoyment out of reading The Royal Mile as I did from writing this story of love and intrigue in my favorite non-native city.

  —Mary Daheim

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  The church bells clamored from St. Cuthbert’s in the west to the Abbey Kirk in the east. Startled crows flew out of the towers and even the bravest of dogs began to howl. Out in the High Street, crowds of expectant townspeople milled about, jostling one another for the best vantage points. The dismal grey haar that had enshrouded Edinburgh for most of the day finally lifted as shafts of late-day August sun filtered between the tall narrow houses of the Lawnmarket.

  Dallas Cameron hesitated for just a moment before she descended the spiraling steps of her family’s gabled house in Nairne’s Close. Her tumultuous emotions seemed to be echoed in the noisy voices rising up over the roof tops from the High Street. Anger, excitement and, most of all, grief made a muddle of her mind and caused her usual sure step to falter.

  The quarrel between Dallas and her sisters had been unseemly. They had stood outside the door of their father’s sickroom and railed at each other for a full five minutes before Marthe, the Camerons’ aged serving woman, had intervened.

  “But Father is dying!” Glennie had protested. “Dallas can’t leave now, not even to welcome the Queen!”

  The youngest of the Cameron girls, Tarrill, was barely coherent through her tears: “Mary Stuart doesn’t know us ... wouldn’t care ... we are nobodies!”

  Dallas stood straight and proud before her sisters. “Our sire has been well respected as a scholar. Though he never met the Queen, he has waited many years to see Mary Stuart regain her rightful place in Scotland. He would want one of us to welcome her in his stead.”

  Marthe, exercising a prerogative born out of long years of service and mutual affection for all members of the Cameron family, waved her reddened, pudgy hands and shushed the sisters into silence.

  “Cease, lassies, yon good sire would not want ye quarreling. Let Dallas go; she knows what Master Cameron would wish in having his kin greet the Queen in her time of triumph.”

  So Dallas had finally left the house with its stale smelling sickroom and the aura of impending death. Let Glennie and Tarrill sob over the counterpane, Dallas thought grimly, while I do what Father would wish. But that had always been the way with the Cameron sisters—Glennie and Tarrill would bemoan whatever ill wind blew their way—and wait for Dallas to shift fate in a more propitious direction.

  But this time it would be difficult even for Dallas to grapple with fate. The tragedy of their father’s death was overwhelming enough. But coupled with it lay the prospect of poverty. Daniel Cameron had been the sole support of his three daughters and two grandsons since Glennie’s husband died the previous winter. Even as their father still clung to life, Dallas’s practical nature had looked beyond his passing to a bleak future.

  Pulling the frayed blue cloak more closely about her slim body, Dallas temporarily put such thoughts from her mind and walked purposefully away from Nairne’s Close. She had only gone a few paces before she stiffened as a familiar figure turned a corner and headed her way.

  “Dallas!” called George Gordon, quickening his step on the rounded cobblestones. “Are you off to see the Queen?”

  Dallas stood her ground and gazed directly at George. It was not easy to face George Gordon under any circumstances; it was extremely difficult to confront him in her time of grief.

  “Aye,” she answered dully, glancing surreptitiously at the handsome face with its dimpled chin and golden moustache. “You know how my father felt about Her Grace’s return.”

  “My own sire has mixed emotions,” George said airily, regarding her from his splendid height. “A Catholic sovereign is well enough—but the Gordons are Highlanders who never have taken well to strong-willed monarchs.”

  “You needn’t remind me how great a lord your sire is,” Dallas retorted. She had to bite her tongue to keep from saying that he also needn’t remind her that his father was the powerful Earl of Huntly and she was but the daughter of a humble tutor. George Gordon had reminded her of that often enough during
his brief stay as a pupil of Daniel Cameron’s.

  But Gordon was only laughing. “It will be amusing, actually, to see how the Protestant lords vie with the Catholic nobility for Mary Stuart’s attentions.”

  Darkness was descending over the city, but bonfires still burned on the surrounding hills and scarcely a window remained unlighted. Here, below Castle Hill, the tall gabled houses squeezed together as if for mutual protection. Some of the buildings rose ten stories in height, with dormer windows set at an angle permitting intimate views into neighboring houses. Dallas tried to concentrate on her surroundings rather than on her companion or on the sorrow she had left behind. But George Gordon seemed determined to keep her at his side.

  “Queen Mary has been in France since she was six,” he was saying, more to himself than to Dallas. “Who could blame her mother, Marie de Guise, for shipping the little Queen off to France instead of letting her fall into the clutches of King Henry the Eighth as a bride for his puny Prince Edward?”

  “The French Dauphin was no less puny, since he died within a year after our Queen married him,” Dallas pointed out. “But then I marvel you would discuss politics with me, sir. When you were a pupil of my father you seldom cared to talk about much more than court gossip or other frivolous topics.”

  Gordon chuckled as they walked up the incline, ignoring a bawdy greeting called out by a small group of young men. “It’s a night for political speculations,’’ Gordon said. “All Scotland wants to find out if a Catholic queen can rule what has—I fear—become a predominantly Protestant nation. And, of course, how her ambitious—and Protestant—bastard half-brother Lord James will react.”

  “With all the bastard half-brothers and half-sisters Queen Mary has, she’s fortunate to have only one who is so power-crazed,” Dallas asserted.

  “I’ve never liked James,” Gordon continued as if he hadn’t heard her comment. “I think he thought to rule Scotland if Francois had lived and Mary never returned.”

  The smells of cooking meat, wood smoke and animal dung mingled in the night air. Dallas and Gordon turned down a wynd so narrow that they had to walk single file. They started up a flight of wooden stairs that would bring them almost to St. Giles where the Lawnmarket ended and the High Street began.

  “James could prove dangerous,” Gordon was saying as they headed towards the Tolbooth. “I hope he never dares pit himself against our clan.”

  As they approached the Canongate that would lead them to the gates of the city and Holyrood Palace itself, Dallas found herself physically fatigued and even more weary of George Gordon’s characteristic self-absorption. “We all have our family problems,” she countered as the crowd began to grow in noise and size. “My father is dying.”

  “My father is unsure of how such a youthful, inexperienced woman will rule,” Gordon said. “He prefers to remain in the Highlands until he can judge her performance as a sovereign.”

  Off in the distance, the skirl of pipes floated down into the Canongate, surmounting the sound of the crowd. Dallas turned and looked at Gordon head-on. “I said my father is dying.” She glanced defiantly at her companion, who seemed to have his attention fixed on the warming pans which many of Edinburgh’s citizens had lighted on their windowsills as signs of welcome to the Queen.

  “You—you said your father is—what?” At last he looked directly at Dallas, puzzled.

  “Oh!” Dallas pushed her hands through the jumble of brown hair in frustration. It was always the same with George Gordon; six years had made no difference. He never listened to anyone but himself. He never cared for anyone but himself. Certainly he never had paid any attention to her. “You pay no heed to anything I say, you were always like that! Go play your silly games of intrigue, go bloat yourself on great Huntly’s pride and power!”

  Gordon looked genuinely puzzled. “My father is a powerful man, everyone knows that. But I still didn’t quite hear what you said about your ....”

  “You never did—you never will.” Dallas whirled away from Gordon and collided with a stout woman, who cursed and waved a fleshy fist in the air.

  Dallas was about to retaliate when someone touched her arm and a man’s voice spoke low from behind her, “Steady, lass. She’s thrice your size.”

  “Old lard-pot,” she bristled.

  “She’s only caught up in the excitement,” said the man at Dallas’s side. He was tall, with a dark-skinned face, lean, sharp features and a pair of hazel eyes that looked as if they knew more about this side of heaven than anybody should.

  Dallas felt something inside wince. “You can let go of my arm now, sir,” she demanded. “I’ve got two good feet and I’m standing on both of them all by myself.”

  The dark man lazily ran those all-knowing hazel eyes down from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. “Aye, so you are,” he said mildly. “But your shoes don’t match.”

  Dallas regarded her footwear with horror. He was right—somehow, in her distress that morning she had put on two different shoes. She was about to retort that a tutor’s daughter was lucky to have shoes at all when she looked up and discovered that the man was gone. No matter—at least he had momentarily taken her mind off George Gordon. George had ridiculed her book learning, rebuffed her girlish attempts to enjoin him in anything but the most trivial of conversations, openly expressed contempt for educated women. Dallas was only a tutor’s daughter, and great Gordons married great ladies; George had taken the Duke of Chatelherault’s daughter, Anne Hamilton, as his bride.

  But that had all happened some years before, and though Dallas had seen George Gordon occasionally in the city, they had scarcely spoken except to bid each other good day. Those incidents were of no importance to him, of course; but each encounter had painfully reminded Dallas of how limited her resources were, simply because she was a woman—and each glance at that handsome, masculine face had made her determined never to let any man take advantage of her.

  Dallas reminded herself of that vow as she noted that virtually every window of Holyrood Palace was now illumined with lights. Beyond the royal dwelling stood Arthur’s Seat, that stately pile of rock which made the perfect mate for Castle Hill at the other end of the city.

  Again the pipes began to play. Somewhere nearby a group of off-key masculine voices sang hymns. A handful of couples danced together in Panmuir Close. Dallas observed them with an envy mingled with annoyance. She would be lucky to have the strength to walk the full mile back to the Lawnmarket, let alone tread any of those light-footed measures the Protestant preacher John Knox railed against in his sermons at St. Giles.

  And then, high up on a balcony in the northwest corner of the palace, a tall, slim figure appeared. The crowd let out a single-voiced cheer as Mary Stuart raised her arms to her people. Even from where Dallas stood, the gesture evoked grace, majesty and feminine charm. To her own surprise, Dallas responded with as lusty a cheer as the rest, then watched with fascination as the Queen retreated into the palace. Bonnets were hurled into the air, children who had been hoisted onto shoulders for a better view hooted with joy and the pipes took up their bittersweet serenade.

  Dallas kept her eyes riveted on the empty square of light where the Queen had stood. How old was Mary Stuart? Eighteen, nineteen? Younger by at least three years than Dallas herself. Yet, there she had stood, gracious, majestic, like a fairy princess. She was not a witch, as John Knox asserted, but there was something magical about her—some quality, however fleeting, that conquered darkness and distance to reach her people.

  Father would approve, Dallas thought as she turned away with others in the crowd. Along the Canongate candles were being extinguished, windows slammed tight, shutters closed. The crowd lessened at every street as handfuls of merrymakers trickled into closes, down the wynds and into the few ale houses which had dared break the Sabbath ban.

  By the time Dallas turned into her shortcut to Nairne’s Close, several of the polished ashlar and timber-fronted houses were completely dark. In spite of
the incline up the side of Castle Hill, she could be home within five minutes, if she hurried; yet the lateness of the hour and the sudden loneliness of the area made her apprehensive. Vexed with herself, she noted that there were footsteps behind her and that she wasn’t alone after all. The footsteps were hurrying, gaining on her. Dallas cast a swift glance over her shoulder and thought she recognized the four young men as the same ones who had called out the bawdy greeting shortly after she and George Gordon had headed towards the Lawnmarket.

  The young men had noted her glance of apprehension. “Wait up, lass!” one of them shouted. “It’s too early to cease our celebrations.”

  Dallas paid no heed; she kept up her pace but refused to give the youths the satisfaction of seeing her break into a run. Within a few doors they had caught up with her, and one, wearing a leather jerkin and a plaid she didn’t recognize in the dark, grabbed her by the upper arm. “Come, refresh yourself with my friends and me.”

  Dallas tried to pull away but the young man’s grip was firm. “It seems to me you’ve done enough celebrating already,” she said archly. Indeed, she noted, he smelled foul from whiskey and his gaze was wavering. Judging his unsteadiness, Dallas relaxed for just a moment, felt his grip do the same, and then she broke free and started to run. One of the more sure-footed of the little group lunged after her, holding her tight by the waist.

  “Leave me be!” she shouted, striking out with her arms. A stocky redhead took hold of her wrists, careful to stand back far enough to avoid the kicks Dallas was aiming at him. The fourth and last member of the celebrants was leaning against a stone wall, holding his sides and laughing like a donkey gone berserk.