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His upbringing had aggravated those characteristics which made him the man he was. He did not remember very much of his life before he was nine years old. That must have been because it was so easy and pleasant; his mother had had charge of him and his sister Janet, and the two of them had been tenderly cared for. They were perhaps wild by nature; they needed restraint, for the family traits were strongly marked in both of them. Their ancestors were lusty men, strong, wild and sensual.
It was unfortunate that, when James was nine years old, his father had secured a divorce from his mother. Ostensibly the grounds were consanguinity; actually they were brought because the Fair Earl wished to pay court to Mary of Guise.
The Countess of Bothwell was forced to leave her home and with it her two children. Gone was the restraining hand and the two—redheaded Janet and tawny James—ran wild.
As a boy of nine James saw terrible things. Henry the Eighth had declared war on Scotland and with typical ferocity had instructed his soldiers to put all to the fire and sword.
“Burn and subvert!” cried the tyrant. “Put all men and women to fire and sword without exception where any resistance should be shown to you. Spoil and set upside down, as the upper stone may be the nether, and not one stick stand by another, sparing no creature.”
The life of adventure had begun. James in his flight from one town to another, saw the soldiers of the English King carry out his orders. As a result the boy was filled with a passionate hatred toward the English, a hatred which burned within him and made him long to act as he saw their soldiers acting. Rape, torture and death were commonplace sights to him. They did not disgust; they were part of the adventurous way of life; he merely longed to turn the tables, and he swore he would one day.
He became a man at an early age. He was cynically aware of his father’s alliance with the enemy; he knew of his father’s fondness for women.
He spent a great part of his youth in the establishment of his great-uncle Patrick, Bishop of Aberdeen. The Bishop was a merry man, eager to educate his great-nephew in such a way as to bring credit to the name of Hepburn. He was a great drinker; food and drink, he declared, were the greatest pleasures in life, apart from one other. He would slap the boy on the back when he told him this. The one other? Did he not know? The Bishop put his hands on his knees and rocked with laughter. He would wager the boy— being a Hepburn—would soon know what he meant; if he did not, then, by all the saints, he could not be his fathers son.
In the Bishop’s Palace the young James would lie awake and listen to the nightly perambulations of his great-uncle’s friends. There were whisperings and laughter, little screams of pleasure. James thought he understood. Life at Crichton, his fathers home, had not been without these phenomena, but never had he known them conducted on the scale they were in the Bishop’s Palace of Spynie.
The Bishop was very fond of several comely serving women. He would chuck them under the chin or pinch various parts of their bodies as he passed them. Sometimes young James would be with him, but he did not abstain from his intimate greeting for the sake of the boy. Why should he? The boy was a Hepburn.
“A real Hepburn!” he would say; and if there was a woman at hand he would push the boy toward her and she, taking her cue, would caress him and say that he was indeed a lovely boy.
In the banqueting hall James would sometimes sit with the Bishop and his cronies, listening to their conversation which invariably concerned their amatory adventures.
The Bishops numerous children often came to visit him, and he was very fond of them all. There were so many Janets and so many Patricks that James could not remember them all. It was the Bishop’s delight to have them legitimized, several at a time.
James willingly took to the life at the Palace of Spynie. It was the life for him. He very soon began to swagger with the Bishop and his friends. He learned how to carry his liquor and boast of his adventures. The Bishop was delighted in his great-nephew. “A true Hepburn!” was his frequent comment.
In France, whither he had gone to complete his education, he found nothing that he had learned at Spynie a disadvantage. He never did and never would like what he thought of as the effeminate ma
His most satisfying love affair had been with Janet Beaton, aunt to that Mary Beaton who was one of the Queen’s Marys. She had had three husbands and was nineteen years older than James, but a wonderful woman, tempering wisdom with passion, friendship with love. It was a very satisfying relationship to both of them. They had become “handfast,” which meant that they were betrothed and that the betrothal was binding. Handfasting involved no actual ceremony. The couple merely lived together and, if after a certain period, they wished to go through the ceremony of marriage, they were free to do so.
The difference in their ages was too great, James realized; Janet realized it also. Janet was the only reasonable woman he had encountered in his amatory life, for he tired so quickly, the women so slowly. Janet had said that though they ceased to be lovers, there was no reason why they should not remain friends. With Janet he had been as nearly in love as he could be.
It was a pity that A
He had set out on an embassy for the Queen-Mother of Scotland. First he was to go to Denmark where he was to use his persuasive powers on King Frederick that he might lend his fleet to Scotland against the English; secondly he must visit the Court of France, taking letters to the Queen from her mother.
He had set off for Denmark with high hopes, and his sojourn there might have been very successful, for he had won Frederick’s promise of help; but with the death of the Queen, the political situation had changed. England was ready to discuss peace with France and Scotland, so that Frederick’s offer was no longer needed.
Meanwhile James’s personal affairs were giving him some anxiety.
A
She believed that she could use him in the future. James was less calculating. He had the Borderer’s instinct: a successful Lieutenant of the Border, it had been his custom to take his choice of the women prisoners, and the affair would be over and done with quickly; he gave it not another thought. He wished it could always be thus, but there were occasions, in a more regulated society than that of a town in the process of ravishment, when certain tiresome preliminaries were necessary.