For over two weeks after the fateful outing in the park at Tixall, Mary had been confined there at Sir Walter Aston’s country house. It was during that fortnight that Gavin Napier secretly made his way out of Chartley and seemingly evaporated into the late summer air of Staffordshire. After Mary’s confrontation with Elizabeth’s men, virtually all of the Scottish Queen’s attendants had been returned to Chartley. Each had been interrogated relentlessly by Sir Amyas Paulet and his cohorts. Nau and Curle were deeply implicated and carted off to London. Sorcha’s obvious innocence of the plot spared her more than the others, though Paulet persisted in his questions about Rob. “Think you,” Sorcha inquired archly, “that the man designated by King James himself to attend his mother would connive at a matter so transparently opposed to his master’s best interests?” While her scornful manner annoyed Paulet, the rationality of her words eventually satisfied him. Sorcha was dismissed just in time to help Jane Kennedy and Gillis Mowbray deliver Barbara Curle’s baby.
