The Raven's Heart

by Jesse Blackadder

  Jesse Blackadder

  Ann Arbor

  2012

  For Andi

  I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love,

  To spite a raven’s heart within a dove

  William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

  Contents

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Part I: 1561

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Part II: 1565

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Forty-four

  Forty-five

  Part III: 1566

  Forty-six

  Forty-seven

  Forty-eight

  Forty-nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-one

  Fifty-two

  Fifty-three

  Fifty-four

  Fifty-five

  Fifty-six

  Fifty-seven

  Fifty-eight

  Fifty-nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-one

  Sixty-two

  Sixty-three

  Sixty-four

  Sixty-five

  Sixty-six

  Sixty-seven

  Sixty-eight

  Postscript

  Author’s note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Foreword

  A sixth-generation Australian intrigued by the origins of my family name, I traveled to Scotland in 2004 and drove to a place in Berwickshire marked on the map as “Blackadder.” The name turned out to signify the original Blackadder Estate and the remains of Blackadder House, built on the foundations of the much older Blackadder Castle.

  The first sight of those stone ruins, rising through the mist on the banks of Blackadder Water, was haunting. That day was the first time I heard the story of how Blackadder Castle was taken by the Holme family in the sixteenth century through the forced marriage of Robert Blackadder’s widow, Alison Douglas, to David Holme, the Baron of Wedderburn.

  The name of Captain William Blackadder turned up in the history books a few decades after the theft of Blackadder Castle. William was appointed the Crown’s Seeker of Pirates, worked for Lord Bothwell, and ferried the Queen of Scots to Alloa after the birth of her son. The Blackadder family history records are unclear on whether he came from the Berwickshire or Tulliallan branches of the family. John and Edmund Blackadder were both known as notorious pirates during the reign of the Queen of Scots, and another John Blackadder, head of the Tulliallan branch of the Blackadder family, was one of many nobles called up to support the Queen against rebel factions.

  Mary, the tall and charismatic Queen of Scots, loved to disguise herself as a man and wander the streets of Edinburgh in secret. She held numerous balls and parties in which she and her ladies-in-waiting appeared dressed as men. She wasn’t the only woman who passed as a man: after a battle between Sweden and Denmark in August 1567, of the 1500 Swedes left dead on the battlefield, 500 were found to be women. They had worn their hair knotted under their helmets and their clothes and arms were the same as the men’s. They had fought with great valor and strength.

  This novel is based on many of these real events and characters. Unlike William and the other Blackadder men, Alison Blackadder is fictional, inspired by references to courageous female servants and companions who helped the Queen.

  The Raven’s Heart

  Prologue

  Scotland, 1519, twenty-six years before I was born.

  It was deep in winter and the sound of rushing water penetrated even the stone walls of the tower room. Black running water, down below where the castle foundations cleaved to rock on the side of the river bed. Black running water, carrying our cursed family name in every drop. Black running water, carrying our downfall from the west, where our enemies, so close, were paused.

  My grandmother Alison was born a Douglas and by the light in her chamber her hair fell down her back in a streak the color of blood. The man in front of her carried a streak of real blood down the side of his trouser, and his hair was lank and wet. A girl on her knees pushed and shoved at the fire, pumped the bellows, heaved in another log.

  “You are certain?” Alison asked him.

  “He is on his way now.” The man looked down at his boots. “He comes to woo you, he says.”

  “Leading an army!”

  “Aye.”

  She stood tall. “I would rather die.”

  The man looked up at her. “He will not waste a tender moment on you. If you had rather die, you shall. His brothers will simply marry your daughters.”

  “They are babes! Is he such a monster as to marry those oafs to children?”

  “Children grow. All he has to do is betroth them. But he would prefer to seal the bargain with you.”

  Alison was silent for a moment. “And William?”

  The man’s voice was curt. “There can be no male heir.”

  Alison’s face was etched deeply. She was a strong woman, tall, and not yet thirty. Six years a widow, alone in that cold castle bearing the weight of a name that had come to her by marriage. Six years of listening for the sound of hooves in the night, like some soft-furred creature with the predator’s stink ever in its nostrils. She crossed the room and stood in front of the armaments hanging dusty on the wall.

  “I could join those wretches downstairs and fight,” she said softly.

  He watched her back until she turned around. “Don’t be a fool. This is an army coming.”

  “Well, what then?” she snapped. “Should I invite them in? Should I cut the children’s throats and my own right now? Or should we run like cowards and let them have the place?”

  “You must order the garrison to keep the castle secure. They are bound to fail, but you must put up a fight so it is known you resisted. When Hume comes, agree to marry him.”

  “What about William?”

  “I will take William tonight to his cousins. They will see Hume brought to justice and you restored. Marry Hume and protect the girls until the marriage can be annulled. William will live to inherit.”

  This is the moment when I wish I could reach back through the years and warn her somehow, stop her putting in place the train of events that will lead to our ruin. Better to cut William off without his name, or find a place for him in the church, where any man of this family not skilled in warfare has been sent. My grandmother had known love with Robert Blackadder, who died on the Flodden Field six years earlier. She would have been better to cut all of their throats and her own while she had the chance rather than submit to this marriage with David Hume, Baron of Wedderburn.

  She straightened herself and tossed back the red coils of her hair. “Perhaps he has heard of our beauty?” she said. She turned to the serving girl, still kneeling motionless on the
hearth. “Wake the children and bring them. Dress William to ride. Bring scissors.”

  The girl stood, curtsied, and backed out of the room. “She will warn them,” the man said. “Men will desert.”

  “Let them. I would not keep them here to fight to their death. Enough will stay.” She put a hand out and her fingertips found his cheek, brushed its harsh stubble, and then fell to her side.

  “Take William,” she said. “Hume will find his pretty prizes shorn like nuns, and perhaps that will keep us safe a little while. If I were braver I would take a brand from the fire and draw it across all our faces to sully his victory.”

  Down deep in the castle the whisper spread like a licking flame and the smell of fear began to rise. Some took whatever was at hand and slipped out into the night, heading through four miles of darkness to Allanton village. A third of the fighting men stationed at Blackadder Castle were gone by the time the man threw six-year-old William up in front of him on a fresh horse, wrapped a cloak around him, cuffed him when he began to cry, and galloped into the night.

  The two girls, still flat-chested and narrow-hipped, wept as Alison hacked off their curls close to their heads. Weapons were issued, heavy doors bolted and reinforced, look-outs stationed. It had rained heavily in recent weeks and the swollen river rushing past the castle’s foot made it impossible to hear any approach.

  I have never been in that castle, but the memory of it has been handed down to me with my name, the same name as the stones and the river. It came to me in dreams, from the whispering of William, my father, night after night as my eyelids sagged and my breathing slowed, the whispering of theft and murder and revenge. A story I know so well that it is as if I were in the castle that night, waiting with Alison and her daughters, Beatrice and Margaret Blackadder, in the bedchamber. As if I were fleeing with young William, clutching the horse’s mane in terror. No sound except the roar of the river, and not a single soul asleep.

  Part I

  1561

  One

  Scotland, 1561.

  We come across the North Sea, bearing the face of heaven in our hold.

  A fleet of ships brings such a treasure, our galley speeding ahead and the rest following slowly with her horses and fineries, her tapestries and clothes. She returns from thirteen years in the French court to take up the reins of power.

  She has been gone since she was five. Does she remember that she returns to a city of stone? Stone is too old to care what human hands press against it, what blood spills in its crevices. Even the palace, Holyrood, with its French architecture, is made of stone and, looming above it, Edinburgh Castle is hewn from the cliff so that none may attack it and none may escape. She sails to a stone city, an icy country, and a cold people.

  As we draw close to the coast, heavy fog envelops us. Bass Rock materializes through the mist like something enchanted, its sides steep and forbidding, and the gulls scream and wrack and sweep around it in circles. The sea is brown and heaving; the outpour of the Forth River is a scum of Edinburgh’s rot slapping at the side of the ship. She waits on the deck to set eyes on the land, but it refuses to reveal itself through the mist.

  August nineteenth, five of the morning, and the ship lies becalmed. The wind has driven us at a furious pace all the way from France before abandoning us at the last mile. All I can hear is the sound of the gulls and my father calling orders to trim this sail, haul in that rope, edge the wheel around to catch whatever hint of breeze will come.

  When finally we edge our way into the port at Leith, there is no fanfare, no welcoming party, no nobles lining the dock. Bothwell frowns until I can see the crease like a slash between his eyes. The Queen, standing next to him, is silent, her face composed. Her four Marys, in a colorful circle behind, look crestfallen. I am ashamed. She has come from the light and color of France, she has come from fireworks and flowers and an exquisite court, and her only greeting is the gulls.

  Bothwell strides down the deck, anger in every footfall, and halts by my father at the wheel. They speak in low voices for a moment, then my father looks up and orders me over with a sharp movement of his head.

  “The fools have not been watching the wind to know we are early,” Bothwell says to me. “When we dock, you must run to the house of the merchant Andrew Lamb and find if Lord James is on his way. If there is no word, take a horse and ride to Edinburgh to rouse them.”

  “He will ride,” my father says. “None faster.”

  Bothwell swings around and marches back to the Queen, and we busy ourselves so that none of us look upon her as the ship comes alongside the dock. Ropes fly down and men jump from sea to land; all is activity. The air smells of brine as though the mist around us is really a pale ocean and we a panicked school of fish.

  A single fisherman on the dock limps over to see the commotion and stares up at the ship. “Who goes there?” he calls.

  “It is Mary Queen of Scots,” Bothwell calls back in a voice raised to carry across a crowd of hundreds. “Returned at last. Long live the Queen!”

  The fisherman sinks to his knees and bows his head. The first Scot to greet the Queen in her own land, stinking of gut, his hands bloody, a royal scatter of silver scales glinting on his tattered jumper.

  Then the Queen’s laugh rings out like a bell on the morning air, a laugh as if she has no care, as if being met by a fisherman is entirely right and good. We all turn to look at her and the fisherman raises his head too, and it seems at that moment the fog begins to lift a little and our hearts, so used to being in fear, lighten. We are to be ruled by a woman with such a laugh, even if she can barely speak our native tongue any longer.

  She and Bothwell turn to come down the ship and I stand by my father, hungry for a close look at her, until he nudges me sharply and says, “Go!”

  Do I imagine or do her eyes follow as I swing over the ship’s side and climb hand over nimble hand down through the ropes, leap lightly to the ground, and break into a run, swift over the wet cobblestones and into the mist?

  When I pound my fists on the merchant Lamb’s door, he leans out the window in his nightshirt to take my message. Within minutes a servant has brought a pony and I set off for the city, barely four miles away, my legs hard around his shaggy hide, spurring him to a gallop with boots and reins.

  In Edinburgh nothing is ready for the Queen either; she is not expected for three days. I gallop up the deserted High Street as fast as the pony can manage, calling out so that the ordinary people will hear it too: “The Queen is coming! She has landed at Leith! The Queen is coming!”

  By the time I reach the castle gate, a crowd is coming up the High Street behind me. My throat hurts, my voice is rough, the pony is steaming and heaving. The guards step out to halt me and far off in the fog I hear the soft boom of a cannon, the sound traveling all the way from Leith.

  Lord James Stewart himself comes to the gate to take my message and his jaw tightens as he learns his half-sister comes three days early to take back her reign from his bastard regency.

  “Go and tell them a party will come down to meet her,” he says.

  I ride to Bothwell’s stable and trade the exhausted pony for my own mare before galloping out toward Leith again. People are beginning to gather by the roadside with expectant faces as I thunder by and disappear into the fog.

  Lord Bothwell takes my horse by the reins as soon as we pull up in Lamb’s yard. “Your mare will do nicely for the Queen, Robbie.” He gestures to a servant. “Get the side-saddle.”

  The rest of the ship’s men have been begging for horses to carry the royal party and they have assembled a herd of sorry creatures with muddy hides. Few have the saddles that a queen’s party will expect—such is a luxury for commoners. John Knox the preacher, who has declared his implacable hatred for the Queen from the pulpit of Saint Giles, will no doubt be gleeful at this batch of evil omens and take it as further proof that heaven frowns on the monstrous sight of a woman ruling over men.

  We wait in the courtyard
and when Bothwell comes out of Lamb’s house with the Queen, I am close enough to see her face as she looks around at the beasts we have gathered. Her expression stays impassive, but I see her swallow. I put my face close to my mare’s, whispering into her ear that she will carry a queen and to do her proud.

  Bothwell brings the Queen toward me. She steps to the front of the horse and strokes her nose with her gloved hand. “Does this creature have a name?” she asks in French.

  “Artemis, Your Grace,” I stammer.

  She walks around to the mounting block.

  “What is this?” she asks, looking up at the side-saddle.

  Bothwell looks confused. “Madam?”

  She gestures at the saddle. “In France a queen rides astride. Even Catherine de Médici does so.”

  He hesitates. “Shall I find another saddle, Your Grace?”

  She shrugs. “Today I will ride the Scottish way. It is not so far. When my own horses and saddles arrive, you shall see how a woman can ride, Lord Bothwell. I’ll wager I can outride even you.”

  He takes her boot to lift her into the saddle. Under her brocade riding dress I see the flash of breeks and I have to stop myself staring like a cabin boy.

  She swings up lightly and I can see from the way she takes the reins that she knows how to ride. She smiles down at me for a moment and nods. My eyes hurt looking up at her, as if I am staring into the sun. She turns the mare’s head and rides her in small prancing circles.

  Another cannon booms. The lords have arrived to meet the Queen and accompany her to Edinburgh. Bothwell leads the royal party out of the courtyard and the first cheers rise from the crowd in the street of Leith. I let the party pass and fall back to mingle with the stragglers. I need a moment to catch my breath.

  This whole country is starving in the gray, dour winter, though the reformers would never let us admit it. It is less than two years since we lost the Catholic Church and Parliament outlawed the May revelry. We are starving for life, for a brief, fierce moment of joy. We are starved from the lack of something more than toil, cold, violence and the bitter struggle for power.