The Raven's Heart

by Jesse Blackadder

  She takes my arm. “I have word he is with Bothwell.”

  I exhale in relief and sink into a chair by the fire. I gulp back the drink proffered by Sophie’s servant.

  She looks at me for a long moment and then touches my cheek. “What has happened to you?”

  I pull away, but I cannot stop the heat rising to my cheeks.

  “Ah,” Sophie says. “You have taken my advice. Who?”

  I hesitate. “Her name is Angelique and she shares my bedchamber,” I say at last.

  Sophie sighs. “I have seen this in you. But the danger! Under the Queen’s very nose.”

  “I am a master at disguise,” I say. “You taught me yourself! Nobody knows.”

  “In a court, there is always someone who knows. You are not the only spy. Be careful, my dear one.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  It is the beginning of the Queen’s second spring in Scotland. Maitland, her secretary of state, arrives in the presence chamber still coughing with the last of his influenza. The Queen herself is pale and drawn from her own bout of the illness. The news came but a few days ago that not one, but two of her de Guise uncles in France have died in

  the past weeks—one of them shot in the back by a Huguenot assassin in the recent French uprising. She is grief-stricken.

  “Chess?” Rizzio asks me, his eyebrow raised. He waves for me to join him and I cross to where he has laid out the board, in a quiet corner but still in earshot of the Queen’s conversation. I sit down and he makes the first move.

  “I wish you to travel to London with an offer to mediate between the English and the French in this uprising,” the Queen says to Maitland.

  “I think Elizabeth will feel you are too closely aligned to the French to take care of English interests,” Maitland says.

  “You will offer anyway. The real reason for your trip is to discover my cousin’s mind in the matter of my marriage. I must be certain of what I may offer as a dowry to Spain.”

  Rizzio’s eyes do not flicker from our game as I make my next move. “A bold play,” he says, his singer’s voice pitched low so it reaches my ears only. “You are careless, Alison.”

  “I am not certain of this approach,” Maitland says. “The prospect of a Catholic union between you and Don Carlos will threaten Elizabeth’s state.”

  “Then bargain with it,” the Queen says. “Tell her I will consider her wishes in regard to my marriage once the succession has been agreed.”

  Maitland shakes his head. “Cecil will not like it.”

  “Cecil would have me a widow forever and barred from what is rightfully mine,” she snaps. “He is Elizabeth’s adviser, not her king.”

  I make a risky move with a rook, sliding it forward in a sneaking assault on Rizzio’s queen. He examines the board, his brow furrowed. “Do you know how you are watched?” he asks.

  I glance down at the board, then up at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Confronting Elizabeth and Cecil with threats has never worked,” Maitland says. “Let me go to London with an olive branch. I will press hard for your succession rights to be acknowledged and I will put it to them that you are willing to be guided in your choice of husband.”

  The Queen is silent. Rizzio takes my rook with his knight. “You must finish this dalliance, or you both will suffer,” he whispers. “The Queen may play at dressing as a man, but that does not make it safe for you to act as one.”

  I stare at him, my heart thudding. “You are mistaken.”

  “You will bargain with my heart,” the Queen says to Maitland.

  “With all respect, Madam, it is succession and dynasty being negotiated, not your heart.”

  “But it is my heart that will choose in the end.”

  The room seems to still at her utterance. Rizzio leans forward. “Hume is most interested in who you are and what you do,” he murmurs. “Take heed, Alison. You are not as discreet as you believe.”

  I make a clumsy move with a knight, my hand shaking.

  Across the room Maitland takes a deep breath. “Your Grace, it may be that there is a suitable English noble you can marry. One that will please Elizabeth and at the same time strengthen your own claim to that throne. Did you not meet Lord Darnley when you were in France?”

  “He’s a boy, Maitland. This time I must marry a man.”

  “He was a boy when you met him, but he is seventeen now, and by all accounts he is grown to a man. It is said he is tall and strong and fine-faced. Taller than even yourself, Your Grace.”

  Cunning Maitland knows how to woo our tall Queen, ruling a country of stocky men who reach her shoulder.

  “Ride at once,” the Queen says. “Find out who Elizabeth would have me marry and if there be any merit in it. Negotiate hard, Maitland, for I am weary of waiting.”

  She reaches for her cup and sips. “Without my cousin’s knowledge, speak with the Spanish ambassador about the possibility of a marriage between Scotland and Spain.”

  “A dangerous game, Madam,” he says.

  “These are dangerous times,” she replies. “And there is one more thing. Ask Elizabeth if she would be so kind as to release Bothwell from the Tower. He is pardoned of any wrongdoing here.”

  Maitland bows low to hide his furious face, and I look at the Queen in amazement, forgetting Rizzio for an instant. Could it be that Bothwell will rise in favor again?

  “You must become a better player, Mistress Blackadder,” Rizzio says. “It is no sport to finish you off so easily.”

  I turn back to the chessboard. Rizzio has made his move. “Checkmate,” he says calmly. This time his singer’s voice reaches every corner of the chamber.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  “How can he know?” Angi asks. “We never touch outside of this room.”

  I pace across the floor, running my hands through my hair. “Perhaps someone spies on us. Someone who can hear us.”

  She sits up. “Have you told anyone?”

  I halt. “Only Sophie.”

  She strikes the covers with her fist. “We agreed—no one!”

  “I have trusted Sophie with my life,” I say. “It is not her who has spoken. I think Rizzio knows of such things himself and has guessed.”

  “If he has guessed, who else suspects?”

  I take both her hands. “No one. It is a warning only, and we shall heed it.”

  She twists her hands out of mine. “We should ask to be roomed apart. Then no one can accuse us.”

  “You can’t mean that.”

  Her eyes are full of tears. “If we are discovered, I could be sent back to France. There’s nothing for me there, Alison. I would end up in a convent, or as a pauper.”

  I draw her to me and hold her hard, as if I can conjure up safety with the force of my grip.

  “I will ask her again for my castle,” I say at last, stroking her hair. “I will beg her to give it to me before she gains the English throne. We can live there more safely than here.”

  She lays her head on my shoulder and tightens her grip around me. “I’m afraid.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  After Maitland leaves, Lord James takes the Queen in a small party to the island of Loch Leven. The Queen invites John Knox to visit her there and back in Holyrood we hear word that their debate is relatively friendly and that the Queen holds her own in their discussion. She returns to Edinburgh and asks me to attend Knox’s services to find out if his opinion of her has softened.

  I have already redoubled my efforts to gather intelligence on every aspect of the future marriage of the Queen and now I seat myself toward the back of the kirk each week, my head bent. I do not want to be where sharp-eyed Knox might come to know me.

  It is a warm Sunday and the sun is shining in through the windows and falling upon the back of my neck. The memory of last night with Angi replays itself through my body and I struggle to concentrate on Knox’s words. After some time I give up and surrender to the pleasure of memory instead.

  A man creeps in late an
d makes his way across the pews to a space next to me. He seats himself uncomfortably close, jerking me from my reverie. I slide a little farther away but he follows, his knee pushing mine sharply.

  I look sideways, scowling, to find myself staring at William.

  The shock of it rushes through my body and I quickly turn my face away again and bend my head in prayer, my heart pounding.

  As the service ends, he stands and gestures for me to precede him from the kirk. He follows so closely I can feel his breath upon my neck, and once outside he takes my arm and draws me across the High Street into the shadow of the Tolbooth.

  “I heard your ship went down.” My voice quavers.

  “I wouldn’t lose a ship so easily,” he says. “We left my ship at Berwick and took passage on another. The captain was a fool and struck the rocks. Half his men drowned, but we made it to shore. The English took Bothwell but he made me leave without him.”

  He draws out a letter and hands it to me. As I take it, he pulls a ring off his finger and presses it into my palm. “The ring is Bothwell’s token. He’s been released from the Tower, but he dares not return to Scotland. He wants us to deliver his letters to the Queen.”

  “What sort of letters?”

  “He has information that will help her choose a husband. He is with us, Robert. He has sworn to get revenge on Hume for having him imprisoned. Our causes are aligned. We will pass letters back and forth between him and the Queen.”

  I look at him in a moment of hope.

  “Bring me her answer and I will carry it to him,” he says. “I will be at Bothwell’s house.”

  “No. It is safer to meet at Katy’s Tams. I will come of an evening when I have a reply.”

  “At last you can be of some use in your position,” he says.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  The Queen is busy and it is not until the evening that I am in her presence. I make the signal that I have intelligence to share and within a few minutes she has sent those around her on errands and nodded that I should come close.

  I bow low and stretch my hand out. She offers hers and Bothwell’s ring slips between us like two pickpockets.

  “How did you come by this?” she asks.

  “My father brought it with a letter.”

  She takes the parchment from me with eager hands, breaks the seal, and reads it swiftly. At the end she looks at me.

  “He writes of whom I should marry,” she says. “It seems every man in the kingdom has an opinion about my nuptials. And yet, I am inclined to trust Bothwell. He is a man, not a politician.”

  “He would have an answer of you.”

  “Would he now? Well, I shall think on it and decide if I will answer. That is all, Alison.”

  “Your Grace, I wonder—”

  “What is it?”

  I look down, lacing my fingers together. “I wonder if I could speak to you about the matter of Blackadder Castle,” I say, my voice soft. “You promised you would help when you won the throne of England. It’s just that my father is old and I fear he will not live that long.”

  She steps closer to me. “So you doubt me. You too think I will never marry, nor come to the English throne.”

  I bow my head low. “I do not doubt you.”

  She turns from me. “I have every noble in court pressing me to marry. I did not think to find such selfishness from you.”

  “I am sorry, Your Grace,” I say, backing away.

  “You should be. Do not speak of this again. I have made a promise and you insult me by doubting it. Do you think your castle is more important than my own marriage?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Leave me,” she says. “I have no stomach for this tonight.”

  Seventeen

  Maitland returns from England with word that Elizabeth will not offer an opinion on our Queen’s suitors, only an ultimatum that the friendship between Scotland and England will cease if the Queen marries one of the imperial sons of France or Spain.

  It is typical of Elizabeth, I am coming to understand, but it brings our Queen no closer to a husband and no closer to the English throne. I am farther away from my castle than ever and the Queen is still angry with me. Rizzio’s eyes seem to constantly burn into my back and the tension casts a shadow between Angi and me. We never speak together outside of the confines of our room, and inside it we converse only in whispers. The only place I forget my fear for a moment is in the blaze of our lovemaking.

  The Queen orders her court packed up for a progress and, to show her continuing displeasure, she does not include me. She leaves Holyrood behind and rides to the west and southwest of the country to hunt and hawk with the nobles of the land, and takes her new bedchamber woman, Margaret Carwood, to attend to her needs.

  Left alone with Angi, away from Rizzio’s curiosity, I stamp my love across her body again and again, imprinting myself there to drive away our fears. I talk to her every night of how I shall win the Queen’s favor again.

  “You could leave,” Angi says one night when we have fallen back against the pillows, flushed and sweaty from pleasure.

  “What do you mean?” I coil her silver necklace around my finger.

  “We could sail to France together. Make a life there, away from this danger.”

  I raise myself to an elbow. “As what, chérie? I have no prospects there.”

  She turns to me and grips my hand. “There is danger all around us here. While the Queen is away we could flee. By the time she comes back we will be long gone. Paris is not like Edinburgh. We could find work somewhere. Even living poor would be safer than this.”

  I stare at her. “You’re serious.”

  “The Queen holds you with a promise that could take a lifetime to fruit,” she says. “We court danger every day. Remember what happens to those who displease her?”

  I sit up, pulling my knees to my chest and shaking my head. “I cannot.”

  “It’s not worth dying for.”

  “But men of my family have died for the castle, and now I am charged with gaining it for my bloodline. If you think I can leave it, you don’t understand.”

  She turns over to face the wall, her back stiff.

  I sit, my chin resting on my knees. “You could go back to France,” I say at last. “You will be safe and I will send for you as soon as she grants the castle to me.”

  She rolls toward me. “You would do so?”

  “I would do anything to protect you.”

  She reaches out her arms and draws me down and I press my face into her neck. Then she turns my head and kisses me and the desire in it makes us both pant.

  “I won’t let you stay here alone,” she whispers.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  The Queen and her party return to Edinburgh as the cold begins. Melancholy overtakes her almost at once and within days she begins to weep. Her physician, Arnault, prescribes diets and gentle exercise, but nothing helps for more than a few days. In December, after her twenty-first birthday, she takes to bed with a pain in her right side and it is not until January that she is well enough to rise again.

  It is 1564 and still there is no husband. She is a widow, and even one who is as famed for her beauty as our Queen has no eternal hold on her looks. Time chips away at the promise of that porcelain skin; the English succession is no closer. The winter is bitterly cold for the third year in a row and there are reports that children are starving in the countryside.

  I bring a letter from Bothwell into the presence chamber one evening, when Rizzio and the musicians have put on another concert to try and raise her spirits. When they have finished playing, she beckons me to her.

  “Do you bring any happy news?” she asks.

  “Perhaps Lord Bothwell’s letter carries some,” I say.

  She takes it. “I have missed you, Alison. It is a pity you did not come to the west with us. You would have liked the hunting.”

  I dare to look at her directly. “I missed you too, Your Grace.”

  She opens
the letter. “Bothwell asks me to meet him at Dunbar.”

  “He wants to speak about your marriage. It’s not safe for him to come to Edinburgh, but Dunbar is closer to the border and he can slip across from England.”

  “My advisers would prefer me not to see him.” Then she smiles. “I am sick of my advisers, Alison. What say we take a small group and ride in disguise?”

  I smile back at her, and it is like spring coming again. “When shall we go?”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Just half a dozen of us accompany the Queen to Dunbar, and she leads us in a spirited gallop. As she and I thunder ahead she laughs.

  “I needed this, not bed rest!”

  “I too,” I call back.

  “Let’s keep going,” she says. “Two men seeking adventure and living rough. I am sick to death of this search for a husband.”

  “Willingly!” I say, and for a moment it is true. I would ride with her into the hills without a backward glance.

  But instead we come around the coast to Dunbar, where the castle squats, a heavy fortress on the cliff over the ocean, the waves crashing on its very foundations. As we ride up with the smell of salt sharp in our nostrils, the Queen looks up at the battlements.

  “I do not like this place,” she says, shuddering.

  The castle warden and his servants come out to greet us. As they open the gates, the Queen turns to me.

  “Bothwell said he would wait in the town tavern until he had word. Go and find him. We must return to Edinburgh tonight.”

  I dismount and hand my horse to one of the servants. It is a cold afternoon, with rain sweeping toward us across the sea. When the gate closes, leaving me outside, I feel suddenly exposed.

  I pull my cloak tightly around me and draw the hood over my head. The road into the village is empty, every door firmly closed. I soften my step so that my boots do not make a sound on the cobblestones.

  A door opens behind me and I hear footsteps, measured and regular. The evening is closing in and the first raindrops spatter on my cloak. When the footsteps speed up, I break into a run, but I am not fast enough. Before I can reach the tavern, my pursuer drags me into a brutal hold.