The Raven's Heart

by Jesse Blackadder

“I will go.” I stand up. “I will plead your cause.”

  “Take some of my men with you and make haste,” says Murray.

  I can count those who have lost their lives through displeasing the Queen. Chastelard, the beheaded poet. John Gordon, the beheaded rebel. The captain of the Gordon castle, kicking and swinging from the rope that hanged him. The Queen’s apothecary, hanged in front of a jeering crowd. Angelique.

  The thought of Bothwell joining them makes me push the horse faster and faster down the road in the dark to keep ahead of the feeling. Faster than Murray’s men, whipping their horses to keep up with me. Faster than any messenger from Lord James carrying a request for a death sentence. Faster than my own thoughts. Faster than the whispered conversation between Bothwell and William when they thought I was asleep.

  Only one thought catches up with me before I reach Stirling. Did Bothwell truly think I was asleep—or did he intend for me to hear?

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  The Queen’s banquet for her servants is underway when at last I force my groaning, lathered horse up the steep hill at Stirling and into the courtyard.

  The great hall is crowded with those who invisibly keep the royal castle running. The kitchen hands, the cooks, the scullery maids, the gardeners. The higher ranked servants are seated around the tables that normally they serve. The lower ranked are crowded together at the rear, looking around this forbidden room with wide eyes. On the tables are foods they are rarely permitted to eat: the succulent freshly roasted meats and soft white manchet bread of the nobility.

  I stand still, catching my breath, looking out for the Queen. Lord Darnley is sitting on the dais talking to Beaton and Seton. The Queen herself is carrying a tray of food. In the center of the room some of the servants have pulled back the chairs and are striking up a lively jig. She approaches them, lays down her tray, and joins hands with the baker to dance a polka. The rest of the kitchen servants surround them, stamping and clapping.

  “When the Queen must woo her own servants, rebellion is brewing somewhere,” Rizzio says from behind me.

  “I must speak to her,” I say. “They found Bothwell guilty.”

  “The wrong word here could hang him. She will send him to his death if she thinks he has besmirched her honor.”

  I watch her, laughing out loud as she takes another servant by the hands to swing around in a circle.

  “There is one chance,” he says. “Many of the lords do not want this marriage and she fears Lord James will rally them to oppose it. Freeing Bothwell will be a slap in the face for Lord James, and at the moment she longs to put him in his place.”

  “I will make sure she knows that,” I say.

  “No. Let me.”

  I hate that I must trust him with this task. An unbidden thought of Angi makes me shiver and I cannot maintain my usual indifferent semblance. I turn to him, my fists clenched.

  “If you are untrue in this, Italian, I will come to you one night and carve such atrocities into your flesh that you will beg me to kill you more quickly.”

  The vehemence in my whisper causes him to blink and he walks away without a word.

  The Queen has returned to the dais and Rizzio makes his way over to her. He speaks briefly to Beaton before sitting down by the Queen. He leans across and says something that makes her laugh. At the same moment, Beaton approaches Darnley and draws him to his feet and onto the dance floor.

  Alone with her, Rizzio draws closer, and both their faces grow serious as he speaks. Then they draw apart, the Queen frowning. Darnley comes back from dancing and she turns to him and laughs as if the whole matter is nothing, her face moving from contemplative to delighted in an instant. She takes his hand and rises and they move onto the dance floor, so much taller than everyone else, like a queen and her consort from some glorious fable. When I meet Rizzio’s eyes, he gives the tiniest shrug of his shoulders.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  I leave the feast, unable to stomach such merrymaking. I take to my chamber but do not sleep, and at first light I am up. I come into the hall as the last few servants are stirring and the musicians are stretching their tired arms and sucking their bleeding fingertips. I come across two figures curled up together in their grease-smeared clothes, and as they sleep I see it is the Queen’s baker and a younger boy from the kitchen, probably the one who kills and plucks the birds with deft fingers. His fair hair falls across his pink cheeks, lying on the baker’s chest, gently rising and falling. I stare at their soft faces and the sight hurts.

  I make my way outside and through the garden to climb up on the parapet that runs along the castle wall so the monarch may stroll its edges and survey the kingdom in all directions. I feel a stirring in my blood that I had not thought to know again.

  I stare down at the gardens on the plain below and then across to the forest blanketing the hills beyond, the hunting ground where she will go today after deer. She will have her huntsman strike one down for her and never give it another thought. Does she think of those men, and the woman, she has ordered killed? Or are they as the deer: sport, unmourned and unremembered?

  Abruptly I turn away from the forest vista and stride the length of the parapet. I am damned if she will take one more thing from me. I will go to her at the start of today’s hunt. I will go on my knees and beg.

  The party is gathering in the courtyard, the dogs whining and anxious to be off in the spring sunshine. Servants are holding the horses but everyone is running late this morning after the evening before; riderless horses are everywhere and those who are dressed and ready stand about sipping hot spiced wine and blinking in the sunlight.

  As the Queen emerges, fresh and untroubled as if she has slept long and deep, a rider arrives at the gates with a commotion of hooves. I hasten my step, but there are dogs and horses and servants and nobles between me and her and I must dodge and weave. As the messenger is being brought inside, Rizzio, with his faultless timing, steps out from behind a horse into my path.

  “Let me pass!” I push him.

  “If she has decided he will hang, do you think you will change her mind, here in front of her hunting party?”

  I try to shoulder past, but his delay has worked. The messenger is down on one knee before the Queen, head bowed, parchment in his outstretched hands.

  “The matter of Lord Bothwell?” She unfurls the message and reads it. “Rizzio?”

  “Madam?” He steps through the horses and strides to her side.

  “Pray attend to this message for me.” She hands him the scroll. “Lord James wishes to know what sentence should be laid on Lord Bothwell for his misdemeanors. Draft an answer and see that the messenger returns at once with a good-sized escort. We would not like our instructions to be misunderstood.”

  Rizzio nods, and I edge closer. The Queen steps onto the mounting block and takes the reins in her hand.

  “Lord Bothwell has caused me a bother once more, but he has ever been my loyal servant,” she says loudly. “I impose a punishment of one thousand marks on him to be paid to the Crown, and I order him to return to France to his post of Captain of the Scottish Guard. Rizzio, arrange his passage. It would be expedient if he were to leave immediately.”

  My legs shudder and give way beneath me and I slump down till I am sitting on a mounting block.

  The Queen swings onto her horse. The master blows his pipe, the hounds burst into full tongue. All around me is a confusion of clattering hooves and wagging tails, and then they are gone, streaming out the gate and down the hill, leaving the courtyard silent. A stable-boy helps me to my shaky feet. Rizzio gives me an enigmatic Italian smile and disappears.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  There are weeks of meetings and discussions, and gatherings of the lords where the Queen cajoles, threatens, and makes promises to garner their support. She negotiates with ambassadors and sends letters to shore up support from Spain and France. A rift widens between those lords who would lend their weight to the marriage and those who implacably oppose it.
>
  I come to the Queen’s presence chamber one morning to find Lord Hume and some of his men among the crowd waiting to confer with the Queen. I have not seen him since I returned from France and even now, though I am disguised, the sight of him gives me a rush of fear.

  I am wary of asking the Queen about him, but now that Rizzio and I have made an alliance—unholy though it is—I go to his secretary’s desk of papers and maps.

  “Is Lord Hume staying long at court?”

  “For a while,” Rizzio says, scribbling. “The Queen needs all her supporters close by. He’s a Catholic, you know. He thinks the marriage is a good idea.”

  “Does he know of her promise to me?”

  Rizzio lays down his quill, cracks his knuckles, and rubs his face. “As far as I know, he does not. But you should keep out of his way, lest he start asking questions once he hears the Blackadder name. I have something to keep you busy.”

  “Not Darnley.”

  “You have a knack with him. I need to help the Queen work out who to bribe and with what.”

  It is a natural division of labor. Rizzio, with his carefully garnered knowledge of power and title in Scotland, works with the Queen while she negotiates and pressures and bribes the reluctant lords. I keep Darnley’s worst excesses under control until the deal is made and they are safely married.

  Lord James, when he cannot change his sister’s mind, withdraws from court. Once he is gone, rumors spread that he is plotting with the other lords who oppose the marriage. It is whispered that if the nuptials go ahead, a coalition of lords will rise up in arms against the Queen and Darnley. John Knox condemns the Queen and her proposed marriage from his pulpit and talks of taking up arms to defend the reformed faith.

  Such a brutal whirl of diplomacy leaves the Queen with little time to register Lord Darnley’s behavior. I have seen hints of his character flaws, but the ugliness of his transformation now that he has won the Queen’s pledge is a shock.

  Rizzio calls me to Darnley’s rooms late one night, when most of the palace has retired from the presence chamber. I can hear banging and crashing issuing from the bedchamber, and Rizzio has lost his usual calm.

  “He will ruin things for himself and all of us,” he says in a low voice when I enter. “Drink is usually enough to stop him, but tonight it’s made him worse. He’s threatening to go to the Queen’s bedchamber and take his husbandly rights, and the fool is in such a fury he might try it.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I ask.

  He hesitates. “He needs to lie with someone.”

  “Finding a whore in Stirling shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “Not a whore, Robert, a boy. One who can be paid enough to keep his mouth shut.”

  I will not let myself think of how it will be for the Queen in the marriage bed of such a man. “Where am I to find a boy at this hour of the night?”

  “Surely there is some boy here in the castle who knows about such matters, and can be paid into silence?” He sees the look on my face change. “I thought you would know one.” He presses a heavy pouch into my hands. “Pay whatever it takes. Hurry.”

  The door to the bedchamber flies open and Darnley stands there, clothes crumpled, cheeks flushed, hair wild. Rizzio jumps up and goes to him.

  “Get away from me,” Darnley says. “I’m going to the Queen. I’m sick of your crippled favors.”

  “The Queen is indisposed, but there are other pleasures in store for you.” Rizzio leans closer to speak in Darnley’s ear, while gesturing at me to go.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  They are sleeping near each other under a table in the kitchen. I put one hand on the boy’s shoulder and clamp my other hand over his mouth to muffle his waking. The baker does not move and no one else stirs either as I lead the boy outside. I whisper in his ear and his eyes widen. I draw out the coins, the sort of money a kitchen boy will never see in his life. It takes only a moment for him to make a choice. Still believing he has one.

  “Should you ever speak of it, you will die or wish you were dead. Not even to him.” I jerk my head in the direction of the kitchen.

  I have brought a cloak with a deep hood, large enough to cover him completely. I lead him past the guards, who know I am on Rizzio’s business, all the way to the King’s bedchamber. Rizzio has Darnley on the bed, talking to him quietly. He waves us over.

  When the boy is close enough, Rizzio gestures at me to pull back his hood. In spite of the kitchen grime upon him, he is a handsome enough lad, broad-chested and fair with strong arms and blue eyes.

  Rizzio stands and moves away from the bed, and he and I back out of the room. I draw the door closed.

  “Let’s hope he’s tougher than he looks,” says Rizzio, sinking to a chair. “When Darnley is aroused in rut, he’s an animal.”

  “I will bid you good night, then.”

  “You will need to return the boy. It won’t be long. Have a drink.”

  Indeed it is not long before a sharp cry issues from the room. Rizzio grins lewdly, but the cries rise in pitch and even he begins to look concerned. Sickened, I walk to the fireplace and crouch in front of it, poking at the logs.

  “Let us hope he doesn’t start screaming,” Rizzio says.

  The sounds reach a fevered pitch and abruptly cease. Rizzio waits a few minutes, head cocked, and stands. “I’ll get him.”

  When he emerges from the King’s bedchamber, the boy gives me one hunted look and lowers his face, streaked with tears. He is limping painfully, but when I put out a hand to assist him, he jerks away and pulls the cloak over his head.

  “He’s asleep, thank God,” Rizzio says. “The boy has done well. Next time we’ll have some eggs—the whites help to ease the passage.”

  The boy flinches, and I lead him out of the room. We walk slowly back around the courtyard, down the hill to the kitchen entrance. He turns to go inside and I stop him and hand over the bag of coins. He takes it without a word.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know it would be—”

  He is gone, down the steps and into the darkness.

  Twenty-seven

  The Queen travels all over the countryside building support. We stay at Ruthven Castle, Seton Palace, Callendar House. All the time the threat of rebellion by the recalcitrant lords lies heavy upon us. The Queen changes our departure and arrival times at the last minute, alters our routes and destinations at short notice, and never travels without an armed guard. On Rizzio’s advice she sends a letter recalling Bothwell from France.

  In Stirling I returned the kitchen boy to Darnley’s clutches several times, until he disappeared one night, leaving even the baker no word. At each new stop Rizzio sends me to find a boy to satisfy Darnley. Few of them can be prevailed upon to go to him a second time.

  When we are back in Edinburgh, the Queen calls me into her chamber one evening after a long day of meetings. Rizzio is seated by her side and the Marys are playing cards with Darnley.

  “Darnley has asked that we go out tonight, he and I and yourself, in disguise,” she says.

  Rizzio looks up, alarmed. “Madam, there is great unrest in the city. Pray find some other entertainment.”

  But the Queen sets her face. “I wish to see the mood of the people. The marriage will go ahead and I would know what will reconcile them to it. It will be good for Darnley too, to have some contact with the ordinary people he will rule.”

  “At least have Robert carry your pistolet,” Rizzio says.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  The stones, having baked in the summer sun all day, hold the heat like a fireplace and I can feel it burning up through the soles of my shoes. The Queen’s pistol lies hard against my side under my cloak.

  “God, I had forgotten how it stinks here.” Darnley wrinkles up his nose as we pass the dark entrance of a wynd.

  I shoot him a warning look. “Shh!” When we are in disguise, I am their equal. For a short time they both follow my lead and, no matter how I have come to despise him, it is a hea
dy feeling to have a queen and her betrothed treading in my footsteps.

  “Let’s go somewhere different this time,” Darnley says. “What about that tavern down past Blackfriar’s? The Siren?”

  I shake my head. “It’s full of sailors and thieves.”

  He shrugs and turns on his heel into Blackfriar’s Wynd. The Queen smiles at me and follows him, and I have no choice but to trail behind. It is crowded and I keep a sharp watch for pickpockets.

  We reach the Siren and push inside. It’s stiflingly hot, packed with men, voices at a roar. It smells of sweat and ale and the street. I gesture to them to wait while I buy drinks. I will not have trouble finding them—they are both a good head taller than everyone else there. I elbow through the crowd to the bar.

  The clamor of voices does not diminish, but there is something new and sinister in its tone. I notice sly glances at the two welldressed merchants, too tall and too bright in spite of my care in disguise. This is a working-man’s tavern, for laborers and seamen and those with a trade. Darnley and the Queen are too obviously ill at ease.

  I push my way back to them with the ale and we drink, standing close together. No one strikes up a conversation with us.

  “Let’s go,” I say. This time there is no argument. They both nod. I can see the Queen is afraid. The cups go to a passing servant and we jostle toward the door.

  I am the first out on the street. I look back to check they are behind me and feel the sly creep of fingers along my thigh. In a flash I have caught an ear and the pickpocket gives a yelp. I twist his ear long enough to frighten him and then allow him to squirm out of my grip and scramble away.

  When I turn back, I see he was only a diversion. Darnley is being held from behind by a man with arms like an executioner, and there is a gleam of steel at his throat. The Queen has her back to the wall, staring at a second man who is pointing his dagger at her.

  “Bit grand for this kind of place, eh?” the one holding Darnley grunts. “No doubt you have a pretty purse, though, and if you give it to us you can get back to the High Street where you belong.”