The Raven's Heart

by Jesse Blackadder

  “Lord Bothwell, you are needed.” La Flamina emerges from the press of bodies to stand in front of us. “We are short of partners. Would you join me?”

  “It would be a pleasure.” He takes her outstretched hand. “Excuse me, Robert.”

  I stand with my back to the wall. When he has gone, I remember some of the tricks I knew as a boy. I slip out of that merry, jostling room like a cat, and no one sees.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Fat snowflakes drop slowly to the ground in the courtyard and the sounds of merriment from the Queen’s chambers drift down among them. I stand still. Soon the marks of my feet across the courtyard will be obliterated.

  A glow shines from the Abbey where the King, if Rizzio is to be believed, is spending the night on his knees. I cross the white expanse of snow and step into the vestibule. The heavy door is ajar and I creep inside to spy on him.

  Candles are burning near the altar. I walk up the aisle like a soldier, silent on the balls of my feet, peering to find him.

  A rumble from the front pew startles me. Darnley is stretched out fast asleep, his cloak wrapped around him. His mouth is open and his cheeks are flushed. As I draw near, I can smell the wine on his breath and another snore rasps out.

  I stare down at him. My hopes, the Queen’s hopes, the hopes of a kingdom rest on this boy. I should slice his throat right now and put an end to it. But this snoring King brings the Queen closer to the English throne and me closer to my castle.

  The snow is still falling as I step outside and shut the door behind me. I can see my tracks on the snow and beside them another, fresher pair.

  “It is only I,” Bothwell says softly and steps forward from where he’s been waiting in the shadows. He wipes the melted snow from my cheek with his thumb, and takes my face in his hands.

  Kissing him is nothing like kissing Angelique. He is not a tall man, but he is strong and thickset. He has a grip that could kill—and yet he kisses me tenderly. He draws his lips from mine and looks at me with a silent question.

  I lead him out of the Abbey, around to the small gate into the cemetery, the snow falling on our cloaks. My feet follow the path through the graves of their own accord. The old gate creaks open and we slip out unseen.

  We kiss against the wall. His cheek is rough against mine; he has hair where I have known only soft skin and there is nothing sweet in the taste of him, but I press against him as though we might become fused.

  Voices and footsteps echo from up the street and he pulls his cloak around us both. I tuck my head down into his warmth as the revelers pass us, laughing and whistling. When they are gone, he moves me to his side, still under his cloak, and we run away from curious eyes, through the snow to his lodgings in the Canongate. He bars the door behind us.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  I am twenty years old and I have never known a man. I wish that he would blow out the candle, but instead he stokes the fire high and lights more candles while I stand in the middle of his chamber and melted snow runs off me. Then he stands in front of me, reaches out, and removes my cloak.

  He takes a long time to undress me, as if he knows that I could take flight. He removes my clothes item by item, stopping to peel off his own as well, so that by the time I am stripped to my skin, he is too.

  My curiosity is no less than his. He steps closer to hold me when I start to shiver, and he is all hair and muscle, soft and hard at once. His member, that strange thing, is straining upward, pressed between our bodies, and at first I cannot even look at it, but pull him to the bed so we can hide under the covers. Then he pulls me on top of him and in a moment I am kissing him in earnest.

  But when he rolls on top and penetrates me, it hurts. I stiffen and cry out and he holds me still and kisses my neck and strokes me and waits until I begin to move again. As his own pleasure mounts he moves faster, driving into me. I cannot tell if this feeling is pleasure or pain; it is both. He makes sounds like an animal and all I can do is hold on with arms and legs. I could not escape from him if I tried. At last, with a deep thrust, he groans and falls heavily across my body so I am pinned and can hardly breathe beneath him. We are both slick with sweat and I am sore, aroused, aching, awaiting release.

  Another sound comes from his mouth and I realize he is snoring. I hold myself still, though I would like to batter his barrel chest with my fists. When I cannot bear the weight of him any longer, I squirm and push him, and he wakes enough to slither off me and murmur a half-question. I turn away from him and he rolls up behind me, pressing his body the length of mine. He is asleep again in an instant. I do not want his touch, but it is cold without it.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  I wake, slowly, with a headache from the wine. I can see by the light in the room that it is late on Christmas morning. I raise my head. Bothwell is crouching by the fire, blowing it into life. I watch him coax until it is crackling. When he sees I am awake, he strides back across the room as if he scarcely notices he is naked. He kneels by the bed. When he sees the look on my face, he sighs.

  “I did not do well by you last night.” He strokes my cheek. “Wine and anticipation—they make everything too fast. But let me make it up to you. I am not such a ruffian as you think.”

  I roll away from him, but he gets into the bed nevertheless and lies behind me. His warmth is comforting and he strokes my hair and kisses my neck and though I wish nothing more than to find my clothes and leave, my body has other ideas. Having been denied so long, my desire flares up. I lie still, fighting it, but when his hand reaches around to my breast, a sound escapes my lips and then our two bodies are speaking to each other, moving, sliding, pressing, and when he finally reaches his fingers between my legs, it is so hot and slippery there that we both gasp.

  “There is a thing they do, in France,” he says, breathing heavily, “For a woman’s pleasure; let me show you.”

  He rolls me onto my back and moves down my body. I arch up to meet his tongue and grip his hair with both hands. He is not as deft as Angi was but my body does not care. I do not want tenderness. I find his hand and push his fingers inside me and the combination of tongue and fingers and need pushes me over the edge and I am crying out. Before I finish shuddering, he lifts himself up and slides inside me, and it doesn’t hurt but wrings a groan from my lips. I wrap my legs around him and arch my back. Our cries are matched until he shudders and thrusts and collapses.

  This time he doesn’t fall asleep, but pulls me close till we are lying side by side, while our panting subsides and the sweat cools. I pull the covers up against the day’s chill.

  “Now I know you, but you are as much of a mystery as ever,” he says, his hand on my hip. “Last night I could swear you were a virgin. This morning you know pleasure well.”

  When I will not be drawn, he smiles and kisses me. “I have found out some of your secrets, and I intend to find out more. But for that we need sustenance. Let’s eat.”

  I sit up. “I need to get back. The Queen will be wondering—”

  He laughs. “The Queen will live without you today. Half the palace will be sleeping off the wine. I will send a message that I have need of you.”

  Breakfast comes: hot, creamy porridge. Bothwell despatches a messenger to the Queen. We eat our fill and he draws me back down into his arms. This time he lies on his back and guides me to straddle him and the shock of him inside again is still pleasure-pain-pleasure and I do not know which one makes me cry out. My pleasure does not peak this time but it is satisfying anyway. Afterward I fall asleep against him.

  It continues for the rest of the day. I keep expecting that he will rise and get dressed and go about his business, but when he does rise it is to stoke the fire and bring me food and drink or use the privy. He comes back to the bed and uncovers me. He explores my body with his eyes, fingers, tongue, lips, looking for my secrets and finding them.

  I become brave enough to explore him too, all the ways he is so different, and some not so different. The snow falls outside in big, soft flakes
, muffling us from the world. The daylight hours are so short that we are soon back in the no-time of darkness again, with the luxury of warm lodgings and a seemingly endless supply of wood and coal.

  Neither of us speaks of what is outside the room, but as the morning light seeps in for the second time, perhaps we somehow sense the footfalls of someone sent from the palace, for we take our pleasure urgently. We roll across the bed and snarl and bite like wolves. I rake his back, I wrap my legs around him and hold hard. Neither of us cares about making a sound, and this time it happens when I am on top, astride, pushing against him. He takes my hips and drives up into me and my head arches back and I forget everything.

  Before our breath has quite subsided there is a soft knock at the door. He gets up, speaks to the servant, then comes back to the bed and strokes my face.

  “Has she sent for us?” I ask, my hand on his chest.

  He nods.

  He helps me wash, and then helps me dress in my boy’s clothes. When I am ready, he shakes his head.

  “You still look like a boy when you are dressed. But you are more a woman than many who wear a skirt. I am confused.”

  I kiss him. “Perhaps that’s what you like.”

  He grins and pulls me close. “You have been assisting me with some errands. I do not expect she will ask you about them.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  In the Queen’s presence chamber it’s as if we never left. Even at this early hour of the morning, the musicians are playing, Rizzio is dealing cards, and there are courtiers and nobles dancing. Food and wine are laid out in abundance.

  The Queen gestures for us to come before her and we both bow.

  “I trust you did not work Robert too hard during the Christmas festivities,” she says to Bothwell.

  “No, Your Grace.” He rises. “I needed help with one or two matters and Robert was good enough to assist.”

  I dare to glance up, having worked to set my face into its usual countenance. I can feel Rizzio watching, but I keep my attentive gaze on the Queen.

  “Good,” she says. “For I have need of him. The King is returning to Peebles for more hunting and I wish Robert to go in his party.”

  She is staring at me hard and it takes all my years of practice to stay impassive. My heart sinks at the prospect of the King’s hunting party. But until I get my castle back, I still serve her and these are my orders.

  “They are leaving before lunch,” she says. “You will need to hasten to make ready. Bothwell, you and I will speak this afternoon.”

  Dismissed, I bow, rise, turn, and am out of the room without a backward glance. Within the hour I am mounted up in the courtyard with the rest of the party, waiting for the King. He emerges with a set face, mounts the latest horse with the misfortune to be assigned to him, and leads us out through the gate, clattering and slithering on the frozen snow. The Queen does not appear to bid us farewell. Neither does Bothwell.

  Thirty-one

  We arrive at Peebles half-frozen and the weather is so bad that even Darnley, in his rage, hesitates to take out a hunting party. Food is starting to run short already and every meal has the same salted flavor. We wash it down with ale, having exhausted the wine stocks of Traquair House.

  It is snowing and time hangs heavily on us. There are two things that occupy my daydreams: Lord Bothwell and Blackadder Castle. I imagine myself riding up to the courtyard of Blackadder Castle, seeing its turrets above the trees from a distance. I imagine the clatter that my horse’s hooves will make on the flagstones and how the heavy door will open to admit me. In my daydreams I am not alone there: Bothwell is by my side.

  Darnley sits by the fire for hours with his distant cousin George Douglas, bastard son of the Earl of Angus, who talks into his ear late every night. George is young and lithe, with the leanness that comes from being illegitimate and hungering for the privileges his paternity should have brought. I watch their heads low together and the same expression on their pretty faces. George, for some reason of his own, feeds the fire of the King’s wrath. At least he keeps him so drunk with whisky that by the end of each evening, Darnley can barely walk and there is no question of my finding someone for his bed.

  One afternoon a group of riders canters into the courtyard, their cloaks covered in snow. Starved for news, we attendants crowd to the windows to watch their arrival. A tall figure dismounts with an easy swing and tosses the reins to one of his men.

  “A visitor,” says George, peering down through the snowflakes.

  Darnley raises his head. “Who?”

  George shrugs. “Someone most interested in seeing you, to ride in such filthy weather.”

  In a few minutes a servant taps on the door to Darnley’s chamber. “David Hume, Baron of Wedderburn,” he announces and the man pushes past him and strides into the room.

  On hearing the name of Hume, I visibly start. Deep in the corner of Scotland dominated by Hume, I do not have the Queen’s protection.

  “Your Grace.” David Hume bows. “What has brought you so far from court in this evil winter?”

  Darnley scowls. “Court is not to my liking.”

  “You have chosen an unfortunate time to enjoy the Borders’ hospitality. There is little good food and not much hunting to be had in such a season.”

  “It is a vile corner of the world indeed.”

  David bows his head. “Your Grace, I have taken the liberty of bringing some modest supplies from Wedderburn and one of my cooks. It is a meager offering, but I hoped to provide you with a meal more fitting for a king.”

  Darnley perks up. “Did you bring any wine, perchance?”

  David smiles. “My man carries a haunch of venison that has been steeping in claret since yesterday. And we bring flagons of our finest French wine.”

  “Well, break them open. My blood’s freezing on nothing but whisky and ale.”

  I shrink back against the wall although fortunately Darnley’s manners do not extend to introducing David Hume to the members of his own party and I am able to melt farther into the background. By the time darkness falls and Hume’s men are serving us a feast of Lorraine soup and succulent venison, Darnley is flushed in the face from drinking and beginning to slur his words.

  After dinner Darnley, David Hume, and George Douglas draw close to the fire and stoke it till it roars. Their discussion is intent, of some secret matter I surmise. I would leave it be, but I see Darnley’s expression change and an evil grin come to his face. The Queen has charged me with keeping watch on him.

  I slide along the wall, gradually moving closer to them. The candles sway and gutter and the wind moans as it tries to claw its way inside. Eventually I am close enough to catch Rizzio’s name in their mutterings.

  “She prefers him,” Darnley bursts out. “In her chamber, all hours.”

  “Hush.” David puts a hand on Darnley’s arm and leans in. I cannot hear his voice. George is nodding. There is something in their expressions that makes the hair rise on the back of my neck. I edge a little closer.

  “We shall do it, then,” Darnley says, “with Ruthven. Teach them a lesson.”

  David Hume catches sight of me and his eyes narrow. “Who is this listening so close to us?”

  Darnley half turns to see me. “Robert. Another of the Queen’s beloved pets.”

  I bob my head to hide my face. “Your Grace, shall I make your bed ready?”

  “By God, yes.” Darnley goes to rise, but staggers. David Hume jumps to his feet and catches him before he can fall.

  “Warm my bed and put some whisky out,” Darnley says, his words slurring even more.

  “At once, Your Grace.” I step back quickly. It seems I can feel David Hume’s gaze burning into my back as I leave the room.

  I reach Darnley’s bedchamber and prepare his bed, my fear making my stomach lurch. There is a crash at the door and he stumbles into the room. I take his arm, giving silent thanks that David Hume did not accompany him, and lead him to the bed.

  “Take
my clothes off,” he says as he sits on the edge.

  He takes a deep swig from his flask as I kneel and pull off his boot.

  “David Hume was very interested in you.”

  “I can’t imagine why.” I tug off the second boot.

  “I told him nobody knows what you are underneath,” Darnley says, as I start to unlace his jerkin. “I told him the Queen allows you all sorts of liberties.”

  I move to the other shoulder and pull at the leather laces till the jerkin comes loose. My hands are shaking.

  “You and Rizzio!” he bursts out. “She lets you in her chambers at all hours, she whispers secrets to you. I bet she lets Rizzio into her very bed, where she will not allow me!”

  “Your Grace.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “I swear to you that the Queen is your faithful wife in every way. Rizzio amuses her, that is all. Do you not remember how he helped you to marry her?”

  He stares at me and lets out a burp. His breath stinks of wine and whisky and I must school my features not to show my disgust.

  “He is a misshapen devil,” he mutters, and swigs his whisky again. “And you are too secretive.”

  “Are we to hunt tomorrow?”

  Darnley climbs clumsily into the bed. “Very interested, he was,” he murmurs as I draw the flask from his fingers.

  I take a deep breath. “Did you tell him my family name?”

  He mutters something I cannot understand and starts to snore. I breathe out and my body sags.

  Any Blackadder to step into this territory has cause to fear for his life. David Hume, if he knows I am a Blackadder, may decide to find me in the night and cut my throat. I dare not leave Darnley’s bedchamber. I pull one of his heavy cloaks over me and curl up in a chair by the fire. I pray that the guards outside the door will stand firm if anyone tries to enter.

  I have dreamed of Bothwell like a young woman dreams of a lover, but now I come to think I should be like the Queen and marry with a firm eye on the advantage it will bring me. Bothwell is Hume’s sworn enemy. If we were to fight for my castle together, what might we achieve?