The Raven's Heart

by Jesse Blackadder

  “I am grateful you rode out in my support,” she says at last. “Now go back to the Borders and take your clansmen. I shall come there on a progress in August, after the babe is born, and we shall meet again. I have matters to discuss with you. But for now I prefer you to stay away from court.”

  Lord Hume kneels and when he rises his eyes flicker around the room and he catches my gaze for a second. Does he remember Alison Blackadder from when I last appeared as the Queen’s lady-in-waiting?

  “Your Grace, I am your loyal servant as always,” he says. “We will be honored by a visit from you. If there is anything you wish of me before then, it shall be done in an instant.”

  She meets his gaze without a smile. “You would be wise to make sure your nephew David Hume of Wedderburn does not associate with the Douglas family. That is all, Lord Hume.”

  He leaves the room without a backward glance and the Queen gives me a small smile. I smile back at her, but it takes an effort. Dressed as Robert, it was I who saw David Hume and George Douglas plotting with the King. Now I cannot be sure of my safety from Hume in either disguise.

  The Queen has promised we will go to the Borders in four months. On that date I rest my hope. Until then I will keep my head down and my thoughts to myself. I will serve her loyally and accompany her in her confinement. I have lived nearly five years in her service. I am determined to survive four more months.

  Thirty-six

  The Queen announces she will move the court to Edinburgh Castle for her lying-in. The day before we are to leave the safe house in Edinburgh, a letter arrives from the traitors Lord Ruthven and the Earl of Morton. I am present when she opens it, for since Rizzio’s death she has no private secretary and I have begun to assist her with these duties. The sound that comes out of her mouth as she reads it brings me hastening to her side.

  “What is it?”

  She hands it to me, her hand pressed to her mouth. Morton, with nothing left to lose, has sent the bond on which the conspirators set down their signatures in agreement to murder Rizzio.

  “It is my husband’s handwriting,” she says. “Morton wishes me nothing but evil to have sent this.”

  I read the paper. It is written in Darnley’s hand, setting down that he is the chief author of the plot to punish wicked, ungodly Rizzio in the presence of the Queen, and to protect his fellow plotters from any repercussions of the murder.

  “Perhaps it is a forgery?” I say.

  “No.” She shakes her head. “Oh no, Alison, this is no forgery. I know his hand, and I know what a fool he is, and now I know the depths of his treachery.”

  She stands, slowly, hands on her ponderous belly. “Tomorrow we move to the safest fortress in all of Scotland.” She walks to the window. “But how can I ever be safe with such a husband?”

  “This is evidence of treason.”

  She wraps her arms around herself. “If I did not need him to confirm the babe’s paternity, I would turn him over to the law at once. But all I can do now is let him think that I may soften toward him, and keep him close enough that he can be watched.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  The next day we ride in procession through Edinburgh to enter the castle. The citizens are still eager for any glimpse of the Queen and flock to the streets to see her and Darnley. But I am riding farther back in the party and I hear the mutters in the crowd once the King and Queen have passed. Why has the King sworn his innocence when it is all over Edinburgh that his dagger was left lodged in Rizzio’s body? Is there any truth to the rumor that Rizzio fathered the Queen’s child? Is that why he was murdered so violently?

  The Queen rides next to her husband and together they wave at the crowd. But she never looks upon him and the cheers that come from the crowd are for her, not for him. He is forcing a smile—he has learned that much of statecraft at least—but he has lost his chance for the crown matrimonial. What will his next move be?

  Entering the gateway and riding into the castle compound feels like preparing for a siege. It is a small group of lords that draws close to the Queen now, some who have always been steadfast, some allowed back on sufferance. Rizzio, the small man with the vast presence, gone. Darnley, slinking around like a cur, ignored.

  The royal apartments have been cleared and decked out in sumptuous hangings and tapestries in honor of our arrival. The Queen’s bedchamber has a small anteroom, like the supper room off her bedchamber at Holyrood. Here she will give birth. But until the child begins its passage, she avoids it. Since Rizzio’s murder, she has a horror of tiny enclosures. She is never present with the King without a bodyguard—Anthony Standen, who has been assigned to be the King’s manservant. There is no secret staircase for the King to come into the Queen’s rooms.

  Into this poisoned atmosphere, Scotland’s heir is to be born.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  The nineteenth day of June, 1566, the dark hours of the morning. In the tiny birthing room, the Queen’s screams bounce off the walls and back into my ears with piercing intensity, as shrill as Rizzio’s shrieks

  in the supper room. The force of her nails draws blood on the skin of my arms. Seton, on her other side, is scratched and bleeding too.

  When the contraction passes, the Queen sags in our arms and her head lolls. She has been in labor since midday and I fear her strength is fading. The midwife’s tone is encouraging as she wipes the Queen’s brow but there is a furrow of worry on her face.

  The next contraction follows quickly. The Queen’s body twists, her screams ring out, her nails cut into my flesh again.

  There is a light tap at the door and the midwife opens it, while Seton and I try to hold the Queen in place. After a whispered consultation, she comes back. When the Queen sags again, gasping, the midwife speaks.

  “Your Grace?”

  The Queen manages a nod as I wipe her skin.

  “Margaret Fleming will use her craft to transfer your pain to Lady Reres, but she needs you to agree,” the midwife says.

  “You speak of sorcery,” Seton says sternly. “The Queen is a Catholic!”

  The Queen screams again, her voice hoarse, her body tight. When she can speak, she gasps, “Yes, tell her yes.”

  Outside the birthing room, the bedchamber is crowded with the Queen’s ladies. Margaret Fleming opens the connecting door wide and then leans down over the prone figure of Lady Reres, lying on the royal bed. She mutters and waves a bundle of smoking herbs. She comes into the tiny birthing chamber and does the same to the Queen. In response, the Queen lurches forward and vomits, then goes into another contraction.

  In the bedchamber, Lady Reres begins to moan and scream in tandem with the Queen’s cries. Far from taking the Queen’s pain, she seems to be adding to it. For an hour the two women moan and scream together; another fruitless hour when there is still no sign of the child’s head.

  The Queen can barely speak, but she gasps and I bend down close to her. “For God’s sake, send that woman away.”

  I stand slowly, trying to ease my aching muscles, and cross stiffly to the bedchamber. Lady Reres looks disappointed.

  “I tried,” she whispers. “I am truly willing to take the Queen’s pain. Are you certain she has had no relief?”

  “I’m sure you tried,” I say wearily. “Thank you.”

  The atmosphere in the bedchamber and the presence chamber, so jovial at lunchtime the previous day, is now thick with fear. So many hours and so much pain, and still no sign of the child. Every woman who steps into a birthing chamber confronts death, but what will happen to Scotland if the Queen cannot deliver the child and they both die?

  There is hot spiced wine to help us stay awake and a tray of food arrives as I take a break. It is hard to eat with the Queen’s screams echoing through the chamber every few minutes, but I manage a sip of wine and a few mouthfuls of bread. The midwife has been attending the Queen almost nonstop and I gesture for her to come out for sustenance. She sips the wine. Her face is deathly white and her hand trembles on the cup.
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  “What is it?”

  She leans close. “I fear she cannot last much longer. I cannot feel what is wrong, except that the child is big and she is slim in the pelvis and too tired. I have told her to push and it seems she cannot.”

  No wonder the woman is trembling. It will be terrible for all of Scotland if the Queen and her child should die, but I do not care for the fate of the midwife charged with their safety.

  “She is strong, and still not too old. What can be the problem?”

  “She is losing her will. She is in so much pain, she does not care if she lives or dies. If you can say anything to rouse her, for God’s sake, say it now.”

  If the Queen dies this night, then I truly have lost everything myself. At once I cannot stand it. I refuse to lose it all now because the Queen cannot summon the will to live.

  I stride into the birthing chamber fast and hard, like a man would. “Mary!” I call. She is in the arms of her women, her eyes rolling back in her head, retreating from the world.

  “Mary!” I shout it this time and everyone jumps in shock except the Queen. Whatever place she has retreated to, she can barely hear me.

  For the third time: “Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland! Listen to me!”

  While the women look at me with open mouths, the Queen lifts her head and tries to focus.

  “If you give up now, you will die.” I grip her by the shoulders and lean in close so there is no way she can avoid my stare. Her eyes, slitted, meet mine.

  “I do not care,” she whispers.

  “You have carried this child safely through the worst travail. You cannot forsake him now.”

  Her eyes start to roll back again. “Pray to God that I die quickly and you can cut him from my belly.”

  I shake her. Seton and La Flamina are too shocked to stop me.

  “You are the Queen!” I say. “If you let yourself and the babe die, then all that is evil has indeed triumphed. Call on your God, call on your courage, call on what makes you a ruler. I will hold you, we will all breathe with you, and he will be born!”

  I wave to one of the ladies and she brings over the brandy and trickles a little in the Queen’s mouth. Another comes with the smelling salts and puts them under her nose. The Queen chokes and jerks her head back, but her eyes are open. Her will to live may be faltering, but my will has risen up strong enough to carry her. I will not unlock my gaze from hers till the child emerges.

  Somehow she responds. She takes another gulp of brandy and a long swallow of water and then settles her body to wait, her eyes on mine. I can see the next wave of pain approaching. Somehow I know that if she is not to drown under the weight of the pain, she must find a way to ride its waves.

  “You are a boat, Mary, a strong boat crossing from France to Scotland, the wind behind you. You can see land ahead. When the wave comes, it lifts you up on its back and you surge forward and it takes you closer to land. It’s not far now.”

  My eyes never leave hers and so I see the moment when the pain ceases to swallow her. She still screams, but something has changed in the shrieks. Can the entire, wakeful castle hear the difference? The bedchamber and birthing room regain an air of expectation. The midwife is down between the Queen’s legs and I can hear the relief in her voice. “That’s it, Your Grace. Keep pushing.”

  In fact it is another four hours and toward the end I am holding her alive with my fingertips and the force of my will. At eight in the morning the midwife gives a glad shout when she glimpses the babe’s head and an hour later the Prince inches his way out and into her arms.

  The room erupts with cheering and in the midst of it the Queen and I look at one another and there are no secrets between us now. The cry of a healthy babe rings out and every woman in the room is weeping.

  The midwife says, “What a lad, what a prince,” and she wraps him and lays him in the Queen’s arms. I see the delight on her face and then I stumble back from the bed on legs that have turned to water. I sink to the floor and lean against the wall, and when the first cannon fires its joyful message to the city, all of us laugh and cheer again.

  “I shall call him James,” she says, and the smile stretches across her face as if it is an independent thing. “The man who will grow up to unite Scotland and England.”

  Someone has distributed cups and we all lift them and say, “To James,” but I am filled with foreboding. The name of the brother who has betrayed her twice and the father who turned his face to the wall and died when he heard of Mary’s own birth.

  Another roar of cannon fire rings out and James lifts up a wail at the assault of sound on his tender, new ears.

  Thirty-seven

  It is a hot summer and the streets of Edinburgh stink as if the smell of murder is rising from the deserted rooms of Holyrood Palace and creeping up the High Street. The Queen is so afraid for her life that she will not countenance setting up a separate household for the babe, as is the custom with princes. She keeps him in a cradle by her bed, lest he be snatched away by some conspirator.

  Lord James, with his skill at playing upon the Queen’s fears, worms his way back into her favor and builds his empire again. Within a fortnight of the birth of her son, he is the only one of her nobles living in the castle. Even her favorite, Bothwell, who is charged with the castle’s defenses, must reside in the midst of Edinburgh’s stench.

  The King, shunned by those in power and barely tolerated by the Queen, gathers himself a band of sycophantic followers, younger sons of the noble lords and lesser hangers-on. They roam the streets in the long summer evenings like a pack of dogs, starting fights in the taverns and frightening women and children.

  At least I do not have to face him. He spends little time visiting the Queen and so distracted and so drunk is he that he has not realized her lady-in-waiting, Alison, bears any resemblance to Robert.

  The Queen is slow to recover from childbirth and spends many hours each day sleeping. Her fear infects the Prince so that he is fretful and noisy in her presence. When I take him away quietly, it seems to soothe him and soon it is I who pick him up when he screams and his wet nurse, Helena, who soothes him.

  One afternoon it is so hot that all activity in the Queen’s chambers ceases after lunch. The babe had a restless night, keeping us awake. Full bellies and the summer’s heat make all of us sleepy. The Queen returns to her bed and her women doze around the presence chamber.

  I am holding the Prince, but he stirs and begins to grizzle. I do not want to disturb the women around me, so I take him downstairs into a drawing room below. I sit on a chaise and rock him gently until he settles. The afternoon sun slants in and strikes the thin strands of his fair hair.

  The door creaks open. “She is here, my Lord,” a guard says, and Bothwell steps into the room. When he sees me holding the Prince, he halts.

  “I came to see the Queen, but I am told she sleeps. I wish to speak to you too.” He peers at the bundle in my arms, his face curious.

  “The boy kept us awake many hours last night,” I say.

  He comes across and stoops to see the Prince’s sleeping face. His own face softens. I have seen that gentleness on his face before, after lovemaking.

  He reaches out a finger and softly touches the Prince’s round cheek. “This suits you.”

  I feel a wave of anger so intense I am surprised the Prince does not jolt awake in my arms. “Don’t dare speak to me of that.”

  He reaches his hand out and lays it on my arm. “I’m sorry how things turned out.”

  I glare at him. Word of his latest infidelity has made its way even here. “Sorry enough that your wife’s serving maid must comfort you?”

  He draws back as if stung, his face hard again. “Some gossip is spreading rumors.”

  “You were seen in the cloisters of Haddington Abbey with her,” I say. “You should be more careful, my Lord.”

  He stands up. The babe stirs.

  “You would do well to keep such baseless rumors to yourself, for they would bri
ng unneeded pain to my wife.”

  “Lying does not suit you.”

  “But when it was you I trysted with, you did not mind our lies.”

  I keep my voice low. “You were not married then, my Lord. Some would say our liaison was wrong, but it was not adulterous.”

  “Was it wrong?” He backs away. “You worked some spell on me, and when I was powerless to help you, you cursed me. I went to my wife’s woman because she too is an enchantress and I wished to have your evil curse lifted. My wife has shown no sign of conceiving since we married. Her woman promised to break your spell with an enchanted tryst, but all that has happened is that Lady Jean heard of it and now refuses to let me in her bed. I come to beg you to lift this curse, and find you holding the Prince as if he were your own. You are a witch!”

  To be called a witch by a man as powerful as Bothwell is dangerous. I sit up, startling the babe into full wakefulness.

  “My Lord, listen to me,” I say urgently. “You know yourself that some word of marriage had passed between us. It was not unreasonable for me to hope. I lashed out at you in disappointment, that’s all. Angry words from a slighted woman cannot prevent you siring children!”

  He looks at me with a mixture of hope and suspicion.

  “When we dallied, you were almost bankrupt and in no special favor,” I say. “Since then you have become one of the most powerful men in the country. Would this happen if you were cursed? Go home, beg your wife’s forgiveness, show her your skill at pleasing a woman, and children will follow.”

  The Prince begins to make mewling noises and I shift him into an upright position against me. Bothwell comes and sits by me. His face is hungry as he looks at the boy.

  “I am getting old,” he says. “I am powerful, but what does it mean without heirs? I want a son. Can you wish that for me?”

  “Come closer,” I say. He shifts so that he is right beside me and I lift the Prince into his arms. “Close your eyes and smell him.”

  He does so and his face softens.