The Raven's Heart

by Jesse Blackadder

  “You have a healthy heir,” La Flamina says. “One blessing at least.”

  “The nobles of Europe are on their way here for the baptism, but what they really wish to see is this marriage of mine. I do not know if my husband will come, or if he does, what disgrace he might cause. He should lighten my cares, but he is the heaviest care of all.”

  “He is young.” La Flamina brings the nightgown to the Queen’s side. “Perhaps he will behave better when he sees the nobility gathered. Surely he will be proud to come to the christening of his own son?”

  “Do not marry,” the Queen says, reaching to grasp La Flamina’s wrist. “There is time to change your mind. Maitland is like all the others. He cannot be trusted. Marriage will bring you no happiness.”

  La Flamina stands still. “Is that truly your wish?” she asks in a small voice.

  The Queen rises to her feet. “I wish it but I do not ask it of you. I pray you find more happiness than I have in wedlock.”

  She steps to the fire and holds out her arms for me to unbutton her sleeves. I start on the left and La Flamina lays aside the nightgown and begins unbuttoning the right hand, her face working.

  “I will stay with you, if you ask me,” she says.

  The Queen stares into the fire. “No,” she says at last. “Go with him. You may be like an ambassador, reporting back to me from the country of marriage, giving me hope that my own might one day reach that happy state. I still have Seton and Alison at my side.”

  I slide off her sleeve.

  “Though Alison will soon leave me too.” She glances sideways at me. I keep my eyes lowered and move behind her to start unlacing her bodice.

  “Everyone leaves,” she continues, her voice flat. “I cannot walk away from my charge. I must suffer this marriage and do right for Scotland. They call me Queen but I am more a prisoner than the lowest servant.”

  “I will never leave you,” Seton says softly.

  La Flamina casts me a quick, sympathetic glance. I concentrate on the hooks at the back of the Queen’s dress, which are stiff and require tugging. When they come apart, I lift the bodice and free her from its clutches. Seton draws the nightgown down over the Queen’s head before she can feel the chill of the night air.

  The Queen wraps her arms around herself, pressing the warm cloth against her skin. “I need you to watch my husband, Alison. I do not even know if he intends to come to his son’s baptism.”

  “But how?” I ask. “I can’t gain his confidence as Alison.”

  “I have France’s leading troupe of actors and costumiers preparing for the masques. They will dress as satyrs. Join them. Be my eyes around Stirling, in the best disguise the French can fashion. You can speak to Anthony Standen about my husband without arousing any suspicion. I will have a word to the guards and they will let you pass anywhere.”

  I bow my head. “Of course.”

  She sighs again. “I would that Rizzio were here. He knew just how to handle such difficult situations. His brother does not share his wisdom.”

  There is a moment’s silence. Rizzio did not see the greatest danger of all until it was upon him.

  “We will help you,” La Flamina says brightly, breaking the silence. “Lord Bothwell is loyal as ever and your brother stands by your side again. You will show the Europeans a spectacle they will never forget. It will be your finest moment.”

  The Queen shivers. “You are right, my dearest. I will not mope.”

  She looks at me. “Perhaps you can find a way to keep my husband busy. You have always been so good at that.”

  She orders me to become a beast and then she asks me to distract him. It is all the permission I need.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  To make a man into a satyr is not such a difficult thing. The hairy reddish hide of a Scots bull, cut and sewn into legs and a vest. Tottering footwear of leather with a cloven-hoof covering. A beard combed and twisted, two horns attached on a string around the head, hidden in the wig of ringlets so that the appendages appear to have grown there. A leather mask, tight across the eyes. Even I, with my bound breasts, am disguised.

  It seems fitting that I shall be a beast in my final service to her. Perhaps this is the truest expression of what I have become in the past five years. William called me an evil creature and now I believe him.

  When I saw him at Craigmillar, my heart full of love, I was willing to withstand his rage. I was protecting him from disgrace and that knowledge made me strong.

  He was silent when he heard I had relinquished the castle. I told him we would not be like the others who lived half-lives, driven mad by the desire for it. I told him our honor was greater than if we had driven out our kin who lived there. I almost believed myself that there was no other reason for letting it go.

  When he reached out a hand, I went forward into his embrace, the word “Father” on my lips. His arms came around me and for a heartbeat, it seemed that he held me and everything was right.

  But then his hands found my throat and the look of disbelief on his face turned to rage and the noise that came from him sounded scarcely human. Bothwell had to drag him off me by force.

  “We could never know peace there,” I rasped when I could speak. “The Hume family owns all the lands surrounding Blackadder. It would be a life of fear.”

  William bellowed in rage like an animal, his arms behind his back, tight in Bothwell’s grip. “Trust a woman,” he snarled.

  “I will speak to the Queen and tell her you made a mistake,” Bothwell said.

  I stared at them, united in their shock. “It’s too late. It is done. It was my choice to make.”

  William stopped struggling, his face twisting. “Get from my sight. You are doubly, triply cursed. I cannot abide you.”

  Edinburgh itself seemed steeped in William’s incredulous rage, for once I returned there with the Queen, the city turned its face against me. When I slipped away from Holyrood in my old disguises and wandered Edinburgh’s streets, every cobblestone rose up to bruise me, every fall of slops from its high windows came down unerringly to splash me. The city where I once immersed myself was a foreign place, hard and cold in the midst of the most foul weather, with driving sleet and wind like a sword edge. The loss of our castle was in every cut.

  Wandering those streets, I came to feel myself the vile creature that William accused me of being. It felt like every murdered Blackadder had joined their power to his curse. I had longed for a home and now I had none. I had once thought to wed, but I had made myself unmarriageable. I believed myself highborn, but I was the offspring of a bastard. The name of Blackadder hung upon me like a weight, as if every utterance was a curse. I felt like a wraith, as if the coming winter was blowing through my bones and sinews.

  I told the Queen I must leave her service but I could give her no reason and no plan for my life afterward. She has never liked being left and she reminds me of her displeasure at every opportunity.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  The noble guests have been arriving all morning, with the heralds blaring out for each new party clattering into the courtyard. Now they are gathering in the quadrangle outside the chapel royal. Spurred by the activity, I hurry down the corridor, leading a fellow satyr I have carefully chosen from the French troupe. Anthony Standen is waiting to meet me as arranged.

  “The way is clear,” he says. “The King is half-dressed, and still drinking.”

  “This will calm him better than whisky,” I say.

  We clatter down the empty hall to the King’s apartments. Anthony opens the door.

  “Who’s there?” Darnley lurches into sight. Anthony moves aside and I reach behind me, pull the boy forward by the wrist, and thrust him into the presence chamber. Tottering on his tall hooves, he stumbles and falls to his hands and knees.

  It is like watching one of the Queen’s lions when a rabbit is tossed to it. Darnley’s head swivels as the boy sprawls on the floor and he licks his lips.

  “What in the name of God do we h
ave here?” he asks.

  “Please, my Lord,” the lad stammers, with a coquettish glance from under his fringe of ringlets. He is more of an actor than I gave him credit for. “I’m a satyr.”

  “A satyr?” Darnley advances and I slip backward into the shadow of the corridor. “One of those that cavort with Bacchus? Do you know, satyr, what Bacchus likes to do with such creatures?”

  Anthony closes the door and on that puff of escaping air, I flee.

  I wind my way back to the great hall by a longer route, passing Bothwell’s chambers. I am hoping for a glimpse of William. I know he has come to Stirling with Bothwell, but it seems he keeps to their rooms. I would try to see, from afar, if he has recovered from losing all hope of the castle. But the chambers are firmly closed.

  Forty-seven

  She can still command the attention of every man and woman in the room.

  The Queen, on the throne at the center of the dais in the great hall, has reached into herself to draw out every shred of charm she possesses and in this she has no equal.

  Lord James, Lord Bothwell, and Lord Huntly have been appointed as ceremonial servers for the feast. Lord James and his men dress in green and he kneels to present the cup to the Queen. Huntly, in red, carves the first of the roast meats with a flourish before handing the knife to his man to finish the job. Bothwell, in blue livery, serves each person at the head table before his men take up the job for him. William is not among them.

  The King does not appear, the wine flows freely, and streams of servants carry platters of food to the tables. The heat rises, the musicians play, the sound of voices and laughter swells and fills the hall. The young Prince has been christened and, though the King did not come, none has dared deny his paternity. Through it all, the satyrs skip and jump, leaping up onto chairs, twirling our tails, pinching an arm here, tugging a beard there.

  In the midst of the laughter and the hands reaching from all sides to fondle us, I see up on the dais some shaking of heads and stern stares from some of the Queen’s visitors. But I care not. There is no chance anyone will recognize me and what does it matter if they do? I skip and twirl until I am dizzy. I straddle the laps of men (to scandalized, delighted screams) and threaten to do the same with women. I plant ever more naughty kisses on the lips of my victims and their lips are willing beneath mine.

  The older guests and those who are sober begin leaving and the rest settle in for a long night. Servants drag tables out of the way to clear a dance floor and the Queen steps down to take the first dance with Lord Bothwell.

  I pass the table where the men of the Hume clan are seated and behind the safety of my disguise I watch them. They do not seem to celebrate. Lord Hume is grim-faced and David Hume scans the room through narrowed eyes. By his side, a young man of his clan looks at me piercingly, and I duck out of his sight.

  Seeing them, I suddenly sicken at the whole spectacle. The laughing, greasy faces, the spilt wine, the men who grab at me as I pass, the food and drink smeared on my shaggy hide, the slaps to my rump. I need fear the Hume family no longer, but the sight of them dining at the Queen’s banquet reminds me that I have nothing, not even the consolation of my noble bloodline.

  The Queen is at the center of the dance floor with Lord Bothwell. She smiles as though every ambassador and dignitary in the room is not assessing her glorious celebration carefully, probing at the situation to find what secrets lie beneath it, what advantage might be found, what gossip might be made of it.

  I skip my way to the rear of the great hall and step into the cold December air of the courtyard. I walk away from the revelers spilling out behind me, pull the sweaty mask from my face, and stand still, my breath coming out in clouds. I promised the Queen I would serve her until the christening and now the prospect of my freedom rises up inside of me. Perhaps I might find some contentment in my new life, whatever it is.

  At last I clip-clop across the cobblestones of the inner courtyard, the sound of music and voices rising from the hall, the air cold on my face. From the deep shadow beside the chapel royal, a hand shoots out of the dark and pulls me into a hard embrace, a hand over my mouth, the cold scream of steel against my throat.

  My captor takes me at a run, around the chapel, out into the garden, his dagger pressing against my skin. When we stop, my heart is thudding and there is a cowardly shaking in my legs. His body is against my back, his mouth close to my ear.

  “If you scream, I will cut your throat before the noise escapes.”

  It is not a man’s voice. I nod and my captor frees my mouth and spins me around, the tip of the dagger still at my throat. It is the young man who sat by David Hume.

  “You are well disguised tonight, Alison Blackadder.”

  “Isobel?” I croak. “I did not recognize you.”

  “As my family did not recognize you when you came to our home, bearing a false name. Queen or no queen, you would not have survived the night if we had known you were one of the Blackadder spawn.”

  I swallow. I had thought Isobel a striking young noblewoman with pretensions to an estate. I would never have picked her as having the skill for convenient violence.

  “My father—” the prick of steel cuts me short.

  In the moonlight her eyes are fixed on mine with unwavering intensity. “The ownership of our castle clearly and legally traces back from Alexander, to Beatrice and Margaret, to Alison. Even if the impossible were true and your father was really Alison’s son, any right he had to inherit the castle is long gone.”

  “Then why do you threaten me?”

  “We have heard a rumor that the Queen would give you the castle anyway, believing your lies and putting us out, though we are the legitimate owners.”

  I take a breath. “Did you also find out that I have relinquished my claim? The Queen herself will verify it.”

  We regard each other in the moonlight. Suddenly she drops her arm and the movement makes me start. She reaches inside her cloak and brings out a folded square of parchment. “This bond is to relinquish your father’s unfounded claim to the rightful property of my family. You and your father will sign it, and then you may go about your lives unharmed. If you do not, my brothers will be the ones to visit next time and they are not so merciful as I.”

  I shrug, forcing myself to appear casual. “If my father is a bastard, as you say, then he has no claim and you have no need of our signatures.”

  She steps forward again, dagger raised in her other hand, and I feel a pang of fear. Her clansmen are close by, after all.

  “Your father has the ear of Lord Bothwell and you have the ear of the Queen,” she says. “They are powerful friends. But if you do not sign, even powerful friends will not be enough to protect you. If you have relinquished your claim, as you say, then it matters not to sign.”

  She thrusts the paper toward me. I reach out to take it and in a flash I seize her wrist instead and twist it up behind her back, snatching the dagger so I have her pinned. Now it is me holding the dagger at her throat from behind, pushing its razor edge against her white skin to stop her outraged struggle.

  “Your family has murdered Blackadder men for three generations,” I say in her frightened ear. “Even if William is a bastard, he and I are still of the Blackadder line. None of yours has ever died at the hand of a Blackadder. Tell me why I should not begin to even the tally tonight?”

  She gasps and I can feel the pounding of her heart against my breastbone and her hair smells of something sweet. For a second I am filled with the desire to kill her. It rises in me like sex, and just as suddenly it’s gone again.

  I release her with a push so she falls forward to her knees, though I am careful to keep hold of the dagger.

  “It seems neither of us has the stomach to kill the other,” I say. “But I cannot make William bear this humiliation. Let me sign now, and leave him in peace.”

  She shakes her head. “It is he who claims to be the heir. It must be signed by him and legally witnessed. You have four day
s.”

  “Isobel,” I say, my voice softening. “I had to lie to him. He still believes he is Alison’s son. Don’t make me take that from him.”

  “Your father is the bastard of Roland Blackadder, Archdean of Glasgow. The records are held in the cathedral in Glasgow for any to see.”

  A burst of shouting and laughter echoes across the darkness from the square. I shiver. “I need more than four days.”

  She holds the parchment out to me. “We have lodgings here in Stirling until Christmas Eve. When it is done, bring it to me.”

  “And walk into such a trap?”

  She shrugs. “My brothers would have killed you tonight if that was our intention.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  We regard each other for a long moment. “William is not Alison’s son. But Beatrice says even if he is a bastard, he is her distant kin. She begged me not to see either of you harmed. She is an old woman with foolish fancies, but I am fond of her. For her sake I would let you live.”

  She drops the parchment to the ground and walks away into the shadows.

  Forty-eight

  The Queen’s service has been full of threat, and my life has had its share of fear, but I have not known the icy-spined terror of this night since David Hume’s visit to Peebles. For what remains of the dark, I lie awake, having buried myself in the center of a shaggy group of satyrs, an animal blindly seeking safety in its flock. The Hume men are here in this castle, with yet another reason to kill me.

  The next morning I rise early and make my way to the King’s chambers to retrieve the boy.

  “Come, they have just broken the oven seal; the bread is hot.” I lead him to the kitchen and we gather servants’ fare, trenchers fresh from the oven, and take our breakfast outside, up on the castle wall where the pale sun offers a promise of warmth.

  “You must pay me more,” he says. “You did not tell me he was diseased.”

  “Diseased?”

  “He is covered in suppurations. The witch in Paris who cures such things is not cheap. But I will go to him again if you pay me properly.”