The Raven's Heart

by Jesse Blackadder

  She stands. “For Beatrice’s sake, because your bastard father is kin to her nevertheless, I will ask them to wait. But there will be no more chances.”

  She leaves and I wait for several minutes to see if anyone watches. But there is no telltale prickle down my back. She has left her whisky untouched and I pick it up and drain it in a single gulp. If I have seen the proof myself, surely I can make William sign.

  I get up to leave. It is not only for William’s sake I will go to Glasgow. I would know for myself the truth about my family before I break my ties with it.

  Fifty

  By the time the Queen brings the Prince back to Edinburgh for safekeeping and is at last ready to retrieve the King, word has come from Glasgow that Darnley is desperately ill.

  We leave the city with four hundred mounted harquebusiers and a litter to carry him home. Lord Bothwell rides at the head of the procession by the Queen’s side, but even brave Bothwell does not dare to ride where the Queen will venture. He delivers her to Callendar House, where the Hamiltons are waiting to meet us. Sworn enemies of the Earl of Lennox, they accompany the Queen to the Lennox territory of Glasgow.

  When we arrive at the gates of Glasgow, our uniformed harquebusiers and the forty Hamiltons who have swelled their ranks seem a faint defense against the might of the Lennoxes. Should they attack or lay us to siege, we shall never be able to make our way to safety. As we ride toward the Lennox stronghold of Crookstone Castle, looming high above the city, I wish Bothwell was with us. His soldier’s instinct would know if we should continue to this place, or demand lodging somewhere less vulnerable to siege.

  Seton and I settle the Queen in her lodgings. A message is waiting that the King has begged for her to wait another day before seeing him, so putrid are the eruptions on his face. She shudders, but pens him back a message of love and promises to visit him the following morning. She gives me leave to go out into the city, but insists I take two of the Hamilton men with me.

  I am glad she does so. As I ride through Glasgow’s winding streets, the faces of its residents are grim, and I do not like the way they stare as we pass and the growing feeling of menace in my wake. My clothes mark me as part of the royal party and I wonder if the whole town is in league with the Lennox clan.

  We emerge from a tight street into a broad square and the cathedral rises before me. I dismount and hammer on the door, and the sound echoes into the church. At last a minister answers.

  “Your business?”

  “Please, sir, we are with the Queen’s party,” I say. “I have come to look at the church records.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Alison Blackadder.”

  He stares at me. “Blackadder? Of the great family from Berwickshire?”

  I nod, and he opens the door wide. “Do you know where you have come?”

  He points toward the right-hand aisle. The late-afternoon sun slants through the stained windows, spilling blood-red on the floor and making me shudder.

  “See?” he says, gesturing.

  Our name is there, carved on the stone at my feet: Blackadder Aisle, in honor of Robert Blackadder, Archbishop of Glasgow.

  “A forebear of yours,” he says. “What is your lineage?”

  “I’m here to find out.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Robert Blackadder, the man I believed to be my great-uncle, rose to become the Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow early in the century. At the peak of his power he officiated at the marriage of King James IV and Margaret Tudor, grandparents to our Queen. The cathedral’s archives are bursting with information about him, and the minister enthusiastically shows me record after record.

  “I have been told of another,” I say. “Not Robert, but Roland.”

  “Ah yes,” the minister says. “There were other members of the family in the church at the time.”

  He leafs carefully through piles of old documents, raising dust until I sneeze. “Here. Robert’s nephew. Roland was the illegitimate son of Robert’s brother, Sir Patrick Blackadder of Tulliallan.”

  He peers at me. “Robert probably did his brother a favor and placed the boy here. He became an Archdean, which was probably as high as he could have risen in the circumstances.”

  “Did Roland have a child himself?” I ask.

  He wrinkles his brow. “Illegitimate too? Now I do recall something about this.”

  It takes him a long time and I have almost given up when I hear an exclamation from deep in the shelves of the records room.

  “Most unusual,” he mutters as he brings another parchment out. He lays it down in front of me and we both bend to look at the faint writing.

  It is a charter, dated 27 October 1519, declaring William Blackadder an illegitimate child, the natural son of Roland Blackadder, Archdean of Glasgow. It is signed by King James V.

  “Strange,” he says, drawing back. “I wonder that the King himself would have become involved in such a matter.” He looks across at me. “You’ve gone white. Is this a shock?”

  “William is my father. But he believed he came from the Berwickshire line as a legitimate son.”

  He smiles. “Illegitimacy is a shame some cannot bear, Alison. Do not be too hard on your father.”

  I lay down the parchment and rise. Yellowed and stiff, its faded writing has struck out my lineage and William’s in a few lines of old ink. What Beatrice told me was true. I thought I had accepted the truth of our lineage already, but I feel desolate at the proof of it.

  I will leave for France soon and the question of my parentage will not matter. But one question gnaws at me. Did William know that he was the bastard offspring of a cleric who could bear the loneliness no longer? Did he lie all this time, or did someone else lie to him?

  Roland, his father, is long dead. The men who made decisions for William as a boy are long dead too. There is only one who might know. John Blackadder of Tulliallan, head of the Blackadder family.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  When the Queen exerts her charms, there is nothing she cannot win and no will she cannot bend to her own. It takes several days, but she manages to convince the King to leave his father and his paternal heartland of Glasgow and return with her to Edinburgh on a litter.

  Our traveling party gathers in the courtyard of Lennox Palace in the morning, mounted up and ready. The King’s litter, draped and luxurious, waits by the front entrance.

  When at last the Queen appears at the door, gorgeously dressed as though she has not ridden here in fear of her life, a bizarre figure is by her side. At first I think there has been some mistake and by the murmur that rustles through the company I am not the only one. Clinging to her arm is a travesty.

  A white mask blocks the King’s face from us, but it cannot disguise the small trembling steps and the absurd stick legs that protrude from below the doublet. His hand is a claw on her arm and, when the breeze lifts his hood, a bald skull peeks out, shocking in its nudity. He totters forward to the litter, and with agonizing effort climbs inside. Eight men lift it to their shoulders as though it weighs nothing.

  The Queen steps to her block and mounts, and Lord Huntly rides to her side. There is a strained blast from the heralds, harsh on the morning air, and, as if in response, a large raven perched on a nearby building gives a guttural caw.

  The Queen glances up for a second, then faces the party with a wide, public smile.

  “Let us bring the King safely home,” she says, her voice carrying across the square.

  There is a ripple as she and Huntly start their horses and the men with the litter move into position behind them. The raven caws again and takes off, flapping heavily in the direction of Edinburgh.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  It takes four torturous days and nights to bring the King to Edinburgh, with the Glasgow raven accompanying us every step of the way. Even the most hardened soldiers watch it with dread and mutter prayers to ward off this evil omen.

  I ride with the Queen’s inner circle: with Seton and Bothwe
ll’s man French Paris; with Anthony Standen, who never strays far from the King; with Arnault the physician. But I would be happier with the soldiers. The closer I am to the Queen, the greater the risk of breathing in the smell from the King’s litter.

  It is so foul that the eight men carrying him could be bearing a corpse. Each evening I can scarcely credit that something alive will crawl from the innards of the litter and stand upon two legs. Always the white mask is upon him, but it only increases speculation about the corruption beneath. His very flesh must be rotting to create such a stench.

  “It is the mercury,” Arnault tells us on the first night. “He is healing quite well, and the odor will pass.”

  “Pity the Queen,” French Paris murmurs so that only I can hear, but there is no one in the party not thinking the same thing. She is married to that rotting corruption in the litter, smelling so much like carrion that a raven will not leave it alone.

  There is more than the smell tormenting me. In those four days of riding I recall every boy I sent to the King, the last being the French actor. None of them shall have French physicians and sulfur baths and the quicksilver madness of mercury, not unless they have taken their heavy purses and weighed carefully the needs of the present with the likelihood of the future.

  Of all the things I have done in my service to the Queen, these betrayals sicken me the most. What were they for? To bring about a marriage for her that was a living hell. To gain a castle that William and I had no right to. For the rest of my life, those ghosts will come to me in the darkest nights to call me to account.

  “Your face is so grim,” the Queen says to me on the final morning of our ride, when we trot out together in front of the party for a breath of fresh air. “We have prevailed, Alison. The King is by my side again and all will be well when we are safely back in Edinburgh.”

  I stare at her, aghast. “You will be a wife to him again?”

  “I must,” she says. “He is my husband. I am bonded to him.”

  “But what if he infects you?”

  She shivers. “I will not allow him back to Holyrood until Arnault deems it safe. When he does return to my side, this time I will not allow him to stray so far. He is like a young boy, easily influenced. I will keep him close. He will grow up in time, Alison. He could be a good ruler yet.”

  I have to hold myself still in the saddle so I do not shudder visibly at the prospect.

  “Are you still determined to leave me?” she asks.

  “I must, Your Grace.”

  She shakes her head. “I do not understand it. You have no castle to go to, no marriage that I know of. What will you do?”

  “I will be free,” I say.

  She rides by my side in silence for a while. “Very well, if you must. But I do not have gold to pay you just yet. In a month I shall have it. Can you stay with me that long?”

  I nod. “Of course, Your Grace. But may I ask a favor? Will you give me leave to ride to my family at Tulliallan? There is a pressing matter I must discuss with them.”

  “Very well,” she says. “But you must be back for the grand masque. Sebastian has asked for you particularly. I shall send a guard with you to make sure you aren’t delayed.”

  I bow my head. Will she ever release me willingly?

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  We bring the King to the Old Provost’s House in Kirk O’Field to take his healing baths and treatments. His sickroom is laid with a burning fire and sweet-scented rushes line the floor. When he removes his mask, I see him fully revealed for the first time since he became ill. His face is ravaged. The remains of the suppurating sores are livid on his skin and his head is almost hairless. He looks like a living corpse. I breathe a sigh of relief that we may leave him and return to Holyrood.

  We have arrived in Edinburgh in time for the start of the Lenten Carnival. All of the lords will be in Edinburgh, traitorous and loyal alike. The young Prince is here, safe in the castle hold. The Queen has gone to the heart of enemy territory and plucked out the King. She has the upper hand in the country again. She talks about the English succession and perhaps this time it will all be as she says. Perhaps I imagined that tone in Bothwell’s voice and there is nothing more between them than should exist between a queen and her most loyal noble. Perhaps the King, stricken by this illness, is truly repentant and they will be reconciled. Perhaps, at last, some small peace will come to Scotland.

  I will not be there to see it. I must leave the Queen of my own volition, or she will keep me by her side with another pretext. My only escape is to leave her secretly.

  William is lodged in Bothwell’s chambers in Holyrood and I must make him sign the bond. Before he does, I will find out from John Blackadder if he knows the truth of William’s birth.

  Fifty-one

  Tulliallan stands in the mist, its sheer face towering above me. I pound hard and after a long wait a servant comes. When I announce my presence, he raises the portcullis. I leave my horse with the Queen’s guard who rode with me and go into the great hall.

  “Alison,” John embraces me formally, touching his cheek to mine. “The Queen must value you highly to send her own guard with you.”

  We both take a seat near the fire. “I have come about William. There is a question about his lineage I must have resolved.”

  “Go on.”

  “In Glasgow I saw the King’s charter that declares William is the illegitimate son of Roland Blackadder, Archdean of Glasgow,” I say. “The Hume family believes Alison’s son died and William has pretended to be him. But a six-year-old boy cannot pretend such a thing.”

  John stares at me for a long moment and in the gloom his face looks pale. “I had thought this matter long dead.” He gets up. “Come with me.”

  He leads me up the circular stairs to the next level. The library is ringed with musty books and my breath makes clouds on the air. John unlocks a cupboard and draws out a casket. He opens it, flicks through the stack of parchments inside, and withdraws one.

  “This?” he asks. It is a copy of the charter I saw in Glasgow.

  “You knew of this?”

  He holds up his hand to stop me. “William was in great danger, and that brought danger upon us all. When the boy was brought here, my father did not know what Hume believed had happened to him. My father was himself the next in line to Blackadder after William, so he was in danger too.

  “Blackadders were high in the church in Glasgow and in the King’s favor. My father’s illegitimate brother, Roland, was there and it was known that he had a son. My father took William there and he took the place of Roland’s son, for his protection. When we heard that the Humes were looking for him, Roland petitioned the King and had this charter signed. We kept a copy here in case it was ever needed for William’s protection. I have not beheld it since my father died.”

  I exhale slowly and John passes the parchment to me. It is stiff with age but the writing is clear.

  “What of Roland’s real son?”

  “He is still a minister in some small parish—Kirconnel, I believe.”

  “So William really is the heir,” I say. “Why did you never tell him of this? I was about to have him sign a bond saying he is illegitimate.”

  “It was secret and to be used only in extreme need,” says John.

  There is something in his face that makes me shiver. “So this falsehood can be destroyed now.” I stand up and take a step toward a candle, the parchment outstretched.

  “No.” John stands swiftly and blocks my path. “It is signed by a king. It would be treason to destroy such a thing.”

  I pause, out of his reach.

  “For God’s sake, John, tell her and be done with it.” I turn as Margaret pushes the heavy door open and steps inside.

  John jerks his head at her. “This is Blackadder business, set down before you were born, Margaret. Leave it.”

  “No, I won’t leave it.” She crosses the room. “I am married to this name, with its burden of jealousy and revenge. This
girl’s life has been twisted and ruined because of that castle. Now tell her.”

  John shakes his head, his jaw set.

  “It’s all a lie,” Margaret says.

  He strides to her and grabs her by the throat. “Shut your mouth.”

  “Tell her,” she chokes out. “Tell Alison her father is a bastard.”

  “Let her go,” I say.

  He drops her like a dog dropping a rat and sits heavily.

  “My father had a plan for this,” he says at last. “He was next in line to the castle after Alison’s son, and he was avaricious in matters of property. If William ever won the castle himself, my father had the means to prove he was illegitimate and take it himself. I do not know if he would have done so.”

  “Of course he would have,” Margaret snaps. “He would do anything for lands, that man.”

  “He would have taken the castle from William?” I ask, my fists clenched.

  Margaret is rubbing her throat. “It would never have belonged to William. He is indeed the bastard son of Roland Blackadder, just as the charter says. This family kept it secret from him. They were content to let him believe he was heir to a castle, but planned all along to snatch it back if he ever won it.”

  I stare at her. I cannot speak.

  “It was not such an evil thing as it sounds,” John says. “I bought William a boat so he had a profession. You were raised with a noble education. He would have had nothing as a cleric’s bastard.”

  “Then what happened to Alison’s real son?” I ask.

  “Nobody now knows,” John says. “It is nearly fifty years ago.”

  I make my way to the window, my legs trembling. Whatever I had expected, it was not this. Then I swing around as a thought occurs to me.

  “You have held the charter,” I say to John. “This was not only your father’s plan.”

  “My father passed all the details of his plan to me before he was killed,” says John. “Of course, I had no intention of doing anything about it. I have not looked at my father’s records in many years.”

  Margaret laughs bitterly. “Be truthful, John. Your father’s desire for lands is not dead in you. William’s whole life, and Alison’s too, have been crafted so they never knew the truth of their lowly birth.”