Queen's Own Fool

by Jane Yolen

  One soldier began to bind him roughly with a length of rope. The Huguenot winced at each twist of the rope but did not make a sound.

  “Your rebellion is as slippery as a serpent, La Renaudie,” said the duke, “but I know how to stop such a creature. Cut off its head!” His voice was venomous and in the morning light the scar on his cheek shone blood red. If anyone looked like the serpent in this garden, it was he.

  “Someone revealed our plans,” La Renaudie said through gritted teeth. “Or we would have trapped you at Blois instead of having to quick march here to Amboise. If we could have spoken to the king there ...”

  I took a deep breath. So that was why we had moved so quickly! I pulled back into the shadow of the chapel.

  “Is it such a surprise that traitors should find themselves betrayed?” The duke smiled. His horse began to paw the ground impatiently.

  “I demand the chance to speak to the king,” said La Renaudie, his head unbowed. “As a nobleman I have that right.”

  A nobleman? Madam had never said any such thing.

  “You are in no position to demand anything,” the duke replied. “By your own admission you were trying to trap the king. That is not the way a nobleman acts. But you shall have an audience with the king.”

  At that I breathed out again, relieved.

  “His Majesty will watch you swinging from the gallows. And he will applaud your final dance,” the duke finished.

  “Oh, no, Your Grace,” I said aloud and without thinking. “That is too cruel....”

  “What about the girl, my lord?” asked one of the soldiers. Taking me roughly by the arm, he hauled me out of the shadows and dragged me over to the duke. “I found where she came over the wall.” He held something in his hand which he gave to the duke. “Is she a traitor? Is she one of the rebel band?”

  I suddenly could not speak out, even in my own defense.

  Despite the rope around his throat, pulled so tight that he was beginning to choke, La Renaudie bleated out, “Leave her, de Guise. She’s ...” He gasped for breath. “None of mine.”

  The duke took what the soldier gave him and held it between his fingers as he had held the chess piece. It glistened in the light of the sun and I saw it was one of the silver aglets from my dress. For a moment the duke looked at me with interest.

  “Over the wall? My, you have put your tumbling skills to good use, little dancing girl. And are you a Huguenot?” he asked. “Or a good Catholic loyal to the king?” He smiled his serpent smile.

  My tongue suddenly loosed and I answered him by reciting the catechism, first in French and then in passable Latin, for once never stumbling.

  He threw his head back and laughed uproariously at my performance. Then he said dismissively, “She is only the queen’s fool. Get her inside. See that she keeps out of the way.” He tossed me the aglet and I caught it in one hand with as much grace as Pierre caught his clubs, though my palm was slick with sweat.

  By the time I was taken back into the castle the sounds of conflict from the town had roused everyone. Soldiers and servants scurried from place to place, and Madam Jacqueline was there to scowl at me as I was pushed into my room by the duke’s man.

  “Where have you been? Look at your dress! Your collar is torn, an aglet gone.” She did not pause for any answer.

  I held out the missing aglet.

  She shook her head and did not take it, saying, “You are an untrainable peasant, Nicola. What can the queen be thinking?”

  Then she kept me at my studies till dinnertime in a small library at the rear of the castle, as far from the town as we could get.

  “We must act as if this is an ordinary day,” she said in a deadened voice. There was a tic in the corner of her right eye which betrayed her nervousness. “The soldiers will do what they do best, and so must we. So must we.”

  Her cane had disappeared, and without it she was less intimidating. But she was also distracted throughout the lessons, often halting in midsentence whenever the sound of hoofbeats or musket shots echoed below the castle walls.

  I was distracted, too, remembering the dream, the courtly Huguenot, the duke. And remembering that the answer that had saved me was the rote taught me by Madam Jacqueline.

  Finally madam slammed shut her book of grammar and stared at me. “Now do you see the importance of your catechism, the importance of keeping the faith strong against any attack?”

  Little did she know!

  “They are such devils, the Huguenots,” madam said. “They hate us all. We could have been murdered in our beds.”

  “I met one of the Huguenots outside,” I told her. “La Renaudie. He is not an imp of Satan but a man. In fact a nobleman. He said he was loyal to the king.”

  Madam’s mouth opened and closed. She looked like a great perch out of water. “Of course ... he said that. They are all liars. Satan is the king of liars. No true nobleman would threaten the king.”

  “He did not seem a liar, madam. At least I have no proof of it.” On the contrary, I had had proof of his honesty. La Renaudie had saved me by telling the duke I was not one of his.

  “We have proof enough,” she countered, offering none.

  “He seemed most sincere, madam, with a rope around his neck to guarantee ...”

  “It is more than a peasant like you could possibly understand,” Madam Jacqueline broke in testily.

  I began to shake with anger and I should have held my tongue, but I did not. “I have sense enough not to make enemies out of those who would be my friends, madam.”

  Madam Jacqueline sniffed. “But not enough, it seems, to learn from those who would teach you.” She turned and walked out of the room, her skirts making a sound like muffled drums.

  And there I was again, left alone. But this time I knew I must see the queen. I must tell her about the duke and La Renaudie.

  And then I thought: No, I must tell her more, I must relay the Huguenot’s request to speak with the king.

  So asking directions from several servants—for I did not know the way—I finally found one who could show me.

  Soldiers stood guard at key points throughout the castle, and especially as I neared the queen’s apartments. Those guards I could not avoid, I managed to charm. Luckily my velvet dress with its silver aglets and discreet white lawn at neck and wrists—while slightly the worse for my garden adventure-still proclaimed me as one of the court.

  As I trod carefully down one dimly-lit gallery, I heard the sound of weeping ahead of me. A lone woman sat on a chair, all hunched over, her shoulders heaving with the force of her sobs.

  To my astonishment, as I drew closer I realized that it was the queen. She was crying into cupped hands, unaware of anything except her own misery.

  Gently I laid a single finger on her arm, something I would have never dared had she not been so overwhelmed. One does not touch a queen!

  She looked up, startled, through red-rimmed eyes. Tears ran freely down her cheeks and her fingers trembled. She did not seem to recognize me.

  Then all at once she knew me.

  “Oh, Nicola,” she said between sobs, “I could not bear to watch anymore, even though my uncles insisted. What must the sight be doing to my poor Francis? He is not well. Not well at all.”

  She waved me away, down the gallery, and lowered her head again, covering her tearstained face with pale, slender hands.

  If she had been an ordinary person, I would have put my arms around her for comfort. But she was the queen and besides, she had just dismissed me.

  What could I do to help? What could I say? Suddenly I was at a loss for words, so I did as she asked, and kept walking down the gallery, only too aware that she still wept behind me.

  Ahead a large doorway gaped into a room. When I peered in, I saw that there was another doorway opening onto a balcony. A number of grandly dressed figures were crowded there, looking into the courtyard below. It took me a moment to sort them out: the king, the dowager Queen Catherine, and the king’s tw
o younger brothers. They were flanked by the duke and the cardinal. On either side were a pair of armed guards standing rigidly at attention.

  Not a one of them saw me, for their eyes were firmly fixed on what was before them.

  I crept past four tables on which the remains of a light supper lay. When I reached the balcony, I had to stand on tiptoe to see.

  At first the scene came to me only in small snatches: a peek under an elbow, over a shoulder. Then I gasped in spite of myself.

  Surely, I thought, this is some sort of tableau of silent players. A charade. A game. Nothing so awful could really be happening.

  But in another instant I realized that it was all too real.

  From balconies and high railings all around the courtyard hung at least two hundred bodies, perhaps more. I could not have borne counting them. The faces were hideously discolored. Eyes bulged. Mouths hung open, slack and lifeless; limbs were limp.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God! I thought in a rush. An orchard of horror in a garden of death.

  I was not naive. I knew of war. Our poets sing of battles and the hundreds slain. I had heard how the duke had killed many of our country’s enemies, which was surely an honorable thing to do.

  But these hanged men were not some foreign foe. They were Frenchmen loyal to the king and to France.

  La Renaudie had said he wanted only to speak to the king. He had come with a company at his back to beg for help. Yet here their poor tortured bodies were, being displayed as though their deaths were but some sort of dumb show.

  I did not understand, I did not want to understand.

  But I knew I had to witness it all, for this was the sight that had made my poor queen weep. So I continued to stare.

  Then I saw in the very center of the courtyard a crude gallows where a man swung back and forth, the rope creaking loudly. I recognized the dead man at once by the beard, and by the cream-colored breeches with the slash in one leg. As the duke had promised, La Renaudie had been hanged in front of the king.

  At the gallows foot stood a bloody wooden block over which hunched a grim, hooded figure. He held a long-handled axe in his right hand. There was already a wide streak of crimson along the edge of the blade.

  Now a struggling prisoner, a young man no older than my dear Pierre, was dragged forward by a pair of soldiers. Forcing him onto his knees, they pressed on his shoulders so that his neck was laid square on the block.

  The headsman lifted his axe.

  I stuffed a hand into my mouth to stifle the scream that rose up—like bad wine. Then, spinning around, I dashed away as fast as I could across the room, through the door, down the corridor, to collapse at Queen Mary’s feet.

  “The axeman,” I sobbed. “The blood ...”

  She put her hand on my head. “Oh, Nicola, what fools we all are. What grief we bring down upon our own heads by this cruelty.” Her voice choked with pain. “How will we ever pay for what has been done this day?”

  15

  DEATH OF A KING

  We did not stay long at Amboise. The grounds of the palace were contaminated, the rivers as well. Those conspirators who had not been hung or beheaded had been tied hand and foot and thrown into the Loire. Some said it was the spirits of the dead that drove us away, others that it was the smell.

  I was glad to leave, for I had constant nightmares.

  It seems I was not alone.

  The king’s valet told me that the king cried out in his sleep: “Au secours!” over and over. Nothing seemed to help.

  As for the queen, she was pale and feverish for days. It was one of the few occasions that King Francis had concern for her health instead of his own. He forsook his games to sit by her side. We chatted often while she slept, about dogs, about hawks, about the life of a player on the road.

  “You must miss the safety of your troupe, Nicola,” the king said, compassion in his puffy eyes. “No hangings. No bloody axe.”

  I nodded in agreement, but really Troupe Brufort and Uncle’s cane had never seemed all that safe to me.

  Once the queen was well enough to travel, the court left Amboise. There was great relief at all levels of the court that we were quit of that cursed place, going first to Fontainebleau, next to St.-Germain-en-Laye, and then on to other châteaus.

  While we traveled, the soldiers scoured the countryside, arresting those Huguenots who had escaped from Amboise and those who had been in league with them. News of executions always seemed to await us at each new place, spoiling our welcome. The de Guises put down their Protestant enemies ruthlessly, with as little compassion as a farmer gives mad dogs.

  If the misfortunes that followed the killings were meant as punishment from heaven, why did they fall so heavily upon my poor queen? She had played no part in the Huguenot deaths. Indeed she had openly wept for them.

  Yet it was she who suffered the most thereafter.

  News came but a few months later of the death of her mother, Mary de Guise, who had ruled Scotland in her daughter’s name for so many years. The queen had been eight when her mother last came to France, but they had remained close through their letters. Now there would be no more letters from that cold land.

  The queen spent weeks grieving, and there was little I did that consoled her, though I tried. I made up little verses and read them aloud, my handwriting as wobbly as my meter.

  “Like that dog on its hind legs,” I told her.

  “No more dogs, Nicola,” she said. “I have no heart to laugh. Just read.”

  I read:“Madam looks up towards heaven’s gate,

  That opens briefly, then shuts tight;

  There both queens and peasant mothers wait,

  The dawn that comes after each dark night.”

  “Thank you for the sentiment, dear Jardinière,” she said, her eyes puffy and red. She did not comment on the meter.

  After that I tried dancing, jests, tale spinning, singing, even tumbling. Nothing worked. She could scarcely manage a smile.

  We did not know that the worst was still to come.

  The court wintered that year at Orleans, and the king returned one Sunday from hunting, complaining of an intense pain in his ear. He sat through dinner with a linen square to his discharging ear, while the queen fed him by hand as if he were a child.

  “Sing, Nicola,” the queen commanded. “The king always likes your jolly songs.”

  “No songs,” he whispered. Then he got up unsteadily and went off to his own apartments, still moaning about his ear.

  The next day he fell into a swoon. Doctors flocked around him like gulls at a fishing boat, but they were powerless to steer him to safe waters.

  So as not to worry the court, the duke announced that the winter fogs over the Loire had given the king a cold. Therefore, no one worried—except the queen and the dowager, who hovered in the sickroom as helpless as the medical men. No fools allowed, of course. No one felt like laughing.

  For the next two weeks the king grew steadily worse.

  The queen’s hairdresser came to my room one morning, her own hair all startled wisps. “You must come to Her Majesty at once,” she said. “She is distraught. I can do nothing right.”

  I hurried after her, and when I entered the room, the queen was sitting before her mirror, dark circles under her eyes.

  “Oh, Nicola, what shall I do?” She did not look at me but at my reflection in her mirror. “How can I possibly live without my sweet brother?” She meant the king. “No one is dearer to me.”

  “He will live many years more, Your Majesty,” I said. “God would not be so cruel,” proving I was a better fool than a seer.

  She sent the hairdresser away and turned to gaze at me with such sadness, I thought my own heart would break.

  “Come with me, Nicola,” she said, standing and taking my hand. Then she led me to the king’s sick chamber. His mother was there already, keeping the doctors at bay.

  The chamber smelled of sickness, that heavy, musky, dank smell of wet beds and poultices.
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  “I thought Nicola might entertain Francis,” Queen Mary whispered to her mother-in-law. “He enjoys her wit.”

  “Anything to take his mind from the suffering,” Queen Catherine replied. She gestured me to stand at the side of the great bed.

  The king’s face was puffier than ever, his cheeks mottled with scaly patches. A bandage had been placed over his left ear, but there were traces of inflammation around its edges, like the crust of a tart.

  “Your Majesty,” I said in a voice in which cheer and dread battled, “I have a riddle for you, one that has to do with dogs.”

  His eyes fluttered open and I took that as a good sign. So I began: “Two legs sat upon three legs, with one leg in his lap. In comes four legs, and runs away with one leg....” I did my best to amuse him with that country riddle and others, as well as foolish songs and stories, but my heart was no more in it than was his.

  Once or twice he lifted his heavy eyelids, but I am not certain he even saw me. Dearly as I wanted to bring a smile to his face—if only to please the queen-I felt as disheartened as on the day Uncle had forced us to perform on the empty, rain-swept streets of Rheims.

  After many minutes the queen said, “It is enough, Nicola.”

  She knew, as I did, that my efforts had been in vain.

  I was relieved to be dismissed. The pervasive odor was making me feel ill as well, and I hurried to a side chamber where I waited in case the queen wished to call upon my services again. To my shame, I hoped she would not. I could not bear to be in that room again.

  I had brought with me a small book of Italian poems the queen had lent me some months before. The poems were full of shepherds and shepherdesses falling in love amidst willows and crystal springs. I wondered that their life was not harder, seeing that here in the king’s own palace, life seemed very hard indeed.

  Curling up on a cushion, I read by the failing evening light, and fell into a doze, dreaming of sheep.