Queen's Own Fool

by Jane Yolen

  She placed her hands on my shoulders and gazed at me. “But what of you, Jardinière? How can I take you to such a northerly land where the wind and frost might wilt your tender petals?”

  I had not considered my own fate in this. Yes, I had thought I might go back to Italy some day. But Scotland? I knew nothing of that cold place.

  Still, the queen had asked a direct question. As always, I had to answer. But my mind boiled like a kettle with questions: If I decided to stay behind, what kind of a life could I make for myself? Would the duke and his brother punish me, without the queen to stop them? Could I ever find Pierre again? Pierre was sixteen now, would he leave the troupe so that we could go off to make our own future? All these questions collapsed around a final one.

  “Am I not bound to follow you, my queen?”

  “Bound, no.” She released her hold on me and sat back. “I freed you once from the cold grip of a tyrant. How could I force you now to go where you do not want to go?”

  I remembered then what the Maries had said, of how a Catholic queen was safer here than in Scotland. The duke and the cardinal had said much the same.

  Yet I—no more than a peasant in a fool’s costume—had told the queen to go there. And she—poor Madam—had accepted my advice.

  Then I recalled La Folle racing to King Francis’s side when the duke was about to checkmate him. If a dwarf could save a king, surely a fool might do likewise for a queen.

  “Take me with you,” I said. “The fool belongs at her queen’s side.”

  17

  ACROSS THE WATER

  I thought we were bound for Scotland, but it was six months more before we left France. A queen’s time is not like that of a traveling player’s. It took weeks to pack everything and weeks to outfit the two great galleys and the two escort ships.

  One of the galleys was fitted out in red, the other in white to match the queen’s mourning colors. Aboard the queen’s galley were to be the four Maries, now finished with their education in the convent, and their crooked-toothed maid, Eloise. Also the young poet Châtelard, who was meant to entertain us with his verses. He was handsome in a pasty sort of way, with parti-color eyes, one blue and one green. The old chronicler Brantôme, with his sour mouth, was to come along, too. /

  We also had physicians, perfumers, a Latin tutor, page boys, milliners, embroiderers, laundresses—all those folk who worked hard to give the queen her ease. And of course musicians. The queen could not do without them.

  And me!

  To my relief Madam Jacqueline was not to go, for the queen decided I needed her no more. And the dwarf stayed in France, too. She was Queen Catherine’s fool now.

  I had a favor I wanted to ask of the queen. I waited for days, trying to think of the best way to approach her. At last one evening we were in her chamber and she was in a happy mood, having beaten me once again at chess.

  Carefully I drew a folded letter from my pocket. “Please, Madam,” I said. “I have written to my cousin. The boy who threw the seven clubs in the air.”

  “Ah, the handsome Pierre. You have not spoken of him for some time,” she said, putting the chessmen back in their oaken box.

  “I have told him that we are going to live in Scotland. In the city of Edinburgh. I asked that he send me word there.” I held out the letter. “But I do not know how to get this to him.”

  Smiling, she took the parchment from me and without unfolding it, said, “Surely if a priest could find your uncle for you once, a messenger of mine can find Troupe Brufort again.”

  The queen had commanded the Maries to teach me the Scottish tongue. So, even though I was not a friend to them, I was often at their sides.

  “Scots is a barbaric language,” I complained to Jolly Mary one evening as we sat by the fire roasting chestnuts. “How it jangles.”

  She laughed. “It is not as pretty as French,” she said. “But once we are in Scotland, you will see how it exactly fits that rugged land.”

  “Surely the queen in England does not sound like she is clearing her throat with every syllable, or they would not call her Great Elizabeth, only Great Elizabelch.”

  Pious Mary, sitting on a nearby chair, smiled. “Elizabeth in England speaks English, which is like—and yet not like—the Scots tongue. Just as the language spoken by people in Normandy differs from that spoken in Picardy.”

  “At least,” I said, “they all speak French.”

  “La, Nicola, you will keep the cold Scottish court warm with that tongue of yours!” Pretty Mary said.

  The dawn of our departure from Calais was so dull and misty that when we boarded the ship, the dock and all of our beloved France was hidden from view.

  The gulls cried mournfully as they flew through the mist, and a small rain began to fall.

  “The country weeps for its loss, Highness,” I said.

  The queen did not seem to hear me. I thought that her eyes and heart were already set upon Scotland. But mine were turned backwards, to France, and I began to weep.

  Pious Mary came over and put her arms about my shoulders as if to draw my sadness to herself. She smelled of lavender water. “Do you weep for the country or the queen, Nicola?”

  I shook my head. “I am only afraid of going so far away and leaving behind everything I know. My family ...”

  “We are your family now, Nicola.”

  “That does not make me any less afraid.”

  “There is much to be afraid of,” Pious Mary agreed, letting me out of her lavender embrace. “Elizabeth of England has refused to grant us safe passage.”

  “Will she send ships against us?” I asked.

  “No one knows,” Pious Mary said. “My father has written to me a warning. But we must not borrow trouble, as the prior used to say. Only be ready for it. Commend yourself to God and all will be well.”

  At last our rowers began to move our galley out of the harbor and onto the cold expanse of the North Sea.

  I looked about for the queen and spied her at the stern, that part of the boat still closest to France.

  In her white widow’s veil she looked like the ghost of a queen and not the queen herself. She held her little terrier to her breast and was staring off to land.

  I went to offer what comfort I could but stopped when I heard her whisper, “Farewell, my beloved France. Farewell. Farewell. I shall never see you more.”

  If she had turned around, I am certain I would have seen tears running down her cheeks. But she did not move or speak again till we were far out to sea. Then she called for her bed to be brought up on deck and remained there the rest of the voyage.

  How could I have been so wrong? She was not looking ahead to the journey. There was nothing familiar for her in Scotland. It was a foreign country to her, no matter that she was its queen.

  Three days out, a fleet of ships was sighted to the southwest, close enough that we could see their banners flapping from the masts.

  “Are they pirates?” I cried to one sailor. I put a fist to my chest and added, “I will fight. I can, you know.”

  “No, not pirates, miss,” he told me, laughing. “They are English, which is worse.” Then he spit over the railing with a sound like “Ptah!”

  “How can you tell?” I stared over the railing at the ships.

  “By their flags, miss,” he replied.

  “Will they attack us?” the queen asked.

  The sailor shrugged. “I do not know, Majesty.”

  Standing at the railing, where she had spent much of the trip, Regal Mary said stiffly, “I think they are as uncertain as we.”

  “Uncertain? What do you mean?” The queen spoke into the wind and her questions were blown back to us.

  Her face the color of soured milk, Regal Mary said, “They do not know if Elizabeth will knight them or behead them should they bring the Queen of Scots captive to London.” Then she bent over the railing once more.

  The queen shook her head. “No—I do not believe this. Elizabeth is my sweet siste
r. She has written me these very words. We need not fear her ships.”

  By evening the English ships had dropped out of sight, and though we never saw them again, I did not stop checking the horizon hour after hour, just in case.

  In all it took five long days to reach the mouth of the river Forth, and our journey ended very much as it had begun in a thick, grey, blanketing fog. We could scarcely see the shore.

  I had thought the French court a fairy-tale realm.

  Not so Scotland. The hard, rugged coast appeared and disappeared in a grey mist.

  “Madam,” I said to the queen, “perhaps giants or savage monsters dwell here.”

  She smiled. “Some call the Scots that. But I was born to love them. Just as they were born to love me.” She leaned over the railing and opened her arms wide. Little tentacles of mist curled and uncurled around them.

  Suddenly, like stars appearing from behind a cloud, bonfires ignited along the shore to greet us. It was as though the hard granite face of a stone giant had just smiled at us, revealing him to be a friend and not the ogre I had feared.

  Queen Mary ran to the front of the ship. She stood on her tiptoes and cried out, “My people—I have come home!”

  SCOTLAND

  1560-1567

  To ease my sorely troubled mind,

  I keep to no one spot confin’d

  But think it good to shift my place,

  In hopes my sadness to efface;

  For now is worst, now best again,

  The most sequestrate solitary scene.

  from a poem by

  MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, 1560

  18

  LANDING AT LEITH

  We docked at the port of Leith, and the queen was the first to cross the gangway.

  If there were ever a last moment when she could have abandoned her Scottish venture, this was it. If she had turned then, calling to her sailors to man the oars, I think not one of us would have felt regret at going back to France.

  But she simply squared her shoulders beneath the flowing white widow’s veil, and strode forward to meet the tall and grizzled Scots nobles who had gathered to welcome her.

  I followed right behind.

  “Greetings, Your Majesty,” a tall, square-chested man called out in Scots as he moved towards us. Dressed in a shirt decorated in blackwork embroidery and a black velvet doublet, he did not look comfortable in his finery. Not like the French nobles I knew.

  “Thank you for my warm welcome, Lord James,” the queen replied. “My most trusted kinsman.”

  Lord James had a heavy, unhandsome face. There was a crude honesty to his features, I suppose. At the same time something seemed withdrawn in his eyes, as though part of him was purposely hidden. The queen called him trusted. But I did not trust him. Not so easily. Not yet.

  I set my lips together. Lord James would get no smile of me.

  Lord James gestured to the small man at his side. “You remember William Maitland, your mother’s secretary of state.”

  The queen inclined her head towards Maitland.

  Maitland was much shorter than Lord James, with a long nose, well-trimmed beard, and a receding hairline shaped like a large heart. He wore a velvet coat with a broad lace collar and was very refined in his movements. Much to my relief, he spoke French. His witty flourishes, however, seemed labored, and he went on and on.

  “Why is it that people who have the least to say are those who take the longest to say anything?” I complained in a whisper to Jolly Mary, who had come up behind the queen.

  “You must be patient,” she whispered back. “This Maitland is a diplomat and so is prone to flowery speech.”

  I made a face. “I think diplomats are like chameleons,” I whispered back. “They change color wherever they stand.”

  The gist of Maitland’s welcome was that fair winds had brought us from France more swiftly than expected. The royal palace of Holyrood was not yet ready. We were to be fed there at Leith while preparations at the palace were completed.

  Not ready for the queen! In France all royal houses were kept in a constant state of readiness.

  Not a good beginning, I thought.

  It took until late that afternoon before we proceeded on to Holyrood Palace. The queen seemed to take everything in stride, but I became increasingly angry. As did the chronicler Brantôme.

  In rapid French, Brantome cursed the Scots, the cold, the sea fog—which everyone here called a haar—and the Scottish tongue.

  “They are brutes,” he said.

  “Beasts,” I countered.

  “Fleas on beasts,” he said.

  “Fleabites!” For a moment I felt as I had with my cousin Pierre, and smiled at Brantôme companionably. But he turned away, still muttering to himself.

  The city elders then presented a grey palfrey to the queen. I was appalled all over again. In France she had been used to the finest, swift-running, spirited steeds, with shiny coats. This small, bowed horse seemed an insult.

  I was not the only one to think so.

  “Your Majesty, you cannot possibly accept such a horse,” said Brantôme. “To sit on it would be like placing a lily on a dunghill.”

  “Hush,” the queen said. “He is a lovely boy. Aren’t you?” She whispered into the horse’s ear while feeding it a handful of grain. Then she looked back at Brantôme. “The dunghill encourages much growth, my old friend. Do not despise it.”

  I was glad then that I had said nothing. It is awful to be rebuked in public by the queen.

  Brantôme continued to grumble as the queen was helped into the saddle, but the palfrey seemed to take on a certain pride with the queen on its back, like that humble donkey carrying Our Lord through the streets of Jerusalem.

  And indeed, with the wind teasing out a stray curl from her cowl, the queen was as beautiful as I had ever seen her, set on that humble little horse.

  Perhaps, I thought, I have been too quick to condemn. If the queen on her little palfrey could find the good, so could I.

  With Maitland and Lord James flanking her, the queen set off along the road to Edinburgh. The four Maries and the noblemen rode directly behind on small mountain ponies.

  I was near the rear of the procession, perched atop a wagon-load of royal baggage, swaying perilously as we made our way along the muddy, rutted road. From so high up, I could see mobs of people—families with young children, gangs of young men, giggling clusters of girls, settled groups of elderly women and men—all gathered on the road waving at Queen Mary and calling her name.

  Though it was August, the onlookers were dressed in heavy, coarse woolens of two and three colors in checkerwork, rough country wear. Many had broad blue caps with sprigs of holly and hawthorn, myrtle or yew. Their long embroidered mantles were pulled tight against the cold. I shivered in my lighter, more fashionable dress and envied them their heavier wear.

  The closer we drew to Edinburgh, the denser and more boisterous grew the crowds. I could see them jostling one another to get closer to the queen on her palfrey and I could hear wild applause and enthusiastic cheers as the royal party neared the city gates.

  “The queen!” people shouted. “Long live Mary!”

  “She be a rare beauty!” called out a redheaded man, and his words were quickly picked up and echoed through the crowd.

  The people were still cheering when my wagon reached them, and they cheered me, too. I smiled and waved, calling back to them in my broken Scots. “Happy to be here. It was a lang, lang journey. ”

  A ruddy young man thrust a handful of flowers up at me. I took the bedraggled bunch, waving them at the sea of rough but friendly faces. The hoorays in the crowd grew louder. I could only suppose that not knowing who I was, they assumed I was someone of importance because I was riding in the cart.

  Either that or fools were held in high esteem in Scotland.

  We crossed an iron drawbridge to the palace of Holyrood. Its towers and turrets reminded me of a French château, and for a moment homesickness w
ashed over me. Then I scolded myself roundly: I will not disgrace Her Majesty. I will take this as a good sign, a welcome.

  I looked then for things to like. There was a row of thirty-five windows in the castle’s long facade. I counted them! And a series of gardens beyond the walls.

  But when we came to the stone gate and I looked at the lintel, I began to tremble, for there was a carving of a stag with a cross set between its antlers, the same as at the little church in Amboise.

  “That is the holy rood, the cross of Christ,” Lord James explained loudly, pointing to the carving. “King David the First saw such a deer at this very spot and so had the palace built here.”

  “Is that true, Jamie?” the queen asked.

  “Every word, Majesty,” said Lord James, bringing his fist in a salute over his heart, but he smiled as if to put a lie to it.

  I wondered then if the Scots lords all lied with smiling faces. Even if no one else was on the lookout for them, I would make it my duty to find them out and protect my queen.

  Holyrood Palace lay a good way outside the city walls, under the protection of a long, looming, rocky hill. Every window in the palace seemed guarded by iron gratings.

  “And what are these for,” I asked in French when I caught up with the Maries. “Proof against thieves and brigands?”

  “Perhaps against wolves and bears,” Pretty Mary replied in Scottish, gesturing up at the great rocky expanse behind Holyrood. “It is said such beasts live up there on Arthur’s Seat.”

  I gasped and she laughed at my frightened face.

  “La, Nicola, be happy for the protection of the iron bars. Do not borrow dangers once danger is past. Did you see how the Scots all love the queen?”