Queen's Own Fool

by Jane Yolen

  I remembered Lord James and his hooded eyes. And the small ponies. And the palace not ready in time. I thought again about the iron bars. “They did seem to.”

  “They are friendly enough today,” Pious Mary warned, whispering in French, “for now they have an excuse for celebration. But when the light fades, the queen’s enemies will sneak out under cover of darkness, mark my words.”

  Once inside the palace, I was escorted by an unsmiling maid to my little room. How would I ever make it feel like a home? The hangings on my bed here were simple woolen plaid, not the embroidered damask of France. There was no private water closet, only a closestool hung with coarse sacking in the common room I shared with Eloise and the other ladies’ maids.

  Shivering and exhausted, I climbed into bed, a hot water bottle at my feet, and tried to sleep.

  I awoke in the middle of the night with a fearful start, thinking that Pious Mary’s prophecy had come true all too soon. Outside the palace walls came a bloodcurdling wail and an awful chant of dissonant voices as if the spirits of the dead had risen from their graves to drive us back to France.

  “Mother of God,” I whispered, flinging aside the covers. I jumped up, took the crucifix from over my bed, and, holding it before me, threw open the window.

  What a sight greeted me!

  Below, hundreds of Scots-men and women alike—capered and sang and played loudly upon their ill-tuned instruments. Some sawed away vigorously at fiddles and rebecs. Others bore strange pipes such as I had never seen before, that had not one but four tubes for fingering and blowing sticking out from a kind of bladder.

  The resulting noise was an earsplitting wail more suited to the battlefield than a serenade.

  Not ghosts, then, but a happy crowd, made happier—I am certain—by much drink. The songs drifted from reverent psalms to bawdy ballads and back again. In between were cheers—for the queen, for Lord James, for the four Maries, and even, when someone spotted me at the window, for me!

  Three rooms from where I watched, the queen stood on a balcony, wrapped in a violet robe, gazing down at the revelers with a smile, like a mother looking proudly upon her boisterous children.

  One huge woman raised a tankard and shouted, “Mary, lass—I drink yer health. Yer father was a generous man.”

  In France such familiarity might have cost the woman her head.

  The queen clapped her hands and called out in perfect Scots, “Haste ye back, my people. Come again tomorrow.”

  My one thought was: What an invitation! What if they take her up on it?

  But luckily they soon left for their own beds.

  I crawled into my uncomfortable cot, and fell gratefully into a dream.

  But the next night and three nights after as well, the people of Edinburgh took the queen at her word, robbing us all of our much needed rest, until even they finally had had enough.

  Surely, I thought each night as I tried to sleep with my head under the covers, surely no queen was ever so beloved by her people.

  Or so loudly.

  19

  MASS AND MOB

  But, as I soon found out, not everyone so loved the queen.

  That very first Sunday in Holyrood, as we went to mass, this was revealed to all of us.

  The queen walked slowly at the head of our small congregation towards the chapel royal, stepping daintily through the mud. She did not speak but read her breviary as she went.

  The four Maries came dutifully behind her, Regal Mary with her skirts hiked well above her ankles so as not to drag her hem through the mire.

  I strode along next to the black-robed acolyte, Michel, who clutched the fat white altar candles to his chest. He had a shaven head, protruding front teeth, and the look of a frightened rabbit.

  Directly in back of us came several of the queen’s French servants, who had been given permission to attend Catholic worship with us. They were carrying a gold altar cloth.

  Suddenly the queen stopped and Regal Mary, eyes on her own hem and the mud, almost crashed into her back.

  I was too far back to know at first what was happening, though I heard angry muttering, so I slipped from my usual place and ran towards the front.

  It was then that I saw our way was blocked by a knot of men.

  “Blasphemer!” cried one, his face red with anger, or drink. He raised his fist and waved it in the air like a weapon.

  “No more idolaters!” cried another, who actually spat at us. Though, as he was too far away for any precision, the spit fell on his own boots.

  “Hang the priest!” shouted a third, a thin-lipped man with narrowed eyes. Leaving the safety of his fellows, he dashed forward and tried to seize the candles from Michel’s hands.

  “I am ... I am no priest!” cried Michel. For a moment, he held on to the candles before dropping them in terror.

  At that, half a dozen of the men ran at us, grabbing the cloth and ornaments from the serving girls, who screamed and let go without a struggle.

  “Stop!” I cried out in French. “Stop it, you monsters!”

  But laughing at me, and mangling my French back at me, the men trod the cloth into the mud until it was brown and ruined.

  “Run!” Michel cried in a high rabbity voice. “There is sanctuary in the church. Run! Run!”

  And suddenly we were all running headlong towards the chapel, which meant running through the mob. So intent were the men on their little acts of destruction, they let us go, though the spitter caught up a serving girl and kissed her, despite her screams.

  All of us ran. Me, too. And when I turned to find the queen, I saw that she had maintained the same stately pace she had had before, head held high, breviary now closed and clutched to her breast. She walked right past the laughing men. None of them dared lay a hand on her.

  When she reached the church door, she turned to face them. There were two bright spots of color on her cheeks. I knew that look.

  The queen was not afraid. She was furious.

  Suddenly Lord James, who had been waiting inside the church, came out and stood by the queen’s side. He puffed out his broad chest like a frog on a lily pad, and looked both comical and fierce. With him were two soldiers, like angels of the Lord, swords drawn.

  Lord James glared at the mob with those great hooded eyes. “What loathsome wolves have we Scots become?” he thundered. “Chasing down women and boys as if they were rabbits on the hill.”

  At his words, a number of the men glanced away, or down at their feet. No one answered his challenge.

  “I have given my word,” said Lord James, “and with it the word of Scotland, that the queen may worship as she will in the safety of her own house. And no men as small as ye—shall make a liar of me.”

  The men stood silent but restless before him.

  Then Lord James put his head to one side. “I know ye, Patrick Lindsay. And ye. And ye.” He pointed to one after another, naming them all. “Go home, lads, and sober up. Or go to the kirk and ask the Lord and his preacher John Knox to forgive ye, for I canna.”

  One by one, the members of the little mob sneaked away, looking thoroughly chastened, though Patrick Lindsay threw down the fattest of the altar candles like a gauntlet at Lord James’s feet.

  We went in then, though Lord James and his two men remained as guards outside the door. But I could not keep my mind on prayer, for the chapel thrummed with tension. The bald-headed priest was shaking so much with remembered terror, he could scarcely manage to elevate the Host.

  I glanced at the queen out of the corner of my eye. As she prayed, her clear, pale face had the calm of an early martyr waiting for the lions.

  The very next morning the queen issued a proclamation confirming Protestantism as Scotland’s official religion. She knew such a measure was necessary, as she said to us that night at supper in her chamber. “For my kingdom’s stability and also because I hope it will confirm my people’s affection for me.”

  “Most already love you, Your Majesty,” said Pret
ty Mary. “How can they not?”

  Behind us a young Scottish musician played upon a lute. He had a sweet touch on the strings though his voice was a bit harsh.

  Jolly Mary added, “They love the music and poetry, the dancing and gaiety you have brought. To lighten their dour lives.”

  “God is watching over you,” said Pious Mary. “And when He is ready, He will help you bring the old religion back to the land.”

  The queen smiled. “Play us another air,” she said to the Scottish boy.

  He began again, his fingers flying over the strings.

  They were all so happily unknowing that I had not the heart to tell them otherwise. I did not say what I had overheard in the kitchen that very morning when I had gone down to fetch up the tea.

  What cook said was that it was the preacher John Knox who had whipped up his followers to stop us from going to mass. That Knox—that “old black crow” as the cook called him—said we were leading the Scots to make a counterfeit France here!

  What good would it do to tell the queen and the Maries? I asked myself as I watched them.

  So I failed in my one duty to the queen.

  In the end, I did not have to warn the queen about Knox’s follies. They became all too evident to everyone at court.

  First, from his high pulpit, practically within the shadow of the castle, he began preaching ferociously against our Catholic faith. Then he took up against what he called the queen’s “frivolity,” as though it were a sin to believe other than he did, and a double sin to do so cheerfully.

  Knox called the queen “Honeypot” and “Sorceress,” and he did not mean them as compliments.

  Soon Knox’s name was on everyone’s lips. The four Maries talked of nothing else at the table, at their embroideries, at cards.

  And the queen? She was baffled by the man. She said so as she played chess.

  “I have sent him warnings and appeals. He ignores them all. Who is this man who dares to speak against me in this fashion?” As she spoke, she moved her pieces willy-nilly, as if unable to concentrate on the game. “What have I done that he seeks to separate my people from me?”

  “In France he would have been beheaded for such treason,” Pious Mary pronounced blithely, her busy fingers at work on yet another embroidery. She did not notice that her words made the queen shiver.

  “Pitch him into the sea,” Regal Mary said. “Let the fish eat his black heart.” She moved her bishop carefully. It was not often she beat the queen.

  “Madam, if you tempt him back to the one true faith, then all the rest will follow,” the poet Chatelard suggested, “as dogs follow their master. ”

  “Oh, yes, Majesty,” cried Pretty Mary. “Send him to a monastery. That will cool his blood!”

  On and on they jested, making light of the dark. The only one who did not jest was the one who had the right to make jokes.

  The queen’s fool.

  Me.

  20

  THE BLACK CROW

  Day after day I added nothing to the jests, for I felt I had already failed my queen by having said nothing at first. And day after day Knox, that old black crow, added fuel to the fire. But still the queen did not speak out publicly.

  “I have promised my people—all my people—freedom to believe as their consciences dictate,” she said, her chin high.

  Who could not have loved such a monarch!

  And then John Knox finally went too far, demanding that Queen Mary become a Protestant herself or be driven from the throne. I did not bring the news to her. Lord James himself, puffed out with the story, told her as she sat surrounded by her Maries.

  I was on a cushion by her chair, one of the dogs in my lap.

  “That,” Regal Mary said plainly, “is treason, Your Majesty. Simply treason. It cannot be ignored.”

  Lord James agreed. “Even I, a Protestant, know he has gone too far. You must speak to him, Madam. You must tell him as his sovereign that such talk will not be tolerated.”

  The little terrier bit down on my finger with its sharp teeth. A love bite. But still I cried out.

  “And you, my fool,” the queen said, “who have been silent all these days on the matter of this Knox? What say you?”

  I replied in Italian: “Our village priest had a crow once that spoke. Until it said what it shouldn’t during mass. Then he wrung its neck.”

  “What did she say?” asked Lord James, who did not understand the language.

  “That I need to speak to the black crow in person, Jamie. Make it so,” the queen said.

  So Knox was summoned to the palace for an interview with the queen.

  How I longed to be at her feet while she filleted him. I said so in French as we sat by the fire.

  “No, Nicola,” she said. “He would take your presence as an insult and therefore would not listen to a word I say. This is a man who prizes himself highly. I will hang him on his own monstrous vanity.” She spoke in Scots and I answered her in the same tongue, for my use of it was improving daily.

  “How I want to see that, Your Majesty.” I turned from the hearth. “Please.”

  “You cannot, Nicola,” she told me. Her mouth got that stern expression that was a warning to me that she was about to say something extremely important and that I must listen with care. “The man already froths at the mouth where women are concerned. He even tried to raise rebellion against my mother. ”

  “But Majesty, I will be as quiet as a sleeping babe....”

  She shook her head and held out her hands to the fire. “No, my fool. ” She said the two words in French, which softened her refusal.

  “Then may I conceal myself behind a tapestry in the council chamber?” I asked. “He will never know I am listening.”

  “Not even hidden will I have you there, my sweet fool.”

  “I could be as silent as the grave.” I made the sign of the cross over my heart.

  “I would rather you be lively,” she answered. “Now run along.”

  Treated as a child, I vowed I would act like one. But what could I do? I was loath to go against my queen’s wishes.

  And then I had it: I would hide but not inside the interview room—for she would see me there—but behind a hanging outside the chamber.

  I was too old at twelve to believe Knox would have flames leaping from his eyes or brimstone gusting from his jaws. I had learned that lesson at Amboise. Still I wondered what kind of man he could be who was both an old crow—and a firebrand.

  So when he was due for the interview, I carefully concealed myself behind a hanging, and arranged the heavy tapestry to conceal the bump that was me. The wool in the tapestry made my silk dress cling unbecomingly to my legs, which was annoying. But I made myself stand still and waited for John Knox to arrive.

  I knew when he entered the hallway. The great doors let out an agonizing squeak as the guards opened them. Then a second squeal as the doors were shut after him. I heard his heavy footsteps going directly across the stone floor.

  The footsteps were all but past my hiding place when I peeked out. He was so intent on the door to the throne room, he never noticed me.

  What a disappointment! At the very least I had expected a man as dashing as La Renaudie, with a winning smile and a piratical manner. But Knox looked more like a wandering prophet. His hair was grey and worn long, with a beard tumbling down his chest to his waist. He wore a homely black bonnet and a long black robe, as if he were in permanent mourning for the world.

  When he entered the audience chamber, I had a moment’s glimpse of the queen sitting under a gold canopy, the great multicolored window at her back. Her mother’s diamond and ruby cross hung from a chain around her neck.

  She was a swan to his crow. But she also looked, somehow, vulnerable.

  And mortal.

  Then the door closed behind him with a crash and I could see no more.

  So I sneaked from my hiding place to listen like a child at the keyhole. Alas, I could make out little they said.<
br />
  Knox’s voice, more powerful than even the cardinal‘s, rose and fell like a raging gale. I could distinguish one or two of the actual words—“idolatry” and “Nebuchadnezzar” were said with much rolling of r’s—but I got no real sense of what he was saying.

  I pressed my ear even harder against the keyhole.

  There were long silences which I took to be when the queen was answering Knox. I could just imagine her gentle, reasoned arguments, possibly leavened by the occasional bit of poetry.

  Quiet versus thunder, light against dark, their conversation went on for some time. I strained to make sense of what little I could hear, when suddenly footsteps approached the door from within the chamber.

  I leaped away from the keyhole and almost fell over backwards. There was just barely time for me to run back to the tapestry. I made little effort to conceal the sound of my shoes on the stone floor.

  Wriggling back behind the heavy arras, I held my breath, willing the heavy hanging to stop moving.

  Just then I heard Queen Mary emerge from the throne room, the light tap-tap-tap of her shoes accompanied by the heavy marching steps of a number of heavy-footed men. They swept down the passage towards the banqueting hall. As she passed, I peeped out and saw on her face traces of freshly dried tears.

  I did not doubt that the queen had met the stern preacher with a spirit as resolute as his own. He had not cowed her. But he had made her cry. I wriggled out of my hiding place and started after her. She needed me—me—and not that gaggle of men following close behind her.

  At that very moment, John Knox emerged from the chamber, and I turned to stare at him. His robes flapped behind him like the wings of a giant crow. His face was locked in a scowl so dark that it could almost have extinguished the torches blazing on the walls.

  “And what are ye gawping at, lass?”

  I stepped back involuntarily, as if thrown off balance by a driving wind. Blurting out the first silly thought in my head, I said, “I was wondering, sir ... how many times you have to run a comb through that beard when you first get up.”