Queen's Own Fool

by Jane Yolen

  Darnley fled the room, whey-faced and shaking. If he noticed us in the outer chamber, he did not so much as nod.

  As soon as he had gone, we crowded in to see what the queen might need.

  She lay ashen against her pillow. “Pull the curtains, Nicola.”

  I did it at once. When I turned back to look at her, she had her eyes closed.

  “I would sleep till tomorrow or beyond,” the queen said.

  The Maries hurried out of the room, but I stayed and knelt beside her bed.

  “What would you have me do to him, Madam,” I whispered to her. “Whatever you ask, I would do and gladly.”

  But she was already asleep.

  As summer gave way to a golden autumn, our Jamie grew into a fat and happy child. He could now almost sit on his own and he loved playing games of peekaboo. He had his own company of violers who fiddled him to sleep.

  I adored the wee child. We all did. He had the sweetest disposition—her child, not his. But I worried where others did not.

  “He shall be spoiled rotten,” I told Joseph as he sat with me outside the child’s chamber. “Like a fruit too much handled.”

  “How is that different from any royal child?” Joseph asked.

  “If I have a child,” I said, “there shall be no spoiling.”

  Joseph laughed. “You shall be the worst of them all.”

  34

  ILLNESS

  Being a father did nothing to change Darnley’s ways. In fact he had continued to risk disgrace and scandal at every turn. The strain of his behavior eventually wore down the queen until—in the course of a visit to Jedburgh—she fell dreadfully ill.

  The four Maries and I were sent for, and we arrived tightly packed in a single carriage, like threads in a sewing basket.

  “How is she?” Regal Mary asked the question for all of us as we were shown up the stairs to the queen’s chamber.

  The chamberlain who led us said, “She came home from a ride to the Hermitage to see Lord Bothwell and collapsed.”

  “And you let her ride so far?” Regal Mary asked. “Why, that is over fifty miles the round-trip, man, and she not yet well.”

  The chamberlain, a storklike figure, shrugged. “She is the queen, my lady. Would you have had me tell her no?”

  “I would have!” I said. “Who is the worst fool?”

  Pious Mary laid a hand on mine. “Hush, Nicola.”

  We had reached a landing, but none of us were willing to stop for a breath. We simply followed the long-legged chamberlain as he continued his awful tale. “She was taken to bed swooning and vomiting. For nine days she has lain in her bed unseeing, unable to speak no matter what Dr. Arnault has tried. A priest is standing by to hear her last confession.”

  “And you only just now sent for us?” I cried.

  “God forgive you,” Pious Mary said under her breath. “I shall not.”

  “And the king? Has he come?” asked Regal Mary.

  “No, my lady, though we have sent for him.” He pointed to a doorway, and we crowded into the small room.

  A servant was by a window, starting to open it.

  “It is too cold for that,” Pretty Mary cried, dashing over to him.

  The servant stepped back. “The stench is bad, my lady, and the queen is beyond caring.”

  “No!” I shouted. “It cannot be true.” I turned towards the bed but could scarcely believe that the woman lying there was the queen. Her face was grey, her mouth shut so tightly that I could not distinguish her lips.

  “Be quick,” Dr. Arnault said, wiping his hands on a towel, “if you would say your farewells.”

  One by one the Maries knelt by the bed and, weeping, whispered into the queen’s ear. She did not so much as move a finger to say she could hear.

  “Madam,” I said when it was my turn at last, “think of your baby. Think of wee Jamie.”

  She answered with a groan so awful, I turned to beg the doctor to release her.

  But the doctor dropped the towel, crying, “Miracle! A miracle! Out, out, all of you. She still has some life. I must do my work.”

  The others fled, even the priest and the maids who had been helping the doctor, but I did not.

  “Tell me what to do,” I said. “And be it ever so bloody, I will do it.”

  “If you faint, Mademoiselle,” he said, “I shall have you removed to the midden heap.”

  Dr. Arnault had me help bind the queen’s limbs tightly with bandages. I did the arms and he her legs from the toes upward.

  Then he said, “You must hold her mouth open for me. Do not shrink from what I ask. It will be difficult.”

  I nodded and sat behind the queen, holding her to my breast.

  “Trust me, Majesty,” I whispered. “What I do may seem foolish now, but we will laugh about it after.” Then I reached around and opened her mouth with ungentle fingers, as one would the resisting jaws of a horse or a cow.

  Dr. Arnault poured wine into her gaping mouth, and much slopped over on her nightdress and the bed linen, and me. But still I held her, saying fiercely, “Swim, my queen, swim back to the shore.”

  She suddenly shuddered in my arms, then threw herself forward and began to vomit up quantities of blood.

  “Good, Madam, good,” the doctor said.

  Good? It did not smell good. It smelled like something long in the grave.

  “You will see,” the doctor said, as he wiped his hands once again on the same towel. “Now. Now she will recover.”

  “She will,” I said, suddenly bursting into tears. “But will my favorite dress?” I looked down at my sodden skirts, once the bright green of spring and now an awful purple.

  We both began to laugh loudly, hysterically, and our laughter called back the others.

  Upon seeing the queen sitting in a pool of her own vomit, Pious Mary immediately took the filthy sheets away for washing, and the queen’s nightgown as well. The other three rolled up their sleeves and began to set the little room to rights.

  I wrapped the queen in two blankets. Then the doctor and I moved her into a different room, where we set her on a mattress next to the fire. I would let no one else near her, and Dr. Arnault agreed. I unwrapped the queen’s bandages tenderly and bathed her all over with a soft cloth and warm water till she was as pink and clean as a newborn child.

  Only then did I get out of my awful dress and into a clean shift.

  Once the queen was entirely well again, and back in Edinburgh, the little prince was baptized. Queen Elizabeth sent a gold font with a little note saying that if the font were too small for the prince, Mary must keep it for her next.

  News came that Lord Ruthven had died in England, in a town called Newcastle, having escaped the queen’s justice and entered under God’s. Those who had fled with him petitioned for forgiveness. Lord James even came personally to plead their cause, saying, “Madam, they must be forgiven if the country is to be united.”

  “Forgive them? How can I forgive them?” the queen said to me later as she dandled the little prince on her knee. “You saw Davie’s wounds. Can you forgive and forget?”

  In fact, as she turned from Darnley and anyone else she suspected of having had a hand in Davie’s death, she relied increasingly on Bothwell. He alone of the lairds had remained steadfastly loyal.

  I tried to like the man. But I found it impossible.

  For one thing, I could not stand his looks.

  But Davie had been uglier by any measurement, and he had been my great good friend.

  So I tried to understand what it was about Bothwell that bothered me.

  He was a good few inches shorter than the queen, with a round and swarthy face, and short, bristly hair. He had little piggy eyes.

  Piggy eyes? That was it!

  Bothwell reminded me of the wild boar that can so cruelly disembowel an unwary hunter with a few, quick, powerful, cruel thrusts of its tusks.

  There were many who admired his courage and his leadership; many more who were cowed by
his ruthless energy. But no matter whom I asked, there were few who actually cared for him. Not even—the gossips said—his pale young wife, who had been forced to the marriage and then divorced by him.

  I said as much to Joseph one time when we were alone in the queen’s chamber.

  Joseph did not look up from the lute he was tuning, but said in a quiet voice, “Wild boars have their place in nature, Nicola.”

  “But not, I think, in a queen’s bedroom. I think Bothwell would be there if not for the king.” I was repeating something I had heard.

  “Best not say such a thing aloud,” Joseph reminded me. “Not even in jest. Not even to me.”

  “It is said everywhere already,” I pointed out, pacing back and forth before the fire. “And if I cannot say what I think, then how can I do what I must? I am the queen’s fool.”

  “Playing the fool and being a fool are two very different things, Nicola,” he said, and looked up. “Promise me you will take care.”

  “I will take care,” I said.

  “You must promise.” He held out his hand.

  I did not hesitate for a moment, but put my hand in his.

  In January Darnley fell desperately ill in a common pub in Glasgow, after a night of carousing.

  “Do you think it wrong to hope that God will relieve the queen of this unhappy match?” I asked Joseph when the news came. We were walking through the grey winter gardens of Holyrood.

  “So you are not yet reconciled to the king?” he teased.

  I made a face. “Reconciled? He is going behind the queen’s back in everything. Why, Mary Beaton says that he has been writing to the pope, asking to be given precedence over the queen as the only true champion of the Catholic faith.”

  “Rumors have a life of their own,” Joseph said. “Do not give them your breath as well.”

  He was so like Davie then, I stuck out my tongue, and he laughed at me. “Sweet Nicola, if God really wanted Darnley to decorate the courts of heaven, He would have taken him by now.”

  “Heaven? That one? He will not even get as far as the gates.”

  Laughing, Joseph took my hand and I trembled with the delight of it. Daringly I twined my fingers in his.

  Joseph did not look at me, but he did not disengage his hand, either. He continued the conversation as if we were not touching. “Darnley has only a slight case of the pox and lies in Glasgow already on the mend. Perhaps we should be thankful. If the queen were free of this one, she might make an even worse marriage.”

  “Surely that is not possible,” I said, raising my eyebrows.

  “Surely anything is possible.” Joseph looked serious. “There are many lords who would be only too happy to be king. Including your beloved Bothwell. What a stir that would be among those sharp-taloned hawks.”

  “A chicken fight more likely,” I said, and we both laughed.

  The wind sharpened, so we turned back towards the palace, still hand in hand.

  Joseph said, “It probably galls them that the queen has softened towards the king now that she has visited his sickbed.”

  The queen at Darnley’s sickbed. I suddenly shuddered, not only from the wind, and pulled my hand from Joseph’s to set my cape tighter around me. “I thought she was off hunting in Fife. Or playing golf there. Surely she cannot possibly be deceived by him again.”

  Joseph shrugged. “She is not just a queen, but a woman as well. A woman is guided by her heart as much as her head.”

  I stopped and turned to look at him straight on. “Joseph! How can you say such a thing? She is queen first.”

  He shrugged again. “In this country, people change their minds as often as they change their clothing. One day they are high-ranking councilors, next in exile, then back in court again. The king has been involved in scandal, treason, and ...” He hesitated and got a faraway look in his eye. “And murder.”

  I longed to embrace him, to help him over the hump of horror. But before I could act on my thought, he had come back again from whatever far country he was visiting.

  “The queen is having Darnley moved back to Edinburgh, where she can nurse him personally,” he said.

  My mind was suddenly filled with images of the queen tending first the ailing Francis, then Darnley.

  “Oh, no, Joseph,” I whispered hoarsely. “Dangerous times are come again.”

  “You are the court fool,” Joseph said with a laugh. “Not the court soothsayer.” Suddenly he leaned forward, as if to kiss me on the lips.

  The awful taste of Darnley’s tongue in my mouth thrust itself brutally into my memory. Much as I wanted Joseph’s kiss, I ducked away and ran off, suddenly afraid of my own wishes.

  35

  KIRK O’FIELD

  Much to my dismay, Darnley arrived back in Edinburgh on the first day of February, carried by horse litter. At his own request e was lodged in a substantial house on a square known as Kirk o’Field. It was a house often used for convalescents, for it had good air. Joseph told me there was a particularly broad and pleasant garden there.

  “You might even enjoy it,” he teased.

  I looked out of the window at my own little garden below. “Not as long as Darnley lies within,” I said bitterly.

  Typically, Darnley complained about every aspect of his quarters until a small army of servants began ferrying comforts up the hilly streets from Holyrood: carpets, cushions, chairs, tables, tapestries, and his favorite bed—an ostentatious thing hung with violet-brown velvet and trimmed with cloth of gold.

  The queen stayed on at Holyrood with the little prince, who was safe there from any infection, but she visited Darnley every day, even staying the night twice in a downstairs room on a small bed of yellow and green damask.

  I was glad not to be asked along.

  The eighth day of Darnley’s convalescence was a Sunday. One of the queen’s favorite valets, the Frenchman Bastian de Pages, had been married that day, and there was so much jollity, it was possible to forget all about the ailing king. At least we should have done so had not the queen made a point of remembering him.

  “Since my lord is not well enough to join us, we must take the festivities to him,” she announced.

  There was an immediate silence and more than one sour face. Mine included.

  What if she should fall in love with Darnley again? I thought. The sickbed had proved a powerful love token for her before.

  “Come, come,” said the queen, “we can make happy faces there as here. And think how it will please the king.”

  And if we do not, I added silently, it will give him something else to sulk about.

  The queen and her attendants mounted horses and set off down the winding lane while I followed with the entertainers and musicians. People stopped to clap as we wound our way through the streets of Edinburgh in our gaudy party clothes. More than once we dawdled to play a tune, and I was roundly cheered when I sang a rouser about the great hero Wallace. In fact, the good humor of the people on the streets almost made me forget our mission.

  By the time we got to Kirk o’Field, the house was full. Company filled every room, dicing and drinking.

  Darnley lay on the bed, his head on a white satin pillow. His face was covered by a taffeta mask to hide the disfiguring pox. I was secretly pleased to note he had lost much of his golden hair.

  Close by the bed was a small table, and next to it a high-backed chair covered with the same violet-brown velvet as the bed. Some few feet away stood a bath covered now by an oaken door. Frequent bathing was a vital part of his cure. This left but little space for revelers.

  When we arrived, Joseph was immediately summoned by the queen to play upon his lute. Seeing him, Darnley turned sharply away, groaning and clutching his belly.

  A bad conscience leads to a bad stomach, I thought, something Papa used to say.

  Angel that he was, Joseph merely shrugged off Darnley’s rudeness. Still it took little to sense the king’s fear even through the taffeta mask.

  “Play on, Jos
eph,” the queen instructed, and Joseph played. His touch was never as lilting as his brother’s, but it had a raw power of its own.

  Lord Bothwell arrived soon after we did, a dark figure keeping company with his wineglass more than with the other revelers. As the evening drew in, he strode over to the king’s bed, where the queen was sitting.

  “Madam,” he reminded her, “you promised Bastian to be at the castle for the masquerade. You are not one to forfeit your promises.”

  The king snorted at that, and the taffeta mask rippled.

  As if Darnley’s response was some sort of signal, the queen stood. “We will go,” she said.

  When she stood, so did everyone else in the room except the king, and soon the whole company began to file out.

  The queen stopped to give Darnley a ring to comfort him for her absence, and passed a few more words with him. I waited for her in the doorway, reluctant to leave without her.

  Once again I was in position to overhear things I shouldn’t. But as dear Maman had once said, Once in the ear, twice in the heart. I do not think she meant it for eavesdropping.

  “Is it true Morton has returned to Scotland?” Darnley asked.

  For a moment the queen was unable to meet his gaze. Morton had been one of those known to have colluded in Davie’s murder, fleeing to England with Ruthven. It was said that he bore a grudge against Darnley for betraying the conspiracy.

  “He had a hand in yon foul fact, you know,” the king added. He never spoke of the “murder” directly. It astonished me that he talked as if he’d had no part in it himself.

  Such astonishment may have been in the queen’s mind, too, for she took a long time to respond. At last she said, “Morton’s pardon was necessary. Lord James insisted the old wounds be healed.”

  “Insisted? But you are the queen, Madam,” Darnley said. “And I am the king. And they are ...”

  “It is done.”

  He put a hand out to her.

  “I must go,” she said.

  “Why, Mary? Why must you leave?” His voice rose to an unbecoming whine. “For a mere servant’s wedding. When your wedded lord lies here so sick—and lonely. Once you cared for me like an angel.”