Queen's Own Fool

by Jane Yolen

  I thought about the queen and her wish that Darnley have her crucifix on that night of all nights.

  I thought about Bothwell, who had said the queen wanted Darnley dead though she’d not said so aloud.

  I thought about Joseph’s arms around me, and the full silence between us.

  Then the sun was overhead, so I knew it was noon. I picked my way slowly, carefully, through the small hidden wynds to the market cross.

  To my disappointment, it was not Joseph who awaited me there but Pious Mary. She had a cape and hood pulled up over her head and one under her arm for me.

  “Put this on quickly and follow me,” she said with quiet intensity. “No talking till we are there. We go straight into the face of danger.”

  She led me through back alleyways and—though I was dying to question her—I did not speak. Partly I was quiet out of fear. Partly I was trying to keep up, for she set us a fast pace.

  At last, on a small street that ran up to the Royal Mile, in front of a rather substantial stone house, she turned to me. “Here is where you will be safe, Nicola. Master and Mistress Carwood have agreed to take you in,” she said in a low voice.

  For the first time since we had begun our mazed travels, I felt a bit of relief.

  We went around to the back door, like beggars or tradesmen, and Pious Mary said in a low voice, “You know their eldest daughter.”

  “Do you mean Margaret Carwood? The queen’s bedchamber woman?” I asked in the same low tone.

  Mary rapped on the door. “The same. Their younger daughter died of a fever last year and it is her room that will be yours.”

  I put a hand on her arm. “Why are they doing this for me?”

  “They are doing it for the queen.”

  The door was opened by a round-faced woman who looked little like the elegant Margaret. But she had Margaret’s same clipped pattern of speech. “Come in, come in quickly, my dears.”

  She led us to an upstairs chamber in which a bed with serge cover and curtains, a bedside table, a large blanket chest, and a wardrobe were all of the furnishings. A picture of Our Lady hung over the bed and I was almost in tears when I saw it. I crossed myself.

  Mistress Carwood watched me carefully, her head cocked to one side like a plump little sparrow. “You are just our dear child’s size,” she said at last. And taking out a simple dark blue woolen dress from the wardrobe and handing it to me, said: “Pray wear this instead of ...”

  She did not have to tell me how awful my own dress looked.

  “Are you certain, Mistress Carwood?”

  “It will honor my dear daughter’s memory, Nicola,” she said.

  Pious Mary must have instructed the Carwoods to be discreet, for they never asked specifically why I was in hiding, though I remained for the rest of February into the middle of April. It was enough for them that I was a friend of the queen’s.

  Joseph visited when he could, but was always wary of being followed by Bothwell’s spies. Each time he came—once early in the morning, but the other times long past ten o’clock at night—he brought news, and none of it good.

  “Immediately following the king’s murder,” he said, “placards were set up accusing Bothwell.”

  “Set up where?” I asked.

  “Nailed to the doors of the Tolbooth and the Tron kirk,” he said. “And on Abbey Gate as well. With a portrait of Bothwell and the legend beneath: Here is the murderer of the King.”

  “Who would have put them up?” I asked. I had not seen them in the market square.

  He shook his head. “I do not know.”

  We acted very proper towards one another, and either Master or Mistress Carwood always sat in the room while we conversed, but we always spoke in whispers. I believe they thought us courting.

  Joseph did not tell me of any other placards, but Master Carwood did so. He said that some of them named the queen herself, discredited because she had been seen a few days after her husband’s death playing golf and pall-mall in the fields. And some named the queen’s servants Francisco Busso and Bastian de Pages. “And one named your young man, Joseph, as well.”

  Joseph! I could not speak more, I was so frozen with fear.

  “But the accusations made by Darnley’s father, the Earl of Lennox,” Master Carwood concluded, “carry the most weight of all. They must be answered publicly before the law.”

  I waited, looking down at my plate, the white soup only half eaten.

  Mistress Carwood asked what I dared not. “Who does Lennox accuse, my dear?”

  “Bothwell.”

  “When?” I asked in a hushed voice. Then louder. “When, sir, must he answer them?”

  “April twelfth, Nicola, at the Tolbooth, the great hall where the Parliament meets.”

  “Oh,” I said, allowing myself a moment of joy and hope. “Then all will be well. I’ll tell the truth and then everyone will know ...” It was the first time I had said anything. I glanced up at the Carwoods and they both looked serious but not surprised. I supposed they had long since found out why I was in hiding. Such things are not so easily kept secret.

  But Master Carwood shook his head. “Do not sew the shroud before the corpse is measured, lass. Bothwell is a powerful lord and he is Sheriff of Edinburgh. There may be nothing more than a lot of angry talk and then a summary decision in his favor. You may not get to speak at all.”

  “We must still hope, Master Carwood,” I whispered, for the first time letting him know my mind.

  “We must indeed,” Mistress Carwood answered for him.

  39

  TRIAL AT THE TOLBOOTH

  On the day of Bothwell’s trial, Joseph came to collect me.

  “Are you ready, Nicola?” he asked.

  I looked around the Carwoods’ home. So small a place for such a big haven. “Ready indeed,” I said. I kissed Mistress Carwood farewell on both cheeks and she patted me on the head.

  “You look a treat in that,” she told me, for I was wearing a wine-colored dress of her daughter’s, with a soft green hooded cape.

  Master Carwood took my hands in his. “If you speak, Nicola, tell all the truth and God will make them listen.”

  “I will, sir, I promise.” But fear was like a large stone in my chest that would not go away.

  We made our way carefully to the Tolbooth. All the way, I kept thinking: If I can tell my story, all will be well. If the boar is slaughtered, we will all feast.

  “Look!” I whispered, pointing to a corner of the square where men with swords and muskets were positioned. Then I turned and turned again. There were armed men everywhere.

  “Stand back, Nicola,” Joseph warned, making sure the hood of my cape shadowed my face.

  We hid in plain sight in the midst of an excited crowd and watched as Bothwell rode up the High Street from the palace with a large escort of soldiers. The sound of the horses’ hooves clattering on the road was deafening. I put my fingers in my ears.

  “Murderer!” a man with a red tam called out.

  “Assassin, you slew our lovely laddie!” came a woman’s voice, considerably louder.

  Bothwell never turned his head to them, but guards marched two at a time into the crowd seeking out the speakers. No one else dared say another word against him.

  “Why so many soldiers?” I asked Joseph.

  “As sheriff, Bothwell is entitled to muster as many men as he thinks necessary,” Joseph answered glumly. “To preserve public order. But Lennox will be allowed only an escort of no more than half a dozen men.”

  I clutched Joseph’s arm and hissed in his ear. “Will Lennox come then?”

  “Would you?”

  I thought about the ill-tempered, violent Bothwell and shivered. Then I put my hands on my hips, saying smartly, “But I am here.”

  “In disguise,” Joseph said, giving yet another tug to my hood.

  We waited for hours in the sun for Lennox to come. I was wilting under the green hood but knew better than to remove it. I did not dare b
e seen by Bothwell before time. In fact every time one of the soldiers came near me, my hands trembled so much I looked like an old woman.

  At first the crowd was restless, then angry in a low buzzing kind of way, and at the last turned boisterous. Men began telling stories loudly, women singing songs.

  At noon hawkers selling meat pies began to make their way through the mob, and Joseph purchased a pie for me. I ate as if I were starving, but still my hands shook.

  “When will Lennox get here?” I whispered to Joseph.

  “In time, Nicola. In time,” he said.

  “In time I will have shaken myself out of my clothes,” I said.

  He put an arm around me.

  “Perhaps I should go in and give testimony by myself,” I said, snuggling against him. “Without Lennox.”

  Joseph held me closer. “Without Lennox there is no case, Nicola. Bothwell will win the day. You would not be allowed to open your mouth. You would simply be taken off into custody and that would be the last I would ever see of you.”

  I knew he was right. But so had Master Carwood been when he said God would listen.

  Where is God now that we need Him? I thought. And trembled some more.

  But Lennox did not come.

  As Joseph had predicted, the case in court against Bothwell melted away. At the end of the day, he left the Tolbooth in triumph, heading to Holyrood, his name cleared of any involvement with the murder.

  Shaking his fist at the crowd, Bothwell shouted, “I will track down the king’s killers and bring them to justice.”

  And they cheered him! The crowd actually cheered him!

  I was too angry to weep, too stunned to keep silent. I started to shout back at Bothwell. But Joseph—as if expecting it—put a hand swiftly over my mouth and dragged me away.

  As we walked down the now empty streets back towards the Carwoods’ house, I wept at last. “What a world, Joseph, when wild boars can roam at will and none dare raise a spear to bring them down.”

  Joseph visited the Carwoods the very next day, and with him came Pious Mary, who was dressed for traveling. The news they brought was even worse than we expected.

  “Bothwell is more powerful than ever. Now there is no one who dares oppose him,” Joseph said, as we gathered in the kitchen. Gone was any pretense as to who I was.

  “I doubt Nicola is safe here anymore,” said Master Carwood.

  “No, she is not, Andrew,” agreed Pious Mary. “That is why I have come to take her away from here.”

  “Does the queen know where we are going?” I asked.

  Mary looked down. “We thought it best not to tell her.”

  Joseph held my hands. “The queen is a virtual prisoner, Nicola. Even if she knew the truth, she could not protect you.”

  We went by back alleys to the city’s edge, where a groom waited with a trio of horses, a lovely bay mare for me, a black mare for him, and a grey gelding for Pious Mary.

  “Where do we go?” I asked.

  “Eight miles east,” she said. “To my father’s castle.”

  The day was soft, the color of pearl. If only we had not been escaping, I might have enjoyed the ride. But my mind was awhirl with what we were leaving behind us. I could see no way out of the maze. All I could think was: poor queen, poor Joseph, and the poor realm of Scotland under the heel of that wild boar, Bothwell.

  We rode for hours. So imprisoned was I in my thoughts of the past, I did not give thought to the future. And I did not notice a thing along the way.

  Lord Seton himself came out of the castle to greet us. An elderly but still vigorous man, he was dressed in somber colors, the gold crucifix around his neck marking him as a Catholic.

  “Father, there was no time to notify you. This is Nicola, the queen’s own fool,” Mary explained. “Since Kirk o’Field, there is much danger to those who came with the queen from France. Nicola has been particularly singled out and we must make sure that no harm comes to her. The queen wishes it.”

  “We will do that,” Lord Seton stated resolutely, “for as long as need be. The queen, poor lass, came here but two months ago to recover her wits after Darnley’s death. Why should her fool not bide here with me?”

  We had a cold collation of meats and cheese, sitting in perfect silence in the dining room, and then Mary got on her horse again, not even taking time to change her clothes. As she mounted, she leaned down and touched my hair with her gloved hand.

  “Love God, trust the queen, and listen to my father as you would your own,” she said. Then she was away, her skirts rising and falling like sea waves and the groom riding hard to keep up with her.

  As I watched her ride out of sight, I felt the weight of all I had lost. My life with the queen was over as surely as my life with Troupe Brufort. France gone from me, and now—perhaps—Scotland as well?

  How many lives can a person lose, I wondered miserably, before losing the last.

  40

  CASTLE SETON

  So I began a new life at Castle Seton, which was smaller than Holyrood but larger than a French château. A grey stone house surrounded by a grey stone wall in the middle of a sea of grass.

  I was assigned work as a maid, as much to make use of me as to conceal my identity from any callers. Lord Seton did not believe folk in his household should be left idle, and I agreed. Idleness would have led to too much thinking—about the queen and her baby, about Bothwell, about Joseph—and thus lead me into despair. As long as I worked hard throughout the day, I had little time to think, falling exhausted into my bed.

  I was grateful for the work.

  Weeks went by, in the course of which I carried out my duties as a maid with gratitude to my host and protector.

  I was also given leave to work in the castle gardens, assisting the gardeners. If they were surprised at my knowledge of flowers, especially the early spring bulbs, they did not ask. Nor did I volunteer where my skills had come from.

  We simply did not talk about politics or insurrections or of any of the murderers being exposed. Our conversations were about the weather or what we could hold in our hands—a dusting mop, a clump of earth, a boot scraper.

  I appreciated the hominess of it all.

  Then one day Joseph arrived, all unexpectedly, at Lord Seton’s castle, and I was called to the back garden, where the vegetables for the table were grown and espaliered plum and apple trees backed up against the walls.

  Lord Seton dismissed the gardeners to work in the front so that Joseph and I might have some time together.

  I cleaned my hands on my apron. “My dear Joseph,” I said, tears starting in my eyes. “How I have missed...” But I stopped, for his face was too grim for pleasantries.

  He took me by the hands and led me to a garden seat. There he drew back from me and told me his news with the bluntness of a hammer.

  “The worst of all has happened. The queen and Bothwell have married.”

  “Married!” My hands went to my mouth, my cheeks, my ears. It was as if I could not keep my hands still. “But ... how could she? Does she not know what this means? If people believe Bothwell is the king’s murderer, what will they think of her?”

  “They will think she planned the murder with him. That they were lovers long before the fateful fuses were lit.”

  “But that did not happen.” I leaped to my feet. “I slept in her room after the child was born. Bothwell never came near her.”

  Joseph stood as well. “What is truth but what others believe? Knox has accused her from the pulpit of adultery and murder. When power is at stake, truth is at best an inconvenience.”

  I recalled my last sight of Bothwell, the knife in his hand as he came towards me. I shuddered. “Why did she marry him? She cannot love him.”

  Joseph sat down and took my hands in his. “What has love to do with royal marriages, Nicola? Some say he abducted the queen and forced her. Some say he studied the magic arts in Paris and has bewitched her. He has a kind of power that draws people to him, Nicol
a.”

  “Oh, my poor queen. Why am I here, away from her side?” I leaped to my feet. “I could have helped her. I could have...” I was frantic, as if blown about by a storm. Finally I turned to Joseph. “What do you think happened, Joseph?”

  He looked down at his hands for a moment, as if the answer were written between his fingers. “I believe that she has been assailed from all sides by deceit. If there is magic, it is the world that has wrought its devilish art upon her. Is it any wonder she surrenders herself to whoever offers to silence her enemies, Nicola?”

  “No! No,” I said, sitting down again. “I cannot believe that of her. She is the sweetest, kindest, gentlest lady. Bothwell must have threatened her. He must have threatened her child.”

  “They have been married according to Protestant rites.”

  I put my hands up. “Then she will consider it no marriage at all. She must have been forced to it. She would never marry outside the one true church. Never!”

  “You see those you love with a fool’s eyes, Nicola,” Joseph told me. “We are none of us as good as you paint us.”

  “Or as bad, Joseph?” I stood again, walked a few steps away, then turned. “What of the Catholic lairds? What do they say of this match?”

  Joseph’s mouth twisted. “I only bring you the news, Nicola. I do not make it. Do not be angry with me.”

  I melted at once, like a candle before a greater flame. “I am so stupid, Joseph. Trying to kill the messenger. Forgive me.”

  “Many of the lairds—both Catholic and Protestant—were happy enough to see Darnley killed,” Joseph said. “But to have Bothwell set over them fills them all with bitterness. Already Morton, Argyll, and Atholl are raising an army to oppose the queen and her new king.”

  “Aha! Then they know that he is the murderer!” I smiled.

  “They guess it.”

  “Then why did they support him when he came to trial?”

  Before Joseph could answer, a little gust of wind blew across the garden, shaking the leaves. I felt shaken, too. Shaken into awareness.