Queen's Own Fool (21 page)

“What happened then?”

“It turned from a silly escapade into a full-scale rebellion,” the queen said, “for Sir John's friends and his father whipped some of the towns into a frenzy against me.
That,
of course, I could not countenance.”

“But you won, Your Majesty?”

“With God's help, how could I have failed?”

“What will happen to Sir John now?” I asked.

Her smile faded. “That is yet to be decided. But I am afraid, Nicola. Of more hangings. Of more beheadings. Of more death.” She stood and went over to my window, staring out as if she could see something awful there.

And suddenly remembering the bodies twisting from the balconies at Amboise, and the bloody block beneath the gallows, I was frightened, too.

 

The queen was right to be afraid, for Lord James and Maitland and the other ministers informed her forcefully the very next week that she must personally witness Sir John's execution.

I was up from my sickness by then, and was in her chamber as her hair was being combed when they came to tell her this.

“If you do not attend, Madam,” Maitland said, his voice urgent and low, “rumors will surely spread that you encouraged his mad plan to abduct you.”

She turned from her mirror to stare at him, her hair around her shoulders, looking like some beautiful ghost from a story, just rising from the grave. “But why would I do such a thing when it would have been so easy just to say yes to his suit?”

“You have lived so long in France, Majesty,” Maitland replied smoothly, making a deep bow. “The Scottish people believe that the French love the romantic gesture. And with this execution, you could say the choice to marry Sir John was not yours, so that the other nobles could not be put out that they were not selected to be your king.”

“Yours is a devious mind, Lord Maitland,” the queen said, turning back to her mirror.

“A diplomat must know which way the wind blows, Madam, and trim his sails accordingly.” He gave a little head bob.

“You
must
watch the beheading, Mary,” Lord James put in. “You have no choice.”

I gasped at the use of her name that way, but she was so appalled at what he said, she never noticed.

 

So the queen had to witness Sir John's execution. She begged me to be at her side.

What could I say? She was my queen and needed me.

I went.

Sir John cried out to a hushed crowd, “Your presence, great queen, brings solace to me in my final moments, for I die of love.” Then he put his head on the block in one elegant movement.

The queen put her hands to her breast. The look she gave him was not one of disdain. Not even pity. It almost seemed to be a look of love.

The executioner was clumsy and it took three strokes to finish what he had begun. Sir John's merry blue eyes remained wide open, as if he stared at the queen even after his head had rolled to a stop.

I closed my eyes and fought back the tears.

 

Unlike at Amboise, the queen could not run to a dark corner and weep. But, immediately after the execution, she left for her chambers, pulling me by the hand.

“Only Nicola stays with me,” she commanded her maids. “Only Nicola.”

So I was the one who held the bowl in which she was sick, and the one who bathed her forehead with scented water. I sang to her in French till she slept. And, when she woke, I held the bowl again till all she heaved up was green bile.

There was no one to hold a bowl for me, though. I had to keep my sickness within.

And then silly Chatelard, not content with making poems to the queen's beauty—as any court poet does—became so smitten with her, he dashed into her chamber and hid under her bed. Luckily he was found by the grooms of the chamber and sent away from court.

He then made things worse by following the queen to the holy city of St. Andrews.

While we sat in the queen's chamber—Queen Mary, Jolly Mary, Pious Mary, and me—he burst in declaring his great love for her, putting his hands on her shoulders and calling her “beloved” right in front of us. He even tried to embrace her and, in doing so, shook her so hard, her glorious hair tumbled down around her shoulders. Pins scattered everywhere—in my lap, on the floor.

Taking her embroidery hoop, Pious Mary hit him on the head, which only seemed to inflame his ardor. Jolly Mary ran screaming from the room for help. The queen's terrier bit him on the ankle and I grabbed hold of him from behind, crying, “Leave go, you stupid loon. Leave go.”

But he would not—or could not.

Just then Jolly Mary returned with Lord James in tow, and spying him over Châtelard's shoulder, the queen cried out, “Run him through, Jamie, run him through.”

Weeping hysterically, she kept trying to pull away from Châtelard's encircling arms. All the while Châtelard—I can only believe he was totally mad—called her his “desire” and his “mistress” and his “lady wife.”

Lord James grabbed hold of Chatelard and tore him from the queen. Ripping a bellpull from the wall, I handed it to Lord James, who quickly bound the poet's hands behind his back. Châtelard was still calling on the queen to witness his great love, when at last he was dragged from the room.

He was executed a month later, going to his death—so it was reported—with the words “Adieu, the most beautiful and the most cruel princess in the world.”

This time we were not forced to attend.

 

It was Châtelard's final words that made me understand at last the power majesty and grace holds over men. And I understood at last that if the queen did not choose a husband for herself, it might not be long before another ambitious lord or crazed commoner scaled the castle walls and tried to seize her. I no longer asked why she needed to marry, but entered the guessing game with the others.

Once more the name of Don Carlos was proposed. But fresh news from Spain came by ship that he had taken a fall while chasing one of his serving maids. The resulting blow on the head had left him subject to fits of homicidal mania.

“Hardly a suitable suitor,” I said in Scots at a royal dinner. It was a phrase which was picked up and spoken around the court and even—so Eloise said—on the streets of the city, where it was put into a scurrilous song called “The Seven Loves of Queen Mary,” the first two lines of which went:

On the very next ship came word that war had broken out in France between the Huguenots and the Catholics.

Queen Mary, hearing the news at dinner, was stunned. “What can this mean?” she asked for days after hearing.

I knew she had to be thinking once more of Amboise.

Then another boat landed with a report that her uncle, the Duke de Guise, had been killed, shot down by an assassin who had known him by the white plume in his hat.

I was in her chamber, losing once again to her at chess, when the message came. She turned so pale that her face looked like milk, then put her hand to her forehead and swooned, for though she had often quarreled with him, he was part of her family.

Regal Mary and I had to carry her to her bed. We loosened her collar and took the heavy pearl drops from her ears. Jolly Mary sent Eloise for a glass of red wine.

But this turmoil so afflicted her, she was struck down by a nervous fever.

Once again the Maries and I sat by her bedside, and just as she was getting better, she heard that another uncle, Grand Prior Francis, had died.

“My family,” she cried in French. “My poor family.” She put her hands to her head as if trying to keep her head from exploding. “Oh my dear companions, the happiest people are not those who continue longest in the world.”

Not one of us could console her, I least of all, though I knew what it was like to be without family.

I prayed for an end to her troubles, my brave beautiful queen. I prayed for a return of her health. Above all I prayed for a handsome prince to appear at her door, one with the charm and grace and youth her Scots lairds so badly lacked, and with the wits Don Carlos had lost.

And one spring day—but three years later—he came.

24

PRINCE CHARMING

I
had asked the queen for a bit of garden. “My mother used to say that the seasons mean nothing without a bit of dirt beneath the nails,” I told her. What I didn't say was that I could no longer remember what my maman looked like. I thought that if I could make a garden, it would recall her to me.

The queen had smiled and granted me a corner of the south garden at Holyrood, without my needing to ask further. I do not think the gardeners were pleased.

Such a change from the endless card games and dicing, backgammon and chess, and I was glad of that!

Once the February snows were past, I set out paving stones, and planted the borders with bulbs. As I lifted a clump of earth to my face and breathed in the dark, damp smell, I remembered my maman with such clarity, I burst into tears.

Just then the queen was taking a turn in the gardens with her little dog and the four Maries. She stopped to admire my corner and, ignoring my tears without comment, said, “When spring comes roaring in, so will your flowers, Nicola.”

On this particular spring morning I was planting some more bulbs, but kept changing my mind about where to put them. Near the castle wall? Away from it? Within the herbal knot I was planning?

At last I found a spot sheltered from the wind but still open to the sun. Perfect!

As I was patting the earth down, I heard the clatter of hooves. Turning, I saw a party of riders in close-waisted doublets and short Spanish capes approaching the gate.

For some reason I watched, though they meant little to me.

One of them displayed some documents to the sentries and they were let in. Dismounting, the three dandies left their horses in the care of their servant and walked in my direction. They gazed about in grudging admiration, and one—a stout bearded man—snorted through his nose like a horse.

“It will not make a bad home, Lord Henry,” he commented in English to the tallest of the three. It was not a language I knew well, but close enough to the Scots we spoke that I could understand most of it. “What say you, Giles?”

“Not bad—if it is kept clean.” Giles, a thin stork of a man, spoke in a high-pitched voice. His feathered bonnet and yellow leggings completed the bird look. “Do the Scots do that, do you think, Lord Henry? Keep clean?”

What right do these English have to talk that way about the Scots?
I thought, then laughed silently at my defense of a people I had often complained of myself.

Lord Henry treated the stout man to a light punch on the chest. “You assume too much, Toby.” It was a reprimand, but said with a grin. “I have not yet commenced my courting of Queen Mary and already you have my feet under the kitchen table.”

Coming to court the queen?
I decided to take a better look.

Lord Henry was dressed like a great noble. His crimson doublet had long vertical slits through which showed bright gold; his crimson hose was of silk; an otter-skin cloak hung jauntily from one shoulder. I thought him a bit lady-faced, for he was beardless, with the soft skin of a child, and he wore his gold hair shoulder-length. He was very tall. And certainly very handsome.

The three of them suddenly noticed me staring at them and sauntered closer, nudging each other and winking.

“Look, a mudlark. Does it talk, do you think?” piped Giles.

“Mayhap it can be persuaded to fly in our direction and then we will find out what is under all that dirt,” said Toby.

Only then did I realize how filthy I must be from all my digging. But such talk needed an answer. “Unless you are raiders, sirs, come to pillage my garden,” I said, “I see no reason for flight.”

“It does talk!” Giles exclaimed in mock surprise. “And in English.”

“With quite a bite for a bird,” Toby added.

“Your tongue has a queer touch to it, mudlark,” remarked the young lord.

“I am from France,” I explained.

“And are you a little piece of French soil that follows the queen around to remind her of her former realm?” Lord Henry asked. He softened the question with a smile of surprising charm.

“When she had a husband to keep her warm?” Toby added.

I glowered. “It is dirt honestly come by, which is better than stolen finery, sir.”

“Stolen?
What do you mean, minx!” Lord Henry was suddenly outraged and moved towards me. “Do you call us thieves?”

“I mean only that your companions take their splendor from you, my lord,” I responded, with an expression of complete innocence. “As everything on earth receives its light from the sun.”

In truth, he did look very magnificent. I had seen tapestries and paintings depicting the gods of ancient Greece. He resembled them closely, with his gold hair and his jewel-like eyes.

“So you have a sweet tongue after all.” He laughed, flattered as easily as he had been provoked. “Girl, find the queen. Tell her Henry Lord Darnley, great-grandson of Henry the Seventh, humbly seeks the honor of entering her presence.” He sounded anything but humble.

“Her presence is not here, sir, for you or for anybody else to enter. All that is left is her absence, if that is any honor to you.”

“What are you talking about, you noisy little sprat?” Darnley was quickly upset again. “Where might she be found?”

“She can be found for certain in Fife,” I replied, pointing to the north with my trowel. “At Wemyss Hall. Gone hunting.”