Queen's Own Fool (44 page)

Laughing, George Douglas stepped out from behind a tree. “Is that any way to treat one of my faithful servants?”

“Mother?” the queen said.

“It was better than Madam or Majesty, which would have given away the game,” I said.

“Mother!”
she said again, and this time followed it with a peal of delicious laughter.

“Come, we had best get out of sight,” George cautioned. “And sound,” he added.

The queen took his meaning, and stopped laughing, but the smile remained on her face for a long while.

 

We wove our way through the thicket to where a tired groom held the reins of a pair of black horses.

The queen patted the head of one of them. “These are handsomer than any I rode that first day into Edinburgh.”

“These are the finest horses in Scotland,” George answered, grinning. “I stole them myself from my brother's stables.” He helped the queen into her saddle, then me into mine.

“Only two horses, Geordie?” the queen asked. “What about you and Willie?”

“Willie and I will remain here to delay any pursuit, Majesty. It is only a matter of time before someone notices yer gone.”

“Aye, we are not in enough trouble yet,” Willie said brightly, “so we will hang about and stir up some more.”

“My dear friends,” the queen began, but George cut her off.

“Ye must go now, Madam,” he insisted. “This is no masque. The danger is all too real. Lord Seton is waiting for you two miles down the road. Go. And God willing, I will join you later.”

“God willing,” the queen repeated under her breath and spurred her horse forward.

 

We rode so fast I half feared the horses would not be able to maintain the pace, but they were as good as George had claimed.

One mile passed swiftly, then the second.

Suddenly a group of horsemen pulled out into the road ahead of us, their horses snorting and rearing.

The queen showed no sign of slowing, but rather urged her mount on.

“Madam,” I shouted as she charged ahead. But I saw then what she had already guessed, that they were friends: Lord Seton with a party of armed men. In the midst was my own dear Joseph on a high-headed bay.

He rode over to me and drew me away from the others.

“Oh, sweet Nicola, my heart rejoices to see you safe,” he said. “I have hardly slept these past few nights worrying about the escape.”

“You knew about it?”

“I could not be kept out. Lord Seton insisted.”

“Which are you gladder to see, Joseph? The queen or me. The lion or the mouse?”

“Right now you could be either,” he answered. “No lion ever had a nobler or braver spirit. No queen was ever more beautiful. ”

49

PARTINGS

A
s we crossed the sea at Queensferry, the waters were so calm for once, I believed God must have willed it.

Then we rode until midnight under a moonless sky. Such was our mood, we could have ridden straight on until morning.

We stopped at Lord Seton's palace at Niddry for the night, and the next morning the queen heard a commotion outside.

“Look out, Nicola, and tell me what you see,” she said.

I threw open the shudders nervously and gazed down. “There is a mass of folk calling out for you, Majesty,” I said. “It seems there is no keeping secret the good news of your escape.”

She climbed out of bed and flung a dressing gown around her, then leaned out, her auburn hair all disordered about her shoulders.

A louder cry greeted her appearance. “Mary! Mary! Mary!”

“Your Majesty, you are not dressed....” I said.

Ignoring me, she leaned even further out of the windows, putting her arms wide as if to embrace them all. “My own dear Scots,” she cried.

The cheers went on and on and on.

Brava,
Majesty, I said under my breath.

 

While we breakfasted at Niddry, we heard the news from Lochleven. How some countryman, recognizing her as she passed, had rowed over to report the escape. How the Douglas nieces had already found her mantle and discovered her missing. How Lord William in a passion of distress had tried to stab himself with his own dagger.

How we laughed at that.

“Though I worry what will become of my faithful Mary,” the queen said, laying aside her spoon.

“God will be on her side, Madam,” I replied.

 

By the time we had gotten to nearby Hamilton, a better place for defense than Niddry, with its high, thick walls, many of the western lords were already gathering to the queen's banner.

By the eighth of May, a week's time, Herries and Maxwell and Argyll from the far north had declared for the queen. Soon after nine earls, nine bishops, and eighteen lairds had signed a joint proclamation supporting her.

But Lord James and his allies acted just as swiftly. He summoned an army to crush those who rose up in support of the queen. “The lion unloosed,” was what Lord James called the queen.

And with her amber hair on her shoulders, she indeed looked like a great lion ready to pounce.

 

“They say the queen now has six thousand men, Joseph,” I said at breakfast in the kitchen at Hamilton. “Is that a lot?”

“It is a start,” he said.

“Is it enough?” I pursued.

He did not answer me right away but glowered at his porridge.

“Is it enough?” I asked again, putting my hand on his arm.

He looked at me. “Enough men,” he said, “but too many commanders.”

Later that same day at dinner in her chambers, Lord Seton cautioned the queen of the same thing. “An army is but as good as its commanders, Majesty.”

The queen listened intently, chin on hand.

By her side, as fool once more, I said what was on all our minds. “I hear they quarrel ceaselessly, like children in a game of war.”

She made a face. “Dear Lord Seton, are the commanders not just trying to find the best way to return me to the throne?”

He shook his head. “I fear the worst, Majesty. We must pick our fights with care.”

 

The first test of our strength came on the banks of the Clyde, that great slow river that halves the city of Glasgow.

As our army came to the little village of Langside, the problem of too many commanders, which both Joseph and Lord Seton had feared, proved lethal.

The first of the queen's troops, under Lord Claud Hamilton, raced forward eagerly. They headed through the village towards the other side, where it was known that Lord James and his troops were well established.

We had more men, Joseph told me, but Lord James had two very experienced generals with him—Kirkaldy and Morton. They used the little town's narrow main street to advantage, setting hagbutters at windows and doors to harry the queen's men without mercy.

Still our troops went forward, fighting bravely for each step, and we could have held the town. Of that I am certain.

But at the wrong moment, one of our commanders—Argyll—had an epileptic fit when he should have been urging his troops forward to help Hamilton. So the order was never given. And Argyll's men—who were the greatest part of the queen's army—never advanced.

Caught in a crossfire of hagbutters, harried on by unremitting pikemen, the brave men of Hamilton could do nothing but turn and flee, heading back to the Highlands.

It was an awful defeat.

The queen and I had been watching from a nearby hill when our army broke. There was nothing for us to do but go after them.

North.

North towards safety.

We rode like men, our legs clamped about the horse's broad backs, for there was no time to sit sideways like a lady. In consequence I had sores on my inner thighs, and my legs and bottom ached from the long hours in the saddle.

The queen did not complain, not once, but she must have been as sore as I, for her face was haggard and she had deep circles beneath her eyes.

 

Just above the village of Tongland, a sleepy little town in the mountains, our company crossed the river Dee. As we raced over an ancient wooden bridge, our horses' hooves clattered loudly enough to rouse the countryside.

As soon as all had reached the other side, Lord Herries dismounted and called his men to him.

“Destroy this bridge,” he cried. “It will buy us more time.”

Time, I thought bitterly, as if that was all we needed.

The men at once began dismantling the plankings. Then they levered up the crossbraces and threw them into the water. I would have offered help but it was clear they needed none from me.

That evening we camped in dense woodland, hiding like outlaws. And indeed, that is what we had become. As I crouched in front of the fire, my cape pulled around me for warmth, I suddenly realized that I could not remember any stories or songs to cheer us. The future looked as dark as the night closing in.

All we had had to eat that day was sour milk and oatmeal without bread. My stomach was full of needles and pins that pricked relentlessly. I put my hand on my belly and thought about moaning. But I did not. There was enough misery in the air already. There were wounded and dying men in our company. The dead we had left far behind. I knew I could at least bear a little hunger without complaint.

Queen Mary sat under a makeshift tent, with Lord Herries at her right hand. I had left her there to dine on more oatmeal—
wretched stuff
!—with Joseph at a smaller fire.

“I feel like a wounded deer with a pack of snarling hounds hard by,” I told Joseph.

“We
are
wounded,” he said, “but that is no reason to give in to despair. Look at the queen.” He pointed.

She had left the sanctuary of the tent and was now strolling around the camp, offering a smile or a word of encouragement to every man there. The firelight softened her features and made her look almost young again.

So I left Joseph's side to follow the queen's lead, and suddenly all the stories and songs I knew came flooding back to me, like a river in spate. I began joking with the tired soldiers, telling them the story of the lion and the mouse, and the one about the girl who tripped while counting the money expected from the sale of her eggs, thus breaking every one.

“Lord James needs to watch his footing,” I finished with a laugh.

They laughed with me, and one called out, “We will break his eggs for ye, Miss!”

“Brava, Nicola!” someone cried. I turned. It was the queen. Her face, lit by the firelight, was hollowed, like a saint's.

She beckoned me to follow her and led me to a clearing overshadowed by the darkening sky. A half-moon shone above it like a wish only half come true.

“This is not unlike the night when we first met,” she mused.

“The surroundings are wilder, but the sky very like,” I agreed. There was something in her voice that warned me she was doing more than simply reminiscing.

“Do you regret that first meeting, Nicola?” she asked. “Might you have been happier if you had remained in France?”

It was an unexpected question. “I was ... not so happy then as I have been since, Majesty. You have shown me more kindness and more beauty in the world than I could ever have imagined.”

“You have also seen much that was not kind or beautiful,” the queen reminded me. “From Amboise, to Holyrood, to Kirk o'Field, to our last battle, violence and bloodshed have dogged me. Might it not have been better if you had never been party to such things, dear Jardiniere?”

I bit my lip. “Nothing was forced upon me that I did not agree to, Majesty,” I assured her. “If we take pleasure in the beauty of a rose, we cannot complain if we are pricked by the thorns.”