Queen's Own Fool (16 page)

I shook my head. “I am only a girl, Your Majesty. Fool is the name you have given me. What wit I have is used in jest. You want me to give you
real
advice, but I can only tell you a story.”

“Tell it then,” she said, holding out her hand to me and leading me to the chaise.

We sat down together, not like queen and servant, but like friend and friend.

I took a deep breath, and began. “A man set sail in a boat, but he could not decide where to go. So, he let the tide take him, for that was the easiest course. To his horror, the tide began carrying him towards jagged rocks that would clearly dash the boat to pieces.”

“Was he shipwrecked?” the queen asked.

I shook my head, as if I knew the ending already, but in fact I was making up the story as I went along.

“He raised his sail, and the wind blew him away from the rocks and out to sea. Now he let the wind take the boat where it would, but it blew him into treacherous waters full of sea serpents whose long necks rose out of the waves, whose teeth snapped hungrily.”

“How did he escape?” The queen leaned towards me intently.

“He took out his oars and started rowing. And just in time, too. One of the serpents caught an oar between its jaws and was about to bite it in two. The man grabbed back the oar and rowed and rowed until he was safely out of reach.”

“Good,” the queen said. “Go on.”

“Now he knew that he could surrender to neither tide nor wind without being destroyed. He could not do what was easy. The only wise course was the most difficult one. He had to keep rowing, though his arms were sore and his muscles ached. But at least now he followed a course of his own choosing.”

The queen gave my story some thought. At last she said, “Nicola, your little parable points the way clearly. My heart tells me to go to Scotland, to be a queen in more than name. But I am afraid.”

I nodded. “That is because being a queen without a king is hard work, like rowing the boat.”

“Hmmmm,” Queen Mary reflected, “Elizabeth rules England without a king at her side. And the dowager is now regent of France and her husband is dead.” Her face grew determined. “Why should I not rule Scotland alone? It is smaller than either England or France and so surely easier to govern, whatever my uncles say. Even I can row a little boat.”

She placed her hands on my shoulders and gazed at me. “But what of you, Jardinière? How can I take you to such a northerly land where the wind and frost might wilt your tender petals?”

I had not considered my own fate in this. Yes, I had thought I might go back to Italy some day. But Scotland? I knew nothing of that cold place.

Still, the queen had asked a direct question. As always, I had to answer. But my mind boiled like a kettle with questions: If I decided to stay behind, what kind of a life could I make for myself? Would the duke and his brother punish me, without the queen to stop them? Could I ever find Pierre again? Pierre was sixteen now, would he leave the troupe so that we could go off to make our own future? All these questions collapsed around a final one.

“Am I not bound to follow you, my queen?”

“Bound, no.” She released her hold on me and sat back. “I freed you once from the cold grip of a tyrant. How could I force you now to go where you do not want to go?”

I remembered then what the Maries had said, of how a Catholic queen was safer here than in Scotland. The duke and the cardinal had said much the same.

Yet I—no more than a peasant in a fool's costume—had told the queen to go there. And she—poor Madam—had accepted my advice.

Then I recalled La Folle racing to King Francis's side when the duke was about to checkmate him. If a dwarf could save a king, surely a fool might do likewise for a queen.

“Take me with you,” I said. “The fool belongs at her queen's side.”

17

ACROSS THE WATER

I
thought we were bound for Scotland, but it was six months more before we left France. A queen's time is not like that of a traveling player's. It took weeks to pack everything and weeks to outfit the two great galleys and the two escort ships.

One of the galleys was fitted out in red, the other in white to match the queen's mourning colors. Aboard the queen's galley were to be the four Maries, now finished with their education in the convent, and their crooked-toothed maid, Eloise. Also the young poet Châtelard, who was meant to entertain us with his verses. He was handsome in a pasty sort of way, with parti-color eyes, one blue and one green. The old chronicler Brantôme, with his sour mouth, was to come along, too. /

We also had physicians, perfumers, a Latin tutor, page boys, milliners, embroiderers, laundresses—all those folk who worked hard to give the queen her ease. And of course musicians. The queen could not do without them.

And me!

To my relief Madam Jacqueline was not to go, for the queen decided I needed her no more. And the dwarf stayed in France, too. She was Queen Catherine's fool now.

 

I had a favor I wanted to ask of the queen. I waited for days, trying to think of the best way to approach her. At last one evening we were in her chamber and she was in a happy mood, having beaten me once again at chess.

Carefully I drew a folded letter from my pocket. “Please, Madam,” I said. “I have written to my cousin. The boy who threw the seven clubs in the air.”

“Ah, the handsome Pierre. You have not spoken of him for some time,” she said, putting the chessmen back in their oaken box.

“I have told him that we are going to live in Scotland. In the city of Edinburgh. I asked that he send me word there.” I held out the letter. “But I do not know how to get this to him.”

Smiling, she took the parchment from me and without unfolding it, said, “Surely if a priest could find your uncle for you once, a messenger of mine can find Troupe Brufort again.”

 

The queen had commanded the Maries to teach me the Scottish tongue. So, even though I was not a friend to them, I was often at their sides.

“Scots is a barbaric language,” I complained to Jolly Mary one evening as we sat by the fire roasting chestnuts. “How it jangles.”

She laughed. “It is not as pretty as French,” she said. “But once we are in Scotland, you will see how it exactly fits that rugged land.”

“Surely the queen in England does not sound like she is clearing her throat with every syllable, or they would not call her Great Elizabeth, only Great Elizabelch.”

Pious Mary, sitting on a nearby chair, smiled. “Elizabeth in England speaks English, which is like—and yet not like—the Scots tongue. Just as the language spoken by people in Normandy differs from that spoken in Picardy.”

“At least,” I said, “they all speak French.”

“La, Nicola, you will keep the cold Scottish court warm with that tongue of yours!” Pretty Mary said.

 

The dawn of our departure from Calais was so dull and misty that when we boarded the ship, the dock and all of our beloved France was hidden from view.

The gulls cried mournfully as they flew through the mist, and a small rain began to fall.

“The country weeps for its loss, Highness,” I said.

The queen did not seem to hear me. I thought that her eyes and heart were already set upon Scotland. But mine were turned backwards, to France, and I began to weep.

Pious Mary came over and put her arms about my shoulders as if to draw my sadness to herself. She smelled of lavender water. “Do you weep for the country or the queen, Nicola?”

I shook my head. “I am only afraid of going so far away and leaving behind everything I know. My family ...”

“We are your family now, Nicola.”

“That does not make me any less afraid.”

“There
is
much to be afraid of,” Pious Mary agreed, letting me out of her lavender embrace. “Elizabeth of England has refused to grant us safe passage.”

“Will she send ships against us?” I asked.

“No one knows,” Pious Mary said. “My father has written to me a warning. But we must not borrow trouble, as the prior used to say. Only be ready for it. Commend yourself to God and all will be well.”

 

At last our rowers began to move our galley out of the harbor and onto the cold expanse of the North Sea.

I looked about for the queen and spied her at the stern, that part of the boat still closest to France.

In her white widow's veil she looked like the ghost of a queen and not the queen herself. She held her little terrier to her breast and was staring off to land.

I went to offer what comfort I could but stopped when I heard her whisper, “Farewell, my beloved France. Farewell. Farewell. I shall never see you more.”

If she had turned around, I am certain I would have seen tears running down her cheeks. But she did not move or speak again till we were far out to sea. Then she called for her bed to be brought up on deck and remained there the rest of the voyage.

How could I have been so wrong? She was not looking ahead to the journey. There was nothing familiar for her in Scotland. It was a foreign country to her, no matter that she was its queen.

 

Three days out, a fleet of ships was sighted to the southwest, close enough that we could see their banners flapping from the masts.

“Are they pirates?” I cried to one sailor. I put a fist to my chest and added, “I will fight. I can, you know.”

“No, not pirates, miss,” he told me, laughing. “They are English, which is worse.” Then he spit over the railing with a sound like “Ptah!”

“How can you tell?” I stared over the railing at the ships.

“By their flags, miss,” he replied.

“Will they attack us?” the queen asked.

The sailor shrugged. “I do not know, Majesty.”

Standing at the railing, where she had spent much of the trip, Regal Mary said stiffly, “I think they are as uncertain as we.”

“Uncertain? What do you mean?” The queen spoke into the wind and her questions were blown back to us.

Her face the color of soured milk, Regal Mary said, “They do not know if Elizabeth will knight them or behead them should they bring the Queen of Scots captive to London.” Then she bent over the railing once more.

The queen shook her head. “No—I do not believe this. Elizabeth is my sweet sister. She has written me these very words. We need not fear her ships.”

By evening the English ships had dropped out of sight, and though we never saw them again, I did not stop checking the horizon hour after hour, just in case.

 

In all it took five long days to reach the mouth of the river Forth, and our journey ended very much as it had begun in a thick, grey, blanketing fog. We could scarcely see the shore.

I had thought the French court a fairy-tale realm.

Not so Scotland. The hard, rugged coast appeared and disappeared in a grey mist.

“Madam,” I said to the queen, “perhaps giants or savage monsters dwell here.”

She smiled. “Some call the Scots that. But I was born to love them. Just as they were born to love me.” She leaned over the railing and opened her arms wide. Little tentacles of mist curled and uncurled around them.

Suddenly, like stars appearing from behind a cloud, bonfires ignited along the shore to greet us. It was as though the hard granite face of a stone giant had just smiled at us, revealing him to be a friend and not the ogre I had feared.

Queen Mary ran to the front of the ship. She stood on her tiptoes and cried out, “My people—I have come home!”

SCOTLAND

 

 

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, 1560

18

LANDING AT LEITH

W
e docked at the port of Leith, and the queen was the first to cross the gangway.

If there were ever a last moment when she could have abandoned her Scottish venture, this was it. If she had turned then, calling to her sailors to man the oars, I think not one of us would have felt regret at going back to France.

But she simply squared her shoulders beneath the flowing white widow's veil, and strode forward to meet the tall and grizzled Scots nobles who had gathered to welcome her.

I followed right behind.

“Greetings, Your Majesty,” a tall, square-chested man called out in Scots as he moved towards us. Dressed in a shirt decorated in blackwork embroidery and a black velvet doublet, he did not look comfortable in his finery. Not like the French nobles I knew.

“Thank you for my warm welcome, Lord James,” the queen replied. “My most trusted kinsman.”

Lord James had a heavy, unhandsome face. There was a crude honesty to his features, I suppose. At the same time something seemed withdrawn in his eyes, as though part of him was purposely hidden. The queen called him trusted. But
I
did not trust him. Not so easily. Not yet.

I set my lips together. Lord James would get no smile of me.

Lord James gestured to the small man at his side. “You remember William Maitland, your mother's secretary of state.”

The queen inclined her head towards Maitland.

Maitland was much shorter than Lord James, with a long nose, well-trimmed beard, and a receding hairline shaped like a large heart. He wore a velvet coat with a broad lace collar and was very refined in his movements. Much to my relief, he spoke French. His witty flourishes, however, seemed labored, and he went on and on.