Queen's Own Fool (22 page)

“That puts a crimp in your own hunt, I should say, Lord Henry,” fat Toby brayed, as though it were all a great joke.

Silencing him with a cold look, Darnley turned back to me. “Girl. Bother—what is your name?”

“I am Nicola, the queen's own fool,” I answered, stepping out of the flower bed and making a curtsy.

“The queen's fool, eh? Are you a particular favorite of hers?”

“She likes to hear me jest and sing, or watch me dance, sir.”

“A dancer, eh?” said Giles. “Perhaps you will show us a pretty leg.” He made a rude gesture which I pretended not to understand.

“If you are a favorite of the queen,” Darnley said, ignoring his companion, “perhaps I can become one also. Will you say a kind word to your mistress for me?”

He reached into his pouch and pulled out a silver coin which he tossed high above my head. I jumped and snatched it from the air, making Lord Darnley and his friends laugh heartily.

“You see what a generous fellow I can be, pretty fool?” said Darnley. “I wager that will buy you more than a few flowers.”

“Indeed it will, sir,” I answered lightly. “I shall be head gardener before the day is out.” I wondered, though, why a stranger should reward me so richly for nothing yet accomplished.

“Remember, you and I are special friends now, and you must speak of me so to your mistress, the queen.” Lord Henry smiled.

“Ho! Look what comes!” cried Toby, motioning at a small hunched figure making his way towards us followed by a lanky companion.

Giles murmured into Toby's ear and the pair of them sniggered.

I reddened, for they were mocking Davie, the one person at court who was my true friend. And the queen's friend, too, for she had raised him up to be her own secretary. In the queen's absence, Davie was in charge of seeing that the palace was run properly. He was a bear for rules, was Davie. Not everyone in the palace was pleased. At times not even me.

Slowly Davie approached Lord Darnley and, bowing low, said, “Sir, I have just been told of your arrival. Welcome indeed. This chamberlain will show you and your companions to suitable quarters. The queen is expected back in a day or two.”

“Indeed,
fellow.” Darnley raised an elegant eyebrow, for as ever Davie was dressed like a popinjay, in a bottle-green doublet decorated with gold braid. “And who might you be?”

“David Riccio, your lordship, secretary to the queen.”

“Stand straight in the presence of his lordship,” Giles demanded, as if he had not noticed Davie's crooked back.

Davie smiled, but it did not reach all the way to his eyes. “I could stand no straighter, not if all the kings and princes of the world were enthroned before me.”

“I like a man who is always bowing to me,” Toby snorted. “I believe I like it very much.”

I thought to answer for Davie. A fool can say much that a secretary cannot. But Darnley spoke first.

“I shall take a downstairs chamber. I am so fatigued from my journey, I do not wish to be further vexed by a set of stairs.”

“I shall see that it is as you desire,” Davie responded.

“And perhaps later you will tell me where in this fair city a gentleman might pleasurably pass the lonely hours of the night.”

I think my mouth dropped open; the chamberlain's certainly did. Giles sniggered again.

Even Davie seemed caught off guard by this request, but he only smiled amiably. “I will give it some thought and make my best recommendations to you, my lord.” Then, with a sweep of his hand, he indicated that the chamberlain would lead them to the palace.

As he went, Lord Darnley cast a final glance over his shoulder at me. “Little mudlark, you may come and dance for me in private, once you are cleaned up.”

“Was that an order?” I blushed and whispered to Davie in Italian as the men left with the chamberlain.

“Do not worry, Nicola. I will see he finds ample distraction. He will not remember asking you to his chamber.”

“Do you think he has really come to woo the queen?” I asked.

“So, I believe, he intends.”

“And in her own house he asks for a place to ... to ...” I could not say the words.

Davie looked somber and nodded.

“But he is very handsome, is he not, Davie?”

“Handsome?” Davie almost spat out the word. “Yes, I suppose he is handsome. But he is a carrion crow in peacock feathers, Nicola. The queen will not be fooled.... And neither should you.” Then he added, “Now, once you have bathed, come take supper with
me.
I have a new card game. Once you learn it, you can teach it to the queen. ”

I nodded and waved to him as he turned and made his slow careful way back to the palace.

It was two days before the queen returned, by which time Lord Darnley was already notorious in the alehouses and gambling dens of Edinburgh for carousing and drinking till daylight. I had the reports from the cook and the potboy, and from Davie as well. A carrion crow indeed!

But for the queen's benefit, Darnley assumed once again the appearance of a perfect prince when she returned, even reciting a poem for her which he claimed to have composed on the spot, though I had heard him practicing it out in the garden.

The queen was quite taken with him.

“Is he not a very godling?” she said at the banquet and ball given in his honor where—dressed in white with gold ornaments at his neck and breast—he performed competently on the lute.

“Apollo or Pan?” I asked.

Although most everyone laughed, even Lord Darnley, the queen's eyes narrowed. I took this as a warning. And as I never wanted to displease my queen, I did not pursue the jest.

25

A HUSBAND FOR THE QUEEN

F
or many days after, I do not believe I ever saw the queen without Lord Darnley at her side, walking together, reading poetry, or dancing with a special lightness of step. She put away her mourning clothes and was now dressed in cramoisie or blue or carnation or sometimes even yellow. And she went fully bedecked with a rich
parure
—the belt with the long end, brooches, broad chains from shoulder to shoulder, clasps, rings, ear bobs, and pearls. She had not seemed so happy in a long time, certainly not since King Francis had been alive.

I believe I was a little jealous, and said so to Davie. “The queen rarely sits with just the Maries and me now.”

“She
will
have to marry someday, you know,” he said, then added with a twinkle, “and you are not a suitable suitor!”

I understood what he was saying. That even were I Queen Mary's sweet sister—as England's Elizabeth styled herself in letters—I could never come between Queen Mary and whoever was her king.

So I
tried
to like Lord Darnley. Really I did. But he exercised no charm over me. Nor over the rest of the court. When the queen was not present, he cuffed servants for the slightest fault, upbraided courtiers for their shortcomings, made mock of the Scottish nobles as “untutored brigands.” I even saw him kick the gardener's dog, and a sweeter old gentleman one could not find in the canine world.

Once Lord James tried to raise the subject of Darnley's behavior with the queen in her bedchamber, where only the four Maries and I sat with her. It was an early morning, so Lord Darnley had not yet risen.

The queen gave Lord James a frosty reception.

“Lord Darnley has learned his manners in a very different court from this,” the queen said. “If my Scots nobles are offended with his etiquette, he has every reason to take issue with them.”

“Take issue?”
Lord James's voice rose alarmingly. “You call striking Lethington on the head for laughing an
issue?
Or spitting ale in Maitland's face because he dislikes the man's politics an
issue?
Darnley is a spoiled child, vain and silly, Majesty.”

Her look sent Lord James from the room.

 

What surprised me more than Darnley's behavior, though, was that Davie had begun making a show of befriending him.

“How can you do such a thing?” I asked when we were taking a walk in the garden. “You whom he has called a ‘black hump' and a ‘pasty, undercooked piece of...' ”

“He makes the queen happy and he galls the dour-hearted lairds,” Davie answered smoothly. “He is as much an outsider as I am, yet I do not dare provoke the Scots as he does. I take as much pleasure in their upset as I would in insulting them myself.” A wind blew a bit of a feather from his hat across his forehead.

“You told me he was a peacock, Davie.”

“Even a peacock can sing,” he said, “though you nor I may not like its tune.”

“Oh, Davie,” I said, putting my hand softly on his humped back, “I sometimes think we two are twins separated at birth.”

“Well, then, you have got the face and I the brains,” he jested. “Which is why you are loved and I am not.”

But we both knew that the only person who truly loved either one of us was the queen. It was part of her nature, I believe, to love best those whom she pitied. A saint's nature, some might say.

 

“Nicola, you must come at once,” said the queen, some weeks after my accounting with Davie. With an unusual abruptness she swept into the room where I sat with the Maries.

I looked up from my needlework. Pious Mary had been teaching me to embroider decorative letters which she then used to embellish her own religious mottoes.

Setting aside my work was no sacrifice at all, as I had little talent for it, my S's looking like sick snakes and my R's as badly humped as poor Davie. I stood up briskly. “Where to, Majesty?”

“To Lord Darnley's sick chamber, Nicola,” she replied. “He is on the mend at last and has expressed a desire for some entertainment. I suggested that you might sing for him, and dance, and he agreed readily.”

Nodding obediently, I followed her out the door.

I wondered that she should be so excited over Lord Darnley's recovery. It had only a been a case of the measles, after all, not the pox. Others had gotten through the same disease with much better grace. Yet here the queen was acting as his messenger. It was not seemly, but how could I task her for it? She was the queen, after all. She had the right from God to choose how she would.

As we rushed along the corridor, she said, “Nicola, while I have always exhorted you to be honest with me, I must ask you not to say anything which might vex Lord Darnley now.”

“I would not knowingly do that, Your Majesty,” I said, hurrying to keep pace with her.

“Oh, I know you would never
intentionally
cause hurt,” she said. “But you do have a wounding wit, my little Jardinière. Set an extra guard on your tongue. Lord Darnley has only begun his recovery. I would not have anything pose fresh hazard to his health.”

“I shall be the very soul of ...”

“Discretion,” she finished for me.

When we entered the room, Lord Darnley was propped up on his pillows, eyes closed. The appliquéd satin hangings were askew, and his embroidered coverlet had fallen to the floor. There were still patches of red on his cheeks from the measles, and for a moment he reminded me of the poor, dying King Francis.

But only for a moment.

Hearing our footsteps, he opened his eyes lazily. A smile flitted across his face, giving him the satisfied look of a cat who has been feasting solely on cream. Then, sighing, he put his hands over his eyes as if the light suddenly hurt him.

The queen hastened to his side. “I have brought La Jardinière to brighten your room till you can walk in the palace gardens again.”

“You are all the garden I need, lady,” Darnley responded in a pathetic voice that was as badly formed as my embroideries.

The queen did not seem to notice his counterfeit—the crow beneath the feathers, the wolf under the sheep's skin. Wetting a linen cloth in a bowl of water, she began to stroke his brow.

“Pray, begin, Nicola,” she said.

So I sang a rude Scottish song that I had learned from one of the maids. Darnley laughed out loud, as I knew he would. I followed the song with a quick jig, another gift of the maid's. Then I told them a story, which ended with a wild scream and a pounce. The queen giggled and put her hand to her breast.

At the end of my performance, Lord Darnley clapped weakly and then squeezed the queen's hand.

“You are so attentive, so considerate of me, Madam,” he said. “If an angel came down from heaven to sit at my bedside, it would display less compassion than you, my dearest, dearest Majesty.”

“Hush, dear laddie,” cooed the queen. “Do not tire yourself.”

Until that moment I had convinced myself that the queen was merely amused by Darnley, happy to have a dancing partner taller than she. But this conversation went well beyond friendship. My head suddenly ached.

You are simply jealous,
I told myself.

But I had not been jealous of King Francis.

And then I recognized the emotion I was feeling: I was afraid.

But she had loved the weak and sickly Francis. She loved Davie despite his warped back and misshapen face. She had loved me first because I had been beaten by Uncle. It was what made her such a noble queen: loving the neediest of her people.