Queen's Own Fool (25 page)

What the queen had, I was certain—though no doctor told me—was a depression of the heart. All my little evasions had not fooled her. Deep down she now knew Darnley for a knave.

It was a dreary December day in Linlithgow when I came upon Davie sitting on a bench by the great fireplace in the parlor. His back was to me and he was intent on a book which I took to be a volume of poetry such as he and I used to enjoy together.

Weeks earlier I would have avoided him, hating him for his championing of Darnley. But since his break with the king, and especially here in Linlithgow, we had come to a sort of peace, occasionally even chatting companionably, though with none of the closeness we had had before. Of course he was now high in the government and had little time for card games with the queen's fool.

I missed him, if one can miss a person one sees every day. So I peeked over his shoulder, to be near him again. I saw then that he was not reading poetry at all but rather a treatise on the laws and statutes of Scotland.

“That looks very dull,” I said. “Have you given up on the poems of Monsieur Ronsard?”

He looked up guiltily, then smiled his monkey smile. “I have found that the law has a poetry of its own, Nicola.” He laid the book aside. “There's a rhythm to smooth governance, a meter like a poem.”

I sighed. “I thought such matters were Maitland's domain.”

“Ah, Nicola, Maitland earned the queen's disfavor when he opposed her match with Darnley. He will not easily win it back.”

“But he is still her secretary of state,” I pointed out.

“Retaining a title is not the same as being in power,” he said, a strange note of ridicule in his voice. The flickering flames from the hearth cast odd shadows, so that his face was now dark, now light.

“But Maitland is here at court all the time,” I said.

“Courting Mary Fleming, rather,” Davie snapped.

I could not stand the contempt I heard in his voice. For Maitland, for Regal Mary, maybe even for the queen. “Davie, what has happened to you? Who have you become?”

“What have I become?” He grinned and puffed out his little chest. “I have become more powerful than the king.”

I must have gaped.
“More ...
?”

“The king is a child who plays instead of learning statecraft.”

I shrugged.

“Did you know that his latest piece of petulance is to sulk because he has been refused the crown matrimonial?”

I looked at him blankly. “What is that?”

He patted the bench. “Come sit, little fool, and I will explain.”

I sat.

“Darnley is king only by virtue of being married to the queen. If she were to die, then he would lose his throne.”

“Oh,” I said, “as the queen did in France.”

“Aye,” Davie agreed. “But the crown matrimonial would make him king in his own right, so that he would continue to reign whatever happens to Queen Mary.”

“Darnley reigning unchecked over Scotland!” I was appalled.

“Oh, I agree such is unthinkable. But there are those who, failing to find advancement with the queen, have tied their futures to Darnley. They fill his head with notions of his own greatness.”

“As you did once, David,” I reminded him, shaking a finger under his nose.

He had the grace to look embarrassed, and his monkey face suffused with color. “Do not task me, Nicola. I did it for the queen.”

“Davie, let us have truth between us as we used to. You did it for yourself.”

He nodded. “I hide nothing from you, my dearest friend.”

“Good,” I said, smoothing my skirt.

“I did it for the queen.” He grinned.

“Oh, you! You are impossible,” I said.

“If I did not have the queen's ear, there are many who would even now be urging her to take second place to her husband,” he said sternly.

“Surely the queen would never agree to such a thing.”

“Not so long as wiser heads prevail,” Davie responded, slapping first his head, then his chest. “I have here, under my tunic and over my heart, the solution to Scotland's woes.”

“Who is the storyteller now?” I said.

He looked a bit peeved with me, his face wrinkling in displeasure. “No, it is true.”

I stood. “David Riccio, you would not know truth these days any more than ...”

“Nicola, listen. I will prove it.” There was a battle being waged on his face, between wanting to boast and wanting me to believe him.

I sat again, the fire warm on my face. “Prove it then.”

“The king's pleasures are what, Nicola?”

I shrugged and counted on my fingers. “Drinking, gaming, hawking, drinking, hunting, dicing, cards, drinking, wenching ...”

He nodded approvingly at my count. “In fact everything but the
business
of the land. He hates being called away from his pleasures even to set his signature to royal proclamations.”

“So ...”

“So—a solution was proposed,” David replied smugly.

“By whom?” I asked, suspicious.

“By me!” He reached inside his tunic and pulled out a metal disk on a length of chain. “Now do you see?”

I leaned closer, but could not make out what it was. “What am I supposed to see, Davie? It does not
look
important.”

“Ah, but it is a mistake to be fooled by appearances, Nicola. The beautiful Darnley is little more than a shadow of a king, while I—his ugly and despised servant—possess a stamp with the king's signature.”

Now I could see the signature picked out in raised metal.

Davie laughed. “With this stamp I can imprint his name upon any document I wish.”

“And he has agreed to this?”

“Agreed? My dear friend, he was delighted!” Davie dangled the metal amulet before me.

I reached out a finger to touch it. It was cold and hard and unfeeling. The very coldness of the thing chilled me through and through. So I stood and went over to the hearth, hoping that the fire would give me back some measure of warmth.

I turned and saw Davie still eyeing his prize as a drunkard eyes his wine.

“Oh Davie,” I cried, “these games are too dangerous for the likes of you and me. You may love the workings of power, the poetry of the law, but you have no army at your back, no powerful family to save you should anything go awry. We are like mice scampering about the feet of angry lions. If we squeak too loudly, they will eat us.”

Davie was unmoved. “And what of the fable you once told me of the bound lion that owes its life to the mouse that chewed through its bonds?” He stuffed the disk back in his tunic.

Just then the door banged open and in walked the king in mud-spattered hunting gear. Close behind him came Lord Ruthven, a hawk-faced man with the unblinking eyes of a snake.

Davie and I leaped to our feet. One does not sit when the king is standing, but I had to repress a shudder.

Davie showed no such alarm. “Here comes the little lion now,” he whispered to me, “and one of his keepers.”

Neither of the men acknowledged us. The king strode across the room, calling out loudly for food and drink as he pulled off his leather gloves. Then, warming his hands before the fire, he turned his handsome, arrogant face upon Davie and me.

“There stands as unlikely a pair of cards as I ever drew from the deck—the knave and the jester,” he said. “What trick should we make with such cards as these, Ruthven?”

He looked to Lord Ruthven to laugh at his jest, but was met with a calculating stare. Ruthven remained at the far end of the room, as though the warmth of the fire was an enemy to his icy nature. Finding no ready audience in Ruthven, the king ambled towards me.

“You have not yet delivered that kiss you promised, pretty fool,” he drawled.

“I made no such promise, sir!” I stepped backwards.

“Oh, no?” He raised an eyebrow over one elegant eye.

I repressed yet another shudder and said in my light fool's voice: “I recall, Majesty, that you stole a kiss, like a brigand.”

“I heard you distinctly,” he purred, grabbing me by the shoulder. “You pleaded with me to commit further robbery. You are not calling your king a liar, are you? That would be treason.”

From the corner of my eye I saw Ruthven moving towards us while Davie stood frozen, eyes flickering back and forth between the king and his companion. My foolery could not save this situation. I would have to speak the foul truth and hope to shock the king.

“Sire, a traitor is a man who would betray his queen wife,” I said, wriggling to free myself and failing. “If the queen knew of this outrage to her fool ...”

“The queen does not wish to know. I should hardly be surprised to learn that she disputes my very existence!” His hand snapped out and caught my face in a vicelike grip.

I tried to protest, but my mouth was squeezed too tight.

“Yes, pout those rosy lips,” the king said. “I fancy I will dine sweetly on those cherries, and more besides.”

All at once, Davie seized the king by the arm and tried to pull him away. “Think of your position, my lord,” he warned.

The king narrowed his eyes. “Touch me again at your peril, you misshapen frog. I'll have your ugly head on my wall.”

Ruthven came from behind and shoved Davie away, almost knocking him into the fire.

“Is this your field then, Davie?” the king asked, wrapping an arm around my waist. “Is no one allowed to plow it but you?”

Davie made another feeble attempt to reach me, but Ruthven blocked his way. “You interfere in things that are not your concern, Riccio.”

All the while, the king pressed me against him, keeping one hand across my mouth so that I could not cry out.

Just then the door opened and the queen walked in with Bothwell and the Earl of Huntly right behind. She had a rolled up parchment in her hand.

At the sight of his wife, the king spun me around and released me. Then he stepped away, his hands wide apart, like a boy who has been caught stealing biscuits from the kitchen.

Halting abruptly, the queen placed one hand over her breast. “What is happening here?” she asked in a tight voice, looking from the king to me to Davie and back. Ruthven she ignored altogether.

“I was having a joke with the fool, as I am sure you jest with your own intimates,” the king answered airily. “Have you never played such a game with bonny Signor Monkeyface?”

The queen's eyes were coldly furious. It was the look I had seen when she had ridden off after Lord James. “What you call play, sir, decent men call scandal.” She advanced on him, the hand with the parchment upraised as she would to a misbehaving dog. “Bad enough you shame me outside the walls of my palace. Oh, yes, I knew of it, but have said nothing, thinking that you were still young and would change. But to do so here in my own parlor—I would that you choke on your shame!”

The king fell back before her. “I see I am as unwelcome here as ever.” It was a weak attempt at defiance. “Come, Ruthven, we will find our amusement elsewhere.” He turned and walked past her and out of the door.

Ruthven cast a quick glance around the room, assessing the mood of the queen and her men, then followed the king.

Once they were gone, the queen sank down on the seat by the fire and dropped the parchment she was carrying. When Davie tried to speak to her, she waved him back.

“All of you leave me,” she said, “but Jardinière.”

Davie bowed, picked up the piece of parchment, then left with Bothwell and Huntly.

I knelt in front of the queen. “Your Majesty,” I began, my palms both sweating. “I swear that I did nothing to invite ... nothing to encourage ...”
Please Lord,
I prayed,
let her believe the truth of it.

“He needs no encouragement, Nicola,” she said. “I have been aware longer than I care to admit what sort of man my husband is. And I have always known
your
heart, my loyal fool.”

For a moment we were both silent, and I could measure the time by the hard beating of my heart. Then the queen said suddenly, “Did you know, dear Jardinière, that I was born in this very castle?”

I shook my head.

“I had hoped that being here would work some healing magic between the king and me. We need that now more than ever.”

She met my questioning gaze and rubbed a hand gently over her belly. “I am carrying his child, the child who will one day rule Scotland. And—if Elizabeth does not marry and bear—this child will rule England as well.” There were tears in her eyes.

Ignoring all propriety, I placed a sympathetic hand on her knee, searching for something—some song or story to comfort her. Then I looked up again and realized that there was no need.

She was smiling, and the tears she was shedding were tears of joy.

29

MURDER

T
hough he moved back to Holyrood, Darnley was in no way improved by the prospect of becoming a father. If anything, he got worse. His drunken parties became notorious. Tavern wenches were sneaked in and out of his bedchamber by day and by night. It was disgusting behavior and we all tried to keep word of it from the queen.

“Darnley and the queen are rarely together now,” I told Davie as we walked into the queen's chambers. We had met by chance in the hall and Davie held the door for me.

He smiled broadly at me, which lent but little beauty to his face. Still, I smiled back. And suddenly it was as if our differences had never happened.

I said over my shoulder, “I sleep in a cot by her side, should she need to rise in the night. She will have no one else.”