The Puzzle Ring

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘Will you sing for us again?’ the queen asked.

  Hannah nodded. She glanced at the others, trying to think what song to perform. Her fingers strayed into ‘Black is the Colour of my True Love’s Hair’. Although it was an old Scottish folk song, it was one Nina Simone often sang. The others followed her lead. Again there was that little hum of surprised displeasure as Hannah began to play her guitar, but again the beauty of the song hushed the crowd and they listened quietly. To Hannah’s surprise, the words of the song caused a few titters of laughter around the room, with many turning to look at the black-haired Lord Bothwell lying back in his seat beside Queen Mary, a look of sardonic amusement on his strong, dark face.

  After they had finished, the four children were accosted by all sorts of men and women asking them questions, pressing wine and sweetmeats upon them, asking them to come and sing at this party and that. A tall, thin man dressed all in black satin, with a flowing white lace cravat instead of a ruff, and shoes so pointed they looked like weapons, came and bent close to Hannah, smiling and murmuring something she could not hear. She inclined her head, trying to hear him, and suddenly he reached out and viciously plucked a strand of her hair. She cried out in pain, and clapped a hand to her head, and the man—smiling still—melted away into the crowd.

  ‘Who was that?’ Linnet asked in some agitation.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Hannah cried, her eyes smarting with tears. ‘He pulled some of my hair right out by the roots!’

  Linnet looked grave. ‘One of the black witch’s spies, no doubt. She can find you more easily if she has part of you to hold. Usually she prefers a finger or toe, but a strand of your hair works just as well, particularly if it is pulled out by the roots and so has your blood on it.’

  ‘A magpie plucked some of my hair back in my own time,’ Hannah told her, rubbing her head furiously.

  Linnet nodded. ‘She may not be able to track you here with that, though, for you are out of time. I was hoping she had lost our trail. We were careful to keep out of sight as much as possible. I’m guessing she knew we must come to Edinburgh, and so her spy was waiting for us.’

  Just then, John Hulme came up to them, drawing Hannah aside and looking at her sternly. ‘That is a dangerous game you play, strumming with the Devil’s hand. You must not do that again. The crowd was merry, and you are very young, and no one wished to spoil the festivities. But if that firebrand Knox should hear of it, there’d be trouble.’

  Hannah shrank back. She had read of John Knox, the strict and puritanical preacher who had led the Protestant Reformation in Scotland. He had written a pamphlet denouncing the rule of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her cousin Mary Tudor of England, calling it ‘The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women’. He preached such fiery sermons that riots broke out in churches, and he had confronted the young queen and lectured her upon her frivolous ways until she had wept.

  ‘What do you mean, the Devil’s hand?’ Hannah had never heard the left hand being called that before.

  John Hulme stared at her in angry incredulity. ‘But surely you must know! Why, they will burn you if they see you using the Devil’s hand.’

  ‘Burn me?’

  ‘Aye. For only a witch would ever use her left hand!’

  The World’s End

  Hannah found it hard to take a breath. Her whole body felt hot and dizzy. She looked down at her left hand in horror. She had heard, of course, stories about how, in the olden days, children had been beaten for using their left hand and had had it tied behind their back. She had never heard of anyone being burnt to death for it.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ she managed to say.

  ‘No one has ever told you before? Warned you against using the Devil’s hand?’ When she shook her head, he went on, in a kinder tone of voice, ‘Where have you come from? The Outer Hebrides! Well, I tell you now. I wish I had seen you play before you did so before the whole court! You must not do so again.’

  But I don’t know any other way to play, she thought.

  ‘It is a good thing that you are leaving right away,’ he said.

  ‘But no! Not at all! They must not leave so soon!’ A warm, sweet, persuasive voice rang across the room. The queen had risen, her ladies clustering about her. ‘They are virtuosos! I must hear them sing again. Not now. We’re going to dance now, and then I have the ambassador’s dinner afterwards. But tonight!’

  ‘They could sing at the masque tonight,’ John Hulme said. ‘Sebastian plans a midnight supper, before the putting-to-bed ceremony. It would be a lovely way to end the day, with sweet love songs sung by such angelic voices.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ the queen agreed. ‘But do you really plan to move on again in the morning, my dears? It is Lent, you know. You cannot play and sing again for forty days.’

  ‘We must, your Majesty,’ Scarlett said dramatically. ‘We cannot tarry.’

  Hannah shot her a warning glance, then turned back to the queen, seeing at last a chance to beg her for the loop of the puzzle ring. But the queen was speaking, and Hannah dared not interrupt her.

  ‘In that case, you must come with me tonight when I visit my husband. I know the king will like to see the new singers the whole court is speaking of. You shall walk to Kirk o’ Fields with us, and entertain us while the men play at dice!’ She nodded and moved away, leaving Hannah with that faint uneasy flicker of memory. Where had she heard of Kirk o’ Fields before?

  The moment of puzzling cost Hannah her opportunity. She would have started after the queen, even dropped on her knees to beg her for the golden loop. But it was too late. The queen was dancing with Lord Bothwell, the two tall figures in their matching black and silver sweeping through the crowd of dancing courtiers like an iron scythe. Hannah fell back, troubled and afraid.

  As the shadows closed down over the gardens outside, great branches of candles were lit, and the laughing queen retired, taking with her a host of lords and ladies and attendants. Linnet came and took the children to the kitchen, sitting them down in front of a bowl of broken meats and vegetables. The children had not eaten since their porridge that morning. They ate ravenously, finding the clatter and commotion of the kitchen nearly as fascinating as the swirl of dancers above.

  ‘How many people must the cooks have to feed every day?’ Max wondered. ‘It must be hundreds, maybe even a thousand.’

  ‘I wish they didn’t have to eat the swans,’ Scarlett said.

  ‘You’re probably eating a bit of swan right now,’ said Donovan.

  Scarlett faltered, holding a piece of meat to her mouth, then shrugged and ate it anyway. It was delicious.

  Later that evening, a page came to fetch them to join the royal party, heading into Edinburgh town. The queen and her courtiers rode gorgeously caparisoned horses. Everyone else walked through the frosty darkness, the flare of torches sending great banners of smoke up into the night sky, dimming the stars. Everyone was still dressed in their carnival finery, some wearing masks like cats or dragons or terrifying birds. The queen wore a black fur mantle against the cold. Everyone chattered in high, shrill voices. Max and Scarlett were running about, scraping up the snow and pelting each other with icy snowballs. Donovan was staring up at the night sky, where a new moon hung among stars, while Angus stumped behind, Linnet a slim shadow by his side.

  ‘Why does the queen’s husband not live at the palace too?’ Hannah asked John Hulme, the queen’s lute player.

  He glanced down at her in surprise. ‘Well . . . he has been sick . . . and her Majesty did not want him to return till she was sure he was fully recovered. And of course, they have not been so sweet to each other this past year, not since David Rizzio was killed . . .’ His voice trailed away.

  Hannah remembered that David Rizzio had been the queen’s secretary. He had been stabbed to death in her bedchamber at Holyrood Palace, leaving bloodstains that could never be washed away. The queen’s husband had believed Rizzio was Queen Mary’s lover, even though he was an
ugly little hunchback, and so he and his friends had burst in upon them playing cards one night, and killed him right in front of Mary’s horrified eyes. She had been seven months pregnant then, and felt sure that they had meant to murder her too, leaving Lord Darnley—her husband—to inherit the throne. Hannah thought it very strange that the queen could still be married to a man who had murdered her friend and tried to murder her.

  ‘So why does she go to visit him now?’ Hannah asked.

  John Hulme hesitated a moment, then answered frankly: ‘They say you should keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. With the king here, under her eye, she can be sure he is not plotting against her again.’

  Hannah pondered this, more puzzled than ever.

  The queen’s party went through the massive gateway of Netherbow Port, Lord Bothwell calling greetings to the guards and tossing them a handful of coins. Once again it was like entering a different world. Outside all was dark and peaceful, with the graceful shape of the palace lit up with candles, and the distant sound of music drifting on the wind. Inside, it was noisy and raucous, with people swarming everywhere, drinking ale and singing loud choruses that involved a lot of banging of tankards and shrieking with laughter. Some children were playing with firecrackers in a corner, a dog was chasing a scrawny cat, and six couples were dancing boisterously to the sound of a fiddle.

  ‘They call this the World’s End,’ John Hulme told Hannah. ‘Many people cannot pay the fee to come in and out through the gate, and so they live and die here, within the city’s walls.’

  ‘So they never go anywhere else?’ Hannah looked around at the dark, smoky streets with pity.

  ‘Why would they want to? Edinburgh is the greatest city in the world!’ the lute player boasted.

  Donovan and Hannah smiled wryly at each other.

  The queen was smiling and waving to the crowd and the earl was throwing more coins, but Hannah noticed some of the crowd scowled in response and shook their fists.

  The bells of St Giles rang out noisily, filling the air with their clangour, and at once boys began to walk the streets, banging on drums. Heads appeared at doors and windows high and low, calling out loudly, ‘Gardyloo! Gardyloo!’ Then they emptied out their chamber-pots into the street, in foul-smelling deluges that splashed on the heads of those who were not quick enough to draw away from the walls. One of the queen’s pages ran on ahead, waving his torch and calling, ‘Hold your hand!’ and the ladies held scented pomanders to their noses, but otherwise no one seemed to notice or mind.

  ‘Ewwww,’ Scarlett cried, and muffled her face in her plaid. ‘What a stink!’

  ‘The Ancient Romans had sewers two thousand years ago,’ Max said, screwing up his nose. ‘No wonder everyone gets so sick these days!’

  Through the maze of dark, noisy streets the procession went, Hannah trying hard not to step in any muck. Then they came to a gate in a high wall, which one of the servants unlocked then stood back to allow the queen to enter. Within were a garden and a house, lit dimly with candles. Hannah and her friends followed the crowd of courtiers up the stairs to a small chamber where a young man of around twenty years of age lay in bed, beneath a purple velvet canopy, all trimmed with cloth of gold.

  He was thin and pasty, with a hollow look about his face and fair curls that clung damply to his brow. Although he was undeniably handsome, there was a sulky, petulant cast to his mouth and his chin was rather slack. He sat up as everyone came in, and complained that they should be so late. Queen Mary went to sit by his side, soothing him and asking someone to pour them some wine.

  Hannah carefully laid her guitar against the wall, then the four of them sang again, wracking their brains for songs they all knew that would not seem too strange to these sixteenth-century ears. They could not sing ‘House of the Rising Sun’, with its talk of New Orleans and sin and misery. They could not sing ‘I Kissed a Girl’ or ‘Bootylicious’. They could only imagine how the queen would react to John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’.

  Let alone John Knox.

  Luckily all four of them had sung in school choirs over the years, and so had a fair repertoire of songs that they knew (most of) the words to. So they sang ‘Amazing Grace’, and ‘Scarborough Fair’ and, rather anxiously, ‘Kumbaya’. No one asked them what the words meant, though, and so they relaxed, and sang as sweetly and innocently as they could. For once, not even Max had the desire to ham it up. It was too strange, singing in this crowded, smoky room, with men wearing swords as they played dice, and the queen laughing and drinking wine with a man who had tried to murder her.

  The queen asked them to play ‘Greensleeves’ again, and they would have sung ‘Black is the Colour of my True Love’s Hair’ too, if John Hulme had not leant over and surreptitiously shaken his head at the very first chords. Hannah did not understand at first, until he jerked his head slightly at the queen and her fair-haired husband. She remembered Queen Mary laughing and dancing with the black-haired Lord Bothwell, who was now leaning up against the wall, drinking wine and watching the queen broodingly.

  So she quickly segued into ‘Morning Has Broken’, and the others followed her lead.

  ‘Morning has almost broken,’ Lord Bothwell said when they finished. ‘Must be time to be getting these young folk back to bed.’

  The queen rose quickly to her feet. ‘Good heavens, the masque! I promised! I must return to the palace too.’

  The king scowled. ‘You said you would stay here tonight!’

  ‘But it is Sebastian’s wedding supper. I promised I would come. I cannot break my promise, you know that. Besides, I will see you in the morning. Have you not ordered the carriage to bring you to the palace? See, it shall not be so very long before I see you again.’

  The king was cross and sulky. He muttered something under his breath, and the queen, smiling, drew a gold ring from her finger and pressed it into his hand. ‘There you are! My lucky ring. You have my pledge that I shall see you bright and early in the morning.’

  Then, in a whirl of silver-encrusted skirts, and black fur as dense and velvety as a panther’s, she was gone. Like a swarm of eels, the crowd of courtiers followed her. Hannah and her friends gathered up their instruments hastily, gazing at each other in agonised dismay. The queen had given the king the loop of the puzzle ring!

  Hellfire

  Hannah lagged behind, watching as the king petulantly cast the ring onto his bedside table and grabbed once more at his wine glass. Then she had to follow the queen’s party out into the frosty night once more.

  The queen was mounting her horse when a young man climbed up the stairs from the subterranean basement. Although his clothes were fine, they were dishevelled and grubby, and his face was smeared with grime. Hannah recognised the queen’s page, who had been in attendance upon her all day.

  ‘Jesu, Paris,’ the queen said. ‘How begrimed you are!’

  He muttered an apology, bowing low, and said he had just been checking on the king’s wine cellar. The queen laughed merrily. ‘And drinking it too, by the look of you!’ she cried, and wheeled her horse about. All the men leapt into their saddles, and followed the queen away, leaving the servants and musicians to follow wearily behind on foot. The queen’s page hurried after, wiping his face clean.

  Hannah and her friends fell behind, out of earshot. ‘What shall we do?’ Hannah whispered. ‘Did you see? Oh, if only I’d asked her for it before!’

  ‘We’ll have to steal it,’ Scarlett whispered.

  ‘You must be joking,’ Max cried. ‘If they brand you on the cheek for singing without a licence, imagine what they’ll do to you for stealing a ring from the king!’

  ‘Sssh!’ Hannah hissed.

  ‘What choice do we have?’ Donovan asked. ‘That guy’s never going to give it to us! He looks like the sort who would hang onto it just to spite us. Besides, it’s the perfect opportunity. We could never have stolen it from the queen at the palace, with all those guards and servants and lords and ladies hanging around all th
e time. But here it’d be easy enough to break into that house, there are no guards, and it’s very secluded.’

  ‘An odd place for the king to stay,’ Scarlett said. ‘I’d have thought he’d be in a castle, if he wasn’t going to stay with the queen. Which is odd too, don’t you think?’

  ‘I think they’re kind of separated,’ Hannah said.

  ‘Why don’t they just get a divorce?’ Max demanded.

  ‘Mary, Queen of Scots, was Catholic, remember?’ Hannah said. ‘I don’t think she’s allowed to get a divorce.’

  Angus loomed up out of the darkness behind them, looking anxious. He and Linnet had not been permitted into the king’s house, and so they had been waiting outside the garden wall, shivering in the cold.

  ‘How’s all with you?’ Linnet asked anxiously.

  ‘The queen gave the ring to her husband!’ Hannah said in a low, urgent whisper. ‘It’s up there, just lying on his bedside table. We’re going to sneak back later, when everyone’s asleep.’ Hannah flushed uncomfortably, knowing her mother would not approve. ‘I mean, it’s not like it’s stealing. It’s our ring, I mean, my family’s. I have to get it back!’

  ‘A dangerous ploy,’ Linnet said. ‘They are cruel, this court. Quick to condemn and quick to kill. We did not realise, my lady and I, how different a land this was when we first came. But I know now. You do not wish to be caught, I promise you that.’

  ‘No,’ Hannah said. ‘We’ll have to be careful.’

  ‘It is too dangerous for bairns,’ Angus said. ‘I will get it for you.’

  Hannah felt a moment of immense relief, but then she shook her head. ‘Thank you, Angus, thank you so much, but I can’t let you do that. They would hang you for sure if you were caught. While I’m just a girl . . . I could say I left something behind.’

  ‘Something so important you’d sneak back under cover of darkness to get it?’ Donovan said dryly.

  ‘My guitar?’

  ‘It’s too big, everyone will have seen you carrying it out,’ Max said.