The Fool's Mirror

by Alex Dylan

  “Heughan, you’re hurting me. I know to keep m’ mouth shut.”

  Heughan let go of her ear and slid his hand round to stroke the back of her head; keeping the stretch of his fingers either side of her neck, he squeezed gently, reminding her that he was in control. He felt her move as she was distracted by a commotion on the other side of the grazing in the centre of the Ward. Honking geese were hissing and flapping uncertainly as Melisande’s young charge struggled to keep them together. The page sidestepped them warily, and they circled around him, holding their wings outstretched like court ladies fanning out their dancing skirts.

  Heughan smiled in spite of himself. It reminded him strongly of the last time he had been to dinner in a castle but that was at Bunratty, before the rebellion. There had been a lot of dancing that night. He remembered the faces of the girls haloed in a corona of soft butter light from the fine candles, brought all the way from Wynetavern Street in Dublin especially for the occasion; the way they had held out the full width of their skirts and curtsied to him. They had been merry that night, dancing recklessly, loving carelessly. What had become of them now?

  Were the girls of his dreams now, like him, harried with the trials and tribulations heaped upon them by the arrogant English and their god who heeded no prayers? Kitty fidgeted under his fingers, bringing him back to the present. He loosened his hold.

  “Why is she Lady Middlemore if she’s just his quean?” Heughan asked out loud, unintentionally.

  Kitty turned to look at him with sharp, hazel eyes.

  “Bless us, Heughan. She’s ne’er his whore. She’s his daughter-in-law; widow of his son, Walter.” She laughed at the look on his face, “You really didn’t know?”

  Heughan didn’t reply. He was trying to assimilate this new information and puzzle out why Rodrigues hadn’t volunteered such an important fact.

  Kitty mistook his silence for considered interest. She tossed her unruly hair back. “You’re wasting your time if you think she’ll have you. She’s a hoyden, that one.”

  Heughan didn’t contradict her but he knew Kitty was wrong. He vaguely remembered kissing Melisande and the way she bent in to him when he pressed against her. He hadn’t imagined it, for all the feverishness.

  “Who else is in the Castle?” he asked Kitty. “Is Letty here?”

  “No,” she said, sounding petulant. She smoothed down her skirts over-carefully. Linen creased easily, and it took her some time to arrange the folds to her liking. Heughan said nothing and waited for her to elaborate.

  “She’s with Nick Storey, if you must know.” Heughan tipped his chin, “And?”

  “Nick’s nearly out of his indentures and mighty keen on Letty, and she on him,” she added querulously.

  Heughan laughed roundly. “Mistress Nortbie would never let one of her apprentices marry, never mind marry Letty. What’s gotten into the girl?”

  “Well, you haven’t been around much of late, and we all have to earn our keep,” Kitty grumbled. “Letty just doesn’t fancy the idea of spending all her time on her back, fumbling with small fry. She’s got plans to land a bigger catch, that’un.”

  She rose to leave, “Heughan, who knows? She might even consider you. It is May Day after all,” she sniffed disdainfully, before flouncing away in the direction Bridie had taken.

  Willie eased into the space she vacated, his eyes twinkling with merriment. He’d heard their exchange.

  “Well, my laird,” he said playing serious, “if it looks like you might be considering a marriage proposal soon, ye’d better find yersel’ a decent dowry because none of the mistresses you’ve collected so far have two pennies to rub together.” He added knowingly, “Mind you, it’s probably not their pennies that you’re interesting in rubbing together, aye?”

  “Nobly shackled is still shackled,” Heughan said. “Marriage comes with a price I’m unwilling to pay. I value my freedom.”

  A snatch of ballad being played on a hurdy-gurdy floated across the Ward. Everyone was in the mood for good-humoured festivities. Dancers circled the maypole on the green, weaving the white ribbons in and out of each other. Heughan recognised ‘Tam Lin’ but the faerie tale instinctively brought Melisande to mind,

  ‘Janet has kilted her green kirtle a little above her knee.’

  What would compel a lady to bother to rip up her skirt and bandage the feet of a poor child? “I’ve a plan, Willie,” he said.

  “Don’t you always?”

  “Would the Queen of the May prefer a song or a dance?” Heughan asked mysteriously. Willie frowned suspiciously, sensing trouble behind Heughan’s jesting.

  “Begging my laird’s pardon, but if it involves a certain sleekit kelpie, it’ll end up costing yer dear, you mark my words.”

  “Ah whusht, Willie, would yer? Quit yer bellyaching,” said Heughan testily. “I’ve heard Mac sing his songs for calming mermaids often enough, an’ I reckon they’ll work on kelpies and any other sort of slippery woman just as well.”

  Willie poked the remains of Heughan’s meal with a thoughtful finger and picked out some bread. “You say you ken the price of freedom and then the next breath, ye tell me ye’ll trade it with a mermaid’s song. Yer a mad bastard, and don’t say I didn’t warn yer. Are we off then?”

  He made to rise but Heughan held him back and shook his head as a singer floated another verse of ‘Tam Lin’ over to him;

  "And once it fell upon a day

  A cold day and a snell,

  When we were from the hunting come,

  That from my horse I fell."

  He was singing along to the melody before he even realised what he was doing. Willie stopped chewing and gaped at him open-mouthed. Were the lads right in thinking that Heughan’s singing of ‘Tam Lin’ was a prophecy of doom? Heughan rubbed a hand over the bristles on his chin.

  “I think I need a shave, Willie, to smarten myself up.”

  Willie shrugged and with a mouthful of bread said, “Aye, weel, I daresay there’s time enough to visit Finkle Street. Best make haste though. Yon Scottish git’ll be here soon enough, and then we’ll all ha’e to stand to attention with our pizzles out.”

  * * *

  James Stewart, nominally king of both Scotland and England, was awkwardly nervous at Naward Castle. As much as he was delighted to be away from Scotland, he wasn’t sure he cared for England in spite of the gracious attendance of his host William Howard. Naward was his recent purchase from James and whilst there was no doubting Howard’s enthusiasm for renovations and improvements, it was fractious close to Carlisle. James himself reposed in easy angst; everyone else was slightly unsettled. It was to become a familiar theme.

  As a counterpoint, Howard made sure that the royal party spent a lot of time in the gardens and that there was plenty of hunting. The weather was uncharacteristically obliging, providing a rare, bright Borders’ day of high blue skies. White blossom puffed on early cherries, though most were still grey and spindly-thin with ragged lichen. The year was on the cusp; it wasn’t yet summer but the endless slanting rain of spring seemed a distant memory. It was a time of promises unfulfilled with the hope of what might yet be.

  James was very satisfied with the morning’s hunting; even more satisfied to be parted from the company of his wife. He had been happy to leave her in Edinburgh, making a big show on the Royal Mile and kissing her a tender farewell in front of the huge crowd that had gathered for the send-off. She was in tears, as were many in the crowd themselves. No doubt many Scots sincerely felt they were losing James to England and getting nothing in return. James himself managed to shed a tear, but it was a mummer’s deceit. He had heard that every English noble kept a well-stocked hunting park and made it clear that it was his intention to visit as many of them as possible on his way south. He had wept tears of joy anticipating the entertainment the royal progress would afford him.

  However, now that the moment to move on had come, James found that he was not at all enamoured of the prospect of further travel
into the Borders. Those ballads, which at a distance were easy to dismiss as romantic hyperbole, acquired new menace so close to Carlisle. James had a lifelong terror of kidnap, with good reason. He’d experienced it first-hand. Torn between a tendency to tempt fate and the need to understand, he had questioned Howard at length about the reivers. The responses he had received had done nothing to quell his fears. His most pressing need was for a safe haven. The royal household was all on edge as James called Mark A’Court, his most trusted advisor, to meet with him.

  James was a tall man but Mark A’Court seemed taller yet. He strode with confidence where James would only shuffle. He had the fiery Plantagenet colouring and owned his heritage; yet for all that, the cleric was a shadowy figure, currently displeased with his king’s vacillation.

  “Highness,” he coddled, “the people of Carlisle have made extensive preparations to receive you. My Lord Middlemore…”

  “That whining shit Middlemore, who steals land and cattle and minds no boundaries,” interrupted James.

  Mark A’Court ignored the outburst and carried on phlegmatically, “Middlemore, who has planned a banquet in celebration of Your Highness’s arrival the like of which is without equal in the whole of the north…” he got no further.

  “I dinna give a rat’s arse,” said James irately. “I’ll nay put myself in danger. And in aye truth, I feel close enough to danger already, here in an openly Catholic household, where a Jesuit could lurk in every closet,” he shuddered and paused to look anxiously around the room.

  Mark followed his gaze with the bemused raising of one eyebrow. “Highness,” he appeased, “you are perfectly safe here.”

  “Pish! Am I though? Am I?” rebuked James. “Reivers, I hear tell, the scourge of society. Plots to capture me, assassinate me, replace me. Such wickedness against the Lord’s anointed.” He looked at Mark with sunken, sad eyes.

  Mark exhaled slowly through his patrician nose and tried a different persuasion, “The city will want to present Your Highness with gifts. A gilt cup filled with gold is traditional, and the city’s sword and key.”

  “And whit good wi’ a cup of gold be to me when I’ll have to use the sword to beat off the skunners who’d try to steal it back from me as soon as I look away?” argued James hotly. “I ken scarce believe the villainy of these reivers. How dare they fail to show me love, fidelity, duty and obedience? I’m their king,” he said indignantly. “They stir up war and rebellion, they encourage my enemies and have nae fear of God in their hearts. I dinnae wonder that they have been moved and seduced by the devil. Or a witch,” he added as an afterthought.

  “Highness, the people want to see you,” Mark A’Court began anew.

  “God’s wounds!” scolded James. “I’ll pull down my breeches and they’ll see my arse!”

  “And I am sure they will be delighted to kiss it just the same,” said Mark serenely.

  James looked at him sternly and then burst out laughing. “I dinnae give a turd for your preaching, Mark. If you’re so keen on Carlisle, you can go there in my place. But mind whit I say. There’s a witch at the bottom of this. I feel it in ma water. A witch, or an Irishman or a Jesuit; or, God forbid us, all three!”

  Mark A’Court was thoughtful.

  “Highness, who has been feeding you such fantastic stories?” he asked, piqued.

  The king had an abiding interest in the occult. Over time, he had come to consider himself quite an expert on the subject and in ‘Daemonologie’, his own treatise on witchcraft, he had concluded that all women were extreme with demonic partialities. Mark suspected that the resurfacing of James’s old twin fears over the involvement of witchcraft, real or imagined, in a kidnap plot or assassination attempt, again real or imagined, meant that some new pernicious influence had penetrated the royal sphere.

  “Did Sir Robert present other messages to Your Highness or has Lord Cecil sent new intelligences?” he hazarded.

  “It is base deception practised on us,” James said bitterly, ignoring the question. “These Borderers are cruel pagans, that’s all. Pagans who think they have us in their thrall. Bewitch us, aye they would.”

  He chewed his pouting lower lip thoughtfully, plucking absently at his sparse beard, plucking at a memory. When he did speak, it was soft poem,

  "The azur’d vaulte, the gleaming faerie torches powdred there,

  Thy hallowed magyck light, that drawest me where I did wander ne’er.

  The music of the bees, and water bubbling from the fount,

  My heart thine conquest now includeth, thou must count.

  “Esme loved pretty stories of faeries. He brought her to me from France to amuse me. He knew I was interested to learn. Esme said she had the power to bewitch us both,” James said wistfully. “He said that she understood our…” he hesitated, searching for the right words, “…duality,” he finished.

  Mark frowned, trying to follow the ramble of the king’s monologue. Esme Stewart was a name he knew well. James’s older cousin had been an elegant, glamorous Frenchman who brought privileged debauchery into the Scottish Court and corrupted the innocence of a teenage James, setting him on a path that forever deviated from Biblical straightness. James had adored Esme, loved him deeply beyond his merit, promoted him beyond his ability and had been shattered when Esme was ousted in a power play. Exiled to France, Esme died of a broken heart. Fittingly, it was sent back to James in a casket; it was his by right, after all. Mark wondered who Esme’s companion might have been.

  “I wonder if she is yet at Carlisle.”

  “Highness?” quizzed Mark, confused.

  “Lady Melisande,” the King answered. “The music of the bees, water bubbling from the fount.” He cocked a look at Mark, who was still deeply perplexed, “That was Esme’s wee tribute to her. It’s a word play on her family name: Melisande Fonteyn.”

  Mark exhaled, comprehending. “The Lady Melisande, widow of Walter Middlemore, Ambrose’s son,” he recited the genealogy, straightening it in his mind, nodding. “Yes, Highness. I believe she is.”

  “Walter was a charming fellow. He didnae deserve what happened to him. Married to such a harpy.” James smoothed out his moustaches and twisted his other features into a disapproving face.

  "Esme said she was a curiosity. Arrogant woman! She told me that we should all be curious, that an educated mind was a knowledgeable and inquiring mind. Aye, right enough if you’re a man, but not women. They have nae capacity for it and I told her so. Curiosity is the way that the devil recruits witches, so it follows that women should be discouraged from being curious and thus falling into sin. The weak-minded have the greatest inclination for it.

  “Esme felt sorry for her on account of her father being burned as a heretic. In the end though, as I pointed out, it was her natural condition of ignorance that saved her. If the Inquisition had thought she had read his writings, they would have burned her too. As would I, same as any true witch,” he added as an afterthought.

  The king stared out of the mullioned glass of the window, one of Howard’s new improvements. High above him, a hawk hung poised in the stillness of the air and called to him. James spoke quietly to himself,

  "Draw farr from heir, mount high up through the air, to gar thy heat and beames be law and near

  That in this country which is colde and bair, thy glistring beames als ardent may appeir."

  Mark kept his silence. This poem he knew as one of James’s own, dedicated to the lost love who had the king’s heart.

  “This is aye a cold and bare country, for all the brightness of the day,” James said, his words sharp with thistle spikiness. Mark watched the king’s lips draw into a thin line, private thoughts once more hidden.

  “A proclamation,” said James, rousing them both. “As my right to the crown of England and Scotland is united in my person, so my Marches are united by land and common boundary. My course will be betwixt both, to establish peace and wealth and religion betwixt both. And if one country had wealth and the other
men, so ye may split the difference and as one they may help each other. I’ll astride them both and master them as one. Borders no more. Are your men ready?” he asked abruptly.

  Mark A’Court nodded curtly. James had started to pull on his gauntlets and held up one already gloved hand to halt Mark’s further comments.

  “Nay, Mark. I’ll say nae more. I’ve nae desire to expose myself to the corrupting influence of women, so I’ll ne’er go to Carlisle. I’m minded a queen of Scotland was imprisoned there. It was an ill omen for her that ended badly. Let’s not lose the king the same way.”

  Mark kept quiet. James was referring to his own mother, Mary Queen of Scots, who had indeed been briefly imprisoned in Carlisle Castle, one of several prisons she had endured. Throughout her life, she had pursued joint regency with James. James had always been stubbornly independent. That much was consistent in his nature.

  “I will forge my own kingdom, my own kingship,” James said, as if reading his thoughts. “Awa’ frae the meddling of women. One true kingdom, kingdom, mind you, with a king to lead. As the Lord rules above, so I will rule below. And you, Mark, you will be my archangel, to smite my foes and make my annunciations.”

  Mark bowed reverently.

  "Howard says the queen, God rest ma sweet cousin, talked of her subjects’ love and good affections. Did they love her here in the Borders, aye? Look at the welt of trouble they whipped up the minute they heard she was dead. Nay, Mark, I dinnae need their love. I’ll settle for their fear and subjugation. I’ll be the keeper of my own fields. These reivers have gorged themselves on riches that aren’t theirs, and I will have an end to it.