The Raven's Heart

by Jesse Blackadder

  A few miles from Jedburgh, when her weary horse, eager to reach home, has cantered to the front of the party, the ground changes from firm to wet in a step. Erskine shouts a warning, but the Queen’s palfrey slips, loses his footing, and falls to his shoulder with a splash. When he scrambles to his feet, the saddle is bare.

  I wrench my horse to a halt and jump down. I wade through the muddy water, calling, “Your Grace, Your Grace!” I cannot see her in the dark and the confusion and the milling horses, and my riding clothes drag at my legs with the weight of the water. Then I hear her soft moan and the suck of the mud as she sits up. The sharp and most unroyal curse she gives fills me with relief.

  “Madam? Madam?” Arnault’s voice is frantic in the darkness.

  “I am here, Arnault.”

  With a scrabble of arms and legs we reach for her, falling in the mud so we are as wet as she. Arnault finds her first and hauls her to her feet and we slosh our way back to firmer ground where the rest of the party has had the wit to wait with the horses. She is unharmed but already shivering.

  Lord James takes charge.

  “You and you,” he points. “Ride as fast as you can and have them make ready for us. Sister, ride behind me and I will block the wind. Here, wrap my cloak around your shoulders. We will ride fast and you shall be back at Jedburgh before any harm comes to you.”

  But it is half an hour of cantering with the cold wind cutting at us and we are all shivering by the time we arrive. The torches blaze out in the dark from Jedburgh House and men come running with a litter to meet us.

  “I hope you have built my fire high,” the Queen greets them, and she manages a smile, as though she is not near to frozen. “I do not need a litter, pray just help me from my horse, and I shall walk inside.”

  “Your Grace, please use the litter.” Arnault’s voice is hard with worry. “We do not know what hurt you may have taken.”

  They help her into the litter, raise it, and break into a run. The rest of us slide from our saddles. I run inside in her wake and the chill in my belly is not just from my wet clothing and the cold wind as I rode.

  The Queen’s chambers are hectic with servants and ladies-in-waiting fussing around her. I am excused and find my way to my own bed and try to get myself warm. It is a long time before the feeling comes back into my toes and fingers.

  To have my fate dangled thus is almost more than I can bear. I send a few words of thanks to the God I don’t believe in before I fall asleep.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Our Queen may be stronger than most women, but all her life she has been plagued with illnesses. The terrible pains in her belly, the fainting, the vomiting, the days when she takes to her bed with violent fits of weeping, until she is near hysteria and must be quietened with laudanum. It is only a few months since she almost died in childbirth. In the past few days she has suffered the shock of Bothwell’s injury, the long ride in the dark, the fall, and getting chilled in her wet clothes.

  By lunchtime she is shivering continuously. Arnault orders her back into bed and calls for a roaring fire in her room. By evening she is in the claws of illness, alternately burning and freezing, racked with coughs, doubled up with the pain in her gut that has dogged her since she was a child.

  Seton, Arnault, and I try to ease her discomfort, moving the bedclothes on and off when she calls for it, sponging her face when the fever grips her, rubbing her icy limbs when she shivers.

  My fear is like ice in the pit of my belly. Seton looks panicked and Lord James and Maitland peer into the room to see how her illness progresses.

  At last, late in the evening, the Queen recovers a little. The pain eases and her fever drops. Seton manages to trickle some broth into her mouth and the Queen gives a tiny, weak smile.

  “Madam, that ride was too much for you,” Arnault says, taking her hand. “I will not allow you to strain yourself again. Do you hear me?”

  She gives a tiny nod. The terror on Seton’s face subsides. She has never learned to conceal her feelings. I, a little more schooled in dissembling, exhale slowly and let relief flood my body.

  “You must rest now, Madam,” Arnault says. “In the morning you will feel better.”

  We eat a snatched meal downstairs and Seton insists on sleeping in the Queen’s chambers. I return to my tiny room, exhausted.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  When I wake, Jedburgh House is quiet. It is early still; the sun has not risen. Outside a robin calls and another answers.

  Tomorrow, or the next day or the one after, I will come home, for the first time in my life. Perhaps the restlessness that has lived inside me will subside. For the first time, I will not be under the rule of another. Not William, not Bothwell, not the Queen. Perhaps at Blackadder I will feel peace.

  On this quiet morning, I see the Queen dispassionately. I know her faults and vanities, her need to be worshiped, her cruelty, her kindness, her jealousy. I know how it is to be a favorite one moment, forgotten the next. I know the danger of angering her or making her afraid. She is a queen, divinely appointed and set above the rest of us, but I have seen the woman behind the Queen.

  I do not allow myself to think of Angi much, for the pain it brings, but this morning she comes back to me as clearly as if she had just stepped outside the room for a moment. Her eyes are full of mischief and she comes toward the bed, allowing her nightgown to slip slowly down from her shoulder. She pauses just out of my reach. I have forgotten the delight of this feeling, the anticipation of our skins meeting, the way she laughs and makes me wait, and wait.

  Faintly, down the corridors of the house, comes a cry so despairing that the hair rises on my scalp. I throw back the covers, stumble from the bed, grab a cloak, and rush out of my room. I take the stairs in great leaps until I reach the hallway outside the Queen’s apartments, where it seems that cry still lingers in the air. A servant rushes past me and I grab her.

  “The Queen is dead,” she gasps, and flees.

  Forty-one

  I push my way into the Queen’s bedchamber. It is crowded with people, their voices an unintelligible wall of sound. The only thing I can hear clearly is Seton’s despairing cries.

  In the center of the chaos the Queen is a storm’s eye of stillness. Her face is as cold as a snowdrift, her lips blue. I shoulder my way through the maelstrom to her side where Seton is kneeling, tears running down her face. I take the Queen’s hand in mine. It is waxen, absent.

  I am filled with a white-hot rage as I stare down at her closed eyes.

  “Alison!” It is Arnault, standing by the Queen’s feet. “We may yet save her. Help me!”

  “She is past our help.” Seton chokes on the words. “Pity, Arnault. At least let her body rest peacefully.”

  He ignores her. “We must bind her limbs.”

  Seton flies to her feet, crosses the room, and drags the window open. “Let her spirit be free,” she cries. “Leave her, Arnault.”

  The priest is muttering and waving incense, and Lord James seems to be pawing through the Queen’s jewels, while Maitland strides back and forth in consternation. La Flamina and the Queen’s other ladies weep loudly.

  I cast another look at the Queen’s face. She is surely dead. I let go of her hand and move down the end of the bed to Arnault. “Close the window,” I snap at Seton.

  “I will hold the leg and you must bind it as tightly as you can,” he says.

  She is limp and cold to the touch; he has surely lost his mind.

  “She’s free now. Let her go to God.” Seton stands by the window.

  “You’ll kill us all with the cold—close it!” My shriek so startles Seton that she reaches out and shuts the window and then sinks to a chair and covers her face in her hands.

  Arnault directs me with short, sharp orders. “Tight! Go faster. Move around the knee!”

  Maitland and Lord James stand close together in a corner, talking urgently in low voices. Servants tear at their hair. Seton sobs as though her very heart is leaving her o
wn body.

  When all the Queen’s limbs are bound, Arnault leans his ear down close over her mouth for a moment, though I do not know how he can hear anything in the hubbub. I follow his directions to rub and slap at her arms and legs.

  “Harder!” he says, and I need no urging. I am as cold and cruel as her half-brother, standing by her deathbed counting her jewels. With every open-handed slap, I recall how she has dangled me, made me promises, taken away what I loved, and now left me. It is hard to keep my hand open and not beat her with my fists.

  The hubbub dies down as people watch us. Even Seton’s sobs quieten, and the priest’s voice drops to a mutter.

  Lord James crosses to the end of the bed. “Arnault! Pray leave my sister in peace. This is unseemly. You can see she has gone.”

  “The Queen yet lives. Look, there is a blush on her cheek,” Arnault says, rubbing her limp hand.

  There is a gasp throughout the room and Lord James hurries to the bedhead and bends over the Queen. Seton rushes to the other side.

  “I can see nothing,” Lord James declares, drawing back. “I order you, desist from treating her royal body in this manner.”

  Arnault ignores him. “Help me. We must get the emetic into her mouth.”

  Seton, La Flamina, and I take the Queen’s shoulders and lift awkwardly, until her head is lolling more or less upright. I cannot see any sign of life, but I take her chin so he can force her lips open and dribble the dark, foul-smelling fluid into her mouth.

  “Careful, careful,” he mutters, allowing a few drops at a time. “Swallow, Madam, swallow it down.”

  He says she lives, but when she retches suddenly it’s all I can do not to drop her and leap back, and the cry that runs around the room is half horror. She retches again, her eyes fly open, and she begins to vomit in earnest. Arnault leaps to her head and helps us lift her and lean her forward so she doesn’t choke. The servants start screaming, the priest is back by the bedside calling on God, and black vomit sprays across the bed. The Queen gags and retches and coughs and still it comes.

  At last she pauses and takes an agonized breath. Seton’s face, opposite mine, is suffused with joy. Even I, who hated the Queen only moments ago, feel the tears on my cheeks at her return. It is not only the prospect of my future making me feel so.

  Then I happen to catch sight of Lord James as he stares down at his half-sister. His mouth is working and his fists are clenched. When he realizes I am watching, he turns away. With his back to me, he calls out, “Thanks to the Lord, the Queen lives this day. We must all give thanks for this good fortune.”

  Over the doubled-up body of the Queen, Arnault meets my eyes. “The Lord always gets the credit.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  The Queen has survived, but she is like a wraith and I think something of her spirit must have escaped the horror of her life when Seton flung open the window, believing her dead.

  For days, Seton, La Flamina, and I barely leave her side and Arnault, too, is in constant attendance. We watch her as though the force of our will can keep her fixed to the earth. We feed her the tastiest foods that the kitchen can produce, in tiny bites as if she were a child. We hold cups at her lips for her to sup at broths and spiced wines and thick soups. But she lies, thin and listless, her eyes dark circles in her face.

  Secret word is sent out of her illness and near-death. A messenger rides to the King in Glasgow, but he makes no reply. Another messenger takes the news to Bothwell where he lies recovering from his wounds at Hermitage. By the evening of the next day, a party rides into Jedburgh carrying Bothwell on a litter like a woman.

  But there is nothing womanly in the way he comes into her bedchamber. While we have stepped around her silently in slippered feet, spoken in whispers and moved slowly, I can hear the sound of his boots on the floor all the way up the corridor. He limps into her room, all size and bluster and noise, and crosses to her bedside. He snatches up her hand and kisses it hard, far longer than is seemly for a married man greeting a married woman.

  “Lord Bothwell.” The Queen’s voice comes out in a croak.

  “What has happened to you?” His loud voice seems to shake the chamber and I wince.

  “I fell from my horse and took a chill. It seems I do not have much strength these days.”

  “I heard you were poisoned,” he says.

  Arnault steps forward hastily. “We do not know that. The Queen has long had an illness in her belly and the chill brought it on again.”

  But he is too late. The Queen looks at him in horror, and then back to Bothwell.

  “Who says this?” she asks.

  He shrugs. “Madam, you know how rumors start when a queen is ill. Poison is always the first thing mentioned. I’m sure Arnault is right.”

  Tears begin to trickle down her cheeks. “Do you know that my husband will not stir himself to come here, though I almost died?”

  “Then he is a fool!” Bothwell’s voice is raised. “And you are a fool to lie here thus.”

  La Flamina jumps to her feet. “Lord Bothwell, that is enough. You’re upsetting her.”

  He glares back at her. “She needs to be upset. She needs to be outraged. Look at her. She will lie here and let herself die for no better reason than that idiot of a boy.”

  He reaches over and pulls the covers back to the Queen’s waist. He grabs her limp hand and drags her into a sitting position and puts his face close to hers.

  “Listen!” he bellows at her. “You are worth a thousand of any of those fools. You have survived. You have a son—half of Europe is about to come to Scotland for his baptism. How dare you let that prat bring you so low?”

  The rest of us are on our feet, Arnault is tugging at Bothwell, and Seton is at the door to call a guard. But there is a stirring on the Queen’s face and for the first time since I saw her body lifeless, there is a spark of animation on her features.

  “How dare you handle your Queen thus?” she says with a hint of her old steel.

  They stare at each other grimly for a moment.

  “That’s better,” Bothwell grunts, and drops her hand. He takes a step backward and sinks down into a chair, his face white. “Madam, I’m too old to take such wounds and then shake sense into you afterward.”

  He has done what all our soft petting has failed to do. She raises herself up in the bed expectantly.

  “I hear you are to ride to meet Lord Hume in a few days,” Bothwell says. “I would come with you, but I am confined to a litter until this slice in my leg grows together, and I will not give Hume the satisfaction of seeing me thus. I will come and meet you at Craigmillar when you’re finished. There are important things your closest lords must discuss with you. Take heart! You are better away from your husband.”

  “I do not know that I can ride,” she says.

  “Of course you can.” Bothwell looks at Arnault. “What say you, physician? Shall we give her three days? Four days? How much time to prepare?”

  “A week at least,” Arnault says.

  “You are right. I do not have the leisure of a week.” She pushes the covers back. “There are too many urgent matters in the kingdom. I will ride in four days.”

  Bothwell laughs. “Now you sound like a queen again, Your Grace. Someone call for a meal. A big one, with meat.”

  We eat in the Queen’s chamber. By the end of the meal she has color in her cheeks again and she rises from the bed to walk around.

  Bothwell, in contrast, has grown pale and quiet, and finally Arnault orders him to rest and asks me to show him to a room that’s been made ready. I take his arm and he leans on me, limping down the hallway, a servant following.

  “Jesus, she’s taken it out of me,” he mutters as we come into the room. He sinks down to the bed and waves at the servant to unlace his boots.

  “You had best not tarry.” He won’t quite meet my eye. “Soon you’ll be an unmarried noblewoman with a castle. You don’t want any scandal.”

  I step back from him and move to the
door. “Lord Bothwell, what of my father? He was in the grip of melancholy when I left him.”

  Bothwell sighs. “He made a mistake, letting the prisoners escape, and he can’t forgive himself. A soldier can’t afford such a luxury as melancholy but he can’t get over it.”

  “He says he’s not worthy of the castle, having let you down thus.”

  “Then he is a fool,” Bothwell says. “He’s punishing himself far more than I ever would.”

  “Can’t you speak to him? Do what you did with the Queen?”

  He grins, leaning his head back on the pillows and closing his eyes. “It worked well, didn’t it? I’ve neglected him, having had a lot on my mind. I’ll go back and give him the Queen’s talking-to.”

  “Thank you.”

  I watch a moment longer as I realize he is falling asleep. His face relaxes and his breathing deepens. In spite of his exhaustion, a sense of vitality still exudes from him.

  It is four days, the Queen said, until we ride out to meet Hume. Her promise redeemed at last.

  Forty-two

  The Queen calls me to meet with her privately the day before we leave Jedburgh.

  “This is a matter that must be handled carefully, for Hume will not take kindly to it,” she says. “I have thought on this and I will not reveal you to him at first.”

  “But Lord Hume has seen me at court.”

  “You are the mistress of disguise. With a different wig and frock, he will not know you, and he will not see you for long. I will send Lord James and Maitland to Wedderburn with Lord Hume, but you and I shall go to Blackadder.”

  I stare at her. She is afraid, I realize, to strip this powerful family of one of its prize possessions. My heart sinks. She could betray me yet.

  “You should choose a different name for the first night,” she says thoughtfully. Then she turns to me and smiles. “You will be a spy, only this time you will spy for yourself. Tell me, what name shall you use?”