The Raven's Heart

by Jesse Blackadder

  The men around me turn to each other, confused. “What’s happening? Are we to fight?”

  Across the hill, Bothwell leaves the battlefield at a gallop. He flees through the ranks of his own men. Swift as a fox he crests the hill and disappears.

  “They will not fight now,” I say, as we press forward to see the Queen led to the waiting lords.

  The men around us move to see too and we are carried on a wave. I am waiting for a cheer in celebration that the Queen has been taken from Bothwell’s clutches, but what rises in the throats of the men around me is an angry jeer. I look around, shocked. Every face is hostile. There are fists raised, and the words yelled at her make me cringe. “Whore! Murderess!”

  “My God, they will attack her!” I say to Isobel and, hardly knowing what I do, I push my horse into the throng of snarling men. Their leaders shout to restore order, but without conviction in their voices. The blood-lust of the battlefield has turned upon her.

  I ride close enough to see her face. She stares around her at the swarm of soldiers in horror as they roar and bellow insults at her. They jostle against her and she must grab at her saddle to keep her balance.

  Morton mounts up and the other lords ride to flank her, but this is not a victory march. They surround her and raise the standard about her head, the piteous lament of the fatherless Prince. They march off with her in the middle and with a roar the soldiers follow, calling for the Queen’s blood.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  The lookouts stationed along the road race ahead of us to the city to spread the news, and even from a distance I hear raised voices. For a moment my heart lifts. This is the city that has never turned its back on the Queen. She will ride through it as of old, up to Edinburgh Castle, the fortress, where our sovereign can always find safety, and the people will weep with joy that she has returned to them.

  We come up the Canongate to Netherbow Port and as she passes through, I hear the muffled roar of voices. But it is not till I pass through the port myself that the noise hits me like a blow.

  I have never heard such hatred. There is not a face that isn’t twisted in rage, no mouth not shouting an obscenity. The Queen is far ahead of me now, but the shouting does not die down in her wake.

  The street rises in front of me, and I can follow her progress by the position of the standard. It stops, well short of the castle, and my gut twists. Will they put her in the Tolbooth like a criminal?

  I push harder, forcing my horse through the crowd. I am in time to see them lead her into Black Turnpike, the house of the Lord Provost. She turns her head at the door and I glimpse her last disbelieving look before they sweep her inside.

  “Burn her!” a man next to me yells. I look down from the horse. He is shaking his fist and his face is so contorted I doubt his own wife would recognize him. “Whore!”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  “They will kill her, I fear,” I say.

  Sophie nods. “But there is nothing you can do.”

  I sit, then stand again. I rub my arms. Even on a June evening the cold of the Blackadder Water is deep in my bones and nothing will relieve it.

  “Should I go and look for Isobel?” I say restlessly.

  Sophie shakes her head. “She knows to come here.”

  “Then where is she?” I walk across to the window. The street is still thronged with people. “Do you think they mean to take the Queen to the castle? Why is she in Black Turnpike?”

  Sophie is watching me with a pitying look.

  “Stop it,” I say.

  “Then don’t be a fool.”

  She takes the heated wine from the servant and brings it over to me herself. “I doubt they will execute her, not without more evidence she was involved in the murder. But I think it likely our Queen will meet with an unfortunate accident before long. It is most convenient, is it not, that she has left a babe as an heir?”

  I take the cup, but the spicy taste of it is the taste of nights in the Queen’s chamber.

  Sophie puts her arm around my shoulder. “You must say goodbye to her. It is over. While confusion is everywhere, we shall leave, properly this time. Not your loyalty, or your love, or your life will help her now.”

  She is still holding me when a loud knock comes at the door and a moment later Isobel strides in.

  Sophie makes to draw away from me, but I tighten my grip to hold us in embrace a little longer. Whatever the question is in Isobel’s eye, let this be an answer to it. She does not know of love between women, but neither is she a fool. If she sees this, surely she will understand something and have the sense to put her heart out of my reach.

  When I do draw back from Sophie, Isobel has stopped inside the doorway and her color is high. Sophie shoots me a hard look. She knows what I have just done.

  “We were worried,” she says to Isobel. “But you’re safe.”

  Isobel’s hand drops from the door handle and she takes a breath. Was I so transparent in my adoration of the Queen, at the start?

  “I tried to find news,” she says. “I saw Alexander in Hume’s army. I followed him, but it was a long time before I could catch his eye and speak with him discreetly.”

  Her lips start quivering. “Beatrice died the night you fell in the river.”

  I am sorry at once for that embrace. I approach her but she turns her body away, takes a few breaths and squares her shoulders.

  “I have hot wine here,” Sophie says. “What more have you heard?”

  Isobel has herself under control. “Bothwell is on the run. They have given him a day to leave Scotland but he is riding for Dunbar to raise more men and come for the Queen.”

  “He has little chance,” says Sophie.

  “They will send a force the day after tomorrow to hunt for Bothwell, but it was the Queen they really wanted. In the streets there is talk of executing her for murder. I heard not one word spoken in love for her.”

  “At first light we will go to Leith,” Sophie says. She looks at Isobel. “Is your family still seeking Alison?”

  “Alexander says all men have been called in for this battle, but there is a standing order that anyone who comes across William or Alison should murder them.”

  It is only what I expect, but the news sends a surge of fear through me, nevertheless.

  “There is also a standing order that I am to be apprehended and brought to Lord Hume himself. They are busy with this rebellion, but it is best we do not tarry. We should climb the Flodden Wall and leave tonight.”

  “No,” I break in. “It’s better to leave openly. Disguise works best when people see what they expect to see. We ride out of Netherbow Port tomorrow in daylight. If anyone asks, we are merchants going to Leith to collect a valuable cargo. We travel light, as if for a day or two.”

  “Then I shall go to my bed,” Isobel says. At the door she stops. “What will you do with William’s casket?”

  William, with the rest of Bothwell’s army, is fleeing somewhere through the countryside, and Hume has a death warrant upon him. This has been his life for almost fifty years.

  “I will take it with me,” I say. Isobel nods and leaves the room.

  Sophie looks at me coolly after Isobel leaves. “That was cruel.”

  “You warned me in the first place that her feelings would be trouble.”

  “Her feelings kept her searching that riverbank in the dark for hours, with only the smallest chance she would find you.”

  “Then they have been useful,” I say. “But I must cut them off now. Isn’t it kinder for her to think I love another?”

  “Kinder than what?” Sophie’s eyes flash. “That you cannot love because the Queen has taken your heart and twisted it into a bitter, black thing and you are content to let her keep doing so?”

  I step back in shock, as if she has struck me.

  “You wish only to love the Queen, and it’s always been so,” she says.

  “But Angi—”

  “You have never really loved anyone but the Queen.”
<
br />   In a moment I realize it is true. The Queen had Angi hanged and still I did not leave her. There is no love that has ever come close to my passion for her.

  I walk away to hide my confusion. I stand with my back to her, looking out the window. Foodsellers are lighting their lanterns over the doors. Up the hill I can still see a crowd gathered out the front of Black Turnpike.

  “It’s not my concern, Alison,” Sophie says sadly. “But I say this to you. When we leave tomorrow, leave your past here in Edinburgh and cut yourself finally free of whatever hold the Queen has on you. If you do not leave her behind this time, she will drag you to your ruin, along with her own.”

  She walks to the door. “I bid you good night,” she says, and closes it behind her.

  Sixty-five

  In the morning light, the port at Leith is like another battlefield. The dock teems with men, pushing and shoving their bundles, carts, goods. Mercenary soldiers hoping for a side to join, foreigners trying to flee, and not enough ships for all of them.

  We thread through the rabble in single file, despairing.

  “There!” Isobel points to a ship lowering its gangplank. The crowd surges toward it until a man on the ship pulls out his pistol and fires into the air. The echo of the shot reverberates through the sudden silence and the crowd backs away.

  But a small group is hurrying up the gangplank and I would know the walk of one of them anywhere. It’s William, followed by Jock. I start to push my way through the crowd.

  When I make it to the foot of the gangplank, William and the ship’s captain are standing on the deck above, looking intently behind me. I turn my head. Soldiers are coming down the road toward the dock, moving fast and wearing Hume colors.

  I hurry up the gangplank and find myself facing the mouth of the pistol.

  “It’s all right,” William says, waving at the captain. “I’ll deal with this one.”

  “William,” I say.

  “Get away from me,” he says curtly.

  I hold out the casket. “Take this. It’s from Beatrice.”

  “Get away!” he yells.

  The violence of it makes me jump. The boys start to pull up the gangplank and I have to run to get off it or be thrown in the water. On the dock I turn, thinking to throw the casket onboard, but it is too late. The crewmen hoist sails as if their lives depend on it and the boat eases away from the dock. The wind snaps at the sails and I can see it lifting William’s hair. He is on the sea, where anything can happen. I am bound to land, unsafe.

  He has left me to their mercy and escaped without me.

  The pain of it keeps me rooted to the spot. Leave the past behind me, Sophie said, and it seems I have no choice. William has cut me adrift and soon there will be oceans between us and no way to find him again.

  The commotion on the dock rises. The crowd jostles me and I look around. Sophie and Isobel have reached my side.

  “Come away,” Sophie says.

  I turn, and over her shoulder I see the Hume soldiers advancing. A rush of dread goes through me, but then I realize it is the ship nearest to me on the dock they are making for.

  There is a force of them, some fifty men, and the ship is large and fast. The man leading them marches up the gangplank and the captain comes down to meet him. They talk. The next minute the crew is making her ready to sail. Other activity on the dock ceases as everyone stops to watch.

  The ship that carries William is sailing down the firth with the wind at her back. The second ship sets out with a great flapping and it is like seeing a wolf set out on the trail of a rabbit. When the sudden boom of a cannon rings out and the puff of white smoke rises from the larger ship, I groan out loud. Sophie clasps my arm.

  The larger ship comes alongside the smaller and after a few minutes they both turn back toward the port. The large ship docks first. I am staring at the smaller ship trying to make out William, when the man leading the soldiers comes to the top of the gangplank as it crashes down onto the port. He raises his voice, and silence falls so that it carries across the docks.

  “I have here under arrest four men charged with being art and part of the murder of our lamented King,” he calls. “Jock Blackadder, William Blackadder, James Edmonstoun, and Mynard Fraser. Make way. They are bound for the Tolbooth.”

  I clutch Sophie’s arm so hard that she gasps. A jeer rises from the crowd, swelling as they bring the four men, hands bound behind their backs, to the edge of the gangplank.

  “Murderers!” a voice yells, and there is a volley of shouts.

  A stone is flung, and another. William and Jock stand impassively, barely flinching as the stones rain around them. One strikes Jock and blood trickles down his face.

  The soldiers manage to hold the crowd back while the second ship docks and the rest of them come to shore, but all four men are cut and bleeding and the sight of it threatens to drive the crowd to a frenzy. Sophie has an iron grip on my arm lest I run forward. The soldiers fire shots into the air to clear a passage and they push the prisoners along, stumbling, battered by stones and words, up the hill to Edinburgh.

  The three of us stand, staring after them until the mob calms down. It takes all my will to not break into abandoned sobs. I stare hard at the outline of Edinburgh up on the hill so I do not have to see the dark mass of soldiers taking William to the Tolbooth.

  Sixty-six

  The cells deep in the entrails of the Tolbooth are carved from solid rock so no one outside can hear the shrieks that issue from within. It is a place more terrible than even Edinburgh Castle’s dungeons. The men in the Tolbooth take pleasure in their work, and they know every way in which to make waiting unbearable, and then every way to make their captors long to only be waiting again.

  It is likely they will hold William a while. It softens a man wonderfully, being made to wait for his own torture.

  Sophie knows a lawyer, a powerful man, and she calls him urgently to meet us in her chambers. He accepts a drink, but his face is grim.

  “It’s not an ordinary arrest,” he says. “He is to be tried by the Lords of the Secret Council.”

  “I do not know of them,” Sophie says.

  “No one does. It is a new coalition and your man is doubly wanted by them. They seek the King’s murderers and they also know he was trying to take the ship to Dunbar for Bothwell to make another stand for the Queen.”

  For a moment my heart lifts. At least he was not fleeing the country without me.

  “The Confederate Lords must have someone to punish,” the lawyer continues. “Those on the ship were not the only ones arrested—Sebastian Pages from the Queen’s household, and two others, Black John Spens and Francis de Busso, are being held too. But Edinburgh calls for a hanging, and swiftly.”

  “I must see him,” I say.

  “Can you afford it?”

  Sophie calls for Red and money changes hands. When the lawyer leaves, she takes me by the shoulders.

  “You mustn’t expect that he can save William. The lords have this country in their grip now.”

  “What of the Queen?” I ask.

  “They say she is losing her mind,” Sophie says. “She was seen at the window of Black Turnpike with her breasts exposed! I thought it was tavern gossip, but my lawyer heard two men tell of it who had seen it with their own eyes. She does little to help her own cause.”

  “Do you think we’ll ever get out?” I ask.

  Sophie and Isobel are silent. I pick up the untouched whisky and gulp it. The sound of raised voices, rough and frightening, drifts up to the windows.

  “Why don’t you open the casket?” Isobel says. “There may be something in there you can tell William that will bring him comfort.”

  Sophie sends for a chisel and mallet, and when it comes I lay the casket on its side on the stone hearth. It is a well-crafted thing and I do not wish to damage it, but in the end I must strike the lock with force until it cracks.

  I pick it up reverently and sit with it on my lap to ease the broken
lid back.

  A carved toy soldier lies on top, limp as a dead body. Next, a curl of a child’s auburn hair, bound in a ribbon. Then a pile of parchment. I unfold the first piece. It is a family tree, showing Alison’s son, William, beside Beatrice and Margaret.

  I stare at it and my hand begins to shake. “I do not think I can bear this.”

  Sophie squeezes my shoulder.

  I lift out the second parchment. It is a deed setting down the lines of inheritance for the castle. Under William’s name is a note, added in 1527, that Beatrice and Margaret have signed over their ownership to John and Robert Hume, their husbands.

  At the bottom, thicker than the others, is a letter to William, sealed with wax so old that it crumbles when I break it. The handwriting is close and tight. I get up and walk closer to the lantern, away from Sophie’s and Isobel’s curious eyes.

  My dear William

  I do not know if this shall ever find you, or even if you still live. But there are matters I must set down here, even if you do not ever read this letter.

  I have done some great evil in the name of protecting you, and now I would confess it, not only to my God, but to you too, whose whole life has been affected.

  Two things I did, and you may judge which of them turned out to be the most evil.

  I knew the girls would be bound to marriage and you would be killed if you remained at the castle. But I needed to explain to David Hume where you had gone, William—and it needed to be convincing. These were not men to be turned aside with some careless lies.

  There was a child, a boy, in the kitchens. His mother was a maid who had died birthing him, and another maid had taken him as her own. He was sickly himself. I had him brought up from the kitchen.

  I killed him. I suffocated him with a pillow and the weight of my body, while my girls were in the next room. I had two of the men in the garrison go out in the dark and bury him at once in the graveyard. I told Hume my son had died of an illness of the lungs a few weeks earlier. I believed once it was underground, any child’s body would suffice, even if it was dug up.