Page 34 of The Changeling

‘It’s true!’ I cried. ‘He crept in and climbed on her bed. He had a knife in his hand!’

‘She kissed me, you all saw it,’ Châtelard cried. ‘Then told me she’d be alone tonight. What was I meant to think?’

‘No, no! It’s not true! James, please. He’s lying. He said he was going to kill me.’

‘His knife is there!’ I recognised the blade the moment I picked it up. It was the dagger with the cross on its hilt that I had seen in my vision. As soon as I touched it, the Sight overwhelmed me again. I swayed, sick and dizzy. ‘He was paid to do it,’ I said in a voice quite unlike my own. ‘He is in the pay of the queen’s enemies.’

‘Be quiet, la sorcière!’ Châtelard turned to face Lord James, his face twisted in a travesty of a smile. ‘Come, my lord! We are all men here. What did she expect, smiling and flirting with me, letting me kiss her? She wanted me to make love to her. Everyone knows she’s wanton.’

‘Shut your mouth,’ Lord James said roughly. He stood for a moment, frowning, looking back and forth between us all. I could not believe he paid any credence to the poet’s words. What man came to make love to a woman with a dagger in his hand?

‘Please, James,’ Mary begged. ‘I … I never wanted … I never asked him …’ She was shaking violently now, hardly able to speak. ‘He … he called me a whore. A Popish whore!’

At once Lord James decided. ‘Enough,’ he snapped. ‘Take him to the dungeons. It is clear he is besotted, mad with love.’

‘Search him,’ I said, still in that strange hard voice.

Lord James shot me a look.

‘Yes,’ Mary said, clutching the torn neck of her nightgown together. ‘Search him.’

The guards looked at Lord James.

‘I am the queen! I order you to search him.’

They found a pewter medallion depicting Christ as a shepherd hanging about his throat. I recognised it at once as the token Châtelard had kissed when he had been given the dagger.

‘It’s a méreau.’ Mary spoke dazedly. ‘He’s Protestant? I did not know. He never said. Oh, James, he said he meant to kill me. Is it a plot, do you think, by the Huguenots, in revenge for my uncle’s ruthlessness?’

‘Rubbish,’ Lord James interrupted. ‘The man is clearly mad with love for you. He must die, of course. On no account must you show him mercy. Guards, take him away!’

A week later, Châtelard was hanged at the Mercat Cross in St Andrews. The queen was told he had confessed to being paid by a Huguenot lord, but Lord James told her it was best no-one knew. ‘You have worked so hard to promote peace here. It will only sow hatred between Catholics and Protestants once more. Say naught, and it will soon blow over,’ he said. So once again Mary obeyed, though for the first time she looked at him with doubt in her eyes.

On the scaffold, Châtelard pressed one hand to his heart, quoted a love poem, and called Mary a cruel dame. When the sword fell and severed his head from his body, Mary flinched but stood steadfast, every inch the strong and valiant queen.

Two days later her uncle, the Duke of Guise, was assassinated by a Huguenot.

It was too late for Mary to accuse Châtelard of intending to do the same.

Pastor Knox harangued her from his pulpit, calling her Satan’s handmaiden. She had the power to bewitch men, he said, so that they lost all reason. Sixteen weeks later, on the 4th of June 1563, a frightened young queen agreed to pass a law dear to the preacher’s heart, in the hope she could placate him.

Entitled Anentis Witchcraftis, it declared the punishment for witchcraft was death.

II

Faery Tree

Once, when I was a little girl, I had cast my consciousness into the body of a mouse. Never before had I realised how terrifying the ordinary world was, when you are small and helpless. Everything loomed huge. Our cats, whom I loved to pet as they purred on my lap, were monsters. Every shadow was a promise of death.

After the passing of the Witchcraft Act, I was like that mouse. I was afraid for myself, a changeling, a fiend from hell. I was afraid for my queen, a young woman accused of bewitching a man to such madness of love he died for her on the scaffold. I was afraid for Mam and Nan, though I hardly knew why. They were not witches. No-one could think so. Could they?

I tried to be as quiet and unobtrusive as possible. But a mouse is a tiny creature that creeps about when all are sleeping. I was not easy to miss, with my mass of wild curls that refused to stay confined, my pointed face and great dark eyes, my stick with its staghorn handle, my black shaggy hound. And I accompanied the queen everywhere. Wherever the queen went, men’s eyes watched her. It was impossible for her to be invisible, and so impossible for me.

Signor Rizzio said to me one night, with one of his quizzical smiles, ‘If the queen is not wedded and bedded soon, there’ll be trouble. She’s too rich a prize to stay unclaimed.’

‘She’s a person, no’ a prize!’ I protested.

He raised one eyebrow. ‘Tell that to the men who imagine they might win her.’