The Puzzle Ring (29 page)

‘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!

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 the 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.

‘My cairngorm ring,' Hannah said. ‘I can say, truthfully, that my great-grandmother gave it to me and that it is one of the most precious things I own.'

‘But why not just ask for it in the morning? Why sneak back?'

‘I was afraid one of the servants would pocket it and then say it could not be found,' Hannah replied.

‘No one would believe it,' Max said.

‘We'll just have to make sure no one catches us, and then we won't have to make up a story to satisfy them,' Scarlett said briskly. ‘Which means, clodhopper, that you're not coming.'

‘Who, me?' Max said indignantly.

‘Yeah, you, Mister Xam Pow Bam! You'd better lurk outside where you can't knock over anything with your elbow, or stamp on anyone's toes.'

‘I guess you think you'd do a better job,' Max said rather sulkily.

‘Sure. After all,' Scarlett said, ‘I am the only one with a purple belt in karate.'

Some hours later, the small party hurried through the dark palace garden, their hearts hammering in their chest. It had been much harder than they had imagined creeping out of the palace, for all the servants—a category which included dwarves, fools, fiddlers, singers, stilt-walkers and actors—slept together in the great hall, on thin pallets of straw. It had been agonising, stepping over huddled snoring forms, tiptoeing down dark corridors patrolled by guards with long halberds, and trying to find a door or window that was unlocked in a palace filled with a thousand unsettled sleepers.

Then they had to get through the gate at Netherbow Port again.

‘Isn't there some other way of getting into the town?' Scarlett demanded.

Angus shook his head. ‘There's a gap in the wall, at Leith Wynd, but it's guarded too.'

‘Such a trusting lot round here,' Max said sardonically.

Angus scowled at him. ‘It's only that wall that's kept the English out of Edinburgh in the past. You want us to just leave ourselves open to the south?'

‘No, of course not,' Donovan said quickly.

‘They took forever to let us through the gate that first time we came,' Hannah said. ‘We're just signalling that we're up to some kind of skullduggery, trying to get in the gate so late.'

‘We could bribe them, maybe?' Scarlett said.

Angus scowled, and closed his hand protectively over his coin-purse, newly heavy with the queen's gold. ‘We'll need our money,' he protested, ‘if we want to eat tomorrow. Besides, it'll only draw attention to us. We'd be remembered.'

‘Maybe if we explained that we were in the queen's party,' Donovan said.

‘No, that's no good! We want them all to think we slept the night peacefully in the palace,' Max said.

‘We need to go through in disguise,' Scarlett said with relish. ‘Let's wrap our plaids around out heads, and chuck a coin at the guard as we go through and say we're with that other guy, the one who paid when the queen came through. They opened the door fast enough when they heard his name!'

‘Lord Bothwell?' Hannah asked. ‘That's not such a bad idea.'

So when the night guard sleepily called, ‘Who goes there?', Angus shouted back, ‘My Lord Bothwell's men!' The gate was swung open at once, and they all strode through, keeping their plaids wrapped close about their heads. Pocketing his coin, the guard went back to his little hut, and the companions plunged exultantly into the dark and empty streets, filled with new confidence.

All was quiet at the Kirk o' Fields. It was after half past one, and clouds had obscured the moon, bringing the occasional flurry of snow. Angus hoisted Hannah and Scarlett up and
over the wall, grumbling anxiously into his beard. Donovan had wanted to go too, but at last had agreed that the two girls were the smallest and lightest, and the least likely to be punished if caught.

Nervously, her heart hammering, Hannah crept through the dark garden, Scarlett at her heels. There was a little window ajar into the pantry. No man could have squeezed through, but both the girls were slim and supple. They managed to wriggle through, landing with soft bumps on the tiled floor. Hannah caught her breath, but there was no sound, so she and Scarlett crept up the stairs to the young king's bedroom. Scarlett stayed out on the landing, keeping watch, while Hannah eased the door slowly open and stepped into the stifling-hot closeness of the king's sickroom.

The room had been crowded with chairs and cushions, Hannah remembered, and a low table covered with green velvet where the lords had played cards. So she went cautiously through the darkness, her hands held out, sliding one foot forward, then the other. Her groping fingers found the king's bedside table. Gingerly she felt all over it, and caught her breath with excitement as her fingers found the slender hoop of gold. It was bent and quirked into an odd shape on one side, rather like a whorl of petals. Hannah seized it, but accidentally knocked her hand against the king's wine goblet, which gave a loud clink as it bumped against the candlestick.