Queen's Own Fool by Jane Yolen

Are you all relatives of the queen?”
    â€œNo, not relatives,” Jolly Mary replied, “though we all come from good Scottish families. We were sent here to France as children to become maids-in-waiting for the young queen.” She spun around, her skirt belling out.
    â€œOur mothers were promised we would be living at court,” added Pretty Mary. “But the dowager queen sent us away to the convent at Poissy.” Her mouth went all sour and she was suddenly not very pretty at all. “A long way away from the games and the fun of the court.”
    â€œThey say little Mary cried for want of us,” Jolly Mary added. “But still they did not bring us back.”
    â€œThere are rather too many games in this court as it is,” Pious Mary said. “It is a place of debaucheries. All Europe knows it. For the sake of our eternal souls it is good that we went to the convent.” Her hands busily tied off a knot in her embroidery. “The Prior has been very attentive.”
    â€œToo attentive, if you ask me. Paying attention equally to our ABC’s and our letters from home,” said Regal Mary. There was a heavy bitterness in her voice. “Prior de Vieuxpont is a tyrant.” She looked so angry that, for the first time, I was almost sorry for her.
    â€œHe is a holy man,” replied Pious Mary.
    I wondered how they could be speaking of the same person, but then I remembered that the way I saw Uncle was not at all the way Nadine saw him. Or his favorite, Annette, saw him. Or even Pierre.
    â€œWhy could you not stay with the queen,” I asked, “having come so far to be with her?”
    â€œQueen Catherine wanted her to be a proper French princess, as she was to marry the little prince,” said Jolly Mary, pulling a face. “She was already a queen, you know, of Scotland. She had been so since an infant. But that was not good enough for Queen Catherine. ”
    â€œAnd we were not French enough,” Regal Mary said.
    â€œOr witty enough,” added Pretty Mary.
    â€œYou were children,” I said. “How could they expect it?”
    â€œHow indeed,” Jolly Mary said, hooking her arm through mine once again.
    â€œIt is no surprise they hid us away,” Pious Mary replied, hardly looking up from her work. “The Scots lords brawled in King Henry’s presence. They were drunk and they were rolling about on the floor pulling hair like peasants at a fair. What a disgrace!”
    â€œWell, how can anyone lay the blame for that on us?” Pretty Mary’s lower lip stuck out. “We were only children. And not even there, but shut away at the convent!”
    â€œWe are here now,” Pious Mary pointed out. “And we must be ornaments in the young queen’s crown. We must show them that not all Scots are drunken brawlers.”
    â€œHere today—and gone tomorrow.” Regal Mary shook her head. “Once the coronation celebrations are over, it is back to the convent for us. And back to Prior de Vieuxpont.”
    I just did not understand. “Why not go back to Scotland, if you hate it so here in France?”
    â€œWe cannot just do as we will, little fool,” Pretty Mary said. “We go or stay at the king’s pleasure.”
    â€œBut that almost makes you ... slaves.”
    â€œSlaves!” Regal Mary drew herself up and glared at me. “We are of good families. Unlike ... some.”
    All my sympathy for her fled at once.
    â€œWe will get home anyway in a year or so,” added Pretty Mary. “To be married off, most like.”
    â€œWhat about the queen? Will she go back to Scotland with you, as she is queen of that land?”
    â€œNot if she has any sense!” Jolly Mary laughed. “It is much pleasanter for her here in France.”
    â€œAnd safer, too,” Pious Mary said, crossing herself quickly, “for a Catholic queen.”

8
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