Free Queen's Own Fool by Jane Yolen Page B

time it seemed a reasonable trade.
    Still, the queen constantly asked for me, and that was all that mattered.
    She even surprised me by giving me gifts. Once it was three dresses.
    â€œOne for your lovely singing voice,” she told me. “One for your laughter. And one for your wonderful peasant stories.”
    The first dress was of tufted velvet, the second, a grass-green silk with embroidered leaves vining across the bodice, and the third of a lighter green velvet over which embroidered flowers were sprinkled. I spent hours trying them on and staring at myself in the glass.
    â€œYou are my Jardinière, and so you must look like a garden,” the queen said several days later, handing me a green velvet cap.
    I had been so astonished at the dresses, I had hardly even thanked her. But when she gave me the cap, I blurted out, “You are the sun, Madam, and flowers always turn toward the sun.”
    She shook her head at me. “Now you sound like a courtier, Nicola, while I would have you say the truth.”
    â€œThe truth, Your Majesty, is in the listening, not in the saying.” It was something Papa had once said.
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    We traveled back to the castle at Blois for the beginning of Lent as winter was giving way to the first promise of spring. As all the châteaus and palaces, Blois was a maze of hallways, a puzzle of doors.
    I was always lost and constantly asking directions from servants who seemed annoyed with me. The cook had long since taken to calling me “Madam Underfoot.” The king’s valet christened me “Little Wrong Turning.” And the king’s dog boy named me “Little Mademoiselle Gone Missing.” I answered them back in kind.
    It made them all laugh but it made me no friends.
    As I settled into my own chamber, not far from the queen’s apartments, I thought about how few friends I had. Only, in fact, the queen. And she had not recently called for me.
    Hanging my dresses on hooks, I suddenly got a cold chill down my back, a strange forboding. It felt exactly as if a dead fish had been laid against my spine. I shivered but could not think what such a chill might mean, except that I had lost the queen’s favor.
    I turned and looked out of the tiny window at the slight green haze on the far fields. If she deserted me, where would I go? How would I live?
    Just then one of the chamberlains knocked on my door and ordered me to report to a study in the west wing of the palace.
    â€œWhat for?” I asked.
    He shrugged extravagantly, and then silently led the way.
    It was lucky for me that he took me or I would have been lost for certain. Blois—like all the many châteaus we had stayed in—had its own logic, but I did not know it yet.
    It was obvious from the dust that the study was but little used. There was a small desk, a pair of wooden chairs, and some shelves. Other than that, the room was bare. For a brief moment, I remembered the room into which our troupe had been ushered in the cardinal’s palace—the one without wall hangings or rushes on the floor. This room had that same empty feeling.
    I shuddered again, my back cold-fish clammy once more.
    The chamberlain left me as silently as he had led, and I was all alone. I went over to the latticed window and looked down at servants scurrying across the courtyard below. How I envied them their busy-ness.
    Just then a noise made me turn around. Entering the room was a thin-faced woman in a somber dark dress, the high collar closed tight with aglets. She carried a book and some paper which she set down on the dusty desk, then fixed me with a glare. Her black hair was parted in the middle and tied back so tightly under her hood, her eyes were pulled into slits.
    â€œSo you are Nicola the fool,” she said without any niceties. “The one they call La Jardinière.”
    â€œYes,” I said with a nod of my head.
    â€œI am Madam Jacqueline,” she told me. “The