“It looks quite impressive to me,” said Simeon.
“Gawd ’elp me, I wouldn’t want to see your unimpressive. Believe you me, most of the rooms are no better than this. A bit mouldy, a bit dusty, a bit this-is-the-best-we-can-do. Some of the rooms are just dumping places for unwanted tapestries. You can’t imagine any real person actually living here. Are you listening, Gavin? That’s what most of the visitors say about your precious palace.”
The five or six other visitors in the throne room looked at each other, and made decisions on whether to hurry ahead or hold back. Marge, pleased with herself, turned towards Simeon.
“I bet you have better big houses in Bulgaria, don’t you?”
“We have a big royal palace in Sofia. It is made of wood. It is used as a picture gallery since we became a republic.”
“Didn’t know you’d ever been anything else.”
“I was named after our last king,” said Simeon proudly.
“Never heard of him. What became of him?”
“Well, he became prime minister for a time.”
“I don’t know if that’s going up in the world, or going down. RIGHT — WE’RE COMING ON, GAVIN. MAKE YOURSELF SCARCE.”
They walked on, through two medium-sized, sumptuous rooms. “See what I mean about tapestries, can’t you? Who’d want to look at crappy old embroideries like that all day? This was Charles the Second’s privy chamber — no, that doesn’t mean lavvy, either. Think of all the work a room like this involves for some poor girl. I don’t suppose the second Charles gave that a moment’s thought. People like that never do. They just think how generous they are to give the girl a regular job. Makes you puke, doesn’t it?”
There was a snuffling sound from the next room.
“Gavin doesn’t like me abusing the Royals. He’s grateful to be given a job, just like the poor skivvy, I suppose. Fawn, grovel, lick arse — that’s Gavin’s natural frame of mind. Now we’re not far off the king’s bedchamber. Come on — you can’t be interested in pictures like that — not gods and goddesses in a state of undress… there’s nothing worth seeing here… But this is the bedchamber. And I’d have to admit it’s quite a bedroom. All that pink velvety stuff, and the four posts so you can draw curtains around you and have as much privacy as you like. This appeals to you, doesn’t it, Simon.”
“Simeon. It is a very fine bed.”
“I always feel it’s not large enough. Charlie Two, my Gavin said, was a bit of a one for the ladies, and you can just about imagine three in a bed, but with four you’d be cramped, and if you’re royal and that’s your taste you don’t want to be cramped. Still, I don’t think Charlie Two came to Scotland after he became king. I expect that was the reason: He knew they didn’t make the beds large enough for his appetites.”
“It was a long way to come,” said Simeon.
“I suppose so. Would they have had the royal train then?”
Not waiting for a reply, Marge made her clattering way through a couple of rooms which she didn’t feel worthy of a commentary before they landed up in a long, well-lit room stretching almost the width of the palace.
“Now — don’t laugh — this is the room I call the Gallery of the Nose. See all these portraits? What strikes you about them?”
“All the people have large noses.”
“Exactly. It must have been a bit of a status symbol in olden days. These are all supposed to be kings of Scotland, but nobody’s ever heard of some of them. Well, the artist — the same bloke painted the whole lot of them, which is a bit of a giveaway, I’d say — he gave every one of them a family resemblance in the form of a long nose. It doesn’t enhance their beauty, does it? Imagine when they have a state dinner here — the poor old queen having to explain why all her ancestors had been given that family feature, whether they really had it or not.”
“So they have great banquets here, do they?”
“Yes — the ones that are too big for the dining room. Gavin is often involved in the preparation. You’ve no idea how finicky everything is, every little thing has to be just so, and that’s over six or seven courses. Ordinarily you’d call it gluttony, wouldn’t you? But I don’t suppose anyone could enjoy their food in a situation like that. It would be all ‘Yes, ma’am,’ ‘No ma’am,’ and never a joke cracked.”
“I can imagine the atmosphere, the elegance,” said Simeon. “It must be very splendid.”
“Oh, you’ve really got the Royal bug, haven’t you? What you’d usually have at these dos is a collection of frowsty Scottish ladies in their best dresses and smelling of mothballs, and red-faced Scottish husbands smelling of Glenfidditch. And the poor old queen and duke nodding off to sleep with the boredom of it all. Come on — I’ve got a last treat for you.”
She hurried him ahead through rooms she wanted him to ignore, and which he only managed to get a passing glimpse of, until they found themselves at the bottom of a cramped stone staircase. Marge stopped. From above there was a scrambling sound, a cry, and then steps.
“BAD LUCK, GAVIN,” shrieked Marge. “NEARLY FALL, DID YOU?”
“Why do you hate your husband?” asked Simeon.
“Hate Gavin? Not at all. He hates me. I DESPISE him.”
They began carefully up the stairs, Marge talking the whole way.
“These are the rooms Mary used when she had Rizzio around.”
“Who was he?”
“Officially secretary. Really toy-boy. Do you understand ‘toy-boy’?” Under her breath but audibly she muttered, “You bloody well should.”
“That’s an Italian name,” said Simeon. “What was an Italian doing in Edinburgh in the sixteenth century?”
“Probably selling ice cream, I should think,” said Marge blithely. “That’s what half the Ities in Edinburgh do today.”
They came to a large room, rich in pictures, with extra portraits on flat screens and a burly attendant keeping guard. “Darnley,” said Marge. “And his brother.”
“Who was Darnley?”
“Mary’s husband. English. Not long married. And a real plonker — just like mine.”
“Which one is him in the picture?”
“Don’t remember. Pick the one who looks a total dead loss and that’ll be him… Now, this is where they were on the night.”
They had come to a stop at the entry to a tiny room. It was really a sort of window in the castle’s turret. There was hardly room for two, and the inevitable closeness of the people there struck Simeon most forcibly. He stood, for the first time wonderstruck.
“Imagine,” said Marge, “what the pair of them got up to in this cosy little room.”
“They couldn’t have done much,” protested Simeon, “not with courtiers waiting and listening in the bigger room — here.”
“Ah, but you forget, royalty does everything with the eyes of the world on them — just like footballers today. The skivvies see and hear them, the courtiers do, too — a snooty lot, I should think, then and now. So you couldn’t do anything if you were worried about who was looking on at what you were up to. What do you think they did — their foreplay, let’s call it. Did they alternate in licking their ice-cream cornet that David Rizzio had brought up from his horse-drawn van?”
“I think you wrong about ice cream. Not invented then. You didn’t have refrigerators then.”
“You had the Scottish climate. That could freeze anything, and keep it frozen. Well, forget about ice cream. What would you imagine they might have been eating in — when was he killed?”