My Contrary Mary

by Cynthia Hand

  “They’re a menace to all of France,” said Cardinal Charles.

  “They deserve no mercy,” agreed Duke Francis.

  More clearly than ever, Francis understood this truth: for all that the uncles lavished Mary with praise, saw to her every need, and maneuvered world politics to benefit her, they were not on her side.

  An hour later, the furor inside the banquet hall had finally died down and Francis was, at last, returning to his chambers.

  It was always exhausting, putting on his best face to be the dauphin people expected. (His best face wasn’t exactly convincing. Nobody—literally nobody—was fooled.)

  Perhaps, he thought, he should send guards into Paris to search for Mary. She was out there with E∂ians and Verities alike, and John Knox had just called his E∂ian followers to have her killed. Francis could send a few guards, only men he trusted, to search the usual pubs for Mary and her ladies and have them brought back to the palace. He could pay them off, so they’d never talk about retrieving Mary, or how all five Marys were dressed as boys.

  But Mary would be furious if he did. She loved going out, and she had so few freedoms already. . . .

  Francis paused at a window, peering out into the night. From here, he could see the lush palace gardens, the wrought iron gates, and the long drive that separated the Louvre from the rest of Paris. “Come on,” he whispered.

  She didn’t usually stay out too late.

  If anything happened to her—he couldn’t say what he’d do, only that he would never recover from losing her. Never. Not even if he lived a thousand years.

  His fingertips brushed across the glass, as though he could reach out and find her himself.

  He must have stood there for half an hour, waiting and hoping and worrying, wondering whether he should send guards after all, when finally movement flickered over one of the garden walls. A figure dropped down into the grass. Then another. Then three more. They moved swiftly toward the palace, their cloaks billowing behind them. One moved ahead of the others, and even from this distance, Francis knew her shape. He nearly sagged in relief.

  Mary, Queen of Scots, was home.

  FOUR

  Mary

  Back in the queen’s chambers, Bea helped Mary out of her men’s clothes and into a lavish purple dressing gown. Hush took down her hair and brushed it until it shone. Liv built up the fire in her room. Flem fetched her a cup of tea. Then the Four Marys went off to their own chambers, still talking and laughing, energized from their night in the city. Liv, in particular, seemed alight. Mary smiled as she remembered the way Liv had danced with Ari de Nostradame, after all this time spent gazing at the seer’s daughter from afar. It was nice to see her happy. Lately Liv had seemed preoccupied with some worry she didn’t speak of, a constant furrow to her brow, a hint of sadness in her eyes.

  Perhaps it was because Liv realized that it would soon be time for the Four Marys to be, well, married. That was the main reason their families had sent them from Scotland along with Mary all those years ago: to find prestigious, well-connected matches in the French court. That sounded good, in theory, marrying well, but what it actually meant was that each of her ladies would have to wed whoever Mary chose for them, namely a lord with loads of money and a title. Most likely a complete stranger.

  In that way, Mary considered herself lucky. It felt like she’d always known that she would be Francis’s wife. There had been a period a few years ago when she’d briefly considered running away to England and marrying Edward Tudor, the boy king, just so she could do something unexpected and not simply obey the adults around her, but that had been a passing fancy. Francis was all she’d ever known. She’d grown up in the chambers next to his, been taught by the same tutors, breathed the same air in the same rooms for most of the past twelve years.

  She knew Francis.

  She would even say she . . . well, yes, she loved him. Not the romantic kind of love, of course, the kind the poets wrote sonnets about, but then Mary had always known she wouldn’t marry for love. That was impossible for a queen, and she’d always been a queen. But a sisterly kind of love . . . well, no, it wasn’t exactly sisterly. Sometimes when she looked at Francis, she became aware of how pretty he was. His blue eyes could be quite startling, and she liked his halo of golden hair, and the funny little twist of his smirk. And she knew they would make a handsome couple together. Even if she was so much taller.

  As for her ladies, she’d try to find a suitable husband for Liv, when the time came. A man who was gentle and sensitive, who would appreciate Liv’s golden beauty and her strong, loyal heart. Although it was hard to say who that could be.

  Unfortunately for Liv, it could not be Ari de Nostradame.

  Mary twisted her ring around her finger. Her gaze fell on the ornate oak desk. She thought about the letter from her mother. Then she took out a quill and some paper.

  Dear Mama, she wrote, then stopped and bit her lip. She didn’t know what to say. I’m sorry to hear that things are such a mess? Keep up the good fight on my behalf? Why did you write to the uncles about the problems with John Knox, and not to me?

  She wished she could offer her mother some news or information that could be helpful. What Mary wouldn’t give for a bit of true excitement. A plot she could uncover. An enemy to foil. A way to prove herself.

  (To which your narrators would say: be careful what you wish for.)

  She hadn’t seen her mother, Mary de Guise, in many years. (Yes, it’s another Mary to keep track of—we’re sorry.) Lately it was getting more and more difficult for Mary to remember her mother’s face, the exact color of her eyes or angle of her nose. But one thing she could never forget was her mother’s strength.

  Mary de Guise had been twenty-one years old when her husband, James V, had up and died, leaving her with a newborn daughter who now happened to also be the queen. Not that the elder Mary had particularly mourned her husband, who’d believed that the “forsaking all others” part of their wedding vows was more of a guideline than a rule. He’d had nine official mistresses at the time of his death and a veritable army of illegitimate children. It had been all the elder Mary could do to keep herself and her daughter alive, as one power-hungry man after another tried to assassinate them both and steal away the throne. Mary’s earliest memories, in fact, were of being on the run from some terrible menace, a wild flight from one castle to another, stronghold to stronghold, tucked into the pocket of her mother’s dress.

  The last time Mary had been in Scotland, her mother had walked her onto the deck of the ship that would bear five-year-old Mary away to France.

  “I don’t want to go,” she sniffled, clutching her mother’s sleeve. “I want to stay with you, Mama.”

  Her mother knelt beside her. “You will be fine.” She grasped Mary by the shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes. “I am sending you on this very important mission for me. You must not forget your duty.”

  Mary nodded gravely. Her “duty,” in the official capacity, of course, was to be raised by the French king and his family and marry, when the time came, the French king’s eldest son. But the duty her mother spoke of was something else. “You are to use your little gift,” her mother had explained to her the night before, by which she meant Mary’s ability to sneak in and out of the tightest of spaces. “I want you to watch all of them—the king and those closest to him, and the queen as well, for heaven knows the queen is full of her own deviousness, and you must report back to me all that you discover. Every detail. Every scandal. I must know.”

  “I will, Mama,” Mary promised, although her heart had thumped wildly at the idea. “I won’t forget.”

  “Good,” her mother said, touching the tip of Mary’s nose. “You’ve always been my good girl.” She drew Mary close and hugged her tightly. “Oh, my clever darling. I shall miss you. Remember, we are a team, you and I.”

  Now, back in her chambers at the Louvre, Mary went to the door and locked it. Then she walked to the back wall where there wa
s an intricate medieval tapestry of a rearing unicorn.

  She unfastened the dressing gown, let it slip from her shoulders, and stepped out from where it pooled at her feet. Her long auburn hair tumbled all around her.

  She closed her eyes.

  There was a bright flash of light, and when the light dissipated, it seemed that Mary had vanished. But she had not. If you direct your attention lower, dear reader—much, much lower, near the floor—you’ll see her.

  A mouse.

  She was gone in an instant, darting through a small hole in that wall, not much larger than the circumference of a coin. If you were small enough to pass through this hole (which of course you wouldn’t be, but let’s pretend, for the sake of the story), you could follow a dark and dusty path along the inside of the wall, which would connect to another path along another wall, and then another path, and so on, a circuitous journey through the various rooms, passageways, and secret passageways of the palace, which would lead you, at long last, to another tiny hole in the wall of the royal bedchamber of the king of France, himself.

  The king was asleep (or had passed out in a drunken stupor—you decide) and was sprawled on the bed, arms and legs akimbo, his head thrown back and his mouth open.

  The king was also drooling. And snoring. Loudly.

  Mary-the-mouse crept out of the hole and stood for a minute, watching the king drool and snore. She twitched her mouse nose in distaste. But she knew that the king often talked in his sleep, so she waited, listening. And soon the king did speak.

  “You’re looking fine today, my dear Catherine,” he slurred. “Would you like to see what the bedroom of a king looks like?”

  Ew. If Mary had been human right then she probably would have gagged. Instead, she called up a list of the women she knew named Catherine. (During this time in history, approximately 92 percent of women were named one of four names: Mary, Anne, Catherine, or Jane, which led to many cases of mistaken identity.) There were no fewer than ten women at the French court named Catherine. The king couldn’t be referring to Queen Catherine (aka Catherine de Medici, his wife, the queen of France), because he’d called her “my dear.” Queen Catherine and the king had given up such pleasantries ages ago—now if they addressed each other directly (which was rare) they typically went with “hey, you.” Also, Mary was fairly certain that King Henry wasn’t the least bit interested in Queen Catherine visiting his bedchamber.

  So it wasn’t the queen King Henry saw in his dreams, but that still left an abundance of Catherines. And, in what seemed a sort of miraculous defiance of probability, none of the king’s current romantic entanglements (that Mary knew of, anyway) was a Catherine.

  “That’s a beautiful brooch you’re wearing,” continued the king, still fast asleep.

  Mary cocked her mouse head, trying to recall the brooches she’d seen recently.

  “It nicely accentuates your bosoms,” added the king. If it were possible for a person to leer in his sleep, he did.

  Mary gave a mouse-sized sigh.

  It didn’t really matter which Catherine. The only thing to be gleaned here was that Henry was considering the procurement of a new mistress. And that, to Mary, was old news. Henry was always procuring a new mistress.

  She waited a few more minutes to see if there’d be any further relevant mumblings from the sleeping king, but there were none. At one point he’d called out “Gowns! Wine! Women! Bells!” but that was all keeping with his brand (except for the bells part—what was that about?). So Mary ventured on to the next room: that of Diane de Poitiers. But she didn’t learn anything revelatory there, either, only that Diane needed to order all new dresses, as she had recently (cough) outgrown her old ones.

  Perhaps she’s been eating too many bonbons, thought Mary, and scurried along her hidden path toward her next destination.

  On the way, she passed by the kitchen, but she didn’t venture from her hole there, as the kitchen was one place in the palace where the servants were vigilant about exterminating mice. She did happen to overhear that the cook intended to feature her fluffy buttermilk biscuits on the palace menu this week, biscuits with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. With marmalade, too, as Bea had been right about them receiving a shipment of oranges and lemons from Spain. This bit of news caused a shiver of anticipation to travel from Mary’s nose to her tail.

  A little-known fact about Mary, Queen of Scots: she loved biscuits.

  With her stomach now grumbling, she made her way to her final hidey-hole: in the chamber of the French queen. The queen’s room was always an exciting place to eavesdrop, one of Mary’s favorites, for the simple reason that Catherine de Medici was (as we’ve already established) evil.

  Tonight the queen was sitting at the fire while her lady-in-waiting filed her fingernails into sharpened points.

  “And then I directed the seamstress to take in all of her gowns overnight, so that when next she wore them, she was nearly bursting out!” Catherine said with a laugh. “She didn’t have a bite to eat all evening, for any good it did her.”

  The lady-in-waiting laughed, too, a little too heartily, Mary thought.

  “Oh, my, Your Majesty. Such antics you pull. What will you do tomorrow? I wonder.”

  “Tomorrow,” said the queen with a devious smile, “she’ll get taller.”

  Mary’s whiskers quivered in a silent giggle. She did like the queen, for many reasons, but most of all because the woman was so fearless in the pursuit of what she wanted, and so unapologetic in being herself. Both were qualities that Mary wished to emulate, in the times when she was not a mouse.

  The queen put a thoughtful finger to her lips. “I wonder if I could also locate some kind of itching powder that would stick to a piece of jewelry, like, just hypothetically, a brooch? I’d want it to itch, of course, but also give the wearer a terrible rash.”

  “I have never heard of such a thing, Your Grace,” said the lady-in-waiting. “But I can ask around.”

  Catherine waved her hand dismissively. “Never mind. I’ll ask the Nostradamus girl. She’s sure to have something that will suffice.”

  There came a knock at the door.

  “It’s Nostradamus, Your Majesty,” came a voice from the other side.

  “Speak of the devil,” said the queen. “Enter!”

  The door opened, and in stepped the famed seer: a stooped, aged man sporting a stern expression and a long gray beard. He was accompanied by Ari, who must also have just returned from her own adventure into the city. She still looked a bit aglow, herself. Mary felt a flash of happiness for Liv, followed by a twinge of guilt.

  Nostradamus bowed. “My queen.”

  They began to make small talk, but Mary hardly registered what they were saying, because she had made a new and wonderful discovery: tonight the queen’s dessert tray had been set upon the floor next to the wall. Upon the tray was a plate of strawberry crepes, which was of little interest to Mary, but there was also one of the cook’s aforementioned biscuits. With marmalade.

  Mary gave a delighted gasp. In that moment it was like the clouds parted and a beam of light shone down from heaven, in the company of angels singing, upon the golden biscuit. The smell of flour and honey and sweet, sweet goodness crowded Mary’s sensitive mouse nose. Her mouth started to water uncontrollably. She felt instantly famished, as if she were starving and one bite of this providential biscuit would save her life.

  The humans were still talking as Mary-the-mouse crept slowly but purposefully across the room to the tray. She didn’t like to fully enter a room where there were people (awake ones, that is), because she had a delicate body and no desire to be squashed, which was always what people wanted to do if they spotted a mouse. But she couldn’t help herself. Once she reached the tray, she hid under the napkin for a moment before she ventured over to the biscuit.

  She broke off a corner, held it between her tiny mouse hands, and took a bite. Her eyes closed. It was delicious.

  “My queen, I have had a vision
of grave importance,” Nostradamus announced raspingly.

  Ooh, this could be good, thought Mary. She broke off another chunk of the biscuit and stuffed it into her mouth.

  “It is about deadly biscuits,” the old man said.

  FIVE

  Ari

  He led with the biscuits! Ari dragged her hand down her face.

  “Deadly biscuits,” the queen repeated. “This is why you interrupted my nightly routine?”

  Nostradamus nodded solemnly.

  “Biscuits like the ones served with tonight’s dessert?”

  They all turned toward the dessert tray on the floor, where Catherine had left one untouched biscuit. Untouched, that is, except by the mouse that was currently gnawing on it. The mouse froze, and then threw itself against a spoon in some kind of mouse-like Heimlich maneuver.

  “Is that a mouse?” the queen asked slowly. “In my bedchamber?”

  “Don’t worry,” Ari said. “I’ll take care of the mouse. Father, why don’t you tell the queen about the other, possibly more important visions?”

  Ari gave her father a knowing look and then lunged toward the tray and made a shooing motion with her hand. In an instant, the mouse disappeared through a tiny crack in the wall. It seemed to be a physical impossibility. It was like a lemon disappearing through the eye of a needle.

  “Thank you, Ari.” A suspicious glint entered the queen’s eyes as she stared at the crack through which the mouse had escaped.

  This visit was not going well.

  “Your Majesty,” Ari said. “The biscuits are not the reason we are here tonight.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, not the only reason,” Ari amended.

  “Tell me, girl,” the queen said. “Have you figured out an elixir that will”—she waved her hand in the air as she thought—“make a man’s testicles climb ever so slowly up and back into his body? Like two little itty-bitty sloths?” She made a mini climbing gesture with her hands.

  The queen was always asking for potions such as this, and she always did it with a mischievous smile. Ari used to think she was jesting, but after so many requests, she’d begun to wonder.