Ave Maria
Gratia plena
Dominus tecum:
Benedicta tu in mulieribus.…
She did not dare to move, hunched there in her stone recess that was cold and covered in a light film of condensation. Time seemed suspended, not to be passing at all. But then, gradually, she saw the five tall windows behind the high altar in the east begin to separate themselves from the night. At first they were barely noticeable, a smudge of opalescence in the dark; but slowly each hue in them began to glow and become more distinct, until at last there were garnet red and marigold yellow and sapphire blue and twilight violet and sea green, slender long panels of jewels forming exquisite pictures in the dawn.
The monks stirred, and there was a metallic clanking as the incense was lit in its censer. The rich, perfumed smoke rose in soft clouds around the altar and then the chanting began: the Office of Matins.
Te de-um laude-mus.…
The deep, measured cadences rolled upward with the incense. The sun sent a first tiny ray through a purple spear of glass in the window. The Virgin Mary, in her niche near the high altar, seemed to glow as the first light caressed her alabaster face.
Mary nearly swooned with the beauty of it all, with the cold, with her excitement, with the forbiddenness of her own presence. She had been to mass at the Chapel Royal in Stirling Castle, but it was a lacklustre, daytime thing: this was magic, a door to another world, a world that overwhelmed her and drew her so powerfully that she felt she could vanish straightway into it.
The incandescent colours, the mystic smell, the deep, beckoning, otherworldly voices, and the glowing face of the Virgin swirled in her aroused soul. Clutching at the wall, she felt herself in the grip of an ecstasy, and, closing her eyes, she let herself be carried away.
So this is God, she thought, as she slid forward soundlessly, and gave herself up to Him.
The monks later discovered her sprawled out on the floor of the nave, near a side altar. She was so deeply asleep they feared she was unconscious; but as she was picked up, she opened her eyes and smiled, a beatific smile.
“Is it time for the next singing?” she asked, and the monks laughed, relieved.
“The Queen of Scots should perhaps become a nun, Your Highness,” they said, in returning her to her mother. “Like the blessed Queen, Saint Margaret. She seems to have a vocation for it.”
“She has a different destiny,” replied Marie. The night’s sleep had confirmed her resolution of the night before. “She must marry, and live in this world.”
“It is dangerous to ignore a call from God,” said Brother Thomas, in a seemingly playful manner. “God is a possessive lover, and He does not suffer rejection lightly. In fact, if He has marked you for His own, He does not suffer rejection at all.”
“Perhaps at the end of her life, when her earthly duty is over,” said Marie. She found this conversation annoying and pointless.
“God does not want our leavings, but our first fruits,” persisted Brother Thomas. “However,” he said with an irritating smugness, “he has been known to turn our leavings into a sacrifice of the highest order.”
VII
Inside the bowels of the French galley, it was stiflingly hot and reeked of unwashed human skin. The rowers had been at their oars for hours, and now that it was growing dark they knew their torture would soon be over—for a little while. Only ten or twelve of them had been lashed today, for everyone had worked hard, and their master was kindhearted—for an overseer.
“They’ve sighted the shoreline near Dumbarton,” announced the master. “Tomorrow we put in. Rest for a few days—then back to France.”
“Here we take on board the Queen?” muttered a tall, sinewy rower. His shoulders bore the fading marks of a not-so-recent lashing.
“Yes, and all her train,” replied the master. “Some fifty or sixty young people and their preceptors.”
“Bah!” said the rower. “So it is to come about, is it? The little Queen is to go to France, there to drink of that liquor that should remain with her all her lifetime, for a plague to this realm, and for her final destruction.”
“What do you care, Knox?” said a fellow rower. “It means a rest for us, that’s all it means. I should think you’d welcome it. Who’s up on deck—does it matter? We never see them.”
“We can feel them,” pronounced Knox. “Their presence pollutes the air!”
“Do you speak of the Queen in such terms, man?”
“The Queen is a child who is half French and now to be wholly indoctrinated with that unhealthy, twisted manner of thinking. No, she’s not my Queen!”
He stretched his cramped arms. It had been over a year since he was captured by the French when St. Andrews Castle fell; he had been rowing in the galleys ever since. There had been the ship of Rouen, and even a fairly pleasant stint on the Loire River, although he had never been allowed up on deck to see the fabled châteaux. Now, for the past few months, he had been serving in the fleet of more than a hundred ships that the French King sent out to do a double duty: to land troops on the eastern coast of Scotland, at Leith, to man the garrisons and rout the English; and then to sail around the northern tip of Scotland—what miserable sailing that had been, no galleys before had ever attempted such a voyage—and land on the western coast of Scotland. There, at the stronghold of Dumbarton Castle, perched on its rocky heights above the Firth of Clyde, was the little Scots Queen, waiting to be conveyed to France.
John Knox had almost wept when he saw his native country from the tiny portholes of the rowing deck earlier on the voyage. The spires of St. Andrews had swum tantalizingly at a distance.
“I shall preach again there someday,” he said solemnly.
“O’ course you will,” muttered the man next to him, a murderer and cutpurse whom Knox had attempted, with singular unsuccess, to convert to the True Gospel.
And now he could see the great boulder—for so it looked from a distance—of Dumbarton from out of the porthole frame. A tiny castle was visible, clinging to the top.
She’s waiting up there, he thought. That misguided little child, steeped in the abominations of Popery. And next to be dipped, like Achilles in the River Styx, in the river of frivolity and falsehood that is France: to the ruin of her character and the misdirection of her education.
Scotland must not be served so. No, she must not, he thought.
* * *
The moment of parting had come. In all the excitement—in the hasty French lessons, and the selection of Shetland ponies as gifts for the French royal children, in the clothes-fittings and farewell banquets—five-year-old Mary had not realized that her mother would not be coming with her.
They had never before been separated. And now, with the wind whipping and snapping the pennants on the ships, with the waters of the Firth jumping in the sunlight, with the large number of lords and ladies assembled for the boarding, she suddenly felt sick. She clung to her mother.
“I cannot leave you,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “I cannot, I cannot!”
Marie de Guise, tears choking her own throat, begged the Virgin for the strength to hide her distress. “My dearest child, do not cry. I will follow as soon as I may,” she said. “There is yet business to attend to here. When I have secured your kingdom, when I have made sure no one will ever take Scotland from you, my darling, then I will come to France.”
“Will it be soon?”
“It depends how much of a fight the English put up!” She attempted to joke. “Now, ma chérie, dry your eyes.” She handed Mary a lace handkerchief. “That’s my fine girl.”
She looked into her daughter’s eyes, trying to memorize them, to hold that look in some part of her mind where she could see it forever. “You go to those who love you,” she said. “The little Dauphin—he is younger than you, and not so strong. He longs for a playmate. You will seem the answer to his prayers. And you will learn, my angel, that fulfilling someone else’s prayers is the same as having your
own fulfilled.” She hugged her. “God keep you—the Blessed Virgin hold you.”
Mary hugged her back, pressing up against her and shutting her eyes.
The onlookers cheered, and began to tease.
“La Reinette must come aboard her humble galley,” said the nobleman who represented Henri II. “France is eager to embrace you!”
Knox, peeping out of the porthole, could just see the small figure of Mary in her blue velvet gown and its matching hat with a curling feather. The fat cow of a Queen Mother was there also, he thought. And all the grinning Frenchmen, like apes in satin. And the red-haired brood of children—half of them Stewart bastards—going along as well.
Pfah! I hope they will all be seasick and soil their fancy selves all the way to France! he thought, just as the overseer flicked him with the lash to make him take his place at his station.
* * *
John Knox got his wish. All the members of the little Queen’s entourage were deathly ill with seasickness, for the winds were tempestuous and the waters stormy almost all the way to France. Indeed, Lady Fleming was so ill she begged the captain to put in at Cornwall and let her go ashore; at which the Frenchman, Monsieur de Villegaignon, made the ungallant response that she could go to France by sea or drown on the way.
Only one member of the party was not sick: Mary herself. She seemed to delight in the excitement of the gales, and in the crisis of the broken rudder off the coast of Cornwall. Eagerly she clung to the ship’s railing—without Lady Fleming there to supervise her—and watched the sailors straining to fit a replacement. Her brother James Stewart, determined as usual to know everything that was going on, struggled up on deck to watch for a few minutes. But the heaving decks soon made him nauseated again and he staggered back to his cabin.
For several days the captain was unable to land along the western coast of France, in Brittany. When finally he could put in, it was near the little town of Roscoff, at a rocky spot in the heart of smugglers’ and pirates’ territory.
Mary was eager to go ashore and the rowboats were readied; she was in the first group to land. Fishermen and townsfolk, drawn by the sight of the huge, battered galleys, had gathered on the shore and now stood by to welcome them. Mary was helped out of the boat to take her first step on French soil by a muscular Breton whose hands smelled of fish. It was August thirteenth, 1548.
At first she thought it looked no different from Dumbarton. It was the same landscape of deep blue, vexed sea, and harsh rocks along the coast.
But as the royal party went inland—conducted ceremoniously by the Lord of Rohan and the nobility of the district, who had hurried to meet them—the land suddenly began to look foreign, and Mary knew she had come to a new and strange place.
As they passed through Normandy, the country became flat, green, and well-watered, with many thatch-roofed farmhouses. There were apple orchards and cows everywhere, and at dinners hosted by the local lords en route, they were proudly served delicious, rich dishes made with apples, butter, and cream: pancakes with Calvados; apple flans and caramels. Even the omelets seemed magical, and not to have come from the humble egg at all, they were so fluffy and light.
At length they reached the Seine, where a decorated barge awaited them, sent by the King. They were to take it upriver to the Château of St.-Germain-en-Laye, where the French royal children—les enfants de France—would receive them.
The barge was wide and comfortably appointed with luxurious touches: a fully staffed kitchen, a dining room with goblets and gold plates, beds with gold leaf on the headboards, privy stool-closets hung with crimson velvet and perfumed with fresh irises in a silver vase fastened to the wall.
It was at this point that the Scots children began to feel uncomfortable, being surrounded by a silvery-soft language they could not understand, and realizing that in only a few days they would come face to face with the French children in the royal nursery. What if they were horrid little things—crying, whining brats who cheated at games, tattled, and teased? Until that moment “the French children,” “the Dauphin,” and “the princesses” had had no real significance to them.
And if the Dauphin and Mary did not like each other, what then? Would the alliance be abandoned, or would they be forced to marry, regardless?
Slowly the royal barge made its way up the Seine and its wide green valley, past Rouen, past Les Andelys, past Vernon, past Meulan, and then finally to the landing stage for St.-Germain-en-Laye. A large pier, its posts painted in gold, red, and blue, flew the royal standard of Valois from its staff.
An attendant hurriedly sent his assistant ahead to the château, and arranged for horses to transport the guests, although the distance was not great—the château lay on the upper banks of the river. Big, sleek beasts with heavy leather saddles were led forward, and the Scots stared at them. They were so rounded and gleaming they did not seem the same animals called “horses” in Scotland.
The gravelled path to the château was planted on both sides with tall, slender trees, like a sacred grove in ancient Greece. And then, looming before them, on a ridge above the river, was the grey building of the château.
Servants and attendants now appeared to accompany them up the path and into the courtyard. Their horses were taken and they were escorted into the Salle des Fêtes, a richly decorated hall on the west side of the courtyard.
Mary looked all around her at the high ceiling and the light colours of the wall decoration: pinks, pale aquas, yellows the shade of meadow wildflowers. The men and women in the paintings were wearing thin, transparent clothes that allowed her to see through them as if they were naked. She was studying this when suddenly a deep voice announced something in French, and everyone was still.
The farthest door of the hall opened, and out came three children, two girls and a boy. Only two could walk properly; the third swayed back and forth on her baby feet and had to be helped by the others. They came toward the Scots, and instinctively Mary went forward to meet them.
Across the wide floor of the Salle des Fêtes, the children approached each other, with everyone watching.
So this little boy must be François, the Dauphin, thought Mary. He had a fat little face and slanted eyes, and his tight, curvaceous mouth was clamped shut. The pale eyes were wary. He was very small, but pudgy.
Immediately, Mary felt protective of him, as she did of the small wounded animals that she had insisted on nursing back to health at Stirling whenever she had found them lying injured on the heath or limping about in the palace courtyard.
“Bonjour. Bienvenue à St.-Germain-en-Laye. Je suis Prince François, et ces sont mes soeurs, les Princesses Elisabeth et Claude.” The little boy bowed stiffly.
“Je suis Marie, votre amie et cousine et—fiancée,” responded Mary, using almost all the French she knew.
Then, to the delight of all the onlookers, the two children smiled at each other, laughed, and joined hands.
It was the first time many of the French courtiers had ever seen François smile.
* * *
Although the King and Queen were not at St.-Germain at the time, they had assured Mary, la Reinette d’Ecosse, of a proper welcome in the person of Diane de Poitiers, the King’s mistress. Indeed, when Mary first beheld her coming into the salle, she assumed she was looking at the Queen, so beautiful was the Moon Mistress. Her hair was silver, her skin pale, and her satins were a shimmery white and black. She seemed to glide across the floor, like a faerie creature, and François and Elisabeth greeted her as warmly as if she were their own mother. Mary immediately gave the proper, prescribed respect to the woman as Queen, only to have her smile and say, “No, no…” and then a string of the unintelligible French followed.
Patrick Scott, a member of the company of Scottish archers at court, hastily came to Mary and bowed. “May I offer my services as a translator, Your Highness? The Duchesse de Valentinois, Madame de Poitiers, thanks you for your kind greetings, and wishes you to know that, as the honoured friend of the
King, and in his name, she welcomes you to France. The King hopes you will find all happiness here, as the wife of his son, and among his people as their future queen. He longs to see you, and will be coming soon from Italy, where he is campaigning.”
At this delightful game where one person spoke for another, Mary giggled. Then François did, also, for it was the first time he had ever heard the Scots language. The rest of the parties on both sides joined in the laughter.
The Duchesse gestured, and palace servants took their stations and stood by to show the Scottish guests to their quarters. She spoke, in her pretty voice, and then Patrick Scott explained.
“Queen Mary, you are to share a room with the Princesse Elisabeth. It is the King’s wish that you should live like sisters. I myself have chosen the furnishings, and I hope they are to your liking. Shall you come and see them now? Perhaps you wish to rest after your journey?”
Used to the debilitation and lassitude of François, the Duchesse was surprised when Mary exclaimed. “Oh, no, I am not tired!” and almost jumped up and down. But then she added politely, “But I should very much like to see the furnishings which you have chosen for me, Madame.”
The Duchesse then led them back, through a long, vaulted gallery and up the main staircase, until at last they reached a suite of apartments above the second storey that overlooked the long slope down to the Seine, which shone like a little ribbon in the afternoon sun. It seemed to Mary that she had never been in such a huge building; the rooms went on and on, an endless series of doors and entrances disappearing behind the rustling gown of the Duchesse, which scattered light like the surface of a liquid, and quivered at each movement.
She showed them into a large, sunny room that was panelled in a tawny wood.
“Here it is, Your Highness. Your quarters. The royal nursery.”
The little beds, one on each side of the room, their frames carved with birds, leaves, and flowers, were bright with blue and gold hangings. There were child-sized tables and chairs; mirrors that hung at their eye level; wool rugs that made the floor as soft as moss. And in one corner, on a stand, was a wooden model château—it opened up on hinges to reveal miniature rooms and furniture inside. Mary rushed over to it and peeked in its tiny windows. Inside was a magical world, like a dream.
Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles Page 6