“I will always try to be kind and good, Maman,” said Mary. “I will remember that you told me so.”
* * *
Mary was both happy and sad. Happy because there was to be a grand fête, three days of them in fact, with archery, tennis, dancing, and hunting. Sad because it was in farewell to her mother, who was returning to Scotland. Still, it had been a year. She was so fortunate to have had her mother with her for a year that the time had seemed compressed, with each day only a half-day’s length.
“My dear daughter,” said Marie, “tonight you will be allowed to stay up almost until dawn. After all, you are now eight years old, and there’s to be torchlight hunting after the midnight banquet set up in the fields. If you become too sleepy, you can just lie down in one of the tents.”
“Like a soldier!” she said. “I have always wanted to play at soldiers.”
Her mother gave her an amused look. “I pray you haven’t already done so. People will talk!”
“But why? Isabella of Castile led her troops, and she was a great Catholic queen.”
Marie smiled at Mary. “And is that your desire, my love, to be a great Catholic queen?”
“Oh, yes. It is my dream. But I shan’t burn heretics. I hate killing.”
Marie was pleased with the way Mary had always shown interest in her faith. The addition of her own private confessor had definitely speeded her spiritual progress in the last year. “Everyone does,” she said. “It is a pity that it is sometimes necessary.” She turned to look around the quarters. Now was the time to tell her. Surely Mary had noticed the absence of Lady Fleming. “I have a wonderful surprise for you,” she began. “There is to be another addition to your household, someone I have chosen for you—Madame Renée Rallay will replace Lady Fleming as your governess. She is a very astute, clever woman from the region of Touraine.”
“Is she young? And where is Lady Fleming?” Mary’s questions were open and happy.
“No, she’s not young—in fact, I think she’s in her middle forties.”
“Oh!” Mary’s face fell. “That’s old!”
“But she is full of joy and wisdom. You will come to love both sides of her.”
“Is her hair grey? Does she look old?”
“No, I don’t believe so. You’ll like her, I promise.”
“But where is Lady Fleming?”
Should she just tell her? Was the child old enough to know? If she did not, others would. “Lady Fleming has proven herself … unsuited for her position.”
Flamina’s mother, unfit? “How? How?”
“She has … she is … with child by King Henri II!” The shame of it! And now both the King’s wife and the King’s true mistress had turned on the Scottish woman and demanded her ouster. Kings would be kings, but foreign governesses must pay the price.
“What?” Mary’s mouth fell open. Lady Fleming, taking off her clothes and getting into bed with the King? Mary had seen paintings of naked women—all allegorical, of course—in Diane’s apartments, but that was different. “Oh!” Now she, too, was flooded with shame. Then she immediately thought of poor Flamina. Her mother would be sent away, and then she would have a bastard sibling as well.
“I am taking her back to Scotland with me,” said her mother. “There she can bear the child in privacy. Let this be a lesson to you. Women often serve as men’s pastimes, and there is nothing more past than a spent pastime. The King and Queen will go on as before, and so will Madame de Poitiers, but Lady Fleming is ruined.”
“Oh!” Mary started to cry, thinking of her playmate and her mother.
Marie put her arm around her. How tall the child was growing! She would have the height of the Guises, then. “Not ruined, truly. I am sure King Henri will be generous with her. Now, then, let us think of today’s festivities. First the archery. The Scots Guards will be demonstrating their skill, and then the rest of us. You like shooting, do you not?”
* * *
The afternoon’s archery contest had been thrilling. The court was presently at Blois, and the butts were set up in the surrounding fields near a hunting park and orchard. In the just-harvested fields, rows of golden stubble stretched away toward the Loire, giving off a warm sleepy scent. Overhead the sky scattered hazy light that was gentle and friendly. The Scots Guards, of course, stunned the courtiers and their guests with an exhibition of their prowess, and Mary was duly impressed with Rob MacDonald’s ability to hit his mark from a hundred and fifty yards. She insisted on being the one to present his reward, and as he received it on bended knee in the field, he winked at her. She almost giggled, but managed not to.
Gathered around were King Henri II, who then languidly took his turn at shooting, and Mary’s Guise uncles: not only the eldest, le Balafre (who of course was a superb shot) but his three younger brothers, Claud, François, and René, whom she rarely saw. Claud, the Duc d’Aumale, was twenty-five, François was seventeen and already named Grand Prior of the Galleys, and René, the Marquis d’Elboef, was sixteen. D’Aumale and d’Elboef wore skintight hose and drank too much wine, and smiled at her as if they truly liked her.
They are so different from my Scottish relatives, she thought. All the Guises—and there are so many of them!—seem to be either soldiers or churchmen. I know there are four more, and they are all either priests or nuns.
Then ladies of the court took their turns shooting. Diane de Poitiers came forward, wearing her customary black and white—this gown was in the Grecian fashion, loose and flowing, but fastened with black straps. Even her bow and arrows were ebony inlaid with ivory. She stepped up to the shooting line and shot easily, coming close to the target. The King and Catherine de Médicis both congratulated her warmly.
Lusty did well, Beaton less well (but did not care), Seton even less well, and then Flamina stepped boldly up, daring everyone to look at her. Her chin was held high, and she performed strongly. The congratulations that she reaped were not for her shooting but for her bravery.
Mary then took her place and, to everyone’s astonishment, hit all her targets dead on. The audience burst into cheers. But all Mary cared about was seeing the pride in Rob’s eyes. She turned and bowed, then let the contest continue.
Marie de Guise had brought some Scotsmen with her, and Mary now watched as they took their turns at the butts. There was the barrel-shaped Earl of Huntly, who basked in public attention. She knew he was a great Catholic noble of the north who held great power, but it seemed to her he was vainglorious and even somewhat comical as he strutted and postured.
They call him “the Cock o’ the North,” she thought, and he does remind me of a rooster. His face is red and he crows. And his bottom sticks out as if it should sport a feathered tail.
She began to giggle, and Lusty, standing beside her, said, “What is so amusing?”
“The Earl of Huntly looks like a rooster,” she answered, and then Lusty began to laugh, and soon the whole row of children was laughing.
Next came a man with a stately bearing, who looked to be a true noble. But he was not. It was Richard Maitland of Lethington, one of Marie de Guise’s privy councillors and advisers. He was just a laird, a lawyer and a poet for his own amusement. Alongside him was a young man, rather good-looking, whom he introduced as his son, William.
“He is studying here in France, and I must take this opportunity to present him to you,” he said to Marie de Guise. “When he returns to his native land, I believe he will prove to be of service to you.”
Marie de Guise just gave a perfunctory nod, but Flamina whispered to Mary, “He’s handsome!”
Mary wondered if Flamina was only pretending to be interested in such things to prove she was not bothered by her mother’s situation. Actually, William Maitland was no more handsome than some of the other men there. But she nodded in agreement.
Some distant relatives of Mary’s, the Lennox Stuarts, were also there: John, Seigneur d’Aubigny, and some cousins had come to pay their respects. These Stuarts had had a Scot
tish ancestor who came to France a hundred and fifty years earlier and were now almost entirely French, even using the French spelling of the name. She rememered Rob saying that the connection between France and Scotland went back a long way.
There were refreshments for the men, and the children took their rest under big shade trees with blankets spread out beneath them. Some of the men—the younger ones, including the King—then went to play tennis until the light faded.
When Mary awakened, she saw that servants were busy setting up formal dining tables under the trees. They were unrolling fine linen tablecloths and, in addition to the candles placed every five feet or so, were stringing lanterns between tree branches. Twilight had come, and the sky was a tender deep bluish purple. Shadows were forming little blue pools around the trees, distant haystacks, and fences. A soft warm breeze was blowing across the fields, right up to the very edge of the forest; where the air met the branches, the leaves rustled and murmured. Fireflies were just coming out, a twinkle here, a brief pulse of light there, when Mary saw a line of people coming to the banquet tables in procession across the fields. Their gowns glowed with sunset colours, and they were bearing tapers and laughing. Before them walked musicians playing recorders and lutes. They looked like figures from a faded tapestry, and even the music was faded and distant.
They approached, and became real, noisy people. The King, freshly attired in velvet, glowed after his tennis game. His Queen flashed with jewels, and rather than seeming odd in the outdoor setting, they graced it. Diane had changed once again to a glistening gossamer gown. Mary’s own mother was now dressed in a fashionably embroidered green satin gown, and was carrying an ornate, silver-studded velvet box.
Everyone was seated in the sylvan dining room, and the musicians kept playing. Overhead the sky darkened, and now the only light came from the candles, lanterns, and fireflies. It bathed the gathering in a soft, dreamy light, these people of France and Scotland, Mary’s relatives and friends, and she loved them all with a fierce, surging love. She felt so safe, so loved, so protected—secure in the arms of France and all the company gathered under the trees on this balmy summer night.
At the end of the dinner, when Marie de Guise had to make her formal speeches in farewell, she opened the velvet box and held it aloft. Mary could see something gleam red inside.
“This is the treasure that I leave in the keeping of the King and Queen, who also have the keeping of my other treasure, my daughter. This is the jewel that belonged to her grandmother, Margaret Tudor. It was presented to her upon her marriage to James IV, and it is my deepest wish that it be presented to Queen Mary upon her marriage to the Dauphin François. Keep it in trust for me, I beg you.” Ceremoniously she handed it to Henri II.
He peered at it, and his normally unresponsive eyes registered an emotion. “Mon Dieu! It is huge!” Impressed, he lifted out the jewel and held it up for all to see. It was a brooch in the shape of an H, fashioned of rubies and diamonds.
“That is why it is called the ‘Great Harry,’” said Marie de Guise. “Guard it well!”
* * *
After the dinner, it was indeed midnight. But the party was eager to hunt by torchlight, and the horses and pack of hounds were brought out to seek red deer on the adjacent heath. The children did not go, but stood watching as the flares and noise were swallowed up in the darkness. Still later, as one by one they fell asleep in the tents, they could hear the cries of the dogs from somewhere far away, carried on the summer air into the palace windows. They slept soundly and did not hear the hunters return.
* * *
When Marie de Guise took her leave later that month, she clasped Mary to her and promised to return soon.
“Come back quickly,” Mary said, trying not to cry. It would be unseemly in front of all these people.
“As soon as I may,” said her mother. “And my thoughts are with you every moment.”
“I love you, dear Maman,” she whispered. But her mother was interrupted by King Henri’s approach, and did not hear the murmured words.
IX
Looking back on it years later, although it was not true, it seemed to Mary that it was always summer in France as she was growing up. The air was always rich and caressing, full of the smells of flowering meadows and ripening plums and apricots. Dusks were milky and warm and lingering; the stones of the châteaux took on a luminosity as the light faded and lanterns were lit. Huge, pale, feathery-winged moths would come to the open windows and light on the lanterns and fly around the pure white wax candles burning in sconces.
White was the colour of France: the white swans dotting the moat water; the peculiar Loire stone used to build the châteaux, which whitened as it aged; the great white fireplaces with their gilded royal emblems of salamanders and crowned porcupines; the milk from the she-asses the court ladies used for their complexions and which Mary began to use as she grew up; the white lilies of France, the royal flower.
Her first communion was a blaze of white in her white taffeta gown at Easter. She wore a coronet of lily-of-the-valley in her red-brown hair, and carried an ivory rosary, a gift from her grandmother de Guise. By her twelfth year, after lengthy preparation by her confessor, Father Mamerot, she had longed to make this first communion, and at last her uncle the Cardinal had pronounced her ready to do so.
“The happiest day of my life,” she wrote in her little private journal that night. And to her mother in Scotland: “Dearest Mother, At last I am come to be a true daughter of the Church.…” She closed her eyes and saw once again the Madonna lilies around the altar opening their smooth ivory throats as if they were about to sing Alleluia; saw the thick, immaculate Easter candle flickering, saw the gentle smile on the alabaster Virgin’s face. “Today I glimpsed Paradise.”
* * *
But on earth here in France, every sense was bathed in luxury, luxury of which she became more and more aware as she grew older. The palate was indulged with strawberries from Saumur and melons planted in the Loire by a Neapolitan gardener long ago, with trout pate, Tours pastries, and vin d’Annonville, with its delicate bouquet. The nostrils were pampered by the happy work of Catherine de Médicis’s Italian perfumers working with the flowers from the fields of Provence, producing heady fragrances to be worn on throats and wrists and to scent gloves and capes. Hyacinth, jasmine, lilac—all wafted through the rooms and from the bathwaters of the châteaux.
The skin was caressed with unguents and the feel of silk, velvet, fur, leather gloves of softest deerskin; goosedown pillows cupped weary bodies at the day’s end; and in winter, newly installed Germanic tile stoves at Fontainebleau provided central heating.
Eyes were continually presented with beauty in ordinary objects rendered more opulently pleasing: a crystal mirror decorated with velvet and silk ribbons; buttons with jewels affixed. There were fireworks reflected in the river; paintings by Leonardo; and black-and-white chequered marble paving in the long palace gallery over the Cher that spanned the rippling water outside.
Pleasing sounds were everywhere: in the chirping of the pet canaries and more exotic birds in the garden aviaries; in the baying of the hounds in the matchless royal hunting packs; in the splash and gurgle of the fountains and elaborate water displays in the formal gardens. And above all that, the sound of melodious French, exquisitely spoken; witty conversations, and the poets of the court reciting verses composed to celebrate the aristocratic dreamworld they inhabited, with a haunting melancholy that it would all pass away.
* * *
But to Mary and her companions it all seemed eternal, given, unchanging, and the poets’ laments purest literary convention. Of course there were small changes: the royal family continued to grow, with more babies swelling the nursery. Catherine de Médicis began to grow stout and her waist disappeared, even when she was not pregnant. Diane de Poitiers, that lady who was immune to time, did not alter in looks, but even she began planning her tomb. It was to be of—what else?—white marble.
One af
ternoon as Mary was keeping the Duchesse company in her chambers, she watched as Diane sat before her dressing table and arranged, then rearranged, her perfumes and silver-backed brushes. Diane’s back was as straight as ever, her silvery hair still thick and swept up, held with a diamond pin. But her face, in repose, was streaked with sadness. Suddenly she turned around to Mary and said, “You will be more beautiful than I.” Mary started to demur, but the Duchesse cut her off. “Please. I speak but the truth. Do not flinch from it. I do not. I am proud that you succeed me; I am glad to pass that duty on.”
Mary laughed. This made her uneasy. Did Diane have a deadly disease? Was she making her will?
“I am fifty-five now. Is it not time? I have reigned a good long while in the realm of beauty, but it is a hard burden. You are welcome to it!” She gestured at a painting of herself in which her bosom was bare. “You are shocked? You would never pose that way?”
“No, Madame,” she said quietly. But then she could not help asking, “When was this painted?”
“Only a few years ago. Now you are shocked! You needn’t be. Painters are kind; it is not only God who can create something out of nothing! Our court painters are equally adept at it.”
Mary had always loved watching the Duchesse as she moved and spoke. “You will reign in beauty forever,” she said. “I fear it is not an office you can resign, like being Keeper of the King’s Seal or Royal Treasurer.”
“Alas, that is so. Hurry and grow up, then, so you can relieve me of it. Time will push you on and push me off.”
* * *
Mary’s two oldest uncles gained in power and stature. Uncle Cardinal acquired a larger sphere of influence, and Uncle le Balafre shone as a battle hero in taking Metz from the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who was fighting France. In Scotland, Mary had achieved the formal appointment of her mother as Regent, and they continued to try to oust the English. In England itself, Edward VI had died and been succeeded on the throne by his half-sister Mary Tudor, who was devoutly Catholic. In a matter of months she had made England Catholic again, and taken as a husband Philip II of Spain. This was a disaster for France, for now England and Spain would team up against France and try to conquer her. That meant that Scotland was suddenly a very important ally for France because of her location.
Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles Page 9