The furnishings of the hotel in Orleans were sent ahead to Chambord; but on the morning they were to have ridden forth, François had an excruciating pain in one ear, and could not move. He was hastily laid on a pallet on the floor, for the room had been stripped of its furniture and there was no bed. Fever set in, and he lay delirious and with chattering teeth, tossing on the pallet.
Mary took her place by his side, as she had so many times before. François had had this earache frequently, and always it had been soothed with a mixture of egg yolk, oil of roses, and turpentine, heated and poured into the ear canal. She did this, and laid compresses on his brow, and his eyelids fluttered open and he smiled at her.
“The boar will get away,” he said. But he said it tenderly, as if to assure her that he was still in command of himself and his senses.
“They but wait for you,” she said. “The biggest boar in the forest of Chambord knows that he is doomed to be served at Christmas to the court. His fate is merely postponed. Lucky boar!”
“Unlucky François,” he groaned. “Oh, Marie, I feel so … dizzy. And weak.”
“Soon you will recover. Already the oil is soothing your ear.”
“It hurts … behind the ear.”
* * *
The King did not speak intelligibly again. He closed his eyes, and the fever confused him and made his face erupt in sores in the next few days. Mary never left his side, going without sleep, lying down beside him on a pallet, playing her lute for his unhearing, festering ears, holding his hand.
The doctors gave him a compound of rhubarb, making a paste of it and forcing it down his throat. He seemed to rally for a few hours, but a relapse swiftly followed.
Queen Catherine, who had hurried to the scene, called Ambroise Paré, the King’s surgeon. “Save him!” she commanded.
“The physicians—”
“It is beyond physicians,” she replied.
The surgeon knelt down and examined the King carefully, turning his head and blowing gently in each ear. There was a large swelling behind the infected ear.
“This must be lanced,” he said, and the two queens agreed.
But although he successfully lanced the swelling and extracted a great deal of fluid, the King was not relieved. On the contrary, he grew worse in the next few days.
“I am afraid the only remedy is to operate, to remove part of the skull,” said Paré. “There is an abscess in the brain, and it will spread, and—”
“Cut open his head?” cried Catherine.
Paré looked at Mary, the King’s wife.
“Do whatever is necessary, but save him!” the girl said softly.
“Are you that cruel?” said Catherine. “Would you have his brains exposed? How could he live, then? No one can live with his head open! Do you have some miracle substance with which to patch it, then?” She turned on Paré.
“No, alas,” he admitted. “But perhaps something can be found. Ivory, or a sheep’s intestine … and I can dull the pain with a mixture we use for soldiers on the battlefield, opium and henbane, so he will not feel the cutting.”
“A King with a sheep’s intestine covering his brain!” shrieked Catherine. “So you propose to offer France such a King, such an abomination! And he—” she looked at her firstborn son lying in extremis—“he could never hunt again, would have to live like an old man, shuffling about in cleansed rooms, wearing a wet turban about his head … no, he would not want that.”
“How do you know what he would want?” said Mary.
“I bore him, I know him, and I know what is consistent with kingly dignity.” She turned to Paré. “No operation. But remove his pain, I beg you. Use your battlefield mixture.”
Paré looked at her, and saw the anguish in her eyes. No mothers were present at his battlefields; they never had her choices.
“I will mix it straightway, Your Majesty. And there is another device I know, to induce sleep and calmness. The sound of falling rain is soothing. If you will provide a large kettle on the far side of the room, and have a servant pour water from high above it…”
“It is done,” said Catherine.
François received the mixture of opium and henbane, and fell asleep to the sound of artificial rain in the cold, bare chamber. Mary held his hand, never relinquishing it, as it gradually grew cold in hers. She held it long after he had passed from life to death.
“Our François is gone, my mother,” she finally said to Catherine, who was dozing in a chair. Gently Mary let go of his hand and arranged his hands on his breast. She kissed his forehead. The red splotches on his face were fading, and his lips were parted as if he would speak.
“Adieu, François, my love, my husband, my friend.”
Catherine burst into tears, but Mary had none left. She was beyond tears; she felt that her life had departed with François.
“Adieu, François,” she whispered. “Adieu, Marie.”
* * *
In Edinburgh, as soon as he heard the news about the death of François II, John Knox wrote, “For as the said King sat at mass, he suddenly perished of a rotten ear—that deaf ear that would never hear the truth of God.”
XX
It was Mary’s eighteenth birthday, and she was a new widow, keeping mourning in an artificially darkened chamber at Orleans. Once again she was wearing white, and it seemed a cruel mockery. They were right; I should never have worn it on my wedding day, she thought. It is the colour of death and sorrow. I will never wear it again. If I had not worn it then, perhaps François …
No, that is foolish. He did not die of a dress colour, she told herself. He died because he had always been weak, because he was born sickly, because his mother took those myrrh pills to help her conceive, because he was born at an eclipse of the sun. Perhaps he would not have lived so long, had I not helped him, nursed him, played with him, loved him.
An ache shot through her. She loved him, her companion, her confidant, her best friend. She could hardly remember a time when she had not known him, and he had loved her utterly.
Now she was completely alone. Her mother and François, both dead within half a year. There was no place for her, suddenly, upon this earth. France was no longer a safe haven. François’s little brother, ten-year-old Charles, ruled as Charles IX, but his mother ruled as regent. Meticulous Catherine, who observed every rule … just as she had stood aside to give Mary precedence ten minutes after Henri IPs death, just so quickly had she demanded that Mary return the crown jewels after François IPs death. There were no lingering niceties, no courtesies. Mary, whose mother was French, whose language was French, and who had been brought up in France, was being told—subtly and unsubtly—to forget France and return to Scotland.
But she was not welcome there, either. Her subjects had rebelled and formally deposed her mother, the regent. A council of lords now ruled the land, enacting laws that abolished Catholicism and made attending mass a crime.
She had no country, no welcome anywhere. After these forty days of mourning were over, then what? Where would she go, what would she do?
And yet a pervasive lethargy seized her. She cared, and did not care. Her loss of François was so gripping that in her pain she only sought surcease: to sleep, to weep, to remember. His presence was everywhere, half comforting her, half torturing her. She, who had so often been entertained by the poetry of the court, now sought to alleviate her pain by writing of her loss.
Over my life’s early spring,
And over its opening bloom,
My deadly sorrows fling
The darkness of the tomb;
My star of hope is set
In yearning and regret.
When day’s long toil is over,
And dreams steal round my couch,
I hear that voice once more—
I thrill to that dear touch;
In labour and repose,
My soul his presence knows.
But who would read her poem, who would understand? Only François, and h
e was gone, in all the ways that mattered … except as a gentle, ghostly presence.
* * *
They spoke to her of marrying. In the first two weeks of her widowhood, when she was in deepest mourning, with the only light in her white-draped chamber provided by flickering and smoldering candles, the Guises were admitted, as befitted her closest relatives, and immediately began to suggest a remarriage. There was Don Carlos, the heir of Philip of Spain. There was Charles IX, her brother-in-law, who had developed an abnormal, childish passion for her. She must stay in power. These bridegrooms—immature, unbalanced children—would enable her to do so.
She sat, hearing them out. Indeed, what else could she do? She was trapped in the deuil chamber. But, although she had loved François, another child-groom did not appeal to her. Instead, what increasingly appealed to her was escape. Escape to Scotland, far away from the suffocating Guises and the watchful Queen Regent.
Would I rather be a dowager queen in France, pensioned off to live in tranquil obscurity on my estates, of no importance to anyone—although comfortably and safely housed—or would I rather be queen in a small, faraway country?
I am too young to be housed in obscurity, she answered herself. I have learned statecraft from my uncles, my grandmother, and Queen Catherine—and to what purpose, if I retire to a country estate in my youth? God gave me a throne in Scotland as my birthright. Am I meant to take this sceptre? It is even more urgent since the country is so lost, so mired in confusion and errors. I know I am very young and unknowledgeable in deeper matters of theology, but my task would only be to set a good living example of my own faith, not to rival Saint Augustine or some other Doctor of the Church. Perhaps that is what God requires of me to help my country.
Cautiously she broached the idea to Father Mamerot, her spiritual guide.
“Do you think this is required of me?” she asked late one afternoon when the night shadows were coming on.
The priest—small but wiry within his robes—waited a long time before answering. “One can say with certainty that the opportunity is there,” he finally answered. “Your country has recently left the fold of the Church, but you have been preserved as their monarch, and kept to the original faith. It is true that people tend to see within a monarch the embodiment of a faith. A king who lies, debauches himself, steals, and acts the coward will drive people from whatever faith he claims to practise. I am not sure, however, that the opposite holds true. You will simply have to try, trusting in God’s providence. You cannot set out with that as a goal. It is really up to God to move men’s hearts.”
“Ah, you always warn me to go slowly,” said Mary.
“It is the duty of a confessor to help his child overcome her spiritual weaknesses, and yours has always been acting too quickly or expecting too much.”
As the long days dragged on, Mary found herself relying on Madame Rallay’s gentle wisdom of the worldly sort as well. She asked her how she would feel about going to Scotland. “I would wish to take the good people of my household, like Bourgoing and Balthazzar. I cannot imagine life without them. But most of all, I could not imagine life without you,” Mary said.
Madame Rallay smiled. “Nor could I imagine life without you. I will go with you wherever you choose to go. Is it truly your wish to return to your original home?”
“I—I am not sure,” Mary answered. “Some days it is, and other days I do not know. But if I knew you would come…”
“I will come.”
A return to her original home: the idea drew her like a forlorn melody, coming from deep within a wood.
Then, suddenly, she would be overcome with grief for François, and wondered if her longing for her faraway throne was just a disguised wish for escape from her pain.
* * *
Every day seemed eternal and unconnected with anything before or after, as it was played out in a chamber that knew neither day nor night, but only artificially measured hours. The waking hours began with mass, celebrated at one end of the chamber. Then came the condolence visits—in reality, the political conferences—then more prayers, then a dinner, served silently. No one could enter the chamber without the prior approval of Queen Catherine and a thorough searching by the guards. The “frivolous” applicants were turned away; only accredited ambassadors and the Guise uncles were permitted access to Mary in those first two weeks.
She braced herself for these visits, wrapping herself in white fur mantles for warmth in the chilly chamber. The dreary December weather and short days outside seemed to steep the chamber itself in cold, dead solitude.
On the twelfth day, a large man stood on the threshold of her chamber, a leather envelope in his gloved hand. His dark mantle had snow in its folds.
“Greetings, my Queen,” he said in perfect French. But she had never seen him at court before. How had he persuaded the guards to admit him?
She motioned him to come in. He did so, and knelt before her, removing the hood of his mantle. His crisp, short reddish hair was rumpled, and his smoky green eyes looked directly at her.
“I bring dispatches from the late Queen your mother, and also I offer condolences on the loss of your late lord and husband the King.” He held out the leather envelope, and she moved forward and took it.
“From my mother, you say? Wherefore not earlier?”
He shrugged. “These are not official, Your Majesty. These were what was found when servitors were clearing out her papers. Personal. These are the things she kept. They were ready to destroy them. But I thought you might want them.”
Mary thumbed through the thick packet. “Why—here’s a letter I wrote her!” she said.
“When you were eleven,” he said.
So he had read them? Natural curiosity, of course. And they had been ready to discard—public property. He had gone to the trouble of rescuing them.
He was shifting on his knees, and then, without leave, he stood up.
“You could have sent them,” she said. “You hardly needed to come all this way in person.”
“There are few one can trust. And besides, my Queen, I wished to see your person for myself. Few in Scotland have had that privilege.”
“Who are you, then?”
“James Hepburn, my Queen.”
She did not like the way he kept repeating “my Queen” like a chorus, when he should have been saying “Your Majesty” in true respect.
“James Hepburn of what? Of whom?”
“James Hepburn, son of Patrick the Fair Earl. Surely you have heard of him?” He removed his mantle—again without leave—and draped it on a stool.
He was not as tall as Mary, but he was beautifully made and his build was powerful.
“Indeed I have not,” she said.
He laughed. “My father, the Fair Earl—for so he was called for his complexion, not his character—divorced my mother so as to marry your mother. She made him a promise, but in the end did not honour it, thereby dishonouring him. ’Tis a queen’s privilege, evidently.”
“So you are Scots?” This strange claim he was making—could it be true?
“That, or nothing,” he said in that language.
“I refuse to believe that of my mother,” she said, still in French.
“Believe what you like, ’tis of no matter now. My father is gone and so is she; they used one another out of ambition, and ’tis done. I think”—he grinned—“she won. Of course, she had more cards to play with.”
“You sound like a gambler.”
“I am.” He made no blushing apology.
“So am I,” she said, startling herself by the admission.
“All queens—all good ones—must be. Certainly your cousin Elizabeth is one of the first order. The bets are still out on her. She has not married yet, in spite of all her offers. ’Tis a privilege of queens, as I said, to dangle suitors.”
In spite of herself, she laughed. “But who are you?” she asked, in halting Scots. It had been so long since she had used it. It came out “hoo
arr yoo?”
“Ah, that’s good. Your enemies say you cannot speak the language. You’ll show them.”
“Come, sir, answer my question.”
“I am Earl of Bothwell. I have other titles as well, which I inherited from the Fair Earl: Lord High Admiral of Scotland, Keeper of Hermitage and Edinburgh Castles, Sheriff of East Lothian, Lieutenant of the Southern Borders. If you’re so kind as to confirm them, that is.”
“That remains to be seen.” She adjusted the filmy white veil beneath her chin, which was part of the deuil costume.
“Are you coming back to Scotland, or no?” he demanded. “The talk is that you aren’t. That you’ll be put out to pasture in France like one of those fine cows in Normandy, there to lie down and graze in soft green meadows. ’Twould please your brother James if you stayed. As son of the King and Lord of the Congregation, with Knox’s blessing he’d rule Scotland, as he believes he was meant to do. Destiny calls him, he thinks. Ha! Destiny is calling loud all over these days, starting with Master Knox.”
“Oui. Je reviendrai à l’Ecosse.”
“Then you must needs not speak French. They hate the sound of it.”
No mention of pleasure that she had elected to return, and he was the only living soul to whom she had thus far announced it. She was disappointed. “Where did you learn French, then?” she asked.
He looked amused at her question. “All educated people speak French,” he said. “You’ll find many of your subjects speak French, write French, and have spent time in France. But that does not stop them from hating the sound of it, as I said.”
“Then they must needs hate me.”
“Why, are you a Frenchwoman?” he said, looking directly at her. He asked it in a schoolmasterly fashion, as if he were teacher, and she his student. It was the way her uncles spoke to her, and in them she tolerated it. But she had grown tired of it, and never realized how deeply until now.
Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles Page 16