The Wild Queen

by Carolyn Meyer

  ***

  Soon after we returned to Paris from Reims, I received two Scottish visitors who had traveled to France for the coronation. The first was Henry Stuart, master of Lennox, my handsome, fair-haired thirteen-year-old cousin. He had been sent by his parents, the earl and countess of Lennox, to bring their congratulations but also to beg a favor. Lord and Lady Lennox had been banished to England many years before over a political matter, and young Henry was asking for the restoration of his father’s confiscated Scottish lands. I found the lad charming, and it pained me to turn him down, but I did so on the advice of my mother, who had warned me what he would be asking. Nevertheless, I sent him home to England with a large gift of money.

  The second visitor was James Hepburn, earl of Bothwell, who had officially represented my mother at the coronation and stayed on to accompany the court when it moved to Fontainebleau. Lord Bothwell was a gruff, darkly handsome man several years older than I who had studied in France and spoke French easily. I spent considerable time with him, gathering a better understanding of the issues that faced my mother in Scotland, and we became well acquainted. I heard from him for the first time the name of John Knox, a fiery Protestant minister determined that the Reformation would end Catholic rule in Scotland. Lord Bothwell also warned me that my brother James was encouraging a rebellion of the Scottish nobility against my mother. I remembered James’s glowering presence in the crowds at my wedding and his request—it was more like a demand—to be made earl of Moray.

  “With all that is within my power I shall oppose Lord James and those who seek to depose the queen mother,” stated Lord Bothwell. I could not have been more grateful.

  In October, when Lord Bothwell took his leave to return to Scotland, he renewed his promise to me. “I have hesitated to tell you this, Madame Marie,” he said, “but I fear that the health of your lady mother is declining. Not wishing to trouble you further at this difficult time, the queen mother specifically asked me not to speak of it.”

  I wept and thanked him for telling me, and felt confident that the earl of Bothwell would be of great service to me, now and in the future.

  ***

  More tears marked the leave-taking of my dear sister-in-law Élisabeth, now the queen of Spain. Her proxy marriage had been a joyous occasion, but her father’s death during the celebrations plunged the court into mourning; the mood had lifted briefly for the coronation of François but then immediately darkened once more. We were still grieving when the court again began moving from one château to the next, just as it always had, but Élisabeth’s departure could no longer be delayed.

  Queen Catherine was so deeply stricken by King Henri’s death that she could scarcely bear the thought of sending her eldest daughter off to Spain. Not until late November when the first snows lay on the ground did Catherine finally agree to let Élisabeth go. The parting was painful, for Élisabeth, certainly, and for me, her closest friend, as well. But it was agonizing for her mother. Setting aside my own sorrow, I tried to comfort my mother-in-law.

  “Dear Queen Mother,” I said soothingly, “you may someday travel to Spain to visit Élisabeth, just as my own dearest mother journeyed here from Scotland and spent a year among us. Surely you can do the same.”

  But the queen mother would not be comforted. “The journeys are long and arduous. One by one the years pass, and they will for my daughter as they have for me. I know that I shall never see my darling Élisabeth again.”

  IV. A Deep Stirring I Had Never Experienced

  THOUGH I WAS NOT YET EIGHTEEN, I enjoyed great prestige as the queen of Scots and as the queen of France, but I recognized that I had no power. As the events of my life continued to unfold in ways I could not have predicted, my discontent grew. I desired the kind of authority my cousin Elizabeth, the queen of England, possessed and exercised. But I also yearned for something more, something deeper, something in my heart for which I did not yet have a name. My pursuit of those unnamed desires led me down the path that has brought me to this place and made me a prisoner.

  Chapter 22

  The Guise Uncles

  I WAS NOW the queen of France, and I watched with growing alarm as my Guise uncles increased in stature and power. Despite the pope’s ruling, they were more convinced than they had ever been that Queen Elizabeth of England was illegitimate and that I, as Elizabeth’s cousin, legitimate and Catholic, was unarguably next in line.

  To make sure everyone understood my claim to the English throne, my Guise uncles saw to it that it was everywhere inscribed: François and Marie, by the grace of God, king and queen of France, Scotland, England, and Ireland.

  I did not protest. It made perfect sense to me. But no one knew just how Elizabeth would react to this new assertion that the Catholic king and queen of France and Scotland had a claim to her throne. It would not be long before I found out.

  Soon after Lord Bothwell returned to Scotland, he wrote to me that the lairds had proclaimed that they would not be ruled by any monarch. “Each laird considers himself a king of his own small piece of Scotland,” Lord Bothwell wrote, signing the letter using his new rank: Lieutenant-General, by the appointment of the Queen Regent, Marie of Guise.

  “Who are these lairds, as you call them?” asked my husband when I had read him Lord Bothwell’s letter. “Are they a lesser sort of lord?”

  “The lairds are the landowners—landed gentry, not noblemen,” I explained. “But the noble lords, too, are being encouraged to rebel. My poor mother! I thank God that Lord Bothwell is there to help her.”

  “They should all be put to the sword,” declared King François fiercely. “Lords, lairds, all the rebels. They must not be allowed to behave so.”

  That same month, as Bothwell had warned, the rebel lords entered Edinburgh and deposed the queen regent, choosing twenty-four of their number to form a council to rule in her stead. Their leader and most influential member was my brother Lord James. I could only imagine how my mother must have felt about this man who insisted that he, the bastard son of King James V, knew better than she did what was best for Scotland.

  But my mother refused to give up without a struggle. She wrote urgently to my Guise uncles begging for help.

  I also went to my uncles, pleading, “You must rescue the queen, my mother!” I cried. “She is your sister!”

  “We will do what we can,” said Charles the cardinal.

  “We will see to it that your mother receives the aid she requires,” said François, duke of Guise, the military man who had not long ago been a hero of the French.

  I took them at their word. They did send a handful of troops eventually, but the troops did not arrive in time to rout the rebel lords. The rebels were now in charge. My mother was not.

  When I learned of this, I rushed to the king’s chamber, sobbing. “You cannot let this happen, François! You hold the title of king of Scotland, and it is up to you to send enough troops to put down the rebellion, once and for all. Your father would never have allowed my mother to be abandoned, and you must not allow it either. Promise me, François! I am begging you!”

  My husband stared at me, startled at this outburst. “Calm yourself, ma chère Marie,” he said quietly “I have never seen you so distressed. I will consult with my advisers and see just what is to be done.”

  Whom did he intend to consult? I wondered. His maman? My mother-in-law could not bear to let my husband out of her sight and kept him constantly by her side, and since he had become king, he seemed unable to breathe without Queen Catherine’s consent. François had become known as le petit roi, “the little king,” and it suited him well. In effect, his mother served as his regent, though he was of age and required no regent to rule for him.

  I was furious—at my uncles, at my husband, at my brother. But I could do nothing, and my lack of power made me even angrier. I resolved that if the day ever came when I ruled, I would not hesitate to act. When Queen Elizabeth learned of the rebellion in Scotland, she took full advantage of it. She
dispatched English troops—not to save my mother but to keep out the French, quell the rebellion, and lay her own claim to Scotland. So this was how she reacted to my claim to her throne!

  “You have betrayed me!” I cried to my uncle Charles when I learned what had happened. “Undone me, Uncle! You will be the cause of my loss of the realm!”

  I began to suspect that these two men, who had been like fathers to me when I first arrived in France, were not the same people I had once revered and even loved. I began to see them in an entirely different light. They were ambitious, certainly, but they were also ruthless and could be horribly cruel. I was not simply their beloved niece whom they were bound by family ties to protect; I was actually the means—the instrument—by which they manipulated my husband to do their will. They did not care for me nearly as much as they cared for the influence they had over the young king.

  ***

  The Protestant Reformation had taken hold in France as it had in Scotland. French Protestants, the Huguenots, were found in every level of society. Naturally, I considered their beliefs abhorrent, and I wanted to see the spread of their vile religion stopped. But what happened late in the winter of 1560 showed a side of the loyal Catholics that sickened me.

  The court was preparing to move from Blois to Amboise. While we were still at Blois, a Huguenot plot to seize the king and my two Guise uncles was uncovered.

  Arrangements were made for me to remain in Blois with the Four Maries while my uncles, the queen mother, and the rest of the court went on to Amboise. I was not told why we were left behind, but rumors reached my ears of what was happening a little distance away. The Huguenot conspirators were seized, their followers were rounded up, and confessions were wrung out of them by torture. Some claimed that the Huguenots did not wish to harm the king, only to speak to him, to have him listen to their concerns. The way the Huguenots felt about my uncles was a different matter; the leaders of the plot wanted to rid themselves of the Guises, whom they had come to despise.

  The bloodbath had begun.

  While the members of the court, my husband, and the queen mother looked on, my uncle François supervised the beheading of fifty-two Huguenot noblemen. Their heads were mounted on pikes to stare back grimly at the spectators watching from viewing stands built in the courtyard. Their bodies were drawn and quartered, and the remains were hung on the walls of the château. Over the next few days a thousand Huguenots were slaughtered or stuffed into sacks and thrown into the river to drown. The Loire ran red with the blood of the Protestant martyrs.

  I tried to make sense of it. I opposed the Protestants and all they stood for, but I had no wish to have them tortured and murdered. When I tried to coax François into telling me what had happened, he first evaded my questions and then flatly reused to answer. “My mother has forbidden me to discuss it,” he said.

  “But I am your wife, François!” I cried. “As the queen of France, I have a right to know!”

  We had never argued. I had never raised my voice to my husband. He looked at me, startled. But he shook his head and would not answer. I understood then that I would have no influence over my husband. His first allegiance was to his mother, not me. He would do what she told him, and not what I asked.

  This was my first shock, but an even more horrifying one was to come. It was a month after the bloodbath; the rotting corpses and staring heads had been taken away, and the bloated bodies had been dredged out of the river and thrown into a common grave. I joined the rest of the family at Amboise only briefly, just before we left for Fontainebleau. I sought out my beloved aunt Anne d’Este and asked her to walk with me. There was an unusual chill in the air for April as we strolled by the water’s edge, and we drew our cloaks tighter.

  “Dear aunt,” I began, “I need to know what happened here last month. My husband will not speak to me about it.”

  My aunt was silent for a long while, staring at the ground as we walked below the walls of the château. From time to time she sighed deeply I wondered if she would answer or, like everyone else, remain silent.

  At last she spoke. “My dear Marie, what I am about to tell you pains me more than I can say I am the devoted wife of your uncle, and I love him deeply But he is the man chiefly responsible for the carnage, along with his brother Charles. It was they who ordered the arrests, the torture, the savage murders. I understand that those who threatened the life of the king must be put to death, and those who took part in the planning must also be severely punished. But the hundreds of Huguenots who were rounded up and slaughtered for their beliefs? I do not understand how my husband could have participated in such a horror.”

  When Anne turned to face me, I saw that her tears flowed unchecked. “Now I fear that it will be our children—his and mine—who will someday pay the price for this. Revenge will surely be taken on them, and they are innocent.”

  What she said left me stunned. How could my uncles have been so cruel? So selfish? I felt I had lost my affectionate childhood relationship with them and could no longer trust them. I feared that Grand-Mère would take their part, and that grieved me. My friendship with my mother-in-law had also cooled, and I knew without question that my husband would side with his maman. My own dear mother was far away and very ill, her body swollen and in pain. I had not seen her for ten years, but though a great physical distance lay between us, in my heart I was never separated from her and clung to the hope that we would be reunited.

  She could not help me now, nor could I help her.

  I was powerless. And I was alone.

  Chapter 23

  Lord Bothwell

  LORD BOTHWELL HAD WARNED ME that my mother was gravely ill, and I should have prepared myself for her death. Yet when the news reached me, it came as a great shock. I was sitting in a quiet little garden with Beaton, the two of us attempting to learn a new piece to play on our lutes, when my uncle Charles approached. Beaton saw him first.

  “The cardinal is here,” she said softly.

  I was immediately on guard. Though I wished to avoid my Guise uncles whenever I could, it was not always possible. What does he want now? I wondered. But when he got close enough that I could see his face, I knew that he was bringing me bad news.

  I set aside my lute. “What is it, Uncle?” I asked. “Tell it quickly, s’il vous plaît.”

  “Ma chère Marie,” he began, “I regret to tell you that your mother has died.”

  I had risen to greet him, but I sat down again suddenly, my knees buckling. Beaton rushed to kneel beside me. “When?” I asked.

  “On the tenth of this month,” he replied.

  “The tenth! This is the twenty-eighth! Have you only just learned of it?”

  He grimaced. “The news reached France on the eighteenth.”

  I was near collapse, but I was also angry. “Why have you only now told me of the death of my mother?” I demanded.

  “It was thought better to wait, Marie.”

  “Better to wait? Who thought so? Why did you think it better to wait ten days to tell me of the loss of the one I hold dearest?”

  “Marie, you are upsetting yourself,” my uncle said, trying to soothe me.

  But I would not be soothed and had to be helped to my apartments. It was all too much. I fell ill, and for a month I was unable to leave my bed. I came to believe that the death of my mother was God’s vengeance upon me, though I had no idea what great sins I had committed to deserve such punishment.

  ***

  In August I felt strong enough to attend the funeral oration for my mother in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. I was dismayed to find that her coffin was not there. “Has the queen regent’s body not been brought from Scotland?” I asked, and I was told that the Protestant preachers were opposed to the “superstitious practices” of a Catholic funeral and had refused to send it.

  My hurt and rage drove me into seclusion once again, where I remained until the Four Maries succeeded in coaxing me back into the world. But this was not a world in which I fe
lt at ease.

  Treachery and betrayal loomed on every side. Just as I was regaining my strength, I learned that—without any consultation with me and certainly without my consent—the Catholic faith had been outlawed in Scotland, and the Protestant faith officially established in its place. Priests were forbidden to say Mass under penalty of death.

  In another insult to my authority, the council that, under my brother James’s leadership had appointed itself to rule Scotland in my stead, now entered into a treaty with England, the Treaty of Edinburgh. That treaty promised that I would give up my claim to the English throne. The agreement was presented to me in my chamber for my signature.

  “I will not sign it!” I cried and pushed it away. “Not now and not ever will I give up my rightful claim!” I rose from my chair and stormed out of the chamber.

  Once I was calmer, I concluded that it had been a mistake to lose my temper. I needed to find a better way to approach the problem. Perhaps it would be to my advantage to befriend Queen Elizabeth, as one queen to another, rather than challenge her.

  I called in the royal portraitist and requested that he make a drawing of me in the deuil blanc, the long white veil that I wore in mourning for my mother. Next I summoned Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, the English ambassador, and told him that I would send my portrait to his queen if she in turn would send me hers. I asked him to speak to Elizabeth of my desire for friendship and to deliver this message:

  We are, you must remember, of one blood, of one country, and one island. As we are both descendants of King Henry VII, I am your nearest kinswoman, and it would please me if you would call me sister and cousin, in honor of this.

  I was more than a little curious about my sister-queen, as I chose to think of her. I knew that I was nine years younger. I was told that I was much taller and of a better coloring. Some even said that her beauty did not compare with mine, but perhaps that was flattery. What was she really like? I hoped to learn that. But still I would not sign the Treaty of Edinburgh.