Her uncles had harangued her, demanding to know, was there no hope that she could be with child? It was assumed, although no one really knew, that François had not yet been able to consummate their marriage. He was so frail, so fragile. It had not mattered in the least to Mary, who loved him. But the dynastic implications that so vexed her ambitious, ruthless uncles now worried her, too. Part of her wished to protect François; poor little boy… she did not wish to shame him before the entire court. But her monthly clouts were watched by her servants and the Queen Mother; they at least knew that there was no possibility that if François died, she would produce his son in good time. She had told her frustrated uncles that she was not certain, but they knew she lied.
After a while, the seeping, foul-smelling yellow discharge appeared to stop. And then that morning when the surgeon had removed the bandage, the pressure of his touch resulted in another explosion of pus and blood from the king’s ear, nose and mouth. None now believed that he could survive.
The Queen Mother sat vigil on the other side of the bed. Catherine regarded her daughter-in-law from under hooded lids. During her husband’s lifetime, she had been forced to give place to his mistress; for ten long, childless years she had been despised as barren. And even when she produced ten children in succession, still she was shunted aside as of no importance. When Henri died, she had succeeded in banishing the hated Diane, but her son had chosen his wife above his mother, and once again she had had to cede power, this time to Mary of Scotland’s Guise uncles. And see what a disaster that had been! The country had been a roiling stew ever since the Tumult of Amboise. But now, all of her patience, her fortitude, her forbearance, was about to pay off. She loved François, her firstborn, her deliverer from the shame of barrenness…but she could see now that only with his untimely death would she ever come into her own. When François drew his last breath, in one swift stroke she would be rid of both Mary and her Guise uncles. The new king would be her son Charles, who was only ten years old and unmarried. She would be a Queen Mother who would truly rule France as regent, her power and authority this time unchallenged.
Mary did not realize that Queen Catherine had been staring at her all this time. She was too intent upon François to attend to anyone else in the room. Had she lifted her eyes at that moment, she would have seen the glaring, implacable hatred with which her mother-in-law regarded her. Catherine had always pretended to be swayed by Mary’s charms, just as all the others around her in her little world were; but it was not so. She loathed her pretentious daughter-in-law, but had always been too astute to show her real feelings. Mary was royal, she had been a queen all her life, but Catherine was not. She was the daughter of a commoner, albeit a rich one, who had married a distant relative of the French royal family. With no consideration for Catherine’s mother’s royal connections, Mary of Scotland had once, when Diane was in the ascendant, dismissed Catherine as nothing more than a merchant’s daughter. Catherine had been mightily offended by this slur upon her clever, remarkable, successful father, Lorenzo de’ Medici, and she had vowed vengeance on Mary for the insult to herself.
And now she was about to taste that vengeance in full measure.
Kentwell Hall, Suffolk, July 1561
“God’s teeth!” cried Elizabeth. “Are you certain that this is not some vile jest?”
Robert sighed. “Quite certain,” he said. “It is a miracle that she has been able to conceal her state up to this point. That will not be possible for much longer.”
“Stupid, stupid girl!” said Elizabeth, shaking her head. Conceal, indeed! She would wager that a certain Mistress Kat Ashley, who as Chief Lady of the Bedchamber was also Mistress of the Maids, knew all about the situation and had been too chicken-hearted to tell her. She paced the room and lightly beat her chin with her clasped hands. “Tell it me again. From the beginning.”
As he recalled the unnerving episode of the night before, Robert’s bowels cramped with fear at the memory and his blood turned once again, for just a moment, to ice water. He was not at all surprised at this spontaneous physical reaction to the very real terror that he had felt at the moment when he realized that there was a woman in his bedchamber and that only a wall separated the two of them from the jealous queen.
Elizabeth never did anything by half measures. It was true that she was often indecisive; this trait of the queen’s was frequently the despair of her Council, but once a decision was made, it was made. And so when Robert had been exonerated of his wife’s death and recalled to court, he had once again been given rooms next door to her own, or that not being possible, just below them, everywhere they went. Kentwell Hall was an ancient manor house, but Sir Francis Clopton, when he heard that the queen planned to pay him a visit on her Summer Progress that year, had built on to accommodate the court. The current style for new houses was to build them in the shape of an E, in flattery to Her Grace; with Kentwell that was not possible, but Sir Francis compromised by adding a Long Gallery for the queen’s pleasure, and above it, spacious connecting rooms for her suite. And her suite always included Lord Robert. Any courtier who wished to please the queen did not wait to be asked to make such arrangements for her visit.
Robert shook off the unpleasant feeling and said, “I was awakened to the sound of whimpering and the sight of a wavering candle flame. At first I thought I was dreaming. But then I saw that it was Katherine. She blurted out that she had married the Earl of Hertford secretly at Christmastide, but now he was gone to France and she is with child and too frightened of you to tell you what she had done.”
“And with good cause!” rounded Elizabeth. “Thoughtless, rash, irresponsible creature!”
Robert ran a sheepish hand through his hair. “It gets worse, I fear me. The only witness to the marriage was Hertford’s sister, Lady Jane, and she succumbed last March to the lung rot. In addition, the lady cannot recall the name of the priest who performed the ceremony. Also, Lady Katherine claims that when Hertford was sent to France, he left with her a deed of jointure naming her his wife and settling a thousand pounds a year on her, but the lady has misplaced the document.” And this was the woman who sought to be recognized as heir to the throne of England! It was laughable.
Elizabeth abruptly stopped her pacing and her face brightened. “That is not worse, Sweet Robin, that is better! Do you not see?”
The only thing that Robert could see at the moment was that he had averted disaster by proactively informing the queen that his dead brother’s sister-in-law had come into his room in the middle of the night without his consent before anyone else who might have observed the situation could use the knowledge to harm him with the queen.
When he did not respond, Elizabeth resumed her pacing. She nibbled a cuticle. “Robert, if no one can substantiate that the marriage ever took place, then perhaps it did not.”
Robert regarded her blankly.
“Robert,” said Elizabeth. “Consider. There are many who would seek to wrap me untimely in my shroud, which is what declaring a successor to myself would certainly do. Am I not one who knows only too well what being heir to the throne truly means? All knew, it was taken for granted, that I would follow my sister to the throne if she died childless, and after two false pregnancies, that assumption became not merely supposition but reality. I almost lost my head several times because of zealous men who wished to do away with my sister and place me on her throne untimely. As long as I continue to let the issue of the succession remain unresolved, the likelihood of that happening in my reign is lessened. Katherine is putative heir by my father’s will, but Mary of Scotland also has a valid claim, and I must admit, if only to you whom I love and trust, a much better one. As long as I keep everyone guessing as to which person I prefer in the role of successor, the chances of insurrection are slimmer. But this changes everything. If the Lady Katherine bears a son, her position shall be immeasurably strengthened. But not if I can prove that she is a fornicator and her child a bastard!”
Elizabeth reac
hed one end of the room and turned from the wall with a swish of skirts; she paced towards the other end with her hands on her hips, just as her father had been wont to do.
“By the Rood,” she said, “I winked at my cousin’s puerile plotting with the Spanish ambassadors. That was surely a treason, and now this is another! She has broken the law. No one in the line of succession, named or not, may marry without the express permission of the reigning sovereign. I want her in the Tower forthwith; make the arrangements. And have Cecil call the Earl of Hertford back from France immediately. He has a lot to answer for, by the Rood! And in any case, my cousin’s foolish behavior certainly puts paid to her pathetic intrigues with the Spaniards.”
Still Robert said nothing; Elizabeth stopped in mid-stride and said, “What is it?”
He took a deep breath. “All such problems should melt away into oblivion if you were to marry me and bear our child.”
Elizabeth just stared at him in disbelief. And yet she had known that this day was bound to come. And so it begins, she thought wryly.
Edinburgh, August 1561
The rancid odor of stale cooking issued forth from the dwellings Mary passed as her cavalcade made its slow way through the winding, narrow streets of Edinburgh. These unpleasant smells mingled with the perfume of the flower garlands that had been hung from the windows to welcome their queen back to her homeland. It was high summer and the sickly-sweet combination of scents made her want to gag. The offal from the tanneries and butcher shops, the debris and effluvia of months, perhaps years, had been swept from the streets that her procession was to take, but wafting over her on the warm breeze came the rotten smell of the rubbish heaps that lay just out of sight down the winding alleyways. The foul reek of too many long-unwashed bodies pressed together was rank in her nostrils. On top of it all, the fetid, ever-present stench of what could only be raw sewage pervaded the air. Mary and her ladies held their spice-scented pomanders to their noses, but doing so only seemed to add to the miasma.
Suddenly she felt her gorge rise, perceived the sour taste of bitter bile in her throat, and fought it back down. She would not give these people the satisfaction of seeing her discomfiture. For it was clear by the half-hearted cheers she was receiving that not everyone was prepared to welcome back this Frenchified creature, bedecked in silks and satins and dripping with jewels, who although they had been told was their queen, seemed as alien to them as a creature of myth. She had, after all, been gone for twelve years. Her mother had been French, and she herself had been raised at the French court. Therefore, French, not English, was her first language; she knew just enough English to be able to converse with the envoys Elizabeth had sent to the French court over the years. The smug satisfaction many felt at the ousting of the French from Scotland was reflected in the hostile glares of her countrymen. Now she knew the truth; the Scots hated the French and were glad that they had been banished from Scottish soil.
Edinburgh Castle was perched high atop a mighty hill, and the tired horses strained to climb it. The ring of their shoes on the cobblestones sounded discordant and jarred her already frazzled nerves. How she longed to reach the castle and bathe!
Beside her rode Mary Seton, one of the four handmaidens, all named Mary, who served her. Her Marys were so devoted to their mistress that they had taken vows of chastity after François’s death; they would not marry until their mistress found another husband.
“Ah, Seton,” sighed Mary, looking around her at the muddle and clutter that was her capital city. “What is to become of us?” she cried on a sob.
“Ah, my lady, don’t,” said Seton tenderly. “You are tired, and overwrought. Things will seem better when you have had a good rest.”
Mary wiped her tears away with an impatient hand. “Things will never be the same again,” she said miserably. “François, dear husband, dear brother, dead; and all of us banished to this inhospitable land!” It was odd, though; her memories of Scotland had always been of an enchanted land of mists like dragon’s breath, and the excitement of always being on the move. It had all seemed so much like a game, with herself as the prize whom everyone sought. Her mother, to protect her; the men who sought to kidnap her, to send her to England, to force her to marry her little cousin Edward. What her mother and the Scots had against Edward she never did know; but she was glad that she had been sent to France. If Scotland had seemed like a fairyland to her young, inexperienced eyes, France was a paradise. No shrouding mists, no dark, cold castles there! All was warmth and beauty; at least it had seemed so.
When they arrived at the port of Leith, it was early morning and the land had been shrouded in mist, but this time, the mist did not seem magical to her. Now it was just cold and damp. A watery sun failed to disperse the dense fog; even at midday it still wrapped its fingers around them.
As last they had come ashore and mounted their horses. The docks were seedy, smelly and unimpressive. But as they left the port behind them and proceeded up the road that led to Edinburgh, the sights and smells that met them only worsened. Where was the culture, the refinement, the beauty, that she had known in France? Had all of that simply passed Scotland by? How could that be, when the French had ruled Scotland for so long? At least, her mother had been regent, and had been an influence on the court…she thought… since her marriage to the king who had been her father. But it seemed that Scotland must have resisted such refinement.
“Merciful Christ, Seton…is this what my poor mother contended with for over twenty years?” Mary pulled her delicately embroidered linen square from her sleeve and dried her eyes, which would not stop streaming tears.
“My lady,” Seton replied, “you must pull yourself together before we reach the castle.”
Mary nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I suppose I must.” But how, in the face of all this squalor, was she to do so? She dried her tears once more and straightened her back. “We must just make the best of things.”
Seton nodded. “Indeed,” she replied. But looking around her she was hard pressed to see what there was to work with!
As they rode into the castle precincts the cannon boomed and the men and women of the court, gathered to welcome her, cheered lustily. But Mary was uncertain if their enthusiasm was genuine or feigned. In France the arrival of a queen would have been a glittering affair. It was now driven home to her with some force the vast difference between France, her adopted country, and Scotland, her natural one. France was glittering, opulent, rich; Scotland was cold, stark, barren and poor in comparison.
And there was another glaring difference; it was her very self. A thought flashed through her mind of the time the French had seized a Spanish galleon in the Channel, which had been returning from the New World, laden with treasure. Aboard had been a fortune in gold and silver, but there had also been a cache of exotic birds. Their colorful plumage had been a wonder to all who beheld them. Mary had always been exquisitely attired at the French court, but then so had everyone else; here in Scotland, for the first time in her life, she felt overdressed and out of place. The people stared at her, not all of them approvingly, as if she were one of those fantastic birds from the Spanish ship. It made her markedly uncomfortable, she who had always been so universally adored and supremely self-confident.
In the midst of her heartbreak, she noticed something else. In France the magnificent gardens had been wonderlands of fantasy, with their colorful flowers, enchanting topiary, and splashing fountains, made and kept for the pleasure of the court as a backdrop to their own elegance. Here there were no gardens. Only stone walls and cold stares.
Mary Fleming had come up on her other side as the passageways leading up the hill had widened. She perceived the queen’s distress, reached out a steadying hand, and placed it upon Mary’s arm.
Mary placed her hand atop Fleming’s; her own was cold and clammy. “Oh, Fleming,” she cried. “I do not think that I can bear it!”
“Your Grace, you must,” whispered Fleming. “Above all, you must not l
et them see your distress.”
In France the coming of a queen would have meant days of celebrations, tourneys, jousts, masques, and balls. Here, she knew, there would be nothing. She would be nothing.
Even more distressing was that The Lords of the Congregation had changed, without her consent, the religion of this, her homeland. She had been informed before her arrival that her Catholic religion would be allowed, would be tolerated, but she must hear her Mass in private and her priests must keep a low profile. Allowed! Tolerated! It was unendurable. But after the horror of the killings in Amboise that she had been forced to witness, she knew that never could she visit upon her own country the terrible punishments associated with religious persecution. Her dreams of restoring the Catholic faith to Scotland evaporated before her very eyes as she regarded the cold, dour faces of her Scottish subjects.
Even Elizabeth had let her down. Once she knew that there was no alternative but to leave her beloved France behind and return to Scotland, Mary had imagined a triumphal entry into England, where she was to have been feted and made much of. There, at least, she would have had her balls and the fetes one expected to celebrate the arrival of a queen. She had planned to sail from Calais to Dover, where she would have been received with all the pomp and splendor that was her due as Elizabeth’s cousin, fellow queen, and northerly neighbor. After dazzling the English court, she would have made a slow progress north through the English countryside, encouraging the English Catholics and being made much of by the gentry.
But those hopes had all been dashed when Elizabeth angrily refused her safe conduct through English waters, and had denied her request to travel to Scotland through England. And Mary knew why! Elizabeth was jealous of her beauty and fearful of her charm. Elizabeth was bastard and heretic, and had no right to the throne upon which she sat, which was rightfully Mary’s own. Her cousin had used as the excuse for her rebuff Mary’s stubborn refusal to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh. Which she would never agree to do as long as it contained clauses that denied her the right of succession!
In High Places Page 16