At the age of eleven, Mary had received her separate household; and when the time came, she was glad to leave the royal nursery after all, because it had become so crowded. There were now six Valois children sharing quarters with her. Mary had become increasingly aware of the intense scrutiny that Catherine de Médicis turned on all the children, and was relieved to escape it.
The Queen had become increasingly dependent on her fortune-tellers and astronomers, especially one called Nostradamus. She insisted on bringing him in to make pronouncements on the children, and when he had seen Mary he had intoned, “I see blood around that fair head!” which had both annoyed and upset Mary—annoyed her by its rudeness, and upset her in case it might be true. Her annoyance at the astrologer (who was, after all, performing his duty) transferred itself to Catherine, who should have had more tact.
Within her household remained the four Marys, John Erskine, Father Mamerot, Madame Rallay, and her physician, Bourgoing. She liked Bourgoing; he was very young and had just completed his studies at Padua. She still had her band of Scots musicians, for she liked to listen to the music of her native land, even though the French teased her about it. Among themselves the Scots continued to speak their native language occasionally as a novelty.
* * *
When she was alone, Mary would look at herself in the mirror, wondering if what Diane said was true. Was she beautiful? How much taller would she grow? When she developed a woman’s body, would it be graceful and pleasing? Girls changed when they turned into women, that she knew. Plain ones could shine, pretty ones turn out coarse and dull. She hoped—if it did not betray too much vanity, about which Father Mamerot had warned her—that she would not be plain.
* * *
By the time she was fourteen, the poets had discovered her. They hailed her in verse after verse, calling her the equal of any beauty since time began. Mary tried to remember Diane’s warning about beauty being a burden, but she could not help enjoying the words, since they answered her secret fear.
The court historian Brantôme wrote, “In her fifteenth year her beauty began to radiate from her like the sun in a noonday sky.” He praised her hands, “so finely fashioned that those of Aurora herself could not surpass them.”
Pierre de Ronsard, the leading poet of the group that called itself the Pléiad, after the constellation of seven stars, gushed: “O belle et plus que belle et agréable Aurore.”
His fellow Pléiad poet Joachim du Bellay wrote, “Nature et art ont en votre beauté / Mis tout le beau dont la beauté s’assemble”:
Nature and art have combined to make your beauty
The quintessence of all that is beautiful.
He also proclaimed:
The tongue of Hercules, so fables tell,
All people drew by triple chains of steel.
Her simple glance where’er its magic fell,
Made men her slaves, though none the shackles feel.
The painter François Clouet sketched her and painted her, lamenting that as she was a butterfly or a wild creature, she could not sit still for him, and so he was unable to capture her charm. He did one jewellike miniature of her, with a sapphire blue background and a rose-coloured dress, but she looked stiff and mannered in it, he thought—something she was not in life. It could not speak in her voix très douce et très bonne, as a true work of art should. Nor could he get her delicate colouring right; in attempting to capture its translucence he merely made her look wan.
Only the bronze bust sculpted by Jacquio Ponzio captured her posture and bearing, as it could show her exquisitely turned slender neck, and the way she carried her head. She had posed for it daydreaming, her eyes focused on a faraway internal landscape, and in it the artist caught the careless largesse of youth, which thinks it has a thousand tomorrows and does not disdain to dream away today. Her hair was upswept in curls, her almond-shaped eyes serene, her mouth almost melancholy. Only the merest whisper of a smile touched her small mouth; otherwise the statue looked out in Olympian detachment.
X
For all that, the young Queen hailed as une vrai Déesse—a veritable goddess—loved to romp and run and ride and often lamented that she was not born a man, to wear a sword and armour. Her uncle the Duc de Guise, the hero-general of France, who had just wrested Calais from the English, compared the girl’s courage to his own.
“Yes, my niece, there is one trait in which, above all others, I recognize my own blood in you—you are as brave as my bravest men-at-arms. If women went into battle now, as they did in ancient times, I think you would know how to die well. And I, my dear, should know,” he said. “For I have seen enough of both kinds—cowards and brave men. Bravery is a Guise trait; look at your mother’s courage in holding Scotland for you against the heretic rebels. Ah, that is true courage!”
“Truly she is beset,” said Mary, hurt by the thought. Her uncle was needed to fight against the English who had invaded France, else he could go directly to her mother’s aid in Scotland. He was so wonderful, he could do anything.…
“Yet, as I said, she holds out bravely.” The Duc looked around the room approvingly. It had been an altogether satisfactory arrangement to set Mary up with her own household at court after her eleventh birthday. Of course, the stingy Scots had not wanted to foot the extra bills for it. As if the French should be obliged to, after all they were already spending to keep troops in Scotland! In the end the Scots had coughed up the money, and the furnishings in the royal rooms were quite passable. A few more rugs would be appreciated, but—he shrugged—one could not squeeze milk from a dried-up udder. Or extra money from a Scottish oatcake, those odd, fodder-tasting cakes they fancied.
He looked at Mary, in her establishment four years now. It had all worked out so well, as if Fate herself had arranged all the details. That the girl should grow up to be beautiful but trusting, ready to believe that people were what they seemed to be. That she should have such a love for her mother—a mother so seldom seen that now, in truth, it was a love that existed for an imaginary person, shaped by her own longings—that she would do anything for her, and, by extension, for her mother’s brothers. All of them worked together, with one goal: to control both France and Scotland. Mary, this tall, spirited girl, was the central point in the turning wheel around which all their ambitions revolved.
The first step had been taken when the French Parliament had been persuaded to proclaim that it was Mary’s desire that she now be granted the right to name her own regent in Scotland; the Scots had to agree, or lose French support. Mary promptly named her mother to be Regent. Out went the erstwhile Regent, the Earl of Arran, head of the House of Hamilton, and all his men. He was pacified with the French dukedom of Chatelherault. In came the French administrators.
Marie then did her part and appointed her brothers to be Mary’s keepers and ministers in France: Duc François was to guide her in earthly things, Cardinal Charles in spiritual ones. Mary was an apt and loyal pupil under their tutelage. She would be their perfect queen and perfect creature when the time came for her to mount the throne. Now that Calais had been won, the French people could deny the Duc nothing; so the time had come to press for the wedding of Mary to the Dauphin, to secure it once and for all.
In Scotland things had not gone so smoothly. It seemed that the Scots had a fervent dislike of “foreigners.” For centuries they had hated the English, the “auld enemy.” But now that the French were close at hand, they decided they hated them worse. They seemed to have forgotten why the French had come there—and at great expense, too!—in the first place: to get rid of the English for them. Now they had started to rebel against the French.
“From what you tell me, dear Uncle, soon more troops will be needed.”
“We will send whatever is necessary,” he said coldly. “The country will never fall from your hands. France will not permit it.”
“Oh! If I were a man! I’d fight them myself!” she cried.
The Duc smiled. “Like your ancestor Charl
emagne! Like your other ancestor Saint Louis, on the Crusade against the infidel. Yes, I believe you would!” He looked at her slim tall form, her shining face—like a young knight’s. “How tall you are!” he suddenly said, realizing she was his own height—about six feet. “Again, like a true Guise!” He put his arm around her shoulders; her bones were delicate, for all her height.
“Is there no Scots in me at all?” she asked, and he could not tell what she wished the answer to be. Odd, as he could usually read her mind. “No trace of Stewart?”
“When you dress à la sauvage, in the furs and plaids,” he said cautiously. She was a pretty sight in that barbaric costume she affected once in a while.
“That is something I put on from the outside. I meant from the inside,” she insisted.
“Well, you like your Scots musicians—you’ve kept your own band all this while to play you that … unusual music.”
“I enjoy it,” she insisted.
“Yes, well, that proves you’re Scots,” he said. “To any other ears, it’s an odd sound.”
The gilded table-clock began to strike the hour of eleven, each chime a separate bell.
“Do you like it?” asked Mary.
“Very much.” The Duc examined its painted face, black numerals on ivory. It had little gold feet, and a moon dial showing a dreamy-faced disk.
“I gave it to myself,” she confessed. “I do not know why I am so taken with clocks and watches.”
“Yes, I remember the striking watch with a death’s head you gave your—what do you call her?—your Marie?”
“Oh. That.” Mary looked embarrassed. “It caught my fancy, with its bell ringing inside the tiny silver skull, and its engravings of time and symbols of eternity. And Mary Seton is—tends to be—so absorbed in religious devotions. It is small enough to be carried into chapel. It seemed the sort of thing a monk would have coveted.”
“Monks aren’t supposed to covet.” He smiled, and the great battle scar on his cheek—the one people called le Balafre—buckled along its seam.
“But others covet the things of the monks,” said Mary. “Like old Harry of England—he just turned the monks out and took their things.”
“If I may say so, Your Grace, at least he was forthright about it—unlike your father, who made his nobles and bastards ‘lay abbots’ of the rich monasteries, so they could take whatever they wanted. Even your brother, James Stewart, is helping himself to the spoils of—what is his monastery?—St. Andrews. And he is so staid and sanctimonious!” The Duc had little use for the hypocritical prude. He had met him twice and disliked him both times.
“In fact,” he continued, “your father made all his bastards ‘priors,’ didn’t he? Providing for them at church expense. John Stewart is Prior of Coldingham, and Robert Stewart, Prior of Holyrood, and another James, Prior of Melrose and Kelso, and another Robert, Prior of Whithorn, and Adam Stewart, Prior of Charterhouse at Perth. A veritable family of holy men!”
Mary felt anger rise in her at hearing her father attacked. “Are things so much more noble in France? How is it that three of your brothers are princes of the church? Two cardinals, and one Grand Prior of the fighting order of St. John of Jerusalem? Why, good uncle Charles was made cardinal when he was but twenty-three! And by the King. Was it because of his upstanding, devout life?”
Le Balafre was caught by surprise. She has a temper, he thought. That’s not good. She would be perfect if only she were more docile. Lately she has been too questioning.
“I will let him answer for himself,” said the Duc smoothly, as he saw the valet de chambre opening the doors for the belated guest. He had been due at half past ten.
“Pardon, pardon!” the Cardinal exclaimed. “I am so sorry to be late!”
A smile lit his delicate features as he came toward Mary and the Duc. He had eyes the pale blue of the March skies arching over the Loire, and his ivory colouring would have made him parchment-pretty, but his chin was weak and made even weaker by a bifurcated whispy beard hanging from it. Its straggly hairs got caught in his impeccably ironed and starched collar-ruff. Why did he wear such a face-spoiler? Mary wondered, not for the first time. She always hoped that he would come in without it the next time, and was always disappointed.
“But I have brought much news, both good and bad!” He patted his velvet dispatch bag.
“Shall we eat first?” said the Duc. “News of any sort digests better on a full stomach.” He was starving. During the recent campaign at Calais, he had permitted himself only the rations of his soldiers, which were scant, it being winter. Yet that had won the battle for them, attacking unexpectedly in January.… Now he needed to feed well before returning to the field and its deprivations.
“Indeed,” said Mary, leading them to the private dining table set at one end of her chamber. With complete naturalness she took her place of honour under her cloth of estate; she was, after all, a reigning sovereign. Eating elsewhere, out from under the royal canopy, would have felt as naked as dining with no clothes.
She nodded to her servitors, and they began to bring in the dishes—some thirty of them. Although most were the usual fare—stuffed eel and bream, chicken in vinegar sauce, goose and duck—she had tried to provide a delicacy or two, difficult in this drear time of year when nothing fresh was available. Spring seemed a long time away.
The servitors were presenting caramelized apple turnovers, and the Cardinal seemed genuinely impressed. Mary was pleased, as the Cardinal was known for his finicky palate and constant searching for novelties at table. He popped a good bit of it in his mouth with the gold-handled fork, and his beard bobbed up and down.
“Exquisite, my dear. Truly.” He smiled and took a sip of the sweet, heady wine from Anjou in the Venetian crystal goblet. Sensual pleasure shone in his eyes.
As the last of the sweets was being cleared away, Mary could wait no longer. “What is your news?” she begged. “Please, withhold it no longer!”
“It is this.” He smiled and brushed a crumb from his velvet sleeve. “The war goes so well for us that it seems God Himself is on our side. Philip and his English toadies are turning tail.” He paused. “But that is news for my brother. For you, ma mignonne, I have this: I have just heard from Scotland. The terms of the marriage are approved, and nine commissioners—including your brother James and some of the highest nobles in the land—set sail next week to come here, draw up the legal documents, and … attend your wedding to the Dauphin François!”
“Oh! When?”
“In some three months’ time. April. You will wed at the height of spring. Can you bear to wait till then?”
“I have waited for ten years. And I will need at least that long to have my dress made—it will be white, I love white—like a blooming pear tree—”
“White is the colour of solemnity, of mourning,” said the ever-fashionable Cardinal quickly. “It would be bad luck.”
“I don’t believe in such things. White is my colour, my chosen colour,” she said stubbornly. “I look the best in white; Brantôme says so. He said, ‘La blancheur de son visage contendoit avec la blancheur de son voile a qui l’emporteroit’—‘the whiteness of her face rivaled the whiteness of her veil.’”
“You said there was other news,” said the Duc, impatient with all this dress talk.
The Cardinal clearly preferred to stay in the land of veils and satins. He sighed. “Yes. At almost the same time as the nine commissioners agreed to the marriage, several of them signed a covenant.”
“What sort of a covenant?” The Duc’s voice was sharp. “Covenant” sounded like a Geneva, Protestant word.
“Calling themselves ‘the First Band of the Congregation,’ they have pledged to—to work for the cause of the Reformed religion in Scotland.”
“Protestants!” gasped Mary, in the same shock as if she had heard a bat flying overhead.
“Protestants!” growled the Duc. “I knew it! I knew that filthy preacher, Knox, would make more converts there!
”
“Oh, and that he has. Made converts everywhere.” The Cardinal reached in his pouch and drew out a tract. “This is his latest utterance.”
The Duc took it. “The bleating fool must be silenced.”
Mary reached out and took it from him in turn. “The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. What is he saying?” she asked. “‘To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city is repugnant to nature, contumely to God.…” She read silently on, then burst out, “‘For their sight in civil regiment is but blindness, their counsel foolishness, and judgement frenzy. Nature, I say, doth paint them forth to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish, and experience hath declared them to be unconstant, variable, cruel, and lacking the spirit of counsel and regiment.…’”
“It goes on for many pages, Your Grace,” said the Cardinal. “Lots of Old Testament references, typically Protestant, quite tedious. He writes it against the ‘three Marys’—you, your mother, but most against Mary Tudor, because of her true Catholicism. Listen to this, it is quite amusing.” The Cardinal thumbed through the manuscript.
“Cursed Jezebel of England, with the pestilent and detestable generation of papists … man and woman, learned and unlearned … have tasted of their tyranny. So that now not only the blood of Father Latimer, of the mild man of God, the Bishop of Canterbury, of learned and discreet Ridley, of innocent Lady Jane Dudley … doth call for vengeance in the ears of the Lord God of hosts; but also the sobs and tears of the oppressed, the groanings of the angels, the watchmen of the Lord, yea, and every earthly creature abused by their tyranny, do continually cry and call for the hasty execution of the same.”