In truth this brief period of royalty in France passed for Mary like a dream—a poignant, uneasy and anxious dream. The ceremony at the cathedral at Rheims—where the archbishop crowned the sickly youth, and where the lovely girl-Queen, bedecked with the jewels appropriate to her position, shone forth from among the nobles like a slender white lily not yet in full bloom—was an isolated occasion of splendour. Except for this the chronicles have nothing to tell of festivals or merry-making. Fate left Mary Stuart no time to found the troubadour’s court of the arts and poesy for which she yearned; left the painters no time to finish portraits of the monarch and his lovely wife in the panoply of royal robes; no time for historians to describe their respective characters; no time for the populace to make close acquaintance with its new rulers or learn to love them. In the long procession of kings and queens of France, the figures of these two children are driven onward like mist wreaths before the wind.
Francis II, a tainted tree in the forest, was doomed to premature death. In a round and bloated face, timid eyes, weary and reminding us of those of one who has been startled out of sleep, give the dominant expression to his countenance. His strength was further undermined by a sudden and extensive growth in stature such as often occurs at his age. Physicians watched over him sedulously and urgently advised him to take care of himself. But the boy was animated by a foolish dread lest he should be outdone by his willowy, untiring wife, who was passionately devoted to outdoor sports. That he might seem hale and manly he rode hell-for-leather and engaged in other exhausting bodily exercises. But nature could not be cheated. His blood was incurably sluggish, was poisoned by an evil heritage from his grandfather Francis I. Again and again he was laid low by paroxysms of fever. When the weather was inclement, he had to keep indoors, restive and bored, a pitiful shade, surrounded by his train of doctors. So weakly a king aroused more pity than respect among his courtiers; among the common people, on the other hand, it was soon bruited abroad that he was smitten with leprosy and that he bathed in the blood of freshly killed children in the hope of regaining health. The peasants regarded the stricken lad menacingly when he went out riding. At court, those with an eye to the future were beginning to throng round Catherine de’ Medici and Charles, the next heir to the throne. Hands so weak as Francis’ could not long nor firmly grip the reins of power. Now and again, in stiff, awkward writing, the boy would pen his “François” at the foot of decrees, but the real rulers were the Guises, the kin of Mary Stuart, in place of one whose energies must be devoted to keeping his vital spark aglow as long as possible. Such a sick-room companionship, with its perpetual watchfulness over failing health, can scarcely be spoken of as a happy marriage, even if we suppose it to have been a marriage in any true sense of the term. Yet there is nothing to justify the supposition that the union of these youngsters was an unhappy one, for even at this malicious court where gossip was rife, at this court where every amourette was recorded by Brantôme in his Vie des dames galantes, no suspicion seems to have been aroused by Mary Stuart’s behaviour. Long before they were dragged to the altar, Francis of Valois and Mary Stuart had been playmates, and it seems unlikely that the erotic element can have had much part in their companionship after the wedding. Years were still to pass before there was to develop in Mary Queen of Scots the capacity for passionate self-surrender to a lover, and Francis, an ailing boy, was not the type of male to arouse the passion hidden so deep in the enigmatic nature of his wife. Tenderness and clemency of character prompted Mary to care for her husband to the best of her ability. Even if she had not been moved to this by feeling, her reason would have informed her that power and position depended upon the breathing and the heartbeats of this poor, sick body, to safeguard which would be to defend her own happiness. But for real happiness, during her brief span of queenship in France, there was no scope. The storms aroused by the Huguenot movement were causing widespread agitation. After the conspiracy of Amboise, in which the royal pair were personally endangered, Mary had to pay one of the painful tributes called for by her position as ruler. She had to witness the execution of the rebels, and we may well suppose that the sight was deeply graven in her memory, forgotten then, maybe, for decades, to leap back again into vivid reality when the hour of her own doom struck. Now she watched the awesome sight of a human being, hands tied behind the back, kneeling with head on the block and awaiting the fall of the executioner’s axe. She heard for the first time the curiously muffled and dull tone of steel that severs living flesh, she saw the blood squirt, and the head rolling away from the body into the sand. A picture gruesome enough to blot out from the remembrance of a sensitive soul the splendid scenes so recently enacted at Rheims when her young head was crowned.
Now evil tidings followed quickly one upon the other. Mary’s mother, Mary of Guise, who had been acting as regent in Scotland during her daughter’s minority, had reached her end and, surrounded by enemies, breathed her last in June 1560. She left the country embroiled in religious strife and in full rebellion, with war raging along the border and English armies occupying the Lowlands. Mary Stuart had to exchange her festal attire for mourning. For the time being she was to hear no more music; her feet were for a while no longer to tread the mazes of the dance. Then Death’s bony knuckle came knocking at the door of her hearth and home. Francis II grew weaker and weaker; the envenomed blood usually flowing so sluggishly through his veins now beat a tattoo in his temples and his ears. No more could he even walk or ride, but had to be carried in a litter from place to place. At length the gathering pus burst the eardrum; but it was too late, for the inflammation had already spread inwards to the brain, and the sufferer was beyond reach of medical aid. His heart ceased to beat on 6th December 1560.
Once more a tragical scene between two women was played to the finish beside this second deathbed. Hardly was the breath out of Francis’ frail body when Mary Stuart, no longer Queen of France, had to yield precedence to Catherine de’ Medici; the younger of the royal widows had to draw back at the door in order to allow the elder one to go first. Mary was no longer the first lady in the realm, but again, as before, the second. One short year sufficed to bring Mary Stuart’s dream to an end. She would never again be reigning Queen of France, but must henceforth remain till the hour of her death what she had always been from birth: Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles.
The rigours of regal etiquette in France decreed that a king’s widow should pass forty days in strict seclusion during which she might not for a moment leave her private apartments, or admit the daylight into her rooms. In the first two weeks of mourning she was forbidden to receive any visitors except the new King and his next of kin, and these she entertained in her retreat which, gloomy as it was and lit only by candles, resembled a living tomb. Nor might a royal widow wear the regulation black adopted almost universally by commoners as a sign of bereavement. The widow of a French monarch had to don the “deuil blanc”—white mourning—prescribed by the law of the land. A white coif framed the pale face, a white brocade dress covered body and limbs, the shoes and stockings were white. Ample folds of white fell from head to waist. This is how Janet depicts Mary Stuart in the days of her mourning; this is how Ronsard portrays her in words:
Un crespe long, subtil et délié
Ply contre ply, retors et replié
Habit de deuil, vous sert de couvertuire,
Depuis le chef jusques à la ceinture,
Qui s’enfle ainsi qu’un voile quand le vent
Soufle la barque et la cingle en avant.
De tel habit vous étiez accoutrée
Partant, hélas! de la belle contrée
Dont aviez eu le sceptre dans la main,
Lorsque, pensive et baignant votre sein
Du beau cristal de vos larmes coulées
Triste marchiez par les longues allées
Du grand jardin de ce royal château
Qui prend son nom de la beauté des eaux.
(A long veil, soft and clinging, fold upon fol
d, a mourning garb, swathes your body from head to waist. It bellies and fills like a sail before the wind, urging the barque along. Thus were you clad when, alas, you left the beautiful land whose sceptre you had held in your hand, when, pensive and weeping as you were, tears, like crystals, coursed down your cheeks while you paced the long alleyways in the gardens of that royal castle whose name derives from the beauty of its waters.) Never before had this young and sympathetic and gentle creature been more successfully painted than at this time of her first grief and her first disappointment. Her roving and restless eyes had become steadfast and earnest in expression; the dignity of her bearing is more obvious in the modest and simple garb of mourning than in the portraits which show her bedecked with gems and the insignia of power.
The same dignified melancholy speaks to us from the lines she herself composed as a lament for her dead husband. These verses are not unworthy of the young Queen’s master, Ronsard. Even if it had not been penned by a queen, the tender elegy would appeal to any heart through the simplicity of its tone and its touching candour. Here we find no passionate regret for the young dead King, since Mary Stuart was always truthful and candid where poetry was concerned, though not invariably so in the world of politics. But we are given a picture of her utter loneliness, and the feeling that she was lost and forsaken.
Sans cesse mon coeur sent
Le regret d’un absent.
Si parfois vers les cieux
Viens à dresser ma veue
Le doux traict de ses yeux
Je vois dans une nue;
Soudain je vois dans l’eau
Comme dans un tombeau.
Si je suis en repos
Someillant sur ma couche,
Je le sens qu’il me touche:
En labeur, en recoy
Toujour est près de moy.
(Unceasingly my heart bemoans the absence of my dear. If to the distant skies I lift my mournful gaze, I see his gentle eyes gaze down from the misty heights; and the waters all around seem to me like a grave. When, resting on my couch, I close my eyes and drowse, his hand softly strokes me. In labour and repose his presence never quits my side.) Mary Stuart’s sorrow at the loss of her husband, Francis II, was undeniably genuine, and not merely a poetical fiction. For in losing Francis, Mary not only lost a pleasant and docile companion and an affectionate friend, but at the same time her position among European potentates, her power and her security. This woman, who was still half a child, soon felt how much it signified to her stability and gratification to be the first lady in a great kingdom, and how paltry it was to have to be content with playing second fiddle. Indeed, for proud natures, this is even more galling than to be nobody at all. Mary’s situation was rendered if anything bitterer by Catherine de’ Medici’s open hostility now that that haughtiest member of a haughty house had resumed her old place at Court. It would appear that Mary, in an unwitting moment, goaded by the inconsiderate rashness of youth, had incurred the elder lady’s undying displeasure by hazarding an observation on the commercial origins of the wealthy family of Medici, and referring to the upstart ancestors of this merchant’s daughter, thus making a derogatory comparison with her own long line of kingly forefathers. Such scatterbrained utterances—heedless and ill-advised, she was at a future date to let her tongue run away with her in regard to Elizabeth of England as well—when spoken by one woman to the detriment of another, are more devastating in their consequences than open invectives. Catherine’s ambitions had already been thwarted during two long decades through the power wielded by Diane de Poitiers; then came Mary Stuart’s rise. Hardly, therefore, had she at length entered into her own and taken her place in the political arena when she allowed her detestation of these two rivals to find challenging and dictatorial vent.
But in Mary Stuart’s case, pride, which was an essential trait in her make-up, prevented her from accepting a minor part. High-hearted and passionate by nature, she refused half-glories and petty positions. Better to be accounted nothing, better to be dead, than to be an underling. For a space she thought seriously of retiring to a nunnery, of eschewing worldly prerogatives, of forfeiting her rights and privileges, since she could not be the leading lady of her court. But life was still too seductive a business for a girl of eighteen to go against the dictates of her innermost being and give up its allurements for ever. Besides, it was possible that the lost crown might yet be compensated for by the acquisition of another, and no less resplendent, one. The Spanish ambassador was even now suing for Mary on behalf of Don Carlos, the heir to two worlds; the court of Austria was simultaneously undertaking secret negotiations; the Kings of Sweden and of Denmark were offering her throne and hand. And was she not, as ever, a queen in her own right; was she not Queen of Scotland and the Isles? Then there was the neighbour crown of England which might fall to her at any moment. Incalculable possibilities lay around the girl-widow now ripening to the full beauty of womanhood—though henceforward she would have to grab what she could get. Gone for ever the days when treasures dropped into her lap like gifts from the gods. Henceforward she would have to fight a lone hand, would have to seize what she wanted by the manipulation of the arts of diplomacy, using her utmost skill, exercising patience. But with such an abundance of courage, with so much loveliness at her command, with youth to warm her blossoming body, why should she not venture on the boldest game? Resolute and greatly daring, Mary Stuart marched forth to battle.
Granted, it would be hard to bid farewell to France. She had lived twelve years at this royal court, in this beautiful, wealthy, happy land that seemed more like home to her than Scotland, which had by now become no more than a vague memory of childhood. Here, in France, dwelt her mother’s relatives, who cherished and guarded her; here were the many palaces and castles wherein she had passed any number of cheerful hours; here lived the poets who had sung her praises and who had so well understood her; here she was surrounded by the knightly courtesies which rendered life so charming, the gallant chivalry which suited her taste so admirably. She put off her departure from month to month, hesitant in spite of urgent messages from her homeland. She visited her relatives in Joinville and in Nancy, was present at the coronation of her ten-year-old brother-in-law, Charles IX, in Rheims cathedral. Perpetually she found fresh excuses for postponing the journey, as though she harboured a premonition of its finality. It was as if she were waiting for some sign that would spare her the dreaded separation from France and the voyage home.
For no matter how inexperienced a girl of eighteen may be in affairs of state, it is undeniable that Mary Stuart must have been convinced that a very hard test was awaiting her so soon as she set foot on her native soil. Since her mother’s death, the Protestant Lords of the Congregation, her fiercest enemies, had gained the upper hand, and they were at no pains to hide the fact that they did not want a Catholic, a believer in the Mass and other idolatrous practices, to return to the land. They brazenly declared (and the English ambassador eagerly conveyed the news to London) that the Queen’s journey to Scotland must be postponed for a few months longer, and, were it not that it was their duty to obey, they would not be much put out if they never saw her again. They had, as a matter of fact, been intriguing on the quiet, proposing that the Queen of England should marry the Protestant James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, who was the next heir to the Scottish throne, thus bartering the crown to Mary’s rival, a crown that was unquestionably Mary Stuart’s by right of succession. Nor could she place any greater confidence in her own half-brother James Stuart, who, as envoy from the Scottish parliament, sought Mary out in France “to know her mind”. His relations with Elizabeth were dubious, and some even suspected that he was in the English Queen’s pay. The only way for Mary to put an end to these intrigues was to be on the spot herself, and with proverbial Stuart courage defend and maintain her rights to the Stuart throne. Determined not to lose a second crown within a year of losing the other, full of dreary foreboding and heavy at heart, Mary Stuart obeyed a summons which h
ad not proceeded from loyal hearts and which she obeyed while half doubtful as to its honesty.