Mary Queen of Scotland & the Isles (14 page)

Lusty did well, Beaton less well (but did not care), Seton even less
well, and then Flamina stepped boldly up, daring everyone to look at
her. Her chin was held high, and she performed strongly. The
congratulations that she reaped were not for her shooting but for her
bravery.

Mary then took her place and, to everyone's astonishment, hit all her
targets dead on. The audience burst into cheers. But all Mary cared
about was seeing the pride in Rob's eyes. She turned and bowed, then
let the contest continue.

Marie de Guise had brought some Scotsmen with her, and Mary now watched
as they took their turns at the butts. There was the barrel-shaped
Earl of Huntly, who basked in public attention. She knew he was a
great Catholic noble of the north who held great power, but it seemed
to her he was vainglorious and even somewhat comical as he strutted and
postured.

They call him "the Cock o' the North," she thought, and he does remind
me of a rooster. His face is red and he crows. And his bottom sticks
out as if it should sport a feathered tail.

She began to giggle, and Lusty, standing beside her, said, "What is so
amusing?"

"The Earl of Huntly looks like a rooster," she answered, and then Lusty
began to laugh, and soon the whole row of children was laughing.

Next came a man with a stately bearing, who looked to be a true noble.
But he was not. It was Richard Maitland of Lethington, one of Marie de
Guise's privy councillors and advisers. He was just a laird, a lawyer
and a poet for his own amusement. Alongside him was a young man,
rather good-looking, whom he introduced as his son, William.

"He is studying here in France, and I must take this opportunity to
present him to you," he said to Marie de Guise. "When he returns to
his native land, I believe he will prove to be of service to you."

Marie de Guise just gave a perfunctory nod, but Flamina whispered to
Mary, "He's handsome!"

Mary wondered if Flamina was only pretending to be interested in such
things to prove she was not bothered by her mother's situation.
Actually, William Maitland was no more handsome than some of the other
men there. But she nodded in agreement.

Some distant relatives of Mary's, the Lennox Stuarts, were also there:
John, Seigneur d'Aubigny, and some cousins had come to pay their
respects. These Stuarts had had a Scottish ancestor who came to France
a hundred and fifty years earlier and were now almost entirely French,
even using the French spelling of the name. She rememered Rob saying
that the connection between France and Scotland went back a long way.

There were refreshments for the men, and the children took their rest
under big shade trees with blankets spread out beneath them. Some of
the men the younger ones, including the King then went to play tennis
until the light faded.

When Mary awakened, she saw that servants were busy setting up formal
dining tables under the trees. They were unrolling fine linen
tablecloths and, in addition to the candles placed every five feet or
so, were stringing lanterns between tree branches. Twilight had come,
and the sky was a tender deep bluish purple. Shadows were forming
little blue pools around the trees, distant haystacks, and fences. A
soft warm breeze was blowing across the fields, right up to the very
edge of the forest; where the air met the branches, the leaves rustled
and murmured. Fireflies were just coming out, a twinkle here, a brief
pulse of light there, when Mary saw a line of people coming to the
banquet tables in procession across the fields. Their gowns glowed
with sunset colours, and they were bearing tapers and laughing. Before
them walked musicians playing recorders and lutes. They looked like
figures from a faded tapestry, and even the music was faded and
distant.

They approached, and became real, noisy people. The King, freshly
attired in velvet, glowed after his tennis game. His Queen flashed
with jewels, and rather than seeming odd in the outdoor setting, they
graced it. Diane had changed once again to a glistening gossamer gown.
Mary's own mother was now dressed in a fashionably embroidered green
satin gown, and was carrying an ornate, silver-studded velvet box.

Everyone was seated in the sylvan dining room, and the musicians kept
playing. Overhead the sky darkened, and now the only light came from
the candles, lanterns, and fireflies. It bathed the gathering in a
soft, dreamy light, these people of France and Scotland, Mary's
relatives and friends, and she loved them all with a fierce, surging
love. She felt so safe, so loved, so protected secure in the arms of
France and all the company gathered under the trees on this balmy
summer night.

At the end of the dinner, when Marie de Guise had to make her formal
speeches in farewell, she opened the velvet box and held it aloft. Mary
could see something gleam red inside.

"This is the treasure that I leave in the keeping of the King and
Queen, who also have the keeping of my other treasure, my daughter.
This is the jewel that belonged to her grandmother, Margaret Tudor. It
was presented to her upon her marriage to James IV, and it is my
deepest wish that it be presented to Queen Mary upon her marriage to
the Dauphin Francois. Keep it in trust for me, I beg you."
Ceremoniously she handed it to Henri II.

He peered at it, and his normally unresponsive eyes registered an
emotion. "Mon Dieu! It is huge!" Impressed, he lifted out the jewel
and held it up for all to see. It was a brooch in the shape of an H,
fashioned of rubies and diamonds.

"That is why it is called the "Great Harry," " said Marie de Guise.
"Guard it well!"

After the dinner, it was indeed midnight. But the party was eager to
hunt by torchlight, and the horses and pack of hounds were brought out
to seek red deer on the adjacent heath. The children did not go, but
stood watching as the flares and noise were swallowed up in the
darkness. Still later, as one by one they fell asleep in the tents,
they could hear the cries of the dogs from somewhere far away, carried
on the summer air into the palace windows. They slept soundly and did
not hear the hunters return.

When Marie de Guise took her leave later that month, she clasped Mary
to her and promised to return soon.

"Come back quickly," Mary said, trying not to cry. It would be
unseemly in front of all these people.

"As soon as I may," said her mother. "And my thoughts are with you
every moment."

"I love you, dear Maman," she whispered. But her mother was
interrupted by King Henri's approach, and did not hear the murmured
words.

NINE

Looking back on it years later, although it was not true, it seemed to
Mary that it was always summer in France as she was growing up. The
air was always rich and caressing, full of the smells of flowering
meadows and ripening plums and apricots. Dusks were milky and warm and
lingering; the stones of the chSteaux took on a luminosity as the light
faded and lanterns were lit. Huge, pale, feathery-winged moths would
come to the open windows and light on the lanterns and fly around the
pure white wax candles burning in sconces.

White was the colour of France: the white swans dotting the moat water;
the peculiar Loire stone used to build the chateaux, which whitened as
it aged; the great white fireplaces with their gilded royal emblems of
salamanders and crowned porcupines; the milk from the she-asses the
court ladies used for their complexions and which Mary began to use as
she grew up; the white lilies of France, the royal flower.

Her first communion was a blaze of white in her white taffeta gown at
Easter. She wore a coronet of lily-of-the-valley in her red-brown
hair, and carried an ivory rosary, a gift from her grandmother de
Guise. By her twelfth year, after lengthy preparation by her
confessor, Father Mamerot, she had longed to make this first communion,
and at last her uncle the Cardinal had pronounced her ready to do so.

"The happiest day of my life," she wrote in her little private journal
that night. And to her mother in Scotland: "Dearest Mother, At last I
am come to be a true daughter of the Church...." She closed her eyes
and saw once again the Madonna lilies around the altar opening their
smooth ivory throats as if they were about to sing Alleluia; saw the
thick, immaculate Easter candle flickering, saw the gentle smile on the
alabaster Virgin's face. "Today I glimpsed Paradise."

But on earth here in France, every sense was bathed in luxury, luxury
of which she became more and more aware as she grew older. The palate
was indulged with strawberries from Saumur and melons planted in the
Loire by a Neapolitan gardener long ago, with trout pate, Tours
pastries, and vin d'Annonville, with its delicate bouquet. The
nostrils were pampered by the happy work of Catherine de Medicis's
Italian perfumers working with the flowers from the fields of Provence,
producing heady fragrances to be worn on throats and wrists and to
scent gloves and capes. Hyacinth, jasmine, lilac all wafted through
the rooms and from the bath waters of the che-teaux.

The skin was caressed with unguents and the feel of silk, velvet,
fur,

leather gloves of softest deerskin; goose down pillows cupped weary
bodies at the day's end; and in winter, newly installed Germanic tile
stoves at Fontainebleau provided central heating.

Eyes were continually presented with beauty in ordinary objects
rendered more opulently pleasing: a crystal mirror decorated with
velvet and silk ribbons; buttons with jewels affixed. There were
fireworks reflected in the river; paintings by Leonardo; and
black-and-white cheque red marble paving in the long palace gallery
over the Cher that spanned the rippling water outside.

Pleasing sounds were everywhere: in the chirping of the pet canaries
and more exotic birds in the garden aviaries; in the baying of the
hounds in the matchless royal hunting packs; in the splash and gurgle
of the fountains and elaborate water displays in the formal gardens.
And above all that, the sound of melodious French, exquisitely spoken;
witty conversations, and the poets of the court reciting verses
composed to celebrate the aristocratic dream world they inhabited, with
a haunting melancholy that it would all pass away.

But to Mary and her companions it all seemed eternal, given,
unchanging, and the poets' laments purest literary convention. Of
course there were small changes: the royal family continued to grow,
with more babies swelling the nursery. Catherine de Medicis began to
grow stout and her waist disappeared, even when she was not pregnant.
Diane de Poitiers, that lady who was immune to time, did not alter in
looks, but even she began planning her tomb. It was to be of what
else? white marble.

One afternoon as Mary was keeping the Duchesse company in her chambers,
she watched as Diane sat before her dressing table and arranged, then
rearranged, her perfumes and silver-backed brushes. Diane's back was
as straight as ever, her silvery hair still thick and swept up, held
with a diamond pin. But her face, in repose, was streaked with
sadness. Suddenly she turned around to Mary and said, "You will be
more beautiful than I." Mary started to demur, but the Duchesse cut
her off. "Please. I speak but the truth. Do not flinch from it. I
do not. I am proud that you succeed me; I am glad to pass that duty
on."