Mary Queen of Scotland & the Isles (2 page)

"Ilikenottheuwd."

"I cannot promise that there will be no enemies," he said stubbornly.
"Nor would it be a good wish. Tis enemies that make a man and shape
him. Only a no-thing has no enemies."

After the lords had departed, Marie de Guise sat by the cradle and
rocked it gently. The baby was sleeping. The firelight painted the
side of her face rosy, and the infant curled and uncurled her fat,
dimpled little fingers.

My first daughter, thought Marie, and she does look different. Is it
my imagination? No, I think she's truly feminine. The Scots would say
a lass is always different from a lad, even from the beginning. This
daughter has skin like almond-milk. And her hair she gently pushed
back the baby's cap of what colour will it be, to go with that skin? It
is too early to tell; the fuzz is the same colour as that of all
babes.

Mary. I have named her after myself, and also after the Virgin; after
all, she was born on the Virgin's day, the Immaculate Conception, and
perhaps the Virgin will protect her, guard over her as a special
charge.

Mary Queen of Scots. My daughter is a queen already; six days old, and
then she became a queen.

At that thought, a brief flutter of guilt rose in her.

The King my lord and husband died, and that is how my daughter came to
be Queen before her time. I should feel tearing grief. I should be
mourning the King, lamenting my fate, instead of gazing in wonder at my
daughter, a baby queen.

The child will be fair, she thought, studying her features. Her
complexion and features all promise it. Already I can see that she has
her father's eyes, those Stewart eyes that are slanted and
heavy-lidded. It was his eyes that promised so much, that were so
reassuring and yet so private, hiding their own depths.

"My dear Queen." Behind her she heard a familiar voice: Cardinal
Beaton's. He had not left with the others; but then, he felt at home
here, and never more so than now, with the King gone forever. "Gazing
upon your handiwork? Be careful, lest you fall in love with your own
creation."

She straightened and turned to him. "It is difficult not to be in awe
of her. She is lovely; and she is a queen. My family in France will
be beside themselves. The Guises finally have a monarch to their
credit!"

"Her last name is not Guise, but Stewart," the bulky churchman reminded
her. "It is not her French blood that puts her on this throne, but her
Scottish." He allowed himself to bend down and stroke the baby's
cheek. "Well, what are you to do?"

"Hold the throne for her as best I can," answered Marie.

"Then you will have to remain in Scotland." He straightened up, and
made his way over to a plate of sweetmeats and nuts in a silver bowl.
He picked one up and popped it into his mouth.

"I know that!" She was indignant.

"No plans to run back to France?" He was laughing, teasing her. "Made
from Seville oranges," he commented about the sweetmeat he was still
sucking. "Lately I tasted a coated rind from India. Much sweeter."

"No. If this child had not come, if I were a childless widow, then of
course I certainly would not linger here! But now I have a task, and
one I cannot shirk." She shivered. "If I do not die of cold here, or
take consumption."

It was snowing outside again. She walked across the chamber to the
arched stone fireplace, where a huge fire was blazing, by her orders.
The baby's chamber must be kept warm, in spite of the wildly bitter
weather raging all over Scotland. The Cardinal, who lived luxuriously
himself, doubtless approved.

"Oh, David," she said, her smile suddenly fading. "What will become of
Scotland? The battle "

"If the English have their way, it will become part of England. They
will seek to grab it one way or another, most likely through marriage.
As the victors of Solway Moss, with their thousand high-ranking
prisoners in hand, they will dictate the terms. They will probably
force Mary to marry their Prince Edward."

"Never! I will not permit that!" cried Marie.

"She must needs marry someone," the Cardinal reminded her. "That is
what the King meant when he said, "It will pass with a lass." When she
marries, the crown goes to her husband. And there is no eligible
French prince. The marriage of King Francois's heirs, Henri de Valois
and Catherine de M dicis, is barren. If little Mary tries to marry a
Scot, one of her own subjects, the rest will rise up in jealousy. So
who else but the English?"

"Not an English prince!" Marie kept repeating. "Not an English
prince! They are all heretics down there!"

"And what do you plan to do about the King's bastards?" the Cardinal
whispered.

"I shall bring them all together and rear them here, in the palace."

"You are mad! Better bring them all together and dispose of them,
rather."

"Like a sultan?" Marie could not help laughing. "Nay, that is not a
Christian response. I will offer them charity, and a home."

"And rear them with your own daughter, the lawful Queen? That is not
Christian, but negligent. You may see your daughter reap the evil
harvest of that misguided kindness. Beware that you do not nurture
serpents to sting her later, when you are gone." The Cardinal's fat,
unlined face registered true alarm. "How many are there?"

"Oh, nine or so, I think." She laughed, then felt guilty about that,
too.

I should feel bad about the King's infidelities, she thought. But I do
not. Why not? I must not have loved him. Otherwise I would have
attacked the women and torn out their eyes.

"They are all boys, except one girl, Jean. His favourite bastard was
the one who carried his name, James Stewart. He's nine years old now,
and lives with his mother in the castle at Lochleven. They say he's
clever," said Marie.

"I don't doubt it. There's no one more clever than a royal bastard.
They have inordinate hopes. Force him into the Church and tie him up
there, if you value the little Queen's safety."

"No, the best way is to allow him into the palace and let him learn to
love his sister."

"His half-sister."

"My, you are stubborn. I appreciate your warnings, but I will keep a
close watch."

"And what of the nobles? You cannot trust any of them, can you?"

"Yes, I trust the ones who have married the girls I brought with me
from France. Lord George Seton, who married my maid of honour, Marie
Pieris; Lord Robert Beaton, who married Joan de la Reynveille; Lord
Alexander Livingston, who married Jeanne de Pedefer."

"But the greater nobles are not on that list."

"No."

Just then the little Queen let out a wail, and her mother bent down and
picked her up. The tiny mouth was puckered and quivering, and the big
eyes were brimming with tears.

"Hungry again," said Marie. "I shall call the wet nurse."

"She is a beauty," said the Cardinal. "It is hard to imagine that
anyone would wish her harm." He tickled the baby's chin. "Greetings,
Your Majesty."

"All men lamented that the realm was left without a male to succeed," a
young priest named John Knox wrote, slowly and thoughtfully. He looked
up at his crucifix, hanging above his desk, as he dipped his pen in the
inkwell.

Why have You not provided? he beseeched the cross silently. Why have
You abandoned Scotland?

TWO

The September weather had played peekaboo all day. First there had
been a rainstorm, with high, gusty winds that were even stronger up on
the two-hundred-fifty-foot heights of Stirling Castle. Then the clouds
had blown away, going east in the direction of Edinburgh, bringing
piercingly blue skies and an astringent sense of cleanness. Now black
clouds were coming in again, but Marie de Guise still stood in the
sunshine and could see a distant rainbow over the retreating storm
clouds, which trailed a skirt of mist all the way to the ground.

Was it an omen? The Queen Mother could be forgiven if she was anxious
this day; it was her daughter's coronation day.

The ceremony had been hastily arranged in an act of reckless defiance
of England; it was, nonetheless, supported by all Scotsmen. Almost to
a man, they found the bullying and patronizing of Henry VIII
intolerable and unswallowable. His smug demands and his school boyish
threats; his lack of any grasp of the idea that Scotland was a nation,
not a sack of grain to be bought and sold; his cool assumption that he
held all the power and therefore must prevail all these convinced the
Scots that they must, and would, resist to the utmost.

The first thing to do was to break the forced betrothal of Mary to
Edward, a betrothal that had as a condition the sending of Mary to
England to be raised. Balked in that, King Henry had wanted to place
her in the care of an English household in Scotland and ban her own
mother from her presence. He was determined that she be in English
hands at all times; in other words, she must be kept from her own
people and brought up English, not Scottish the better to betray their
interests later, so his thinking went.

Henry's "assured lords," the captives from the battle of Solway Moss,
had turned coat and repudiated the English policy as soon as it was
possible, and now the second act of defiance was being hurried forward:
Mary would be crowned Queen of Scotland this afternoon, to hammer home
the fact that Scotland was an independent nation with its own
sovereign, even if she was only nine months old.

The date chosen was most unfortunate, thought the Queen Mother:
September ninth, the anniversary of the dreadful battle of Flodden
Field, where exactly thirty years before, Mary's grandfather had met
his end, hacked to death by the English.

Yet there was a certain stirring defiance in it, as if not only Henry
VIII were being challenged, but fate itself.

She looked up once more at the darkening sky, then hurried across the
courtyard to the palace. There was no time now to admire the French
work that her late husband had lavished on decorating the grey stone
palace, down to the whimsical statues he had installed all along the
facade. There was even one of her, now looking down at the living
model that walked quickly toward the entrance of the palace.

Her daughter was ready, wearing heavy regal robes in miniature. A
crimson velvet mantle, with a train furred with ermine, was fastened
around her tiny neck, and a jeweled satin gown, with long hanging
sleeves, enveloped the infant, who could sit up but not walk. Her
mother smoothed her head soon to wear the crown prayed silently for
her, and then handed her solemnly to Lord Alexander Livingston, her
Lord Keeper, who would carry her across the courtyard in solemn
procession to the Chapel Royal. As they passed outside, the Queen
Mother saw that the sunshine had fled and the sky was black. But no
rain had yet fallen, and the baby passed dry in her ceremonial robes
into the chapel, followed by her officers of state in procession.