The Flower Reader (2 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Loupas
Jean Stewart, Countess of Argyll, Mary Stuart’s illegitimate half sister.
Archibald Campbell, Earl of Argyll, husband of Jean Stewart.
Mary Fleming, called Flaminia, the first among Mary Stuart’s “Four Maries.”
Mary Livingston, one of the “Four Maries.”
Mary Seton, one of the “Four Maries.”
Mary Beaton, one of the “Four Maries.”
David Riccio, a Piedmontese musician.
George Gordon, fourth Earl of Huntly, head of the Gordons.
Sir John Gordon, one of his sons.
Elizabeth Keith, Lady Huntly, his wife.
Lady Huntly’s familiars: Janet, Beathag, and Meggie One-Eye. The familiars are historical and there is a record of one name, “Janet.” The other two names are fictional.
Andrew Leslie, fifth Earl of Rothes, head of the Lesl ies.
Grizel Hamilton, Countess of Rothes, Andrew Leslie’s wife.
*Rannoch Hamilton of Kinmeall, illegitimate half brother of Grizel Hamilton.
Sir William Maitland of Lethington, Mary Stuart’s secretary of state.
James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell.
John Sempill of Beltrees, Mary Livingston’s sweetheart.
John Knox, leader of the Scottish reformation, in partnership with a group of Protestant Scottish nobility called the Lords of the Congregation.
Robert Hendersoun, chirurgeon in the sometime employ of the town council of Edinburgh.
Sir Archibald Douglas of Kilspindie, provost of Edinburgh.
T
HE
F
RENCH:
Catherine de Médicis, queen mother and regent of France.
Francois II, king of France, first husband of Mary Stuart. Died 5 December 1560, leaving Mary Stuart a young widow.
Charles IX, king of France, younger brother and successor of Francois II.
Antoinette de Bourbon, dowager duchess of Guise, Mary Stuart’s grandmother.
Francois I, Duke of Guise, her son, Mary Stuart’s uncle.
Anne d’Este, Duchess of Guise, his wife, sister of Alfonso II d’Este, the fifth Duke of Ferrara.
Michel de Nostredame, called Nostradamus.
Pierre de Chastelard, grandson of the Chevalier Bayard, a poet.
*Nicolas de Clerac, one of Mary Stuart’s French secretaries.
*Blaise Laurentin, a mercenary.
T
HE
E
NGLISH:
Elizabeth Tudor, queen of England.
Thomas Randolph, an agent of Elizabeth Tudor.
*Richard Wetheral, an agent of Elizabeth Tudor.
Henry Stewart, son of the Earl of Lennox, called Lord Darnley.
READER
Tabale of Contents
Chapter One
DINBURGH
C
ASTLE
10 June 1560
I
hated the queen, hated her down to the deepest marrow of my bones.
I was a fierce and graceless fourteen when my grannie died and the queen took me away from Granmuir, kicking and crying, to shut me up at court. She gave me three years of luxury and learning, I will give her that, music and poetry and polish, but no fresh salt-scented air, no wheeling guillemots, no Aberdeenshire flowers, and no huge silver sky stretching down to meet the sea. She took me away from my home. She took me away from Alexander Gordon, my soul and my heart. She ruined my life. By the Green Lady of Granmuir, I hated her.
How could I hate her so, and love her, too, with all my heart?
Now she was dying, Mary of Guise, queen regent of Scotland, my
belle-tante
, my foster mother, my liege lady, my adversary, dying in the night under a waning moon. And everyone in Edinburgh, everyone in the castle, everyone in the queen’s own bedchamber was waiting for the queen to die.
My knees hurt. The stone floor was hard; older and more
important folk had claimed all the places on the carpet. In unison with the ladies in front of me I prayed, half-drowned in a haze of beeswax and perfume, sweat and sickness, my Latin phrases perfect but meaningless. In my heart I was praying hard for Alexander Gordon, my own darling dear, my golden love, to come for me. We would go home, the two of us, be married at last, and be happy forever.
The queen’s French-born ladies knelt close around her; the truly brave ones told their rosaries, bead by defiant bead, under the narrow eyes of the Protestant Lords of the Congregation. Lord Erskine and young Lord Seton kept close, as did the half-outlaw Earl of Bothwell and the queen’s inscrutable French secretary, Monsieur Nicolas de Clerac. Lord James Stewart was in and out of the room, the bastard son of the queen’s dead husband—when I looked at him I saw narcissus for self-interest and snapdragon for deceit.
Why flowers? I always saw flowers in people’s faces and eyes, and the flowers told me what was inside the person, what they had done, what they would do. When I touched a flower or breathed its scent, I saw things. It was an old, old trait in the Leslies of Granmuir, and my great-aunt, whose name had been Marina Leslie just like mine, had taught me to use it when I was a wee bairnie. People said I looked like her—my dark brown hair that caught tortoiseshell gold streaks from the sun, my sea-colored Leslie eyes. People also said she was mad. She never married, Gran’auntie, and lived alone in Granmuir’s northeast tower, which we called the Mermaid Tower. She fought a running war with my grannie, my father’s mother, who was practical as iron nails, managed Granmuir single-handedly, and did not believe in flower reading.
“Rinette.”
Surprise rippled through the people packed into the chamber. How could it be the queen’s voice, when she had not spoken for days?
“She is asking for her daughter,” said Lady Bryant. She was one of the dearest of
the queen’s friends, a lady who had come with her from France and married two Scots lords in succession. “The little queen,
la reinette
.”
“Rinette,” the queen said, a second time. “
La jeune floromancière
. To me.”
I did not move. If I am very still, I thought, they will not see me here.
“No, it is the Leslie girl she wants, I think.” Lady Bryant put her ear down close to the queen’s lips. “That
farouche
child who sees fortunes in flowers.”
“Yes,” the queen said. Her voice was faint and labored. “Rinette Leslie. I would speak with her.
Vite
.”
Lady Bryant looked straight at me. So much for invisibility. “Come here, my girl,” she said. “The queen is asking for you.”
I stood up, my knees stiff and aching. Could I run? Would they stop me?
Of course they would.
I walked across the chamber, feeling the blood rush up hotly in my cheeks as people stood aside to make way for me. Their faces were like moonflowers in the dark, turning toward me, round and white, with the black anthers and stamens of their features in the center. Moonflowers, harbingers of dreams and prophecies and madness. What madness was coming, what prophecies, what dreams?
“Madame,” said Lady Bryant.
“Voici
la petite
Leslie.”
The queen opened her eyes. Guise eyes, designing and subtle. They saw into my soul:
I know you want me gone
.
You have held me captive for three years, for the sake of your statecraft. I want to be free.
You will be free soon enough. Until then, I am still your queen.
I curtsied and said aloud, “What is your wish, madame?”
“I wish you to read the future.”
Holy Saint Ninian, did she not realize everyone in the room could hear? The room was packed with Protestants who saw witches in every corner, and even the Catholics were quick to see heresies.
“The flowers are only an amusement, madame.”
“Even so, I wish you to prophesy.”
It was impossible to disobey. “I will need flowers, madame.”
“Fetch them.”
“Yes, madame.” I curtsied again but could not find the will to move. Lady Bryant gave me a push and I stumbled back; that broke the spell of royalty and death. I made my way toward the door through close-packed bodies dressed in fur despite the heat, silk and gold and jewels, with avid eyes and whispering mouths behind their hands. I could hear words, random, sibilant.
Superstition. Sorcery. Heresy.
Once I was out of the bedchamber I gathered up my gray camlet skirts and ran like a wild thing, down the staircase, out of the palace, and into the clean silver moonlight, through the quadrangle and across the upper ward to the hedgerow beside Saint Margaret’s ancient chapel. There I threw myself to my knees—I felt no pain this time—and gulped in fresh air, the scents of woodbine and hawthorn and sweet briar rose. Far far off, down the firth, the sea.
I breathed. The moon climbed higher. I broke a branch of hawthorn and brushed the velvety blossoms back and forth over my face. It calmed me, as the touch of flower petals always did. I would not go back inside. I could not go back inside. The queen regent was the last link with my childhood; Grannie was dead, Gran’auntie Marina was dead, my father was dead. My mother might as well have been dead, immured as she was in her convent in Paris.
