The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots (5 page)

They brought her poor swollen body back to France in a gilded coffin, painted with the silver eaglets of Lorraine.

I watched from the harbor as the great Flemish galleass that bore her hove into view, under full sail, and wept as the ship rode at anchor and her privy councilors lowered the coffin into a small boat and then hoisted it up onto the pier.

I had known that my mother was dying, yet I was not at all prepared for the news of her death. It was the Earl of Bothwell who told me—he had rapidly become my closest adviser, the one man at the French court I felt I could fully trust. Shortly after we returned to Fontainebleau from our northward progress the earl received a message from Edinburgh, telling him that despite the rhubarb poultices and the strong spells his sister cast to counteract the sorcery of the Earl of Arran, the great Queen Dowager of Scotland had died.

She had died, valiant and undefeated, surrounded by traitors and wolves, and as soon as the earl told me of her death I vowed I would avenge her.

I balled my fists as I watched her coffin being carried into the wharfside chapel. I vowed I would fight my villainous cousin Arran, and his rebellious Lords of the Congregation. That I would resist the
traitorous Scottish Parliament that had abolished the mass and declared Scotland to be a Protestant kingdom. And I would fight the English too, though how I would manage that, I couldn’t for the time being imagine.

For Scotland, without my mother’s guiding hand, was a kingdom adrift. I was Scotland’s queen, I reigned—but could not rule, not as long as the petty lordlings such as Arran continued to fight like snarling dogs for the bone of power, and I stayed on in France by my husband’s bedside.

I had wanted to bury mother among those she loved, at the convent of the Poor Clares in Pont-à-Mousson where she lived as a child. But my uncle the Duc de Guise, as head of the family, prevailed on me to order that she be interred at Rheims, the royal city, as befitting one who had been the wife of a king and the mother of a queen. I was in mourning, I did not insist. I deferred.

I wore a medallion with mother’s portrait on it to the requiem mass, and tried to remember her face, not as it was painted on the circlet around my neck, but as it was the last time I saw her, when she came to visit me many years earlier. I remembered that she smiled, and hugged me, and that she cried when she left to return to Scotland, though she tried not to let any of her servants see her crying. I remembered the sound of her voice, and her laughter. But I could no longer see her face clearly, the intervening years had taken it from me. And it was all I could do, as the priest recited the words of the Dies Irae, those terrible words about the day of wrath and destruction, to keep my trembling knees together and prevent myself from falling. For I was an orphan now, an orphan queen, and there was no one I could go to any longer for succor.

At my suggestion Francis appointed the Earl of Bothwell to be one of his chamber gentlemen and he became a member of our court. His friend Cristy Ricarton stayed nearby, though he had no official court appointment. He seemed glad enough to undertake occasional responsibilities when asked, though what he liked most was to go out with the earl on his nightly excursions.

What must it be like to be a man, I wondered, with the freedom to spend the evening however he liked? Highborn or lowborn, it seemed, men caroused with their friends and hangers-on. They drank, they gambled, they brawled on occasion—and they enjoyed the company of women. Not the sort of women I was forced to spend my evenings among, my ladies and relatives, my Guise cousins and aunts, my grandmother (whose company I always enjoyed), my mother-in-law (whose company I generally shunned). No: men sought another kind of women entirely, ones to be found, I assumed, in taverns or in brothels, in attic rooms or in dark alleyways. Or, as I was well aware, men had mistresses, or visited the luxurious residences of courtesans, like Diane de Poitrine. Diane had several such houses. I had visited them. There amid beautiful, tasteful surroundings, her lovers could indulge themselves to their hearts’ content in sensuous pleasures.

Drinking, gambling, brawling, wenching. It was a world closed to me, yet I was curious about it, and I had the strong feeling that men were allotted by nature a generous measure of freedom and enjoyment which was denied to women, and I envied them.

The truth was, I was curious about how the Earl of Bothwell spent his evenings with his friend Cristy, and I asked Adrien to try to find out.

A few nights later Adrien came to tell me what he had learned. I had him escorted into my private apartments and then told my women to leave us—even my tirewoman Margaret Carwood, who knew nearly all of my secrets and who was both surprised and offended to be excluded from my interview with the handsome Scots Guards officer who was coming to be one of my most trusted servants.

“He plays cards, Your Highness,” Adrien said simply once we were alone. “He gambles with dice. He is lucky. He wins.”

“But to win, one must have a large stake,” was my immediate response, “and I thought the earl had no money. At least, he convinced me that, like many Scottish nobles, he has an honored title but no wealth to go with it. In fact he told me outright that he is very short of funds. That was one reason I convinced my husband to appoint him to his household. And beyond that, I gave the earl a purse of coins—six hundred crowns—to reimburse him for his services to my mother, and as a memorial to her.”

Adrien looked uncomfortable. “Six hundred crowns is a great deal of money, indeed. However—Your Highness may not wish to hear this—I assure you the earl wagers even larger sums than that with abandon.”

“Does he indeed? And when he loses?”

“His friend Lord Ricarton produces from his own purse whatever is needed to make up the losses.”

“Ah, so Cristy has a fortune. He is the earl’s bank.”

Adrien smiled. “I wish I had such a rich friend.”

“So they drink, and the earl gambles, and—what else?”

“There is something else. Something that puzzles me.”

“And what is that?”

“There is a woman. She is not French. She speaks a language I can’t understand. She shouts it, in fact.”

“Describe this woman.”

“She is not young, she is not beautiful, she does not have a sweet face or a sweet nature. She is very sour, in fact. Very loud and demanding. More like a fishwife than a wellborn lady. And yet—”

“Yes?”

“And yet, her clothes are fine. Not quite clean and certainly not of the newest fashion, but fine nonetheless. She appears every night, wherever the earl and his friend go. They know her—or at least, they are not surprised to see her. The earl glowers when she comes near.”

“Is she alone?”

“As far as I can tell, yes.”

“Plain, aging, foreign, and alone. And dressed in shabby finery. How very strange.”

I pondered Adrien’s words for the next few days. I could not help noticing that whenever I went into my husband’s apartments and found his chamber gentlemen there, they were idling away their hours playing cards or dice—the Earl of Bothwell among them. He usually appeared to be winning, with a high pile of coins at his elbow and a broad smile of triumph on his face.

I noticed this—and tried to put it out of my mind. But for some reason my knowledge of his gambling, and especially of the odd foreign woman, nagged at me, until in the end I summoned Adrien again.

“I want to see for myself this woman you described,” I told him. “I need you to escort me to the tavern where the earl and Lord Ricarton go.”

“But Your Highness cannot visit a low tavern! There are thieves and spies there, and women of the streets—and murderers!”

“I shall not go as the queen, but as—as your sister. Are there no mothers or sisters in taverns?”

Adrien thought a moment. “I have seen travelers take their womenfolk now and then.”

“So we shall be brother and sister, traveling together. Bring two horses into the stableyard tonight. If anyone asks, say you are being sent on an errand for the king. What time shall I meet you there?”

“Ten o’clock.”

“Very well.”

As afternoon wore into evening I could not wait to meet Adrien. I listened eagerly for the chiming of the clock, I could hardly sit still. At nine o’clock I retired to my room, telling my bedchamber women that I felt unwell and asking them not to disturb me. Once again, Margaret was offended—and aggrieved. As a rule she slept on a trundle bed at the foot of my own large high four-poster bed. I could tell that my request to be left alone puzzled her. I had never excluded her from my room at night before, though etiquette demanded that whenever Francis came into my room after dark my women left us alone together.

Waiting for the hour of ten to arrive, wearing a borrowed plain gown of homespun stuff, a patched cape with an ample hood enveloping me, I trembled with excitement. Adventure! It was something I had had very little of since my marriage. And now, tonight, I would surely have my fill.

Adrien knew an unfrequented way out of the least used castle gate, a way favored by peddlers and servants, and as I kept the hood of my cape low over my face, no one we passed recognized me as we guided our horses out onto the road that led to the nearby village.

The moon had risen, but dark clouds soon came up to obscure it, and we had not gone far when it began to rain.

It was hard rain that came down in sheets, and I was soon drenched.

“Shall we turn back, Your Highness?” Adrien asked, shouting over the noise of the downpour.

I shook my head and we continued. I could not have said why, except that my blood was pounding in my veins and after all the anticipation of the afternoon and evening I did not want to be disappointed of my adventure.

I did not give a thought to whether or not my absence from the palace would be noticed, I merely assumed that for the next few hours I would be free. And for those precious hours I would not be Mary, wife of the king but someone else entirely: I would be merely the sister of one of the Scots Guards.

By the time we arrived at the Inn of the Three Barrels and Adrien
helped me down from my horse I was completely soaked from head to foot. My gown clung to my body in wet lumps, my cloak hung dripping from my shoulders, the hood so low over my face that it covered even my wet untidy hair that drooped in wet ringlets across my cheeks.

Our entry into the noisy, candlelit tavern was inconspicuous, so engrossed were the drunken men inside in their goblets of wine and their raucous singing and laughing. There were a few women among them, and I glanced at the women, though I did not see anyone who looked like a foreigner wearing what had once been costly clothing. I did see the Earl of Bothwell and Lord Ricarton, however. They sat with four others, playing cards.

At first I was all but overcome by the reek of liquor and sweat, damp unwashed clothes and unwashed bodies. Only once before, when entering a soldiers’ barracks, had I encountered such a strong odor. I restrained myself from holding my nose and, keeping my head lowered, managed to follow Adrien as he made his way through the room.

We seated ourselves at a table in a dim corner of the tavern and from somewhere Adrien produced a dry cloth with which I dabbed my dripping face and hair. We were served with wine. As I sipped from my goblet I glanced over at the earl’s table. He was completely absorbed in his game. Every roll of the dice was greeted with loud cries of dismay or rejoicing.

Suddenly two men sitting near us began shouting at one another and then fighting. Adrien stood, shielding me from the mayhem, and the burly tavernkeeper came up to the table and roughly ordered the men to go outside. They stumbled out. As they reached the doorway they nearly collided with a remarkable figure coming in—a tall woman all in scarlet, from her feathered headdress to her gilt-edged cloak, muddy at the hem, to the embroidered gown she revealed as, throwing aside the cloak with a theatrical gesture, she strode into the room.

“It is the Skottefrauen,” I heard someone say as the woman walked up to the Earl of Bothwell and, putting her hands on her hips, spoke to him in guttural tones.

Her words were forceful, but I could not understand them. He ignored her, as did the others around his table, though I heard a few groans and snickers.

She resumed her harangue but was drowned out as some of the men began singing, and soon most of the others in the room joined in. They were singing in French, a gutter French spiced with filthy words.

Big woman with the ugly face, go home!

Big woman with the ugly voice, be still!

Sit on your ****

Make us all laugh

Big woman no one wants to ***** you!

Adrien looked very uncomfortable and pretended to put his hands over his ears.

Big woman where has your husband gone?

Out to find a prettier one, with a sweeter voice

To sit on her *****

To take his pleasure

Big woman no one wants to **** you!

Her cheeks as red as her gown, the woman picked up the goblet from which the earl had been drinking and threw it against the wall. At this Lord Ricarton got up from the table, went to her (I held my breath; I was afraid he was going to strike her), picked her up and carried her back outside. She shrieked and beat on his chest with her fists, which made the men erupt into song and laughter once again.

I looked over at Adrien.

“Is she mad, do you think?” I asked him, though in truth her eyes were not the wild eyes of a madwoman. I had seen madwomen, chained to walls, screeching and tearing their clothes. Or else crouching or lying on the bare ground, looking out from lifeless, closed faces, seeing nothing.

“I think she is very angry.”

“Is her name Skottefrauen? Or is that some insult I have never heard before?”

Adrien shrugged and shook his head.

“Will she be back, do you think?”

“She always comes back.”

There was a shout of dismay from the earl’s table and the room fell silent.

“That whore has brought me bad luck!” I heard him cry out. “Damn her to hell!”

“Damn her to hell!” came the echoing cry from the men around him. “Damn the Skottefrauen!” All of a sudden there was more noise than ever, the men stomping their booted feet on the wooden floor and banging on the tables with their fists.

The mood in the room had grown ominous, and for the first time since entering the tavern I felt cold and wretched in my wet clothes. I wanted to be gone from that place, wearing warm dry clothes and on my way back to the palace at a gallop. I opened my mouth to shout to Adrien over the stridor but before I could say a word the strange foreign woman was running back inside, a dagger in one upraised fist.

She ran at the earl, whose companions quickly deserted him. Lord Ricarton was nowhere to be seen.

With the swiftness of a fine swordsman the earl drew his own weapon—a long knife—parried the woman’s strong but clumsy dagger thrust and skillfully grabbed her wrist and twisted until the blade fell from her hand with a clatter. She cried out in pain.

“I should make you pay for my losses tonight, you wretch!” he said to her through clenched teeth. “Next time it will be your rings, your
necklaces, everything you possess! For now I will settle for—your jeweled buttons!”

At a stroke he slashed the front of the red gown with his knife, severing the many flashing ornamental buttons from the bodice. They spilled out across the filthy floor. Instantly the men were on their knees, grabbing for the jewels, fighting one another, whooping and snorting with hoarse laughter.

I looked across the table at Adrien and he understood at once that I wanted to leave. We got up and hurried out, picking our way among the scrambling men on the floor, Adrien pressing a coin into the tavernkeeper’s outstretched hand as we passed him.

I thought I saw the earl, seated once again at his table, glance briefly in my direction as we crossed the room, but I wasn’t certain. He gave no sign that he had recognized me—if indeed he had. Just as we went out I heard the sound of dice landing on a wooden table, and knew that he had resumed his game.

Outside the air was fresh and sweet after the rain. I took a deep breath and then another, waiting for Adrien to bring up our mounts.

Where would the Skottefrauen spend the night, I wondered. Who would prepare her bed? Who would repair her gown? I could still hear her harsh, loud voice—more a man’s voice than a woman’s, I thought—shrieking in her unknown tongue.

I was glad when Adrien and I had gone far enough along the muddy road so that we could no longer hear the noise from the Inn of the Three Barrels, and there was quiet once again as we rode, under the moonlight, back toward the castle.