The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots (6 page)

“What under heaven were you thinking, child? To go out alone, at night, to a place full of thieves and murderers! Be glad I’m the one who found out about your foolish excursion and not Queen Catherine!”

It was the morning after Adrien and I had gone to the Inn of the Three Barrels and my grandmother Antoinette was sitting in my bedchamber rebuking me, frowning in irritation, her wide, generous mouth turned downward even as she tossed her thin leather gloves from hand to hand across her broad lap.

“I wanted an adventure, grandmamma,” I said. “That was all.”

“An adventure! You are a queen, child. You are not supposed to be off on adventures, you are supposed to be decorous. And docile. And above all, fertile.” As she said the last words she sighed, her voice dropping. “Not that there seems to be any chance of that now. Francis is too ill.”

“He may yet recover,” I said softly, though I knew that neither my grandmother nor I believed it possible that my dying husband would ever regain his vigor.

My grandmother was returning to the subject of my late night wandering.

“From now on you are to stay where the court is, do you understand? You are never to go outside at night, even if you have an escort. When the court travels, you will travel with it. Otherwise you will stay where you are.”

“I understand. I will obey you.”

But grandmamma was still agitated. Instead of leaving my bedchamber she continued to sit where she was, slapping her gloves against her palm, rolling her eyes, her breathing rapid.

“I promise not to go out again,” I said, hoping this repeated reassurance would calm her. Instead it brought out more exasperation.

“There is a problem,” she snapped. “You were seen.”

I was astonished.

“One of the servants was in the tavern last night. He recognized Adrien. And he heard Adrien speak to you in a respectful tone. As you were both leaving, he saw your shoes, and recognized them too.”

My shoes! I had taken care to keep my face well hidden, to wear modest clothing, a modest cloak, I had removed my jewellery so that no one would suspect that I was anything other than Adrien’s humbly-born sister—but I had not thought about my shoes, accustomed as I was to assuming that my long skirts always kept them covered. Yet my shoes were very distinctive, made of soft kidskin and trimmed in golden filigree with bright jewels twinkling from within the swirls of the design. They were the shoes of a highborn woman, costly things that belonged in the royal court and not in a rural village.

Remembering all that had happened the night before, I thought I knew when my shoes would have been seen and my identity revealed. It must have been when the earl stripped the gleaming buttons from the Skottefrauen’s bodice and all the men got down on their hands and knees and scrambled for the brilliant stones.

“You can imagine what is being said, and how quickly the story is spreading. That the queen has a hidden life. That she keeps low company. That she seeks out places where her favorite the Earl of Bothwell goes.”

“But I did not speak to him,” I protested. “Nor he to me.”

“It is enough that you were nearby. Or so the story goes. I imagine it becomes more scandalous with every retelling.”

I insisted that I was blameless but I knew that the damage had been done. And I feared that my mother-in-law was already at work spreading gossip about me. Saying that I was not only unfaithful, but mad. That I ought to be chained up in a dark place, or worse—condemned to die. For in France, as I knew, wives who committed adultery were often killed, though highborn wives were shielded from this brutality.

I sat down beside my grandmother, close to her, close enough to smell the rich odor of the perfumed pomander she wore at her waist, a mixture of violets and gillyflowers. I needed to feel the reassurance of her presence. I needed her support.

She shook her head.

“I would not be in your place for anything,” she said, patting my knee. “You must keep your wits sharp, and your friends close by in case of need.”

She stood up then, kissed me and started for the doorway. Before she reached it she paused and turned back toward me again.

“Be careful of that astrologer of hers,” she said. “She has brought him back to court. Heaven knows what ghoulish plots he is devising.”

The vultures were gathering. I could sense them circling over the court, over my husband’s sickbed, over me.

Not my Guise relatives, they were slipping from power. But the others, the Comte de Dampierre and Monsieur de Roncelet, the high and mighty constable Anne de Montmorency, the queen dowager’s advisers. The members of Prince Charles’s household, Francis’s little brother Prince Charles who was next in line for the throne. The clergy waiting to hear of deathbed benefactions. And the ever hungry, ever hopeful courtiers who were always to be seen when momentous events
were about to occur, men who watched for opportunities and seized them.

The vultures could smell death, and fresh meat. They meant to gorge themselves. They meant to feast on the entrails of power.

I did not count Michel de Notredame among the vultures. He was not greedy to advance or enrich himself, nor did I think he wished anyone ill. But he valued being high in my mother-in-law’s favor, and each time I entered my husband’s bedchamber and saw him there, sitting quietly or consulting his books or talking in low tones with Queen Catherine, I remembered what he had said about the deathly worm that was burrowing its way deep into Francis’s ear, and how nothing could stop it.

I knew that the best way to counteract the damaging gossip being spread about me in those dangerous days as my husband’s life ebbed was to stay close to Francis and show my concern for him. Hour after hour I sat at his bedside, talking to him when he was awake and watching him when he slept. From time to time I knelt on the prie-dieu in one corner of the room, repeating familiar prayers and asking for grace. I asked that Francis be freed of his deep-boring worm, that he might be restored to health, and that I would be guided to do and say the right thing. I prayed for my mother’s soul and that my kingdom, Scotland, would be spared destruction.

I watched the royal doctors when they came in to examine Francis and stood together afterwards, whispering and looking as doctors always look when they do not expect their patients to survive: they looked grim. The apothecaries were dosing Francis with rhubarb and the stench of the herb permeated the room.

Poor Francis slept most of the time. I did my best to ignore the others who came and went, peering down into Francis’s pale face and asking the doctors how he was—by which they meant, of course, how much longer was he likely to last.

Mine was a harrowing vigil. For poor wretched Francis was not only mad with the terrible pain in his head, his mind too was in
torment. Everything and everyone terrified him. When he was awake his eyes were wide with fear—fear of shadows, even.

“Assassins, assassins!” he cried weakly as he flailed his arms to beat back nonexistent attackers. He lashed out at me, no longer knowing who I was. I had to duck to evade him. Even when his mother came in, wearing mourning black and bringing rhubarb tea, he did not recognize her and practically knocked the tray she carried out of her arms. To my horror, I saw the ghost of a smile cross her plain features when she looked down at her son, helpless and in the grip of his fears. Soon she would be in full control, as regent for the new King Charles. In her mind she had already moved from grieving the loss of Francis to triumphing over her enemies, the Guises, over me, over the entire court. She was about to become sovereign in all but name. And I, Queen Mary, was, I feared, about to become her first victim.

Francis’s funeral was magnificent even though I heard it whispered that Queen Catherine had had to borrow heavily from her Italian bankers to afford it. All the nobles and officials, both old and new, now clustered around the new king, young King Charles, and crowded his bedchamber. I was ignored, which suited me, except that I continued to fear the queen and to recall the dark future her astrologer had predicted for me.

I wore black to honor my late husband and to follow court etiquette, but inwardly I was not in mourning. Francis’s long illness, and his increasing bitterness, had driven away any sorrow I might have felt at losing him. And there was another force at work as well: the strong and forceful Earl of Bothwell was more and more on my mind.

I went to the earl for advice after Francis died and found him, not in the comfortable lodgings he had enjoyed as one of the king’s bedchamber gentlemen but in a cold bare room over one of the stables. He was sitting on the floor, meanly dressed, rubbing a piece of leather with a cloth. He did not seem surprised to see me.

“I wondered how soon you would find me here, Your Highness. As you see, I have been removed from the palace. I no longer have an
official position, and I am apparently not welcome as a guest. My mother-in-law the queen is not pleased to honor me with an invitation to stay on.”

“In that, I fear, we are the same. She would rather I did not stay on either. Will you go back to Scotland soon?” I asked after a pause.

“If I must. I have a ship in the harbor. My own ship. The
Black Messenger.
She can be ready to sail on very short notice.”

“Why delay?”

He put down the piece of leather he was polishing and looked at me through half-closed eyes.

“Because of you, madam.”

I felt a jolt, a pang.

“Me?”

“You are my queen. I am Scots, and you are Queen of Scots. You are my concern.”

“You are gallant.”

“I serve the Scottish throne. Against Arran and the Protestant lords, against the English, even against the dark arts of a certain Michel de Notredame who, if I am not mistaken, wishes you ill.”

This comment about Monsieur de Notredame took me aback.

“I was not aware of any ill will from Monsieur de Notredame. Are you certain this is not mere servants’ gossip?”

“There is certainly plenty of servants’ gossip making its way through the palace. It has even reached the stables. For example, Your Highness, there is a story about you. About you going to a certain tavern on a rainy night and observing what went on there. This story, it seems, is reliable.”

So he saw me there, I thought. Had he too recognized me by my lovely shoes? I felt a sudden surge of indignation.

“If you are indeed a servant of the Scottish throne, then you will not sit in the presence of your queen.”

He got to his feet.

“Pardon me, Your Highness.” He swept me a bow—such an
elaborate bow, there in the dark dirty room, that I could not help but feel that he was mocking me. Why was it that the earl’s signs of regard invariably seemed to have an edge of contempt?

I ignored the insult.

“If I had gone to that tavern, I might have seen a very alarming sight. The sight of a certain woman. A frightening woman. A woman who made a nearly fatal attack with a knife on a Scots nobleman who was lucky to escape with his life.”

The earl sighed and spread his hands in a hopeless gesture. There was no longer any hint of insult or contempt in his manner.

“Well then, let us speak frankly. You came to see me at the Inn of the Three Barrels, I recognized you, we did not communicate—at least, not directly.”

Our eyes met. All of a sudden he looked older, more burdened. I felt a stronger connection to him than ever, though I could not have given that connection a name.

“Let us speak frankly, Jamie,” I repeated, my voice low. “As friends?”

“Very well, Your Highness, if you wish it. As friends.”

“My name is Mary.”

“I cannot call you that.”

“What then?”

He laughed. A small, soft, intimate laugh. “Orange Blossom,” he whispered.

“What!”

“It is how I think of you.”

I shook my head, smiling. Such a sweet, intimate name.

“Then I command it,” I said, laughing. “When no one else can hear, I permit you to call your queen Orange Blossom. Now then, who was that fearsome woman in the tavern?”

Once again Jamie—I thought of him from then on as Jamie—gave a hopeless shrug.

“I am being pursued by a Fury. I won her in a card game. Now I can’t get rid of her. I call her the Encumbrance.”

“You are speaking in riddles.”

He sat down again on the floor, and I looked around for a bench, but there was none. With a grunt of exasperation he sprang to his feet again, went out of the room and down the stairs. I heard voices. In a moment he had returned, carrying a saddle, which he put down on the floor for me to sit on. I thanked him and sat.

“Last year your mother sent me to Denmark, as her envoy,” he began when he had resumed his own place on the floor. “I had business at the court. I stayed on for a month or so. There were many Norwegians there as well as Danes (Norway being ruled by Denmark, as you know) and in the evenings they liked to drink and play cards. I won many a game. I won nearly enough to buy my ship, as it happens.”

“The
Black Messenger.
”

“Yes. She used to be called the
Whale of Trondheim,
but—well, a change was necessary—”

“I can understand that.”

“One night we played until dawn,” he said, chortling at the memory. “We drank so much we could hardly see, our heads were spinning so fast. One of the players was a young Norwegian, a nobleman, hopelessly beside himself with drink, with no skill at all in his play. He lost all his money, and then began betting his possessions—his horse, his rings, even a lock of his dead mother’s hair. Can you imagine! He actually bet a lock of his dead mother’s hair!” He shook his head, amazed at the memory.

“Finally, when everything else he had was gone except his title, he bet his betrothed, his bride-to-be from a rich family. She wasn’t there in the flesh, of course. Well, I thought it was nothing more than a bizarre jest. I didn’t care. I grinned, drained my goblet, took the bet, and won. I certainly never expected to see the young nobleman again—or his fiancée.”

He looked up at the ceiling, shook his head, and went on. “I was wrong. The woman came to find me, and said she was my betrothed
now, and that I would have to marry her. The nobleman had abandoned her, she said, and had gone away to Iceland. Her family had renounced her. She is the daughter of a Norwegian admiral, and as I am hereditary admiral of the Scottish fleet I must keep her father’s goodwill. We rely on the Norwegians to crew our few ships, as you may know.”

“What a cruel dilemma! But you are unmarried. Why not just marry the woman, rather than become her victim?”

“You have seen her. You know why.”

“She is certainly plain, and graceless, but not hideous.”

Jamie looked as if I had just handed him a plate of stinking rot from the refuse pile.

“She is not only plain as a pikestaff, but a violent, vengeful scold. Even though she does have a dowry of seven thousand ecus. And I have half of it—at least I did have half of it until I lost it to a Dutchman who, I’m sure, was cheating.” The last words were mumbled, his voice dying away as he spoke. He did not meet my eyes.

“No wonder she follows you. She wants her dowry back.”

“Let her take it! I told her the Dutchman’s name. It’s Lukas Korthals. I wish to God she would follow him and not me. She says she prefers me. Besides, she claims she is carrying my child.”

At that I began to feel wary. Had Jamie slept with the woman who called herself the Scottish wife? And if he denied it, could I be certain he was telling me the truth?

“And is she?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even.

He spat. “Of course not. If there is a bastard, it belongs to that drunken young lord who gambled her away. Or some blind man.”

I thought for a moment. “She must be paid off.”

“If only I could—”

“Can you borrow from your friend Cristy?”

“He only lends me gambling money. And he takes more interest than the Italian bankers.”

We were both silent for a time. Jamie went back to polishing his bit of leather, and I began to ponder. Jamie had a dilemma to solve—but so did I. And mine, it seemed, was on a vaster scale.

Leaving him in his room over the stables, I returned to my bedchamber, the bedchamber of an eighteen-year-old widow and dowager queen whose prospects were unclear and whose ability to choose her path was about to be tested.