Mary Queen of Scotland & the Isles (15 page)

Mary laughed. This made her uneasy. Did Diane have a deadly disease?
Was she making her will?

"I am fifty-five now. Is it not time? I have reigned a good long
while in the realm of beauty, but it is a hard burden. You are welcome
to it!" She gestured at a painting of herself in which her bosom was
bare. "You are shocked? You would never pose that way?"

"No, Madame," she said quietly. But then she could not help asking,
"When was this painted?"

"Only a few years ago. Now you are shocked! You needn't be. Painters
are kind; it is not only God who can create something out of nothing!
Our court painters are equally adept at it."

Mary had always loved watching the Duchesse as she moved and spoke.

"You will reign in beauty forever," she said. "I fear it is not an
office you can resign, like being Keeper of the King's Seal or Royal
Treasurer."

"Alas, that is so. Hurry and grow up, then, so you can relieve me of
it. Time will push you on and push me off."

Mary's two oldest uncles gained in power and stature. Uncle Cardinal
acquired a larger sphere of influence, and Uncle le Balafre shone as a
battle hero in taking Metz from the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who
was fighting France. In Scotland, Mary had achieved the formal
appointment of her mother as Regent, and they continued to try to oust
the English. In England itself, Edward VI had died and been succeeded
on the throne by his half-sister Mary Tudor, who was devoutly Catholic.
In a matter of months she had made England Catholic again, and taken as
a husband Philip II of Spain. This was a disaster for France, for now
England and Spain would team up against France and try to conquer her.
That meant that Scotland was suddenly a very important ally for France
because of her location.

At the age of eleven, Mary had received her separate household; and
when the time came, she was glad to leave the royal nursery after all,
because it had become so crowded. There were now six Valois children
sharing quarters with her. Mary had become increasingly aware of the
intense scrutiny that Catherine de Medicis turned on all the children,
and was relieved to escape it.

The Queen had become increasingly dependent on her fortune-tellers and
astronomers, especially one called Nostradamus. She insisted on
bringing him in to make pronouncements on the children, and when he had
seen Mary he had intoned, "I see blood around that fair head!" which
had both annoyed and upset Mary annoyed her by its rudeness, and upset
her in case it might be true. Her annoyance at the astrologer (who
was, after all, performing his duty) transferred itself to Catherine,
who should have had more tact.

Within her household remained the four Marys, John Erskine, Father
Mamerot, Madame Rallay, and her physician, Bourgoing. She liked
Bour-going; he was very young and had just completed his studies at
Padua. She still had her band of Scots musicians, for she liked to
listen to the music of her native land, even though the French teased
her about it. Among themselves the Scots continued to speak their
native language occasionally as a novelty.

When she was alone, Mary would look at herself in the mirror, wondering
if what Diane said was true. Was she beautiful? How much taller would
she grow? When she developed a woman's body, would it be graceful and
pleasing? Girls changed when they turned into women, that she knew.
Plain ones could shine, pretty ones turn out coarse and dull. She
hoped if it did not betray too much vanity, about which Father Mamerot
had warned her that she would not be plain.

By the time she was fourteen, the poets had discovered her. They
hailed her in verse after verse, calling her the equal of any beauty
since time began. Mary tried to remember Diane's warning about beauty
being a burden, but she could not help enjoying the words, since they
answered her secret fear.

The court historian Brantome wrote, "In her fifteenth year her beauty
began to radiate from her like the sun in a noonday sky." He praised
her hands, "so finely fashioned that those of Aurora herself could not
surpass them."

Pierre de Ronsard, the leading poet of the group that called itself the
Pleiad, after the constellation of seven stars, gushed: "O beue et plus
que belk et agreabk Aware."

His fellow Pleiad poet Joachim du Bellay wrote, "Nature et art ont en
votre beaute I Mis tout k beau don't la beaute s'assemble":

Nature and art have combined to make your beauty The quintessence of
all that is beautiful.

He also proclaimed:

The tongue of Hercules, so fabks tell,

All people drew by triple chains of steel.

Her simple glance where'er its magic fell,

Made men her slaves, though none the shack ks feel.

The painter Francois Clouet sketched her and painted her, lamenting
that as she was a butterfly or a wild creature, she could not sit still
for him, and so he was unable to capture her charm. He did one
jewellike miniature of her, with a sapphire blue background and a
rose-coloured dress, but she looked stiff and mannered in it, he
thought something she was not in life. It could not speak in her voix
tres douce et tres bonne, as a true work of art should. Nor could he
get her delicate colouring right; in attempting to capture its
translucence he merely made her look wan.

Only the bronze bust sculpted by Jacquio Ponzio captured her posture
and bearing, as it could show her exquisitely turned slender neck, and
the way she carried her head. She had posed for it daydreaming, her
eyes focused on a faraway internal landscape, and in it the artist
caught the careless largesse of youth, which thinks it has a thousand
tomorrows and does not disdain to dream away today. Her hair was up
swept in curls, her almond-shaped eyes serene, her mouth almost
melancholy. Only the merest whisper of a smile touched her small
mouth; otherwise the statue looked out in Olympian detachment.

TEN

For all that, the young Queen hailed as une vrai Deesse a veritable
goddess loved to romp and run and ride and often lamented that she was
not born a man, to wear a sword and armour. Her uncle the Duc de
Guise, the hero-general of France, who had just wrested Calais from the
English, compared the girl's courage to his own.

"Yes, my niece, there is one trait in which, above all others, I
recognize my own blood in you you are as brave as my bravest
men-at-arms. If women went into battle now, as they did in ancient
times, I think you would know how to die well. And I, my dear, should
know," he said. "For I have seen enough of both kinds cowards and
brave men. Bravery is a Guise trait; look at your mother's courage in
holding Scotland for you against the heretic rebels. Ah, that is true
courage!"

"Truly she is beset," said Mary, hurt by the thought. Her uncle was
needed to fight against the English who had invaded France, else he
could go directly to her mother's aid in Scotland. He was so
wonderful, he could do anything.. ..

"Yet, as I said, she holds out bravely." The Duc looked around the
room approvingly. It had been an altogether satisfactory arrangement
to set Mary up with her own household at court after her eleventh
birthday. Of course, the stingy Scots had not wanted to foot the extra
bills for it. As if the French should be obliged to, after all they
were already spending to keep troops in Scotland! In the end the Scots
had coughed up the money, and the furnishings in the royal rooms were
quite passable. A few more rugs would be appreciated, but he shrugged
one could not squeeze milk from a dried-up udder. Or extra money from
a Scottish oatcake, those odd, fodder-tasting cakes they fancied.

He looked at Mary, in her establishment four years now. It had all
worked out so well, as if Fate herself had arranged all the details.
That the girl should grow up to be beautiful but trusting, ready to
believe that people were what they seemed to be. That she should have
such a love for her mother a mother so seldom seen that now, in truth,
it was a love that existed for an imaginary person, shaped by her own
longings that she would do anything for her, and, by extension, for her
mother's brothers. All of them worked together, with one goal: to
control both France and Scotland. Mary, this tall, spirited girl, was
the central point in the turning wheel around which all their ambitions
revolved.

The first step had been taken when the French Parliament had been
persuaded to proclaim that it was Mary's desire that she now be granted
the right to name her own regent in Scotland; the Scots had to agree,
or lose French support. Mary promptly named her mother to be Regent.
Out went the erstwhile Regent, the Earl of Arran, head of the House of
Hamilton, and all his men. He was pacified with the French dukedom of
Cha-telherault. In came the French administrators.

Marie then did her part and appointed her brothers to be Mary's keepers
and ministers in France: Duc Francois was to guide her in earthly
things, Cardinal Charles in spiritual ones. Mary was an apt and loyal
pupil under their tutelage. She would be their perfect queen and
perfect creature when the time came for her to mount the throne. Now
that Calais had been won, the French people could deny the Duc nothing;
so the time had come to press for the wedding of Mary to the Dauphin,
to secure it once and for all.

In Scotland things had not gone so smoothly. It seemed that the Scots
had a fervent dislike of "foreigners." For centuries they had hated
the English, the "auld enemy." But now that the French were close at
hand, they decided they hated them worse. They seemed to have
forgotten why the French had come there and at great expense, too! in
the first place: to get rid of the English for them. Now they had
started to rebel against the French.

"From what you tell me, dear Uncle, soon more troops will be needed."

"We will send whatever is necessary," he said coldly. "The country
will never fall from your hands. France will not permit it."

"Oh! If I were a man! I'd fight them myself!" she cried.

The Duc smiled. "Like your ancestor Charlemagne! Like your other
ancestor Saint Louis, on the Crusade against the infidel. Yes, I
believe you would!" He looked at her slim tall form, her shining face
like a young knight's. "How tall you are!" he suddenly said,
realizing she was his own height about six feet. "Again, like a true
Guise!" He put his arm around her shoulders; her bones were delicate,
for all her height.

"Is there no Scots in me at all?" she asked, and he could not tell
what she wished the answer to be. Odd, as he could usually read her
mind. "No trace of Stewart?"

"When you dress d la sauvage, in the furs and plaids," he said
cautiously. She was a pretty sight in that barbaric costume she
affected once in a while.

"That is something I put on from the outside. I meant from the
inside," she insisted.

"Well, you like your Scots musicians you've kept your own band all this
while to play you that .. . unusual music."

"I enjoy it," she insisted.

"Yes, well, that proves you're Scots," he said. "To any other ears,
it's an odd sound."