The Flower Reader (53 page)

She seated herself under her cloth of estate. The Countess of Argyll and Mary Livingston arranged her train to spill gracefully over the edge of the dais, then stood back with the other ladies and gentlemen. Darnley sat next to her in another chair, quite as splendid as hers, but of course without the royal canopy. He radiated sulkiness.

David Riccio, newly appointed the queen’s French secretary, brought out a small gilded table and set it on the edge of the dais, in front of the queen. Members of the queen’s council surrounded her—Moray, Rothes, Maitland, and the rest. The English ambassador was present, Master Throckmorton, with his agent Thomas Randolph. Monsieur Castelnau stood on the other side, alone.

“We are prepared to receive the petitioner,” the queen said.

The pipers and trumpeters played another fanfare. I stepped forward with Nico beside me.

Yes, Nico was beside me. After his first visit we had talked every day, and little by little I had let go of my bitterness and mistrust. We had not become lovers again, not yet, although Tante-Mar serenely continued her correspondence in pursuit of a dispensation for us to marry.

Today he was dressed in a black velvet doublet and black hose and stockings embroidered in silver, but plain compared to the costumes he had worn as a courtier. I wore black velvet as well, with a white lace ruffle showing at the edge of my high collar and long oversleeves pinned back with emeralds over tight blue-green silk undersleeves. My hair was mostly hidden by a jeweled net and a velvet cap embroidered with pearls.

Everything was new and fresh, from my shift to my long white lawn veil, with one exception. Around my neck, bright against the black, I wore my mother’s chain of turquoises set in gold.

I carried the silver casket in my hands. The candles’ light glinted off the repoussé work on the domed lid and the hunting scenes in pouncework around the four sides. With the casket I carried a stalk of yellow cockscomb, a single long stem spotted purplish-black, with slender, deeply notched leaves and a tassel of yellow flower buds at the top. The buds had only just begun to open—Lord Darnley’s power over the queen had only begun to blossom. I did not know whether I could convince her to repudiate him before his influence came to full flower, but I had to try.

When I was halfway along the length of the hall, I saw him lean forward and whisper to her. His hands were shaking. He was afraid. Good. He deserved to be afraid.

I reached the dais and bent my knees as if I were performing a
révérence
in a dance; I could not perform a full court curtsy with the casket in my hands. Nico stopped beside me and bowed gravely.

“Marianette.” The queen nodded to me. Then she looked at Nico. I saw her expression soften. She would never be able to look at him without feeling affection for him; they were so much alike that when she looked at him she surely saw herself.
“Mon cousin,”
she said.

“I have brought your mother’s silver casket,” I said. “The murderer of Alexander Gordon has confessed his crime and is dead. You have sent the
Escadron Volant
dagger to Catherine de Médicis as a royal reminder of her complicity. Is this not so, madame?”

“It is so.”

“You have kept your part of the bargain, madame, and I am here to keep mine. I have brought you the yellow cockscomb as well, and I will tell you what it says to me, as you have asked.”

The queen lifted one long-fingered white hand and gestured. “You may place the casket upon that table,” she said. “The key with it, if you please. You have the key?”

“I do, madame.”

I stepped forward and placed the casket on the table. The fires licked and flickered over the silver. I laid the yellow flower on top of
the casket, and then detached a short chain from my jeweled cincture. The key swung on the end of it. I placed the key beside the casket. Then I stepped back.

“Madame,” I said. “When you first chose the yellow cockscomb in the garden of Granmuir, I told you it suggested you would meet a tall, slender, fair-haired person.”

The queen smiled. She looked at Lord Darnley and placed a loving, proprietary hand upon his wrist. “I have done so,” she said.

I paused for a moment. The queen waited expectantly, her hand upon Lord Darnley’s wrist.

“The flowers say what they say, madame. The yellow cockscomb represents a person who will batten upon your life and power, suck it away from you, and in the end cause your death.”

“Witchcraft!”

Everyone in the room stopped moving. Lord Darnley jerked his wrist away from the queen’s hand, rose to his feet, and snatched up the stem of yellow cockscomb. He threw it to the floor and stepped down upon it, crushing it.

“Witchcraft,” he said again, this time laughing. “Mary, my love, you have allowed this woman to take advantage of you with her so-called floromancy. I would never do you harm.”

“Of course you would not,” the queen said. “Marianette, you are mistaken. Your yellow cockscomb may indeed represent a tall, fair-haired person, but it could be anyone. Perhaps it is the king of Sweden. He is one of my suitors, and he is certainly fair-haired.”

I bowed my head. I had warned her, and that was all I could do. “I can only beg you to take care, madame.”

“Let us open the casket now, and see if the king of Sweden is one of the
quatre maris
. Harry, take the key and open it for me, if you please.”

Darnley stepped forward again and picked up the casket and the key. The crushed flower buds of the yellow cockscomb clung to the sole of his leather-and-velvet shoe. He unlocked the casket and threw back the lid.

“
Voilà
, my Mary,” he said. “The predictions of Nostradamus are yours.”

The queen took out the packet, with its net of knotted scarlet silk cords and its blood-red seals. None of the seals had been broken, and the intricate pattern of the cords was undisturbed. “It has not been opened,” she said. “I will be the first, then, to look upon it.”

She thrust her long white fingers into the cords. The wax of the seals broke with an audible cracking sound, and the cords came loose. She opened the folded sheets of parchment. The room was so silent I could hear the rustling sounds, even over the crackling of the fires.

“‘Les quatres maris de Marie, reine d’Ecosse,’”
she read. “Let us see, now, who these four husbands are, and what Monsieur de Nostredame has to say about each one.”

“Madame.” It was Nico. He had not spoken up to this moment. “The prophecies are for you alone, and perhaps your most trusted advisers. Half Europe has been pursuing them since your mother’s death. If Duchess Antoinette were here, she would beg you not to read them publicly, particularly in the presence of the French and English ambassadors.”

“You yourself could be one of those trusted advisers again,
mon cousin
. I know it would please my grandmother if that were so.”

I held my breath.

“I think not,” Nico said evenly. I closed my eyes and breathed again. “But please put the prophecies away, madame, and consult your council in private as to what they foretell.”

“Tell me only, my Mary,” said Darnley, “if I am one of them.” His hands were shaking again. “Surely I am one of them, as we love each other so truly.”

The queen paused, her gaze running down the parchment. I saw her brows slant together—something made her angry. She said in a clear, diamond-hard voice, “I shall read them if I choose. This is the first:

“The island king and the king from the south,

Vie for a child queen who takes to the sea.

In the white color of mourning she weds the dolphin prince,

Into whose ear a foreigner pours poison.”

“That is the little king of France,” Darnley said. “The dolphin prince—
le dauphin
. Hardly a prediction, as you were set aside to be married to him from the time you were a child.”

“But the last line,” the queen said. “Was the poison figurative or literal? And who was the foreigner?”

“What difference can it make now, my Mary? Read the next one. It is your next husband we all wish to know.”

“It is longer. I shall read part of it only.

“The queen will make a king, and conquer a bastard.

There will be death and birth and death again.

Letters are found in a silver casket,

No signature and no name of the letter-writer.”

“Make a king!” Darnley was exultant. “That is me. And the bastard—that is you, Moray.”

“There are many bastards in Scotland,” Moray said. He was flushed with anger. “Death and birth and death—perhaps you are the one who will die, Darnley, and the king she will make will be a son of her own body with a more suitable husband.”

“The letters in the casket,” I said. “No signature and no name—those could be your mother’s ciphers, madame.”

“Be silent, all of you.” The queen was reveling in the drama of it all. “Here is one couplet from the third prophecy, to tantalize you all.

“A Lord from the sea will carry off the queen,

She will pretend she is unwilling.”

She smiled. “There is more. I will keep it in my own heart, and ponder it.”

Darnley tried to snatch the parchment from her; she held it just out of his reach, teasing him.

“You will have no more husbands after me,” he said. “Nostradamus was probably drunk when he wrote these. Or in bed with his rich wife. Do not even read the last one.”

“The last one I shall read. It is a single quatrain.

“In a great castle where a king was born,

The queen will meet the fourth into whose hands she will be given.

In the early morning she will wear a red robe,

And after that she will know no more sorrow.”

The room was suddenly silent. There was something eerie about the fourth quatrain. The queen stood frozen and silent, as if reading Nostradamus’s words had put her under his spell.

“Mary,” Darnley said. “
Mary
. You will not have four husbands. You will have only two—the little king of France and me.”

The queen lifted her head and came out of her trance.

“You are right,” she said. She smiled. “
Bon
. We do not choose to believe or pursue these prophecies, with our council or without them. We have made our own royal choice.”

With one sweeping gesture she cast the parchment into the fire. It went up in a sheet of flame. Whatever strange ink Monsieur de Nostredame had used resisted the fire longer than the parchment did; for the briefest of seconds the words seemed to float unsupported in the heart of the flame. Then the red wax seals exploded in a series of flashes and the prophecies were gone.

“The ciphers,” Darnley said. “Your mother’s secrets. Burn them, too, my Mary. Be free of the past, and we will rule together in a new utopia.”

The queen hesitated. The casket lay open before her. I could see the papers inside. How carefully Mary of Guise had hoarded the scandals and misdoings of the Scottish lords for her daughter’s sake.
Those same lords surrounded her daughter now, from Darnley and Lennox, his father, to Moray and Rothes and Maitland and a dozen more. Any one of them would have killed to possess the old queen’s secrets for himself; none of them would want his secrets known by the others.

“Burn them,” the Earl of Moray said.

“Yes, burn them,” said Lennox. “Now, at once.”

I was stunned at the thought that no good at all would come of the pain and death the silver casket had wrought.

“Madame,” I said. “I beg you. Do not burn them. Keep them. Put them away safely. Read them later, when you are alone. Do not show them to anyone else.”

“Mary,” Darnley said. He stepped close to her and took her hand; his voice was husky and sensuous. “My Mary. Burn them, or I will have to leave you—I cannot bear for there to be secrets between us.”

Do not listen to him, I thought. It will change everything. Oh, madame, your whole future will change if you listen to him now. Look down, look down, see the buds of the yellow cockscomb clinging to his shoe; see how they have attached themselves to both shoes now, and even to his stockings…

The queen took the papers out of the casket and threw them into the fire.

I cried out with horror. I would have run to the fireplace and reached in with my scarred hands to pull the papers out if Nico had not held me back.

“It is too late,” he said. Everyone else was shouting, and the rush of sound mingled with the crackling of the fire and the rustle and spatter of rain against the windows. He spoke softly, for me alone. “They are gone.”

“That means it was all for nothing.” I was crying. I hated it, but I could not stop myself. “All for
nothing
, Nico. Alexander’s death. Wat Cairnie’s death. Rannoch Hamilton. All of it.”

“No. You kept your promise to the old queen. The young queen has chosen her path, and now she must walk it to the end.”

“That is not enough.”

“I think it is. There may be more—she did not read the entirety of the prophecies aloud. Do you remember how I told you the world would be a different place if you had not taken the casket?”

“I remember.”

“The world may have been changed again, now that the casket has been opened. It is not always given to us to understand the ways of fate,
ma mie
.”

“The casket,” the queen said. Everyone else was suddenly silent again. “The casket itself was truly my mother’s. I will keep it. It must be polished, of course. Perhaps it will serve for my own letters one day.”

“An excellent plan, my Mary,” Darnley said. “It is very pretty—I will send you letters and poems to put inside it.”

They had eyes only for each other. I curtsied deeply, and beside me Nico bowed. We went out together, and no one called us back.