The Flower Reader (56 page)

Q. Mary, queen of Scots, has been portrayed in many novels, movies, and plays. What inspired your particular portrait of her?

A. I wanted to capture the fact that she was so young when so many of the great events of her life happened. She was fifteen when she became queen of France. (She did not have to be
crowned, because she had already been crowned queen of Scots when she was nine months old and so was considered sufficiently consecrated.) She was eighteen when she returned to Scotland. She was twenty-five when she fled to England and her public life essentially ended, but for the final dramatic moment of her execution.

Mary in films is so often portrayed by adult women, and as an adult woman. Even given the fact that children were considered “adults” at a much younger age in the sixteenth century, Mary was a teenager when she returned to Scotland to take up her personal rule, and the physical and emotional challenges of the teenage years have not really changed. I have tried to capture her youth, her high spirits, and most of all the mercurial emotional changes and impulsiveness that are so thoroughly documented throughout her life. I can’t help but wonder whether Mary would be diagnosed with bipolar disorder if she lived in our present-day world; the fact that she was a queen, of course, surrounded her with people whom we today would call “enablers.”

Q. I love the descriptions of flowers, and their meanings, in the novel. Where did you learn how to “read” flowers? Was it an actual practice in Tudor times, or something you made up?

A. Floromancy as a form of folk magic is as old as time. If you’ve ever pulled the petals off a daisy and said, “He loves me; he loves me not,” you’ve practiced floromancy. In the sixteenth century it probably would have existed mostly in the countryside, among herbalists and “white” witches. That said, astrology and alchemy, which were considered actual sciences at the time, incorporated flower symbolism. Flowers were associated with planetary influences and with the prevailing medical theory of the four humors.

Some of the flower lore I used in the book is based on ancient
mythologies, some of it on astrology and alchemy, some of it on the planets, the zodiac, and the four humors. Most of it has some basis in folklore somewhere, although as an organized system, it’s something I created.

Q. Rinette’s mother enters a convent soon after her husband dies, placing her daughter under the nominal care of the queen regent, Mary de Guise. Many readers might find her choice a strange one. Can you explain more fully the culture in which it was acceptable to do this?

A. The connection between parents and children in the sixteenth century was very different from what we expect and experience today. Rinette herself would have been considered the odd one, with her passionate devotion to her children; Blanche of Orléans and Patrick Leslie of Granmuir were more typical sixteenth-century parents of the noble class, spending their time at court and leaving their daughter to be brought up by older relatives and servants.

Patrick was Blanche’s whole life, her great love; his death stripped her of any will to continue with the life of the court, the only life she knew. In addition, the Catholic Church of the time (and to some extent still today) taught that the prayers, sacrifices, and good works of the living are helpful to souls in purgatory. Blanche genuinely believed her prayers and the sacrifice of her worldly life and position would reduce her beloved husband’s time of punishment in purgatory and speed him on his way to heaven.

We see an echo of her mother in Rinette’s own intense love for Alexander Gordon, and in her willingness to send her daughter Màiri to be brought up at Granmuir while she pursues justice for Alexander at the court. Rinette, however, learns from her experiences and her suffering and eventually lets go of her
obsession with Alexander in order to love again and to be a genuine, loving presence in the lives of her children.

Toward the end of the story, Nico’s copying of Blanche’s childhood storybook is a metaphor for Nico being the catalyst in initiating Rinette’s new life, however much that life may be founded on her childhood at Granmuir and her troubled love for the mother who abandoned her.

Q. The political maneuvering and skullduggery going on in Mary’s court make it a dangerous place to be! How did young women, especially someone without a protector as Rinette is, survive it?

A. Rinette may seem to be without a protector, but she really isn’t. The well-established kinship system of Scots society puts her under the protection of the Earl of Rothes, the head of the Leslies. Because her grandmother was a Gordon and she was married to Alexander Gordon, at one point the Earl of Huntly, the head of the Gordons, vies to be Rinette’s protector as well. After her father’s death and her mother’s withdrawal from the world, she became a royal ward, which also protected her; Rinette herself negotiated with Mary Stuart to gain the young queen’s royal protection in exchange for the silver casket.

Of course, a “protector” in this situation pretty much means “a person who can do whatever he or she wants with your life and property.” Even the men—vassals like Rannoch Hamilton—were much at the mercy of their feudal lords.

Q. We all know that Mary, queen of Scots, was eventually executed by her cousin, Elizabeth I, but can you summarize what happened to her after the events of this novel? In your research, did you come across any particularly interesting fates for any of the other historically based characters?

A. In the two years following the end of
The Flower Reader
, Mary drove her half brother the Earl of Moray into exile, witnessed the brutal murder of David Riccio, bore her son, James, later James VI of Scotland (and ultimately James I of England), was involved (or possibly not involved) in the murder of Darnley, married the Earl of Bothwell, was defeated and forcibly separated from Bothwell and imprisoned at Lochleven, and forced to abdicate. After not quite a year at Lochleven she escaped, lost another battle, and unwisely fled into England. There she was detained for eighteen and a half years, before ultimately being executed for treason against Elizabeth. Obviously there is an incredible amount of additional detail, detail about which there is a great deal of historical mystery and disagreement—it would make a whole other book!

Virtually none of the historical characters in the book had happy fates. The Earl of Moray became regent of Scotland after Mary’s abdication but was assassinated three years later. Riccio and Darnley, as mentioned above, were murdered. Bothwell died insane in a Danish prison.

Q. In your two novels, this one and
The Second Duchess
, you write about two very different places. The research must have been formidable! How did you tackle it for The Flower Reader?

A. I had a bit of a head start because I’d been reading about Scotland and about Mary Stuart (which is how she always spelled her own name, as opposed to “Stewart”) since I was old enough to read. I’m not sure why Scotland fascinated me so, although I do have a long line of Fleming ancestors on my mother’s side.

The Second Duchess
was set in 1565–1566, while
The Flower Reader
was set in 1560–1565. So they overlapped a bit at the end. And it’s quite true that Alfonso II d’Este of
The Second Duchess
knew Mary Stuart during his youth in France; his sister Anne d’Este was married to Mary’s uncle Francois of Guise, and he was therefore her uncle-in-law. Later, after the death of Lucrezia de Médicis and before his marriage to Barbara of Austria, he actively courted Mary Stuart with gifts and letters while she was in Scotland. I love the way the threads of the two books glanced off each other in that single moment.

Another interesting connection is that Alfonso also received a private prophecy from Nostradamus. It did not come true, and it was so terribly heartbreaking that it is just as well that it didn’t.

Q.
The Flower Reader
is set during the Tudor period, but its Scottish setting gives it quite a different, and fresh, sensibility. Was life really different in Tudor England versus Tudor Scotland?

A. It was indeed. The Scottish court was much smaller and much less well financed—throughout her personal rule in Scotland, Mary Stuart depended on her dower estates in France to pay much of the cost of her household. The castles and palaces were less, well, palatial. Mary Stuart herself, for all the jewels, dresses, furniture, books, and paintings enumerated in such minute detail in
Inventaires de la Royne Descosse Douairiere de France
, had a minuscule wardrobe compared to Elizabeth Tudor.

Outside the French-influenced court of the sixteenth century, Scotland was generally considered primitive, rustic, and uncouth compared to the rest of Europe. Communication was difficult and roads were poorly maintained. Kinship was the primary social structure; the great lords were virtually autonomous rulers, and feudal and family relationships were woven into every aspect of life. The Stewart kings had not ruthlessly wiped out other claimants to the throne, as the Tudors had, or struggled to get male heirs; with healthy legitimate families and many half-royal
bastards (James V had at least nine illegitimate children), virtually every great family was related by blood to the crown and harbored their own (sometimes violent) ambitions.

Q. Nico is an unusual hero in that he’s more courtly, diplomatic, aesthetic, and less obviously masculine than many romantic leads. He reminds me of the heroes one tends to find in Dorothy Dunnett’s wonderful (but challenging!) historical novels. Was Nico inspired by her work?

A. In part he is a sort of homage to Dunnett’s hero Lymond—Dorothy Dunnett has always been one of my very favorite writers. But there are also elements of other foppish courtier/man-of-action dualities in Nico’s makeup—Sir Percy Blakeney and the Scarlet Pimpernel, for example, and Don Diego Vega (as he was called in Johnston McCulley’s original novels, novellas, and short stories), and Zorro. I adored Zorro as a child and accumulated all sorts of Zorro collectibles. That duality fascinates me, and for me makes a character like Nico all the more intense and compelling.

Q. What was the most fun for you about writing
The Flower Reader
?

A. It’s impossible to pick any one thing! Collecting the folklore of flowers from old herbals and books of mythology was endlessly delightful—some of the flowers I planted myself so as to experience their textures and scents. Another enjoyable process was creating the little dog Seilie, who, like Tristo and Isa in
The Second Duchess
, is based on our own beagles. His freckled paws? Straight from our own Cressie.

Another thing I loved was imagining the atmosphere of Granmuir. The name is based on old Scots Gaelic, with
gàrradh
meaning “walled or enclosed garden” and
muir
meaning “sea.” The
ancient chapel supposedly built by Saint Ninian, and the even more ancient pagan Green Lady, are based on tales told about Dunnottar Castle on the Aberdeenshire coast; in fact, Granmuir on its sea-girt rock will be recognizable to anyone familiar with Scotland as a fictionalized version of Dunnottar. In my stories I tend to return to themes of home, home longed for, home lost, and home found; Granmuir is a place where I myself would love to live.

Q. What are you working on now?

A. I am returning to Renaissance Italy for my next project—the working title is
The Alchemist Prince
. The book is woven around the most scandalous, most tragic, and most enduringly mysterious love triangle of sixteenth-century Italy—the alchemy-obsessed Prince Francesco de’ Medici; his proud and fragile young wife, Joanna of Austria (sister of
The Second Duchess
’s Barbara); and his beautiful, ambitious Venetian mistress, Bianca Cappello, whose story is so similar to Anne Boleyn’s that it sends a chill down one’s spine.

There are fictional characters as well: Chiara Nerini, a troubled Florentine girl unwillingly initiated as Prince Francesco’s alchemical
soror mystica
; and Ruan Pencarrow, a rough-edged, enigmatic Englishman from the copper mines of Cornwall, who may be a master metallurgist, may be a spy, or may be the greatest alchemist of them all.

1. How does
The Flower Reader c
ompare to other novels you might have read about Mary, queen of Scots, or others set during the Tudor period? What did you enjoy most about it?

2. Mary, queen of Scots, has been portrayed in many movies, plays, and novels. Compare the portrait of her in
The Flower Reader
to other portraits with which you are familiar.

3. By law and custom, the men of this period held absolute authority over their wives. Discuss the various marriages in the novel. What makes Rinette’s relationship with Nico so unusual, and what makes it a more mature union than her marriage with Alexander?

4. Discuss the ways in which Catholics and Protestants coexist and make accommodations for one another in Mary’s court. Can you think of ways in which we make accommodations for other religious beliefs in contemporary society? In what ways do we fail to make those accommodations? Is there a point at which adjusting to other beliefs imperils your own?

5. Considering the untold suffering caused by the struggle to possess the contents of the silver casket, and the trouble that the queen’s mother went to, to preserve those contents, do you think Mary was right or wrong in burning the contents at the end of the novel? The queen’s impulsiveness is one of her defining traits, but do you think she would have later regretted her action?

6. Nicolas de Clerac goes to great lengths to honor a sacred vow he made to his grandmother. Do you admire him for keeping the vow or do you think he should have been more flexible in reaction to events? In contemporary society, does our reluctance to make sacred promises tend to make us less responsible and mature as adults?

7. Throughout the novel, Rinette wants to go home to Granmuir, her castle by the sea. Is there a place that acts as a similar refuge and touchstone in your life? If not, can you imagine one?