The Wild Queen (2 page)

My own little court was made up of the Four Maries, my father's three bastard sons, and a number of others. My nurse, Janeen Sinclair, would accompany me, as would my governess, Lady Janet Fleming, Mary Fleming's mother. Mary Livingston, the daughter of Lord Livingston, one of my guardians, was in my party as well. Mary Seton and Mary Beaton were the other two Maries, and Seton's younger brother Robbie was coming too.

The Marie dearest to me was Mary Fleming. Because of her reddish curls and mischievous smile, we called her La Flamin. A little older than I and “irrepressible,” in my mother's opinion, La Flamin made it her duty to keep me informed of what was really going on. It did not occur to me that she might have been inventing some of her stories, or at least embellishing them a little. Her father had been killed at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh.

“You and I had the same grandfather, you know,” she told me proudly “King James the Fourth.”

“I do know that,” I said, not wanting her to think I was ignorant, but in fact I was not sure I
did
know. “He was killed in battle too,” I said, eager to show off my knowledge of Scots history. “Fighting against the English at Flodden Field.”

“He was married to Queen Margaret, so he couldn't marry my grandmother,” added Mary Fleming with a deep sigh. “And so my mother is a bastard.”

“Pity,” I said, nodding sympathetically. Queen Margaret was
my
grandmother. It was indeed unfortunate that a person born out of wedlock could not inherit titles and property—like my three older Stuart half brothers. “But you and I are still cousins, are we not?”

“Aye, of course! But I am pure Scots on both sides of my family,” she boasted, tossing those red curls. “The other Maries have Scottish fathers and French mothers, like you. When Marie of Guise came to Scotland to marry your father, the others came with her as her ladies in waiting.”

“I know that too,” I said.

“And did you know that your father had another wife, before your mother?”

Sometimes I had to pretend I knew more than I did; this time I did not. “Her name was Madeleine,” I said, “and she was the daughter of the previous king of France. She was sixteen when she came here to marry my father, and within forty days she was dead of a fever, poor thing. They blamed it on the Scottish air.”

“The air in France is said to be much more pleasant,” said La Flamin helpfully

“My mother's first husband, the duke of Longueville, died as well, when she was expecting her second child. Poor Mither! That baby died when he was only four months old. But her older boy still lives in France. I suppose I will meet him when I go there.”

“That must have been so sad!” Mary Fleming said, her brow furrowed sorrowfully. “And then your mother, the duchess, received a proposal of marriage.” She leaned toward me eagerly and took my hand in both of hers. “My mother told me about it. Do you know who her suitor was?”

“My father? The king of Scotland?” I hoped I was right. I did not like La Flamin knowing more than I did about my own family, even if she was my dearest friend.

“No!” she cried. “You are wrong! He was a king, it is true, but not of Scotland!” Mary Fleming was bursting with her triumph in our storytelling. “It was Henry the Eighth of England!”

“That horrible man wanted to marry Mither?” I was so shocked by that bit of information that I flung Mary's hand away. Why had my mother never told me this?

“Aye, but she refused him! My mother knew all about it!” La Flamin struck a pose that she considered queenly “This is what Marie of Guise said: 'I may be a big woman, but I have a very little neck.' King Henry had had his second wife, Anne Boleyn, beheaded, you see, and before the swordsman cut off her head, Queen Anne said, 'I will be easy to kill, for my neck is little.' Your mother had heard that story, and she was not about to have
her
head cut off.”

“Then I thank a gracious God that she refused him and I did not have Henry the Eighth for a father!” I exclaimed. “How horrible to have one's head cut off!”

My friend agreed that it was horrible. “But still you had him for a great-uncle, you know. King Henry married three more times before he died. Six wives all told!” she went on, sure of my interest. “He divorced two of his wives and had two beheaded. One died—that was Edward's mother—and one outlived him. I would never have married that dreadful man—would you?”

I shuddered at the thought. “Or his son either,” I added. “A wicked lot, the English.”

My cousin clearly enjoyed shocking me with her grisly tale. I shivered at my mother's good fortune in escaping the clutches of the evil King Henry. I did not stop to wonder then how she must have felt when she left France for Scotland, a country she had never seen, to marry a man she had never met, leaving behind her little son without knowing when she would be with him again.

F
OR TWO DAYS
after the arrival of the French ships, a small army of servants bustled around my apartments at Dumbarton, packing my possessions in brass-bound leather trunks under the watchful eye of my mother's friend Lady Seton. Some trunks were filled with gowns of silk and velvet trimmed with lace and gold braid and embroidered with sparkling jewels. Others were stuffed with dainty gloves and little slippers and underthings. I amused myself by counting the trunks as the servants struggled to carry them down the steep, narrow steps to the royal galley tied up at the pier. I could not yet count past twenty, and there were still more to come.

My mother fretted that my finery would not be fine enough for the French court. “The French have a different idea of fashion,” she said, sighing as she watched the trunks being carried off. “But your grandmother will see that you are given many new clothes when you arrive.” Then, as happened often during those last few days, tears began to slide down her soft cheeks. “Oh, my sweet Marie, you will have so much to learn!” she cried, brushing away the tears. She took me on her lap and kissed me, murmuring endearments in French, which I understood well enough, though I always replied in Scots. “You must learn to speak French,
ma chère,”
she said softly, pushing strands of hair away from my face. “No one in France understands the Scots language.”

“Then I shall speak Scots with the Four Maries,” I declared.

“What a stubborn child you are,” she said fondly. “Besides that, you are accustomed to being the sole object of all our attention. Now you will join a family—the dauphin and his two sisters—and you must remember that you are no longer the most important person in the room.”

“But I am the queen of Scotland!” I exclaimed, surprised and a little put off by what I had just been told.

“Yes, dear child, you are the queen of Scotland, but you are going to live in the French court. The dauphin outranks you. Fortunately, you are young, and I have no doubt you will learn quickly”

***

While the French ships were being provisioned for the journey, my mother arranged farewell banquets in my honor and invited the Scottish lords and ladies and the landowning lairds. Royal banquets were usually merry affairs, but young as I was, I sensed the sadness rippling like an underground stream beneath the music and dancing and feasting. Though everyone rejoiced that I was going off to marry the future king of France, I would be living far, far away, and I had no idea when I would see Scotland—or my dear mother—again. I tried not to think about that.

The day came to say goodbye: the twenty-ninth of July in the year 1548. My mother and I clung to one another and felt our hearts breaking, though I had been taught that as a queen, I must not give way to displays of emotion. “Your subjects do not wish to see your nose dripping and your eyes red with weeping,” my mother had told me over and over. “It is your duty as queen to appear calm and steadfast, no matter what you may feel.”

On the occasion of my leave-taking, I tried to follow her instructions but failed entirely The French ambassador, sent by the king to escort me on my journey, attempted—without success—to lure me away from my mother. “Go, dearest child,” my mother said at last, her voice thick with tears. “I shall remain on the parapet and watch you from here.”

Finally my guardian Lord Erskine swept me up in his arms and began the long descent down the steep steps cut into the rock to the waiting ships below. I insisted that he put me down at once. “I am the queen,” I lectured him, “and I do not wish to be carried like an infant. I shall walk to the ship myself.”

From somewhere below me on the rough path, Lady Fleming complained that her shoes were being ruined, that they were not made for climbing mountains, and I called down to her, “Lady Fleming, we are not
climbing
a mountain, we are
going down!”
That only made her more irritable.

Musicians played lighthearted tunes, but once my companions and I were taken aboard the ships, they turned to something slow and serious. A priest gave a final blessing to the passengers, the crew, and the royal ship itself, and every one of us prayed for a safe journey. Dozens of galley prisoners chained below deck bent to the oars and rowed the royal ship away from the shore, and the crowd that had gathered high above us on the parapet cheered, their shouts carried on the wind. My mother waved her handkerchief. As the ship moved through the Firth of Clyde, my companions and I stood on the deck and watched until Dumbarton Castle, looming remote and forbidding on its great rock, was far behind us. We could no longer make out the tiny figures on the parapet, though I was sure I could still see my mother's handkerchief fluttering bravely Then that, too, disappeared.

When my friends were done sniffling and wiping their noses over the sadness of leaving their families behind, we set out to explore the ship. I found my quarters and thought them too small, and I protested that I should be given a much bigger cabin. Then my half brother James, who was seventeen and on his way to France to continue his religious studies and who had traveled there once before, explained, “We are truly going to sea, dear Mary, and this is how seafarers live. Even queens must travel this way.” So I decided that my tiny cabin was, indeed, quite large enough after all.

As a child, I was always full of energy and high spirits, and besides, my dearest friends were with me, and I was sure we would have nothing but happy times during our voyage. Neither I nor any of the Four Maries had been to sea, and so we had no idea of what lay ahead of us. At that hour we were very pleased with this grand new adventure, but our enjoyment was not to last.

We passed the Isle of Arran, its rugged mountains shrouded in mist, and were about to enter the open sea. But Captain Villegagnon observed the sky rapidly filling with black clouds and ordered the ships to heave to just as a great ocean storm roared down on us. The royal galley pitched and rolled in the angry waves, and a gale blew so hard across the deck that I could scarcely stand upright. Hours stretched into days, and still the storm punished us. My three half brothers organized games of handy-dandy and hide-fox-and-all-after to amuse the children. But eventually they as well as the rest of the passengers, young and old, grew sick and listless; they could not bear the sight of food and spent their time clutching the rails of the galley. Day after day passed in misery while the captain waited for the storm to wear itself out and the benevolent west winds to rise and carry us on.

“When will the winds be right?” I asked the captain, and he explained wearily that it was all in God's hands.

Lady Fleming was not willing to wait for God and made a great fuss to the captain, demanding to be put ashore. “It is utter nonsense to have us all imprisoned on this wretched ship and going nowhere!” she complained. “I shall die if I cannot go ashore and recover myself.”

But Captain Villegagnon refused to yield to her. “You are not going to shore but to France,” he said curtly “If that does not please you, madame, you have my permission to drown.”

Lady Fleming let out a sharp little cry and closed herself in her cabin and did not come out again for at least half a day; her usually rosy complexion seemed quite green when she eventually reappeared.

On the tenth day the clouds broke. The captain ordered the sails raised and the prisoners on the oars to row. The royal galley began to plow through the still towering waves, heading westward into the Irish Sea, passing by the Isle of Man and then going south along the coast of Wales. My friends never ceased to be plagued with seasickness and whimpered piteously. I was not afflicted and could not understand why they were so distressed.

Within a day the storm had caught up with us. Once more the royal galley bobbed like a cork on the white-tipped waves, and the rudder was smashed. While the men struggled to repair it, the ship began to roll from side to side so violently that objects slid back and forth across the deck. I had a favorite doll I called Wee Mary—I could not think of any other name for her—and she was swept overboard as I watched helplessly. For the first time since we'd sailed from Dumbarton I was truly upset, and I sobbed until Lady Fleming promised to find me another, though I knew no new doll would be nearly as pretty as Wee Mary

My oldest brother, James, was bent over the captain's chart table, studying our course and reporting on the progress of our voyage to anyone who cared to listen. The French fleet rounded Cornwall and entered the English Channel, still with no relief from the battering sea. Then, just as everyone had begun to think that we might never arrive, that we were doomed to endure calamity after calamity, land was sighted.

“France! France!” rejoiced the passengers, though it was said weakly by those suffering from a delicate stomach. We had been on the open sea for eighteen days, twice as long as expected.

***

Nearly every citizen of the little fishing village where we landed turned out to welcome the king's galley. The deck had heaved beneath us for so long that our legs wobbled as we left the ship and came ashore.
“Vive la petite reine écossaise!”
someone shouted. “Long live the little Scottish queen!” Others joined in. The cheering crowd accompanied us in a joyful procession to a nearby town, where the local lord received me at the gates with great ceremony. I understood hardly a word of what he said—it was all in French—but I believe it included “welcome” and “safe arrival.” I said,
“Mera'—thank
you—and smiled.