Читать книгу Child Royal - D. K. Broster - Страница 10

Armed men, waiting ships, a wide river stippled by the wind, a nursery of five excited little girls to be embarked from the frowning steeps of Dumbarton—and one of them a Queen. In addition, a retinue of nobles and gentlemen, young and old; Monsieur Artus de Maillé, Sieur de Brézé, the French ambassador, full of solicitude and the last recommendations of the Queen Mother, Mary of Lorraine; the Lords Erskine and Livingstone, appointed for “the keiping of our Soverane Ladeis persoun”; Lady Fleming, her “governess” who, being a natural daughter of King James IV, was also the aunt of her royal charge; Lord Robert and Lord John Stuart, the two youngest of the Queen’s four bastard brothers, and a number of serving men and women. Most certainly that seaman of experience and Knight of Malta, the Sieur de Villegaignon, had his hands full.

One hundred and twelve years earlier, from this same port of Dumbarton, another child princess of the House of Stuart, but little older, had set sail for her marriage to the future King of France. She left behind her broken-hearted parents, and went herself, all unknowing, to a broken heart. But with the widowed Mary of Lorraine the compensations far outweighed the sorrow of parting with her only child. Her ambitions for her daughter and the strong family feeling which ran in her Guise blood were alike gratified by that daughter’s coming betrothal to the heir of France. The marriage would lift to yet greater eminence that ambitious and already very influential princely house. In France the little Mary, France’s future queen, would still be under Guise tutelage, for when her grandfather, Duke Claude of Lorraine, and her grandmother the Duchess Antoinette, and her great-uncle the rich and powerful Cardinal of Lorraine should have passed away, there would still remain her six uncles, of whom two were already high in royal favour. So much for the family fortunes. More important still, once in France and betrothed to the Dauphin, Mary of Scotland would be safe from any further attempt of the English to wed her to their young King, Edward VI. and to make a vassal kingdom for themselves beyond Tweed.

Before the summer sunset had ceased to colour the waters of the Clyde, the embarkation with all its turmoil had been successfully carried through, and the French galleys with their passengers were anchored for the night, to await a favouring breeze next morning. The fresh wind of the earlier part of the day had almost entirely died down, but what remained was still south-westerly, and the master of Ninian’s galley, the Sainte Catherine, averred that he liked the look of the sunset not at all. But, inexperienced and excited, the Scottish lords and ladies of the Queen’s train were fain to think it augured well for their voyage towards that Paradise of their dreams, the Court of France.

In a small, richly-decked cabin in the stern of the Queen’s galley, the Saint Michel l’Archange, the hanging lamp burnt already, swinging almost imperceptibly over a narrow bed behind which was stretched on the bulkhead a tapestry with the arms of Scotland. On either side of this bed were two slightly wider ones, for there was not room on board to give the Queen of Scots a cabin to herself, and she must share it with her four little namesakes and playmates of Livingstone, Beaton, Seton and Fleming. Laid two and two, tired out with the day’s happenings, for they were none of them much above six years old, these playmates were now drowsy, save little Mary Seton, who was already feeling sick, and was tearfully proclaiming the fact to the annoyance of her sleepy bedfellow, Mary Livingstone, snuggling away from her companion beneath the bed-clothes.

All at once there was a stir in the central bed, and the Queen of Scots sat up. The embroidered nightcap which fitted her little head so tightly could not altogether imprison her young red-gold hair; her eyes were bright with disdain.

“Foolish little Seton!” she said contemptuously in the French which was her mother’s tongue. “This is but the river, and we are at anchor! What will you do when we are upon the ocean?”

“Lie down, your Grace, I beseech you!” adjured the maid of honour, Magdalen Lindsay, who, being at the moment the only attendant on the royal sleeping cabin, had come over to comfort Mary Seton. And stooping over the whimpering child she said kindly, “It is but fancy that takes you, my dear. Shut your eyes, and think that you are in Stirling or Dumbarton again.”

“I wish I were!” gulped the sufferer. “I do not want to go to France in this ship!”

“Not want to go to France!” exclaimed the Queen, her childish voice shrill with scorn and amazement. “Mary Beaton, do you hear that?”

A sleepy sigh was the only response from the other double bed.

“If indeed you do not want to go to France, little coward,” continued the royal child, “I will leave you behind. You shall be put into a boat to-morrow morning, and I will tell M. de Villegaignon to have you taken back to Dumbarton, all by yourself, and we will sail without you!”

At this prospect the already tried Mary Seton burst into howls. A determined presence with a white coif and wide skirts was immediately in the cabin—Janet Sinclair, the Queen’s nurse, who was accompanying her to France, though it was assumed that she would not remain there.

“What’s this? Greetin’ a’ready? What gars the wean, Mistress Lindsay? And you, your Grace, lie ye doun!”

Her Grace assumed a mutinous expression, but after a moment she obeyed. So did Mary Seton obey a rather fierce injunction to cease her lamentations; and when, some quarter of an hour later, Janet having departed again, Lady Fleming herself entered the cabin, every one of the little girls was asleep. She stood a moment by the Queen’s couch, then bent over her own little daughter, curled up unstirring beside Mary Beaton, and smiled.

Mother of six children, widowed of the husband who had fallen at the battle of Pinkie only the year before, Lady Fleming at eight and thirty, in the plentitude of a rich, full-blossoming beauty, was still very attractive to men. And she had a way with her own sex too; at least she had in the past shown her young kinswoman Magdalen Lindsay a marked kindness, for no ascertainable reason. And now she had procured for her the envied post of maid of honour—dignified by that title, though it was rather that of bedchamber woman—procured it too with some difficulty, seeing that the daughters of many noble Scottish houses coveted it, and that Magdalen Lindsay’s widowed father would only consent to her absence for a year.

“’Tis to be hoped,” said this benefactress in lowered tones to her protégée, “that Mary Seton will not be queasy again, and awaken the rest of the children.”

“If she is,” answered the girl, “I will take her to my own bed in the little cabin yonder.”