Читать книгу The Duel of the Queens - Elizabeth Louisa Moresby - Страница 5

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It was on the last saint’s day before the marriage that the Queen Catherine of France paid the very young bride the honour of a visit in her private apartment in the palace of the Louvre. So rare—so unexpected was it that as Mary met her at the door her heart beat with quick expectation and the more as her Majesty desired the ladies in attendance to remove themselves out of earshot. Two armchairs of equal splendour were placed for the two queens, for much of the etiquette of the French court centred upon armchairs as opposed to lowlier seats. A bronze perfume burner was set on the table before them, and footstools were set for their silk-shod feet.

And then with a lip smile intended to inspire confidence Queen Catherine began:

“In a few days, my child, you will be my true daughter, and your own good mother, the regent of Scotland, not being able to leave your stormy kingdom it is needful that I should take her place in giving you some needful instructions. This I will do and in return claim a daughter’s and a queen’s promise. Shall I have it?”

Mary in silence looked up at the tall imposing figure in glorious red damask, strings of pearls littering the bosom and stressing the sallow Italian skin and masterful jaw. The dark eyes above them were as piercing as heart hiding—an overmatch for a child’s. She was assured of her answer before it was spoken, yet when it came it was unexpected. Mary spoke gently:

“Madam, my very good mother, I desire your best counsel, for who has more need? And your instructions I receive with reverence. But a queen cannot promise before she hears, for she pledges her kingdom with her.”

There was no sign of anger or surprise on the yellowish marble of Catherine’s face. She smiled slightly and went on:

“I wish to speak of England—of which you are rightful queen at this moment and must actually be one day. The whole policy of Europe turns on England now and I may say of the world, for Asia is nothing nor is the New World except to Spain who holds it in her pocket. Now—what is your own thought of England? You are the great-granddaughter of Henry VII, the great-niece of the atrocious Henry VIII—that butcher of noble ladies and renegade to Holy Church. Therefore, royal English blood is yours. But you are also half French. Your mother, Mary of Lorraine, is one of us. Does not Nature itself point out your office?”

In much surprise and more anxiety Mary tried to clear her thoughts and words and the Queen continued to look at her with calm expectance. When the answer came her voice trembled a little in replying, but there was no other sign of emotion and no delay.

“Madam, your Majesty knows that England has been a nightmare to me as to my father and mother, and France I love. How could I not? I came here a little child to peace and safety from the plottings and persecutions. I never heard the word ‘England’ spoken, but it meant dismay and horror. But there is a country your Majesty has forgotten. I am queen of Scotland, and in my heart the Scots are first forever. If I hope to be queen of England it is because it will mean peace for Scotland and an end of the plotting and fighting that bleed my country to death.”

Catherine permitted no disapproval to appear. She had thought French interests would come first with the girl who owed so much to France and would be her queen. With herself French interests came first for the simple reason that they were her own and her family’s interests also, and that would have been the preferable view for Mary Stuart. What was a barren country like Scotland but a stepping-stone to the wealth and power of England? But she said sedately:

“A queen should feel in that way, my daughter. We are the shepherds of our people. However, what I would have you know is that in Europe at this moment the two most important women are yourself and Elizabeth of England. No others are worth mentioning in comparison and therefore——”

Mary ventured to interrupt.

“But, madam, Queen Mary, her half sister, keeps her prisoner in the Tower of London and now guards her in the country, and the next courier may bring word that her head has fallen. How is she important? I do not speak of myself.”

The French queen’s lips lifted with scorn.

“The old hag on the English throne, though a very good Catholic and a very dull fool, dares not kill her. She has friends. And the old hag, hated by her husband Philip of Spain and incapable of children, will be dead in two years or less. And then—it will be you, my daughter, or Elizabeth, for the English throne.”

“Then it should be me,” Mary cried with spirit, “for I am of the true blood, and my great-uncle Henry himself bastardized his two daughters and with his parliament declared them incapable of succession. I come next. He knew it, and that was why he would have married me to his puny son Edward, who died.”

Indeed this child’s hand had been plotted for by France and England when her life could be counted in days. It would be so plotted for to the end of her life. But Catherine shook her head.

“True, my daughter, you are queen of England as you sit, and so do those half sisters hate one another that you being a good Catholic the old hag would sooner have you for her heir than the slut Elizabeth, the daughter of the slut Anne Boleyn, who ruined her own virtuous mother, your great-uncle’s first wife. But though bastardized she is reigning, and Elizabeth though bastardized may succeed instead of you if we are not careful. We make what trouble we can for her and yet——”

There was a long silence. Then Mary raised her head.

“Madam, my good mother, was Anne Boleyn guilty when they beheaded her for adultery and incest as treason to my uncle Henry?”

“You ask a difficult question, my good daughter. She was certainly guilty of a very coarse levity with men and should have had better manners, having been trained at our court. But also she was guilty of standing in the way of a woman your great-uncle wished to marry after he had tired of Anne and told her she should have no more boys by him. Also she did not affirm her innocence on the scaffold. But I believe her to have been guilty for one reason because of the coarse levity of her daughter Elizabeth. It runs in the blood. You cannot mistake women of that temper.”

“Madam, may I hear the rights of that story? My mother has not dared commit it to paper—our ships are so often captured by the English. And my gouvernante, Madam Parois, said a little and threw up her hands to God and all the saints. What has Elizabeth Tudor done? Has she disgraced herself with men?”

The French queen’s black eyes sparkled, and a malicious laugh showed her teeth. She slipped into her own Italian speech which Mary spoke perfectly.

“Very different are the two sisters. Mary Tudor is an old maid, though married and dreaming pregnancies until Europe laughs at her empty cradle. But she will soon be dead. Elizabeth, my good daughter, is nine years older than yourself. This you know. Perhaps you do not know that at fifteen her conduct with the handsome Lord Admiral of England—Seymour, husband of her stepmother, Katherine Parr, was so—shall we say—merry?—that all England believed she had had a child by him and she was obliged to deny it roundly in a letter to the Privy Council.”

Mary Stuart blushed rose red. A wave of crimson ran over her fair face. She had thought of Elizabeth Tudor as a girl like herself, and though she could love no Tudor this outraged royalty and therefore her own.

“Was her denial true?”

“It was quite certainly true—and for an excellent reason. Like her half sister she is incapable of children. We have it on authority we cannot doubt. But she is folle for admiration, mad for the pursuit of men, and like her mother will go to any length for them—c’est une grande amoureuse!—but I question whether she will marry, for with no children the husband must be master, especially if he outlives her. She will romp with men as she did with Seymour, who lost his head as the price of her pleasure. She will flatter them, try to tickle their senses, lead them to think they have caught her, and then as the butterfly net swoops over her head dance off to the other end of the garden and draw on another to the same futile pursuit.”

There was another pause. Presently Mary asked:

“And what is this light lady like? Oh, I have seen her miniature flattered with a skin of rose and pearl and hair like sunbeams and a Diana air in the carriage of her head and modest eyes! But what is the slut like when Truth measures her praise?”

Catherine needed little sensitiveness to feel the disgust in the voice of Mary Stuart, and it pleased her well. It could never suit the aims of France that there should be friendship between the two queens of the island of Britain, and besides that it was well known that Elizabeth, true daughter of Henry VIII, was deep in dissimulation and could betray with a kiss any day. No safe friend for a girl inclined to believe in fair faces! Therefore she replied smartly:

“Here among ourselves we call her the half virgin—and I believe that to be a flattery. Her conduct with the rake Seymour was incredible. For her looks—she is a passable height. Her hair inclines to red—on the yellow side. Her face is pale, her lips small and red. The nose hooked. She has a carriage of great dignity and majesty when she happens to remember her father. A carriage very much the reverse when men are for her hunting; for then she resembles the cat who was changed into a princess. The mice scurry, and she is among them with claws and teeth in a second, and nothing else is remembered, unless indeed it be her mother’s amusements. She is extremely clever and shrewd and well educated and thinks herself much more so than she is. As, for instance, she counts herself a perfect mistress of French, and yet makes such blunders that our ambassadors laugh in their gold sleeves. Very woman of very woman and therefore most dangerous for a queen.”

She waited a minute for an answer and Mary said sighing:

“She cannot be outwitted”—more as an assertion than a question. Catherine replied with a grim out-furl of her fan.

“She is as keen witted as Machiavelli, whom she has made her study. There, I do not blame her! It is the policy of kings.”

With another long sigh Mary said, as if to herself:

“And yet—if she could trust me we might be friends. It is what I would choose for England—I may be queen there—for Scotland where I am queen. We are women—we have the same blood. We——”

Then indeed the French queen cut in with most bitter laughter:

“Friends! And you are her heir and nine years younger and lovely as a fairy tale, and of unblemished reputation and of royal blood on both sides and—is there anything in which you do not goad and shame her? Nothing, by God’s Mother! And you would trust her! Let me assure your Majesty that the day you trust the English slut you sign your death warrant and your country’s. She cannot but hate you. I should hate you myself if I were she. Any rival must. Be not a fool. You have the game in your own hand. In a few days you will be not only queen of Scotland but dauphiness of France. Later, queen of France also. You will have four kingdoms to share among your children if you count Ireland. This brings me to the promise I have a right to ask. It is this. Promise me that in all your dealings with England until you are seated on that throne you will consult the interests of France and take counsel with us. Promise that when queen of England you will be our true and faithful ally. Otherwise what use has France for you?”

Mary of Scotland rose to her feet and laid a hand like a white rose petal on the velvet of her chair.

“Madam, I thank your good Majesty for much good counsel. I hope all my life long to be true to France and to England. I have no other thought in my whole body. This I swear to God and our Lady. But I am queen of Scotland and I cannot pledge her alliance without my ministers, and if I am queen of England it is the same. How can I pledge alliances in private talk with my mother? No. Trust my heart, madam, for it beats true French. And if I say I would be friends with Elizabeth I must test her, but I think it cannot be. I hate false red-haired women that must hunt men.”

In the last sentence the Queen so obviously was eclipsed by the young disgust of the girl whose rôle would always be to elude men rather than chase them that Catherine smiling inwardly set herself to gain her point. She heaped the brutalities of the court where Elizabeth had had her training upon the little queen. Some were true, some false, but all would serve their turn. She bade her remember that but two barren wombs were between her and the English crown and entreated her to pledge herself now to France, the only ally she could trust. But though she could create disgust for Elizabeth and distaste for a heretical country like England she could wring no pledge from the Queen of Scots, and they parted with anger on her side and a belief on Mary Stuart’s that her cousin Elizabeth might have suffered a little unjustly at the hands of a lady whose interest it clearly was to disparage her.

“I shall watch with as many eyes as a peacock. I shall walk as gingerly as on spring ice. I am no fool! But I will see for myself. My cousin is my cousin, though a bastard, and it does not please me altogether that the daughter of an Italian banker should call any kin of mine sluts and bitches and red-haired witches. There is much good in human nature—and may be in hers!”

She went back slowly to the great room where her Marys were chattering wedding finery and all the pomps of royalty, and sat among them sighing. A world where royalty has things very little its own way. She wondered what Elizabeth, the prisoner of the Tower, had heard of her. Yet Catherine of France was right. Undoubtedly the planets of these two were in opposition of the sharpest, and the fierce duel of terror and beauty in which they were to struggle for power was the inevitable outcome.

For the moment Mary had tried to forget these anxieties for lesser ones. The great preparations for her marriage absorbed her and filled her girl’s heart for the most part, though at moments a hidden fear would lift its head. All fears should bend to a bride’s joy and a queen’s will, but they would not.

“It is hard,” she said to Mary Beton, who knelt before her, displaying jewels, “that my Scots lords will not allow the crown and sceptre of Scotland to leave Edinburgh. I would have worn it so gladly on my marriage day, for I love Scotland. It should have come in spite of the dangers of English ships. They should have moved heaven and earth to bring it to me.”

“But that would have been too great a danger, your Grace,” said Mary Beton seriously. “Your head would not have rested on your pillow if you had thought of the crown in the hands of the English. And what you will wear is glorious. You will look like an image of the Blessed Virgin all mailed in jewels, crowned and sceptred and nothing wanting but the child in your dear arms, and that will come later.”

“God grant it! But I think the comparison profane. I am well enough for an earthly queen, but nothing more, if that. And the Queen of Heaven is beauty immaculate and divine. One should not say such words.”

She crossed herself devoutly. Young as she was, her Marys could have told the world that she had not a little of the visionary’s temper, not a little of the mystic’s yearning. Fate was against her there, but her mother remembered a scene when, thwarted and careworn, the child had said:

“Put me out of the way. They wrangle about me, and I am weary of it all. Send me to the convent at Soissons, and there with birds and flowers and prayers and the good sisters I can live my life and bid the world forget me.”

Her mother, sharply hurt, had answered:

“A fine reward for all my care in ruling your unruly kingdom! Think rather that you shall marry a great king and have noble children and you and they be defenders and warriors of the great Apostolic and Catholic faith. A high destiny. Prayers can be mixed with power. You shall not forget your daily prayers and the Mass—but you shall reign.”

She did not plead again for a convent. But she had seizures of strange thought in which the world shrank to the size of a wizened walnut filled with black dust in comparison with things unseen, winged and haloed like angels.

That mood was on her now as she looked at the table loaded with jewels, her own property and the gifts of her French relations and such courtiers as those whose position gave them the honour of presenting them. Beautiful exceedingly, but with no promise of peace in their glitter. Those angry diamonds came from her store in Edinburgh Castle. They glittered as coldly and fiercely as the eyes of the Scots barons who opposed her right in the Northern Kingdom, men bought with England’s money and sworn to make her reign a short and bitter one. Those rubies burned with a sullen blaze which recalled the burning fanatical zeal of John Knox and the Scots Reformers sworn to break the Catholicism in her or to break her with it and fling both into the dust heap of the ages. Those moonbeam strings of pearls were the tears she would weep in that cold and gloomy kingdom of the North, far from the sunny land of France and all the joys of her glad childhood and youth? Those emeralds, baleful with the green fire of jealousy, might stand for the catlike glaring eyes of the Leopards of England couched for the spring, seemingly passive for the moment, but tense with steady watchfulness. Were they passive even now? She spoke aloud suddenly:

“It is bad luck—I say it is bad luck to carry the arms of England on my shield until I am queen of England. I never liked it. They should not force me. Take away the jewels. I have other things to think of.”

Mary Beton raised astonished dark eyebrows.

“But, your Grace, who should wear the arms of England but the great-granddaughter of Henry VII and the great-niece of King Harry VIII? Half the blood in your veins is royal English blood. Are you to forget it? That wrinkled old woman on the English throne—who has no right there—she may object! But need you care?”

“It is not the old queen of England I care for. As you say, she is a bastard and the throne is mine. It is the English people. True, they send messages, but—oh, let me not think of it now. Let me be free from care for a day, an hour.”

There was prayer in her eyes—a young plea for joy. A prayer to the unrelenting brows of Fate.

“Think of this, madam,” said Mary Beton, “here is the marriage poem that Master George Buchanan has written for your Grace. In Latin, of course, but with a loveliest translation. It will go all over the world! An address to his Royal Highness, the dauphin.”

She was but a girl. Pleasure lighted in her face as she snatched the paper and began reading it aloud.

“If matchless beauty may your fancy move

Behold a princess worthy of your love,

How gloriously her stateliness doth rise

What gentle lightning flashes from her eyes.”

“Beautiful! Beautiful!” cried the Marys in concert, “Oh, go on, madam, go on.”

Mary, laughing, pushed the illuminated paper into the hands of Mary Seton.

“How can I read my own praises! You read best, Mary Seton. A few more lines, and then I must see my wedding dress.”

Mary Seton rose and declaimed it with waving hand. She read with sweetness and fire, still addressing the bridegroom:

“Are you ambitious of an ancient line

Where heralds make chivalric blazons shine?

She can a hundred monarchs count and more

Whose hands the English, Scottish, sceptres bore.”

“I like that. It is right to speak of England. That should never be forgotten!” Mary Beton said proudly. “For myself I shall never know a satisfied day until I see my queen throned in Windsor by the Thames.”

The Marys loved her as a sister. Brought up together from earliest childhood, there could never be the distance prescribed for queens between them and their mistress. The frank Scots manners forbade it also. Mary laughed at their zeal and the clapping hands of the rest.

“Go on, flatterer!” she said to Mary Seton. “Shall I not have enough with the two crowns of France and Scotland?”

Mary Beton laughed, too. It seemed weight enough for so young a head, but not enough to satisfy her pride in her queen.

“Never mind. That can wait. I like these verses. Go on, Mary Seton!” she said.

“That passion which with infancy began

Took firmer root as you advanced to man.

Your own fond eyes the peerless maid surveyed

A constant witness what she did and said.

Your passion never sprang from wealth or State

But from her virtues nobly proud and great.

Features divine, no coldly pictured grace,

But shining conquering beauty in her face.

“I like that, Mary Stuart!” said Mary Seton, interrupting herself, for sometimes among themselves they called the girl queen so. “It is true. You are all life and shining. For my part I think Ronsard’s verses too cold and set. And as to the pictures!—I believe I could paint a better myself!”

“Try, little Scots owl! And now—finish up. Hurry, for I must see the dress.”

“Miles more!” said Mary Seton, running her eyes over the pages. “Oh, just this bit—addressed to your Grace:

“And let no fond regrets disturb your mind,

Your country and your mother left behind.

For one awaits you, dear beyond the rest,

Smiles on his lips and rapture in his breast

And he will be to you all else above

A kingdom’s or a mother’s sacred love.”

She laid down the manuscript, and Mary took it lost in thought. Yes—she loved him as a young brother. They had grown up together. There was nothing to discover, for she had known every turn of his temperament since childhood. She knew exactly where she must support and supplement his shyness and awkward self-contempt. She must inspire him with the confidence needed for his great position. She must be king of France as well as queen of Scotland when he succeeded to his father’s great honours. A difficult position for a girl not sixteen, but possible because she knew him so well, loved him so tenderly. Her eyes softened over those lines. Naturally Buchanan had written them as to a mighty prince who would be his bride’s stay and shield. He would never be that—never! She almost smiled in thinking of the grotesqueness of the notion as compared with truth. But it might—it might be dear and sweet and homely between them, for all that! She would do her best, and he would trust her.

The Marys sat about her still as statues, waiting until the cloud of dream should lift from her eyes. They loved her too well to misread such thoughts as those, for they, too, knew the bridegroom and knew that the Queen of Scotland must rule for both, and that would be no easy task in the teeth of Queen Catherine of France.

None who saw it could ever forget the glory of that April marriage day, an April bright and blossoming like the young promise of the royal bride. Paris the lovely, the city of festivals, had excelled herself in magnificent preparation for the joy of the child she had adopted as her own, and this was but the sign and seal of that unwritten covenant. The King, conscious of her popularity, had made it possible for the humblest to see and rejoice with the royal house, and all was planned to that end. A long gallery twelve feet from the ground had been built from the palace of the Archbishop of Paris to the great cathedral gates of Nôtre Dame, ending in an open pavilion, where the marriage would be solemnized in the face of the world before the bride and bridegroom proceeded to the high altar for the marriage blessing.

The very thought drove Paris mad with delight. They were not to be defrauded of one blush, one smile, one note of her clear voice as she took the vows which bound her to them forever. Beauty wins all hearts, but perhaps the purposes of the French are more swayed by it than others, and not a man in the vast surging breathless crowd but had a thrill of the bridegroom’s joy.

Such a gallery! Embowered in carven vine leaves and branches, shaped like the cloister of a great cathedral. Such a pavilion, hung with blue Cyprus silk, blossoming with golden fleurs-de-lys! Such a cardinal to make the marriage, splendid in crimson against the blue, the Cardinal de Bourbon, a prince of the Church and of the blood royal!

“Sad that her poor mother cannot see it!” murmured the women in the crowd. “Hard that she is nailed to that gloomy throne in Scotland and cannot come to our darling’s triumph! I would give my little finger if she could lead the child to the altar. The poor Queen Mother!”

The men nodded assent. Hard indeed! Life is not all easy for those great people. She would miss her mother—a fine woman and brave! Hush, a man has climbed a few feet upon the gallery so that he stands above the crowd. What is he saying—what shouting aloud?

“Happy beyond all men is the prince who is to be wedded to this pearl. If Scotland is of value, she, the Queen, is far more precious, for if she were a beggar maid, in her person, in her divine beauty, she is worth all the kingdoms of the world. And since she is a sovereign she brings to France and to her husband double fortune!”

It was Chastelard, the poet. He shouted the words, wild with triumph, tossing his velvet cap into the air. Men took them up and roared them from one to another and farther. And to the accompaniment of that mighty music of a people’s joy the bride appeared, led by the King of France. Let the old chronicler describe her splendour.

“She was dressed in a robe whiter than the lily but so glorious in its fashion that it would be impossible for any pen to describe it. Her royal mantle and train were of bluish gray cut velvet, richly embroidered with white silk and pearls. It was of a most marvellous length, its weight supported by young ladies.”

Not for her young beauty the purples and crimsons of older royalties. She drifted among them, unveiled indeed as royal brides must be, but evanescent in her gray and white as an April dawn. She desired no jewels, but that was impossible; therefore on her head she wore a crown royal, ablaze with splendour, and about the white stem of her neck long chains of noble gems sustaining that matchless cluster of stones known in England as the “Great Harry” and once the possession of her great-grandfather Henry VII through whom she claimed the English throne.

“Not that. Not to-day!” she had pleaded to Queen Catherine, who had supervised her adornment. “Let me forget that quarrel to-day. This once!”

“To-day of all days you shall wear it,” the Queen said sternly. “England is a part of the dowry you bring to France. Let the English know it and the French rejoice!”

And therefore with every breath she drew the Great Harry sparkled her rights to all men in flaming colour. The crowd waited still as a sea in sunshine while she advanced to the pavilion. Not a sound must interrupt the words which made her bride of France. It was done, and still the silence held while she turned to the bridegroom who kissed her on the lips.

“Monseigneur, I salute your Majesty as king of Scotland.”

That was the bride’s gift—her triumph, and as the Scots commissioners knelt before them the sea broke into the storm and billows and thunders of acclaim. What a bride—what a bride for France! And to that thunderous music they moved into the mighty church, the sea roar of the great organ meeting the other like opposing waves and heralding her approach.

Paris rejoiced that day as never yet. Such as were admitted to behold the festival in the Louvre spoke of it as enchantment impossible to forget.

After the banquet there followed in the great hall of the palace a pageant said to have been designed by Mary herself, and indeed it had the touch of her delicate fancy.

The floor cloth was painted in imitation of blue sea waves, and as the court, headed by the queens, stood at gaze six ships with silver masts and sails of silver gauze entered before a prosperous breeze, gliding smoothly over the painted waves—a lovely pageant. On the deck of each sat a prince masked and in cloth of gold sewn with jewels. And as the fleet passed before the crowding ladies each prince leaped from his deck and made a capture for the vacant seat beside his, the dauphin seizing his bride. And thus, doubly loaded with youth and beauty, the happy ships glided round the great hall, while outside brilliant lights blazed the triumph to Paris—until all dissolved in dancing and delight not only in the palace but all over the city and in the country of France.

Was it flawless triumph for the bride who had raised her husband to the rank of king? No. She carried an anxious heart weighted with a secret known to her, known also to the French king and to Catherine. The astrologers anxiously consulting the bridegroom’s horoscope had shaken their heads very gravely over it. Stormy planets had shadowed the eclipse under which he was born and darkened his boyhood. Consulted as to the alliance with the Queen of Scotland they had again gloomed, but this time in silence.

“Not even their wish to flatter us, and they would do it if they could, can hide the fact that the stars are against us, my heart’s hope!” he said to his bride as they stood alone at last in the royal chamber where the marriage bed awaited them. “Think well, before we go farther. They have said—I heard them say it—that my ill fortune is infectious. It casts its shadow on those nearest, whom I best love. Think well. Be only my sister, heart’s dearest, and you may yet escape. You have long life and triumph before you. I have not.”

She looked and her eyes filled with tears, seeing the thin neck, brightly flushed cheeks, and feverish eyes. Better for her, for him, if each had been given more years for ripening, but these children could have no privileges of youth. They were crowned slaves fettered to a political necessity.

“Would you have waited longer if you could, Francis?” she whispered, trembling. “We are so young. I am afraid.”

“I too,” he said. “Yes, I would have waited until I was a man able to guard and guide you. They drive us on. I saw the English ambassador’s eye to-day on the jewel you wore, and the English arms on your great coach. I knew he would write to that withered old woman at Windsor. Not that she matters. She will soon be dead. But they drive too hard—too fast.”

“That is true. I have said it!” Mary answered in a low voice of fear.

Holding hands, they were sitting on a low couch in the great room now lighted with silver lamps burning perfumed oil. Dim splendour surrounded them, but ghosts of ancient fears and hates looked through it like a dying moon in clouds. In a moment she collected herself—rallying to her duty as queen of Scotland and queen-to-be of France.

“We cannot wait, beloved. We are young, but time will not wait. My kingdom and yours cry out for a son; England also. We are not our own—not even each other’s. They drive us—but not they. It is our destiny.”

He put his arms about her and leaned his head on her slight young bosom. She felt two hot tears roll into it, tears of nervous excitement and fear.

Outside was the roar of Paris, drunk with lights and colour, rejoicing in the marriage of this dauphin, jesting, boasting; but slowly and in awe, hand in hand, the bridal pair approached their marriage bed as an altar of fear.

Next day the ambassador of the Queen of England laid an angry complaint before the French king from his mistress against the assumption of the royal arms of England by the Queen of Scotland.

“For it has been brought to our royal notice that in Scotland is circulated a very scandalous verse as followeth:

“The arms of Mary, queen-dauphiness of France,

The noblest Lady in Earth to advance,

Of Scotland queen, of England also,

And Ireland as well. God has provided so.

A thing not to be endured by the reigning queen of England, as your Majesty may well perceive.”

It was the first formal gun of a conflict which was to carry blood and desolation with it.

This was not told to Mary. They would spare her for a few short days, and she was busied in distributing the special gift prepared for the Scots nobles and ladies who had graced her marriage. One of these survives in a noble house—a priceless treasure.

It is a locket containing portraits of herself and Francis, so fixed that when closed her face rests on his bosom. It is of filigree gold, set with a wreath of pearls and forget-me-nots in bluest turquoise. That and a medal with the double portraits were given to the loyal Scots who came crowding into the palace to receive both from their mistress.

After the charming scene the Princess Marguerite of France sat down to write to the mother who was so far away in Scotland from the pride and triumph:

The Queen of Scotland, your daughter, is so much improved in everything that I am driven to write and tell you of the virtues she has acquired since you have seen her. You may imagine the delight it is to the King and Queen and all her relations to see her what she is. As for me, madam, I esteem Monseigneur the Dauphin very happy in having such a wife.

It brought a moment’s joy to that very lonely and sorely tried mother now drawing near the end of her labours. She may have shivered, however, in reading, knowing from bitter experience the weight of the hatred of England. But she had not long to bear her chain, heavy though of gold. Two years later she was to welcome rest, though with the grievous thought that never again would her eyes behold the fair face of the child for whom she had suffered as few women suffer. Her travail had not ended at birth. Only Death, the breaker of fetters, could end her pangs.