Sheena was suddenly very still.
“You are asking me to be a spy, Papa?”
“I am asking you to serve your country as every man of our Clan is willing to do, not by spying but by trying to learn the truth.”
“But then, Papa, surely the King of France will support our Queen. He knows that when Queen Mary dies it is Mary Stuart who should succeed to the Throne of England.”
“Does he believe it? And if he does, what is he then prepared to do about it?” Sir Euan enquired. “We are so far away, child. How are we to know what he is thinking? How are we to know what help he will give us? Without France are we strong enough to beat England?”
Sheena felt herself shudder. It seemed to her then as if her father was voicing the fear and anxiety that beset the whole of Scotland. They surely knew that their cause was right, that Mary Stuart was the true Queen of Scotland and heir presumptive to the throne of England. But had they the arms, the money and, above all, the men to set her in her rightful place?
The thought of what she must do had lain very heavy on Sheena’s heart all through the journey. And now, as she looked round the room at the rich garments and flashing jewels of the Frenchmen hovering around her near the fire, she felt a sudden scorn.
Could they be anything but sops and effeminate, these men all dressed in silks and satins and velvets, wearing jewels and a greater profusion of feathers and laces and ribbons than any Scotswoman would have worn on her most elaborate evening gown.
A comely chambermaid in a mob cap came through the door carrying a steaming cup of chocolate, which she set down by Sheena, talking all the while in a dialect which was hard to understand.
“The Priest, God bless his soul, is better. With a little cognac in his stomach the sickness has subsided. But your maid is still in tears, madame, and says not if the King himself asked her could she put a foot onto the ground, for it is still swirling under her as if the waves had come with her from the sea itself.”
“Will you please give her something to eat and say that I shall hope to leave for Paris within the hour,” Sheena said.
It was the voice of authority. The chambermaid looked mildly surprised.
“I will tell her, madame, but I doubt we’ll get her on her feet, poor soul. She’s vomited until there’s nothing left to vomit and still her stomach is queasy.”
“I shall be grateful if you will convey my message,” Sheena said and then, turning to the gentlemen, she added, “I hope, messieurs, you will permit me to travel as soon as possible. I have a deep anxiety to reach Her Majesty and start my duties.”
“You are in a great hurry,” the Duc remarked. “Would you not be wiser to rest here tonight? The place is poor but clean.”
“In Scotland, monsieur,” Sheena said, straightening her back and looking at him full in the face for the first time since their exchange of hostilities, “we put duty first and comfort a very long way behind.”
His lips twisted at the corners and she had the impression that she had made no more impact upon his sensibilities than if she had been a fly brushing itself against his velvet coat.
“Very commendable, mam’selle,” he said. “Commendable indeed. We must all admire your persistence and, of course, your devotion to duty.”
The sarcasm in his voice was so obvious that Sheena could not help but retort. Her fiery Scottish temper, never very well controlled, flashed for a moment like lightning across her eyes.
Then she said in a tone as icy as that which she had used when she first came into the room,
“I think, monsieur, that I shall fare best without your praise, for words from a twisted tongue are often dangerous to those who have serious and important work to do.”
.Even as she spoke, Sheena was half-frightened at the challenge of her voice as well as of her words. In that moment her eyes met the Duc’s and they stared at each other,
The shabbily dressed girl with dishevelled curls and wet feet held out to the flames, and the aristocrat with his magnificent attire, flashing jewels and tired cynical eyes.
It was war between them and they both knew it. War, inescapable, deadly and pitiless. A war in which one or the other must ultimately be the victor.
As if the other people present realised that something momentous was taking place, no one spoke. Then very slowly the Duc rose to his feet. For a moment he stood towering above Sheena, his head almost seeming to touch the ceiling.
Then he swept her a magnificent and exaggerated Court bow.
“Your servant, mam’selle,” he said. “We shall meet in Paris.”
Still in silence he turned and walked from the room and the door closed behind him.
Sheena did not move, She knew that something strong, tempestuous and frightening had gone, leaving the room curiously empty.
She suddenly felt very tired and very alone.
CHAPTER TWO
They were nearing Paris.
Sheena bent forward in the coach to stare about her with wide eyes at the fine Châteaux which they passed from time to time and the cultivated fields which lay on either side of the road as far as the eye could see.
Every mile that she travelled to her destination made her realise her own inadequacy and the poverty of her appearance. She had not expected anything so luxurious or so comfortable as the coach sent by the King to convey her from the little fishing Port to Paris.
“We shall travel at great speed,” one of the gentlemen in her escort had said to her and, after the rough roads in Scotland and the uncomfortable hard coaches that had been her lot until now, Sheena could hardly believe it possible that horses could move so quickly or that she could lie back in such comfort against the coach’s padded cushions.
Her knees were covered with a rug of velvet lined with fur and she thought wryly that it was incongruous that anything so delicate should be required to cover the coarseness of her gown.
She had felt so elegant when she had left her home in Scotland for she had sat up half the night struggling with the old seamstress of the village to achieve what she then imagined was an exceedingly fashionable wardrobe and worthy of the girl who had the privilege of waiting upon the Queen of Scotland.
Now she felt that she looked nothing but a laughing stock.
But she could only compare her own possessions with those of the young gallants who accompanied her. As they rode on either side of the coach, the silver accoutrements on their horses’ harness glittered in the sunshine, their cloaks of velvet and satin billowed out behind them in the wind and the ostrich feathers on their caps waved with every single movement that they made.
‘I must look like a servant girl,’ Sheena whispered to herself.
Then defiantly her little chin went up.
Her blood was as good as theirs if not better and the blood of Scotland was being shed at this very moment in the defence of her Queen.
Yet at seventeen it is hard to be resolute in the face not of adversity but of plenty. Sheena did not miss the way that at every inn at which they stopped the ostlers ran forward to change the horses, the innkeeper bowed low to the ground and the maidservants curtseyed.
She was travelling in a Royal coach, she was under the protection of the King of France, and therefore she was treated with a respect which was akin to reverence. It was something she had never known before in her whole short life in the barren Castle in Perthshire.
The Priest, who had been her companion on the sea voyage, had gone no further. He was journeying to Calais to join the English Garrison there and to bring back the homesick bored troops news of their homeland.
Sheena and Maggie were all alone and Maggie with her high cheekbones, sharp, angular features and bright inquisitive eyes, was somehow something strong and familiar to which she could cling almost desperately in her apprehension of what lay ahead.
“Dinna fuss yoursel, ma wee bairn,” Maggie said, sensing what Sheena was thinking, “You’re as good as they are, nay even better. All they’ve got that you haven
’t is money and what has money brought them but laziness and corruption?”
“You cannot say that, Maggie,” Sheena responded, laughing, although she felt more like bursting into tears. “We have not seen the Court. We must not judge until we have been there. The King has been very kind to us. Look at this wonderful coach and our escort. He could do no more if we were the Queen herself and not just a troublesome addition to her household.”
Maggie snorted.
“Fine feathers! Men dressed up like women in silks and satins and diamonds. I’d rather have a mon who can wear a plaid and knows just how to wield a claymore. Pah! ’Tis doubtful I am if any of this crowd will fight for Her Majesty.”
“Hush, Maggie! Hush!” Sheena urged her.
“They’ll no understand us,” Maggie said scornfully.
“Look at that house,” Sheena breathed in admiration as they swept past a great Château standing back from the road with a garden of ornamental lakes and fountains playing.
There were swans, black and white, swimming on the silver water and it all seemed to Sheena as if the whole scene was out of some Fairytale.
She thought a little wistfully of her own home, the ramparts crumbling from old age, the doors and staircases sadly in need of repair and the rooms furnished shabbily and without any comfort.
Everything here in France appeared to have been newly painted. Even the villages they passed through seemed clean and the people thriving and prosperous. She had heard many tales from the Elders in Scotland of the extravagance of the French Monarchs, how Francis I, the father of the present King, had taxed his people unmercifully to pay for his war with Spain and for the band of innumerable mistresses who travelled with him wherever he went.
She could hear her uncle, the Earl of Lybster, denouncing him with a violence that made his voice echo round the room.
“A dissolute and corrupt man,” he had boomed, “who died from a disease that came from his excesses. A King who was a disgrace to the Monarchy wherever he might reign.”
Sheena had only been a child at the time and her uncle had not realised that, sitting in the window, half-hidden by a. tattered velvet curtain, she was listening to him.
“You must concede, sir, that he was at least a patron of the arts,” someone remarked.
“Arts!” Lord Lybster shouted. “What does art lead to but licentiousness? To men such as rule over France it means statues and pictures of naked women, it means debauchery where there should be discipline and lassitude where there should be strength of purpose.”
Sheena had wondered why they all should feel so violently about a King who had lived so many miles away and was long since dead. And then they had gone on to speak of Henri II, son of Francis I, who now ruled France and to whose protection they had entrusted the Queen of Scotland.
It was amazing, she thought, the stories and gossip which managed to drift back across the sea. Mary Stuart had enchanted the French King. She had sung to him and had recited a poem that had almost moved him to tears.
A tale that was most often repeated was that when Mary had first curtseyed to Henri II at Saint Germaine when she was not yet six years old, he had exclaimed,
“The most perfect child I have ever seen!”
It was compliments of that sort that fed the loyalty of the rough Scotsmen and kept them eternally on the defensive against the ever-encroaching onslaughts of the English.
“Tell Her Majesty that we are fighting for her by day and by night,” Sheena’s father, Sir Euan McGraggan, had said as he kissed his daughter farewell. “Make her understand how loyal the Clansmen are, and how much she means to us that we live for her return.”
Sheena had been moved at the simplicity of his words. She had known only too well that they were nothing but the truth and that the men waving goodbye as her ship moved away from the windswept quay sent with her a part of their hearts.
She had been utterly convinced at that moment that it was right that she should go. Mary Stuart must not be allowed to forget those who strove for her against almost overwhelming odds.
She thought it would be easy to tell the Queen stories of the heroism and courage and unquenchable bravery which drove the Scots into battle against far superior forces and which made them accept, with an almost unbelievable fortitude, the burning and laying waste of their lands and crops.
Now, nearing Paris, she began to be afraid. What had this sunlit and rich land in common with the great barren moors, the burns, swamps and dales where a man could march for days, if not weeks, and not meet another soul that he could pass the time of day with?
“Maggie, I am frightened,” Sheena said impulsively.
“Shame on you! You’re nothin’ of the sort,” Maggie retorted tartly.
She did not meet Sheena’s eyes and they both knew the feeling of uncertainty and fear of what lay ahead.
“They are kind gentlemen,” Maggie said almost gently, “despite all their fancy garments. They’ll show us the way right to the King’s door if nothin’ else.”
“If only we had some money that we could buy different clothes with,” Sheena breathed almost beneath her breath.
“They must take us as they find us,” Maggie retorted. “The men who are fightin’ for Her Majesty are doin’ it often in bare feet and without a piece of cloth to cover their shoulders. Let her remember that. Make her understand the sacrifices that are bein’ made not only by the men themselves but by their wives and bairns as well.”
“I will try,” Sheena said humbly.
She cheered herself up with the thought that Mary Stuart was nearly three years younger than herself, only a child, whereas she had now come to womanhood. It should not be hard to instruct a child in the truth.
Despite such comforting assurances her hands were cold, her fingers trembling a little, as she laid them on the arm of Comte Gustave de Cloude as he helped her alight at The Palace.
She had expected it to be Regal, but she had not expected so many servants, such a bustle of liveried footmen, of Major Domos and sentries besides numerous personages who had apparently little to do but stand around, waiting and staring.
Sheena was allowed only a few moments to tidy herself after the long journey and then, without being allowed time to change her gown, she was ushered straight into the presence of the King.
She was ready to hate and despise him. The stories of his liaison with Diane de Poitiers had lost little in the telling when they crossed the sea, also his neglect of the Queen, the fact that he ordered the initials ‘D’ and ‘H’ to be entwined as a monogram and carved on all his Palaces. These stories had made her father snort with indignation.
Sheena had not known what she expected the King to look like. Whatever the image she had preconceived it was certainly nothing like the heavy mournful features of the dark-haired man who looked at her with melancholy eyes.
“Mistress Sheena McCraggan, Your Majesty!” she heard a voice saying and swept to the ground in a deep curtsey.
'“Mistress McCraggan, we have been looking forward to your arrival,” the King said.
“I thank you, Sire.”
Sheena was surprised to hear her own voice, clear and apparently unafraid. She rose to stand before him, small and straight-backed in her crumpled homespun gown, her head held high so that the evening sun coming in from the window behind the King’s head glittered on the red-gold curls she had tried to straighten into unaccustomed neatness on either side of her cheeks.
“You had a good journey, mam’selle?”
“The sea was very rough, Sire,”
The King nodded, as if he had expected the sea to be rough, and then he commented,
“You speak French extremely well.”
“My grandmother was French, Sire.”
“Yes, yes, I have not forgotten. Jeanne de Bourget, one of the oldest families in France. You have good blood in your veins, Mistress McCraggan.”
“I am proud of my Scottish blood too, Sire.”
“Yes, ye
s, of course.”
Henri was quite obviously bored with the conversation. He looked round the audience chamber as if at a loss, wondering what he should say next or what he should do or perhaps seeking guidance.
And then the door opened and his face was very suddenly transformed.
The look of melancholy vanished, the air of uncertainty changed and he moved forward quickly.
Sheena turned her head.
The most beautiful woman she had ever seen in her life was coming into the room. She was not young and yet there was something so youthful in her movements that it was as if spring itself had suddenly emerged to cast away the darkness of winter.
She was dressed in white with touches of black and yet the purity of the colour only served to show the whiteness of her skin.
‘She is like a camellia,’ Sheena thought, surprised at her own sense of poetry.
The lady in black and white sank to the ground before the King.
“Forgive me, Sire, if I am late.”
He bent forward to raise her hand to his lips.
“You already know that every hour you are away from me seems just like Eternity,” he murmured.
Only those nearest to him could hear what he said, but everyone could see the adoration in his eyes, the pleading of his lips and the change that had come over him since the opening of the door.
Still holding the hand he had kissed with his lips he turned towards Sheena.
“Mistress McCraggan has arrived,” he announced. “She has had a rough voyage, but she is young enough to survive it.”
The beautiful woman smiled at Sheena, a smile so warm and so embracing, that Sheena felt some of the tension go from her.
“We are so glad you are here, Mistress McCraggan,” the lady said and then, as Sheena curtseyed, she added, “The little Queen has been looking forward to seeing you. It will be nice for her to have news of Scotland and her people who must miss her sorely.”
She could have said nothing that would have gone straighter to Sheena’s heart.
The Hidden Evil Page 2
