Sheena read what she had written and wondered almost why she had said it.
Did she really think that about the Queen? The words seemed to have dropped from her pen without her conscious volition.
A sleeping panther! Why should she think that? She thought of those bright inquisitive eyes, which would be veiled as the Queen deliberately sank into the background, and when she allowed the Duchesse de Valentinois to precede her even on important occasions. And yet sometimes Sheena had seen a tightening of her lips, a little pulse beating in her thick short neck and she suspected that the Queen was not as complaisant as she appeared.
What else could she say? How else could she keep him from realising how little she had written about Mary Stuart?
“The Marquis de Maupré is charming,” she scribbled. “He rightly supports the Queen and yet I think no one could fail to like him. He is agreeable and charming to everyone and excellent company when there is a party.”
There came another knock at the door.
“The messenger is impatient,” Maggie said.
Hastily Sheena finished off the letter.
She had a feeling that her father would be annoyed at quite so much triviality and detail without any of the facts that he had hoped to hear from her. Yet what else could she do?
She realised suddenly that she had always been afraid of her father.
He had shown her little love since her mother died, but had always been too busy with affairs of State to spend much time at home. He was used to giving commands and he had ordered her to go to France and find out all that she could about the King’s intentions towards Scotland and the placing of Mary Stuart on the Throne of England.
What an impossible task it all was! How could she help but fail him?
She smiled a little ruefully as she sealed the letter with a ring that bore the McCraggan Crest and holding it for a moment against her heart said aloud,
“I only wish I could go with this letter. Our rightful place is in Scotland, Maggie.”
“That it is,” Maggie agreed wholeheartedly. “We’re like two bits of purple heather tryin’ to grow on a foreign soil that dinna ken how to nourish us.”
“They are kind, very kind, here,” Sheena said. “But I have a longing for the mountains and the burns running down into the sea and the mist in the morning and the absolute quiet at night.”
“You’re right,” Maggie agreed, her voice suddenly hoarse with emotion. “Palaces are not the places for us.”
Suddenly remembering that the messenger was still waiting, Sheena hurried to the door. She pulled it open. Outside was a small wizened little man with deep lines running from his nose to the corners of his mouth. His beady eyes peered at her from a network of wrinkles.
Sheena was startled by the sight of him. She did not know what she had expected, but she had not imagined that the messenger would be so old.
“Is it you who is going to Scotland?” she asked him in French.
“Oui, mam’selle, I leave tonight.”
“But – but why?” Sheena asked.
He looked at her sourly.
“That’s my business,” he replied. “Is the letter ready? It’ll cost you a Louis for me to take it there.”
Maggie had the money ready. Sheena took it from her hand and gave it to the man before she handed over the letter.
She had a sudden reluctance to part with what she had written. Then, feeling that she was being absurd, she gave him the letter and he placed it in his doublet.
Without a word he turned on his heel and walked away down the passage and she saw as he left her that his legs were rather bowed as if he had spent too much of his life in the saddle.
“Who is he?” Sheena asked as she re-entered her bedchamber and shut the door. “What do you know about him?”
“They say he be trustworthy enough,” Maggie answered.
“I hope so indeed,” Sheena said sharply. “I would not wish that letter of mine to fall into any hands except those of my father.”
Maggie said nothing and Sheena knew that they were both thinking the same. It was hard in a strange country to know who was trustworthy and who was not.
As if she was afraid to say more, Sheena walked across the room to stare at her reflection in the burnished mirror. She was wearing yet another gown that the Queen had given her, of pale-blue satin looped with silver ribbons, and it made her look very young and her skin more dazzlingly transparent than ever.
She stared for a moment at her reflection.
Instead of seeing herself she saw her father’s face, puckered and anxious, his brows knit as he tried to read between the lines she had written and find some answers to the questions with which his nobles and the Elders would be sure to ply him once they learned he had heard from France.
‘I am failing him,’ Sheena thought miserably and on an impulse turned towards the door.
“Where are you going’?” Maggie asked.
“I am now going to try and talk to the King,” Sheena answered. “It is something I ought to have done long ago.”
She swept through the door and down the passage, knowing that at this hour of the day the King was likely to be found in one of the great salons receiving Ambassadors and other notabilities in audience.
There would be no possibility of talking to him then, Sheena thought, but later he would slip away for a game of tennis and then there was always the chance of intercepting him.
Even so she realised it would be a formidable, if not impossible, task to get him alone.
“Where are you going, looking so proud and disdainful?” she heard a voice call after her and she turned to see that intent in her own thoughts she had passed the Marquis de Maupré who had come into the passage from another staircase.
“I-I was wondering where everyone was – hiding.”
He smiled at her.
He was, she thought, even more handsome and more debonair than usual in a doublet of white velvet slashed with crimson satin and ornamented with diamonds and rubies.
“I think you will find ‘everyone’, as you put it, is in the garden,” the Marquis replied. “The King is due to play tennis in half-an-hour’s time and your own Queen has challenged the Dauphin to a game of battledore.”
“I must go and watch!” Sheena exclaimed.
“Don’t fret yourself,” the Marquis smiled. “I think I am the only person who has noticed your absence.”
Sheena laughed a little ruefully.
“That is not much of a compliment,” she complained.
She was being coquettish, for she had learned since her arrival at the French Court that women were expected to flirt rather than talk and now she glanced at the Marquis from under her eyelashes without really thinking of what she was doing.
He bent nearer towards her.
“You are enchanting,” he said in a low voice.
“I am convinced that you say that to every woman,” Sheena replied automatically.
Equally she now wondered why her heart did not flutter because he was so devastatingly handsome.
“I tell you the truth,” he protested. “But, alas, I cannot hope to be the only person who admires you. There is someone else who extols your praises at all times and arouses in me a jealousy such as I have never felt before.”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” Sheena answered but all the same she could not help being interested.
At first she had been repelled by the fulsome compliments of the Courtiers, but now she had grown used to them and she was honest enough to admit to herself that it was fun to be flattered by such a handsome man.
It was also exciting to be told that one was attractive not once but a hundred times a day by the look in every Frenchman’s eyes, who had all been taught to look at a woman as if they really saw her and not just to treat her as a provider of food or a regrettable necessity.
How often had she seen her father glance up impatiently when she came into the room? How often had she noticed that
he and friends stopped talking or changed the subject because she was present? And as for compliments, they were far too intent on national problems and the exigencies of war to have time for anything so frivolous as complimenting a woman on her looks.
“Are you not curious?”
She realised that the Marquis was looking at her mouth in a manner that told her all too clearly where his thoughts were leading and instinctively she moved further away from him and asked quickly,
“Curious about what?”
“About this person who admires you even more than I do and who says when you are not present such charming things about you that your cheeks and ears should be burning a dozen times a day.”
“I cannot imagine who it could be,” Sheena answered. “I know few people well enough to think that they should even speak of me.”
“Then let me tell you who it is,” the Marquis suggested.
He put out his arms as he spoke and drew her close to him.
Then, with his lips close against her ear, he whispered,
“’Tis the King!”
Sheena looked up at him with incredulous eyes and then gave a little uncertain laugh.
“Now I know you are teasing me. The King has hardly noticed me since I came here.”
“That is what you think,” the Marquis said. “But the King is very shy. You don’t know how reserved he has been since he was a child and was incarcerated in a Spanish prison and brutally ill-treated by his jailors.”
“I have heard how miserable he was,” Sheena agreed.
“It has made it impossible for him to express himself, except when he is alone with a few old friends like myself. To women he appears tongue-tied and morose.”
“I think that the King has eyes for only one woman,” Sheena pointed out.
“You mean the Duchesse?” the Marquis enquired. “She is old. Did you not know that she was eighteen years old when the King was born? Though he loved her for many years she has now become a habit. She makes things comfortable for him. What man does not appreciate that? But his heart is free of her. I have known that for a long time.”
“I don’t think that such things are any concern of mine,” Sheena said crushingly.
She felt uncomfortable at the way that the conversation was going and wished now that she had not lingered with the Marquis.
“Is it no concern of yours,” the Marquis asked softly, “that the most important man in the civilised world is at your feet? He loves you, Sheena! He loves you!”
There was something in the way he said it, something in his voice, that frightened her.
“You lie!” she said hotly, turning on him with a sudden blaze of fire in her eyes so that the Marquis took a step backwards before he realised what he was doing.
“You lie!” she repeated. “And even if it was the truth, I would not wish to hear it. The King is a married man, and he is married to Queen Catherine, and I would despise any man, whoever he might be, who deserted the woman to whom he was joined both by the Church and State, for another.”
She almost shouted the words at him and then, before he could reply and before he could recover from the astonishment of her attack, she turned and marched away down the corridor, her small shoulders square and her head held high.
The Marquis made no attempt to follow her. He watched until she was out of sight and then the expression of astonishment slowly left his face and he smiled, not a particularly nice smile, but one which might have given Sheena, had she seen it, reason to think.
As it was, she was angry enough. She had closed her eyes to a great many excesses at the Court, the immorality that took place blatantly amongst the Courtiers and Ladies-in-Waiting and she had even turned a deaf ear to the stories that Maggie tried to regale her with.
But that she herself should be mixed up with such a state of affairs was something that she had never anticipated.
Even though, she told herself, it was only a wild fabrication on the part of the Marquis, it was still infuriating that he should think such things or even consider them worth repeating. Her Scottish pride was aroused and she told herself fiercely that she would not be involved in the sordid intrigues or the amorous philanderings of the Court.
And even if such a thing was true, the Marquis had no right to repeat it to her.
If it was true! The question pulled her to a full stop. Could it be possible that the King was in love with her? If so, what should she do about it?
Just for a moment she hesitated and then she walked on with her head still held high.
There was no chance of it being true, she told her uneasy conscience. But if it was, the only thing to do would be to ignore it and to pay no attention.
It seemed to her that it was the Devil himself who whispered in her ear,
‘If it is true, how easy it would be then to find out what your father wishes to know. How easily, in that way, you could help Scotland.’
“No! No! No!”
Without realising what she was doing Sheena said the words aloud.
Then, reaching the bottom of the staircase, she found herself precipitated into a band of young people in the midst of whom was Mary Stuart.
She saw Sheena and held out her hand.
“Come with us, Sheena,” she cried, “and you be the umpire. I know I am going to win, I always do, but His Royal Highness has forced me to accept a handicap. It is not fair, I swear it is not.”
Laughing and chattering and not noticing that Sheena made no effort to answer her, the little Queen led the way into the garden followed by her young friends. The Dauphin, looking pale and sickly and more in need of rest than a game, walked beside her, but it was obvious that he had little to say and was content to listen to the gay teasing voice of his fiancée.
They swept towards the lawns and suddenly Sheena felt a hand on her arm and a voice at her side say,
“Her Grace the Duchesse de Valentinois would wish to have a word with you, Mistress McCraggan.”
“The Duchesse?”
“Yes, in her Apartments. I have been looking for you and your maid told me I would find you here.”
“Does she want me to see at once?” Sheena asked.
“At once,” the Courtier answered.
Sheena detached herself from the revelling throng.
“They did not notice her go and she turned back the way they had come accompanied by the grey-haired man who had come to fetch her.
He led her up to the first floor and she realised that this was a part of The Palace that she had not visited before.
The rooms were magnificent and they passed through two antechambers until they came to one where the grey-haired man stopped and knocked on the door.
“Entrez!”
He left her for a moment and then returned to open the door and beckon her in.
Sheena found herself in a large room with long windows and a balcony overlooking the gardens of The Palace. There was a large four-poster bed skilfully draped and surmounted by a frieze of beautifully carved gold cupids.
As if it made her feel uncomfortable, Sheena averted her eyes from it and the Duchesse, in a gown of white embroidered with black pearls, came over the room towards her.
She smiled and Sheena curtseyed as briefly as she dared.
She could not help but feel hostile, although the Duchesse was so beautiful that it was hard not to excuse the King for a liaison that had lasted for so many years.
“Ah, Mistress McCraggan, no, I think it would be more friendly if I call you ‘Sheena’,” the Duchesse said. “I am glad you have come to see me. I have been wanting to talk to you for some time.”
She made a gesture towards a sofa placed by the window and then, as she did so, there came a knock on a door to the other side of the bedchamber. A maid entered and spoke to the Duchesse, who said impatiently,
“Oh, dear! I had just forgotten that I had asked him to come this afternoon.” She turned to Sheena. “You must forgive me, my dear, for a moment. The Court jewel
ler has brought a necklace for me to look at. It is a very special present that the King has promised me for my birthday and so I cannot send him away. Wou;d you please forgive me and wait for just a few moments until I can return?”
“I am at your service, madame,” Sheena said coldly.
The Duchesse moved with exquisite grace across the room and disappeared through the doorway. Alone, Sheena rose to her feet and looked around. There were three pictures in the room all by great artists and all had taken as their model for the central figure of their picture the Duchesse herself.
There was no mistaking her as Diana the Huntress, any more than no one could fail to recognise her features on the glorious sculpture that stood in one corner of the room or on the pieces of enamel that decorated the mantelpiece. Wherever one looked, the lovely face that had captivated a King stared back at one.
Instinctively Sheena threw back her head and looked up at the ceiling, expecting to see the Duchesse portrayed there amidst the heavily decorated plasterwork. There was no picture but instead the entwined arms, ‘H’ and ‘D’ with which the King, to commemorate his love, had adorned every Palace that he and his mistress had ever visited.
The cipher had been cleverly conceived, Sheena thought, and wondered if any woman had ever been loved so well and truly as Diane de Poitiers.
And then, as she stared at the ceiling, a curious thing happened.
She noticed what appeared to her at first to be a dirty mark beside one of the plaster roses that encircled the cipher. She looked again and thought that a piece of the design had fallen from the ceiling.
Then with almost a sick feeling of apprehension she realised that what she was looking at was an eye! An eye staring at her from the ceiling, an eye that moved and that undoubtedly belonged to a human being.
She rose to her feet and walked over to the window. Surely, she thought, she must have been mistaken. Then casually, because she did not wish to reveal what she had discovered, she glanced round the room again and then up at the ceiling.
The Hidden Evil Page 9
