The Wild Queen

by Carolyn Meyer

  She sniffed, pointed to her nose, made a face, and turned away The costume did have a gamy odor, I realized, but I adored this outfit. I took my pleas to Grand-Père, explaining that even if I never wore it again, it was my most important possession.

  Grand-Père listened sympathetically “Je comprends, ma petite,” he said. “I will speak to her.”

  At last Grand-Mère gave in. She ordered the furs and leather packed in a separate trunk, and I watched closely until I was certain that the trunk with my Scottish costume would indeed be going with me and not to an orphanage—or worse.

  “Do not worry, ma chère,” my grandmother said as the last of the trunks were tied to the baggage carts. “You will have everything waiting for you when you reach your new home.”

  My new home! If I had been a little older, I might have felt uneasy, perhaps even fearful of what this could mean. But I was not yet six years old, I was the queen of Scots, and everywhere I went, I was greeted with cheering crowds and music and adoring children presenting gifts. It was the kind of welcome I had come to expect, and I delighted in it.

  Chapter 4

  Madame de Poitiers

  I HAD LEFT Scotland in summer, traveled for two months by royal galley, litter, and riverboat, and finally in autumn arrived at Carrières-sur-Seine, a huge old fortress that reminded me of the castles in my homeland. Bands played, flags fluttered, and I was welcomed with pomp and ceremony Lord Livingston, now somewhat recovered from his illness, explained that I would be staying here while one of the other châteaux was being prepared, the cleaning that always preceded the arrival of the royal family.

  The welcoming ceremonies, so enchanting at first, had grown quite tiresome. I was impatient to meet the family of which I would become a part—King Henri II and Queen Catherine; their son, François; and his sisters. However, at Carrières I was not presented to the queen, as I had expected to be, but to Diane de Poitiers, duchess of Valentinois, a handsome older woman who seemed to be in charge of everything. Who is she? I wondered.

  “I am a great friend of King Henri,” the duchess said, as though she had guessed my question. She spoke to me in slow, careful French that I was able to understand, at least in a general kind of way. “The king is in Italy and regrets that he cannot be here to greet you. He has asked me to see that you are made welcome and comfortable.”

  The duchess then presented Princesse Élisabeth, who made a graceful révérence. I judged her to be at least two years younger than I. And then I met the dauphin, François, the boy I would someday marry.

  Prodded by Madame de Poitiers, the dauphin stepped forward. I knew that he was more than a year younger than I—he would not be five years old until January; my mother had told me that much—but I had not expected him to be quite so small. He was thin and pale, and his eyes were listless and dull. My three older Stuart half brothers were all big, strapping lads, but I did not think that this little fellow would ever grow to be so large and muscular. His nurse was continually wiping his dripping nose.

  The dauphin bowed deeply and stammered a little speech of welcome in a high-pitched voice. I felt sorry for him. But when he smiled at me, his eyes suddenly came to life, and his whole face changed. I believed his words were heartfelt, and his smile seemed true and genuine. I attempted to respond to him in French, resorting to Scots when the French words failed me. The dauphin seemed pleased by my efforts, crude as they must have sounded to his ear.

  “W-w-we shall soon become good friends, I am sure,” said François.

  I understood that perfectly and would have been happy to try to converse with him, but Madame de Poitiers instructed his nurse to lead him away Another nurse appeared, carrying a plump and smiling baby. This was Princesse Claude.

  Only then did I notice the rather plain woman who had been sitting quietly nearby while the royal children were being presented. Princesse Claude reached out her chubby arms to this woman, who kissed the infant and returned her to the nurse.

  “I am Queen Catherine,” said the woman as she rose to leave. “You are welcome here, Queen Marie,” she said, and walked away without waiting for my slow response. I had no experience in acknowledging queens. Everyone had always acknowledged me.

  “Madame Marie,” said the duchess after the queen had gone, “it is my duty to inform you of the rules of precedence, as ordered by His Majesty King Henri.” François, as dauphin, would take precedence over me, while I, a crowned queen, would take precedence over François’s younger sisters, the two princesses, Élisabeth and Claude. These were rules that I had never actually had to think about—who was first to enter a room, who was seated first, who was served first at a banquet, who left first. Except for the first six days of my life, I had always been a queen, and so I was always first. I had never thought of the arrangement being any other way Now I understood what my mother meant when she had warned me that I would no longer be the most important person in the room.

  “It is the king’s desire that you share lodgings with Princesse Élisabeth,” continued Madame de Poitiers.

  Share lodgings? I had never shared lodgings with anyone. I was surprised but said nothing. Perhaps someday this young girl and I would become great friends.

  That was only the beginning of the changes to which I now found myself subjected. The hardest was the departure of the Four Maries. During the first weeks in France, my friends went everywhere that I did, and their company helped me adjust to all the strangeness of my new circumstances. Then quite suddenly they were gone, sent to a convent to learn French and be schooled in the ways of the French court. I burst into tears when I found out—tears that distressed little Élisabeth but left Madame de Poitiers unmoved.

  “It is feared that you will not learn to speak French well if your friends remain here and you are continually tempted to converse with them in your native tongue.”

  The duchess left me to deal with my misery alone.

  ***

  I had barely learned my way around the château at Carrières-sur-Seine when the entire court moved to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. “Papa’s favorite château,” Élisabeth told me. During the move—it was not far, and within half a day we were settling in—I discovered that I had been separated not only from the Four Maries but from nearly all the Scots who had accompanied me. Lord-Keeper Livingston, as my guardian was titled, stayed on, but now that Lord Erskine had recovered from his severe illness, he and most of the other gentlemen in my suite were on their way back to Scotland. My half brothers Robert and John Stuart went with them, though James stayed in France to study We went to see them off, and Lady Fleming remarked that unlike the French, our men went about gripping the hilts of their swords. “Our loyal Scots are always on guard, as though they expect to be attacked at any time. Doubtless, they are relieved to go home to Scotland.”

  Fortunately, Lady Fleming remained with me as my governess, and Sinclair stayed on as my nurse.

  Sinclair seemed to have as much trouble as I did deciphering this distinctly new way of life. I missed the oat porridge that she had always fixed for my breakfast, and she curled her lip at the broth she was given in the servants’ hall.

  “Aye, they want to get rid of me too,” she complained. We were whispering in Scots, though I had been warned by Madame de Poitiers that Sinclair too would be sent away if we persisted. “These French hate the sound of our auld tongue. I heard one of their fancy gentlemen say that he could scarce believe such ugly sounds could come from such a pretty little mouth like yours.”

  Sinclair was mending one of her thick woolen stockings, and she bit the thread angrily. “Seems to me like these folks want to drain every drop of Scots blood from you and replace it with French,” grumbled my nurse, who never ran out of complaints. She yearned for “just a crumb of oatcake and a tasty bite of salmon from our own fresh rivers,” she said every time it came to mind, which was often. “And ne’ermind that you’re first and foremost the queen of the Scots and will someday come back to your own country to rule your
own people, God be willing.”

  “I am to be queen of France, Sinclair, and I shall rule Scotland from Paris. But,” I added wistfully, for I often felt homesick, “no doubt I shall be able to visit whenever I please.”

  ***

  I missed the Four Maries, but I did not have time to dwell on their absence. Soon after I arrived at Saint-Germain, my grandparents brought my half brother François, duke of Longueville, for a visit. He was the son my mother had had to leave behind when she left France for Scotland to marry my father. The duke, who had inherited his father’s title, was now fourteen, tall and auburn-haired. I thought him quite handsome.

  “You are so like our mother!” he exclaimed at our first meeting, though how he knew that I cannot say, as he had been just three years old when he had last seen her.

  “And so are you!” I replied.

  Our grandmother smiled and nodded. “You are all Guises,” she said, dabbing at the tears that sprang to her eyes.

  François wanted to hear everything I could think to tell him about our mother, and he asked me many questions that I tried hard to answer.

  “Did she sing to you?” he asked. “Before you went to sleep at night?”

  “She did! Mither has a lovely voice. I can sing the tune but not the words. Lu lu la, lu lu lala lu,” I sang.

  “I remember, I remember!” he cried, and began to weep softly. “Venez rêves, venez à mon enfant.’’

  Before he left that day, my brother kissed my hand and told me I was as beautiful as his memory of our mother and he was sure we would spend many happy hours together from that day on.

  ***

  I now belonged to the royal nursery The king had decided that I must be educated with the royal children, including the dauphin. That seemed a surprise to many—especially Lord and Lady Humières, who supervised the nursery (though it was Madame de Poitiers who told them, and everyone else, what to do, claiming she had received her authority from the king). It fell to Lord and Lady Humières to make certain that, from the time I opened my eyes in the morning until the moment I closed them at night, I heard nothing but French. They were pleased when I was able to reply in complete French sentences.

  I was delighted with my new “sister” Princesse Élisabeth, probably because she seemed delighted with me. The infant Princesse Claude was still at least a year or two away from joining in our conversations and little games. The dauphin, François, was closest to me in age, so naturally I spent a great deal of time with him. He became the one who answered my many questions.

  “Who is Madame de Poitiers?” I asked one day when we were not attending to our lessons, and Lord and Lady Humieres had left us a little time to ourselves. “Why is she with us so much more than your mother, the queen?”

  “She is my father’s mistress,” he replied with a shrug. “She wants to make sure we are properly trained in the ways of the court.”

  I nodded, having only a vague idea of what a mistress was. Later I overheard Sinclair muttering to Lady Fleming on this very subject. Neither my nurse nor my governess liked Madame de Poitiers. In truth, they could not abide her.

  “It is beyond understanding that the queen puts up with that woman,” said Lady Fleming. “The king must be in her thrall.”

  “I’ve heard all about it in the kitchens,” said my nurse with a snort; she always enjoyed a bit of gossip with her meal of bread and sausage. “King Henri has been Madame de Poitiers’s lover since he was a young lad and she old enough to be his mither,” Sinclair said disapprovingly. “And poor Catherine de Médicis, coming here from Italy to marry him when she was a lass of fourteen and him not wanting much to do with her in the way of husband and wife. Married eight years and not a single bairn! At last God showed His mercy to that good woman, and she brought forth the little dauphin, someday to be the husband of our own darling Mary!”

  “Now the queen is about to give the king a fourth child,” Lady Fleming pointed out. “Another for Madame de Poitiers to rule.”

  “Aye, and how hard it must surely be on Queen Catherine, her rival running the royal nursery with an iron fist like she does. Nobody can do anything regarding the queen’s children without Madame’s say-so.”

  “I wonder if it is so when the king is here,” mused Lady Fleming. “He is expected in the next week or two, I hear. I look forward to meeting him, as I am sure you do as well.”

  “Not much,” said Sinclair sourly. “But we shall see what we shall see.”

  Chapter 5

  The Dauphin

  "JOYEUX ANNIVERSAIRE, Madame Marie,” Madame de Poitiers caroled cheerily.

  It was the eighth of December, my sixth birthday as well as the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. The duchess had arranged for a special celebration for me.

  After Mass in the royal chapel, the king’s children and the children of the court gathered in the nursery. My French half brother, François de Longueville, came, accompanied by my grandparents. Servants carried in platters of cakes and pastries. Minstrels entertained us with shawm, recorder, sackbut, and hurdy-gurdy. Jugglers and acrobats performed. Queen Catherine, heavy with child, was on hand, observing quietly.

  Madame de Poitiers had chosen this as the perfect occasion for me to have my first dance in public with the dauphin. “Soon you will be expected to dance together at the wedding of your uncle François, duke of Aumale, to the duchess Anne d’Este,” she said. “Great royalty as well as the highest nobility from all over Europe will be watching.” She must have seen how this unnerved me, but she smiled and added, “I am confident that you will perform faultlessly, Madame Marie.”

  For several weeks, the dancing master had been instructing the dauphin and me on the pavane, a simple dance with long gliding steps and a few révérences and bows. But Madame de Poitiers wanted us to dance the much more complicated courante.

  “Queen Catherine brought the courante to the French court from the Italian court of the Médicis,” Madame de Poitiers told me. “It will be sure to please her.”

  The steps of the courante were not difficult—two single steps and a double to the left, a little skip followed by the same steps to the right—but there were gestures and poses meant to accompany each step. “The gestures are the signs of love,” our dancing master explained. We were supposed to pretend that François was courting me; I was to refuse his advances until at last I feigned acceptance and we danced off together. We had practiced this for days, but we had not yet learned the gestures to the dancing master’s satisfaction. Now, with the queen herself and members of the court all watching intently, we were expected to perform it.

  I had dreaded this. It was not how I wished to celebrate my birthday. I looked to Lady Fleming for a way out. My governess, who had been supervising my dancing practice, glared at Madame de Poitiers—no one could fail to see the look of disdain that passed between them—but she did not argue with her. “You can do it, Marie,” said Lady Fleming. “It will be a good rehearsal.”

  At a sign from Madame de Poitiers, the musicians began to play. I did not recognize the tune. Surely it was not the same as the music played at our practice—this was so much faster! Poor little François looked frightened half to death. “Be brave,” I whispered to him as we took our places. He proceeded to stumble about clumsily while I urgently whispered instructions: “Whenever I turn my back, you must kneel and pretend to implore me.”

  “Implore you?” he asked, bewildered.

  “Beg me!” I ordered. It would have been so much easier if our roles were reversed!

  But he either backed away when he was supposed to step forward or knelt at the wrong time. With his every misstep, the duchess’s frown deepened. Lady Fleming forced an encouraging smile.

  When the music stopped at last, the dauphin had tears in his eyes; he forgot that he was supposed to bow to me, rushed to his mother for comfort, and buried his face in Queen Catherine’s lap, leaving me to make my révérence to an invisible partner.

  “More p
ractice is in order. The king returns tomorrow,” Madame de Poitiers announced sternly. “His Majesty will not be pleased.”

  Little François sobbed harder as the duchess led him away without a word of protest from his mother. I glanced at my governess.

  Lady Fleming shrugged and raised her eyebrows. “Joyeux anniversaire, Madame Marie,” she said. Then she added in a whisper, “You did beautifully, Marie. Have no worries about the dauphin.”

  But, of course, I did.

  II. As Though We Had Known Each Other All Our Lives

  LIFE IN THE FRENCH COURT was unlike anything I had known in Scotland. Though I was schooled in the language and manners of my new country, the most important lessons were not taught but learned by observing. I saw that one might have a great title and still have very little power, and that the reverse was also true. Young as I was, I discovered that power was important to me, and I felt sure that someday I would know how to use it. I did not consider that I might also lose it.

  Chapter 6

  King Henri II

  THE KING’S PORTRAIT hung in the great hall at Saint-Germain, brought from Carriéres-sur-Seine when the court moved, and so I already knew what he looked like. King Henri II was tall and slender and had a long, narrow face with a neatly trimmed brown beard and sad eyes. The king knew what I looked like too: soon after my arrival in France he had ordered drawings to be made of his children, including me, and he had had them sent to him while he was traveling in Italy.

  We awaited his arrival with growing excitement.

  Late one afternoon the king and his gentlemen, all mounted on handsome horses in rich trappings of bright silk and gold, rode into the courtyard heralded by trumpeters. We hurried out to welcome him.

  King Henri dismounted and strode toward the great hall, looking exactly like his portrait. He first greeted his son, the dauphin, and then turned to me. “Ah, ma petite reine, Marie!” he cried, holding out his arms to me, just as my dear grandfather had done, and I eagerly accepted his warm embrace.