The Queen's Mary: In the Shadows of Power...

by Sarah Gristwood

  The queen didn’t sprawl or squat, of course. She stood – and just as well. All that embroidery. She’d chosen to wear the lushest, deepest, black – the kind that took a gallon of dye and a world of effort – and salt would show up hideously.

  Bad enough they’d sailed up the Firth at an unconscionable hour of the morning, so early the sailors couldn’t find the pier in the fog. They’d had to wait aboard three hours before even disembarking.

  Bad enough that her devoted subjects were late with their welcome. You wouldn’t want them to find her looking as if she had been cast away.

  Through all the weeks of packing and taking leave of half of France, they’d all been carrying around – like an extra, invisible, piece of baggage – the question of whether anyone in Scotland really wanted the queen home.

  Throughout the five-day voyage, they’d all been wondering what sort of welcome they were sailing into. The answer, it seemed, was none at all.

  Clambering awkwardly to her feet, Seton brushed the damp sand off her own dress, absent-mindedly.

  As the sickness in her stomach subsided – as her legs began to grow used to the land – she looked around. When first they came ashore in an early fog, they’d seemed to be stepping into the landscape of a nightmare. Grey rocks looming up like phantasmagoria, and the chill damp swallowing the sound of the sea.

  But now the mist was clearing a little, Seton could see that the beach was really one bank of a great inlet. On the other side the land itself swelled and billowed like the waves of some huge ocean. A hawk screamed overhead and, for a moment, she saw as it would see.

  The huddle of humans stranded on the shore, a woman holding the centre of attention – Queen Mary. The clutches of men, like hatchlings in a nest, all clearly in some disarray.

  And then the four Marys, punctuating the shingle landscape like needles in a tapestry.

  Livy had skittered off with some young man to peer into a rock pool, for all the world as though she were still a child. Beaton had found a boulder to perch on, near Fleming. She, with her usual air of containment, was standing a little apart and gazing across the water, while close behind her stood another young courtier, whose name and profession Seton remembered without difficulty.

  Seton wondered sourly whether the ever-ready Chastelard was managing to turn this morning’s adventures into poetry.

  There was a little bustle of movement nearby. The marquis – the youngest of the queen’s Guise uncles – had finished harrying the sailors who were bringing the chests ashore.

  Now he and the other Frenchmen were starting to clamour about sending messages to somebody, anybody. Messages to say that Scotland’s queen had come back to her native land after thirteen years away. Surely somebody other than the squawking seabirds should be here as a welcome party?

  ‘It’s been done, your Majesty.’ Typically, the Earl of Bothwell turned his shoulder on the marquis, and addressed the queen directly. He was an extraordinary man. They’d had several weeks by now to get used to him since first he arrived in France with the escort party, but Seton still couldn’t look at that bristling red beard, that sharp foxy face without a rush of disbelief that anyone could be so pawky.

  ‘I sent a lad running into the town before ever ye’d set foot on shore, and the provost’s man will be halfway to Edinburgh by now. It’s only a few miles away.’

  ‘The provost’s man! Where is the provost?’ spluttered the marquis. Like all the Guises, he had never been one to take any slight kindly. ‘Doesn’t he realise his queen is here?’

  Bothwell shot him a look out of those dark staring eyes. ‘He’ll mebbe be changing into his bettermost jacket,’ he said indifferently.

  ‘Lord Bothwell looks as though he’s just been goosed by a gull,’ giggled Livy.

  Beaton too moved up beside them. Her steady tread passed on to join the queen, and the sound of the sand crunching beneath her boots galvanised them all to their duties.

  The queen had been silent all this time. It’s one of the first lessons royalty learns – when actually to do anything is to lose dignity. Seton had been too unwell to dress the queen’s hair that morning on the ship, and the queen had sent a message of sympathy. Beaton must have done it for once, but the smooth auburn curls were ordered very nicely.

  It was the queen, now, whose head first turned towards the dunes. Sure enough, the tops of men’s dark bonnets could be seen bobbing up and down as the horses of their wearers picked a path between the tall hillocks of couch grass.

  As Livy went for the mirror, the other three fussed at the queen’s dress and white veil. Beaton wrapped a fur protectively around her shoulders, although the morning wasn’t really chilly.

  ‘That’ll be the Leith party now.’ Lord Bothwell sounded positively self-congratulatory – as if he’d arranged the whole half-hearted welcome, and couldn’t see that anything might be lacking in it. Or maybe he just wanted her Majesty to grasp that there was no false glamour about this country.

  ‘The trouble is, that with the winds so favouring your Majesty’s ship, they won’t have looked for you for a few days yet,’ he added unnecessarily.

  ‘Perhaps I should apologise for my poor timing?’ The queen spoke at last, so sweetly it was hard to be sure she was being sarcastic. For a moment, strong as bile, there rose up in Seton’s throat the bitter conviction that they had indeed got their timing wrong, and that it could be more serious than the matter of an absent escort party.

  *

  The mood did not lift as, mounted on a set of the sorriest nags this side of St Peter’s, they jostled their way almost silently over the short turf. The fog was still dense enough to dull the noise of the hoof beats – but then, they had barely left the shore. They were riding not inland to the queen’s palace at Edinburgh, but the short distance along the coast into the port of Leith.

  ‘Why?’ the queen had demanded, uncomprehending, turning her blank beautiful stare onto the dark-clad man who had stood before her there on the shore.

  The horsemen they had seen approaching had turned out not to be the local burghers but a deputation from the city – a hastily-assembled welcome party of nobles bringing in their rear a motley collection of whatever spare horses they could assemble at speed.

  ‘Why not go direct to Holyrood? And—’ her gaze turned to a spoon-backed bay, its ribs almost showing through its patchy coat, ‘—why go anywhere on these unfortunate animals? My own horses must have arrived by now.’

  Lord James Stewart shifted uncomfortably – the discomfort of a man forced to be the bearer of bad tidings. Especially to a woman. Especially to a queen. Especially if that queen was his own half-sister.

  Holyrood palace – he explained, with the vagueness of a man who’s proud to say he knows nothing of household matters – was not yet ready to receive her, her voyage had been so swift… Was it Seton’s imagination, or was he not really as apologetic as he might be?

  *

  The queen accepted that in silence. Her Marys knew she would wait until nightfall, when they were getting her undressed in her chamber, to explode that, for sweet heaven’s sake they had had weeks – months! – to get ready.

  ‘And my horses?’

  This time perhaps Lord James did look embarrassed. Her Majesty’s illegitimate half-brother – older than she by a decade – it had been only natural that, in the queen’s absence, he had taken a leading part in the running of the country. And this was verging on a matter of state. The ship containing her Majesty’s horses, it seemed, had been seized by the English authorities.

  The Queen of England had not been prepared to grant the Queen of Scots safe passage through her realm as she came home from France.

  The English had drawn the line at actually intercepting their passage over the seas. But bad weather forced Queen Mary’s horse transport to make harbour in England and the local governor had been unable to resist the opportunity.

  Of course – Lord James explained – the return of the animals was being de
manded through diplomatic channels, but relations between the two counties were so complex that…

  With a glance around the listening crowd (and far too many of them French, as he clearly thought), he let the phrase tail away.

  The queen took the point at once. ‘So where are we to go?’ She would hate herself for that plaintive note, but there was little doubt about it, she had no choice at this moment but to bow to another’s authority.

  This was not the scene she had planned – less like a homecoming than the arrival of strangers in a strange land. But if it had to be anyone to usher her back into her home, leading her as helpless as a toddler trapped by its nurse’s hand, then at least best it was her brother, surely?

  But it was not Lord James who gave the answer, but the quiet-eyed man who stood at his side. ‘your Majesty…’

  ‘Maitland,’ Lord James introduced him grumpily, ‘William Maitland of Lethington, your Majesty’s State Secretary.’

  He may have thought it a little odd for a man who, after all, was no noble to be putting himself forward in such company. But it was Maitland, Seton thought, who had best understood their feelings. The fear that if they didn’t move somewhere soon, they might be stuck on that shore forever, as if in limbo, or some warning legend from an old story.

  ‘There is a merchant in Leith – one Andrew Lamb, a very respectable man with a decent sort of house – who would count it an honour to host your Majesty. You can dine and refresh yourself after your journey. If your Majesty pleases…’

  Maitland gestured towards those same sorry horses and, so smoothly that you couldn’t even see the cogs slip into motion, the queen decided to do everything graciously.

  ‘I shall be most happy.’

  As the rest clambered into the saddles as best they might, she had assembled the most significant of the men around her with no more than a smile. A side-saddle was being fitted onto one of the horses, too, Seton noticed approvingly. It was another thing they’d all forgotten – that in Scotland, women usually rode pillion on a journey. But if the queen meant to steer the country, she could hardly have made her entry there bobbing along behind like a pedlar’s backpack, unable even to steer her own way.

  The ladies behind her could hear the stream of bright questions – the weather, the port, the lords’ female relations – as they set off on their way.

  *

  The man they called Maitland rode a little behind. It was Fleming, the flame-haired one, who first caught his eye, though she didn’t see it. She was busy trying to soothe the little lapdog squirming in her arms, complaining in a whine against the jouncing of the saddle and the stolen fish turning its stomach. Then, as his gaze moved to Seton’s rigid back, to the bouncing curve of Livy’s skirt, his mind brushed like a bird’s wing over the bevy of the Marys.

  Captives, he imagined them – with the ghost of a grimace to catch back the foolish thought. Pieces of baggage, then – expensive luxuries brought back from France with the velvets and the embroidered slippers, and the barrels of fine wine the sailors were unloading behind them, but as bound to the queen’s train as that complaining puppy.

  Four Marys, the alchemist’s number. Four elements, and the red cheeked one, on the flirt with the young men around her – that would be Mary Livingstone, of the earth, earthy. Fleming, with the royal blood – of a sort – she’d be above the rest, airy.

  The dark girl riding behind the others – a puzzle, that one. Beautiful in the face, yet without allure. Quieter than the rest, you’d think one of the dourer elements, and yet with something smouldering, volcano-like, at her core. Yes, maybe Beaton could be fire, if that were she.

  As for the last of the Marys, Seton – well, no one looked their best after hours of seasickness, did they? Not water for her, anyway…

  Tall as the queen, brown haired and not ungraceful. Not one the young men would rush to, precisely. But an air of thoughtfulness under her blanched face. Another with hidden depths, maybe. Yes, Seton would do for the fourth element, for water…

  Touching his heels to the mare’s side, Maitland pushed away the fantasy, and with it his fleeting sense of pity.

  How many young women could dream of freedom, after all? Others were tied to a husband just as these girls were tied to this Queen Mary.

  Blinded to much of life, like the hooded hawks in the palace mews, they had no real understanding of the stakes of this game. But unless they were greater fools than they looked, they might still be given a few cards to play.

  *

  The huts by the track, stinking of fish, seemed little more than hovels to the eyes of the party fresh come from France, and behind them loured curious flat red-topped hills.

  ‘Dieu, what a place. Even the hills are ugly!’ It was Chastelard, of course, and Seton felt a flash of irritation. She had, of course, been feeling the same way, but this was still her country.

  They were riding into Leith’s main street now, between better houses. At each window sprouted a crop of gawping, grinning, cheering heads. Here and there a carved doorway gleamed with unexpected prosperity.

  Seton’s spirits rose, infinitesimally. Then down a street’s end she caught sight of something hanging from a gibbet, and sharply turned her head.

  A boy ran past, the cloth flapping loose from a tray he balanced on his head, trying to outpace the horses. He dived into the doorway of a solid, three-storey, timbered house, where by now the first of the riders was dismounting.

  ‘I wonder whose birthday feast that was supposed to be.’ Beaton spoke unconcernedly.

  She was right – the unknown Andrew Lamb must have been begging provisions from all the neighbours. That tray had been full of marzipan dainties, which meant that someone had been pounding almonds and loaf sugar for many a day.

  There were even cherries there, steeped in a cinnamon syrup – Seton’s nose twitched, despite herself, as the tray passed by.

  ‘Seton! Stop wool-gathering!’ From behind, Livy nudged her, and with some relief she unclenched her arms from around the waist of the servant who rode in front, and slid awkwardly to the ground.

  But at least her Majesty was slipping gracefully down from the saddle of her own horse. She was on the ground now, smiling, laughing at the running boys, extending her hand to the owner of the house, whose nervousness was beginning to melt like snow in the sun.

  By the time the meal was over, she’d have everyone believing she’d planned to arrive in this charmingly informal way.

  Perhaps, after all, if the queen could work the miracle in one house she could do it in the whole country. Perhaps her charm would win the day. It had been clever of her to make this fiasco of an arrival into a party.

  They passed into the house, and the smell of roast meat washed over them pleasurably. To her amazement, Seton realised her stomach had recovered. And that she was hungry.

  *

  Hours later they were still in Leith, in the best bedroom Master Lamb had vacated so hastily it seemed the vibrations still lingered on the air.

  As the dinner had dragged on, with every housewife in the town bustling in with a dish and watching goggle-eyed as they tasted it – as the men made ever deeper inroads on the cellars – it had soon become obvious no one was going anywhere in a hurry.

  Truth to tell, by the time the light began to fade, all the four Marys wanted was to find a place they could be private. To chew over their first feelings about what – for all that they’d been born here – felt like a strange country.

  ‘The hippocras!’ Her Majesty liked a cup of the warm sweetened wine at the end of the day.

  ‘I suppose they do have hippocras here?’ Fleming asked, only half-jokingly.

  ‘Oh, Livy, let the boy get it.’ Livy nodded, and stuck her head out into the corridor, where a page boy was waiting eagerly. She didn’t want the conversation to start without her.

  But now they were alone together, oddly enough, the speech did not come easy. They were still groping for the world they once knew, trying to
find their Scotland embedded in this one as a fly is preserved in amber.

  *

  Speaking their fears and anxieties aloud might give them form and shape. Better to leave them as shadows in the firelight… The Lamb servants had looked askance, when they’d asked for a fire in August. But Fleming said firmly that her Majesty would be chilled after the journey. Seton held her hands to the blaze, and memories rushed over her.

  Thirteen years since the four of them had last stood on Scottish soil, but she could see each little girl clearly enough in the queen’s grown Marys.

  Fleming’s hair was more red, less gold now but she was even more lovely. Just a little slighter than her Majesty. Livy was still bright cheeked and bouncy.

  Beaton’s hair was darker now, and her impassive face was a perfect oval, if one troubled to see. She had the kind of figure that would grow too solid in later life, but would look very well now, if only she would hold herself up properly.

  Seton herself, now – the queen once told her that she looked like one of the palace guards on duty, and she knew she was too tall for beauty.

  But at least her hair was as glossy as Beaton’s, and she wasn’t ashamed to admit she always took the trouble to dress it properly.

  *

  Livy bounced back into the room, and looked around, with an air of discovery.

  ‘Well!’ she said explosively.

  Perhaps it was something to have someone in their midst who rushed in where angels might fear to tread. Not that Livy was a fool, precisely. Sometimes Seton thought that of them all, she had the best grip on good ordinary reality.

  ‘Well…’ Beaton echoed her, mockingly. She was never one to venture her own opinion too quickly.

  ‘It’s early days yet,’ Seton said, ‘and everyone seems friendly.’

  ‘Very friendly. Fleming, I thought that young man was going to fall off his horse when they put you up behind him.’ Even in France, it had always been Livy who had the sharp eyes for the young men of the company.

  ‘I’m afraid our French fashions may seem a little saucy here,’ Fleming answered, smiling faintly.