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

by Sarah Gristwood

  ‘I know, I know,’ – this wasn’t the kind of work the Queen’s Marys expected to have to oversee – ‘but I didn’t trust the servants here to do even the floors properly!’

  Beaton seemed to have recovered her serenity, though behind her the girl Morag hung her head as if there had been words, while she stabbed at the embroidery.

  ‘Did you have a good ride?’ The whole palace must have heard by now that Seton’s brother had called for her.

  ‘He wanted to talk…’ Seton felt silly. Of course they talked – what else were a brother and sister going to do after years apart? – but she didn’t know how to explain that the patchy conversation of those two hours had somehow changed her.

  ‘Yes – there is a lot to say.’ It was one of Beaton’s special gifts, to invest even the most trivial sentence with a kind of significance. Staring at her face now, across the basket of lavender and rosemary, Seton felt Beaton was ahead of her.

  Impatient, Seton dropped to her knees and began rummaging in an open trunk of clothes, glad of something to do. Ribbon garters, embroidered stocking. Then her questing fingers found an ornament pulled loose – a white knot of pearl embroidery.

  She knew where that had come from. her Majesty had worn a blue velvet train, scattered all over with these white knots, on her wedding day. And suddenly Seton was back there, in the sunlight of an April day, outside the Cathedral of Notre-Dame – could it only be three years ago?

  *

  She could hear in memory the confusion, as the heralds tossed gold coins into the crowd, and the poor fought for them, savagely, more like a bear pit than a marriage.

  She could almost feel the weight of the great jewelled crown on her Majesty’s head – they’d helped her try it on, the night before – and wondered how she’d be able to support it all the long day. But at least, young as she was, Queen Mary had looked like a queen and a bride as she paced ahead, in contrast to the poor puny dauphin at her side.

  Seton remembered the six golden miniature ships, each with a French prince seated at the prow, sweeping across the floor of the banqueting hall for the prince to choose his princess and bear her away. She even remembered the overexcited small boys crouching around the corners of the room to tug at the painted cloth that covered the floor and produce the effect of – ugh! – billowing waves upon this pantomime sea.

  But she remembered, too, the feeling that this, truly, was nothing to do with her. That the Seton who smiled and danced and made stilted conversation in the elegant French the nuns had taught her was not the real Mary Seton but a puppet for people to gaze at.

  Everybody looked at them at the French court; they learned that quickly when they returned to the queen’s side. They were, after all, the Scots Queen’s Marys. But nobody listened to them, they learned that, too – mere ladies to another grander lady.

  Queen Mary had no business to perform in France, queen though she might be. If some great issue of Scottish policy did arise, her Guise uncles, the duke and the cardinal, took her aside and instructed her what she should say.

  Now, gazing down at the pearly knot in her hand, for the first time Seton really understood that things had changed completely. She glanced up, and saw the knowing, sympathetic half-smile on Beaton’s face.

  ‘That’s right – it won’t all be just pearls and parties here,’ Beaton said meaningfully.

  Slowly, Seton nodded. The queen was at a council meeting, was she? Well, that was something that had never happened in France.

  When the queen came back, her head would be full of it, and there would be no Guise duke or cardinal uncles to advise her in Scotland – even the marquis, lightweight though he was, would be returning to France shortly. And that left – well, her Marys.

  Was this what Seton’s mother had meant, when she urged her always to serve her Majesty? Was this the task for which she had been waiting – something with more significance to it than just arranging the queen’s clothes, or helping her with her embroidery? Was this why her brother had wanted her to understand the situation here so quickly?

  It was frightening, the stakes were so high. Nothing less than the future of a whole country. What if they got it wrong? What could – what couldn’t – the consequences be?

  But it was exciting, too. There’d been satisfaction in Beaton’s voice, and something like it was rising, too, in Seton.

  There was a sharp rattle of voices in the outer room, and they jumped up, just as the queen swept through the doorway, her eyes bright and her colour high. And it was with a whole new glow at her own heart that Seton sank back down into a curtsey to her Majesty.

  Three

  But hardly a week at Holyrood, Seton was beginning to learn there were bad as well as good sides to being henchwomen to a queen who was trying to rule a country. Monday morning and Seton was feeling ruffled to her very soul, and it had nothing to do with the wind that was snapping at her scarf as they marched round the palace gardens, dourly.

  A harassed-looking man in a shabby cloak was bowing to her. She recognised him as a distant kinsman but with a quick frown shook him away. He’d already tried once to use her as an intermediary to beg his favour.

  And this really was not the moment, she thought. We all have other things on our minds, especially her Majesty. As they went into the palace – out of the wind at last – the queen passed into the inner room with Lord James and Maitland, and the Marys were free to discuss the latest, quietly.

  ‘Well, you can’t expect her to do nothing!’ You could always count on Livy to be in favour of anything that made for a little excitement.

  ‘By granting him an audience – sending for him this way – her Majesty just dignifies his heresies,’ Beaton protested vehemently. Her position hadn’t altered a jot since the discussions of the night before, and it had been her hands the queen had clung to as she poured out her hurt and fury about the scandalous events of that Sunday.

  ‘If we’d still been back in France, I can’t imagine what would happen if a mob of heretics had dared disrupt the royal service. And even Lord James admits it was agreed the queen would be allowed to hear mass privately.’

  ‘I’m not sure Master Knox sees things that way,’ said Fleming. ‘To him, the queen herself is no more than another of God’s servants – and maybe further down the line than the one he sees in the mirror each day!’

  They sat silent for a moment, remembering the latest pamphlet which had burned its way through Europe. It said God had commanded for kings to be obeyed, but that if those kings should do anything against His glory, then a man was right to raise his hand against them. And who was to decide what was against His glory? Master Knox, presumably.

  ‘And if that’s what he thinks about kings…’ It was Livy who spoke all their thoughts aloud. ‘You know he says a woman ruling over men is a monster in nature.’

  ‘And as for a woman “clad in the habit of a man…”’ They all caught each other’s eye and smiled a little, as Fleming quoted naughtily. ‘Still, I suppose any excuse for a riot will serve—’

  She broke off, disconcerted, and they all came hastily to their feet and down in a curtsey again as the queen swept through into an inner chamber, followed by Lord James. The Marys made as if to follow her, but a brusque gesture from Lord James motioned them back.

  ‘I feel like a dog that’s been told to stay,’ Fleming grumbled, and it was hard to disagree.

  Seton drew her hastily aside. A dark gown and a long beard strode past in the queen’s footsteps, beneath a glare fierce enough to freeze the last of Fleming’s laugh in her throat. A nervous-looking secretary flung open the door and bowed this walking thundercloud into the queen’s presence.

  ‘So that was John Knox.’ Livy never balked at stating the obvious. The four of them settled down again, on their low stools. But Seton for one itched to be the other side of that oaken door, to hear what Knox said with her own two ears, not try and piece it together later, through her Majesty.

  *

&nb
sp; That closed door was stout – in the Holyrood winds, doors needed to be. Not much noise came through. But a lot of courtiers seemed to have decided, that particular morning, to loiter around it, quietly.

  Once the queen cried out, in what sounded as much like pain as indignation. Knox’s voice rumbled on inexhaustibly, the words indistinguishable but the bass note as penetrating as you’d expect from a man whose opinions filled St Giles’ Cathedral.

  Seton looked around the sea of faces, and for a moment the room seemed to billow under her. How many of them truly loved the old faith? How many of them had gone over to the Reformed out of real conviction rather than policy?

  Before she could sink into doubt, her gaze reached a face guaranteed to stop her melancholy in its tracks. A giant tuft of bristling red hair, with just a pair of angry eyes, peering out suspiciously… It was Morton, the Earl of Morton, who’d joined with Lord James and Secretary Maitland in the running of the country. Good God, how could she ever have thought that Bothwell looked extraordinary?

  A new figure joined one of the groups of loiterers. They opened their ranks to receive him, but self-consciously. He was a sober man with black hair and dark serious eyes, neat-looking though portly.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Beaton looked at him with interest.

  ‘Master Randolph, the new English envoy, come to report back on her Majesty to his own queen.’

  ‘Come to cheer his fellow heretics on, more like!’

  ‘No, no, you’ve got it wrong, Livy. On this ground, if on no other, Queen Elizabeth and her Majesty are two birds in one nest. A peaceable religious settlement, everyone keeping whatever lands they’ve snatched, none of this nasty Calvinist extremity.’

  They jumped up again as the door opened, but it was only the Calvinist extremist himself, gathering his moral superiority around him, as he left this court of extravagance and debauchery.

  His scornful gaze swept from Fleming’s rustling skirts, to the cross on Seton’s chest and the perfume beads the queen had given Beaton recently. ‘Toys of the devil!’ he said comprehensively.

  It was bizarre enough to start a ripple of laughter. But in fact, it was with a frisson as much of shock as of amusement that they hastened through the open door and in to her Majesty.

  Four

  They all tried, that first autumn. The four Marys tried to do what they could, to smooth her Majesty’s way. Night after night they’d cluster round the queen as she rehearsed what she’d say in the meetings next day. Their pooled knowledge of this country and its court was like the kind of stockpot the peasants keep simmering on their fire, and they all added into it what scraps of intelligence they had gleaned.

  Even Livy was beginning to learn that the young men who sought her out for a dance or a laugh might have their own game to play. Then again, there might even be something she could learn about their goals, or that of their families.

  I swear, Seton thought, I’m even beginning to dress a different way. She had always wanted only to pass unremarked in the queen’s train, whether that meant wearing the quietest of garments, or sometimes the pretty furbelows her Majesty loved, but that didn’t really suit anyone who didn’t breathe grace in every line of their body.

  Now – Fleming mentioned it, smilingly – Seton found she almost wanted the rest of the court to see her. With the aid of some kind gifts of fabric from her brother, she’d ordered a new gown of cut velvet, with paler roses standing out from a tawny background. George had promised her a cross of amber to wear with it, and Seton was glad he thought she looked well in her new finery. He was much at court these days – the queen seemed to know the importance of his support, and Seton was glad to see his early doubts about her seemed to be melting away.

  The queen tried harder than any of them those months, and not just to buckle herself down to day after day of meetings and papers.

  It was as though the French relatives who took her away from her Scottish companions, to be raised with the French princes at the French court, had done their work too thoroughly. The band of four Marys had kept the germ of their Scottishness like a secret they relished together through the years at the convent. Not so Queen Mary.

  It was as if the queen were groping to understand what to her – Seton thought with a chill – seemed almost to be an alien country.

  *

  It’s for only so long you can go on behaving properly. The queen began to chafe at her bonds as Christmas approached, when the gardens outside glittered white with hoarfrost and inside, the rooms were already so cold that it was an extra penance for her to sit through the council meetings.

  It was past dinner time, and Lord James and Sir John Gordon, a young hotblood of the powerful northern clan, had been sniping at each other again, while the breath of their arguments left white puffs hanging on the winter air. Her Majesty, passing out of the council chamber, lent towards the Marys, with a mischievous look, and whispered a message that made Livy jump and blush.

  They’d played this truant’s trick before, in France – donned cloaks and breeches and slipped out for a few hours, to wander anonymous through the streets. Their men’s garments were waiting in a trunk, and in the dark there’d be nothing so foreign in their cut or colour as to give the game away.

  A few hours later, the five of them were slipping down the privy stairs from the tower rooms, and out of a side door. It took some moments, always, for Seton to get used to the rough bulk of woollen fabric between her thighs – to remember, every time she turned, to make allowance for the sword at her side.

  Once she stumbled in her unaccustomed boots. The rising slope of the Canongate lay inviting ahead, lamplit from the houses of the nobility. But following the queen’s path, they turned off as soon as they could, and plunged down into Cowgate.

  The way here was slippery with refuse underfoot, and almost at once, from an upstairs window, came a shout of, ‘Gardez lou!’ The queen was slow to respond to the warning, and they were almost splashed with a stream of filth, but at least she remembered to drop the tone of her voice when she called a protest to the unseen householder.

  This was the poorest part of the town, and they were moving between the laich houses, the lowest levels of the piled tenements, where whole families lived like animals in a single room. It was several stories upwards before the apartments of the better sort, opening out onto the High Street, rose dreamlike against the sky.

  Little moonlight reached down into this chasm, but there seemed suddenly to be a lot of people on these dark streets. ‘Where are we going?’ Seton hissed to Livy.

  ‘To the Grassmarket. They’re lighting the need-fires.’ Of course, the need-fires – the bonfires that poor people lit to drive ill luck away.

  For the need-fires to work, every other flame around had to be extinguished for the whole long day. No wonder the streets had seemed so dark. They’d heard there was sickness in the city, riding the harsh air like a witch on her way to the devil’s party.

  As the narrow streets drew close to the open Grassmarket, they began to have to push their way. With infection around, was it safe to press so closely? But Livy for one had no such qualms. Her eyes shining, her only care was to get closer to the great central fire, and see more clearly. As for the queen, she was leading them all, and even Beaton was shoving the broad-clothed back in front of her in a quiet, determined sort of way.

  All around, the very thought of need and danger seemed to have bred a strange kind of excitement, and people were behaving in a way that really… Hastily, Seton looked the other way.

  ‘Up here!’ said Fleming suddenly. They tumbled into one of the wynds that led up towards the castle and yes, Fleming was right, there should be a sort of terrace ahead, from which they’d be able to see. But sprawled on the steps of the tall houses, there was something in the way.

  At first, in the dark, Seton thought it was an animal. One of the cows fallen sick, maybe. But then the bottom half of the ‘cow’ spoke – or moaned.

  ‘Oh, my lord,
oh… no…’ The thumping rhythm was one Seton recognised suddenly. She knew it from when the palace bitches were in heat – but she’d never expected to be so close to a person doing it so openly. The man (for her eyes were becoming accustomed now) reared himself up abruptly. His hand dived downwards, beneath the woman’s tumbled skirts, and they both groaned something out, in pain or pleasure it was hard to say.

  As he thrust, he glared around him suddenly, as if he knew he was being watched, and the sharp, bright-eyed stare was one they all knew. Seton had always thought the Earl of Bothwell looked like the carved satyr on the Holyrood roof.

  Seton looked around at her companions. They’d all of them shrunk back into the shadows; Livy had the giggles, predictably, and Fleming (herself half-laughing) was squeezing her hand reprovingly. Beaton looked… disgusted, was it? Her eye caught Seton’s, and they locked for a moment in sympathy.

  And the queen? Seton couldn’t read the expression on her face. She alone had been here before, had known a man with his trousers down. Or had she? Seton couldn’t read the expression on her face.

  They’d been prating of her remarriage for almost a twelvemonth now. Even in those forty days of deuil, after poor little King Francois died so suddenly, there had been whispers in that darkened room. Indeed – so Fleming had told Seton in real confidence; not just women’s talk, but the kind of confidence not broken lightly – they’d complained in Scotland that her Majesty herself thought more about a grand second match than she did about the welfare of her country.

  For all the talk of marriage, though, for Seton those plans had an air of unreality. The same kind of fantasy that now had the two queens, Scots and English, writing poetry to one another like lovers and regretting the one of them were not a man, so that they might marry.

  Now for the first time, watching Queen Mary, Seton wondered if her marriage to Francois, that sickly boy, had been a marriage in reality. Whether – when gossip spread, when she wore her clothes loose for a time – the queen really had thought herself pregnant.