The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots: A Novel

by Erickson, Carolly

  “I doubt that the prince will accomplish much in the bedroom tonight,” she remarked.

  “Hush, grandmamma! There is already too much talk of these very personal matters!” I knew I sounded prim, and regretted it, but the truth was, I shared my grandmother’s views. Yet I wanted to be loyal to Francis.

  “I pray that we will be worthy to bring sons into the world for the honor of Scotland and France,” I said stoutly, at which Grandmamma Antoinette lifted her fan to her mouth and made a sound that was somewhere between a sneeze and a snort.

  “We must all pray for that,” Queen Catherine added immediately, and when I turned to look at her I saw a gleam—was it a gleam of avarice?—in her small eyes. It was the same gleam I had seen on the morning I signed my marriage treaties several days earlier. On that morning, after Francis and I had signed our names on the documents prepared by the court lawyers, the queen had drawn me aside. She had shown me other documents, secret ones, which my mother had prepared without telling me. What these documents said was that, if Francis and I had no children, Scotland would belong to France.

  Young as I was, I understood quite well what was at stake in our marriage. Francis and I had to have a son, if possible several sons. It was vital. Scotland’s future was at risk. I did not doubt that I was strong and vigorous enough to become a mother. But could he become a father? My household physician, Dr. Bourgoing, thought so, and I trusted his opinion.

  How I wished, at that moment, that my own mother could be with us, watching the wedding joust. My widowed mother Marie, who was Queen Dowager of Scotland and who continued to live among the disorderly, treacherous Scots—yes, that is what they were!—in an effort to preserve some sort of harmony and peace among them. How I missed her! I had not seen her in so long, not since her last visit to France when I was seven years old. If I closed my eyes I could see her dear face, hear her voice.

  She was a Frenchwoman, she belonged among us. Like Grandmamma Antoinette, she had the royal blood of the Bourbons in her veins.

  The spectators were stirring loudly to life once again as a fresh challenger came riding against the king. Once again there came a thunder of hooves, a clashing of lances, and although the king took a blow to his shoulder, his opponent was unhorsed and fell heavily.

  On through the afternoon the king continued to be victorious, tiring four mounts and shattering many lances. He seemed invincible. Only the challenger, a tall, burly knight who smashed his lance into the king’s chest and a second one into his helmet, appeared to offer real opposition. But in the end the king struck a disabling blow and the man went down.

  Francis, sitting quietly beside me, began to sniff and wipe his nose on his sleeve. His attention wandered from the tiltyard.

  “Only a few minutes more,” I said to him. “Then the banquet will begin.”

  “I’m not hungry,” he whispered. “I want to leave.”

  “We can’t leave. Not until the prize of arms is awarded.”

  At last twilight began to descend and the king, triumphant, came forward to receive the prize, to the applause and cheers of the onlookers. Francis and I stood, paying him homage as the undefeated champion of the joust, but Francis was yawning, and we had no sooner returned to the palace than he went to bed, without even waiting for his servant to take off his boots.

  I found him there, alone in the immense bed we were expected to share for the first time that night as husband and wife. He was sound asleep under a layer of down, a weary boy at the end of a long and tiring day.

  I kissed his cheek and went back to my own apartments, eager to have my attendants dress me in the lovely gown of pale blue satin that my grandmamma had chosen for me to wear that night. I did not want to miss the banquet—or the dancing that would follow it. I loved to dance and besides, it was my wedding day. I would simply explain that Francis had felt ill and needed to take some physick. Everyone would understand. And even if they didn’t, they would not dare to complain. For was I not Queen of Scotland and, as of today, dauphine of France?

  TWO

  While I was becoming accustomed to being a wife and hoping to become a mother, I had many letters from my own dear mother in Scotland. A courier arrived nearly every month with a new bag of documents for me to sign and messages, often hastily scrawled and heavily blotted, signed “from the queen,” or simply “Marie,” with my mother’s special insignia, the silver eaglets of Lorraine, added at the bottom of each page.

  She was in trouble.

  The great and quarrelsome Scots lords, the most powerful of them as mighty as kings in their own lands, were fighting, and though they often changed allegiances, and clashed fiercely with one another, there were always many of them who were fighting against the crown. I was queen, but my mother was regent, holding authority on my behalf, and try as she might to hold it, that authority was rapidly slipping away.

  It did not help that she was ill, and that her illness was slowly growing worse. Her legs and feet swelled until she could barely walk, and her face, she wrote, looked like a sheep’s bladder that someone had blown up and forgotten to deflate.

  “The doctors shake their heads, and soak my blankets in lime juice, which is supposed to take away the swelling. But all the lime juice in the world can’t make my belly flat again,” she told me in one letter. “They really don’t know what to think, or what to do. Young Jamie—that’s the young heir to the earldom of Bothwell—thinks it’s witchcraft, and he’s brought me a charm stone to keep in my bed.”

  From the letters, and the visits of mother’s couriers and ambassadors to the French court, I was able to follow what was going on, after a fashion. Mother’s illness was getting worse, the hostile Scots (she called them wolves) were pursuing her from one castle to another, and despite the aid of “Young Jamie” and others who were faithful to her, it was taking all her courage and the last of her strength to resist them.

  Meanwhile here in France a sudden, unexpected event changed the direction of our lives.

  The king was once again taking on all challengers at a joust—and Francis, as before, was watching from the spectators’ pavilion instead of joining in. The afternoon sun blazed hot on the horses and riders in the tiltyard, and the king, performing with athletic grace as he invariably did, and triumphing over each challenger that came forward, drank deeply and frequently from the goblets that were handed up to him by the grooms.

  It seemed to me, by the time he spurred his mount against the fifth challenger, that he rode unsteadily, and appeared to falter, but I quickly dismissed the thought. I had to be mistaken. He was a great champion, I had to be wrong.

  Yet his opponent’s lance struck him heavily in the chest and he nearly fell from his horse. A gasp went up from the onlookers, many stood, some cried out, “Lord King! Lord King!” in anguish. Francis looked down at his lap, unable to watch.

  But within a moment King Henry managed to right himself, and waved to the crowd, and there was applause, and loud cries of relief.

  Still, I watched with apprehension as the next challenger took his position and the king, swaying slightly, drank again from a proffered goblet.

  This time, having finished off the liquid, he flung the goblet into the crowd—a gesture I had never before seen him make—and I thought to myself, he has drunk too much wine. How will he judge his blows accurately, or evade those of his challenger? I held my breath as he spurred his mount and closed the distance between himself and the other rider, the dust rising under his horse’s hooves.

  There was a clash—and suddenly both men were on the ground, their mounts shying and snorting in protest.

  Grooms rushed to the aid of the fallen jousters, but while the challenger was helped to his feet, and staggered off the course, the king lay where he was, unmoving.

  As quickly as I could, I helped the trembling Francis to make his way down from the pavilion and back to the palace, where we went at once to the royal apartments, through corridors crowded with weeping servants and officials.


  The hubbub in the king’s bedchamber was loud, the courtiers and retainers frantic with worry. Queen Catherine rushed in with three of her ladies, all of them in great distress.

  “He’s injured!” she shouted to the cluster of physicians who were conferring nervously. “He’s covered in blood! Why aren’t you treating him? Why are you just standing there, doing nothing?”

  The king lay unmoving under the linen sheet, one eye bandaged, the other closed but covered in bruises. Another bandage that covered his throat and ear was red with what looked to me like fresh blood.

  Francis trembled and knelt by the bed, grasping his father’s hand.

  “I warned him not to go,” the queen was saying. “I had a bad dream last night. I saw the accident. I saw the horse veer. My husband ran right into the oncoming lance.”

  It was well known at the court that Queen Catherine had prophetic dreams, and that she kept in her household a physician who was also an astrologer, Michel de Notredame, who foretold the future.

  “What shall I do?” Francis murmured to me, shaking his head. “How shall I manage?” The look on his face was piteous.

  King Henry lived for ten days after his accident, on the eleventh day he died, and my husband Francis became King of France.

  THREE

  He dressed in cloth of gold, he wore immense rubies in his caps and even his shoes had jeweled buckles. Everywhere he went he surrounded himself with an escort of handsome, sturdy young men and when he dined in public he made certain that there were beautiful women adorning his table.

  He tried to look like a king.

  But no amount of finery or outward show could make Francis kingly, and day by day his misery and fear deepened. He was only happy when away from the court, and his refuge was the hunt.

  When autumn came we went to stay at the beautiful new palace of Fontainebleau, where the hunting in the surrounding forest was at its best. Francis rode off happily into the woods early each morning and each evening his foresters brought back many handsome stags and does, all dead by his royal hand (or so they assured everyone), and laid them out on the grass under the light of the torches.

  There was a chill in the air, and intermittent rain, and by the fourth day of our stay at the palace I noticed that Francis, who was forever sneezing and having to wipe his nose no matter where we were or what season it was, was sniffing more than ever and blowing his nose noisily and complaining that his ear hurt. When I suggested that he stay indoors rather than ride out in the rain, he snapped at me irritably—and then began coughing as if he could not stop.

  On the following morning, despite the dark clouds and sharp wind, he went out to hunt as usual, and all his retinue with him, only to come back a few hours later, soggy in his velvets (Francis loved his finery!) and holding his hand to his ear. Dr. Bourgoing gave him a purgative and sent one of the grooms to the kitchens for a roasted onion to place in his ear to draw out the poisons.

  My mother-in-law’s astrologer Michel de Notredame also arrived, sent by the queen to examine Francis. He was a dark-haired, heavily jowled man of medium height, well advanced in age (though everyone looked very old to me then, young as I was), with a serious expression and a look of great intelligence, such as I had seen on few faces in my brief life.

  He bent over Francis, who had been ordered to bed by Dr. Bourgoing, and listened to his chest and looked into his ear.

  “The king has a worm in his ear,” he told the doctor. “It has bored its way in, deep into his head. It cannot be dislodged. The onion will not cure him. However, the king will recover—this time.”

  I was very relieved to hear the astrologer’s words, so relieved that I ignored the subtle warning in what he said, the implication that there might be another illness from which he would not recover.

  “Monsieur de Notredame,” I said as he was preparing to leave, “would you please read my palm?”

  He looked at me searchingly. “Are you certain you want me to?”

  I hesitated a moment, then nodded.

  “Very well then. I should like you to stretch out your hands, palms downward.”

  I did as he asked.

  “Very pretty. The long fingers very elegant. But the nails—”

  My nails were bitten down to the quick. My tirewomen soaked them in rosewater each night and rubbed scented oil into the raw edges, but they looked ragged and injured nonetheless. When I attended banquets or masques, I wore gloves—tight, soft dogskin gloves—to hide my nails.

  “Please turn them over.”

  I had had my palms read before, it was a common enough pastime at court, but when Monsieur de Notredame inspected first my left palm, then my right it was with a degree of scrutiny and thoughtfulness I had never encountered. He took his time, tracing the significant lines with one finger, frowning occasionally and slowly shaking his head.

  “What day were you born, and at what hour?”

  I told him. He remained quiet for a time, then motioned me to sit on a bench near the fireplace.

  “More logs!” he called out to the groom who stood nearby. At once the boy ran out of the room and before long came running back in with an armload of wood, which he proceeded to add to the fire.

  “Little queen, I would like you to remove one of your bracelets.”

  I unfastened the clasp of a gold bracelet with rubies set into its intricately carved tracery and slid it off my hand. He took it and held it, keeping his eyes closed. Then he opened them and spoke a single word: “Baleful.”

  He began pacing up and down in front of the bench where I sat, speaking rapidly, looking not at me but at some object in the distance, as if I wasn’t even there. He was near the fire, rivulets of sweat ran down his face as he walked back and forth across the uneven gray stones of the hearth.

  “I see that you play the spinet, though not very well, and that you have many little dogs, and one of them, a spotted bitch, has one short leg and cannot run very fast. I see that you work at your lessons but they do not come easily to you. You are kind to your husband and wish him well, but you do not love him and you never will. I see your favorite roan, and your mother—she is ill, is she not?—and—that is all I see.”

  He stopped pacing and the intensity drained from his face. He relaxed, shrugged, and sat down and handed me back my bracelet.

  “Tell me, Monsieur de Notredame, what did you mean by ‘baleful’?” The word lingered in my mind, troubling me.

  “I would rather not say more. You are too young.”

  “Please.”

  He took his time before he spoke, and chose his words with care.

  “When you were born,” he began, “you were meant to die. You nearly did die. You were born at a savage time. Someone else—your father—died instead. You were given up for dead as well. It was your fate to die, yet you perversely survived.”

  “How can it be perverse to survive?” I asked. “I know my mother was very glad I did not die, as her other children had.”

  “There is an order to things,” the astrologer said, his tone suddenly severe. “You upset that order. You were not meant to live, to have children.”

  At the mention of children my nerves were set on edge. I was constantly being reminded of my duty to produce an heir to my husband’s throne—and of what my mother-in-law referred to as my barrenness.

  “What do you mean, I was not meant to have children? Why else would I have survived? I carry my father’s royal blood in my veins, strong blood, rich blood. I am as sturdy as the next girl. I can run, I can ride—even though my mother-in-law does not like me to. I can hunt as well as any boy, draw a bow, shoot a gun. I have brought down a stag. Clearly I am meant to have my husband’s child. I have been spared so that I might have that child. Spared, do you understand?”

  “I understand,” Monsieur de Notredame replied calmly, “far more, and far better, than you, little queen. And all that I have said is true. Do not blame me, blame the fates, the blind destiny that governs our lives.
I am only the messenger.”

  He looked at me, and his expression was very grave.

  “I tell you this for certain. Something has gone wrong. You endure, but so does the force that assaulted you and brought you low as soon as you were born. The struggle you knew as a weak infant will go on throughout your earthly life.”

  I was both angry and puzzled by the astrologer’s enigmatic words. Until that time I had not had to struggle, everything had always been done for me, my path had been made clear, my every need filled. Was there not fine food on my table at every meal, and a dozen servants to bring it to me? Were there not entire rooms filled with my costly gowns in rich brocades and satins and even cloth of silver, my petticoats, my fans, my hats, my gloves, my jewels? I had only to ask, and whatever I called for was brought to me. I had always been treated like the queen I am.

  I got up from the bench and went to the window, looking out to the immaculate, luxuriant gardens.

  “If what you say is true,” I managed to say, doing my best to keep my tone even, “then why is it that I have been brought up in luxury, with my every request filled, and married to the highest-born man in the land?”

  He shook his head. “That was illusion, and will soon end.”

  I bristled, and turned back toward Monsieur de Notredame. “I don’t believe you,” I said.

  But he only shrugged. “It is written in the stars.”

  FOUR

  The clashing of swords rang out across the courtyard, and I heard shouts of alarm from the Scottish Archers who formed our royal Garde de Corps. We ran to the windows to see who was fighting. Francis and I were staying at a château near Soissons, on our way northward; the last thing we expected to hear in this out-of-the-way place was the clangor of metal on metal and the grunts of men in combat.

  But there they were, two stalwart, strong-looking young men, both swinging heavy broadswords, shouting insults and challenges at one another between blows and panting from their exertions. Neither appeared to be injured, though it was impossible to be sure from the window where I stood and so I made my way from my upstairs room down to the story below and out into the mud and muck of the courtyard.