The Duel of the Queens E-Book

Elizabeth Louisa Moresby

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

“She is the greatest lady in the world,” said George Buchanan, tutor in Latin to the young queen of Scotland soon to be queen of France.
“She is the loveliest lady in all the world,” responded Ronsard, poet of beautiful women and all lovely things. “I have heard her French Majesty, Queen Catherine, declare: ‘That little Scots whippersnapper of a queen has only to smile to turn the heads of all my good Frenchmen. It is a folly, but so it is!’ ”
“If her Majesty made that remark the whole world may swear it is true. For there is no love lost——”
“S-sh!” said the Bishop of Orkney with a discreet finger on narrow lips. “Her French Majesty has been a loving mother to our little queen ever since her own French mother sent her to France from Scotland, a hunted baby fleeing from the Scots lords in English pay. But, gentlemen, you commend her for beauty and rank. Now, I who am a churchman commend her for wits and learning. She is the most brilliant little lady for her young years in all the world.”

Leseprobe

The Duel of the Queens

Elizabeth Louisa Moresby

© 2025 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385749088

PREFACE

It has pleased the poets and romancers who have written of the loveliest and most loved of royal women to represent Mary Stuart as one overwhelmed with sexual passion, swept into murder and adultery, and counting them as nothing but an inevitable means to her end. That she must gain it also at the cost of her fair fame, her son, her kingdom, and what she could not but count as the loss of her immortal soul does not weigh with these romancers and historians for a moment. To support this theory, the brutal Bothwell must be transfigured into the strong and silent lover, passion to the red heart’s core, a Lancelot of Scotland, and Mary into a demon with fairy’s face and tail of fiend. They did not need, however, to embellish the romance, nor to take such bygone historians as Mignet and the eulogists of Elizabeth for their guides. State papers, the private letters of Elizabeth’s statesmen, the interchanges of the Scotsmen and their tools whose business it was to ruin Mary for their own ends are safer ones, and in this romance I present the truth as I have found it in these dark places and tortuous windings and have rather drawn upon Mary’s enemies than her friends for the truth.

Such as I have found it I give it, knowing no pen can reproduce the matchless charm that won the world’s heart then and has held it since. In many parts of my book she and others speak in their own words and all the letters are authentic, though slightly modernized and occasionally shortened.

E. Barrington.

(L. Adams Beck.)

Japan.

PART I

CHAPTER I

“She is the greatest lady in the world,” said George Buchanan, tutor in Latin to the young queen of Scotland soon to be queen of France.

“She is the loveliest lady in all the world,” responded Ronsard, poet of beautiful women and all lovely things. “I have heard her French Majesty, Queen Catherine, declare: ‘That little Scots whippersnapper of a queen has only to smile to turn the heads of all my good Frenchmen. It is a folly, but so it is!’ ”

“If her Majesty made that remark the whole world may swear it is true. For there is no love lost——”

“S-sh!” said the Bishop of Orkney with a discreet finger on narrow lips. “Her French Majesty has been a loving mother to our little queen ever since her own French mother sent her to France from Scotland, a hunted baby fleeing from the Scots lords in English pay. But, gentlemen, you commend her for beauty and rank. Now, I who am a churchman commend her for wits and learning. She is the most brilliant little lady for her young years in all the world.”

They looked a little doubtful on that, these gentlemen gathered in the embrasure of one of the stately windows of Fontainebleau. All can understand that beauty sways mankind like a moon serene above climbing waves. All, that rank is a sceptre apart from beauty’s, and independent. Both united are omnipotence. Master George Buchanan was extremely susceptible to the latter. Ronsard, the young poet, was the passionate, the fanatic poet of beauty. All day he would sit in the rose-wreathed alleys of the garden to catch a glimpse of the tall young maid walking with her Marys, laughing softly, telling her little secrets softly among them—too young as yet to be conscious of her terrible power; unripe; an apple tree in sweet white blossom under blue skies.

But who could admire learning in a budding beauty? Venus and Minerva have never assorted well and the owl has no affection for the dove.

They stared a little contemptuously at the Scots bishop as he spoke with the gravity of a man of God. He had, however, come as one of the Scots commission to arrange her marriage with the dauphin, the future king of France, and was to be respected.

“Mother of Christ! my lord, what should she do with learning?” said Ronsard. “Set wrinkles between her velvet brows and dull her sweet eyes and put an edge to her exquisite smile? No, by God! Leave learning to ladies who have nothing else to recommend them.”

Another gentleman intervened—a man broad browed, with strange piercing eyes, eagle faced and ironic. He wore a doublet of purple velvet laced with silver, warm against the chilly spring winds. Brantôme, the keen-eyed historian of that gay and wicked court.

“My lord Bishop speaks well. This lady, as I would have you know, gentlemen, is unrivalled in every quality. She is a lordly jewel, cut and polished in every facet. It may be enough for a lesser lady to be a beauty and indeed it is much. I own it. And it is dominance if a lady be queen of France and Scotland like this one. All knees indeed must bow, for she will shape the world to her pleasure. But there is more. Should not such a beauty and such a queen have wisdom for her guide——”

“Not if wisdom blights charm,” put in Ronsard sharply. “It is the law of beauty to be beautiful and that is more than queendoms. We ask no more. Our cup brims. Wisdom is not for this girl. Rather a divine folly——”

“You forget, gentlemen,” said Brantôme gravely, “that she is to be no toy for a husband’s pleasure, but the greatest lady of all. She will crown our dauphin king of Scotland on her marriage day. She is also in her own right queen of Scotland and England, for the old harridan Mary, now on that throne, is not only bastard by her father and Parliament’s will but is incapable of children, and her sister Elizabeth in the same plight both ways. There is no king in the world can match her Majesty, though, marrying our heir, she will be second to him in France. Such a princess must not be ignorant of the world she rules.”

“Rehearse her gifts!” said the bishop, smiling. “We have some reason to be proud of our little Scots queen.”

Brantôme threw himself into an oratorical attitude with the bust of Cicero for a background.

“Since one day I shall pen her glorious history, I speak. When that unequalled princess was fourteen she spoke and understood Latin perfectly. You, gentlemen, were not present, but these ears heard her address the King of France in a Latin speech on the intellect of women and the hills of learning they may climb if they choose to use their pretty feet.”

Ronsard laughed mischievously.

“The little lovely mignonne! She has a rare memory, and it is not for nothing that the learned Master George Buchanan is her tutor!”

“Allow me!” interposed the sour-faced Buchanan. “It is true I corrected a word or so. No more. The girl was a prodigy of wits. A critic might object that it was not Latin of the best period, but she reads Latin like a scholar. But so do the barren Elizabeth of England and her shrivelled sister, Queen Mary. With royal women it is the fashion nowadays to be learned.”

Brantôme turned to his supporter.

“Well, Messire Ronsard, I, like you, took her for a pigeon, disgorging with exquisite grace the stuff which Master Buchanan had crammed down her young throat, and I went apart to Antoine Fochain and said: ‘Sound the pretty one on some learned subject. Speak in Latin! Take her at a disadvantage. It will do her no harm, for if she falters she will win all hearts with her lovely hesitation. This girl is a winner of hearts, do what she will.’ And Antoine, whose learning has blinded him to every beam of beauty, addressed her on—guess!”

“Love,” said Ronsard. “What else? The arrows in her own quiver? The girdle of Venus.”

Brantôme smiled drily.

“By no means. You little know; Antoine is a chip of dry wood. He took her as a young arrogant scholar that must be made to know his place. He said (but in Latin): ‘Most learned young lady, what is your opinion on the science of rhetoric?’ I own the court tittered as far as it dared. Even the King smiled and Madam Diane de Poitiers beside him giggled aloud. That lady would not have been sorry to see the young queen abashed! Gentlemen, she stood forth bright and clear as a dewy rose at dawn and in her voice of crystal replied—in Latin always: ‘Your Majesty, lords and ladies, and learned Master Fochain, bear with me while I say I do not respect the science of rhetoric. It is a woman’s weapon, for it can make the worse appear the better reason by its false ornaments. It is a flatterer, a false guide, misleader of men’s senses that love to be misled. No. Give me plain words eloquent in truth and justice only, and let those who will play with the false Circe while I woo the Goddess of Clear Wisdom and few words!’ Enchanting! In thought the whole court kissed her! Sure none but a French girl could be so ready! Her mother, a French princess, has given her ready wit in spite of a Scots father!”

“Her poetry certainly comes from us. She writes verses honey-sweet,” said Ronsard with dreaming eyes. He would have given much to have heard what Brantôme described. That was the quick flash in her that could never be at a disadvantage, swift as summer lightning in the night, but below that lay what won him more—her passion for lovely words, for the music of them stringing on thought like pearls on gold, for the wistfulness that lay beneath and spoke of the deep waters of the heart, sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet. These quenched in him the deepest thirst with which a poet’s heart can burn, the yearning for perfect sympathy. No one hung on his words like this royal girl; no one dwelt on a phrase nor worshipped the achievement like “la Reinette d’Ecosse.” Small wonder he loved her. Who did not?

There was a slight commotion outside and clear cries of mirth. The four gentlemen crowded into the window each with a mullioned pane to himself.

Below on the green lawn was the girl they had been discussing. She was playing ball with her four Marys, five happy Scots girls, darting, dipping like swallows in flight, stooping like lapwings to catch it as it sped along the grass. Most unlike the stately decorum of the French princesses this one wore her skirts ankle short and ran until her face flushed and dark chestnut locks fell over her eyes, and she tossed them back with her hands and panted through laughter and leaped like a boy at the ball when Mary Seton flung it to Mary Fleming and took her chance with the rest whether she missed or got it, and finally flung herself on the grass sitting and clasping her knees after she had flung a rose instead of the ball in Mary Seton’s laughing face. They sat close about her talking eagerly, heads together, as girls will.

“You beauty! You beauty!” muttered Ronsard, leaning breathless from the window and did not know he had spoken aloud. He loved her as Venus incarnate, not as a woman. Flowers and incense for the altar! Love of men for the burnt offering! That was the way with her now—a maid apart. He knew she was to go to men’s heads like a madness of the gods driving them to crimes and follies unheard of. And this, her power, she was never to understand all her life long because she meant so well and had no thought of triumph. Now, pure maid, she charmed like a bed of lilies hidden in green leaves, exhaling clean loveliness and perfume fresh as dawn—surely a mortal delight that earth can grow such a blossom for God’s pleasure.

She was then fifteen, tall, though she had not reached the stateliness of her height, slender as a willow wand, and the thin silken folds falling about her showed her long limbs like running water. She was bareheaded, for it was a frolic for the Scots young folk to play thus carelessly in the gardens, and therefore the late afternoon sun found her unguarded from his kisses and illustrated her face in gold.

No man living or, what is more to the point, no woman could fault her. She had the sensitively shaped features of the true ruler of hearts. Her face was exquisitely pale and she knew her business too well to use the fards and rouges which clogged the skins of the French court beauties—it was the transparence of blood seen through pearls. Men were to vow later that when she drank red wine it flushed her throat. “A lily among thorns,” said Ronsard. Be that as it might, this pallor set off her singularly long brown eyes darkened with curled lashes and set under lovely brows to match the hair, which was perhaps a chief beauty. For there, gold of her Scots father brushed the black of her French mother and they blended into darkness that gave lights of red amber when sunlight burnished the waves. We come to her mouth, sweet and most sweet, love’s own rose not to be described otherwise for no man who loved it (and they were many) but attempted a description after his own heart, and indeed, as Madam Diane de Poitiers (the King’s madam) observed, it was all things to all men, though in no case after her Goddess-ship’s meaning.

She wore her hair simply parted on the brow and rolled back in two shining waves, making a frame for the pale face where all beauty sat promising that more yet was to come of it. This was truth, for the charm that sways not only men but women grew in her daily giving her the world for her lover and history for her slave. That could not as yet be foreseen in its fulness. But the Scots lass was known already as the most royal maid in all the world by nature as by birth. She would certainly play a great part. No sparkling beauty, but young laughter mixed as yet with a girl’s timidity when taken unawares.

She sat among her Marys: Mary Beton, reserved and stiff with much dignity and much ambition to prop it, a proud brunette in spite of youth. Mary Livingstone, a milky blonde with flaxen Scots locks curled in the mode and eyes blue as forget-me-nots in shadow; Mary Seton, truest of them all, brown haired and hazel eyed with a tender heart shining in those eyes as she looked at her queen. And Mary Fleming, red haired and green eyed, the most spirited of the band and the hardest to keep in charity with all men—a noble spitfire if she let herself go as she did often enough. These girls of high blood made much of the romance of the Queen’s little court and stories of the hearts laid at their young feet, and the great matches preparing for them were current all over France, Scotland, and England—these charming guardians of the beauty of the Mary of Marys, who superseded all need for stiff duennas! She was fated to this. Romance attended her as her slave from the cradle to the grave, and nothing happened to her as it did to others, but always with some shining unexpected drama and fanfare that made men hold their breaths and marvel.

The gentlemen at the window saw the group increase. A party of men came up through the rose alleys and joined the girls, and all rose ceremoniously to their feet, for heading the men was Francis, dauphin of France and future king—a tall pale boy with hollow wistful eyes fixed on his young love so soon to be his wife. He could not take them off her, and that was not singular, for men and women alike watched her, hoping to turn some new page in the book of love in deciphering the secret of effortless charm. She laughed and talked with him, trying to strike sunshine into his wistfulness on such a day of June.

“He should not have her!” said Ronsard between his teeth. “He is unripe. He has no knowledge to taste the flavours of her sweetness. She needs a man and a strong one to rule that wild kingdom of hers and to teach her the innermost meanings of love. She will be a woman before he is a man and then——”

Ronsard was privileged. He might criticize even royalty, but the bishop smiled superior.

“Thrones marry thrones, monsieur, the poet! If our queen does not marry your king it must be some great Englishman who shares her Tudor and Plantagenet blood. Remember she is queen of England now, if right had its own, and all the Catholics own it, and many Englishmen besides.”

“Englishmen—pouf!” said Ronsard with scorn. “They are never lovers. They are pedigrees, policies, treaties. Good fighters for all three, but—lovers—never! Give her a lover or she must find one!”

He turned away and the bishop shrugged his shoulders. He was of opinion that riches and rank should be a sufficient guarantee for any woman’s chastity and the future king of France a good enough match in any case even for the beauty of all time. His only concern was that such terms should be made as would strengthen Scotland and give her the full fruition of the alliance. And indeed the conditions fluttered all the statesmen of Europe.

Reams of parchment rose like walls about the little queen. Should she bear a son he must rule all the realms. If daughters, Scotland claimed the eldest for her queen, and so forth. Men who had not seen her thought of her only as a pledge, a treaty to be turned to account. Men who had—— But that must wait.

Horses were called for, and she ran in with her girls, the pages legging it to keep up with them. She returned in riding dress and plumed hat and mounting her Arab galloped off, leaving a trail of laughter, to the green woods of Fontainebleau with her following of youth and gaiety. The Frenchmen at the window dreamed of inevitable triumph, for she inspired such dreams in all but those whose veins ran ink, who wielded no weapons but pens.

“But truly she makes politics even more dangerous,” said the voice of a man who had come up behind them. “A princess of such royalty should be ugly, dull, stupid, to have her affairs conducted with any sanity. She will drive herself and her ministers mad with her wine of beauty and be a world’s wonder in more ways than one. Remember Helen and Guinevere! How can Venus usefully hold any but a sceptre of flowers? It is the most preposterous situation! She wants her doves and roses, and they give her treaties and protocols. Heaven help us all! She will set Europe aflame.”

He was a young man, handsome as Narcissus. Another poet, Chastelard, of whom more later. He and Ronsard sang her in verse that still lives. But the bishop was extremely angry with both.

“Sir, you will find that the commissioners of the Queen of Scots who have come from Scotland to arrange the terms of her marriage are extremely sane persons and know the value of their sovereign lady, and therefore——”

“No one could know her value unless he loved her for life and death and eternity, my lord Bishop. She is no mere woman. She is beauty, royalty, love. She is all that each means. She is a light that will burn in the world’s eyes and dazzle them while words live and history lasts. She is a world’s bane or blessing. She——”

The bishop looked with smiling pity at the young man’s flushed face and shining eyes.

“She is a very handsome girl,” the bishop said, “and queen of Scotland. And these rhapsodies are very exceedingly out of place. She should be spoken of respectfully and not like a naked goddess!”

That was the trouble. The men who loved her, and they were legion, could never remember that she was queen of Scotland. The fire of her loveliness consumed her royalty. And the men who did not love her thought of her only as queen of Scotland and cared nothing that she had a heart to break and a woman’s life to live. Between them it was likely enough that they would ruin her one way or another.

In the forest of Fontainebleau the pair rode softly together, the others having fallen behind to give them the chance of a word, these lovers on the eve of marriage. He rode so near that his foot brushed her stirrup.

“Marie, ma mie, ma bien aimée, are you glad that it will be so soon?”

“Glad, my heart!” she answered, leaning a little toward him. She had the instinct to lean and conciliate always where she trusted, and also the instinct to trust where she should not. A woman indeed! “I do not like all the pomp and bustle,” he said nervously. “It is enough to break lovers’ hearts who would have their joy to themselves. Love should be secret.”

“But we are great princes!” she said with astonished eyes. “How can it be otherwise? We are a picture for the people—a poem. In us they see all their wants and hopes expressed in beauty. I would not disappoint them for the world—no, not I! I will be beautiful that day if never again.”

“You can never be anything else, but—but look at me! Am I anyone’s want and hope? Lean, long legged as a crane, hollow in the cheek, dull of eye, I shall make a poor show beside the grace of my princess. You should have chosen better, my heart’s love.”

“I have chosen. But we neither of us could choose!” she said. “France and Scotland must wed. If we had hated each other that must have been. It was lucky our hearts went with it. Do not fear, Francis. When the time comes for the great ceremony in Nôtre Dame you will remember nothing but our love and what the people long to see, and you will be France. What could be more wonderful?”

But the boy looked down with tears that she must not see in his eyes. His weak health impeded him at every turn and he saw the cruel keen eyes of his evil mother, Catherine de’ Medici, watching it and greedily calculating her long regency over her second son Charles, a boy of nine who must succeed him if he died and left no son. She had no love for Francis. Such a wife as Mary Stuart would be his queen and ruler as well as queen of France. But if he died—and there was no promise of long life about him—then she herself would reign over the boy Charles and gain her heart’s desire. Her black Italian eyes narrowed and glittered with a cat’s expectation of cream. Two lives only stood between her and her hopes—her husband’s, Henry, King of France, who was besotted on the fair Diane de Poitiers, and this Francis, the dauphin, lover of Mary Stuart. Well—fate had been good to her—the mere daughter of great Italian bankers yet queen of France. It might be better yet. She could be passive awhile.

The two rode a little way in silence—their followers far-off bright spots of colour down the long green glade, and as they passed a bed of pale anemones Mary leaned toward them.

“They remind me of Scotland. They grew in the little island of Inchmahome, where they kept me guarded from the English. In those days I shuddered if the English were named. They began to torment me—so soon. King Henry VIII, my great-uncle, was the ogre of my dreams.”

“Tell me, ma mie!” said Francis, drawing so near that he brushed her saddle. “You talk so little of those days. Had you orders for silence from Madam your mother?”

“Yes, orders, my heart. She does not think it well to disparage the English, whom I must rule one day. But, oh—their cruelties!”

There was a catch in her breath like a sob; he pressed nearer and took her disengaged hand in his. She slipped off her riding-gauntlet and it lay cold and white as a snowflake.

“Tell me!” he pleaded. “They have let me hear so little!”

“No good luck to tell. I killed my father. After the battle of Solway Moss, when the English conquered us, his one hope, his one prayer, was for a son to gather Scotland up again in soldier’s fashion. And when they brought him word that I was born in Linlithgow he cried aloud so that they could hear his heartstrings crack, and he groaned out: ‘It came with a lass and it will go with a lass!’ He meant Scotland, my heart, which a princess you know not brought for her dowry, and he believed it would slip from my hand and so cried: ‘Alas!’ It may. God knows! Two or three days afterward he died. I had killed him.”

She stopped with a fated look later to be stamped upon her descendants. Her eyes explored the green solitudes for peace. She found at all events courage—she never lacked for that—and went on.

“And then my brute of a great-uncle, the Eighth Henry of England, claimed my little body for his puny son, Edward. He thought to get Scotland that way. But the Scots and my mother would not—not they! They sent their ambassador from England and he said: ‘Give us the little queen and we will bring her up royally in England and the realms shall be one.’ But my mother said: ‘Yes, as when the wolf has swallowed the lamb. One indeed! Tell me—if ours were the lad and yours the lass, would you ask it? No. You would not have our lad for king of England, and we refuse yours for king of Scotland. The child is ours and here she stays!’ ”

“I like that well!” said Francis, laughing, as she stopped for breath with sparkling eyes. “How did he take it?”

“He said a cruel thing, my heart. He said: ‘A bairn’s life is a slender thread. They say your lass is a sickly thing not like to live.’ ”

The dauphin frowned.

“The brute! But Englishmen are like that. They should have flogged him from the castle gate.”

She laughed proudly.

“My mother did better. She swept her chair about, and it had hid my cradle and me. And she caught me naked to her lap and held me up mother naked to the Englishman, and she said: ‘My girl will live when your sickly boy rots in Westminster, and she shall be queen of more than Scotland. Go, tell this to your master that would have her to kill as he has slaughtered his wives.’ ”

The pale young dauphin meditated and chilled her; she was too young to make allowance for his ill health that made him slow and dull in kindling. The fire in her own face died, but she went on, pouting a little at his lassitude.

“So then they had to send me to France, for the English would have harried all Scotland to find me, and but for this we had never met, my heart.”

Francis leaned forward and kissed her hand tenderly.

“There, I bless the butchers, ma mie! How beautiful you are when you tell your story! Shall we stop and gather anemones? Let us wait till your girls come.”

Vaguely she guessed that this was a shy boy’s love and no man’s. But she knew no other, being a bud sheathed in cool green from the sun. They waited, and the Marys rode up with their ardent cavaliers, eyes wooing, hot hands seeking; and the silence of the woods rang to their joy, and old unhappy far-off things were forgotten in the coming marriage and its pomps.

What a wedding—what a bride! What a queen for bridal glory! Queens consort must kneel to their husbands for a crown, but this would crown hers. As a baby the crown was held on her head; her hand took the sceptre; the sword of State was girt about her middle like a king’s. Already the English leopards were borne upon her shield—and why not—she whose great-grandfather was the Seventh Henry of England? Who was the bastard Elizabeth, daughter of a mere slut of an Anne Boleyn, to stand in her way? What but triumph could await her when the breath left the harried body of Bloody Mary of England? The English would repudiate the Protestant bastard Elizabeth; and Mary of Scotland and France be called to reign over a united island!

Did she believe it? Did life even then hold out such brilliant promise? Difficult to say. She had a strain of melancholy in her sweetness which fed itself on dreams and previsions of which she did not speak. There had not been much in her childhood to give her faith in joy, and her mother, steadily guarding her throne in Scotland from English intrigues, she had seen but once since she sailed, a child of six, from black Dumbarton, escaping the hawking English ships with difficulty on the way. Would life be always like that? Promise and doubtful fulfilment? No, she could not think it. Queens have queens’ luck. Her great marriage was a shout of triumph in the world’s face—not promise but proudest fulfilment, a defiance to English plotting, a challenge to all human obedience.

CHAPTER II

It was on the last saint’s day before the marriage that the Queen Catherine of France paid the very young bride the honour of a visit in her private apartment in the palace of the Louvre. So rare—so unexpected was it that as Mary met her at the door her heart beat with quick expectation and the more as her Majesty desired the ladies in attendance to remove themselves out of earshot. Two armchairs of equal splendour were placed for the two queens, for much of the etiquette of the French court centred upon armchairs as opposed to lowlier seats. A bronze perfume burner was set on the table before them, and footstools were set for their silk-shod feet.

And then with a lip smile intended to inspire confidence Queen Catherine began:

“In a few days, my child, you will be my true daughter, and your own good mother, the regent of Scotland, not being able to leave your stormy kingdom it is needful that I should take her place in giving you some needful instructions. This I will do and in return claim a daughter’s and a queen’s promise. Shall I have it?”

Mary in silence looked up at the tall imposing figure in glorious red damask, strings of pearls littering the bosom and stressing the sallow Italian skin and masterful jaw. The dark eyes above them were as piercing as heart hiding—an overmatch for a child’s. She was assured of her answer before it was spoken, yet when it came it was unexpected. Mary spoke gently:

“Madam, my very good mother, I desire your best counsel, for who has more need? And your instructions I receive with reverence. But a queen cannot promise before she hears, for she pledges her kingdom with her.”

There was no sign of anger or surprise on the yellowish marble of Catherine’s face. She smiled slightly and went on:

“I wish to speak of England—of which you are rightful queen at this moment and must actually be one day. The whole policy of Europe turns on England now and I may say of the world, for Asia is nothing nor is the New World except to Spain who holds it in her pocket. Now—what is your own thought of England? You are the great-granddaughter of Henry VII, the great-niece of the atrocious Henry VIII—that butcher of noble ladies and renegade to Holy Church. Therefore, royal English blood is yours. But you are also half French. Your mother, Mary of Lorraine, is one of us. Does not Nature itself point out your office?”

In much surprise and more anxiety Mary tried to clear her thoughts and words and the Queen continued to look at her with calm expectance. When the answer came her voice trembled a little in replying, but there was no other sign of emotion and no delay.

“Madam, your Majesty knows that England has been a nightmare to me as to my father and mother, and France I love. How could I not? I came here a little child to peace and safety from the plottings and persecutions. I never heard the word ‘England’ spoken, but it meant dismay and horror. But there is a country your Majesty has forgotten. I am queen of Scotland, and in my heart the Scots are first forever. If I hope to be queen of England it is because it will mean peace for Scotland and an end of the plotting and fighting that bleed my country to death.”

Catherine permitted no disapproval to appear. She had thought French interests would come first with the girl who owed so much to France and would be her queen. With herself French interests came first for the simple reason that they were her own and her family’s interests also, and that would have been the preferable view for Mary Stuart. What was a barren country like Scotland but a stepping-stone to the wealth and power of England? But she said sedately:

“A queen should feel in that way, my daughter. We are the shepherds of our people. However, what I would have you know is that in Europe at this moment the two most important women are yourself and Elizabeth of England. No others are worth mentioning in comparison and therefore——”

Mary ventured to interrupt.

“But, madam, Queen Mary, her half sister, keeps her prisoner in the Tower of London and now guards her in the country, and the next courier may bring word that her head has fallen. How is she important? I do not speak of myself.”

The French queen’s lips lifted with scorn.

“The old hag on the English throne, though a very good Catholic and a very dull fool, dares not kill her. She has friends. And the old hag, hated by her husband Philip of Spain and incapable of children, will be dead in two years or less. And then—it will be you, my daughter, or Elizabeth, for the English throne.”

“Then it should be me,” Mary cried with spirit, “for I am of the true blood, and my great-uncle Henry himself bastardized his two daughters and with his parliament declared them incapable of succession. I come next. He knew it, and that was why he would have married me to his puny son Edward, who died.”

Indeed this child’s hand had been plotted for by France and England when her life could be counted in days. It would be so plotted for to the end of her life. But Catherine shook her head.

“True, my daughter, you are queen of England as you sit, and so do those half sisters hate one another that you being a good Catholic the old hag would sooner have you for her heir than the slut Elizabeth, the daughter of the slut Anne Boleyn, who ruined her own virtuous mother, your great-uncle’s first wife. But though bastardized she is reigning, and Elizabeth though bastardized may succeed instead of you if we are not careful. We make what trouble we can for her and yet——”

There was a long silence. Then Mary raised her head.

“Madam, my good mother, was Anne Boleyn guilty when they beheaded her for adultery and incest as treason to my uncle Henry?”

“You ask a difficult question, my good daughter. She was certainly guilty of a very coarse levity with men and should have had better manners, having been trained at our court. But also she was guilty of standing in the way of a woman your great-uncle wished to marry after he had tired of Anne and told her she should have no more boys by him. Also she did not affirm her innocence on the scaffold. But I believe her to have been guilty for one reason because of the coarse levity of her daughter Elizabeth. It runs in the blood. You cannot mistake women of that temper.”

“Madam, may I hear the rights of that story? My mother has not dared commit it to paper—our ships are so often captured by the English. And my gouvernante, Madam Parois, said a little and threw up her hands to God and all the saints. What has Elizabeth Tudor done? Has she disgraced herself with men?”

The French queen’s black eyes sparkled, and a malicious laugh showed her teeth. She slipped into her own Italian speech which Mary spoke perfectly.

“Very different are the two sisters. Mary Tudor is an old maid, though married and dreaming pregnancies until Europe laughs at her empty cradle. But she will soon be dead. Elizabeth, my good daughter, is nine years older than yourself. This you know. Perhaps you do not know that at fifteen her conduct with the handsome Lord Admiral of England—Seymour, husband of her stepmother, Katherine Parr, was so—shall we say—merry?—that all England believed she had had a child by him and she was obliged to deny it roundly in a letter to the Privy Council.”

Mary Stuart blushed rose red. A wave of crimson ran over her fair face. She had thought of Elizabeth Tudor as a girl like herself, and though she could love no Tudor this outraged royalty and therefore her own.

“Was her denial true?”

“It was quite certainly true—and for an excellent reason. Like her half sister she is incapable of children. We have it on authority we cannot doubt. But she is folle for admiration, mad for the pursuit of men, and like her mother will go to any length for them—c’est une grande amoureuse!—but I question whether she will marry, for with no children the husband must be master, especially if he outlives her. She will romp with men as she did with Seymour, who lost his head as the price of her pleasure. She will flatter them, try to tickle their senses, lead them to think they have caught her, and then as the butterfly net swoops over her head dance off to the other end of the garden and draw on another to the same futile pursuit.”

There was another pause. Presently Mary asked:

“And what is this light lady like? Oh, I have seen her miniature flattered with a skin of rose and pearl and hair like sunbeams and a Diana air in the carriage of her head and modest eyes! But what is the slut like when Truth measures her praise?”

Catherine needed little sensitiveness to feel the disgust in the voice of Mary Stuart, and it pleased her well. It could never suit the aims of France that there should be friendship between the two queens of the island of Britain, and besides that it was well known that Elizabeth, true daughter of Henry VIII, was deep in dissimulation and could betray with a kiss any day. No safe friend for a girl inclined to believe in fair faces! Therefore she replied smartly:

“Here among ourselves we call her the half virgin—and I believe that to be a flattery. Her conduct with the rake Seymour was incredible. For her looks—she is a passable height. Her hair inclines to red—on the yellow side. Her face is pale, her lips small and red. The nose hooked. She has a carriage of great dignity and majesty when she happens to remember her father. A carriage very much the reverse when men are for her hunting; for then she resembles the cat who was changed into a princess. The mice scurry, and she is among them with claws and teeth in a second, and nothing else is remembered, unless indeed it be her mother’s amusements. She is extremely clever and shrewd and well educated and thinks herself much more so than she is. As, for instance, she counts herself a perfect mistress of French, and yet makes such blunders that our ambassadors laugh in their gold sleeves. Very woman of very woman and therefore most dangerous for a queen.”

She waited a minute for an answer and Mary said sighing:

“She cannot be outwitted”—more as an assertion than a question. Catherine replied with a grim out-furl of her fan.

“She is as keen witted as Machiavelli, whom she has made her study. There, I do not blame her! It is the policy of kings.”

With another long sigh Mary said, as if to herself:

“And yet—if she could trust me we might be friends. It is what I would choose for England—I may be queen there—for Scotland where I am queen. We are women—we have the same blood. We——”

Then indeed the French queen cut in with most bitter laughter:

“Friends! And you are her heir and nine years younger and lovely as a fairy tale, and of unblemished reputation and of royal blood on both sides and—is there anything in which you do not goad and shame her? Nothing, by God’s Mother! And you would trust her! Let me assure your Majesty that the day you trust the English slut you sign your death warrant and your country’s. She cannot but hate you. I should hate you myself if I were she. Any rival must. Be not a fool. You have the game in your own hand. In a few days you will be not only queen of Scotland but dauphiness of France. Later, queen of France also. You will have four kingdoms to share among your children if you count Ireland. This brings me to the promise I have a right to ask. It is this. Promise me that in all your dealings with England until you are seated on that throne you will consult the interests of France and take counsel with us. Promise that when queen of England you will be our true and faithful ally. Otherwise what use has France for you?”

Mary of Scotland rose to her feet and laid a hand like a white rose petal on the velvet of her chair.

“Madam, I thank your good Majesty for much good counsel. I hope all my life long to be true to France and to England. I have no other thought in my whole body. This I swear to God and our Lady. But I am queen of Scotland and I cannot pledge her alliance without my ministers, and if I am queen of England it is the same. How can I pledge alliances in private talk with my mother? No. Trust my heart, madam, for it beats true French. And if I say I would be friends with Elizabeth I must test her, but I think it cannot be. I hate false red-haired women that must hunt men.”

In the last sentence the Queen so obviously was eclipsed by the young disgust of the girl whose rôle would always be to elude men rather than chase them that Catherine smiling inwardly set herself to gain her point. She heaped the brutalities of the court where Elizabeth had had her training upon the little queen. Some were true, some false, but all would serve their turn. She bade her remember that but two barren wombs were between her and the English crown and entreated her to pledge herself now to France, the only ally she could trust. But though she could create disgust for Elizabeth and distaste for a heretical country like England she could wring no pledge from the Queen of Scots, and they parted with anger on her side and a belief on Mary Stuart’s that her cousin Elizabeth might have suffered a little unjustly at the hands of a lady whose interest it clearly was to disparage her.

“I shall watch with as many eyes as a peacock. I shall walk as gingerly as on spring ice. I am no fool! But I will see for myself. My cousin is my cousin, though a bastard, and it does not please me altogether that the daughter of an Italian banker should call any kin of mine sluts and bitches and red-haired witches. There is much good in human nature—and may be in hers!”

She went back slowly to the great room where her Marys were chattering wedding finery and all the pomps of royalty, and sat among them sighing. A world where royalty has things very little its own way. She wondered what Elizabeth, the prisoner of the Tower, had heard of her. Yet Catherine of France was right. Undoubtedly the planets of these two were in opposition of the sharpest, and the fierce duel of terror and beauty in which they were to struggle for power was the inevitable outcome.

For the moment Mary had tried to forget these anxieties for lesser ones. The great preparations for her marriage absorbed her and filled her girl’s heart for the most part, though at moments a hidden fear would lift its head. All fears should bend to a bride’s joy and a queen’s will, but they would not.

“It is hard,” she said to Mary Beton, who knelt before her, displaying jewels, “that my Scots lords will not allow the crown and sceptre of Scotland to leave Edinburgh. I would have worn it so gladly on my marriage day, for I love Scotland. It should have come in spite of the dangers of English ships. They should have moved heaven and earth to bring it to me.”

“But that would have been too great a danger, your Grace,” said Mary Beton seriously. “Your head would not have rested on your pillow if you had thought of the crown in the hands of the English. And what you will wear is glorious. You will look like an image of the Blessed Virgin all mailed in jewels, crowned and sceptred and nothing wanting but the child in your dear arms, and that will come later.”

“God grant it! But I think the comparison profane. I am well enough for an earthly queen, but nothing more, if that. And the Queen of Heaven is beauty immaculate and divine. One should not say such words.”

She crossed herself devoutly. Young as she was, her Marys could have told the world that she had not a little of the visionary’s temper, not a little of the mystic’s yearning. Fate was against her there, but her mother remembered a scene when, thwarted and careworn, the child had said:

“Put me out of the way. They wrangle about me, and I am weary of it all. Send me to the convent at Soissons, and there with birds and flowers and prayers and the good sisters I can live my life and bid the world forget me.”

Her mother, sharply hurt, had answered:

“A fine reward for all my care in ruling your unruly kingdom! Think rather that you shall marry a great king and have noble children and you and they be defenders and warriors of the great Apostolic and Catholic faith. A high destiny. Prayers can be mixed with power. You shall not forget your daily prayers and the Mass—but you shall reign.”

She did not plead again for a convent. But she had seizures of strange thought in which the world shrank to the size of a wizened walnut filled with black dust in comparison with things unseen, winged and haloed like angels.

That mood was on her now as she looked at the table loaded with jewels, her own property and the gifts of her French relations and such courtiers as those whose position gave them the honour of presenting them. Beautiful exceedingly, but with no promise of peace in their glitter. Those angry diamonds came from her store in Edinburgh Castle. They glittered as coldly and fiercely as the eyes of the Scots barons who opposed her right in the Northern Kingdom, men bought with England’s money and sworn to make her reign a short and bitter one. Those rubies burned with a sullen blaze which recalled the burning fanatical zeal of John Knox and the Scots Reformers sworn to break the Catholicism in her or to break her with it and fling both into the dust heap of the ages. Those moonbeam strings of pearls were the tears she would weep in that cold and gloomy kingdom of the North, far from the sunny land of France and all the joys of her glad childhood and youth? Those emeralds, baleful with the green fire of jealousy, might stand for the catlike glaring eyes of the Leopards of England couched for the spring, seemingly passive for the moment, but tense with steady watchfulness. Were they passive even now? She spoke aloud suddenly:

“It is bad luck—I say it is bad luck to carry the arms of England on my shield until I am queen of England. I never liked it. They should not force me. Take away the jewels. I have other things to think of.”

Mary Beton raised astonished dark eyebrows.

“But, your Grace, who should wear the arms of England but the great-granddaughter of Henry VII and the great-niece of King Harry VIII? Half the blood in your veins is royal English blood. Are you to forget it? That wrinkled old woman on the English throne—who has no right there—she may object! But need you care?”

“It is not the old queen of England I care for. As you say, she is a bastard and the throne is mine. It is the English people. True, they send messages, but—oh, let me not think of it now. Let me be free from care for a day, an hour.”

There was prayer in her eyes—a young plea for joy. A prayer to the unrelenting brows of Fate.

“Think of this, madam,” said Mary Beton, “here is the marriage poem that Master George Buchanan has written for your Grace. In Latin, of course, but with a loveliest translation. It will go all over the world! An address to his Royal Highness, the dauphin.”

She was but a girl. Pleasure lighted in her face as she snatched the paper and began reading it aloud.

“If matchless beauty may your fancy move

Behold a princess worthy of your love,

How gloriously her stateliness doth rise

What gentle lightning flashes from her eyes.”

“Beautiful! Beautiful!” cried the Marys in concert, “Oh, go on, madam, go on.”

Mary, laughing, pushed the illuminated paper into the hands of Mary Seton.

“How can I read my own praises! You read best, Mary Seton. A few more lines, and then I must see my wedding dress.”

Mary Seton rose and declaimed it with waving hand. She read with sweetness and fire, still addressing the bridegroom:

“Are you ambitious of an ancient line

Where heralds make chivalric blazons shine?

She can a hundred monarchs count and more

Whose hands the English, Scottish, sceptres bore.”

“I like that. It is right to speak of England. That should never be forgotten!” Mary Beton said proudly. “For myself I shall never know a satisfied day until I see my queen throned in Windsor by the Thames.”

The Marys loved her as a sister. Brought up together from earliest childhood, there could never be the distance prescribed for queens between them and their mistress. The frank Scots manners forbade it also. Mary laughed at their zeal and the clapping hands of the rest.

“Go on, flatterer!” she said to Mary Seton. “Shall I not have enough with the two crowns of France and Scotland?”

Mary Beton laughed, too. It seemed weight enough for so young a head, but not enough to satisfy her pride in her queen.

“Never mind. That can wait. I like these verses. Go on, Mary Seton!” she said.

“That passion which with infancy began

Took firmer root as you advanced to man.

Your own fond eyes the peerless maid surveyed

A constant witness what she did and said.

Your passion never sprang from wealth or State

But from her virtues nobly proud and great.

Features divine, no coldly pictured grace,

But shining conquering beauty in her face.

“I like that, Mary Stuart!” said Mary Seton, interrupting herself, for sometimes among themselves they called the girl queen so. “It is true. You are all life and shining. For my part I think Ronsard’s verses too cold and set. And as to the pictures!—I believe I could paint a better myself!”

“Try, little Scots owl! And now—finish up. Hurry, for I must see the dress.”

“Miles more!” said Mary Seton, running her eyes over the pages. “Oh, just this bit—addressed to your Grace:

“And let no fond regrets disturb your mind,

Your country and your mother left behind.

For one awaits you, dear beyond the rest,

Smiles on his lips and rapture in his breast

And he will be to you all else above

A kingdom’s or a mother’s sacred love.”

She laid down the manuscript, and Mary took it lost in thought. Yes—she loved him as a young brother. They had grown up together. There was nothing to discover, for she had known every turn of his temperament since childhood. She knew exactly where she must support and supplement his shyness and awkward self-contempt. She must inspire him with the confidence needed for his great position. She must be king of France as well as queen of Scotland when he succeeded to his father’s great honours. A difficult position for a girl not sixteen, but possible because she knew him so well, loved him so tenderly. Her eyes softened over those lines. Naturally Buchanan had written them as to a mighty prince who would be his bride’s stay and shield. He would never be that—never! She almost smiled in thinking of the grotesqueness of the notion as compared with truth. But it might—it might be dear and sweet and homely between them, for all that! She would do her best, and he would trust her.

The Marys sat about her still as statues, waiting until the cloud of dream should lift from her eyes. They loved her too well to misread such thoughts as those, for they, too, knew the bridegroom and knew that the Queen of Scotland must rule for both, and that would be no easy task in the teeth of Queen Catherine of France.

None who saw it could ever forget the glory of that April marriage day, an April bright and blossoming like the young promise of the royal bride. Paris the lovely, the city of festivals, had excelled herself in magnificent preparation for the joy of the child she had adopted as her own, and this was but the sign and seal of that unwritten covenant. The King, conscious of her popularity, had made it possible for the humblest to see and rejoice with the royal house, and all was planned to that end. A long gallery twelve feet from the ground had been built from the palace of the Archbishop of Paris to the great cathedral gates of Nôtre Dame, ending in an open pavilion, where the marriage would be solemnized in the face of the world before the bride and bridegroom proceeded to the high altar for the marriage blessing.

The very thought drove Paris mad with delight. They were not to be defrauded of one blush, one smile, one note of her clear voice as she took the vows which bound her to them forever. Beauty wins all hearts, but perhaps the purposes of the French are more swayed by it than others, and not a man in the vast surging breathless crowd but had a thrill of the bridegroom’s joy.

Such a gallery! Embowered in carven vine leaves and branches, shaped like the cloister of a great cathedral. Such a pavilion, hung with blue Cyprus silk, blossoming with golden fleurs-de-lys! Such a cardinal to make the marriage, splendid in crimson against the blue, the Cardinal de Bourbon, a prince of the Church and of the blood royal!

“Sad that her poor mother cannot see it!” murmured the women in the crowd. “Hard that she is nailed to that gloomy throne in Scotland and cannot come to our darling’s triumph! I would give my little finger if she could lead the child to the altar. The poor Queen Mother!”

The men nodded assent. Hard indeed! Life is not all easy for those great people. She would miss her mother—a fine woman and brave! Hush, a man has climbed a few feet upon the gallery so that he stands above the crowd. What is he saying—what shouting aloud?

“Happy beyond all men is the prince who is to be wedded to this pearl. If Scotland is of value, she, the Queen, is far more precious, for if she were a beggar maid, in her person, in her divine beauty, she is worth all the kingdoms of the world. And since she is a sovereign she brings to France and to her husband double fortune!”

It was Chastelard, the poet. He shouted the words, wild with triumph, tossing his velvet cap into the air. Men took them up and roared them from one to another and farther. And to the accompaniment of that mighty music of a people’s joy the bride appeared, led by the King of France. Let the old chronicler describe her splendour.

“She was dressed in a robe whiter than the lily but so glorious in its fashion that it would be impossible for any pen to describe it. Her royal mantle and train were of bluish gray cut velvet, richly embroidered with white silk and pearls. It was of a most marvellous length, its weight supported by young ladies.”

Not for her young beauty the purples and crimsons of older royalties. She drifted among them, unveiled indeed as royal brides must be, but evanescent in her gray and white as an April dawn. She desired no jewels, but that was impossible; therefore on her head she wore a crown royal, ablaze with splendour, and about the white stem of her neck long chains of noble gems sustaining that matchless cluster of stones known in England as the “Great Harry” and once the possession of her great-grandfather Henry VII through whom she claimed the English throne.

“Not that. Not to-day!” she had pleaded to Queen Catherine, who had supervised her adornment. “Let me forget that quarrel to-day. This once!”

“To-day of all days you shall wear it,” the Queen said sternly. “England is a part of the dowry you bring to France. Let the English know it and the French rejoice!”

And therefore with every breath she drew the Great Harry sparkled her rights to all men in flaming colour. The crowd waited still as a sea in sunshine while she advanced to the pavilion. Not a sound must interrupt the words which made her bride of France. It was done, and still the silence held while she turned to the bridegroom who kissed her on the lips.

“Monseigneur, I salute your Majesty as king of Scotland.”

That was the bride’s gift—her triumph, and as the Scots commissioners knelt before them the sea broke into the storm and billows and thunders of acclaim. What a bride—what a bride for France! And to that thunderous music they moved into the mighty church, the sea roar of the great organ meeting the other like opposing waves and heralding her approach.

Paris rejoiced that day as never yet. Such as were admitted to behold the festival in the Louvre spoke of it as enchantment impossible to forget.

After the banquet there followed in the great hall of the palace a pageant said to have been designed by Mary herself, and indeed it had the touch of her delicate fancy.