The Ballad of the Five Marys Read online

  Mary

  Livingston is right. Fontainebleau is the best for riding because it is a royal hunting lodge. One day we will go hunting and not be held back. I will teach Francis not to be afraid for Kings should not ever be afraid. My favourite château is Anet, because it has the best gardens for walking and playing. Also it is Lady Diane’s favourite. I think that King Henri has given it to her, because she is so beautiful. She is very kind to all the Marys but especially to me because my mother is in Scotland. Her skin is smooth like cream and she lets me touch her and try her oils and perfumes. There is something fragrant about Lady Diane and the King likes nice smells. I would like to be beautiful like her but I think my skin is too white. Lady Diane says I shall be beautiful and told the King and Queen Catherine. She is best friends with the Queen. I have no best friends but love all the Marys, Elizabeth, Claude and little Francis. Perhaps he is my best friend, but I like Diane most of all. The King wants me to be kind to Francis and to love Diane.

  This bit was rude and was written by Elizabeth, but it has been scored out by Fleming.

  Livingston

  I love Lord James because he is the best rider and hunter. He is Mary Stewart’s brother but is a bastard. I don’t care as he is a royal bastard.

  Livingston must be more careful, even if our book is secret. Fleming.

  Unless we tell our secrets this book will be dull. Beaton.

  We should not quarrel but be like sisters to one another. Seton.

  Don’t be so holy, Seton. We are five Marys and not three.

  Beaton

  Lady Diane has arranged dancing lessons for all the children. She watches while the musicians play and the dancing master puts us through the beat with a cane. I think he likes to whack the girls’ behinds. We have to dance with each other, but Mary partners with Francis, even though she is taller. We would laugh but the Poitiers is unbending. The Queen steers him round keeping time, with a solemn expression.

  Fleming

  Her Majesty has had an audience with the King. She and Francis talk with Le Roi Henri. He is the Dauphin of France and she Queen of Scots and ‘a special daughter of France’. They play with each other every day but converse like strangers. ‘I am very honoured to meet His Majesty the Dauphin. I bring him the greetings of my Scottish kingdom, and of my mother Queen Marie de Guise.’ I am her chaperone. ‘We hope very much that your mother will come soon to visit us here in France’, Francis stutters. ‘Indeed, nothing would give our sacred person greater joy.’ She plays her part guiding young Francis through the performance, like a game of toy soldiers.

  The King looks on with dark eyes and his hawk nose, drinking it all in. He is master of the masque, and knew my mother. She came with us from Scotland but I have become more grown up since she left us to go back. Because of that man and his dark eyes. Sometimes I am afraid that everything that may happen has already been decreed. What does he intend for the Marys? Shall he send us away as well? I shall not leave the side of my Queen, as this is my sacred duty.

  Mary

  The King and I talked together. He called me his own daughter and asked me what I thought of Lady Diane. I said I loved her best of all which pleased him very much. Then he spoke about Francis as if he were a stranger. But I spoke fondly of Francis as my dear playmate and brother monarch. I said we would be bound together by ties of duty and affection. The King said that I was wise beyond my years – an old head on young shoulders – and that he had more profit in talking to me than with one hundred of his courtiers. Fleming was not present. We were private together.

  Beaton

  Mary presented her oration to the Court. I stood behind her, notes in hand, but she was word perfect. She declares that women should be educated because they are intelligent governors of the realm and of their own natures, if given equal learning. She was applauded, especially by the King. Yet what she says is denied by almost everyone. I saw Queen Catherine look closely at my mistress as if seeing her for the first time. Mary’s brow was shining and her colour high. I never loved her so much as today, because she said what was inside me too.

  Mary

  Maman is coming to France at last. I hardly see her face at night any more. She will be here within weeks, or even days. My whole life so far has been for this moment. Now I shall not be left on my own again.

  Beaton

  We shall be going to Rouen as Marie de Guise will arrive from Scotland. Our Mary is excited but very tense, wound tight within herself. It is too much to hope, fatal to expect. Before we leave Paris there is a court ball. The great hall is cleared, the music poised for a pavane. Will the King himself lead a lady to the dance? All wait with respect. But young Francis comes to the floor accompanied by four pages. We bring Mary forward and she curtsies. He bows, and they turn into the dance, hand in hand. Everyone watches as she steps and glides like a Queen, hiding all her partner’s awkward stumbles. The music swelled with applause; pair by pair the company takes to the floor in golden silks and crimson satins. We stand to one side and watch our Mary, slender in royal blue, our Grace dancing into the future.

  Maitland of Lethington

  William Maitland of Lethington

  This is my father’s own hand. He has left no record of his early years, other than these adult journals. They are full of his thoughts on the condition of the realm. He is very politic and questioning in the modern way.

  Lethington is only a house. A valuable estate which one day should be mine. The house of my ancestors, a noble name. None stands higher. I will restore the gardens which I love, like terraces on the Loire. But I must prove myself first. I shall do this by always treating my name and my work with the utmost seriousness, but never my own self. I regard that with quizzical detachment and sometimes derision.

  When everything dear to the house of Maitland is at risk, I am removed to safety. I was in France before and there is security in what is known. My father, too, was put to the schools in France. There he got law, and poetry. Good Sir Richard – courtier, diplomat and poet – and in his own way an enigma. Is he also detached, but unable to confess?

  Our girl Queen lives in belle France, and is pledged to marry the Dauphin, so France is a safe harbour for loyal Scots gentlemen. And profitable, if I can fathom French designs. I am not sure if that is what my father intends.

  Lethington Tower has been burned and our estate is a camp for Haddington’s besiegers, Scots and French. This is what France has cost our nation. The English would make Lothian an Irish Pale, a fortified state from which the natives may be subdued or at least resisted. Are we heathen savages?

  Which is why Scotland turns to France. Better an unequal ally than a conquered province. The English have a strangely blinkered view of their nearest neighbor, and we must be careful to live up to their prejudices. They expect bloody resistance with at least a dash of barbarism

  But in France I shall see more closely what alliance means. Are we a province or a nation? We are destined to join England or France. Yet can we be our own still? He who discovers an answer to that riddle will stand behind the throne. It is a game of hazard.

  The English invade at great cost to their purse and to Scottish lives. Yet French coffers too are emptied in the attempt to win Scotland back. Have we gained or lost? It lies in our Queen’s marriage, as she may be Queen to four kingdoms, if Ireland counts.

  The next stage of this drama will be played in France. That is what Sir Richard realised.

  Puzzles are passed down through the generations. My grandfather could be inscrutable. I remember him well for he lived into a ripe old age, long after his son, my father. When his sight failed it was the task of my aunts to record his poems and other writings. But of his own life he would only say, ‘The world is very strange and I have seen many changes.’ A sphinx could be more confidential.

  My father acquired a more ambitious creed, but no less upright. The clues are in these meticulous densely covered pages. Was anyone other than himself ever supposed to read them? I
am in his labyrinth searching for my thread.

  William Maitland will get learning, but in a style Sir Richard may not approve. My wits were whetted in the schools at Paris but I am no longer an idle student. A new world has been discovered but it is in our own minds as well as the Americas. I am a citizen of this new age, but derive amusement from the death pangs of the old.

  The view from one side of the river is different from the other. Left bank and right bank. In truth you can hardly see the river for houses stacked drunkenly together, mists, and piles of barely floating rubbish. Then, every so often, floods cleanse the soul of Paris. The city closes round you, peopled by fantastic creatures of the day and night. All life is here.

  In St Andrews you can always smell, and usually see, salt ocean. Edinburgh turns its back on the sea to live in open market squares, and lurk in secret courts or closes, but the hills and rivers are never far from your eyes. Even the gentle slopes, woods and pastures of Lethington are nearby – I can call them to my view when I am melancholy or disturbed. The streets of Haddington rest peacefully below the Lammermuirs, but Paris is a world unto itself, apart from nature. Man is remade here as the creature of the city, not of the country, or even the nation. Here is France and Europe, Babylon and Rome. Scots College and College de France. University and Palace. The old world and the new.

  In the Scots College as a boy, I slept on straw and fed on gruel. But now I lodge south of Seine in rooms furnished with a bed that does not fold away, carved settles with arms on which to rest a book or glass, and Persian rugs before an ample fireplace. True comfort for one no longer forced to memorise a lesson. My present orbit is not the schools but Court. A Scots gentleman attends on royal France, courtesy of Sir Richard’s guineas.

  Though I read still in texts as well as faces. Like a physician who takes his patient’s pulse while scanning a book of cures.

  The young Queen, Mary of Scots, was received here as a child with royal honours. Her entry to Angers is remembered, because she was attended by four pretty little maids. A doll Queen, the lass held herself with solemn dignity. Prisoners were graciously released at her command.

  All becomes slowly clearer for my father. News from everywhere arrives in Paris. Boulogne had been recaptured from the English. In Scotland, Haddington had been abandoned by its starving garrison, and one by one England’s forts were dismantled. So in due season Marie de Guise came to France to share Scotland’s triumph with her allies, and to see her growing girl, our young Queen of Scots. This was my father’s chance to show his mettle and he takes it with his usual discretion. He seems more at home with French subtlety than Scots gusto.

  At Rouen the Scots arrive, a straggling troupe of earls, courtiers, knights, wrestling with too much baggage, giving precedence to no one, fighting for place and lodging. My vain, proud, calamitous countrymen, bragging to all and sundry how they had defeated the English. They are a band of strolling players ready to play farce or melodrama alike. The French look on bemused and yet indulgent to les Écossais très fiers.

  Amidst the drinking and squabbling, I make myself useful, advising here, cajoling there, administering my little store of experience. For the first time I meet Lord James, the Queen’s brother. A sober youth, he holds himself aloof and canny. There is matter here to be probed.

  As a Guise, Marie herself is taken to the bosom of the Court, enfolded in the royal embrace. With King Henri, Queen Catherine – the Medici – and Mary of Scots, she sits in state beneath a golden canopy to watch a grand entry across the Seine Bridge to Rouen. From where I watch beyond the stand tiers of godly beings seem to rise midst waving silks and banners towards the skies. And at their summit the monarchs sit like Jupiter and his heavenly council, clothed in light.

  Drums and trumpets. The great cavalcade begins processing towards the bridge, at each end of which a towering triumphal arch has been erected. The arches proclaim an Age of Gold, religion restored with culture, learning, music and martial might.

  First comes a panoply of flags and heralds all emblazoned with three crescent moons. Their motto resounds –‘three crescent moons will fill the earth’. So Henri, King of France, of England and now of Scotland will command the globe. Yet gossip has it that the full moon is Poitiers his mistress, with her glowing form rising on the King. Henri likes to flaunt every kind of triumph.

  Now come all the dignities of Rouen – nobles, merchants, councillors, guild masters, crossbowmen, mace bearers and notaries. I saw Henri lean down to Mary to pet his little favourite – ma propre fille. Did his consort look for a moment hard and sharp? A Medici look. The crowd roars as Rouen’s soldiers march past followed by eighteen Roman gladiators whirling in close combat as they move along. All are swept into the city gates, and everyone turns to eat and drink until the next wave arrives.

  If all Scotland came together to fashion a parade, we might equal the spectacle so far, with some tumblers and masquers added for satiric zest, rollicking up the High Street. But what comes next belongs only to a France, or the Empire. Even England might not attempt it, except in Henry Tudor’s time. Gaze on imperial might; submit; obey: those are the lessons to be scanned.

  The first float is drawn by four winged horses. Its charioteer is the mighty angel Fame, also winged and enthroned, with a trumpet to his lips and round his feet scenes of bloody conquest. Next comes the capture of Boulogne modelled like some war game on another float. This scene is accompanied by swordsmen, pikesmen, musketeers, and cannon hauled by plumed horses, caparisoned in silver. After them prisoners taken in the siege are dragged along, followed by more gladiators. And at the centre of the column, garlanded with fanfares, drowned by cheers, six mighty elephants – creatures of the Indies with flapping ears and a long snaking trunk instead of a nose. So Hannibal, so Henri. The rabble are completely taken in by papier mâché. I salute this art of painting and design: we do not have its like at home.

  Scotland though is not forgotten. A troop of Roman warriors preceded by drum and trumpet, bear a line of banners. Dundee, Broughty Craig, Edinburgh, Eyemouth, Inchkeith, Haddington. Each one a conquest, repulsing the English claim to occupy and rule. They might be cities for all anyone knows. We Scots look on from the royal pavilion, in the lower tiers.

  Henri himself, followed by Queen Catherine, our Mary with the other royal children, and Marie de Guise, descend to lead the last procession into Rouen. Mounted on a white charger Henri heads a pageant of court officers towards the bridge. Then all comes to a halt, for on a specially constructed island, two naked tribes appear, men and women. They hunt, cook, trade and then begin fiercely trading blows. Here is fabled Brazil to which France also lays her claim. The uncovering of nature, even in its secret parts, delights the multitude.

  At the city gate the King is met by two children carrying a coiled snake eating its own tail in flame and smoke. ‘Here is Time’ was the motto. Suddenly the stage becomes a giant globe lapping at the fires. Rent asunder the globe reveals a mighty Triton mounted on winged Pegasus. Last of all the globe re-forms bearing an image of the King at whose feet this final scene is laid. The spectacle has reached its apt conclusion. Then all dissolves, as people fight to gain the Cathedral for a Victory Te Deum and solemn Mass.

  I withdraw to read the royal proclamation issued that day to the Sultan at Constantinople and proclaimed at the Mercat Cross of Rouen: ‘I have pacified the Kingdom of Scotland, which I possess with such authority and obedience as I do in France. To which two kingdoms I am joining another, England, which by a perpetual union and confederation, is now under my control as if it were my own self. The King, his subjects and his powers unite in such a way that the three kingdoms together can now be considered one monarchy’.

  To this claim I must reply at tonight’s feasting, flattering without ceding anything from the negotiations to come. For which Scot will guard his tongue in drink? I shall be prudent, yet eloquent. Here my usefulness begins: my presence on the stage will be noticed.

  ‘How happy is Scotland to
be favoured, fed and maintained like an infant on the breast of the most magnanimous King of France, the greatest Lord of all the Earth, and the future monarch of that round machine. For without him you would have been laid in ashes, your country wasted and ruined by the English, utterly accursed of God.’

  When is he ironic and when sincere? Does this sow the seeds of dissent or display staunch loyalty? It can be read in two opposite ways, even by its author. Perhaps a letter was dispatched home to make his feelings clear, but has not survived. More likely William Maitland declined to commit his thoughts into anyone else’s keeping.

  I am beginning to discern the father whom I never knew. He has been accused of treachery, double dealing and deceit, a serpent of guile. Meikle Wily, they called him, the Machiavelli of his age, bent only on advancement. But his thoughts are politic, his words always in season, guiding and guarding the Scottish nation. My father plays a long hand.

  Maitland of Lethington

  To see them together is delightful and instructive. We are in the gardens, surrounded by nymphs and fountains. Music plays somewhere from a maze. The young Queen is aglow with charm. Her high brow gleams, auburn hair swept up and back. She is tall beyond her years and sex, but knows how to hold herself without stooping shyness, and to be gracious and courteous, while light dances in her eyes. She is still a girl for all the formality, full of fun and mischief though not without a dash of self-will, the natural hauteur of her station. Like me she chuckles at the world in secret.

  Beside Mary her mother seems poised as a statue. Yet the Guise too has charm and beauty with eloquent features and the stature to command. Her figure is fuller and more mature, most gratifying to the eye and always clothed in a way that draws admiration. But there is a reserve, as though life has tried her and taught caution. The beautiful eyes appraise you. Are they green or almond or even grey? She inclines her head a fraction and listens with care, considering how to respond.