Chapter 45
1604
The next morning, I managed to stop crying long enough for Jeannie to complete my toilette. I was dressed in the new blue gown with the pearls sewn in around the neckline. I had had it made for my first day at Court and she had arranged my hair high off my crown, in the manner we heard the Queen favours. I thought it looked dreadful, even though my forehead is wonderfully smooth, but I was in no state to argue and my husband had approved the style when we had tested it before we left Fyvie. She had just left to fetch some more water when there was a knock at the door and Alexander entered. I immediately stopped snivelling and raised my chin. I could do this.
Then as he approached, I saw that he too had been crying. His eyes were red and sore-looking and it seemed as if he had not slept all night. He not only looked his age, he looked twenty years older. I opened my mouth to speak but thought better of it and so I waited.
“Grizel, the King has just sent a message. He heard our sad news and wishes to pass on his and the Queen’s sincere condolences. He asked if you wished to delay your attendance at Court awhile. Obviously, I must go in any event to deliver the prince.”
I was unsure whether this was a question or a statement and so I remained silent.
“I have just sent a message to His Majesty to say we would both attend Court today as planned but then, after three days, should that be acceptable to Their Majesties, we would return north to bury our son.” 209
His head drooped and I waited for more. But there was nothing. He turned and headed for the door just as Jeannie was entering. She curtsied as he stepped past her, shoulders hunched like an old man.
“Will you wear these, My Lady?” Jeannie lifted the parure from its box.
“Yes, my husband would insist upon it, for my first encounter with the King and Queen.” She began to put on my necklace and then the earrings.
I turned round and grabbed her hand. “But then, Jeannie, when we are back at Fyvie, I shall remove them from my jewellery drawer.” I had been thinking about this as I sat in silence while she attended to my hair. “I will not wear them once we are back home. So if you cannot find them, do not worry, they will be safe.”
I looked up at her. She was frowning.
“Why, My Lady?”
“Because they bring bad luck. Your previous Mistress wore them and she died. I have been wearing them and my darling son has just died.” My voice caught but I swallowed and forced myself to continue. “They are a curse. After today, I shall keep them somewhere safe and yet out of sight, so you must not fret that they are missing.”
“And if His Lordship asks me where they are?”
“Send him to me.”
She bobbed and left the room and I looked in the glass before me. The emeralds and rubies glinted in the morning light. Usually, I would smile at my reflection, made even lovelier by the jewels, and feel blessed and happy. But today I saw only a young girl whose heart had just been broken.
210 Our first day at Court at the Earl’s castle in Northampton passed quickly, thank God. Queen Anne had been charming and kind to me during our private audience, but once she had passed on her condolences, she talked more about herself and how she’d coped after the death of her two little ones, Princess Margaret and Prince Robert, than of my own darling Charles. She invited me to pray with her, which I supposed was an honour, but her Lutheran upbringing meant I felt no connection at all to her invocations. Even though we were all now Protestants at Fyvie, I still yearned for the familiarity of my Catholic childhood.
She was only thirty, a mere ten years older than me, and yet there was something mature and awe-inspiring about her. Perhaps it was her astonishingly ornate dress with all its lace and brocade and those elaborate jewels at her neck and in her hair. Her coiffure was so high, I wondered if she might bump her head against the ceiling. She also had a more fulsome figure than me, though she had had her last child some two years previously.
Or perhaps it was the fact that, when she sat beside the King and we conversed together, she did not appear to defer to him at all, even though she was only Queen Consort. It was almost as if she were his equal; this was so unlike the relationship between Alexander and me.
She did not wait for him to begin a conversation, nor did she always agree with him. When the King said how fine the weather had been and we all nodded and concurred, she said, “Well, in fact it was extremely cold this morning, if you recall. Or perhaps your rooms have more lusty fires than mine.”
I glanced at Alexander who looked surprised, but the King simply shrugged and put his hand on my husband’s arm, before drawing him away to a corner for a private talk. The Queen had been delighted of course to be reunited with her son and told us both how very grateful she was for our taking such good care of 211 the prince, and we all had to watch as he walked then ran the full length of the Great Hall several times, but thankfully he was soon sent away to rest.
Then Queen Anne invited me to sit with her while she told me again about the two little ones she had lost. At least I had been able to forget momentarily about my own little Charles. But when I was about to leave, she drew near and whispered to me in her funny, clipped Danish accent, “What you need now is to be with child very soon. Ensure it happens.”
And before I could even think of an answer, she swept away with her ladies-in-waiting.
At the masque later that day, I hardly saw either the King or the Queen amongst the crowds, though Alexander was of course almost always at the King’s side. Soon after the Queen had retired, I told my husband I was going to bed and he said he would join me in our chamber later. He was merry and ruddy of complexion, obviously the royal wine was very much to his liking. If he had been full of sorrow a mere twenty-four hours before, he seemed to be covering his sadness well.
It took Jeannie ages to get me undressed and to pat down my hair. As I watched her in the mirror, I could see she kept snatching glances at me, presumably to see how I was faring. How very strange it felt to have some sort of reconciliation with my irascible maid over my darling son’s death.
My shoulders began to shake as I thought once more of him and tears flowed down my face. She patted me on the shoulder and asked if there was anything else she could do, but I dismissed her and took to bed.
I must have been sound asleep when Alexander crashed into the room some hours later. His servant had obviously tried to undress him but not successfully, for he fell onto the bed with his shirt half off him. He began to kiss my neck and I swatted him 212 away, but he persisted then soon ripped back the covers.
“No, Alexander, I am asleep!” I cried, but he persisted.
I ended up sobbing as he pulled off his breeches and flipped me over as if I were a piece of meat.
“Our baby has just died, I do not want this,” I howled.
But he grasped my hands and flung them back above my head, then bent over me as I gasped for air under his claret and brandy breath.
“And I do want this,” he hissed. “You will give me another son.”