December 26, 1553

We played games all day long. This is the King’s favourite amusement during holidays. He likes for us children to have no lessons and just play. First we played Brittany skittles. It is the best and most complicated game of skittles. Diane, who arrived the night before, is actually awful at this game, and the Queen with Francis can beat her handily. Therefore the Queen was in quite a good mood and wanted to keep playing.

The sun came out brilliantly, and the servants brought us warm drinks to drink outside. Francis then said we must play blindman’s buff. I didn’t think this was a good idea. Why? The King always cheats, and he peeks in a very sly way through the blindfold and manages to catch Diane. They tumble down to the ground together as if this were the most hilarious thing in the world, and then the Queen gets terribly angry. This is exactly what happened. Sometimes adults really behave stupidly. So then the game was quickly over and we all went inside. That was of course very boring. So Francis, who is very good at thinking up things to do, said we should play a no-grown-ups-allowed game. In other words, one we know they would hate. So we did. Comme vous allez mourir, or ‘How will you die?’ Whoever is It gets to choose a famous figure to be and a pretend weapon to use. Francis always chooses Charlemagne and I always choose to be William Wallace – Braveheart, as he was called. He is my favourite Scottish hero, and he defeated the English King Edward I, who had the nerve to declare himself King of Scotland. The idea of the game is to see who can die the best, the most dramatically. We all play, including Elizabeth and Claude, and we let the babies fool around but they are really too young to judge who dies best. We usually insist that Minette join in although she hates it, and Francis’s horse groom, and one or two of the younger footmen. I die spectacularly. I have a way of flopping my body to the ground that makes it look as if it breaks in half. Francis is not nearly as good. It always looks as if he is afraid of bruising himself when he falls. Mary Seton is good at dying, too, although she has a much different style from me. She does a rather slow crumble. Very effective.