February 10, 1554

Disaster – the ball was an utter disaster. I am just now recovering. I bless Doctor Nostradamus. Had it not been for him I do not know what would have happened. I shall try to describe the horrifying event. The first dance as usual was a bransle. Francis and I began the first series of kicks – kick left, kick right. By the end of four kicks, I began to feel a slight prickling sensation on my face. I paid it no heed. But by the end of the dance, I felt a numbness beginning near my jawline. I touched my face lightly for I did not want to disturb the makeup. I felt fine. So I joined another set of dances. By the end of the second set, half of my face felt completely numb, and although numb, my lips and nose felt as if they were hugely fat. I dragged Mary Livingston off to the side. “Is my lip swollen?” I asked.

“What are you talking about?”

I told her that I was having the strangest sensation in my face.

At that moment Monsieur Ronsard walked up. “The pavane?” he said, reminding me of our promised dance together.

“Oh, certainly,” I replied, putting the business of my face out of my head. Or so I thought. For to dance with a poet like Ronsard is heaven. His rhythms are so natural even the clumsiest dancer in the world would improve by dancing with him. We had danced one round of the old Carolingian pavane and were just beginning the second when suddenly Ronsard stopped. “Your Majesty?” His voice was filled with alarm. At that moment I felt as if my face had – it sounds so strange – floated away from my head. It was indeed a disembodied thing. “Milady, your face!” The next thing I knew I was on the floor. People were bending over me saying the strangest things.

“It has swollen to the size of a melon!”

“She is as red as a strawberry!”

“Look, her eyes are locked.” And indeed it did feel as if my eyes had frozen in their sockets, for I could not blink. A footman carried me to my chambers and the King’s physician was called, as was Ruggieri. It was not long before I heard the word I dreaded. “Leeches.”

“No! No! No!” I screamed. Janet Sinclair rushed to my side to calm me. As much as I love Janet, I really wanted my mother.

“You must have them, my dear. You have had a bad reaction to the face whitening. It can happen sometimes. The leeches must be brought to suck out the poison.”

Just then the royal apothecary arrived with two immense jars, the insides of which were a writhing slime of black leeches. I could not even shut my eyes for my eyelids were still frozen open. With long tweezers Ruggieri and the King’s doctor, de la Romaniére, placed the leeches one by one on my face and neck and chest. My face being numb I could not exactly feel them sucking but I fancy that I heard them. I thought I would go mad. I wished my own doctor, Doctor Bourgoing, were here, but he is gone temporarily. He would never have put leeches on me. All night my face remained under this blanket of leeches. I somehow managed to sleep with my eyes open because they had dosed me with a strong spirit. By morning I was really no better, but I saw thin threads of blood trickling down my chest where the leeches had gorged and been pulled from my skin.

Suddenly Nostradamus burst into the room with Lord Erskine at his side. “Get those foul things off her!” he roared. He came to my bedside and began pulling off the leeches. Next he dipped a sponge into a bowl that Lord Erskine held. He began wiping my face. There was a strong scent of cloves. Then with his fingertips he began massaging my face. He called for “ointment of calamus”, which he next put on thickly, and then he folded a hot wet cloth, also soaked in the same palm-scented lotion, and placed it on my face. Gradually the numbness began to leave. He applied more lotions and ointments.

Then little Mary Fleming with tears streaming down her face cried out, “Mary, you are back!”

I tried pressing my lips together and then making a slight smile. They felt normal. “Might I see a mirror?” I asked. Lord Erskine brought me a mirror. I looked at my reflection. Never have I been so happy to see that band of freckles across my nose. I looked deathly pale with blue shadows under my eyes, but my face was my face once more.

Nostradamus sank into a chair. “A toxic beauty they all strive for.”

I turned my head to him. “You mean the whitening.”

“Precisely, my dear. You were lucky. You found out quickly how poisonous it was to you. But the ceruse made of vinegar and white lead builds up over years and years until finally a woman dies from her own reserve of poison slowly administered over a lifetime of seeking beauty. Her fingernails turn blue. She loses feeling in her fingertips and toes and earlobes, but she is beset by the sensation of fiery ants eating into her skull. Finally the poison creeps into the muscles of the throat and paralyses them. She cannot swallow to eat and then soon she cannot breathe.”

What a terrible, terrible death I have been spared. I shall forbid the four Marys ever to use the whitening again. I know I am lucky, but still to be so sick and so far away from my mother leaves me with another kind of pain that is so deep.