They were nearing Paris.
Sheena bent forward in the coach to stare about her with wide eyes at the fine Châteaux which they passed from time to time and the cultivated fields which lay on either side of the road as far as the eye could see.
Every mile that she travelled to her destination made her realise her own inadequacy and the poverty of her appearance. She had not expected anything so luxurious or so comfortable as the coach sent by the King to convey her from the little fishing Port to Paris.
“We shall travel at great speed,” one of the gentlemen in her escort had said to her and, after the rough roads in Scotland and the uncomfortable hard coaches that had been her lot until now, Sheena could hardly believe it possible that horses could move so quickly or that she could lie back in such comfort against the coach’s padded cushions.
Her knees were covered with a rug of velvet lined with fur and she thought wryly that it was incongruous that anything so delicate should be required to cover the coarseness of her gown.
She had felt so elegant when she had left her home in Scotland for she had sat up half the night struggling with the old seamstress of the village to achieve what she then imagined was an exceedingly fashionable wardrobe and worthy of the girl who had the privilege of waiting upon the Queen of Scotland.
Now she felt that she looked nothing but a laughing stock.
But she could only compare her own possessions with those of the young gallants who accompanied her. As they rode on either side of the coach, the silver accoutrements on their horses’ harness glittered in the sunshine, their cloaks of velvet and satin billowed out behind them in the wind and the ostrich feathers on their caps waved with every single movement that they made.
‘I must look like a servant girl,’ Sheena whispered to herself.
Then defiantly her little chin went up.
Her blood was as good as theirs if not better and the blood of Scotland was being shed at this very moment in the defence of her Queen.
Yet at seventeen it is hard to be resolute in the face not of adversity but of plenty. Sheena did not miss the way that at every inn at which they stopped the ostlers ran forward to change the horses, the innkeeper bowed low to the ground and the maidservants curtseyed.
She was travelling in a Royal coach, she was under the protection of the King of France, and therefore she was treated with a respect which was akin to reverence. It was something she had never known before in her whole short life in the barren Castle in Perthshire.
The Priest, who had been her companion on the sea voyage, had gone no further. He was journeying to Calais to join the English Garrison there and to bring back the homesick bored troops news of their homeland.
Sheena and Maggie were all alone and Maggie with her high cheekbones, sharp, angular features and bright inquisitive eyes, was somehow something strong and familiar to which she could cling almost desperately in her apprehension of what lay ahead.
“Dinna fuss yoursel, ma wee bairn,” Maggie said, sensing what Sheena was thinking, “You’re as good as they are, nay even better. All they’ve got that you haven’t is money and what has money brought them but laziness and corruption?”
“You cannot say that, Maggie,” Sheena responded, laughing, although she felt more like bursting into tears. “We have not seen the Court. We must not judge until we have been there. The King has been very kind to us. Look at this wonderful coach and our escort. He could do no more if we were the Queen herself and not just a troublesome addition to her household.”
Maggie snorted.
“Fine feathers! Men dressed up like women in silks and satins and diamonds. I’d rather have a mon who can wear a plaid and knows just how to wield a claymore. Pah! ’Tis doubtful I am if any of this crowd will fight for Her Majesty.”
“Hush, Maggie! Hush!” Sheena urged her.
“They’ll no understand us,” Maggie said scornfully.
“Look at that house,” Sheena breathed in admiration as they swept past a great Château standing back from the road with a garden of ornamental lakes and fountains playing.
There were swans, black and white, swimming on the silver water and it all seemed to Sheena as if the whole scene was out of some Fairytale.
She thought a little wistfully of her own home, the ramparts crumbling from old age, the doors and staircases sadly in need of repair and the rooms furnished shabbily and without any comfort.
Everything here in France appeared to have been newly painted. Even the villages they passed through seemed clean and the people thriving and prosperous. She had heard many tales from the Elders in Scotland of the extravagance of the French Monarchs, how Francis I, the father of the present King, had taxed his people unmercifully to pay for his war with Spain and for the band of innumerable mistresses who travelled with him wherever he went.
She could hear her uncle, the Earl of Lybster, denouncing him with a violence that made his voice echo round the room.
“A dissolute and corrupt man,” he had boomed, “who died from a disease that came from his excesses. A King who was a disgrace to the Monarchy wherever he might reign.”
Sheena had only been a child at the time and her uncle had not realised that, sitting in the window, half-hidden by a. tattered velvet curtain, she was listening to him.
“You must concede, sir, that he was at least a patron of the arts,” someone remarked.
“Arts!” Lord Lybster shouted. “What does art lead to but licentiousness? To men such as rule over France it means statues and pictures of naked women, it means debauchery where there should be discipline and lassitude where there should be strength of purpose.”
Sheena had wondered why they all should feel so violently about a King who had lived so many miles away and was long since dead. And then they had gone on to speak of Henri II, son of Francis I, who now ruled France and to whose protection they had entrusted the Queen of Scotland.
It was amazing, she thought, the stories and gossip which managed to drift back across the sea. Mary Stuart had enchanted the French King. She had sung to him and had recited a poem that had almost moved him to tears.
A tale that was most often repeated was that when Mary had first curtseyed to Henri II at Saint Germaine when she was not yet six years old, he had exclaimed,
“The most perfect child I have ever seen!”
It was compliments of that sort that fed the loyalty of the rough Scotsmen and kept them eternally on the defensive against the ever-encroaching onslaughts of the English.
“Tell Her Majesty that we are fighting for her by day and by night,” Sheena’s father, Sir Euan McGraggan, had said as he kissed his daughter farewell. “Make her understand how loyal the Clansmen are, and how much she means to us that we live for her return.”
Sheena had been moved at the simplicity of his words. She had known only too well that they were nothing but the truth and that the men waving goodbye as her ship moved away from the windswept quay sent with her a part of their hearts.
She had been utterly convinced at that moment that it was right that she should go. Mary Stuart must not be allowed to forget those who strove for her against almost overwhelming odds.
She thought it would be easy to tell the Queen stories of the heroism and courage and unquenchable bravery which drove the Scots into battle against far superior forces and which made them accept, with an almost unbelievable fortitude, the burning and laying waste of their lands and crops.
Now, nearing Paris, she began to be afraid. What had this sunlit and rich land in common with the great barren moors, the burns, swamps and dales where a man could march for days, if not weeks, and not meet another soul that he could pass the time of day with?
“Maggie, I am frightened,” Sheena said impulsively.
“Shame on you! You’re nothin’ of the sort,” Maggie retorted tartly.
She did not meet Sheena’s eyes and they both knew the feeling of uncertainty and fear of what lay ahead.
“They are kind gentlemen,” Maggie said almost gently, “despite all their fancy garments. They’ll show us the way right to the King’s door if nothin’ else.”
“If only we had some money that we could buy different clothes with,” Sheena breathed almost beneath her breath.
“They must take us as they find us,” Maggie retorted. “The men who are fightin’ for Her Majesty are doin’ it often in bare feet and without a piece of cloth to cover their shoulders. Let her remember that. Make her understand the sacrifices that are bein’ made not only by the men themselves but by their wives and bairns as well.”
“I will try,” Sheena said humbly.
She cheered herself up with the thought that Mary Stuart was nearly three years younger than herself, only a child, whereas she had now come to womanhood. It should not be hard to instruct a child in the truth.
Despite such comforting assurances her hands were cold, her fingers trembling a little, as she laid them on the arm of Comte Gustave de Cloude as he helped her alight at The Palace.
She had expected it to be Regal, but she had not expected so many servants, such a bustle of liveried footmen, of Major Domos and sentries besides numerous personages who had apparently little to do but stand around, waiting and staring.
Sheena was allowed only a few moments to tidy herself after the long journey and then, without being allowed time to change her gown, she was ushered straight into the presence of the King.
She was ready to hate and despise him. The stories of his liaison with Diane de Poitiers had lost little in the telling when they crossed the sea, also his neglect of the Queen, the fact that he ordered the initials ‘D’ and ‘H’ to be entwined as a monogram and carved on all his Palaces. These stories had made her father snort with indignation.
Sheena had not known what she expected the King to look like. Whatever the image she had preconceived it was certainly nothing like the heavy mournful features of the dark-haired man who looked at her with melancholy eyes.
“Mistress Sheena McCraggan, Your Majesty!” she heard a voice saying and swept to the ground in a deep curtsey.
'“Mistress McCraggan, we have been looking forward to your arrival,” the King said.
“I thank you, Sire.”
Sheena was surprised to hear her own voice, clear and apparently unafraid. She rose to stand before him, small and straight-backed in her crumpled homespun gown, her head held high so that the evening sun coming in from the window behind the King’s head glittered on the red-gold curls she had tried to straighten into unaccustomed neatness on either side of her cheeks.
“You had a good journey, mam’selle?”
“The sea was very rough, Sire,”
The King nodded, as if he had expected the sea to be rough, and then he commented,
“You speak French extremely well.”
“My grandmother was French, Sire.”
“Yes, yes, I have not forgotten. Jeanne de Bourget, one of the oldest families in France. You have good blood in your veins, Mistress McCraggan.”
“I am proud of my Scottish blood too, Sire.”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
Henri was quite obviously bored with the conversation. He looked round the audience chamber as if at a loss, wondering what he should say next or what he should do or perhaps seeking guidance.
And then the door opened and his face was very suddenly transformed.
The look of melancholy vanished, the air of uncertainty changed and he moved forward quickly.
Sheena turned her head.
The most beautiful woman she had ever seen in her life was coming into the room. She was not young and yet there was something so youthful in her movements that it was as if spring itself had suddenly emerged to cast away the darkness of winter.
She was dressed in white with touches of black and yet the purity of the colour only served to show the whiteness of her skin.
‘She is like a camellia,’ Sheena thought, surprised at her own sense of poetry.
The lady in black and white sank to the ground before the King.
“Forgive me, Sire, if I am late.”
He bent forward to raise her hand to his lips.
“You already know that every hour you are away from me seems just like Eternity,” he murmured.
Only those nearest to him could hear what he said, but everyone could see the adoration in his eyes, the pleading of his lips and the change that had come over him since the opening of the door.
Still holding the hand he had kissed with his lips he turned towards Sheena.
“Mistress McCraggan has arrived,” he announced. “She has had a rough voyage, but she is young enough to survive it.”
The beautiful woman smiled at Sheena, a smile so warm and so embracing, that Sheena felt some of the tension go from her.
“We are so glad you are here, Mistress McCraggan,” the lady said and then, as Sheena curtseyed, she added, “The little Queen has been looking forward to seeing you. It will be nice for her to have news of Scotland and her people who must miss her sorely.”
She could have said nothing that would have gone straighter to Sheena’s heart.
“Indeed, madame, in Scotland our thoughts are only of the time when the Queen will return to us.”
“That is how it should be,” the King said a little ponderously. “And so now, Mistress McCraggan, the Duchesse de Valentinois will take you to your mistress.”
Sheena felt herself stiffen.
So this was Diane de Poitiers, Duchesse de Valentinois, the Grande Sénéchale, who had bewitched the King and seduced him so that he had eyes for no one else.
She had known, she thought, the moment that the Duchesse had entered the room, but somehow she had been so bemused, so taken aback by her beauty and her charm, that she had for a moment forgotten the scandal and the gossip, the spite and the condemnation, that she had listened to in Scotland about this very woman.
She had thought somehow that she would never see her. That the King would keep her in some secret place where only he visited her.
“The Queen has been in my charge,” the Duchesse was saying quietly. “I have been supervising her education and Her Majesty is a very promising pupil. You will be surprised at how talented she is and how quickly her education has progressed in the last few years.”
Sheena found herself unable to answer. What would her father and the other Statesmen say if they knew? To be brought up by a courtesan, by a woman they had all declaimed as a prostitute and lower than those who followed in the wake of the Army or who paraded the dark streets of Edinburgh at night.
Diane de Poitiers! A witch they had all called her. And yet now with most incredible graciousness, she was leading the way down the corridors of The Palace.
‘Heaven knows,’ Sheena thought to herself, ‘what the little Queen has been taught under such auspices.’
Had Her Majesty’s education been one of witchcraft and guile, of how to blind a man’s eyes so that he would forget his duty and his honour simply so that he could receive a smile from those red lips?
“You must be very tired after your journey,” the Duchesse was saying and it seemed to Sheena that her voice was almost hypnotic it was so easy to be deceived by it.
“I have had a room prepared for you near to that of your Queen. You will have much to talk about in the next few days and after you have met I suggest that you go upstairs and have a sleep. If you are not overly tired, we shall welcome you at dinner. There will be dancing afterwards, but if you prefer to do so, sleep until morning and start the day fresh.”
“I have no need of rest,” Sheena replied grimly.
Already she was beginning to see the magnitude of the task ahead of her. How could she on her own undo the harm that must have been done to the little Queen by this evil woman?
Perhaps she had been kept shut up with her alone, having no one decent and respectable around her to whom she could turn to learn the truth or to weigh in the balance all the wrong and twisted things they were putting before her under the guise of ‘education’.
“Your Queen is extremely busy at the moment,” the Duchesse was saying. “She has been learning her part for the play she and the Royal children are to act before the King next week. It will be a very gay evening. Perhaps you will be able to help with the final details.”
Sheena felt herself shiver. Play-acting! What would her father say to that? She could see his hands raised in horror, hear the anger in his voice if she told him that Mary Stuart was to strut the boards and to perform as if she was a common actress. The audience might consist of a King and his Court, but the wrong was still there.
They had reached the end of a passage hung with wonderful pictures and carpeted so that it seemed as if one’s feet walked on velvet. They turned and another great corridor lay ahead of them.
“This part of The Palace,” the Duchesse was saying, “is given over to the Royal children. Some of them are very young, as you may well know, but the Dauphin and Queen Mary are almost the same age and they have many interests in common. There are other companions for your Queen as well. Thirty-seven children of the Nobility of our land share her studies and her sports.”
“Thirty-seven!”
Sheena repeated the words in absolute astonishment.
The Duchesse smiled her beautiful glorious smile, which revealed the whiteness of her teeth and made her exquisite eyes twinkle a little.
“Yes, thirty-seven. I hope you did not think we left our little Scottish visitor without any interests or amusements.”
“No – no, of course not,” Sheena stammered.
“At first her four little friends, the four Marys who came with her from Scotland, were sent away, but only so that she should learn French. It is very difficult to learn any language when one is talking one’s own all the time. But now they are constantly with her, although just at the moment they are still in the country for a special rout that they had promised to attend some time ago. Only Mary Stuart has come back to Paris especially to greet you.”
“That is most gracious of her,” Sheena said quickly.
“And here I think we shall find her,” the Duchesse smiled.
The door she indicated was flung open for them by a footman resplendent in gold lace and Sheena eagerly followed the Duchesse into the room.
It seemed to her that all this had been a wearisome preparation for the moment when she would see her own Queen and when she would start on the work she had come to do and for which she had travelled so many miles.
And then as the chandeliers, pale-grey walls, carpets covered in roses and great hangings of exquisite embroidery swam before her eyes in a kaleidoscope of colour and movement and steadied into being only a frame for the person who stood waiting at the far end of the salon.
Sheena saw Mary Stuart.
She had expected a child. She saw instead a young woman who appeared far older than herself.
Her hair was that strange liquid gold that the poets had written about since the beginning of time. It was not unlike Sheena’s own hair and yet there the resemblance between them ended.
Mary Stuart was taller than Sheena and her full oval face had a beauty that was almost classical in its conception. There was no flaw to be found in it and, perhaps because it was so cool, so flawless, so smooth and clear-cut, the face was a little lacking in expression.
And yet Mary Stuart’s beauty lay in her skin, in her hands, long, slim and pale as snow, and in the way she held herself. There was nothing that was not beautiful about her and yet somehow Sheena felt a little stab at her heart as if she had expected far too much and found something lacking.
Her feet carried her forward without her being conscious that she had moved. Then, as she reached the Queen of Scotland and sank down before her in a deep curtsey that was not only a greeting but a reverence, the Queen spoke,
“So you are Sheena McCraggan! I thought I should remember you but I don’t.”
She sounded disappointed and Sheena said hastily,
“It is many, many years ago, Your Majesty. You were little more than a babe.”
“I thought you had dark hair,” Mary Stuart said a little petulantly. “So I must have been thinking of someone else.”
Sheena then rose from her curtsey. Never had she expected her first conversation with the Queen of Scotland to be like this. She had planned so often the things she would say, the greetings she would bring her and now she could only stand tongue-tied, something cold and unhappy crushing at her heart.
“I wonder who it was I found myself thinking about?” Mary Stuart persisted, looking not at Sheena but turning her head a little to address someone who was standing in the further corner of the room and who now came forward.
Sheena glanced upwards and felt herself stiffen. It was the man to whom she had spoken in the inn, the man who had insulted Scotland by his cynical and rude remarks, the man she had hated all the way from the coast to Paris and thought that she would never see again.
She had forced herself, when he had gone, not to ask any of her escort who he was and not to speak of him. Now she regretted that she had had no idea of his identity. If he was in attendance on Mary Stuart, he was an enemy and she must beware of him.
“You have not welcomed Mistress McCraggan to France,” the Duchesse said quietly to Mary Stuart, and to Sheena’s surprise the young Queen flushed slightly at the rebuke.
“Forgive me, madame,” she said to the Duchesse and, turning to Sheena, held out her hand. “I do welcome you, I do truly,” she said. “It must have been a long and tiring journey and it was very gracious of you to come to me.”
Sheena felt the young Queen’s hands touch hers and in that moment she knew the full and fatal fascination of the Stuarts, which could so cleverly and so skilfully charm all with whom they came into contact and make them in an instant their abject and adoring slaves.
She found herself holding on to the Queen’s hand and stammering the few words she had intended to speak and which had been in her mind when she first left Scotland.
“I have – come, ma’am, to – to bring you the greetings, the love and – the devotion of all those who look on you as their – rightful Queen and to tell you that they are holding your Kingdom for you if it means that – that every man in Scotland must die to do so.”
She spoke passionately, forgetting for a moment everything around her and seeing only the bare heads of the Clansmen, the wind and rain in their faces, as her ship drew away from the quay.
“Thank you! Thank you!” Mary Stuart said. “Tell them that my heart is with them.”
It was beautifully said and, as Sheena felt the tears gathering in her eyes, the voice of the man she so disliked intruded upon them.
“Well done,” she heard him say and it seemed to Sheena that he broke the poignant spell between herself and Mary Stuart.
“I have not introduced you,” the Duchesse said. “Mistress McCraggan, this is the Duc de Salvoire. Your Queen will tell you that there is no one in the whole of France who is cleverer at assessing the worth and performance of any horse. In fact none of us buy our horseflesh without his advice. Is that not so?”
The Duc bowed as Sheena dropped him a curtsey.
“You flatter me, madame,” he said to the Duchesse. “And yet somehow I don’t think our visitor is interested in horses. Surely in Scotland they have eagles to carry them from place to place?”
He was mocking her and Sheena attempted to annihilate him with a glance and failed.
Mary Stuart laughed.
“How ridiculous you are, Your Grace” she exclaimed. “You make a joke of everything. But what a glorious idea. If we could be carried about by eagles, think how swiftly we could travel. Even swifter than your chestnuts can convey us. And that is saying a great deal.”
“Do not speak of his chestnuts,” the Duchesse appealed. “The King is wild with envy and you know that he longs to buy them. Can I not plead with you once again to sell them to him?”
The Duc shook his head.
“What money could compensate me for the loss of such perfect animals?” he enquired. “They should not be the objects of sale and barter. But, madame, may I not present them to you as a tribute to your beauty and because, above all things, I enjoy your mind?”
“No, no, it is just impossible,” the Duchesse said and then added with a sudden smile, “I really believe you mean it. I warn you, if you make the offer again I shall accept if only to make the King happy.”
The Duc made a little gesture with his hands.
“They are yours,” he declared.
Sheena looked at them both with contempt.
So he was toadying now to the King’s mistress, this man she hated and despised, this man who she felt should have no contact with the child Queen who she had come to protect and help.
Eagles indeed! He had laughed at her and made her feel a fool. Now he was making an extravagant gesture that would ingratiate him with the King who would be, whether he liked it or not, in his debt.
“Are you not lucky?” Mary Stuart was saying enviously. “Oh, madame, I wish the Duc had given the horses to me.”
“You shall share them with me,” the Duchesse said generously. “When you want to use them on any special occasion, come and ask me. I will see that they are put at your disposal.”
“Oh, thank you,” Mary Stuart said excitedly.
She put her arms round the Duchesse and gave her a hug.
Sheena could not help but shudder at the sight of such beauty and innocence embracing a woman who was old and steeped in sin.
“And now will you show Mistress McCraggan, you will not mind if I call you ‘Sheena’, will you, dear, to her rooms?” the Duchesse said. “They are on your corridor and I am sure that you girls will have much to talk about.”
“Come, let me show them to you,” Mary Stuart said, holding out her hand to Sheena.
At the touch of her fingers Sheena felt that her cup should be full of happiness. She was in France, hand in hand with the Queen. They were going away together, leaving behind them for a moment at least the wicked courtesan who had seduced the King and the Duc, who she knew without the shadow of doubt, was a bad and evil influence.
How much there was for her to do for the Queen!
And yet, as they moved towards the door, she was conscious that it was Mary Stuart who led her. She was slower, less sophisticated and less assured than this elegant beautiful girl who was talking to her with an easy charm that was in itself irresistible.
“Your rooms are delightful,” she was saying. “The Duchesse de Valentinois allowed me to choose the furniture for them myself. I will show you – ”
They had reached the door and were just about to pass through and as they did so Sheena heard the Duc saying something to the Duchesse. He spoke in a low voice, but she caught the words quite clearly.
“You had better get the child some clothes, she needs them!”