The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots (19 page)

The orchards were all in bloom outside my windows, acres and acres of apple and pear orchards fragrant with pink and white blossoms, when I was moved into Wingfield Manor in the spring of 1569.

The violent weather that had ravaged the countryside for several years was over, the skies were blue and the spring winds mild, and when I walked amid the blooming trees, watching them shed their petals like a delicate fall of pastel snow, I felt, just for a moment, as if I had returned to the France of my youth, where Francis and I had walked hand in hand as children in the fragrant gardens of the Louvre and Chambord.

I could not help but admire the rooms prepared for me at Wingfield, rooms of modest size but quite adequate for my immediate needs, and those of my household of thirty. My cousin Queen Elizabeth had sent some of her own gold and silver plate all the way from the Tower of London for my use, along with dozens of Turkey carpets and handsome tapestries for the walls, beds and cushions and hangings. She had made me a generous gift of baskets filled with her castoff gowns, gowns made of velvets and silks and other stuffs that
were perfectly usable once the stained sections were discarded and the clean unsoiled lengths restitched and fitted.

Fitting was a challenge, for I was growing plump, the bodices, skirts and underskirts of my gowns all had to be cut on more generous lines than in the past. My hostess and frequent companion Bess (who was really my warden but I did not like to be reminded of that) liked to bake, and her delicious cakes and meat pies were my downfall.

“More pudding?” she asked me, offering me a tray, an ingratiating smile on her round face. She sat opposite me, resting her bulk on a bench piled high with embroidered silk cushions. At least, I thought, I am not getting as fat as Bess. I took a pie and sampled it, the rich sweet smell of the honey and cinnamon mingling agreeably in my nostrils as I ate. There was delicious cider to wash it down.

My warder Bess, Countess of Shrewsbury, had reached the advanced age of forty-one, the age (so everyone said) when women turn to lard and lose their beauty. I was then in my twenty-seventh year, though my admirers were swift to tell me I did not look that old. I had a long way to go before I reached the dreaded age of forty-one.

I glanced down at the diamond ring I wore, a gift from my newest admirer, Thomas Howard. (I did not for a moment forget my dear Jamie, or my vow to be ever faithful to him, but Thomas was very sweet and a little sad, having lost three wives in a row and being quite besotted with me.) I wondered how many pies I would have to eat before Thomas would regret having given me the lovely ring.

I noticed Bess’s eyes on my ring and quickly looked out the window at the flowering orchards. I could tell that she was trying to read my thoughts. We had spent so very much time together in the year since I first arrived in England, we knew each other well—altogether too well, it seemed to me. My cousin Elizabeth had appointed Bess and her husband George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury to be my hosts and to make certain I did not escape the queen’s carefully circumscribed hospitality. They housed me in their various manors and mansions.
They made certain that I did not stray, or try to escape—and made certain too that others, Queen Elizabeth’s enemies, did not try to kidnap me in order to make me the focus of their conspiracies.

They were spies—and yet at the same time potential subjects of mine, for was I not the next in line for Elizabeth’s throne? Bess and her husband knew only too well that, if Elizabeth died and I became Queen of England, I would remember every detail of their guardianship. They knew that they had to be very careful in all that they said and did. Frankly, I thought theirs a thankless job.

“I believe that is the ring the duke sent you, is it not?” said Bess, her words somewhat indistinct as she was munching on a meat pie.

“Yes. It belonged to his great-great-grandmother. She must have been a tiny woman. The ring had to be made larger to fit me—and I have slender fingers.” I held up my hand to admire the ring—and to admire the hand as well, for I have beautiful hands with long graceful spidery fingers and they have been much commented upon throughout my life.

“Has he asked you to become his wife?”

I looked at Bess, unsmiling, my gaze even.

“I have not had the honor of a proposal.” I was aware, as I said these words, that had Thomas asked me to marry him and had I agreed, I would have been quite capable of giving Bess the same answer. I was learning to lie, although I suspected that I was not as good at it as Bess was.

“No doubt he will need to request the queen’s permission.” Bess spoke casually, as one who spent a good deal of time at the royal court and was comfortable in the presence of the much feared Elizabeth.

“I believe she would favor a match between us.” I did not mention Jamie. I had learned not to.

Bess sighed and put down the tray of sweets and savories. “It would certainly solve many a problem for you, if you were to marry him. You would have a definite standing in this country. You would
have a husband who dotes on you—yes, I’ve seen it in his eyes, he is in love. You would cease to be looked on with—shall we say suspicion?—as a Frenchwoman.”

“I am of course much more than a duchess. I am a queen, and heir to the throne of these realms, as my cousin Elizabeth herself has acknowledged.”

“There’s many who would dispute that, as you know,” Bess retorted, suddenly tart. “I don’t have to remind you how much our Parliament dislikes Catholics. England will never have a Catholic ruler again, not after the disaster with that acolyte, that zealot, that semi-nun, Murdering Mary.” I knew that she meant the late Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth’s fanatically Catholic half-sister and my cousin. “Nor do I need to bring up the claims of others besides yourself to Queen Elizabeth’s throne.”

“One less claimant now,” I shot back. Lady Catherine Grey, another Tudor cousin, had just died, strengthening my own succession rights.

I was growing weary of this familiar ritual of provocative remarks and rejoinders; Bess was not the worst of companions but her conversation had become depressingly predictable, and in truth I suppose mine had too.

I got up from my bench and walked to the hearth, then to the long high windows with their beautiful orchard view. The sky was beginning to fill with gray clouds coming in from the west, as often happened in the afternoons. In my many months of confinement I had learned the habit of watching the weather, appreciating the sweep of wind and cloud, the rising of warmth and the sudden sensation of a chill in the air. Bess too was like this: her tempests were swift to arise though they did not always come from the same quarter, and her shifts of mood, from warmth to chill and back again, were as sudden and as quicksilver as the ever-changing weather.

“Speaking of rings, as we were, I’m sure you have noticed that I always wear two of them: the duke’s diamond and the one my cousin Elizabeth sent me as a token of her love and regard.” I held out my
hand to display the sparkling ring the queen had sent me a few years earlier, with its large heart-shaped diamond. I kissed it fondly.

“She has shown me so many marks of her affection and good will—the plate and furnishings she sent me to use while in this house, her graciousness in agreeing to serve as godmother to my son James, and the costly christening font she sent him, her messages conveyed by officials of her court. I have received many such signs of her love and esteem over the years.”

Bess said nothing, merely raising her eyebrows slightly.

“Indeed I often wonder,” I went on, “whether she has used and enjoyed the gifts I sent her in return. The five strong hawks from Orkney, for example. Has she ever mentioned them?”

“I don’t think so. She likes to ride, especially with her Robin, but she leaves the hawking to her fewterers.”

Bess loved gossip, and it gave her pleasure to allude to the queen’s closeness—many said intimacy—with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, whom she called her “Sweet Robin.”

“I wouldn’t count too much on her affection,” Bess was saying as she fanned herself—overeating invariably made her hot—“as she has sent men she loves and regards highly to the executioner’s block more than once. Though as it comes to that, her sister killed many more men than our good queen Elizabeth could ever contemplate doing away with.”

Bess’s loud voice trailed off as her husband George came into the room through the high double doors, rubbing his hands together briskly, his whole body aquiver with agitation, the deep lines in his forehead and between his eyes a clear sign of his anxiety. “My love, my love,” he said, coming over to Bess and giving her a quick kiss on her plump cheek, “where is that balm the peddler brought us? I need it today. Whenever the weather changes, you know—”

“I lent it to my groom, for the lame mare,” Bess said.

“You gave my medicine to a horse? Don’t you know that it is made with larks’ tongues, and each pot we buy costs a fortune?”

“The peddler cheats you. He knows you are in pain, and that you will pay whatever he charges.”

“But not so that the precious stuff can be wasted on nags and hacks!”

“Carlotta is my favorite mare.”

“She’s the only one strong enough to carry you,” I heard George Talbot grumble.

“What was that you said?”

“Never mind. We bore our guest with our quarrels.” He smiled at me, an innocent, kindly smile with no hint of the lechery I so often saw in the smiles of men.

“I should like to walk amid the blossoms before the rain comes,” I said. “I will leave you to talk.”

“Wait for your escort.” Bess went out into the corridor and summoned the phalanx of guards who accompanied me whenever I left the manor.

“Bring our guest’s cloak,” she said, addressing no one and everyone of servant rank in the room. “And make certain she does not catch a chill.”

“Sir George,” I began while waiting for my cloak to be brought to me, “I need to speak to you about the furnishings supplied to me here and certain other matters. I must have a cloth of state over my chair. I was promised one months ago at my last lodging but so far none has been provided. I also require horses and grooms for riding. I have only ten now, and need at least twenty. And I wish to send my son James in Scotland a pony and saddle. He is nearly three years old and I have not been able to see him or send him letters or even send someone to tell him I love him and have not forgotten him. Surely, as a mother, I must be allowed to do all those things.”

George shook his head and continued to rub his hands together.

“I must get permission,” he said, without looking at me, “and that is likely to be very difficult. My lord Cecil—”

“Will say no,” Bess interrupted. “He says no to everything we ask.”

“He is a hard man, an uncompromising man,” George agreed. “But then, his aim is to protect his royal mistress. As it should be.”

“And he sees me as representing a danger to her.”

“Which you do,” Bess said. “You covet her throne, and you could be very useful to her enemies—I mean the Spanish and French—should they decide to invade us.”

“And as long as we are speaking frankly,” I put in, “it is no secret that my birth is legitimate and my cousin’s is not. Therefore my claim to the English throne is legitimate and hers is not.”

“Ah now, my girls, let us have none of this!” George Talbot put up his hand and stood between us. “Lady Mary, you must guard your tongue, for I am duty bound to report your words to the queen. And my dearest Bess, you too must be slow to argue, and quick to mend any quarrel that may arise. Let your words be made of honey, not gall.”

“I’ll speak my mind, when and where I choose,” Bess asserted with a snort. “And I won’t have any mollycoddle old man telling me when to speak and when to be silent!”

Sensing the onset of further quarreling, I slipped on the cloak I was handed by Bess’s tirewoman and went out for my walk.

In the pear orchard, the air was brisk for May, but the sun warmed me and it was a pleasure to make my way along, my spirits lifted by the beauty of the blossoming trees and the vigor of my walking. I put aside my worries as best I could and turned my mind to the fresh grass under my feet, the rich sweet scents in the air, the bright green leaves above me and the drift of white petals that floated on the wind.

The gray clouds I had seen earlier had gone. A good omen, I thought, as I crested a low hill, my escort close behind me. From the top of the little rise I could see the narrow road that led from the nearby village to the manor. There was a man on the road, his clothes dusty, wearing a soft hat with a broad brim. He had a thick walking stick in his hand and a large pack on his back. Wanting a rest, I stood where I was and watched him approach.

As he came nearer I thought there was something familiar about
him. His gait, his muscular body, the ruddy beard I glimpsed beneath the low brim of his hat . . .

Could it be? How could it be? I stared. I held my breath.

He came closer, and lifting his head, caught sight of me, and of the soldiers standing around behind me.

I could tell that he took in the sight of us in the briefest of glimpses, then lowered his head again.

I swallowed hard. I forced my muscles to stay rigid. I did not let myself shout for joy. But I knew. And I thought my heart would burst from my chest.

Jamie! It was Jamie! My own dearest. My love.

“Good sirs,” he said to the soldiers when he reached us, “can you direct me to Wingfield Manor? I am a peddler of apothecary goods, come from Oakerthorpe with remedies for milord of Shrewsbury, to ease his aches and pains.”