The Flower Reader (44 page)

“Do you think I would do anything else,
ma mie
?”

I felt more confident.

“I will tell you what to do,” I said.

It took a long time, and twice I stopped him at the last possible moment. God alone knew what it cost him in self-control to hold back. In the end we came together very slowly, very gently. I wrapped my arms around him and cried and cried and cried, until all the shame and misery had been cried away.

“W
HEN WE HAVE FINISHED WHAT
we must do in Edinburgh…” I said. We had slept for a while. The moonlight awakened me, and when I opened my eyes I found him awake as well. “When the queen is satisfied the yellow cockscomb represents the sum of all her dreams, and when the magistrate has pronounced my divorce…”

I stopped. Why, when I wanted to say it so much, was it the hardest thing I had ever tried to say?

He stroked my hair. “What?” he said.

“When all that is done, will you come back to Granmuir with me? Will you marry me in Saint Ninian’s Chapel by the sea, and live here with me and Màiri and Kitte forever?”

He lifted my hand and kissed my reddened countrywoman’s knuckles very lightly. I felt that kiss down to the marrow of my bones. My heart had been bleak and blank like a field of windflowers burned to the bare earth, and now new leaves, tiny ones, were thrusting up through the ashes like knives. It hurt. It made me wonder whether the new growth would be stunted and pale.

“With all my heart I will,” he said.

“I do not know if I can…feel for you…everything you want me to feel. What I felt for— What I felt when I was young.”

“And now you are so ancient,” he mocked gently. “It will not be the same,
ma mie
, and it should not be. We will find our own way.”

“And the court? The queen? The duchess in France? Are you willing to give it all up?”

“I must fulfill my vow,” he said. “In Edinburgh. When that is done— Are you certain you truly want to give it all up forever,
ma mie
? You are, after all, a French duke’s granddaughter and the lady of Granmuir. I have Duchess Antoinette at Joinville, and my estate at Clerac.”

“I would like to see it,” I said, surprising myself.

“In time, you may even wish to visit the courts again, both in
Scotland and in France. In time you may wish to visit your mother at Montmartre.”

I drew away a little. “I will never go to Montmartre,” I said. “Edinburgh, perhaps. Joinville and Clerac, perhaps. But not Montmartre.”

He stroked my hair back from my forehead. “Not Montmartre, then.”

“Visits,” I said. “Short ones. My father and mother lived at the court and visited Granmuir upon occasion. I would like to do just the opposite.”

He smiled. “We shall do just the opposite.”

In three more days he finished copying the book, and after that we all went down to Edinburgh.

“R
annoch Hamilton is in Edinburgh.”

The brush in Tante-Mar’s hand stopped halfway down the length of my hair. My mouth turned dry. I said, “Where did you hear that?”

Jennet came into the bedchamber, taking off her shawl. “In the High Street,” she said. “There’s clack about it everywhere. That Englishman Darnley, the Italian Riccio, the Frenchman Laurentin, and Rannoch Hamilton. The four of ’em are roistering together through the wineshops and whorehouses every night.”

“Are you sure, Jennet?” Tante-Mar said. She put the brush down and I knew what she was thinking—
We should not have brought the children
. “He was to have sent a proxy for the business of the divorce.”

“Didn’t see him myself, but stopped a couple of braw fellows and asked them—was it Rannoch Hamilton of Kinmeall they’d seen with all those foreigners? They said it was.”

I turned and looked at Tante-Mar. “Go,” I said. “Stay with Màiri and Kitte, and keep Wat and Gill with you. I am almost dressed—I can manage the rest myself, or Jennet can help me.”

We had arrived in Edinburgh the night before, in the midst of a great storm. Nico had immediately gone to the queen’s apartments; I did not expect to see him again until I myself was called to wait upon the queen as well. As much as it had struck us both to the heart, we had agreed: until the divorce between Rannoch Hamilton and me was handed down and both Màiri’s and Kitte’s wardships were safely and legally mine, we would not spend time together alone. Surely it would be no more than a few weeks. We would wait, however much we longed for each other, until we could properly and openly pledge ourselves.

The rest of us had crammed ourselves into the two rooms provided for us up under the roof of Holyrood, and before we could even get the children settled amidst the thunder and lightning, a lady came with a message from the queen commanding me to dine with her the next day. Thus this morning Tante-Mar was attempting to make me look presentable in an old gown and skirt of worn black velvet with a bodice and sleeves of black-and-white-striped satin. Thus this morning Jennet had gone out into the High Street to hear what the town had to say about Lord Darnley. She had come home with more than either of us had expected.

“Peelie-wallie you’re looking,” she said, once Tante-Mar had gone. “And thin as a bow-saw. That black does you no favors—you need some face paint.”

“I do not have any face paint,” I said. “The queen will simply have to take me as I am, peelie-wallie or no.”

She twisted my hair up inside an embroidered cap and thrust in a few pins. Over the cap she fastened a starched veil of white linen gauze forming the shape of a heart around my face and falling down over my shoulders and back.

“That high collar’s a blessing,” she said. “Covers up those scrawny neckbones. Now, don’t fret about the bairnies—we’ll keep them safe. I’ll walk with you over to the queen’s tower. You need to take care as well, Rinette.”

We walked downstairs, past the entrance and great antechamber
and through the queen’s lobby, and then upstairs again to the queen’s outer chamber in the northwest tower. On the last step she said, “Don’t fear. Master Nico will be there, and he’ll look out for you.” She kissed me firmly and went back down. The gentleman usher smiled at me and asked me my name. I hesitated, and then I told him firmly that I was Marina Leslie of Granmuir.

He announced me.

I took a deep breath. How many times had I been banished from the queen’s presence and then recalled? I should be accustomed to it by now. I held up my head and squared my shoulders and went in.

“Marianette!” the queen cried. We might have been eight years old again, in France, and best friends as we had been perhaps one day out of four. “Come in; come sit beside me.
Vite, vite, ma chère!
I wish to make you known to Lord Darnley.”

I walked toward her. She was, if anything, more vivid and alluring than ever; she was wrapped in silver tissue with pearls and diamonds, and her beautiful red-gold hair was braided with more pearls in the Italian fashion. There were so many familiar faces in the room—Mary Livingston and Mary Fleming, the Earl of Moray and the Earl of Rothes, the queen’s half sister the Countess of Argyll, and my dark-eyed, black-hearted nemesis Lady Margaret Erskine, as always watching for any opportunity to move her son a step closer to the crown. I was not surprised to see the Englishman Thomas Randolph, but I was surprised to see Blaise Laurentin in the train of the French ambassador, Monsieur Castelnau. Perhaps Laurentin’s wineshop friendship with Lord Darnley had made him welcome in the queen’s inner circle.

I could only thank Saint Ninian it did not seem to have done the same for Rannoch Hamilton.

With the queen at the high table lounged an elegant, long-legged, fair-haired man with the face of a Greek demigod, who was clearly already the worse for drink. On the other side of Lord Darnley sat the dark, monkeylike Piedmontese musician David Riccio, and next to Riccio, Nicolas de Clerac.

Nico smiled at me.

Fo
r a moment I felt as if I could not catch my breath. Then I steadied myself. It would never do to make my love obvious. The queen was rapt in her own love, I thought, and she would want it to be the only love in the world.

I sank into a deep curtsy. When I straightened I had collected myself.

“Good day to you, madame,” I said. “It is my pleasure to come into your presence again, after such a long absence.”

I did not say,
After being brutalized by the man you forced me to marry, and kept prisoner, and almost poisoned, and barely escaping with my life and the life of my precious daughter
.

“We shall see to it that you are not absent again,” the queen said, as lightly as if I had been away by my own choice. “Harry,
mon cher
, I present to you Marina Leslie of Granmuir. I have known her since I was a little girl in France, where I always called her Marianette. Marianette, this is Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, the son of the Earl of Lennox. He is my cousin, or I should say my half cousin—half cousin by marriage—it is a very distant relationship.”

She tilted her head and looked at Lord Darnley sidelong, her mouth curling in a sensuous little smile. He leaned toward her, his eyes half-closed, his own lips parting.

He was certainly not looking at me but I curtsied again. “It is my pleasure to make your acquaintance, my lord,” I murmured.

And what am I going to tell the queen about you, I thought, when I can feel strongly and clearly that, beautiful as you are, like the yellow cockscomb you will batten upon her and destroy her?

“We are deep in preparations for a wedding,” the queen said. “No, no, not my own, not yet, at least.” Another languishing look at Darnley. “And not yours, my Marianette, although Sieur Nico has hinted to me that once you are divorced, you will quickly become my own
cousine
.” Her eyes sparkled as she looked from me to Nico and back to me again. So much for my attempt to hide my feelings. Since she was in love, it apparently pleased her for the whole world to be in love.

Everyone looked at me. I saw Lady Margaret Erskine turn her head and whisper something to the Earl of Moray. Both of them were looking at Nico. Clearly the news that he was the queen’s own blood cousin through the Guises had not been universally well received. Nor had the news that he intended to marry me. Steadily I said, “Whose wedding, then, madame?”

“Livingston’s. She is marrying John Sempill of Beltrees on Shrove Tuesday, four days from today, and none too soon, I think.”

All the ladies cried out with mock indignation, Mary Livingston herself loudest of all. Young Master Sempill, who had danced so amusingly as Terpsichore in the masque of Apollo and the muses so long ago—could it be almost three years?—took his ladylove’s hands and pressed them to his heart.

“None too soon for me,” he said. “Although only because I love her so dearly.”

The ladies applauded him. Mary Livingston rewarded him with a kiss on the mouth. Three or four of the bolder gentlemen took that as a suggestion to kiss the ladies next to them, with or without invitation. There were high cries of laughter and one smart slap.

They were like children, playing at life as if it were nothing but a masque itself. Had any of them ever suffered or starved or cried or struggled through a ten-days’ ride in December cold? Had I ever been part of their golden world? I had, of course, but it felt as if it had been in another life. Even so, I went to Mary Livingston and embraced her. She had been my first friend at court, and I wished her well with all my heart.

“I am so happy the queen has invited me to return in time for your wedding,” I said. “I would have known, even if she had not told me—you are glowing with happiness.”

She embraced me in return and kissed me on both cheeks. “I am so happy indeed—thank you, my dear. You are just in time to be one of the wedding party—the queen has given me ells and ells of wonderful lady-blush satin for dresses, and hundreds of pearls, and silver
embroidery for headdresses. I will ask my seamstresses to send you enough for a new dress.”

“Thank you.” I leaned closer and whispered, “Tell me about Lord Darnley.”