So weakly a king aroused more pity than respect among his courtiers; among the common people, on the other hand, it was soon bruited abroad that he was smitten with leprosy and that he bathed in the blood of freshly killed children in the hope of regaining health. The peasants regarded the stricken lad menacingly when he went out riding. At court, those with an eye to the future were beginning to throng round Catherine de’ Medici and Charles, the next heir to the throne. Hands so weak as Francis’ could not long nor firmly grip the reins of power. Now and again, in stiff, awkward writing, the boy would pen his “François” at the foot of decrees, but the real rulers were the Guises, the kin of Mary Stuart, in place of one whose energies must be devoted to keeping his vital spark aglow as long as possible. Such a sick-room companionship, with its perpetual watchfulness over failing health, can scarcely be spoken of as a happy marriage, even if we suppose it to have been a marriage in any true sense of the term. Yet there is nothing to justify the supposition that the union of these youngsters was an unhappy one, for even at this malicious court where gossip was rife, at this court where every amourette was recorded by Brantôme in his Vie des dames galantes, no suspicion seems to have been aroused by Mary Stuart’s behaviour. Long before they were dragged to the altar, Francis of Valois and Mary Stuart had been playmates, and it seems unlikely that the erotic element can have had much part in their companionship after the wedding. Years were still to pass before there was to develop in Mary Queen of Scots the capacity for passionate self-surrender to a lover, and Francis, an ailing boy, was not the type of male to arouse the passion hidden so deep in the enigmatic nature of his wife. Tenderness and clemency of character prompted Mary to care for her husband to the best of her ability. Even if she had not been moved to this by feeling, her reason would have informed her that power and position depended upon the breathing and the heartbeats of this poor, sick body, to safeguard which would be to defend her own happiness. But for real happiness, during her brief span of queenship in France, there was no scope. The storms aroused by the Huguenot movement were causing widespread agitation. After the conspiracy of Amboise, in which the royal pair were personally endangered, Mary had to pay one of the painful tributes called for by her position as ruler. She had to witness the execution of the rebels, and we may well suppose that the sight was deeply graven in her memory, forgotten then, maybe, for decades, to leap back again into vivid reality when the hour of her own doom struck. Now she watched the awesome sight of a human being, hands tied behind the back, kneeling with head on the block and awaiting the fall of the executioner’s axe. She heard for the first time the curiously muffled and dull tone of steel that severs living flesh, she saw the blood squirt, and the head rolling away from the body into the sand. A picture gruesome enough to blot out from the remembrance of a sensitive soul the splendid scenes so recently enacted at Rheims when her young head was crowned.

Now evil tidings followed quickly one upon the other. Mary’s mother, Mary of Guise, who had been acting as regent in Scotland during her daughter’s minority, had reached her end and, surrounded by enemies, breathed her last in June 1560. She left the country embroiled in religious strife and in full rebellion, with war raging along the border and English armies occupying the Lowlands. Mary Stuart had to exchange her festal attire for mourning. For the time being she was to hear no more music; her feet were for a while no longer to tread the mazes of the dance. Then Death’s bony knuckle came knocking at the door of her hearth and home. Francis II grew weaker and weaker; the envenomed blood usually flowing so sluggishly through his veins now beat a tattoo in his temples and his ears. No more could he even walk or ride, but had to be carried in a litter from place to place. At length the gathering pus burst the eardrum; but it was too late, for the inflammation had already spread inwards to the brain, and the sufferer was beyond reach of medical aid. His heart ceased to beat on 6th December 1560.

Once more a tragical scene between two women was played to the finish beside this second deathbed. Hardly was the breath out of Francis’ frail body when Mary Stuart, no longer Queen of France, had to yield precedence to Catherine de’ Medici; the younger of the royal widows had to draw back at the door in order to allow the elder one to go first. Mary was no longer the first lady in the realm, but again, as before, the second. One short year sufficed to bring Mary Stuart’s dream to an end.