To the despair of the English spies the child suddenly vanished from Stirling Castle. None, not even those in the Queen Mother’s confidence, knew whither Mary had been spirited away. The hiding place was admirably chosen. One night, in the custody of a trustworthy servant, the girl had been smuggled into the Priory of Inchmahome. This is situated on a speck of an island in the Lake of Menteith, “dans le pays des sauvages”—in the land of the savages—as the French envoy reports, very remote from the world of men. Not even a path led to this romantic spot. The precious freight was conveyed to its destination in a boat. Here the child dwelt, hidden and removed from the turmoil of events, while over lands and seas diplomacy continued to weave the tissue of her fate.

Meanwhile France had entered the lists, menacing and determined, resolved that Scotland should not become subject to England. Henry II, son of Francis I, sent a strong fleet to the northern realm and, through the lieutenant-general of the auxiliary army, sued the hand of Mary Stuart for his young son and heir, Francis. In a night-time, Mary’s destiny changed its course owing to the set of the political wind which swept in mighty war-engendering gusts over the Channel. Instead of becoming Queen of England the little daughter of the House of Stuart was now fated to become Queen of France. Hardly had the new and advantageous bargain been struck when, on 7th August 1548, the costly merchandise (Mary was then five years and eight months old) was shipped from Dumbarton for a French port. Once more she had been sold to an unknown bridegroom, and committed to a marriage which might have lasted for decades. Again, and not for the last time, alien hands were moulding her destiny.

Trustfulness is a distinctive quality of childhood. What does a toddler of two, three, or even four years old know of war and of peace, of battles and of treaties? What can such words as England or France, Edward or Francis, mean to it? A fair-haired girl ran gleefully in and out of the dark or the brightly lit rooms of a palace, with four other girls of the same age at her heels. A charming thought had been allowed to blossom in the bleak atmosphere of a barbaric age. From the earliest days of her life Mary Stuart had been given four companions, all of them born at the same time as herself, chosen from among the most distinguished Scottish families, the lucky cloverleaf of the four Marys: Mary Fleming, Mary Beaton, Mary Livingstone and Mary Seton. In early years these namesakes of the Queen were her gay playmates; later they were her classmates in a foreign land so that she did not feel her novel surroundings to be unbearably strange; still later they were to become her maids of honour. In a moment of unusual affection, they took a vow not to enter the married state before Mary herself had found a spouse. Even after three of them had forsaken the Queen in the days when misfortune befell her, the fourth of the Marys followed her mistress, clave to her in adversity, shared in her exile and her prisons, waited upon her when she died on the scaffold, and never left her until her body had been consigned to the grave. Thus, to the very end of her life, Mary was accompanied by a touch of childhood. But at the time she sailed for France as a small child, these sad and darkened days lay far ahead.

At Holyrood or at Stirling, the palace and the castle rang with peals of laughter and the patter of small feet, as the five Marys ran from room to room, untiringly, from morning till nightfall. Little did they care for high estate, for dignities, for kingdoms; nothing did they know of the pride and danger encompassing a crown. One night, Mary the Queen was roused from her baby sleep, lifted from her crib; a boat was waiting in readiness on a lake that was hardly bigger than a pond; someone rowed her across, and they landed on an island. How quiet and pleasant the place! Inchmahome, the isle of peace. Strange men stooped to welcome her; some of these men were robed more like women, and had peaked hoods to their black gowns. They were gentle and kind, they sang beautifully in a high-ceilinged hall with stained-glass windows. Mary soon grew accustomed to her new home. But all too soon another evening came when once more she was taken in a boat across the waters. Fate had decreed that Mary Stuart was constantly to be making such night flittings from one destiny to another.