On this occasion she awoke to find herself on a ship with high masts and milk-white sails, surrounded by unknown, rugged soldiers and hirsute sailors. What need was there for Mary to be frightened? Everyone aboard was kind and friendly to her; her seventeen-year-old half-brother James was gently stroking her silky hair. This youngster was one of her father’s innumerable bastards, born in the decade before he married Mary of Guise. There, too, were the four Marys, her beloved playfellows. Delighted and happy in their novel environment, the five little girls frolicked about the vessel, dodging in and out among the cannons of the French man-of-war, laughing madly and joyously. Above these innocents, at the mast-head, was a man whose vigilance never relaxed. Anxiously he spied in every direction, for he knew that the English fleet was cruising about in those waters and only awaited an auspicious moment to pounce upon the precious freight and make her England’s Queen before she had been given a chance to become Queen of France. But what should she know of crowns and the ways of men, of trouble and danger, of England and France? The seas were blue, the people around her were amiable and strong, and the great vessel swam onward like some huge bird, speeding over the waves.
On 13th August, the galleon dropped anchor in the small harbour of Roscoff near Brest. A boat was lowered, and conveyed the Queen to the landing place. Enchanted with her voyage by land and by sea, Mary sprang lightheartedly from the gangway onto French soil. She was not yet six years old; but with this landing, the Queen of Scotland left her childhood behind.
Chapter Two
(1548–59)
THE FRENCH COURT EXCELLED in the courtly accomplishments of the day, and was practised in the mysterious science of etiquette. Henry II, a prince of the House of Valois, knew what was proper to the reception of a dauphin’s bride. Before her arrival he issued a decree that “la reinette”, the little Queen of Scotland, was to be welcomed by every town and village through which she might pass with as much ceremony as if she had been his own daughter. In Nantes, therefore, Mary Stuart was received with almost overwhelming pomp. At the street corners there had been erected galleries adorned with classical emblems, goddesses, nymphs and sirens; to put the escort in a good humour, barrels of costly wine were broached; salvos of artillery and a firework display greeted the newcomer; furthermore, a Lilliputian bodyguard had been enrolled, consisting of one hundred and fifty youngsters under eight years of age, dressed in white uniforms, and marching in front of the child Queen, playing drums and fifes, armed with miniature pikes and halberds, shouting acclamations. Everywhere the same sort of reception had been prepared, so that it was through an uninterrupted series of festivities that Mary at length reached Saint-Germain. There she, not yet six years of age, had the first glimpse of her husband-to-be, four and a half years old, weakly, pale, rachitic, a boy whose poisoned blood foredoomed him to illness and premature death, and who now greeted his “bride” shyly. All the heartier, however, was the welcome accorded her by the other members of the royal family, who were greatly impressed by her youthful charm; and Henry II described her enthusiastically in a letter as “la plus parfayt enfant que je vys jamès”—the most perfect child I have ever seen.
At that time, the French court was one of the most resplendent in the world. A gleam of dying chivalry illumined this transitional generation, which belonged in a certain measure to the gloomier period of the Middle Ages. Hardihood and courage were still displayed in the chase, in tilting at the ring, and in tourneys; the old harsh and virile spirit was manifested in adventure and in war; but more spiritual outlooks had already come into their own amid the ruling circles, and humanistic culture, which had before conquered the cloisters and the universities, was now supreme in the palaces of kings. From Italy the papal love of display, the joie de vivre of the Renaissance (a joy that was both mental and physical) and delight in the fine arts had made their triumphal entry into France; the result being, at this juncture, an almost unique welding of strength with beauty, of high spirits with recklessness—the supreme faculty of having no fear of death while loving life with the full passion of the senses. More naturally and more easily than anywhere else temperament was, among the French, associated with frivolity, Gallic chevalerie being extraordinarily akin to the classical culture of the Renaissance. It was expected of a French nobleman that he should be equally competent in full panoply to charge his adversary in the lists, and gracefully and correctly to tread the mazes of the dance; he must at one and the same time be a past master of the science of war, and proficient in the manners and practices of courts. The hand which could wield the broadsword in a life-or-death struggle must be able to strum the lute tunefully and to indite sonnets to a fair mistress. To be simultaneously strong and tender, rough and cultured, skilled in battle and skilled in the fine arts, was the ideal of the time. In the daylight hours, the King and his nobles, attended by a pack of baying hounds, hunted the stag or the boar, while spears were broken and lances splintered; but when night fell there assembled in the halls of the splendidly renovated palaces of the Louvre or of Saint-Germain, of Blois or Amboise, lords and ladies eager to participate in witty conversation. Poems were read aloud, musical instruments were played, madrigals were sung, and in masques the spirit of classical literature was revived. The presence of numerous lovely and tastefully dressed women, the work of such poets and painters as Ronsard, du Bellay and Clouet gave the French royal court a colour and a verve which found lavish expression in every form of art and of life. As elsewhere in Europe before the unhappy outbreak of the wars of religion, in the France of that epoch a wonderful surge of civilisation was in progress.
One who was to live at such a court, and above all one who might be expected in due time to rule there, must become adapted to the new cultural demands. He must strive to perfect himself in the arts and sciences, must develop his mind no less carefully than his body.
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