but also from the poverty which stalked the land, taking more toll of helpless children and weakened women than were ever killed in battle?
“I expect you can ride,” Mary Stuart was chattering on. “We must persuade the King to lend you one of his horses. The stables at the Château des Tournes are filled with the most magnificent horseflesh you have ever seen.”
Sheena murmured something.
“His Majesty says that I can ride as well as I dance,” the young Queen boasted. “I saw the Queen flush with anger when he said it. She is so jealous that she cannot bear him to pay anyone a compliment.”
“Perhaps Her Majesty has reason for her jealousy,” Sheena suggested quietly.
“Oh, nobody bothers about her, Mary Stuart exclaimed. “She is très ennuyeuse and when she sends for me I always try to make an excuse not to visit her. It is not always easy because Madame La Duchesse insists that I behave with the utmost courtesy to Her Majesty.”
“The Duchesse de Valentinois is right – ” Sheena began and then realised that she was siding with the woman whom she thought of as a natural enemy.
This moment of bewilderment was repeated again and again before she had left Mary Stuart to find her bedchamber and Maggie unpacking for her.
“Have you seen Her wee Majesty?” Maggie enquired eagerly as she entered the room.
Sheena nodded.
“I have, indeed,” she answered. “She is very lovely, Maggie, but she is no longer a child. We are not needed here.”
“Ah, now, Mistress Sheena, dinna you go makin’ up your mind aboot somethin’ like that within the first moment of your crossin’ the threshold. “’Tis not likely that our Queen, after bein’ in exile all these years, will not have learned to hide her true feelings and so not to go about wearin’ her heart upon her sleeve. How is she to know at the first sight of you whether you be friend or foe? And the Lord knows there’s enough of both in Scotland!”
“At least she knows I have come as a friend,” Sheena pointed out.
“There’s friends and friends,” Maggie muttered darkly. “Dinna forget there are those in Scotland who have fought against her mother, poor blessed lady. Do you no suppose that she is aware that they will be ready to fight against her again when the time comes?”
“Yes, you are right!” Sheena exclaimed in tones of relief. “Perhaps it will seem simpler and plainer tomorrow. Now I am in such a daze that I don’t know what I do think.”
“Of course you dinna,” Maggie answered stoutly.
It was then that without any warning Sheena found the tears running down her cheeks. It had been a long voyage, it had been unnerving to arrive at Brest to find that there was no one there to meet her. Her encounter with the Duc, the elegance of her escort and the knowledge of her own insignificance and badly dressed appearance had all culminated in the shock of finding the little Queen she had come to instruct was not a helpless homesick child.
She had thought to find Her Majesty lost and bewildered in the corrupt Court – instead she had discovered a poised and elegant young woman seemingly far older than herself, well educated, exquisitely mannered and already more au fait with the world and its affairs than Sheena could ever hope to be.
This was all too much to be borne and, hiding her face on Maggie’s broad shoulder, she sobbed,
“Let’s go home. We are not wanted here, Maggie. Let’s go home.”
“Now dinna fuss yoursel,” Maggie said soothingly.
She held Sheena close and then, when the tempest of her tears abated a little, fetched her a drink of water and with it a draught of what Maggie called her ‘soothing medicine’.
She had no sooner drunk it than she started to feel unconscionably sleepy.
She tried to protest but Maggie took her clothes from her and helped her into bed.
“I must dress and go down to dinner,” she murmured. “They will be expecting me.”
“There’s plenty of time for that on the morrow,” Maggie said quietly.
The sheets smelt of lavender and were warm from the warming pan. Her tired body sank low in the goose feather mattress.
“I will get up in five minutes,” she tried to say to Maggie, but before the words were past her lips she was asleep.
Maggie found a chambermaid and told her to carry a message to the young Queen that Sheena was indisposed after the long journey and would not be able to come down to dinner that night.
The chambermaid then promised to deliver it to a footman and Maggie, having seen that Sheena was asleep, drew the curtains quietly and went to her own room.
*
Sheena woke with a start feeling that something was wrong.
The room was in darkness, the fire had burned low and she guessed that it must be in the early hours of the morning. She felt conscience-stricken that she should have failed in her new position so soon and so quickly after her arrival. but it was too late now to do anything about it and she knew that the wisest thing she could do would be to go back to sleep.
But this was the one thing that seemed impossible. Instead she began to toss and turn. Scraps of conversation came back to her, the expression on Mary Stuart’s face when she had spoken of Scotland and the tone of contempt that it seemed to her had been in the Duc’s voice as he told the Duchesse de Valentinois to provide her with some clothes.
“I should never have come,” she said forlornly to the darkness and felt her heart ache because of the blindness of those scores of devoted men in Scotland, plotting and planning and worrying over their young Queen, quite unaware that she was a very different being from the baby they had seen carried aboard the ship that had taken her to the safety of France.
‘How can I ever tell them? How can I make them understand?’ Sheena asked herself.
She must have dozed a little.
When she opened her eyes again, the light was coming in through the curtains. It was the pale, faint, golden light of dawn and, because she felt stifled by the comfort of her feather bed and over-soft pillows, she rose and crossed the room to throw wide the long windows, which reached to the floor.
She found herself looking out over the courtyard beyond which were the gardens of The Palace. There was the sound of horses’ hoofs below and Sheena craned her head forward.
A magnificent white stallion was being led into the courtyard. The embroidered reins and velvet-covered saddle made her guess that it belonged to someone of importance.
Did the King rise at such an early hour? she wondered and guessed by the light on the horizon that it was not yet six o’clock.
Then down the steps below her she saw a figure that she recognised.
It was the Duchesse de Valentinois. She heard her voice, low, musical and wishing the grooms good morning and saying a word of greeting to the horse itself. Then she
