in her movements that it was as if spring itself had suddenly emerged to cast away the darkness of winter.
She was dressed in white with touches of black and yet the purity of the colour only served to show the whiteness of her skin.
‘She is like a camellia,’ Sheena thought, surprised at her own sense of poetry.
The lady in black and white sank to the ground before the King.
“Forgive me, Sire, if I am late.”
He bent forward to raise her hand to his lips.
“You already know that every hour you are away from me seems just like Eternity,” he murmured.
Only those nearest to him could hear what he said, but everyone could see the adoration in his eyes, the pleading of his lips and the change that had come over him since the opening of the door.
Still holding the hand he had kissed with his lips he turned towards Sheena.
“Mistress McCraggan has arrived,” he announced. “She has had a rough voyage, but she is young enough to survive it.”
The beautiful woman smiled at Sheena, a smile so warm and so embracing, that Sheena felt some of the tension go from her.
“We are so glad you are here, Mistress McCraggan,” the lady said and then, as Sheena curtseyed, she added, “The little Queen has been looking forward to seeing you. It will be nice for her to have news of Scotland and her people who must miss her sorely.”
She could have said nothing that would have gone straighter to Sheena’s heart.
“Indeed, madame, in Scotland our thoughts are only of the time when the Queen will return to us.”
“That is how it should be,” the King said a little ponderously. “And so now, Mistress McCraggan, the Duchesse de Valentinois will take you to your mistress.”
Sheena felt herself stiffen.
So this was Diane de Poitiers, Duchesse de Valentinois, the Grande Sénéchale, who had bewitched the King and seduced him so that he had eyes for no one else.
She had known, she thought, the moment that the Duchesse had entered the room, but somehow she had been so bemused, so taken aback by her beauty and her charm, that she had for a moment forgotten the scandal and the gossip, the spite and the condemnation, that she had listened to in Scotland about this very woman.
She had thought somehow that she would never see her. That the King would keep her in some secret place where only he visited her.
“The Queen has been in my charge,” the Duchesse was saying quietly. “I have been supervising her education and Her Majesty is a very promising pupil. You will be surprised at how talented she is and how quickly her education has progressed in the last few years.”
Sheena found herself unable to answer. What would her father and the other Statesmen say if they knew? To be brought up by a courtesan, by a woman they had all declaimed as a prostitute and lower than those who followed in the wake of the Army or who paraded the dark streets of Edinburgh at night.
Diane de Poitiers! A witch they had all called her. And yet now with most incredible graciousness, she was leading the way down the corridors of The Palace.
‘Heaven knows,’ Sheena thought to herself, ‘what the little Queen has been taught under such auspices.’
Had Her Majesty’s education been one of witchcraft and guile, of how to blind a man’s eyes so that he would forget his duty and his honour simply so that he could receive a smile from those red lips?
“You must be very tired after your journey,” the Duchesse was saying and it seemed to Sheena that her voice was almost hypnotic it was so easy to be deceived by it.
“I have had a room prepared for you near to that of your Queen. You will have much to talk about in the next few days and after you have met I suggest that you go upstairs and have a sleep. If you are not overly tired, we shall welcome you at dinner. There will be dancing afterwards, but if you prefer to do so, sleep until morning and start the day fresh.”
“I have no need of rest,” Sheena replied grimly.
Already she was beginning to see the magnitude of the task ahead of her. How could she on her own undo the harm that must have been done to the little Queen by this evil woman?
Perhaps she had been kept shut up with her alone, having no one decent and respectable around her to whom she could turn to learn the truth or to weigh in the balance all the wrong and twisted things they were putting before her under the guise of ‘education’.
“Your Queen is extremely busy at the moment,” the Duchesse was saying. “She has been learning her part for the play she and the Royal children are to act before the King next week. It will be a very gay evening. Perhaps you will be able to help with the final details.”
Sheena felt herself shiver. Play-acting! What would her father say to that? She could see his hands raised in horror, hear the anger in his voice if she told him that Mary Stuart was to strut the boards and to perform as if she was a common actress. The audience might consist of a King and his Court, but the wrong was still there.
They had reached the end of a passage hung with wonderful pictures and carpeted so that it seemed as if one’s feet walked on velvet. They turned and another great corridor lay ahead of them.
“This part of The Palace,” the Duchesse was saying, “is given over to the Royal children. Some of them are very young, as you may well know, but the Dauphin and Queen Mary are almost the same age and they have many interests in common. There are other companions for your Queen as well. Thirty-seven children of the Nobility of our land share her studies and her sports.”
“Thirty-seven!”
Sheena repeated the words in absolute astonishment.
The Duchesse smiled her beautiful glorious smile, which revealed the whiteness of her teeth and made her exquisite eyes twinkle a little.
“Yes, thirty-seven. I hope you did not think we left our little Scottish visitor without any interests or amusements.”
“No – no, of course not,” Sheena stammered.
“At first her four little friends, the four Marys who came with her from Scotland, were sent away, but only so that she should learn French. It is very difficult to learn any language when one is talking one’s own all the time. But now they are constantly with her, although just at the moment they are still in the country for a special rout that they had promised to attend some time ago. Only Mary Stuart has come back to Paris especially to greet you.”
“That is most gracious of her,” Sheena said quickly.
“And here I think we shall find her,” the Duchesse smiled.
The door she indicated was flung open for them by a footman resplendent in gold lace and Sheena eagerly followed the Duchesse into the room.
It seemed to her that all this had been a wearisome preparation for the moment when she would see her own Queen and when she would start on the work she had come to do
