Marie And Mary

by Nigel Tranter

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Marie de Guise ruled Scotland alone after the death of her husband James V. She foiled Henry Tudor of England's plans to marry her baby daughter to his son Edward and unite the two thrones under English rule by sending young Mary to France. She kept the peace between Protestants and Catholics while John Knox was becoming a fiery power in the land. Beautiful, lively and clever, Mary, Queen of Scots was welcomed back to the country of her birth after her mother died. But her troubles mounted with her disastrous marriages to Lord Darnley and to Lord Bothwell after Darnley's murder. In spite of numerous plots against her, and even after her little son James was crowned king, she always believed that Elizabeth I of England would help her. Trustingly, she set off for England - and her tragic fate.

Release date: December 8, 2011

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 224

Sample

Principal Characters

In order of appearance

Marie de Guise: Sister of the Duke of Guise of France.

Claude, Duke of Guise: Eldest brother of above.

Charles of Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine: Younger brother.

François d’ Orléans, Duke of Longueville: Kinsman of the royal house of France.

François, or Francis: Child of the duke and Marie; duke in his turn.

King James the Fifth: King of Scots.

Sir Andrew Wood of Largo: Admiral of Scotland.

Lord Maxwell: Powerful Scots Borders noble.

Elizabeth: Wife of Sir Andrew Wood.

Cardinal David Beaton: Archbishop of St Andrews.

James Stewart, Duke of Rothesay: Infant of Marie and the king.

Oliver Sinclair: Young laird of Whitekirk, in East Lothian.

Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk: Great Marshal of England.

Mary Queen of Scots: Child of Marie de Guise.

James Hamilton, Earl of Arran: Great Scots noble, with royal links.

James Douglas, Earl of Angus: Lieutenant-General of Scotland.

Henry the Eighth: Tudor King of England.

Sir David Lindsay of the Mount: Lord Lyon King of Arms, in Scotland.

Mary Fleming: Daughter of the Lord Fleming. One of the queen's Marys.

John Knox: Protestant divine.

Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford: Regent in England.

Archibald Campbell, Earl of Argyll: Great Scots noble. Vice-Chancellor.

George Gordon, Earl of Huntly: Chancellor of Scotland.

John MacDonald of Moidart: Powerful Highland chief, known as Clanranald.

Andrew Wood, Younger of Largo: son of above.

Sir Ralph Sadler: English envoy.

D'Oysel: French envoy.

Henry Sinclair: Dean of Glasgow.

Lord Home: Powerful Borders noble. Warden of the East March.

Sir William Maitland of Lethington: Scottish Secretary of State.

Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange: Noted soldier.

Catherine de Medici: Queen of France.

Elizabeth Tudor: Queen of England. Daughter of Henry the Eighth.

William Cecil, Lord Burghley: English statesman.

Erskine of Dun: Strong Protestant laird.

James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell: Powerful Scots noble. Lord High Admiral.

James Stewart, Earl of Moray: Illegitimate son of James the Fifth.

Sir John Gordon: Second son of the Earl of Huntly.

Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley: Eldest son of the Earl of Lennox.

David Rizzio: Italian musician and poet at the Scottish court.

Sir Thomas Kerr of Ferniehirst: Borders magnate.

Lord Borthwick: Powerful Scottish noble.

James Stewart, Duke of Rothesay: Infant son of the queen. Later James the Sixth.

Lord Seton: Lothians noble. Father of one of the Marys.

Will Douglas: Son of the Keeper of Loch Leven Castle.

Lord Claud Hamilton: Son of the Duke of Chatelherault.

John Maxwell, Lord Herries: West March magnate.

Lord Knollys: English noble.

Elizabeth, Lady Cavendish: Wife of Sir William. Known as Bess of Hardwicke.

Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex: Favourite of Queen Elizabeth of England.

Sir Amyas Paulet: English courtier.

Sir Francis Walsingham: English Secretary of State.

The young woman looked at her two elder brothers, exasperated. “Why Longueville?” she demanded. “He is old enough to be my father. He has had two wives already. No children by either, both dying in childbirth. Is that a good recommendation for me? And Longue is far away, far beyond Paris. When I marry, I would choose my own husband!”

“We know of your interest in young D'Arcis,” her eldest brother said. “But such as he is not for the likes of you. Longueville is a duke and related to the royal house, a D'Orléans. It would be a suitable match for a Guise. And you, Marie, I would remind you, are not in a position to decide who you would wed.”

“I am nineteen!” she asserted. “Not to be married off to whom you choose, Claude!”

“You will do as we say,” the Duke of Guise told her. “Longueville it is. We have discussed it well, and so chosen.”

“He is none so ill,” the other brother, Charles, said. “Our two dukedoms, allied, will serve France well, and King Francis. Be not so stubborn, Marie. We know what is best.”

“What do you, a churchman, know about marriage? A cardinal you may be, but that does not make you understand women and their feelings and wishes, does it?”

Marie de Guise was a comely, well-built creature, tall,

fair, pleasingly rounded, characterful, and knowing her own mind. Her younger brothers were well aware of this, all seven of them, and heedful not unduly to cross her, although she was warm-hearted and nowise exacting in manner. She had run this household of Châteaudun since their mother had died four years before, quite a responsibility for a fifteen-year-old. But these two elder ones, Claude, Duke of Guise, and Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, used to rule and governance in state and Church, were concerned to maintain their authority, the Guises being one of the greatest families of all France.

“Longueville and Guise will make a worthy alliance,” Claude declared. “He is agreeable . . .”

“Agreeable to marry, perhaps; but not agreeable as a husband for me! Have I no say in the matter?”

“You will find him well enough, girl. You met him, three years ago, is it? Before his last wife died. We have spoken with him, at Paris. He will come here and take you in marriage in due course. It is arranged. Say you no more about it.”

And that was that. The dukedoms of France were apt to be associated thus. Marie shook her fair head, but recognised that she would probably have to make the best of it, whatever her feelings towards Charles D'Arcis. Such was life.

François d'Orléans, Duke of Longueville, duly arrived at Châteaudun a couple of weeks later, having had to ride a long way with his escort of men for Longue was fully three hundred miles to the south-west, in the Loire valley, with Paris in between. He was a large and massive man, with a shock of greying hair and beard and a masterful manner. Marie recognised that he was sizing her up with entirely evident calculation, and, she later complained to her

younger brothers, almost as though she had been a cow at a market, assessing her shape and lineaments, so that she felt that perhaps she ought to turn around on her heels and display her rear view also for inspection. He seemed to be the sort of man who would put a large value on physical matters and proportions. At least he made no complaints at what he saw; she almost wished that he would do so, for she was less than enamoured of him, and would have rather welcomed rejection. He had hot eyes under those bristling eyebrows. He had viewed her before, but that was while she was still not fully of womanly maturity. Distinctly physically basic as he might be, it did occur to her to wonder why both his wives had died in childbirth. That was a somewhat worrying thought. Could she use this as a means of persuading her brothers that becoming the third Duchess of Longueville might not be advantageous?

She had to act hostess to the man, and would no doubt be judged on that front also.

When it came for his departure, however, all seemed to have been arranged, she not being consulted. He announced that they would wed in six weeks’ time, at Notre-Dame in Paris, as more convenient for his family and friends than having to come to the châteaux area. This evidently was his attitude to life.

The six weeks passed all too swiftly for Marie. Then it was Paris for her and her brothers.

François had brought surprisingly few family and friends to the wedding – or perhaps these were just getting tired of attending such. Or it might be that he had not invited them, possibly in short supply anyway. The Guises and their friends greatly outnumbered the rest.

Marie kept reminding herself that weddings were

supposed to be joyful occasions – which was not in any way what she felt.

The ceremony and feasting over, the bridegroom announced to her that he had a town-house near the church of St Eustache. Thence they were bound, without delay.

Indeed, bride and groom were barely inside the premises when Frangois grasped Marie, all but lifting her off her feet, well-built as she was, and pushed her, past the staring servants, up to a bedchamber on the first floor, where he planted her on the bed and began to drag off her fine clothing, careless as to what might tear, this with no spoken accompaniment but with grunts and heavy breathing, whatever her protests. Near naked as no matter, he flung himself upon her. Devastated, she found herself being raped by this huge man, large in all ways.

It became, for her, a chaos of affright, distress and pain, as she was crushed down under his weight and his heaving, panting person. Gasping for breath, she sought to shut off her mind from what was happening, this less than successfully. And she was now married to this!

It did not go on for very long – not this first time, at any rate. He rolled off her, and was snoring in moments. She lay there, eyes shut, wishing that her mind and consciousness were shut also, hating the feeling and awareness of her own body.

She must have drifted off to sleep of a sort, despite her revulsion, when she was rudely awakened by the man clambering over her once more. Was he not satisfied? Apparently not.

This time it took longer, and was the worse, more heaving and thrusting and panting. So this was being Duchess of Longueville!

The man further used her before he lay back, and his breathing became more regular. Dare she hope . . . ?

So commenced Marie's life with François d'Orléans, if life it could be called. She had come to loathe the man, and all to do with him, and she reproved herself for so feeling; after all, had she not sworn marriage vows? Fortunately he was often away, for he had many estates, and visited them frequently – and blessedly saw no need to take her with him. No doubt he had other women available at them all.

It was only a few months before she realised that she was pregnant. So she was to become mother as well as wife. When she told him, he said that he wanted no more deaths in childbirth, and that it had better be a son. His dukedom needed an heir. But her condition did not stop him using her. That was the way it was, love and caring not involved. She just had to put up with him.

The weeks passed, Marie a tested young woman.

More testing when it came to her time for delivery. As first births go, it was perhaps not a difficult one, but it was no physically enjoyable event nevertheless, as she laboured for those hours. But when at last she looked down on the little round face and blue eyes which the midwife presented to her, she knew a surge of sheerest joy. Here, at last, someone to love and be loved by, her own, her very own, part of her yet a completely new creature; admittedly François's son, but somehow so utterly different and distinct from that great bear of a man that she could not associate him with the father. She would call him, not François, as no doubt the father would demand, but Francis. She whispered to herself that she had produced love personified.

Her husband welcomed an heir, however many bastards

he had fathered. He commanded celebrations and rejoicings on a great scale throughout the dukedom, bonfires to be lit, feasting to be held, and the infant to be taken all round the estates and paraded for tributes to be paid, Marie being more or less ignored, the child his, her part in it all scarcely recognised. Indeed he dispensed with her company on many of these demonstrations, wetnurses adequate for the occasion as attendants.

The baby did much travelling in the weeks after his birth, carried in a kind of cradle slung between two pack-horses, for the Longueville properties were far-flung. And it so happened that from one of the most distant of these, only little Francis and his women carers came home to the unwanted Marie. The duke, careering over rocky ground in proud fashion, had been thrown from his horse as it stumbled and, crashing on a boulder, broke his neck.

The infant who was brought back to his mother was now Duke of Longueville.

Marie, now a widow in her twenty-second year, was less than stricken by mourning. Scarcely able to comprehend her situation fully, she fairly quickly removed herself from Longue, with her baby, to head home for the Guise house of Châteaudun and her brothers’ company, a free woman.

In time she was able to put the nightmare of her marriage behind her, choosing not even to call herself Duchess of Longueville, although proud for little Francis to be called duke. She took over the running of the castle once again, as she had done since her mother's death; and soon it became as though those intervening years had never been. Francis was her joy. The family looked after the Longueville dukedom for her and their nephew, taking it in turns to reside on the various distant estates, these a

source of great wealth. As well that she had so many brothers.

Life became acceptable and fulfilling.

Charles of Guise, the cardinal, took an especial interest in young Francis. Indeed he almost bewailed the fact that the infant was already a duke, or he would have sought to make another churchman out of him.

The Guise family frequently attended the royal court at Paris; and it was on one such occasion, when indeed they had been specially invited, that they met the King of Scots, James the Fifth, this at the town-palace of the Duke of Vendôme, a Bourbon, kin to King Francis. He had come to wed Marie de Bourbon, the duke's daughter; and great was the company gathered to celebrate the marriage.

But the Scots monarch, a good-looking, gallant and lively young man, was causing some concern to his hosts. For despite the proposed bride's evident approval of him, he was proving to be much more interested in the Princess Madeleine, the sixteen-year-old daughter of King Francis, very beautiful but delicately frail. The chosen Bourbon bride was manifestly upset by this. Marie de Guise and her brothers were intrigued by the situation, although King Francis clearly was not.

What went on thereafter between the two monarchs was unclear. But it presently became evident that King James was a man of determination, and not only knew his own mind but intended to have his own way. Poor Marie de Bourbon was rejected and dejected. Young Madeleine's father was requested to let her become the Queen of Scotland.

In the circumstances King Francis more or less had to concede.

So the marriage took place, after only a short interval, in the great cathedral of Notre-Dame, but not with the

originally suggested bride, in the presence of two other monarchs, the Kings of France and Navarre, and no fewer than seven cardinals.

Marie de Guise commiserated with her Bourbon namesake, but was sufficiently romantically minded to recognise love at first sight. She liked James Stewart, and hoped that he would make a good husband to Madeleine.

Along with a great and distinguished company they saw the newly-weds board the Scots vessel, the Yellow Caravel, a handsome ship commanded by the Scots Admiral Sir Andrew Wood. It all made a dramatic and memorable occasion.

They heard in due course that the new queen had been warmly received in Scotland, especially when it was known that on landing at Leith, the port of Edinburgh, the capital, she had knelt on the ground and kissed the Scots soil, . . .