Mary Queen of Scotland & the Isles Read Online Free PDF Page A

cliques, and codes. They kept pets and played at cards, telling fortunes; they tattled on each other and swore eternal friendship the next day. The ninth, James Stewart, presided over their little world with fifteen-year-old solemnity, suspended midway between the world of the adults and that of the children, fully belonging to neither. Both sides turned to him for advice about the other.
     
    Mary was only six months old when she came to live at Stirling, and the whole world was contained in that mountaintop fortress for her. She was crowned there; she took her first tottering steps there; her tutors taught her her earliest lessons there in the antechamber off the Queen's apartments. When she was only three, she was presented with a tiny pony from the islands in the farthest north of Scotland, and so she first learned to ride there. Lusty, of course, took to the ponies as quickly as she, whereas Seton and Beaton preferred quieter, indoor pastimes. Flamina could ride well enough, but she preferred human adventures to animal ones.
     
    Mary looked up to James, and followed him about eagerly. When she was very small, she clung to him and pestered him to play with her. As she grew older, she came to realize that he disliked being handled and touched,
     
    and that such behaviour had the very opposite effect on him. If she wished him to pay attention to her, she had to look the other way and talk to others. Then curiosity would draw him.
     
    One day, when she was nearly four, she wandered away from the upper courtyard where the children were playing ball between the Great Hall and the Chapel Royal, and crept into the forbidden King's apartments. They were always shuttered and dark, but they drew her. The great round medallions on the ceiling cast a brooding presence over the room, as if they were guarding a secret. She kept imagining that if she just looked in every corner, and searched hard enough, she would find her father there. He would have been hiding, playing a joke on them. And think how happy her mother would be to have her bring him out!
     
    Heart thumping loudly, she walked swiftly across the huge guard chamber. She already knew that nothing was in here. The room was bare, and there was nowhere for the King to hide. The next connected room, the presence chamber, was likewise bare. But there were several little hidden chambers off the King's bedchamber. She knew they were there; she had seen a map of them. And that was where the King was probably hiding if he was hiding at all.
     
    But they were the farthest away, and were very dark. She had never dared to go there before. Once, she had got up to the door of the King's bedchamber and seen, opening off it, the dark entrance to the closet. But her courage had failed her, and she had turned back.
     
    Today she would go. She half wished she had brought Flamina with her. But she knew that her father would not appear if anyone else was there. She had to go alone.
     
    At the same time, she knew it was only a game. He was not really there; this was just a test of courage she was setting for herself. She crept forward in the dim room, making for the bedchamber. Her eyes had become accustomed to the dark, and now she could see much better. She reached the doorway of the bedchamber and peered in.
     
    There was still a bed there, and it even retained its hangings. She dared herself to get down on her hands and knees and peek under it. She did, almost fainting with trepidation. But there was nothing under it but dust and silence.
     
    Now she had to do it; she had to go into the attached closet. There was no sound at all except her own breathing. She wanted to turn back; she did not want to turn back. She held her breath and ran, on light feet, into the room.
     
    It was horribly dark. It had in it a sense of some presence, and it was not benevolent. She forced herself to walk around the perimeter of the room, touching the walls, but by the time she was halfway round, she was