The Wild Queen Read Online Free PDF Page A

the changes to which I now found myself subjected. The hardest was the departure of the Four Maries. During the first weeks in France, my friends went everywhere that I did, and their company helped me adjust to all the strangeness of my new circumstances. Then quite suddenly they were gone, sent to a convent to learn French and be schooled in the ways of the French court. I burst into tears when I found out—tears that distressed little Élisabeth but left Madame de Poitiers unmoved.
    â€œIt is feared that you will not learn to speak French well if your friends remain here and you are continually tempted to converse with them in your native tongue.”
    The duchess left me to deal with my misery alone.
    ***
    I had barely learned my way around the château at Carrières-sur-Seine when the entire court moved to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. “Papa’s favorite château,” Élisabeth told me. During the move—it was not far, and within half a day we were settling in—I discovered that I had been separated not only from the Four Maries but from nearly all the Scots who had accompanied me. Lord-Keeper Livingston, as my guardian was titled, stayed on, but now that Lord Erskine had recovered from his severe illness, he and most of the other gentlemen in my suite were on their way back to Scotland. My half brothers Robert and John Stuart went with them, though James stayed in France to study We went to see them off, and Lady Fleming remarked that unlike the French, our men went about gripping the hilts of their swords. “Our loyal Scots are always on guard, as though they expect to be attacked at any time. Doubtless, they are relieved to go home to Scotland.”
    Fortunately, Lady Fleming remained with me as my governess, and Sinclair stayed on as my nurse.
    Sinclair seemed to have as much trouble as I did deciphering this distinctly new way of life. I missed the oat porridge that she had always fixed for my breakfast, and she curled her lip at the broth she was given in the servants’ hall.
    â€œAye, they want to get rid of me too,” she complained. We were whispering in Scots, though I had been warned by Madame de Poitiers that Sinclair too would be sent away if we persisted. “These French hate the sound of our auld tongue. I heard one of their fancy gentlemen say that he could scarce believe such ugly sounds could come from such a pretty little mouth like yours.”
    Sinclair was mending one of her thick woolen stockings, and she bit the thread angrily. “Seems to me like these folks want to drain every drop of Scots blood from you and replace it with French,” grumbled my nurse, who never ran out of complaints. She yearned for “just a crumb of oatcake and a tasty bite of salmon from our own fresh rivers,” she said every time it came to mind, which was often. “And ne’ermind that you’re first and foremost the queen of the Scots and will someday come back to your own country to rule your own people, God be willing.”
    â€œI am to be queen of France, Sinclair, and I shall rule Scotland from Paris. But,” I added wistfully, for I often felt homesick, “no doubt I shall be able to visit whenever I please.”
    ***
    I missed the Four Maries, but I did not have time to dwell on their absence. Soon after I arrived at Saint-Germain, my grandparents brought my half brother François, duke of Longueville, for a visit. He was the son my mother had had to leave behind when she left France for Scotland to marry my father. The duke, who had inherited his father’s title, was now fourteen, tall and auburn-haired. I thought him quite handsome.
    â€œYou are so like our mother!” he exclaimed at our first meeting, though how he knew that I cannot say, as he had been just three years old when he had last seen her.
    â€œAnd so are you!” I replied.
    Our grandmother smiled and nodded. “You are all Guises,” she said, dabbing