Page 130 of A Column of Fire

‘I gave my name to a man called Pierre something.’

‘Oh! He has been sent to keep people like you away from Mary. But she’ll see you, of course. Let me tell her you’re here, then I’ll send someone to fetch you . . . both.’ She gave Ned an enquiring look.

James explained: ‘My secretary, Ned Willard.’

Ned bowed again. Alison gave him the briefest nod of acknowledgement then left.

James said: ‘That Pierre character didn’t even tell Mary we had arrived!’

‘I was warned about him.’

A few minutes later, a servant led them from the hall to a small, comfortable parlour. Ned felt nervous. This was the meeting for which he had travelled so far. Both his queen, Elizabeth, and his master and mentor, Cecil, had placed their faith in him. He only wished he had as much faith in himself.

Soon afterwards Mary Stuart came in.

Ned had seen her once before, but he was startled all over again by how tall she was, and how strikingly beautiful. She had dramatically pale skin and red hair. She was only eighteen, yet she had tremendous poise, and moved like a ship on a calm sea, her head held high on a long, graceful neck. Her official mourning period was over, but she was still wearing white, the symbol of grief.

Alison McKay and Pierre Aumande de Guise walked in behind her.

James bowed deeply, but Mary immediately went to him and kissed him. ‘You are clever, James,’ she said. ‘How did you know I was at St Dizier?’

‘It’s taken me a while to catch up with you,’ he said with a smile.

Mary took a seat and told them all to sit also. She said: ‘I have been told that I should return to Scotland like a newly risen sun, to scatter the clouds of religious tumult from the land.’

James said: ‘You’ve been talking to John Leslie, I suppose.’ This was what Ned had feared. Leslie had got to her first, and what he had said had clearly enthralled her.

‘You know everything!’ Mary said. Evidently, she admired her half-brother. ‘He says that if I sail to Aberdeen, he will have an army of twenty thousand men waiting to march with me to Edinburgh and overthrow the Protestant parliament in a blaze of Christian glory.’

James said: ‘You don’t believe it, do you?’

Ned very much feared that she did believe it. He was rapidly getting the impression that Mary was impressionable. Her physical poise and grace were queenly, but so far there was no sign that she had the sceptical wisdom so essential to much-flattered monarchs.

Mary gaily ignored James’s question. ‘If I do return to Scotland,’ she said, ‘I’m going to make you an archbishop.’

Everyone in the room was surprised. As queen of Scotland she would not appoint bishops – unlike the monarch of France, who had that power. But James mentioned a different snag. ‘I’m not a Catholic,’ he said.

‘But you must become one,’ Mary said brightly.

James resisted her breezy manner. Sombrely he said: ‘I came here to ask you to become a Protestant.’

Ned frowned. This wasnotthe mission.

Mary’s answer was firm. ‘I’m Catholic and my family is Catholic. I cannot change.’

Ned saw Pierre nodding. No doubt the idea of a Guise becoming Protestant would fill him with horror.

James said: ‘If you won’t become Protestant, will you at least become tolerant? The Protestants would give you their loyalty if you left them alone to worship as they wish.’

Ned did not like this line of argument. Their mission was to persuade Mary to stay in France.

Pierre, too, looked uneasy, but surely for a different reason: the notion of tolerance was abhorrent to ultra-Catholics.

Mary said to James: ‘And would the Protestants treat Catholics with the same tolerance?’

Ned spoke for the first time. ‘Absolutely not,’ he said. ‘It is now a crime to celebrate the Mass in Scotland.’

Pierre contradicted him. ‘You’re wrong, Monsieur Willard,’ he said. ‘The Mass is not a crime.’