Mary Queen of Scotland & the Isles Read Online Free Page B

down on Stirling Bridge and the gateway to the Highlands, where a person could vanish in safety from any foreign foes that threatened. There were rare excursions to hawk and hunt and see the countryside, before scurrying back to the safety of the rock fortress.
     
    There were mists. And howling winds and ice-covered hills that sometimes the children went sledding on, using a cow's skull to ride down the hill behind the castle. There were little furry ponies that she and her playmates all also named Mary, which was such fun learned to ride on. There were fogs and heather, green glens, and an enormous sky with clouds that raced across it like bandits.
     
    Up in the castle, there was a room in the King's apartments empty now that had round medallions on its ceiling. Little Mary would wander into the room and stare at the carved wooden heads in the dim light from the shuttered windows. One of the figures had hands that clutched the rim of the roundel, as if he would escape and leap out into the real world. But he never moved; he remained forever on the brink of a new world which he could not enter, gazing down at her from the ceiling.
     
    Her mother did not like her to be there. Usually she would come looking for Mary and bring her back into the Queen's apartments, where she lived and had her lessons; where there were cushions and a fireplace and a swirl of people.
     
    Sometime in that mist of early childhood she came to know her half-siblings. Her mother, with odd charity or was it political astuteness? had gathered four of her late husband's illegitimate offspring and brought them to Stirling Castle. Mary loved them all, loved being part of a large family; and, as her mother did not seem to find it offensive that they were bastards, neither did she.
     
    James Stewart was stern and grave, but as the oldest, his judgement seemed the wisest and they deferred to it. If he said they should not sled down the hill once more before the light faded, Mary learned that he had always gauged it correctly and that if she disobeyed she would find herself in the dark by the time she reached the bottom.
     
    Before Marie had brought Mary's half-siblings to spend some time at Stirling, she had assembled another little family for her daughter as well: the four daughters of friends, all named Mary, and all the same age: Mary Fleming, Mary Beaton, Mary Livingston, and Mary Seton.
     
    Mary Fleming was entirely Scots, and also had Stewart blood, but from further back on the wrong side of the blanket: she was the granddaughter of James IV. Mary Fleming's mother, Janet, shared the Stewart family traits of beauty and high spirits, and served as governess to the five little Marys. From the earliest days, Mary Fleming nicknamed La Flamina was the only one who would take Mary's dares and outdo her in mischief.
     
    The other three Marys, although they had proper Scots names and Scots fathers, all had French mothers, ladies-in-waiting who had come over with Marie de Guise. That their daughters should all be friends with her daughter gave the Queen Mother great satisfaction, and a feeling of being at home in this fortress in an alien land. Although the mothers spoke French to each other, their daughters did not seem either interested or able to learn it themselves, although presumably they could understand some words of it. But the mothers, when they wanted to talk secretly of presents and surprises for the girls, could always speak safely in French.
     
    To differentiate between them, Mary Livingston, robust and athletic, was called Lusty by the others; Mary Seton, who was tall and reserved, was called by her stately surname of Seton, and Mary Beaton, who was plump, pretty, and inclined to daydreaming, was called Beaton because it rhymed with Seton to make a pair. Mary Fleming had been nicknamed La Flamina because of her flamboyant personality. Only Mary was always only Mary, the Mary.
     
    The eight younger children romped, fought, had secret clubs,