The Hidden Evil Read online

  “Indeed, madame, in Scotland our thoughts are only of the time when the Queen will return to us.”

  “That is how it should be,” the King said a little ponderously. “And so now, Mistress McCraggan, the Duchesse de Valentinois will take you to your mistress.”

  Sheena felt herself stiffen.

  So this was Diane de Poitiers, Duchesse de Valentinois, the Grande Sénéchale, who had bewitched the King and seduced him so that he had eyes for no one else.

  She had known, she thought, the moment that the Duchesse had entered the room, but somehow she had been so bemused, so taken aback by her beauty and her charm, that she had for a moment forgotten the scandal and the gossip, the spite and the condemnation, that she had listened to in Scotland about this very woman.

  She had thought somehow that she would never see her. That the King would keep her in some secret place where only he visited her.

  “The Queen has been in my charge,” the Duchesse was saying quietly. “I have been supervising her education and Her Majesty is a very promising pupil. You will be surprised at how talented she is and how quickly her education has progressed in the last few years.”

  Sheena found herself unable to answer. What would her father and the other Statesmen say if they knew? To be brought up by a courtesan, by a woman they had all declaimed as a prostitute and lower than those who followed in the wake of the Army or who paraded the dark streets of Edinburgh at night.

  Diane de Poitiers! A witch they had all called her. And yet now with most incredible graciousness, she was leading the way down the corridors of The Palace.

  ‘Heaven knows,’ Sheena thought to herself, ‘what the little Queen has been taught under such auspices.’

  Had Her Majesty’s education been one of witchcraft and guile, of how to blind a man’s eyes so that he would forget his duty and his honour simply so that he could receive a smile from those red lips?

  “You must be very tired after your journey,” the Duchesse was saying and it seemed to Sheena that her voice was almost hypnotic it was so easy to be deceived by it.

  “I have had a room prepared for you near to that of your Queen. You will have much to talk about in the next few days and after you have met I suggest that you go upstairs and have a sleep. If you are not overly tired, we shall welcome you at dinner. There will be dancing afterwards, but if you prefer to do so, sleep until morning and start the day fresh.”

  “I have no need of rest,” Sheena replied grimly.

  Already she was beginning to see the magnitude of the task ahead of her. How could she on her own undo the harm that must have been done to the little Queen by this evil woman?

  Perhaps she had been kept shut up with her alone, having no one decent and respectable around her to whom she could turn to learn the truth or to weigh in the balance all the wrong and twisted things they were putting before her under the guise of ‘education’.

  “Your Queen is extremely busy at the moment,” the Duchesse was saying. “She has been learning her part for the play she and the Royal children are to act before the King next week. It will be a very gay evening. Perhaps you will be able to help with the final details.”

  Sheena felt herself shiver. Play-acting! What would her father say to that? She could see his hands raised in horror, hear the anger in his voice if she told him that Mary Stuart was to strut the boards and to perform as if she was a common actress. The audience might consist of a King and his Court, but the wrong was still there.

  They had reached the end of a passage hung with wonderful pictures and carpeted so that it seemed as if one’s feet walked on velvet. They turned and another great corridor lay ahead of them.

  “This part of The Palace,” the Duchesse was saying, “is given over to the Royal children. Some of them are very young, as you may well know, but the Dauphin and Queen Mary are almost the same age and they have many interests in common. There are other companions for your Queen as well. Thirty-seven children of the Nobility of our land share her studies and her sports.”

  “Thirty-seven!”

  Sheena repeated the words in absolute astonishment.

  The Duchesse smiled her beautiful glorious smile, which revealed the whiteness of her teeth and made her exquisite eyes twinkle a little.

  “Yes, thirty-seven. I hope you did not think we left our little Scottish visitor without any interests or amusements.”

  “No – no, of course not,” Sheena stammered.

  “At first her four little friends, the four Marys who came with her from Scotland, were sent away, but only so that she should learn French. It is very difficult to learn any language when one is talking one’s own all the time. But now they are constantly with her, although just at the moment they are still in the country for a special rout that they had promised to attend some time ago. Only Mary Stuart has come back to Paris especially to greet you.”

  “That is most gracious of her,” Sheena said quickly.

  “And here I think we shall find her,” the Duchesse smiled.

  The door she indicated was flung open for them by a footman resplendent in gold lace and Sheena eagerly followed the Duchesse into the room.

  It seemed to her that all this had been a wearisome preparation for the moment when she would see her own Queen and when she would start on the work she had come to do and for which she had travelled so many miles.

  And then as the chandeliers, pale-grey walls, carpets covered in roses and great hangings of exquisite embroidery swam before her eyes in a kaleidoscope of colour and movement and steadied into being only a frame for the person who stood waiting at the far end of the salon.

  Sheena saw Mary Stuart.

  She had expected a child. She saw instead a young woman who appeared far older than herself.

  Her hair was that strange liquid gold that the poets had written about since the beginning of time. It was not unlike Sheena’s own hair and yet there the resemblance between them ended.

  Mary Stuart was taller than Sheena and her full oval face had a beauty that was almost classical in its conception. There was no flaw to be found in it and, perhaps because it was so cool, so flawless, so smooth and clear-cut, the face was a little lacking in expression.

  And yet Mary Stuart’s beauty lay in her skin, in her hands, long, slim and pale as snow, and in the way she held herself. There was nothing that was not beautiful about her and yet somehow Sheena felt a little stab at her heart as if she had expected far too much and found something lacking.

  Her feet carried her forward without her being conscious that she had moved. Then, as she reached the Queen of Scotland and sank down before her in a deep curtsey that was not only a greeting but a reverence, the Queen spoke,

  “So you are Sheena McCraggan! I thought I should remember you but I don’t.”

  She sounded disappointed and Sheena said hastily,

  “It is many, many years ago, Your Majesty. You were little more than a babe.”

  “I thought you had dark hair,” Mary Stuart said a little petulantly. “So I must have been thinking of someone else.”

  Sheena then rose from her curtsey. Never had she expected her first conversation with the Queen of Scotland to be like this. She had planned so often the things she would say, the greetings she would bring her and now she could only stand tongue-tied, something cold and unhappy crushing at her heart.

  “I wonder who it was I found myself thinking about?” Mary Stuart persisted, looking not at Sheena but turning her head a little to address someone who was standing in the further corner of the room and who now came forward.

  Sheena glanced upwards and felt herself stiffen. It was the man to whom she had spoken in the inn, the man who had insulted Scotland by his cynical and rude remarks, the man she had hated all the way from the coast to Paris and thought that she would never see again.

  She had forced herself, when he had gone, not to ask any of her escort who he was and not to speak of him. Now she regretted that she had had no idea of
his identity. If he was in attendance on Mary Stuart, he was an enemy and she must beware of him.

  “You have not welcomed Mistress McCraggan to France,” the Duchesse said quietly to Mary Stuart, and to Sheena’s surprise the young Queen flushed slightly at the rebuke.

  “Forgive me, madame,” she said to the Duchesse and, turning to Sheena, held out her hand. “I do welcome you, I do truly,” she said. “It must have been a long and tiring journey and it was very gracious of you to come to me.”

  Sheena felt the young Queen’s hands touch hers and in that moment she knew the full and fatal fascination of the Stuarts, which could so cleverly and so skilfully charm all with whom they came into contact and make them in an instant their abject and adoring slaves.

  She found herself holding on to the Queen’s hand and stammering the few words she had intended to speak and which had been in her mind when she first left Scotland.

  “I have – come, ma’am, to – to bring you the greetings, the love and – the devotion of all those who look on you as their – rightful Queen and to tell you that they are holding your Kingdom for you if it means that – that every man in Scotland must die to do so.”

  She spoke passionately, forgetting for a moment everything around her and seeing only the bare heads of the Clansmen, the wind and rain in their faces, as her ship drew away from the quay.

  “Thank you! Thank you!” Mary Stuart said. “Tell them that my heart is with them.”

  It was beautifully said and, as Sheena felt the tears gathering in her eyes, the voice of the man she so disliked intruded upon them.

  “Well done,” she heard him say and it seemed to Sheena that he broke the poignant spell between herself and Mary Stuart.

  “I have not introduced you,” the Duchesse said. “Mistress McCraggan, this is the Duc de Salvoire. Your Queen will tell you that there is no one in the whole of France who is cleverer at assessing the worth and performance of any horse. In fact none of us buy our horseflesh without his advice. Is that not so?”

  The Duc bowed as Sheena dropped him a curtsey.

  “You flatter me, madame,” he said to the Duchesse. “And yet somehow I don’t think our visitor is interested in horses. Surely in Scotland they have eagles to carry them from place to place?”

  He was mocking her and Sheena attempted to annihilate him with a glance and failed.

  Mary Stuart laughed.

  “How ridiculous you are, Your Grace” she exclaimed. “You make a joke of everything. But what a glorious idea. If we could be carried about by eagles, think how swiftly we could travel. Even swifter than your chestnuts can convey us. And that is saying a great deal.”

  “Do not speak of his chestnuts,” the Duchesse appealed. “The King is wild with envy and you know that he longs to buy them. Can I not plead with you once again to sell them to him?”

  The Duc shook his head.

  “What money could compensate me for the loss of such perfect animals?” he enquired. “They should not be the objects of sale and barter. But, madame, may I not present them to you as a tribute to your beauty and because, above all things, I enjoy your mind?”

  “No, no, it is just impossible,” the Duchesse said and then added with a sudden smile, “I really believe you mean it. I warn you, if you make the offer again I shall accept if only to make the King happy.”

  The Duc made a little gesture with his hands.

  “They are yours,” he declared.

  Sheena looked at them both with contempt.

  So he was toadying now to the King’s mistress, this man she hated and despised, this man who she felt should have no contact with the child Queen who she had come to protect and help.

  Eagles indeed! He had laughed at her and made her feel a fool. Now he was making an extravagant gesture that would ingratiate him with the King who would be, whether he liked it or not, in his debt.

  “Are you not lucky?” Mary Stuart was saying enviously. “Oh, madame, I wish the Duc had given the horses to me.”

  “You shall share them with me,” the Duchesse said generously. “When you want to use them on any special occasion, come and ask me. I will see that they are put at your disposal.”

  “Oh, thank you,” Mary Stuart said excitedly.

  She put her arms round the Duchesse and gave her a hug.

  Sheena could not help but shudder at the sight of such beauty and innocence embracing a woman who was old and steeped in sin.

  “And now will you show Mistress McCraggan, you will not mind if I call you ‘Sheena’, will you, dear, to her rooms?” the Duchesse said. “They are on your corridor and I am sure that you girls will have much to talk about.”

  “Come, let me show them to you,” Mary Stuart said, holding out her hand to Sheena.

  At the touch of her fingers Sheena felt that her cup should be full of happiness. She was in France, hand in hand with the Queen. They were going away together, leaving behind them for a moment at least the wicked courtesan who had seduced the King and the Duc, who she knew without the shadow of doubt, was a bad and evil influence.

  How much there was for her to do for the Queen!

  And yet, as they moved towards the door, she was conscious that it was Mary Stuart who led her. She was slower, less sophisticated and less assured than this elegant beautiful girl who was talking to her with an easy charm that was in itself irresistible.

  “Your rooms are delightful,” she was saying. “The Duchesse de Valentinois allowed me to choose the furniture for them myself. I will show you – ”

  They had reached the door and were just about to pass through and as they did so Sheena heard the Duc saying something to the Duchesse. He spoke in a low voice, but she caught the words quite clearly.

  “You had better get the child some clothes, she needs them!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Duc de Salvoire climbed the twisting stairs that led from one part of The Palace to another. The candles had burned low in their sconces and, where one had flickered out, he banged his knee against a protruding pillar in the darkness and swore beneath his breath.

  ‘I am getting far too old at twenty-six for creeping along passages in the middle of the night,’ he told himself wryly with a twist of his lips that his enemies would have recognised as being an expression of his most caustic mood.

  As he reached the wing that led on to the Queen’s apartments and those of her suite, he hesitated and for a moment considered returning the way he had come. And then with a shrug of his shoulders he realised that René would be waiting for him. It would be churlish and discourteous to cancel his appointment when he had not seen her alone for nearly three weeks and had been away at Anet for part of the time.

  There were only two more passages, mercifully empty at this hour of the night, although he could hear the footsteps of a sentry in the distance. And then he was knocking on her door, two long knocks and a short staccato one, before it was opened swiftly by a maidservant who kept her head down and did not raise her eyes from his feet when she dropped him a curtsey.

  The Duc walked past her without a word and then was in the small fragrantly scented boudoir which stood adjacent to a larger and more impressive bedchamber.

  The Comtesse René de Pouguet was waiting for him. As he entered the room and closed the door behind him, she rose from her chaise-longue and came towards him eagerly.

  She was most attractive with raven hair and slanting green eyes that gave her a seductive mysterious expression which, however, was belied by her lips and about them there was no mystery, only the hunger and yearning of a passionate woman.

  “Jarnac!” she then exclaimed. “I have been waiting so long. I thought that perhaps you had forgotten me.”

  “How could I do that?” the Duc enquired, bending his head to kiss the long white fingers of her left hand on which glittered an enormous emerald ring.

  As she moved with a serpentine grace, her robe of satin trimmed with ribbons and lace revealed that underneath it she wore v
ery little and there were tantalising glimpses of softly rounded breasts and beautifully shaped legs.

  She used a heady and very exotic perfume, which seemed to permeate the whole room and mingle with the fragrance of lilies and tuberoses. There was also the hint of some other scent, something Oriental, which made the Duc feel as if his senses were swimming a little.

  Only a few tapers were lit and so most of the light came from the half-open door of the bedchamber.

  “You have missed me?”

  It was a conventional question and now, with her lips parted, she looked up at him, her dark eyes glinting behind the incredibly long black lashes.

  “I was about to ask you that same question.”

  “Why did you spend so long with the Duchesse de Valentinois this evening?”

  The Duc straightened and there was a sudden guarded expression on his face.

  “Ma foi, René!” he exclaimed. “Is anything hidden from you? Have you an ear at every keyhole in The Palace?”

  The Comtesse threw back her head and laughed.

  “But, of course, mon brave!” Do you not know it is why I am so completely useful and indispensable? If I was not, do you know what my Fate would be? To be sitting with my husband in the country looking at the crops and my only outing a drive to Church on Sunday with my children grouped around me. It is a pretty picture, but not one to my liking.”

  The Duc knew that it was the truth. The Comte de Pouguet had retired from the Court a year ago, ostensibly to see to his estates in the Chambord district, but in reality as he could no longer afford his wife’s extravagances or continually to turn a blind eye to her excesses.

  The Comtesse had enjoyed countless protectors after his departure, but none had been so important, so wealthy or indeed so charming as the Duc de Salvoire.

  Unfortunately, however, for René’s peace of mind she had fallen in love. For the first time in her whole life her heart took precedence over her head. She loved the strange cynical young man who she now suspected had taken her as his mistress merely because several of his friends had been competing for the honour and it had amused him to win far too easily what they coveted.