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Her childhood is a series of moments and memories she plays in her mind. Francis chasing her across the castle. Catherine smiling down at her. Seeing her mother, briefly. Kenna revealing her first crush, Lola talking them down from grand and dangerous adventures, Aylee’s smile, Greer’s knowing looks and giggles.
France in the winter, the hills covered in snow. Scotland, in fleeting memories: she only remembers green, and her mother’s dresses, and mountains. France in the summer, the way the lake rippled in the sun.
Her time at the convent: the nun’s graciousness, running barefoot in plain dresses, reading all that she can.
She remembers Francis’s laugh, and the layout of French court, and her mother and Catherine and Henry discussing her engagement, lying on the floor of her chambers with her best friends, the rules of the nun’s games.
Mary yearns to return to her childhood, when things were easy and free and she dreamed of becoming a queen.
***
Catherine always likes to give her advice.
“You’re queen, you’d better not smirk at the duchess,” she says after a particularly terrible meeting. “Smirking is unbecoming, and unbecoming leads to breaking of treaties and death. Horrible, horrible death. We don’t want that, do we? Execution is so costly.”
Mary always nods.
Catherine terrifies her, and Mary admires the queen mother.
Mary sees her future reflected in Catherine, and that scares her. Who will she be, someday, when she’s old and gray and been a queen for a long time? She already feels herself hardening, breaking down the kindest parts of herself. Queens are kind, and queens are cruel.
She’s beginning to learn that in order to be a queen, you have to give up the best parts of yourself.
Long may she reign, as long as she survives, and produces heirs, and remains in power. Long may she reign.
***
Lola’s baby gets older. Somehow, the baby grows into a toddler; somehow the baby isn’t really a baby anymore.
Lola loves her daughter, Mary can see that. She’s always smiling around the child, giggling and reading to the child and teaching her new words.
Francis loves his daughter, too. He always beams around the child, and likes to bounce her in his lap. He sends Lola gifts: blankets and clothes and toys for his daughter.
The baby has Francis’s eyes, and Lola’s hair.
Every time Mary sees the child, she imagines her unborn baby. Would the child have Francis’s curls, and her eyes, and his smile, and her eyelashes? The baby is a series of what-ifs. What if her child had survived?
Mary’s forgiven Lola. She really has. It’s hard, though, when there’s a child at court with your husband’s eyes and everyone knows it’s his, that he has a child with another woman who isn’t you. It’s hard when she has to smile and pretend that she’s the perfect demure wife; wouldn’t want to ruin anyone’s reputation.
Men can have illegitimate babies, and it's fine; women get pregnant out of wedlock and they become dependent on men.
Lola’s doing well. No, she’s doing great: she has financial support and a secure place at court, and her baby is safe and well and healthy.
Mary smiles as she watches the child grow up. For the child’s first birthday, Mary gets Lola a special blanket, imported from Scotland. When Pearl says her first word—“Mama”—Mary giggles and hugs the baby. When Pearl begins to walk, Mary cheers her on.
(Later, she goes into her chambers and cries.)
***
Giving orders for execution used to terrify her. Now Mary doesn’t hesitate.
***
She loves Francis, she really does. But it’s hard to be a wife and a queen. For kings and queens, marriage is performative.
In court, they politely argue and make political decisions. Together—always together. They are a team, the king and queen of France. To the people, to the public, they are unshakable. Mary holds his hand, and meets Francis’s eyes in the throne room. She dances with him and paints herself as the perfect wife for France and for Scotland.
Obeying, not submissive; cooperative, not angry; kind, not dismissive.
She is a queen, and queens must behave.
When they are in their chambers, they can be themselves. Mary yells and Mary cries and Mary curses. She yells at him about his child, about his political decisions, that she feels he’s ignoring her and keeping political and personal secrets from her, her worries that she’ll never become pregnant.
Francis yells at her, and they throw things, and she doesn’t have to lie to herself and to her people.
And they apologize, and fuck, and he kisses her and she sighs, and then it starts all over again tomorrow.
Mary loves him, but she’s not sure that she can be a good queen and a good wife.
***
One day Catherine comments on how she’s changed, and Mary wants to yell, but all she says is, “Change is inevitable.”
***
A letter comes from her mother in exile.
Marie de Guise’s letters are short and sweet. She doesn’t describe much about her life, and never asks how life is at court. (In all her letters, she does ask if Mary’s pregnant.)
She seems well in exile, and Mary’s grateful that her mother’s safe. Because a daughter loves her mother, even a mother that never really was one. All they have connecting them together is genetic tissue.
Mary sends back a three-page letter, asking her mother questions and updating her on French court. She signs the letter, “Love, your daughter Mary.”
***
Mary has been trying to get pregnant for six months. She’s listened to the court gossip, and used Catherine’s remedies, and told the nobles that yes, we’re trying, and watched Francis’s baby and imagined her own.
Nothing has worked.
She worries that she’s barren, that she can never have a child. Maybe God doesn’t want her to have a baby.
Mary breaks down one day, after another month of failure, and for once she lets herself cry. She collapses onto the bed and sends away the servants and thinks, I’m a failure, over and over and over.
***
There’s a wedding, and Mary’s ladies drag her onto the dance floor. Just like old times. Mary dances and laughs and twirls her ladies, and they enjoy each other. Lola waltzes with her and Greer twirls across the floor and Kenna is the master of creating new dances.
Except it’s not like old times. Because Kenna is married to a bastard, and Greer’s a newlywed, and Lola’s a mother, and Aylee’s dead, and Mary is the queen of France.
They’re different, they’re older, and the lines around their eyes are harder. They aren’t the young girls that came to French court; they’re women, and they bear women’s scars.
****
Mary understands diplomacy. In order to be a queen, you must understand treaties and agreements and old wars and broken hearts. She sits around tables and nods. Francis is the leader of diplomacy, because he’s the king, but they always make diplomatic decisions together (and with Catherine, whose cunning always helps).
Kings and queens hold their countries in the balance: should we go to war, should we create treaties, should we raise taxes, should we execute this person, should we meet with this leader.
It’s a terrifying power.
Because queens and kings can be terrible: that is their God-given right, and they must tread carefully. Before blood is shed and treaties are broken and nations collapse.
***
Mary thinks that she might be becoming a terrible person, but she’s becoming a better queen.