The Lives & Legacy of Extraordinary Women. Kate Dickinson Sweetser
given their lances to their squires when King Henry rode across to the royal balcony, and raising his visor, spoke to a man who was sitting near Mary. "Come, my lord Count of Montgomery," said the King. "I would fain break a lance with you. To horse, for the honor of your lady and the glory of France!"
The Count rose from his seat. "It is an honor, sire, to meet so great a champion in the lists, but to-day I must crave pardon. The hour is over late for me."
"The light holds well, my lord. 'Twill see one meeting," answered Henry. "I would have the court see how well Montgomery can hold a lance."
"It is most gracious of you, sire. Were the time otherwise——" It was quite evident that the Count was anxious not to meet the King.
But Henry was impatient of refusal. He interrupted, and said with a hasty gesture, "An I must command I will. To horse, my lord, and with what speed you may."
There was nothing for the Count to do but bow, whisper an excuse to the lady at his side, and leaving the pavilion seek the tents. In a short time he rode out into the field, his armor shining golden in the sunset, his lance in his gauntleted hands, a favor of blue and orange ribbons fluttering at the crest of his helmet. Meantime the King had curbed his horse to a place before the balcony where the Queen sat. Catherine leaned forward. "Have you not ridden enough to-day, sire?" she asked. "I would beg you to stop."
"One more joust," said Henry, "and this one, madame, in honor of yourself."
"But, sire," she persisted, "you cannot excel the deeds you have already done to-day, and now you should join the ladies."
Henry, however, with a smile, shook his head. "This one shall end the day," he said, and rode to his end of the course.
Mary Seton leaned forward to speak to her young mistress. "The Count of Montgomery, being Captain of the Scottish Guard, dared not refuse, with you here to see," she whispered. "See how he reins up his charger. He is young, and not anxious to break his lance on the King's coat-of-mail."
Montgomery took his place, lowered his visor, and set his lance. At the opposite end the King did the same. Then at a signal each touched his spurs to his horse, and rode furiously fast to the onset. There was a crash, the shock of steel, and a cry from the audience. The Count had driven his lance at the King's helmet, and it had broken short. The blow sent the King reeling and he was whirled about so fast that he had difficulty to keep his seat. The Count rode on, but the King, only too evidently dazed, swayed in his saddle, and then fell forward on his charger's neck. A dozen men sprang forward, and catching the King, helped him to the ground. A glance showed what had happened. Montgomery's lance had broken and a splinter of the steel had been driven through an eyehole of the helmet into the King's head just over his right eye. The men took off his armor and carried him as gently as they could into the palace.
Thus suddenly the celebrations of the Princess Elizabeth's wedding came to an end. The young and reluctant Count of Montgomery had given the King his death wound, and a few days later the spirited monarch died. The triumphal arches and banners were torn down, and the bells of Paris tolled slowly where they had rung joyful peals so short a time before.
So the Dauphin Francis and Mary Stuart became King and Queen of France. He was sixteen and she seventeen. They were too young to reign and Francis was much too delicate. Moreover there were two or three grown-up people who had no intention of letting the boy and girl have their own way. Behind the throne stood the boy's mother, Queen Catherine de' Medici, and the unscrupulous and ambitious uncles of the girl, the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine. They headed the Catholic party in the kingdom and they were pursuing the hapless Huguenots with torch and sword. Careless of the young King's wishes they plunged France into terrible civil wars wherein massacres were a matter of almost daily occurrence.
Francis and Mary were crowned in the old Cathedral of Rheims, where Joan of Arc had once seen her Dauphin crowned, and over the royal pair hung the banners of France, Scotland, and England. Then they traveled south to the château of Blois, and Francis amused himself with hunting while the Queen and her four Maries either rode out after the gentlemen to watch the sport or stayed at home to listen to the poems and songs of troubadours or walked on the banks of the small winding river Loire. She was more beautiful than ever, and very fond of her husband Francis, and their little court, made up largely of boys and girls nearly their own age, enjoyed itself thoroughly while the dark figures of Catherine and Mary's uncles were free to plunge the kingdom into blood.
The house of Valois had spent all its strength, and the four sons of the gallant Henry II, three of whom were to be kings in turn, were fated to be weak and sickly. Francis drooped and pined, and a year had barely passed before his reign was ended, and Mary, patient nurse at his side, was made a widow. Charles, the second brother, came to the throne, only to find it a place of weariness and regret, and to shudder at the horrors of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve, planned by his mother. Perhaps it was as well for Mary that her reign in France had ended. The land had fallen into evil days, wherein there was little happiness for any one.
The Queen of Scots, still only a girl, went back to her northern home, and the people of that mountainous land were glad to welcome her to the old historic Palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh. But even when she was leaving France her cousin Elizabeth the English Queen showed her enmity. Mary had asked to be allowed to pass through England on her way to Scotland, but this Elizabeth refused, and Mary was obliged to make the long sea-voyage.
The youth and beauty and the sweet manner of the young Queen won all Scotch hearts to her. She was at once beset by royal suitors; the King of Sweden, the Archduke Charles, son of the Holy Roman Emperor, and Don Carlos, son of Philip II of Spain, all wanted to marry her. In the midst of the plots and plans of her statesmen the young Queen took matters into her own hands and married her cousin, the handsome Earl of Darnley, whom she loved with all the passion of her nature.
Though the Scotch people had longed to have their Queen home again they did not make her happy when she lived with them. Plots and counterplots surrounded her, the leaders of the Catholics and the Protestants were continually fighting over her, and the dashing Darnley proved a weak and vicious man. Mary did what she could to steer her course through these troubled waters, but she was met by treachery on every hand. At last she was betrayed by some powerful men who wished to be rid of her and to rule the kingdom as guardians for her infant son, Prince James. She was delivered over to the English, and charges were brought against her of having conspired against Queen Elizabeth. Her judges found her guilty; the English Queen, remembering how Mary had been proclaimed in France as Queen of England, turned a deaf ear to all pleas for mercy, and so Mary, the beautiful, heroic Queen of Scotland, came to her death on the scaffold. Like so many others who had been brought up in royal palaces in that glittering but cruel age she met a tragic fate not so much on account of her own acts as through the bitter hatreds of other people.
Mary's son became King James VI of Scotland, and when Queen Elizabeth died King James I of England. In France the two young brothers of her boy husband, Charles IX and Henry III, had met the same untimely deaths as that young King, and the throne passed to the valiant Henry of Navarre. The house of Guise had fallen, and the bloody civil wars were ending. There was little left of that gay court of France where Mary had seen such splendors as a girl. Like the thunder-storm that ends a summer day tragedy too often closed those pageants. So it had been with the life of the famous Scotch Queen, who had ruled all hearts as a girl in France.
POCAHONTAS
The Girl of the Virginia Woods: 1595–1617
Deep snow covered the fields about the encampment of the Algonquin Indians on the banks of the river James. The snow had been falling for days during January, and made the long, low houses of bark and boughs look like so many great white ridges high above the ice-bound river. They were big houses, these "long houses" as they were called, each one large enough to hold twenty families. Each family had a compartment to itself, with sleeping bunks built against the walls, and curtains of deerskin to shield the family from the open passage which