The Flower Reader Read Online Free

remained sitting upright,her eyes half-closed. Her lips were parted, as if to say one more word. But there were no more words for Mary of Guise, queen and queen mother, regent of Scotland. No more words ever.
    I had not thought I would cry, but I could feel tears filling my eyes and streaking down over my cheeks. Think, think. There had to be a way.
    They would be looking for a casket closed and locked and hidden away—but open and filled with flowers—overflowing with the flowers of sorcery and carried before their eyes—
    I do not want you to open it. What is inside is for my daughter alone.
    You are clever; I know that. You can outwit them.
    I unlocked the casket. Even with my hands shaking, it was easy to turn the key, so easy—the queen herself must have unlocked it often. The lid swung back. I gathered up all the flowers, the hawthorn and sweetbriar, and stuffed them in on top of…I caught only a glimpse, a book of pages sewn together with black thread, a packet of folded papers bound with a net of scarlet cords, sealed with scarlet wax, with writing in rusty-looking ink. The flowers covered it all. I filled the hollow of the lid as well, and pushed the jeweled box and the key in among the blossoms. Then I wrapped the woodbine recklessly around it all and let the ends trail down.
    I pushed myself to my feet. “The queen is dying!” I cried.
    The women and the lords and the Protestant minister Mr. Willock flocked in like gannets, sharp-eyed and gluttonous for news. I stood fast, holding the casket filled with flowers as if it were a shield. Surely it was only the stir in the air from all the people running into the room that made the flowers move, made the woodbine vines float and curl. Surely it was nothing but the heat in the room that made the pink buds of the hawthorn seem to open before my eyes into starry white flowers.
    Mr. Willock passed close and one of the trails of woodbine caught on his sleeve. He slapped it away as if it were a serpent.
    “Get away, girl,” he said. “You have no business here with your mummery.”
    I kept my head down and curtsied humbly. Lady Bryant and Lady Drummond had begun to cry. Lord James Stewart came in with the earls of Argyll and Rothes close behind him. They made no pretense of grieving for the queen, but went straight to the oratory and began to rifle through the prie-dieu. So for the moment, at least, the Earl of Rothes had more important things to think of than one unmarried Leslie girl and her castle by the sea.
    I began to edge toward the door. People pressed away from me so as not to touch the flowers. I caught a glimpse of Lord Bothwell and Nicolas de Clerac speaking to Lord James and the earls, over by the poor queen’s prie-dieu. Voices were raised. Bothwell was swearing at Lord James in both Scots and French. It made a good distraction.
    “The queen is dead,” Mr. Willock said. “Idolatry is dead in Scotland.”
    I pressed the silver casket close to my body. God speed you, madame, I thought. I will see your casket safe under Saint Margaret’s and then I will be away from the court forever. No one paid any more attention to me. I walked out of the room with the silver casket and the masses of flowers in my arms.

Chapter Two

    I did not keep my promise to hide the queen’s silver casket in the secret vault under Saint Margaret’s. Not that night, at least.
    I had a little household of my own within the court—my aunt Margot Loury, my mother Blanche of Orléans’ legitimate half sister, whom I called Tante-Mar; and my maidservant, Jennet More, my own age, the daughter of the castellan of Granmuir. They could not have been more different. Jennet was tall, stout, freckled, and outspoken; Tante-Mar was tiny, frail, and ferociously devoted to proper manners, always contending, I think, for some sort of equality with my mother’s grand birth as the bastard daughter of the Duke of Longueville. I had never known my French
grandmère
Agnès Loury, the