Scottish historical fiction is having quite the moment just now with many novelists taking on Scotland’s past as a rich subject to explore. Sue Lawrence carries this on with her latest novel, The Green Lady, which uses the diary of Marie Seton to look at the violent clash of personal and political ambition.

Extracts taken from The Green Lady
By Sue Lawrence
Published by Saraband

1615
Marie Seton

As I lie on my bed, not far from death, I have asked Sister Agnes to bring me over my journals and my letters, which I have not looked at for so many years. I feel ready to reflect on my long life before I begin my journey into the next. I had just received news that Alexander Seton, now Lord Chancellor of Scotland, is to begin preparations for the royal visit from London to Scotland next year. The plan is for King James and Queen Anne to tour the country, from Dunbar to Aberdeen, presumably at great expense. The King never travels without hundreds of servants and horses and probably the entire Court and its attendant trappings. But my nephew Alexander has never been one to let the mere matter of money get in the way of his great schemes.

I believe he was generously rewarded for his guardianship of Prince Charles who, in his first few years while his parents were in London, was brought up by Alexander at his properties in Scotland, including Fyvie Castle. As well as receiving an annual income, my nephew was also made Earl of Dunfermline. And now that the young prince’s elder brother Henry is dead, Charles will be the next king of England and Scotland. How Alexander will be rubbing his hands in glee that he brought up the future King Charles I of Great Britain.

But, as I lie here thinking about my life and my relationship with Alexander Seton and also with his first wife, Lilias, I wonder what would happen if his royal patrons knew what he actually was. Then perhaps he would not be lauded as one of the greatest men in Scotland, one of the finest legal minds and among the most gifted patrons of the arts. If only I had the King’s ear, as I had his mother’s ear during all my many years in her service. His mother is now more often spoken of as Mary, Queen of Scots, even though she was not only Queen of Scotland but also Queen of France, and her name, like mine, was Marie, not Mary.

I sigh as I think back to those times, when I was one of her four Maries, at first her childhood companions and friends in France, then later, at Court in Scotland, her ladies-in-waiting. But whereas the other three abandoned her when their men came courting, I was the one to remain loyal and true, though I too had to leave her shortly before her death. That I regret even to this day.

I force my ancient, arthritic bones upwards in the bed so that my head can rest against the cold stone wall. I pick up my diary and flick back through the pages to those happy times when, instead of wearing this simple habit of coarse grey wool, I would dress in fine Court attire, in gowns of silk and velvet, with gold and jewels woven into the fabric and pearls plaited through my hair, and all of this even more sumptuous and lavish at special banquets and assemblies.

I have a notion to read more about life back then and, in doing so, remember the conversations I’d always meticulously recorded. I had wanted my journal to be not just a written account of what happened, but a memory of all the voices. I inserted comments and addenda along the way in later years. And now I shall listen to them all again, whisperings in my ear of old promises and of secrets and lies.

***

October 1584

After what seems like an interminably long sixteen years serving the Queen in captivity and in various levels of damp discomfort and cold confinement, when my bones have ached from morning till night and my heart is tight with sorrow, I know I have to start thinking of myself, of my own well-being. And the only way ahead therefore is for me to retire from her service, something that would have been unthinkable ten years ago, but now is becoming an imperative.

George has written to say he is to travel to France next spring on a mission for the Queen and has suggested I travel with him to ensure my health, which has been failing, does not suffer any longer. In the Seton family, it is a tradition that the unmarried middle-aged women retire to a convent for their last years. I know I will never marry, so surely now is the time to devote myself to God rather than to my Queen? After many discussions with the Queen, she has eventually agreed it would be better for my health that I leave her, and I have accepted the invitation that I received so many years ago, when I was still a young woman. At last, I will join the Abbey of Saint Pierre in Reims, whose Abbess is the Queen’s aunt, Renee de Guise.

During those years of indecision when she came to rely more and more on me, her only Marie, I often could not sleep for worrying. But then early one morning as I lay in the dark before the hope of light that the dawn brings, I asked myself a question: if she were me, would she continue in service, to the detriment of her health? Or would she grasp this opportunity and for once think of herself? I knew immediately the answer. Once my decision had been taken, I felt neither fear nor trepidation, and of course she acquiesced, with tears and sighs, but also with fortitude; this is, after all, her battle with her cousin, Elizabeth, not mine.

But first, before I exchange one form of incarceration for another, I need to live, for just a short period, in freedom. Since George is not leaving for France till the month of March in 1585, I agreed that I would first recuperate with my family. It’s been decided that I would travel, after a short stay at Seton Palace with George, to Fyvie Castle in Aberdeenshire, which his son Alexander has just bought from Andrew Meldrum of Drumoak. My nephew wants to show it to me before I leave for France, and I too am excited to see what is soon to become another Seton family home.

I shut my eyes tight as I remember writing these words and the excitement I felt in my new venture, including a visit to my nephew’s new property. I believed it could be the last time I would set foot in Scotland. As it turned out, of course, it was not, and I had to return another sixteen years later to attempt to put right the wrongs my brother’s son had visited upon his own dear wife.

It was during those few months of freedom residing up at Fyvie that I first met Lilias Drummond. She was not even fifteen, yet already betrothed to my shrewd, ambitious nephew, Alexander Seton. There was such an immediate connection between Lilias and me, even with the age difference; I was already forty-three years old. And by the end of my stay there in the wilds of Aberdeenshire, I had decided without any doubt that it was she who would be the recipient of my beautiful parure once I had gone. Those sparkling rubies, emeralds and pearls would be so beautiful around her fair neck.

Such spontaneity was not in my nature, but I felt somehow that God had guided me to this decision. Alexander may have been the Queen’s godson, but to me, Lilias was more than a goddaughter could ever have been; she was the daughter I never had.

The Green Lady by Sue Lawrence is published by Saraband, priced £9.99.