Free The Wild Queen by Carolyn Meyer Page B

the scandal of Lady Fleming, I asked instead for pâte à Panterelli, the pastry puffs that were his specialty. I knew they were La Flamin’s favorite.
    Matteo allowed us to mix water, butter, flour, and eggs together to make a stiff paste. He showed us how to mold the paste with spoons so that the blobs formed the most enchanting shapes as they baked—swans, for example. The results seemed almost magical. Princesse Claude, who insisted on joining us though she was only three, always made a great mess. Princesse Élisabeth could not bear to have her hands sticky La Flamin wanted to try anything new, and the other Maries followed her lead. The dauphin, meanwhile, waited to be served, as a king would do. When our pastry swans emerged from the oven, puffed and golden and somewhat lopsided, Matteo helped us fill them with sweetened custard. “Shall we save them for later?” Seton suggested, but of course we did not. We ate every one of them immediately.
    Delicious as our pastry swans were, frittered pears remained my favorite—until they were nearly my undoing.
    This is what happened. In March of 1551 during the spring of my mother’s visit, the court left Blois and moved to nearby Amboise on the opposite side of the river. Overlooking the Loire and surrounded by Italian gardens, Amboise was a favorite of Queen Catherine’s. We arrived the week before Easter, and the king ordered a grand feast to mark the end of the long Lenten fast.
    After Mass in the cathedral on Easter Day, as we made our way in a formal procession back to the château, we heard loud noises and became aware of a sudden disturbance. The captain of the Garde Écossaise, the Scots Guard, specially appointed to protect the king and the royal family appeared and whispered to King Henri. I saw them both glance at me before the captain saluted the king and left, and then the procession continued on to the banquet hall. I was curious—Why
did they look at
me?—but there were so many people gathered that I soon forgot about it.
    The royal family, my Guise uncles, my mother, and my brother the duke of Longueville were present. Grand-Mère had ended her formal period of mourning and come out of seclusion for the first time since Grand-Père’s death. Diane de Poitiers absorbed the king’s full attention, and Queen Catherine pretended not to notice. The great hall of Amboise was crowded with French noblemen and their wives as well as the Scots courtiers who had accompanied my mother to France and now followed her as she moved from château to château. Everyone of importance was there, with one exception that I could not fail to notice: Lady Fleming. It was not like my governess to miss a big event like the Easter feast. La Flamin and the other Maries had been assigned to sit in a distant part of the hall, and I would not have a chance to speak to my friends until later. I wondered if La Flamin now knew what I knew: that her mother was expecting a child.
    King Henri gave the signal for my uncle Charles, the cardinal, to bless the feast, first in Latin and then in French. A dozen trumpeters blew a fanfare, and a parade of servants in brilliant blue and red livery entered carrying silver platters piled high with every kind of festive dish, one course after another of roasted meats, grilled birds, baked fish stuffed with herbs, and vegetables I had never tasted before I came to France, such as one called broccoli, which looked like a miniature tree and had been brought from Italy by Catherine de Médicis. Queen Catherine had told me a few days earlier as we sat at our needlework that she had ordered frittered pears to be included on the menu, especially for me.
    I was always a hearty eater, but on that day I forced myself to eat sparingly as I eagerly awaited the frittered pears that had been denied me since the beginning of Lent six weeks earlier. An array of tarts and pastries and other sweets