The Mysterious Child at Saint Pierre les Dames: (formerly published as ‘An Unknown Princess’ and ‘Midwife’s Secret’) (The Legacy of the Queen of Scots Book 1)

The celebrated Abbess of Saint Pierre les Dames d’ Rheims (1627-1639), Marguerite d’ Kircaldie, was considered the most beautiful woman in the world by the few men who had been allowed to see her. When she was a Novice, the walls of the cloister were raised to thwart young men who had tried to scale them just for a glimpse. When she arrived as a small child under the guardianship of Abbess Renee d’ Guise, aunt of the imprisoned Queen of Scots. she spoke a Midland Scottish dialect and called herself ‘Daisy’, the Scottish name of the blue flower the French call a Marguerite. Renee kept her isolated from the students at the abbey school and hid her in the cellars when visitors came. The abbess dealt harshly with any residents who dared question her origin. But, after Queen Marie Stuart’s execution in 1587, her French physician Claud Nau claimed the queen confirmed old rumors that one of the twins she was said to have miscarried in 1567 had survived and was living in a French convent under the protection of the House of Guise. When the rekindled rumor spread, the child in the abbey was at risk from factions seeking to exploit the mystery of her identity, and those who wished her dead. But both the dead queen’s friends and foes shared a belief that the child at Saint Pierre les Dames in Rheims was not who Renee d’ Guise and her powerful family claimed.