So I write instead to my lady grandmother and tell her of my disappointment and sorrow, and I ask her—for perhaps she knows—if there is any reason why God would turn His face from me and not bless me with a son? Why would a Tudor princess not be able to get and keep a boy? I don’t say anything about a curse on the Tudors, or about Katherine in poverty at court—for why would she listen to me?—but I ask her if she knows of any reason that our line should not be strong. I do wonder what she will reply. I wonder if she will tell me the truth.
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, EASTER 1509
We come to Stirling for Easter, in the bitter cold, the horses laboring through drifts of snow, and the carts with the goods bogged down, arriving days late, so my walls are bare of tapestries. I have no curtains around my bed, I have to sleep in coarse linen and there are no crests embroidered on my pillows.
My husband laughs and says that I have been spoiled by the balmy weather of England, but I still cannot believe that it can be so cold and so dark at this time of the year. I long for the sight of green springing grass and the lilt of birdsong in the early morning. I say that I will stay in bed until it is light, and if that proves to be midday then so be it.
He swears that I shall stay in bed and that he himself will bring the wood for my fireplace and mull me a mug of ale at my bedside fire for my breakfast. He is merry and kind to me and I am with child again, warmed with hope and confidence: this time I will be lucky, I think. I have suffered enough.
I think he has come to read to me again, and I hope that it is not Erse poetry, when he enters my rooms one afternoon with a paper in his hand. I can understand it now, but the poems are very long. He does not sit in his usual chair at the fireplace but on the side of my bed, and his face is very grave as he looks around for Eleanor Verney, my senior lady-in-waiting, and makes a little gesture with his hand to tell her to stay with us. I know at once that it is bad news from England.
“Is it my lady grandmother?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “You are going to have to be brave, my dear. It is your father. God rest his soul, he has gone from us.”
“My father is dead?”
He nods.
“Then Harry is king?” I whisper disbelievingly.
“He will be King Henry VIII.”
“It’s not possible.”
He gives me a wry smile. “I was afraid you would be very grieved.”
“Oh I am, I am,” I assure him, feeling nothing. “It’s a shock, and yet I knew he was unwell. My lady grandmother always said that he was unwell.”
“It will make a great difference to the country,” he says. “Your brother is quite unknown, quite untried. Your father gave him no power; he didn’t teach him the ways of governing.”
“It was always meant to be Arthur.”
“Not for years.”
I can feel the tears welling up now. “I am an orphan,” I say piteously.
He sits beside me and puts his arm around me. “You have a family here,” he says. “And if Harry will keep the peace as he should, then perhaps you can visit him when he comes to his throne.”
“I should like that,” I concede.
“If he will keep the peace. What d’you think he will do? He is sworn by the Treaty of Perpetual Peace to respect our borders and our sovereignty. Your father and I were quarreling over raiders and pirates, and he tried to forbid me a friendship with France. Do you think Harry can be persuaded that peace is in the interests of us all? Do you think he will be an easier neighbor than your father? Do you have any influence over him?”
“Oh, I am sure I can persuade him. I am sure I can explain. I could travel to London and tell him.”
“When you have been brought to bed and risen up again with a bonny boy. You shall be an ambassador then. There can be no traveling until you are both well and strong.”
“Oh yes, but then . . .” I think of how wonderful it will be to return to England with my younger brother as King of England, with My Lady the King’s Mother diminished and renamed as my lady the king’s grandmother, and Mary a mere princess, whereas I will be a queen with a prince in the cradle who has brought peace to two countries. I shall have a baggage train that goes on for miles. They will see the jewels that James has given me; they will admire my gowns.
“And you have an inheritance,” my husband remarks.
“I have?”
“Yes. I don’t know exactly what you will have; but he died immensely rich. It will be a substantial sum.”
“Am I to have it all myself?” I ask. “It’s not to go to you?”
He bows his head. “You are to keep it all, my little miser. It is to come to you entire.”
I feel the tears come again. “It will be a comfort. In my loss. In my great loss.”
“Oh, and you will never believe this,” my husband says, gently wiping my tears away with the heel of his hand. “Your brother’s first action is to punish his father’s advisors who were overtaxing the people.”
“Oh, yes?” I have no interest in taxation.
“And his second is to announce his marriage to the dowager princess. He is going to marry Katherine of Aragon at last. She has been on his doorstep for seven years; but they will be married within days. They are probably married already; the roads are so bad that this letter is days old.”
I can feel something like dread. “No. Surely not. Not her. You must have got it wrong. Let me see the letter.”
He hands it over. It is a formal announcement from the herald. It tells simply of my father’s death and the declaration for Harry. I look at his title as if I still cannot believe it. Then comes the announcement that Harry is to be married to the dowager princess. It is in black and white, in ornate handwritten script. There are seals on the bottom: there can be no doubt.
“She will be Queen of England,” I say. At once my sympathy for her lonely years on the fringes of court, ignored by everyone, trying to survive by selling her plate, completely deserts me. I cannot remember my pity for my poor widowed sister. Instead I think that she has played a monstrous gamble and it has paid off. She staked her health and her safety and she has won. She gambled that she would endure longer than my father. She defeated him by outliving him; she practically wished him dead. “That false girl has won.”
James laughs with genuine amusement at the contempt in my voice. “I thought that you loved her?”
“I do!” I say, but the flood of jealousy rushes over me. “I did. I just naturally love her more when she is poor and unhappy than when she is triumphing over me.”
“No, why? She has waited long enough for her reward. She has earned it. They say she was all but starving towards the end.”
“You don’t understand. She failed Arthur and I thought that my father would punish her by never letting her marry Harry, nor go back to Spain. Katherine is years older than Harry. The match is quite unsuitable.”
“Only five years.”
“She’s his brother’s widow!”
“They have a dispensation from the Pope.”
“She is not . . .” I clench my hands into fists; I cannot explain to him. “You don’t know her. She is ambitious—it is the throne that she wants, not Harry. My lady grandmother does not . . . I do not . . . She is proud. She is not fit. She will never fill my mother’s shoes.”
Gently he takes my hands. “Harry will have to take your father’s place, she will have to take your mother’s place. Not in your heart, of course. But on the throne. England has to have a king and queen and it will be Harry and Katherine of Aragon. God bless them and keep them.”
“Amen,” I say sulkily, but I cannot mean it, and I do not mean it.
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1509
As the snow clings on to the peaks of our high Scots hills, and the icy winds strip the blossom from the fruit trees, I think of the two of them in England in this, Harry’s first miraculous summer, glorying in the titles they won by mischance: king and queen, beneficiaries of the deat
hs of their betters. I think of Katherine, saying it was her destiny, and waiting and biding her time. I think of her saying that she would outlast my father, and now she has done so. I think that there is no true love there, only ambition and vanity. Harry has stolen his brother’s wife; Katherine has captured the heir of England. I think they are despicable, both of them, and that there is no true grief when a younger boy wears his dead brother’s shoes and a widow throws off mourning.
And then another messenger comes from England with urgent news. My lady grandmother has died. They say that she overate at the coronation feast—soothing her grief with roasted cygnet; but I think that perhaps she had nothing to live for, once she saw her grandson to the throne and knew that her great work for the Tudors—both public and secret—was done, knowing we will have and keep the throne forever. I try to feel a sense of loss for the grandmother who ruled me so strictly, but my mind keeps returning to the thought that, with the old lady gone, Katherine will be unchallenged mistress of the court and there will be no one to rule over her. Not even my mother was allowed in the queen’s rooms—they were always reserved for My Lady the King’s Mother. But Katherine will do better than my mother: she will be a queen without a mother-in-law overshadowing her, free to do whatever she wants. Certainly, Harry won’t know how to manage her. She will behave as if she were a queen in her own right, just like her unwomanly mother, Isabella of Castile. She will be triumphant, leaping from poverty to queenship on Harry’s whim. She will think herself the victor of everything, she will think herself the favorite of God Himself. Her mother called herself a “conquistadora”; Katherine has been raised to ride roughshod over everyone.
I write to Mary:
I am sure that the coronation and the wedding were very grand and I am sure that you enjoyed it; but you must be a good sister to Katherine and remind her to be grateful to Harry for raising her to this great position, when she had sunk so very low. Our brother has been generous to recognize his betrothal to her when he was not bound to do so. You should caution her against pride and greed in her new position. Of course, I rejoice in her extraordinary rise to power but we would not be good sisters if we did not warn her against the sin of ambition, and rivalry with us who are Tudors born.
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, AUTUMN 1509
James has ambassadors at Harry’s new court and they report that, just as I feared, the young couple are spending lavishly on clothes, celebrations, jousts, and music. There is dancing every night and apparently Henry composes songs for his own choristers, and poetry. My pregnancy is not an easy one, and the nausea that comes with my condition is worsened, I swear, by the reports of Katherine dancing in gowns of cloth of gold, the curtains in her box at the joust sewn all over with little gold letters of K and H, her pomegranate crest carved on every stone boss, her barge with silk curtains, her fantastic horses, her beautiful wardrobe, her greedy purchases of jewels.
I am so avid for reports of the most extravagantly beautiful court in Europe that people think I love to hear of my brother’s happiness. I show them a weak smile, I say “yes.” All this is troubling enough, but news of my sister Mary’s wealth and freedom is even worse for me. She will be completely unsupervised—for Katherine will never command her—and Harry will just drown her in jewels and fine gowns to show her off. Everyone tells me she is the most beautiful princess in all of Europe. Harry will use her as a puppet to show the crown jewels; he will have her portrait painted and send it all round Christendom to flaunt how beautiful she is. I imagine bets are already being taken on the likelihood of her jilting Charles of Castile and marrying another applicant, if they can find anyone grander. I really don’t think I can bear to see another picture of another betrothal. I can’t bear to get another letter from Mary boasting of her betrothal gifts—that ruby! And they will not make her return it, I am sure.
Katherine herself writes to me. It is her first letter adorned with the royal seal on the bottom. I find it unspeakably irritating:
We have always been sisters and now I am your sister and a sister-queen. Your brother and I have mourned your dear father and your good grandmother and we are very happy together. We should be so glad if you could make a visit to court next summer when the roads are good.
You will want to have news of your little sister. She lives with us at court and I think every day she grows more beautiful. I am so happy that she is betrothed to my family and so when she leaves us she will go to my former home and I know how they will delight in her fair skin and golden hair and the beauty of her sweet nature. She shares my wardrobe and my jewels and sometimes we dance together in the evenings, and people exclaim at the picture that we make: they call us Grace and Beauty—so silly. She will write to you next. I am trying to keep her to her studies—but you know how playful and naughty she is.
I hope soon that you two will be royal aunts to a little prince. Yes, I am with child! I will be so glad to give your brother a son and heir. How blessed we are! I pray for you daily, and I know that you think of me and our sister Mary and my dear husband, your brother the king. I know that you must feel, as we all do, that our dark years are behind us and we three must pray for our blessings to continue. God bless you, Sister.
Katherine
I grit my teeth. I write in reply. I say how pleased I am for her. I explain that I am sick in the mornings but some people say that this proves it is to be a boy. I say that they give me broth of beef. I am not afraid of childbirth, having faced it before, and also I am so young, only nineteen. It is so much safer to have babies when you are a young mother, everyone says so. And how is Katherine feeling? How is she at the age of twenty-three? Carrying her first child at twenty-three?
She does not reply to this, and first I laugh up my sleeve at the thought of taunting her with her age, and reminding her of the long years when she was waiting as a widow, the years when she should have been married to Harry and conceiving a child, and then—when her silence continues—I take offense, thinking that she believes herself too grand to be obliged to reply promptly. Also, she said that Mary would write to me and she does the child no favors if she allows her to be negligent and lazy. She should remember that I am her sister-in-law, and a queen in my own right. She should remember that my friendship is valuable, the perpetual peace is of my making, we are royal neighbors and my husband is a great king. Certainly, she should reply promptly to me when I have taken the trouble to write to her.
In October, not having had a single word from either of my so-called sisters, I write from my childbed to tell them that I have birthed a boy. I know that I write as if it is my triumph. I cannot moderate my tone—but it is my triumph. I have given my lusty husband a boy and whatever Katherine achieves in her future confinement, I have already done this, and I have done it before her, and they can know that in London. I have given my husband a son and an heir, and this boy is the son and the heir of England too—until Katherine does her duty as I have done mine. Until then, it is I who have the heir to the crowns of Scotland and England in my golden cradle, it is I who have the first Tudor of the third royal generation. We are no dynasty without grandchildren to follow my father, we are nothing without sons, and it is I—not Mary and not Katherine—who has a Tudor prince in my nursery tonight.
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, CHRISTMAS 1509
We celebrate Christmas in the grandest way that Scotland can afford, with masques and disguisings, dances and feasts, and John Damien the alchemist builds a machine that can fly around the room like a captive bird, which makes people scream with fright. James gives me a chain of gold, and jewels for my hair, and tells me that I am the finest queen that Scotland has ever had. I look well, I know. My gowns are too tight and they have let out the seams and lace me loosely, but James says that I am bonny and blithe, as a wife should be, and that he has no objection to a warm armful.
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1510
James and I are so happy that not even t
he return of the two bastards from Padua causes trouble between us. Alexander, who was named as Archbishop of Saint Andrews, and his half brother James, Earl of Moray, come to pay their respects and I greet them with cool courtesy. I show them both the legitimate son of their father, and I tell them this is Arthur, Prince of Scotland and the Isles, and Duke of Rothesay. Both boys kneel to the little crib and swear fealty and Alexander blinks his short-sighted eyes behind his round glasses perched on his nose, and says doubtfully, “He’s very small for such a big title,” which makes me laugh.
I don’t even object when my husband names Alexander as Lord Chancellor. “I need someone I can completely trust,” he says.
“He’s little more than a boy,” I say irritably.
“We grow up early in Scotland.”
“Well, as long as he knows that all his learning has been for the benefit of his half brother,” I say.
“I am sure that Desiderius Erasmus never forgot it for a moment,” James says with his wry smile.
To my surprise, Katherine finally replies to my letter, writing in her own hand, with her pomegranate seal. It is a private letter to say that she is so sad and so ashamed, she has lost the baby she was carrying, and though it would have been a girl, she feels that she has failed to produce the one thing that Harry lacks, the one thing they need to make their joy complete.
She shocks me out of my righteous offense. She makes me stop and think of my little girl that died, and my son before her. I think how cruel I was to taunt her with being a mother for the first time at twenty-three. It was a poor joke when she read it and lost her baby. I am filled with remorse and I am ashamed that I let my rivalry with Katherine spill over into spite. I take her letter in my hand, and I go to chapel and pray for the little soul of the lost baby. I pray for Katherine’s sorrow, I pray for my brother’s disappointment and for the throne of England. I pray that a Tudor son and heir will come to them, to the young woman who has been my sister for eight years, whom I have loved and envied turn and turn about, but who has been in my heart and prayers for so long.