Obviously, we should have done that to say that we were coming, and he did not think to do so, and now we have this cold welcome, and a delay until they open up, and I have longer to wait before I can be comfortable.
There are lights at the hatch and someone glares out at us and then at last the gate opens but it does not swing back to admit us. A man comes out with two guards on either side of him, a cape thrown over his nightgown. He stares at me for a moment and then he bows very low. “Your Grace, forgive me.”
“Anything! If you will let me in and give me a bed for the night,” I say, trying to keep the fury out of my voice. “I am very tired and I am with child and we have come all the way from Scotland. I expected a better welcome to my own country than this.”
He bows his head and then looks at Archibald. “Do you have papers of safe conduct?” he asks.
Obviously, we don’t. We don’t have food or my jewels or my wardrobe or my shoes. We don’t have my horses or my hawks or my furniture. We don’t have my tapestries or my silver plate. We don’t have my books or my musicians or my secretary. We don’t have the late King James’s lute. We don’t have a safe conduct because we are seeking safety.
“This is the queen regent!” Archibald shouts. “She doesn’t need a safe conduct to get into her own brother’s castle! You should be on your knees welcoming her in. She is carrying my child! She is the mother of the King of Scotland. Open the gates or by God I will—”
He breaks off. He does not say what he will do. Of course, this just reminds everyone that there is nothing he can do. We are a party of a dozen people and three of us are ladies and one of us is eight months pregnant. What are we going to do if the governor refuses us entry?
“Sir Anthony,” George Douglas says pleasantly, “out of chivalry, out of loyalty, you must admit the king’s sister in the middle of the night when she is flying from Scots traitors.”
“I can’t,” he says miserably. He bows low to me. “I am commanded, absolutely commanded by the king himself, to admit no one from Scotland without a safe conduct from the king himself. Without a signed and sealed safe conduct, my gates must be kept closed.”
“To the king’s sister?” I repeat.
He bows in silence and I think, this is what sisterhood with those two women has brought me: nothing.
“What are we to do?” Archibald goes from rage to helplessness. “We have to get her somewhere safe. She is less than a month from her time. We have to get somewhere safe!”
“What about Coldstream Priory?” Sir Anthony says, eager to move us on. “The abbess will admit her, and from there you can send for help from London.”
“She has to come in here!” Archibald rages again. “I insist!”
“How far is it to Coldstream?” I ask shortly.
“Only about four hours,” the governor replies. “Three,” he says when he sees my face.
George throws his reins to one of the servants and comes to Archibald and myself. “He won’t let us in; he can’t,” he says. “We waste time and we lose our dignity begging here. Coldstream is our best chance. We’re in England now, we should be safe. Albany probably won’t cross the border. Let’s force this fool to give us food and we’ll go down the road and get a bed for the night in an abbey or a house or somewhere, and go on to Coldstream in the morning.”
“I’m so tired,” I say quietly. “I don’t think I can.”
“We’ll stop as soon as we can,” George promises me.
“I tell you, I can’t,” I say, my voice catching on a sob.
“You’ve got to,” Archibald replies. “You should not have left Linlithgow if you were not prepared to run to England.”
COLDSTREAM PRIORY, ENGLAND, SEPTEMBER 1515
This time my husband thinks far enough ahead to send one of the servants to warn the priory that we are coming, and as we plod towards them the gates are flung open and I can see the nuns coming down the lane to greet me.
The prioress herself stands by my horse when Archibald lifts me down from the saddle, and she exclaims at my agony, at my huge belly, and summons three nuns forward to help me walk. My legs won’t support me, there is something terribly wrong with my hip. They send for a chair and the lay sisters carry me into the abbey.
The guesthouse is large and comfortable and there is a big bed with good linen and curtains. My ladies strip off my filthy clothes and I get into bed in my dirty linen. “Leave me,” I say. “I have to sleep.”
They don’t wake me until it is afternoon and then they bring me a bowl of gruel and tell me that dinner will be served whenever I wish it. I can come to the guest hall and dine with the prioress or I can have it in my rooms, just as I prefer. “Where is Archibald?” I ask. “Where is he dining?”
Ard is housed in the pilgrim-house, at a distance from the abbey buildings with his brother and the menservants, but he can visit me in the guesthouse if I wish.
“He must come at once,” I say. “And I will take my dinner in the hall. Make sure that I have a suitable chair.”
“There’s no cloth of estate,” my lady-in-waiting reminds me. “And Alice has brushed your gown but it’s not really clean. The prioress has loaned you some linen.”
This silences me. I am not myself unless I am seated beneath a cloth of estate, in beautiful clothes, dining like a queen. All my life I have been on the top table, beside the throne. What will I become, if I am as poor as Katherine was?
“I’ll eat here,” I say sulkily. “And you will have to get me new clothes.”
I don’t discuss with her how, in the middle of the borders, she is to get me new clothes, and she is too wise in the ways of royals to ask me how I think this will happen. She goes to order my dinner and to fetch Archibald and I think, just for a moment, how I made this journey twelve years ago, and came into Berwick and there was a loyal speech, thanking God that I, the senior Tudor princess, had honored the little town with my presence.
Archibald comes in looking boyish and fresh. Breakfast and a wash have restored him to health and energy. He is not bowed down by pregnancy and crippled with pain. A young man can endure much and rise up full of life and joy; but a young woman—and I am still a young woman—has to struggle.
“My poor love,” he says as he kneels to me.
He has borrowed some clean linen and his hair, damp from a bath, is curly and glossy as a ram’s fleece. He gleams with vitality.
“There is nowhere for me to dine,” I say miserably. “And I have no clothes.”
“Couldn’t you borrow a gown from the prioress?” he asks. “She’s a very cultured and thoughtful lady. She has beautiful linen, I am sure.”
“I cannot dress as a nun,” I say shortly. “I cannot wear another woman’s linen, however much she has impressed you. I have to dress as a queen.”
“Yes,” he says vaguely. “Perhaps we can write to Albany and demand that he send your clothes. Perhaps your wagons are already at Tantallon and they can send them on?”
“We can write to Albany? He can know where we are?”
“You’re safe now, in England. You can start to negotiate, I suppose. Indeed, we will have to tell him what we expect.”
“I can?” I have a sudden gleam of hope. I had felt that we were running like criminals from an army of forty thousand Scots who were determined to capture Archibald and try him for treason, determined to imprison me so that I would die in captivity. But now we are safe, now I am home in England, everything is changed.
“I have saved you,” Archibald says. “I did. It’s quite incredible. It’s like a romance, it’s like a fairy tale. That journey! Good God, the ride that went on and on! And now we are here, and we have won.”
“Get me some paper and a pen from the lady abbess. I will write at once,” I declare.
I inform the duke, in the frostiest letter, that I am safe in England. I don’t say where, for I am still frightened at the thought of his army. I say that I will return on a number of conditions. I don’t stint mysel
f: I want my lands back and my dower rents, the full restitution of my fortune, my jewels and especially my clothes. I want a pardon for Archibald and for everyone who has defended me, regardless of whether or not they are facing criminal charges. I want free access to my sons and the right to appoint their governors, tutors and household. I want, in fact, everything that I had that Albany took from me, but I don’t object to him keeping the title of governor as long as he works alongside me (I mean beneath me) for the good of Scotland, as clearly the parliament intended that he should.
I rest. I eat well. I sleep at night without troubling dreams. The pain goes from my hip and I feel the baby squirm and turn so I know he is well and strong too. I talk at length with the prioress, Isabella Hoppringle, who is a thoughtful and astute lady of letters. She advises me to wait to hear from Lord Dacre what I should do next, and that I should put no trust in Albany. She tells me that Lord Dacre will save me. Airily I tell her that I am in control of my own life, winning the war of words with the duke. I show her the letters that pass and repass between us, when he offers me one thing and I demand another. I think that I am playing this hand well. The queen counts high in this game, and I am dealing the best cards to myself.
I am winning. By getting to safety I have restored my power, I am a force to be reckoned with. The Duke of Albany appoints the French ambassador to negotiate between us and he will come to me at Coldstream, carrying all the compliments and courtesies of the duke and of parliament. He will bring me proposals that have been forced through parliament by the duke, anxious that I shall return to my place. The last thing Albany wants is to drag France into war with England over Scotland. Indeed, he is specifically commanded by his king not to allow matters to worsen. He was to bring peace and order to Scotland and now everybody blames him for bringing anarchy and the risk of war. To turn a queen from her own castle is to threaten every monarch in Christendom. Nobody will support him. So I am to have my children at my side, I am to stay wherever I like, I am to have my fortune restored to me, my husband will be pardoned. The ambassador will arrive at midday, and his name on the agreement will make it binding on both sides. I am not winning; I have won.
I walk in the garden with Isabella, and I say to her what a joy it will be to go back to Edinburgh and to see my boys again, and how I never thought that I would long to take my place as Queen Regent of Scots, but that now I do. I tell her that my sister, foolishly, without producing an heir for the throne of France, left her new home, married a commoner and returned to England, and now it will be as if she never went away. The French will forget her in a sennight. She will have to return her jewels. Of course, she may have the pleasures of the English court and the prestige of being the king’s sister—these are trivial pleasures for a foolish girl—but a woman called by God to do her duty by her husband’s country should stay there, serving the country and serving God, as I do. I declare that to be the mother of a king is the greatest calling that a woman could have. I have become as great as my lady grandmother, who bore a king and saw him to the throne. She had God’s hand over her every action and so do I. I am closer to God than a prioress. I have a vocation and a duty. I am that great woman. I will serve Scotland and God.
It’s very pleasant to stroll around the herb garden with the prioress, our skirts swishing against the end-of-summer lavender, releasing the sharp smell on the heady air. As we walk she picks a sprig of mint and sniffs it, I brush my hands over a bush of rosemary. There is rue growing, and the daisy flowers of chamomile, the bright little faces of johnny jump-up and the scented leaves of lemon balm. “I wonder that you trust him,” she says casually.
“What?”
“Albany,” she says. “The Sieur d’Albany.” She says it like a French name, the very accent of deceit. “He has tricked you and betrayed you every single time he has made an agreement with you from his first coming to Scotland. Surely he is false to you? He brought the cannon against you in Stirling; he shamed you before your son. He took the keys of the castle out of your little boy’s hand. He separated you from your two boys. Would you really put yourself in his power again?”
“He’s a duke,” I say. “And a man of great courtesy. And now he acknowledges that I am queen. I have his word in writing.”
She makes a little face and shrugs her shoulders. “He’s a Frenchman,” she says dismissively. “Or as good as. Married a Frenchwoman for her money. Sworn to the French king. False as a Frenchman; and dishonest as a Scot. Between him and your parliament I fear they will destroy you.”
I am horrified. “You surely cannot think that!”
“Ever since he came to Scotland he has been your undoing!” she exclaims. “Why are you here if not driven into exile? Did you choose to leave Stirling? Was it your free choice to leave Edinburgh? Did you not run from Linlithgow in fear of your life? Did you not ride from Tantallon in only the clothes you stood up in?”
I think for a moment that she seems remarkably well informed for a prioress in a border abbey; but perhaps she has been talking to George.
“If I were you I would return to Edinburgh only at the head of an army,” she remarks. “I would do as Lord Dacre advises, and go to his grand house at Morpeth, and muster your forces there.”
I laugh uncertainly. “You make me sound like Katherine and her warlike mother.”
“I am sure you will prove as brave as she. I would have sworn that you were her equal.”
“Oh, I am, certainly I am. Katherine is no braver than I am. I know her, and I know this for a fact.”
“And I am sure that you have a husband as brave as Ferdinand of Spain.”
“Archibald is worth ten of him.”
“Then why should you not reconquer Scotland as Isabella and Ferdinand did Spain? And then you won’t have to argue and bow down to the duke. You will just send him back to France.” She pauses. “Or behead him, as you think fit. If you were ruling queen and not a mere regent, you could do whatever you pleased.”
There is a loud banging on the outer door. I look up in alarm. “Could that be the French ambassador early? Isabella, you will have to show him into the guesthouse hall and make him wait while I dress. I have to sign the agreement with him.”
She waits as a nun from the gatehouse comes through the garden, bobs a curtsey to me, and whispers. Isabella laughs and takes my hand. “You are lucky,” she says. “Great men and women are always lucky, and you have all the luck of a queen in the special keeping of God. That is Lord Dacre at the door, a day ahead of the French liar, bringing you a safe conduct so that you can go anywhere in England. He can take you to London right now.”
I gasp, my hand closing on a leafy bush of rue so the sharp scent fills the air. “To London?”
“Lord Dacre has come!” she says, as delighted as if it were her own triumph. “And you are free!”
I can hardly believe that he has come, with a troop of horse, with a safe conduct, ready to escort me south at once. I kiss Isabella as if she were a sister, and we mount up gladly. I have a little stabbing pain as I sit in the saddle behind my husband, but I can see my future unrolling ahead of me. Isabella is right: I can persuade Harry to do his duty by me, I will return to Scotland at the head of an army and enter Edinburgh in triumph. I can bring up my boys to be the sons their father would have wanted, heirs to the throne of Scotland and even England.
I am in the saddle before I remember: “Oh, but Lord Dacre, the Duke of Albany is sending the French ambassador with proposals. Shouldn’t I wait for him and give him an answer? What if he is offering me the regency? What if he will give me everything I demand?”
“He can send it to you at Morpeth, my castle. He can meet with us at Morpeth,” the old guardian of the borders replies to me. “Better that he discuss with you what terms he will offer when you are behind strong walls in an English castle that will never fall to siege, than when you are in one gown in a priory in the borders, surrounded by the dead of Flodden.”
“But if he is coming, with a cap
itulation?” I press my case.
“Would you want him to see you like this?” the old lord asks. “So very travel-stained? So very shabby? And—forgive me, Your Grace—but your belly is so big. Shouldn’t you be in confinement? Do you really want to see the French ambassador in this condition? Don’t you think he will tell everyone that you were near your time and riding pillion around the borders like a poor woman?”
I am mortified. If I had my linen from Edinburgh or my furniture from Linlithgow I could meet him, and dare him to glance at my swelling belly. But Lord Dacre is right: I can have no confidence in myself looking like this. When I am washed and dressed I will meet him. He can come to me when I am seated under a cloth of estate in a great castle. Right now, I am dressed as poor as Katherine of Arrogant when my lady grandmother was reducing her to nothing.
“God bless you!” Isabella calls. “And bring you to your own again.”
We go out like English lords, not as we came in, like Scots criminals. Lord Dacre’s standard goes before us, the royal standard of England before that, and my standards as Queen Regent of Scotland at the very head. He has had this all prepared; I think he may have been prepared for months. He knew that I would come to England before I did.
“I do think that we should have waited, out of courtesy to the French ambassador,” I say to his lordship, who reins in his horse so that he can fall back and talk to me, seated on my pillion saddle behind my husband. Lord Dacre hardly troubles to acknowledge Archibald, I could be riding behind my groom. In his turn, Archibald is sullen as a boy.
“Oh, why not set off for London, for a comfortable confinement and then Christmas there?” Dacre asks.
“Because I think the ambassador was authorized to offer me everything that I wanted,” I say. “The letters from the duke made it clear that he had spoken to parliament and forced them to agree to all my demands.”