“I have no regrets,” he says. He is lying. He must have, he does have. So do I.
“If Harry sends his army . . .”
He nods. Of course. Of course, it is what we always say to each other. If Harry sent his army then the world could change again in a moment. We must become warmongers like Thomas Dacre, wishing a merciless invasion on Scotland. We must argue for revenge, we must demand a fleet. If my brother will be a brother to me, if Katherine will advise him as a sister should do, then I will be queen regent again. It all depends on Harry. It all depends on my sister-in-law his wife.
“There is something I have to tell you,” Ard says, picking his words with care. “They did not tell you before, because they feared for your health.”
I feel my belly plummet as if I am falling. I am wildly, suddenly afraid. “What is it? Tell me quickly. Is it Mary, my little sister? She’s not dead in childbirth? God forbid it. It’s not her?”
He shakes his head.
“Katherine has lost her baby,” I say with certainty.
“No, it is your son.”
I knew it. I knew as soon as I saw the gravity on his face. “Is he dead?”
He nods.
I put my hand over my face as if to blot out his sympathy. Beneath my fingers my tears run sideways from my eyes and into my ears. I cannot raise my head to mop my face dry. I cannot cry out at this new pain, having screamed so much at the pain in my joints. “God take him to His own,” I whisper. “God bless and keep him.”
I think, naturally enough, even in the first shock, that at least I had two princes. If one is gone there is still a son and heir. I still have another. I still have an heir for Scotland, an heir for England. I am still the only one of the three queens to have a son. Even if one is dead, even if I have lost my boy, my heir, I still have my especial treasure; I still have my baby.
“Don’t you want to know which one is dead?” Archibald asks awkwardly.
I had assumed it was the king. That would be the worst thing. If the crowned king is dead then what is there to prevent a usurpation but one little baby alone? “Is it not James?”
“No. It was Alexander.”
“Oh God, no!” Now I wail. Alexander is my darling, my pretty boy, my baby boy. This is the baby that James left me with. Not even the new baby, Margaret, has replaced him in my heart. “It can’t be Alexander! He is so bonny and strong.”
Archibald nods, his face pale. “I am so sorry.”
“How did he die?”
Ard shrugs. He is a young man. He does not know how babies die. “He was sick, and then he weakened. My dear, I am so sorry.”
“I should have been there!”
“I know. You should have been. But he had good nursing, and he did not suffer . . .”
“My boy! Alexander! My little boy. This is the third boy that I have lost. My third boy!”
“I’ll leave you to the care of your ladies,” Archibald says formally. He does not know what to say or what to do. He is always having to comfort me. Nothing has ever gone right for us. Now he is bound to a crippled woman screaming for the loss of her son. He gets to his feet, bows to me, and goes from the room.
“My baby, my little boy!”
I swear that the Duke of Albany shall pay for this. However Alexander died, it is the duke who is to blame for it. I should never have been forced away from the boys at Stirling Castle. I should never have been separated from him. My own sister Mary, a royal widow just like me, married a man in secret, and was allowed to leave her country with full honor. Why should I be an exile and my husband with a price on his head, and my son dead? Always, always, I am not granted my due as the senior Tudor princess. Thomas, Lord Dacre, agrees completely with me and together we compile eight pages of charges against the duke to send to London. Dacre adds every instance when the Scots have been allowed to invade English Northern lands, everything they have stolen, every cottage they have burned, every traveler they have robbed. We will destroy the duke; we will persuade Harry to invade. If it causes war with France it is a small price to pay for the revenge that a queen should exact for the death of her son.
The false duke writes to me, sympathizes with my loss, congratulates me on the birth of my daughter and says that he hopes we can come to an agreement. He is sending an emissary to Harry. He hopes we can come to peace.
“Never,” I say flatly to Dacre. “I shall tell him what he has to do before I will consider a peace treaty. He is to release Gavin Douglas, he is to forgive Lord Drummond, he is to lift the outlawry from my husband, he is to send me my jewels and he is to restore my husband’s lands and wealth to him.”
“He can’t do all that,” Dacre says, looking worried.
“He has to,” I say. “I will write to him myself.”
The old border lord looks cautious. “Better not to negotiate with him while he is sending a man to your brother. Better let the two men agree together.”
“Not at all,” I say fiercely. “I am queen regent, not anyone else. I shall tell him my demands, and he will meet them.”
I write also to my sister the Queen of England, Katherine, who seems to have held this child in her belly for all this long time, and tell her that I am praying for her as she nears her time, and ask her to write to me at once, as soon as her baby is born, a little cousin to my Margaret. I think of my two sisters, nearing their time, lapped in luxury, advised by physicians, with gold cradles ready for their babies, and I think that it is the unfairness that hurts me the most. They have no idea of the pain that I suffered; they will suffer nothing like it. They have no idea of the danger I was in. They are sisters together; I am like a changeling, forever excluded.
Albany writes to me promising peace, promising agreement, but at the same time his emissaries write to my brother. Perhaps he is trying for a peace, trying to speak to Harry and agree with me, but I would rather that he deal with me direct. I cannot allow Harry to agree with Albany keeping charge of my son the king. I cannot impress on Harry the importance of my jewels. Everyone thinks that I am thinking of trivial things, women’s things. But I know that Albany treats me with contempt, treats my allies with contempt. Nobody but me seems to understand that the men who fought for me have to be rescued from Albany’s imprisonment. Gavin Douglas is still imprisoned. He must be released and given the see that I said he should have. These are not things that can be lightly traded; they are, like my jewels, my possessions. Anyone who takes them from me is a thief.
Sometimes I think that I should creep back into Stirling Castle and raise a siege again, just so that I can be with my boy. Sometimes I think that I should go to Edinburgh and negotiate with the duke in person. But then Dacre comes to my chamber with letters from London when I am seated before the fire.
“Give them to me!” I say delightedly.
“There is one here from the queen,” he says, indicating her royal crest.
I show an excited and happy face, and put out my hand, eagerly breaking the seal to read. I make sure that I give Dacre not a clue that I am filled with dread, certain that she has given birth to a healthy boy at last, after so many attempts. If she has got a boy then my son has lost his inheritance of the English throne, and there is no reason for Harry to rescue him. I put my hand over my eyes as if to shield my face from the heat of the fire. That would be the worst loss of this year of losses.
And then I see that Katherine has not done her duty. God has not blessed her. Thank God, she has failed again, and her heart will be breaking. Tucked down at the bottom of the page, almost scribbled out by her signature, is the news that makes me smile.
“She’s had a girl,” I say flatly.
“God forgive her. What a pity,” Dacre says, heartfelt, as every Englishman will say. “God save her. What a disappointment.”
I think, I have given birth to four royal sons and I still have one left. And all Katherine has is a girl. “She is going to call her Mary. Princess Mary.”
“After her aunt, the dowager queen?”
Dacre asks cheerfully.
“I doubt that,” I snap. “Not since she came home in disgrace married without permission. It will be Mary for Our Lady, as Katherine will want the Queen of Heaven’s protection on this little child, after all her previous sorrows. We must pray that the little one lives; none of the others have.”
“I hear they are very close, Princess Mary and the queen,” Dacre perseveres.
“Not particularly,” I say. “Duchess of Suffolk, she is now.”
“And here is a letter from your brother’s steward,” Dacre says. “And he has written to me.”
“You may read yours here,” I say, and we break the seals and read together.
It is the letter we have both been waiting for. Harry’s master of horse writes to say that he has commissioned a special litter to come for me from London with a guard of honor, extra horses, wagons for my goods, and soldiers to keep me safe through the wild Northern lands. Harry himself has scrawled a note at the side of the careful script to say that I must come at once.
“What about Archibald?” I demand, smiling at my husband as he comes into my room.
He stands behind my chair, and I feel his hand rest gently on my shoulder. I straighten up in pride and ignore the twinge in my hip bone. I know we are a handsome young couple. I see Dacre take in Archibald’s strength and my determination.
Dacre smiles. “I am pleased to be able to tell you that your brother the king has sent a safe conduct for His Grace, your husband. You are to go to London together and the two of you will live there as queen regent and consort. He will be accorded all appropriate honors and you will take precedence before everyone but the queen. You will go before your sister the Dowager Queen Mary and her husband.”
“You shall see what I have tried to describe to you,” I promise Ard. “You shall see me at my home, in the castles that were my childhood homes. I shall present you to my brother, the king. We will follow him and Katherine in to dinner and then everyone else, everyone, will come behind us. You will be the greatest man in England after the king and I will be the greatest woman after Katherine.”
He comes around to my side and he goes down on one knee. He turns his handsome face up to me and I cannot stop myself from putting my hand to his smooth shaved cheek. My God, this is a handsome man. I feel myself yearn for him. It has been so many days that I have had to lie flat as a corpse in a bed while he sat beside me, not daring to touch me for the pain that it would cause. I want to be his wife again, I want to be his lover. I want to be his queen and walk proudly at his side.
“My lady wife, Your Grace, I cannot come,” he says simply.
Dacre and I exchange shocked looks over his head.
“What?”
“I cannot come to London.”
“But you have to,” I say flatly.
“If I go with you, as a Scots outlaw, all the lands will be taken from my kinsmen and my castles will be destroyed,” he says bluntly. “Everything that my father left me, everything that my grandfather owns, will be torn down. My clan will be leaderless, my people will die of starvation. I will have abandoned my birthright, and everyone will know that I left them for the comfort of being your husband in London when I should have been fighting for my home. They will think that I ran away to safety and left them to disaster.”
“You can’t stay here and fight,” Dacre says. “The king himself is trying to get a peace. You can’t stir up trouble now.”
“Are you a gentle dove now, your lordship?” Archibald says bitingly. “I never thought to hear you say that a Scot should not be fighting other Scots.” He turns his attention to me, as if Dacre is too despicable to answer. “My love, my queen, I can’t leave those who have risked everything for your cause. Lord Hume will lose his lands too. Albany has already threatened his wife and his mother with imprisonment. We can’t run away and leave our families behind.”
“But I am your wife! This is your family!”
“It would be dishonorable to run away.”
“Your duty is with me!”
“My duty is in Scotland,” he says. “Your brother will guard you and keep you in England. But no one will guard and keep my people if I abandon them.”
“Think it over,” Dacre recommends. “Don’t be too hasty, my lord. You might be a long time, hiding in the hills. The king may get a peace with France that doesn’t restore you. If you’re not in London, they may forget all about you.” He looks at me. “It is the way of great men, sorry though I am to say it. If your husband is not there he may be forgotten.”
This is a sneer against my husband and against me. Dacre is always my brother’s man first and my servant second. I know very well they will not remember Archibald—they barely remember me. Who would know better than I that a princess passes over the Scots border and disappears from memory? Who would know better than I that they only fight for you when it has all become such a disaster that they can overlook it no longer? I am not Mary, who can come and go without losing her brother’s attention, behave disobediently, disloyally, and be welcomed home with celebrations. I am not Katherine who can fail to give him a son year after year and still be the wife of his choice and the queen of the court. I am Margaret, Queen of Scotland, and they forget me altogether until the extremity of my danger threatens them.
“He will come with me to London!” I say hotly. “They will see us together. They will remember us then!”
Dacre turns to my husband with a small smile, and waits for his reply. I remember that this man has had years pitting one Scot against another, one Englishman against another, Scots against English, English against Scots. Now he is setting a wife against her husband. Dacre is a border man in every sense. He will think that he knows men like Archibald inside out, that he has paid them to dance to his piping. He has always thought him bought, easily turned, easily betrayed.
“I can’t come,” Ard says flatly. “Remembered or forgotten, I can’t come.”
We leave without him. I am only twenty-six years old, and yet I seem to have spent my life leaving the people I love and losing those who should guard me. We leave my son Alexander in the cold ground of Scotland, for Albany buried my boy in December, before I even knew that he was dead. We leave my surviving son the king, a child of four years old, in the keeping of his tutors. I pray that Davy Lyndsay is at his side, for who else is there who can give him comfort? We take Margaret with us, and her wet nurse and her rockers and her endless entourage. We travel as lightly as we can, and yet there is a long train of wagons with my goods, and Dacre’s goods, and the men-at-arms that guard them, and the lords who accompany us—glad of the chance to get to London after years on the border. We take half of Northumberland with us, but we leave without my husband.
He kisses my hand, my wet eyes, my lips, my hands again, before I leave. He swears that he loves me more now than when he was my pretty carver, my knight, my friend. He says that he cannot abandon his friends and his allies, his men, his lowly tenants who know nothing of king or regent or queen regent, but will follow him wherever he leads them. He cannot leave his castle, that great fort overlooking the sighing sea and the crying gulls. He tells me that we will be together again some day. We will be happy again, some day.
“I will come back,” I promise him. “I will come back to you and you will wait for me. I will command Harry to make peace with the French and with the Scots lords and they will allow me to come home and I will be queen regent, as I was, and you will be my consort.”
His loving gaze is as clear and as true as when he was my young carver. “Come back to me, and I will hold my castles and my lands and my power. Come back to Scotland and I will welcome your return as queen. Come back soon.”
ON THE ROAD SOUTH, ENGLAND, SPRING 1516
It is a long journey but there are signs of my returning power. The farther we go, by slow, painful stages, the grander becomes our procession. I enter York in state and process through the city which remembers my entrance as a princess all those years ago
. Every day we add more followers. I appoint new people in my household, and I am surrounded by hangers-on and petitioners. Dacre says that he cannot house and feed so many on the road, and I shrug and say that I have always been beloved in England; he should have listened to me when I told him that the people would flock to be with me.
I receive letters from London: from Katherine, saying that her new baby is thriving and strong, and from my sister Mary, who has given birth to a boy. It is hard to be glad for her. This is not a boy who will be a stepping stone to greatness for his mother, my little sister. This is not a boy who is going to take up a great place in the world. His parents are all but bankrupt since they have to pay the royal exchequer a massive fine for their marriage. The boy’s very title was only a reward to his father for being an amusing friend; Brandon has no talent or breeding or merit. They are calling the little mite Henry in an attempt to win my brother’s favor. I expect they will ask Thomas Wolsey, that rising star, to be godfather, as he is to my baby. They will have to do something to turn their fortune around. So I cannot celebrate the birth of this boy, who will be nothing but a cost to the family.
But I am glad that Mary is out of danger. I always thought that she would be fertile and strong. All of our mother’s family are prolific breeders. The Plantagenets flower like the weed of their name. I was certain she would not be weakly like Katherine. I am delighted that she is up and well, and that she will be able to greet me when we get to London. The thought of seeing her again, even seeing Katherine, becomes more and more exciting as we get closer to the capital city. It has been thirteen years of exile. I never really thought that I would get home again. I never thought that I would sleep under an English roof with the Tudor standard flying over my head again. There were times when I never thought to see any of them, ever again.