“How were they?” Harry asks briskly.
Clearly, Thomas Wolsey already knows who “they” are and is to be part of this conversation.
“They will return my jewels,” I say with quiet pride. “They admit they were wrong to seize them. They have them safe, all accounted for, and they will send everything to me. My dresses too.”
Wolsey smiles at me. “You are an able diplomat, Your Grace.”
I really think I am. I incline my head. “And they agree that my rents shall be paid. I think I am owed a fortune, perhaps as much as fourteen thousand pounds.”
Harry gives a low whistle. “They say they will pay them?”
“They have promised.”
“And what do they say about the Duke of Albany?” Wolsey asks. “Now that we have settled the question of the gowns?”
I incline my head as the butcher’s son dares to remark on my conversation with my ambassadors. “They insist he remains as regent; but I was very clear to them that this is to deliver Scotland into the power of the French.”
Harry nods.
“I made sure that they know you will not tolerate it.”
“You did well,” he says. “I will not.”
“And so we are to meet again, when they bring my jewels.”
“I will talk with them in the meantime,” Wolsey remarks. “But I doubt I will make more ground than Her Grace has done. What a queen regent you are: two of your aims gained at one meeting!”
“I must have my son restored to me,” I say.
“Your son is safe,” Wolsey says gently. “But there is bad news from Scotland about Alexander Hume and his brother William.”
I wait. Alexander Hume is a turncoat of ridiculous pride. He changed sides against Albany and in my favor because he feared that Albany had made a joke about his little stature. He has all the fiery pride of a short man. But once he had joined my side he was a staunch servant. He rescued me from Linlithgow, and he rode with us from Scotland. He kept Archibald company and we would not have been so brave without his courage. But I know he is terribly unreliable.
“Has he changed sides?” I ask suspiciously.
“He won’t be changing again,” Wolsey says with vulgar humor. “He gave himself up to Albany for a pardon, but then he broke his parole and he has been executed for treason. He’s dead, Your Grace.”
I give a little gasp and I stagger. “Good God. He was executed after a pardon? No one will ever trust Albany again!”
“No.” Wolsey has the impertinence to correct me. “Nobody would ever trust a Hume again. It was he who broke his word. He received a pardon, he swore allegiance, then he rebelled again. He deserved to die. Nobody could argue in his defense.”
I would argue it. I don’t think any promise to Albany needs to be honored. But I am not going to disagree with my brother’s favored advisor, who, in my opinion, should not even be speaking unless invited.
Wolsey nods at Harry, as if to cue him to a speech. “It means that the queen regent has lost the support of a powerful family,” he says, as if thinking aloud. “If only we could get her another ally. A great ally, who would frighten the French. Perhaps the emperor?”
Harry takes my hand and tucks it under his arm. He guides me away from them all: Thomas Wolsey, the courtiers, the servants. There is a long gallery that leads from the privy chamber to the privy stairs and we walk, side by side, our paces matching.
“The emperor would be glad to offer marriage to you,” Harry says frankly. “And with him as your husband you could dictate your terms to the Scots. With him as your husband, and me as your brother, you would be the most powerful woman in Europe.”
I feel a little flare of ambition at the thought of it. “I am married already.”
“Wolsey thinks it could be annulled,” Harry says. “It took place when Scotland was under a ban of excommunication: it is invalid.”
“But it is not invalid in the sight of God,” I say quietly. “I know it, and so does He. And I would make my baby Margaret a bastard. I won’t do that, any more than you would make little Mary a bastard. You couldn’t do it, I know. Neither can I.”
Harry makes a grimace. “It would give you such power,” he reminds me. “And the husband you are defending is not at your side, and his greatest ally has been executed.”
“I can’t do it,” I say. “A marriage is a marriage. You know it cannot be set aside. You, who married for love, as I did, know what a sacred thing that is.”
“Unless God shows His will otherwise,” Harry says. “He did so with our sister, when her husband died within weeks.”
I don’t say out loud that Mary was lucky to get off so quickly, but I think it. “If He shows His will,” I agree. “But God has blessed my marriage with Archibald, and yours with Katherine. He has given us health and issue. I am married for life. As are you. It is till death do us part.”
“I too,” Harry says, yielding to my certainty. He is still the child of my lady grandmother’s raising. He will always take a pious woman’s advice. He cannot help but think that a woman who is determined is a woman who is in the right. It is the consequence of having a self-righteous grandmother. If he ever throws off this belief he will be free to think anything. “But you will consider it, Margaret? For your husband has all but abandoned you, and who knows where he is now? He could be dead. It could be God’s will that your marriage is already over.”
“He has not abandoned me,” I say. “I know exactly where he is now. And I married him for richer or for poorer, I cannot desert him now that he is an outlaw, fighting for what is his own, fighting in my cause.”
“If he is an outlaw still,” Harry suggests. “If he did not surrender with Hume, and make his peace with Albany and abandon your cause.”
“He would never do that,” I maintain. “And I know where my honor and my love lies.” There is something about talking with Harry that always tempts me to speak as if in a masque. He is always rather staged. He never speaks without an eye to his effect. He never walks without an eye to his appearance. His natural pomposity is choreographed.
Now, he kisses me on both cheeks. “God bless you for your honor,” he says gently. “I wish that both my sisters had been so careful of their reputations.”
And there’s a snub for you, little Mary, I think, as I smile under his praise.
THE PALACE OF SCOTLAND, LONDON, ENGLAND, AUTUMN 1516
But I don’t overlook Henry’s hints. I write to Lord Dacre to ask him for news of Archibald, and of all those who support me in Scotland. I tell him I know all about Hume; he need not shrink from the truth. I know the worst. But even with that assurance, he does not reply and I take it that he either knows nothing, or does not want to tell me. I meet again with the Scots ambassadors and I cannot tell from their quiet courtesy whether my husband is on my side or has turned his collar and joined theirs. In the end I have to ask Thomas Wolsey to come to me.
I show him his goddaughter, my darling little Meg, and she smiles at him, just as she should. I serve the sweet pastries that he likes with a glass of malmsey wine. Then, when he is flattered and fed, I ask him for a loan. The Scots have sent my jewels and my gowns from my palaces, but no rent money. Thomas Wolsey is obliging—why should he not be? As Lord Chancellor he has control of the royal treasury and is amassing a fortune on his own account. His fat little fingers are loaded with jewels. He lends me money that will be repaid when my rents are paid. Dacre will collect them at the border and send Wolsey his share.
He congratulates me on the agreement I have made with the Scots. “You can go home in safety, you can rule as co-regent,” he says. “They promise to pay your dower and consult you. This is a triumph, Your Grace. I am impressed.”
I smile. “Thank you. I am glad that I have been able to achieve so much. But I really wanted to ask you about the Earl of Angus,” I say.
I am hesitant to say his name. Nor do I want to say “my husband” to this plump clerk whose eyes are so bright, whose wit is so sh
arp but who knows nothing about living hard, of the hazard and luck of being on the border.
He says nothing, he merely bows.
“I wanted to ask if you know where he is,” I say. “I am concerned . . . after what you told me of Alexander Hume. They were all riding together, the Humes and my husband.”
He knows something. I swear that he has known for weeks.
“Indeed yes, I think that the earl, your husband, surrendered at the same time as the Humes, Alexander and William,” he says evenly. “We think the three of them surrendered to Albany the regent and took the pardon. Your husband has given up.”
For a moment, I simply cannot hear him. “Given up? Given himself up?”
“I only just learned it myself. It is a blow,” Wolsey says, quiet as a priest in confession.
It is a lie. It must be a lie. “He can’t have done,” I say hotly. “He hasn’t written to me. He wouldn’t have done such a thing without telling me. He wouldn’t have surrendered without winning me the right to see my son. He wouldn’t just give up.”
“I think he has got his own lands back,” Wolsey says gently. “He has traded your cause for his own. He has Tantallon Castle back in his keeping. I know it was important to him and to his—clan, do they call themselves?—that he recover his own. And his own fortune, of course.”
“What about my own?” I demand, suddenly furious with this soft-skinned man who tells me such terrible news in a softly confiding voice. “This is my husband! He should be fighting for me! He did not come with me to England so that he could continue the fight. He should be fighting for me now!”
Wolsey spreads his fingers, heavy with diamond rings. “Perhaps he did not come to England so that he could regain his castles and lands. And he has done that. It is, for him, a victory.”
I am so furious that I can hardly speak. “It is no victory for me,” I say, choked.
His round face is tender. “No,” he says. “You have been overlooked again.”
I could cry that he names this grief so exactly. This is always what happens to me, over and over again. I have been put into second place. My needs have been neglected; where I should be first, I have been put aside. My own husband befriends my enemy rather than fighting for my cause. He has betrayed me.
“I can’t believe it,” I mutter. I turn away from Wolsey so that he cannot see my face, twisted with anger. I am torn between fury and despair. I cannot believe that Archibald would surrender without telling me. I cannot believe he would ride to Edinburgh and not to London. I cannot believe that he would get his lands back, and leave me with nothing.
“The wife of the emperor would be the greatest woman in Europe,” Wolsey says silkily. “You would be first. You would be able to command everyone in Scotland.”
Even in my distress, I don’t forget my marriage vows. “Archibald may have neglected his duty to me, but I do not neglect mine to him,” I say. “We were married in the sight of God and nothing can change that.”
“If you’re sure,” Thomas Wolsey says.
LAMBETH PALACE, ENGLAND, AUTUMN 1516
I surprise myself by not collapsing into tears. I find I want to talk to someone who will understand how I feel—not someone whose softly-spoken advice only makes me feel worse. I call for my horse and for my grooms of the stable. I put on my best riding cape and my gown trimmed with marten, and I ride to Greenwich. I don’t go to the king’s presence chamber to see my brother, I take the stairs to the queen’s side, and the chief of my ladies asks the head of Katherine’s household if she will see me. He shows me in at once, and I find her ladies sitting quietly in her presence chamber, and the door to her privy chamber closed.
“You may go in,” he says quietly. “Her Grace is at prayer.”
I enter quietly, closing the door behind me on all of them, and I see her through the open door to the private chapel that she has made adjoining her privy chamber. I stand in the doorway and watch as the priest makes the sign of the cross over her bowed head and crosses himself, and she rises from the luxurious prie-dieu, speaks a few words to him, and comes out, her face smiling and serene.
She lights up with genuine pleasure when she sees me. “I was just praying for you, and here you are,” she exclaims. She puts her hand out to me. “I heard the news from Scotland. You must be glad at least that your husband is alive and restored to his own.”
“I can’t be,” I say, with sudden honesty. “I know that I should be. I know that I should be glad for him. And I am glad that he has not been killed. I have been in a constant terror that there would be an accident, or a raid, or a fight . . . But I can’t be happy that he has agreed with Albany and left me here.” I swallow a gulp of tears. “I know I should be glad for his safety. But I can’t.”
She draws me to the fireside and we sit together on stools of equal height. “It is hard,” she agrees. “You must feel quite abandoned by him.”
“I do!” I trust her with the painful truth. “I left him behind because he wanted to fight for me and would not come to England with our cause in so bad a state. It broke my heart to leave him, and he was so loving, he followed me to York and swore that he would fight for me to the death, and now I find that he has made an agreement with our enemy and is snug in his own little castle! Katherine—it must have been he who sent on my gowns!”
She looks down, she purses her lips. “I know. It is hard when you think someone is very good, very great, and they disappoint you. But perhaps it will be for the best. When you go back to Scotland you will have his castles to live in, he will have a fortune to support you. He will be on the council and can speak for you. You will be the wife of a great Scots lord and not an outlaw.”
“Have you been disappointed?” I ask so quietly that I wonder if she can hear me.
She turns her honest blue eyes on me. “Yes,” she says shortly. “You will have heard of some of my troubles. I think that everyone knows that Henry took a lover in the very first year of our marriage, when I was confined with our first child. Since then, there have been others, always another. There is one now.”
“One of your ladies?” I dare to ask.
She nods. “That makes it twice as bad,” she says. “It feels like a double betrayal. I thought of her as my friend, I thought of her tenderly.”
I can hardly breathe, I want to know so much which one it is. I don’t think I can ask. There is something about Katherine, something forbidding, even sitting on a stool before a fire, side by side with her sister.
“But it’s not serious,” I state. “It’s an amusement, for a young man, as all these young men do. Harry is gallant, he likes to play at chivalrous love.”
“It is not serious to him perhaps,” she says with quiet dignity. “But it is serious to me; and of course it is serious to her. I say nothing about it, and I treat her as kindly as I have always done. But it troubles me. On the nights that he does not come to my bed, I wonder if he is with her. And of course,” her voice quavers, just a little, “I am afraid.”
“Afraid?” I would not have thought she was ever afraid. She sits so straight, she looks out of the window to the sunlit river as if she would know all the secrets of the world and is afraid of nothing. “I never think of you as fearful, I think of you as indomitable.”
She laughs at that. “You left England before I was diminished. But you must have known I was defeated by your lady grandmother. She set out to bring me very low, and she was successful.”
“But you recovered your place. You married Harry.”
She gives a little shrug. “Yes, I thought I had won him and I would keep him forever. The girl—it is Bessie Blount, you know, the pretty girl, the fair one, very musical, very charming . . .”
“Oh,” I say, thinking of that blond head bent over a lute and that sweet clear voice.
“She is young and, I expect, fertile. If he were to get a child on her . . .” Katherine breaks off and I see that her eyes are filled with tears. She blinks them away as if they mean not
hing. “If she were to give him a son before I do, then I think my heart would break.”
“But you’ll have a son next time!” I declare with false certainty. She has had four dead babies and one live little girl.
She looks at me; this is not a woman for an optimistic lie. “If God wills,” she says. “But I held a boy in my arms and named him Henry for his father, and then I had to bury him, and pray for his immortal soul. I don’t think I could bear for Bessie to have a son from my husband.”
“Oh, but surely he’d never let her call him Henry,” I remark, as if it matters.
Katherine smiles and shakes her head. “Ah, well. It’s not happened yet. Perhaps it will never happen.”
“So she must be married off to someone,” I say. “At least you can arrange her wedding and get her sent away from court.”
Katherine makes a little gesture with her hand. “I don’t know that it would be very fair to her, or to her husband,” she says. “She’s very young, I would not want to order her to marry a man who might resent it. He would know that she was the king’s leavings. He might be cruel to her.”
I simply cannot understand why she should care about Bessie’s happiness, and my bewilderment must show in my face, for Katherine laughs and pats my cheek. “Ah, my sister,” she says. “I was raised by a woman whose husband broke her heart over and over. I am always on the side of the woman. Even if the woman is my rival. And little Bessie is not really my rival. She is just a lover, not the first, and I doubt if she will be the last. But I am always the queen. Nobody can take that from me. He will always come back to me. I am his first, his true love. I am his wife, his only wife.”
“And I am Archibald’s,” I say, comforted by her certainty. “And you’re right that I should be pleased that my husband has gained a pardon from Albany and can live in his own castle again. Of course I am glad that he is safe. I can go home to him there and perhaps my son can come to us.”
“You must miss him so much,” she says.