The first is from my sister Mary. She writes that she was ill in spring but that she was well enough, thank God, to go with the king and queen to France. She bubbles with delight, her letter filled with misspellings and blots of excitable ink. Through the scrawl I make out that the visit was to sign a great treaty to confirm the peace between England and France, and that they made a masque every day. Harry took a hundred tents, a thousand tents, to the field outside Calais and all the nobility of England took their households and their horses and their hawks and their servants and built their own summer palaces out of canvas and wood and showed off their wealth and their joy. Harry summoned a city for a summer’s day and at the center of it a fountain flowing with wine with silver cups for anyone to drink.
Mary has thirty-three gowns, she lists her shoes, she had a cloth-of-gold canopy held over her head when she walked out in the brilliant sunshine. She rode the most beautiful horses, everyone cheered her as she went by.
I so wish you had come! You would have loved it so!
I daresay that I would. It is a long long time since anyone cheered me, or the Scots had anything to cheer about. I open a small package from Katherine.
My dear Sister,
The king, my husband, was much surprised to learn from His Grace King Francis of France that you have been writing to the Duc of Albany and urging his return to Scotland. I was ashamed to hear also that the duc has spoken to the Holy Father and urged that you should be released from your marriage on the grounds that King James IV was not killed at Flodden—you know this is not true. You know that I was obliged to take his body so that this lie should never be spoken. They are saying that you and the Duc of Albany are plotting his return to Scotland so that you can marry should his wife die.
Margaret, please! This is horrifying scandal to attach to you. Write at once to your brother and say that it is not so, and then publicly return to your husband so that there can be no doubt that you have not become the French duc’s whore. God forgive you if you have forgotten what you owe to your family and your name. Write at once and assure me that you are in a state of heavenly grace and married to the good Earl of Angus. My love to your dear son—Margaret, think of him! How can he inherit the throne if there is any question of your honor? And what of your daughter? A divorce will name her as a bastard. How can you bear this? How can you be my royal sister and declare yourself as a whore?
Katherine
I walk across the courtyard and go out of the little sally port to walk down the hill to the loch. The water meadows stretch before me to the side of the water, the short-legged cattle graze on the rich grass, the swallows weave in and out of them. A dozen milkmaids go past me with their buckets swinging from the yokes laid across their shoulders, carrying their milking stools in their hands. They call the cows in, and the animals lift their heads when they hear their names sung out in the high, sweet voices. James used to like to go out with the milkmaids and they would take a ladle and let him drink from the bucket. It would leave a little creamy moustache on his upper lip, and I would wipe his round face with my sleeve and kiss him.
I have not seen my boy, since the battle between Angus and Hamilton that they are calling “the cleansing of the causeway” after the scrubbing of the blood from the cobbles. I have not seen Archibald since he marched into the castle and I withdrew to Linlithgow, riding out through his army in silence. I have not seen James Hamilton since he galloped away to save his life. I have no daughter: she must live with her father. I have no son; he is all but imprisoned. I have no ally. I have no husband and now Katherine tells me I have sisters only upon impossible conditions.
Mary is not the fool that she pretends to be. She is desperate to avoid being caught in a quarrel between Katherine and me. She will write to me forever about gowns and lutes and hunting, always avoiding the knowledge that I am alone and unhappy and in danger. She won’t speak for me to Harry—she is too fearful for her own status at court. She will be the very model of an English princess, a radiant beauty, a wife beyond reproach. She will not risk her position at court by saying one word in my favor.
I know that I am lost to Katherine. This is a woman who left home at fifteen and endured years of loneliness and poverty in order to marry the king and become Queen of England. She will never contemplate anything that might threaten her place. She may love me, but she cannot bear me to challenge the vows of marriage. She may love me, but her whole life depends on there being no end to marriage but death.
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, DECEMBER 1521
My luck changes, at last, at last.
The Duke of Albany himself walks into my chamber, handsome as ever, urbane as always, and bows over my hand with a French flourish as if he has just stepped out to order his cape to be brushed, and has been no time at all.
“Your Grace, I am at your command,” he says in his Burgundian French—the very pinnacle of elegance and charm.
I jump to my feet; I can barely breathe. “Your Grace!”
“Your loyal servant,” he says.
“How ever did you get here? They’re watching the ports!”
“The English fleet was at sea looking for me but they did not find me. Their spies were watching me in France—they saw me leave court but they did not see where I went.”
“My God, I have prayed for this,” I say frankly.
He takes both my hands and holds them warmly. “I came as soon as I could get away. I have been begging King Francis to let me come to you for more than a year, as soon as I heard the terrible trouble that you were in,” he says. “The deaths of the Hamiltons! Fighting in the streets of Edinburgh! You must have thought the kingdom was being destroyed before your eyes.”
“It has been terrible. Terrible. And they forced me to leave my son!”
“They will beg your forgiveness, and your son will be restored to you.”
“I will see James again?”
“You shall be his guardian, I swear it. But what of your husband? Is he your enemy? You cannot reconcile?”
“It’s over between us, forever.” I realize that the duke and I are still holding hands. I flush and release him. “You can count on me,” I promise. “I will never return to him.”
He hesitates, before he lets me go. “And you can depend on me,” he says.
EDINBURGH CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1522
We take Edinburgh Castle without a shot being fired. Archibald simply surrenders, leaving the castle and my children, and the duke has him escorted to France under guard. His uncle Gavin Douglas flees to England, to Harry, with a mouthful of lies.
The duke and I, on matching white horses, wait outside the castle while the trumpets sound from the battlements and the drawbridge is lowered. All the people of the city are on the castle hill, watching this masque of power. The constable comes out in the livery of the Stewarts—I imagine wryly that he has made a hasty change of clothes, and that Archibald’s colors are kicked under his bed—and bows and presents the keys of the castle to the regent, the Duke of Albany. In a beautiful gesture Albany takes them, and turns to me. He smiles at the delight in my face and presents them to me. As the people cheer, I touch the keys with my hand to acknowledge acceptance, and return them to him as regent, and then we all ride inside the castle.
James, my son, is in the inner keep. I jump from my horse without ceremony and go quickly towards him. I glance at Davy Lyndsay’s beard—grizzled gray in the months that we have been apart—and I could curse Archibald for what we have all endured, but I can see nothing but my son’s pale face and his urgent expression. I curtsey, as a subject should, and he kneels to me for a mother’s blessing, as I wrap my arms around him and hold him tightly.
He feels different. He is a little taller, a little stronger since I last saw him. He is nine now, he has grown stiff and awkward. He does not yield to me, he does not lean against me. I feel as if he will never cling to me again. He has been taught to mistrust me and I see that I will have the task of teaching him to love
and value me all over again. I look up to see Davy’s brown eyes are filled with tears. He rubs them away with the back of his hand. “Welcome home, Your Grace,” is all he says.
“God bless you, Davy Lyndsay,” I say to him. I rest my cheek against James’s warm curls and I do indeed bless Davy Lyndsay for staying beside my son, through it all, for keeping him safe.
I am not the only Scot to rejoice in the return of the Duke of Albany. The Hamiltons know that with him returned to Scotland, and the power of the French behind him, they can recover. The Scots lords can see a way out from the tyranny of the Clan Douglas. The people of Scotland, their borderlands destroyed by Dacre’s continual raids, their capital bloodstained and unruly, long for the rule of the regent who brought them peace before.
I write a gleeful taunting letter to Lord Dacre and tell him that, despite his gloomy predictions, the duke has returned to Edinburgh, peace will come to Scotland, and England will not dare to invade now that we are protected by France. I say that his good friend, my husband, seems to have abandoned his post and his family and I beg nobody will reproach me for failing to accompany him into a traitor’s exile. At last we can have some happiness in Scotland again. I laugh as I write; Dacre will know that the tables are turned on him and that I am a free woman and I am in power.
I think my brother must have gone mad. I cannot believe that anyone would dare to speak of a reigning queen in the terms that they are speaking of me. I cannot believe that my brother would listen. A true brother would denounce the gossips. If his wife were a true sister to me, she would insist that they are silenced. The English blacksmiths are commanded by law to slice the tongue of anyone who slanders the royal family, but it is my own brother who writes scandal to Dacre and permits him—a border lord!—to accuse me of unspeakable crimes.
Archibald’s uncle, Gavin Douglas, is an honored guest at the court in London and has told everyone that I am the Duke of Albany’s mistress. He swears that the good duke came to Scotland only to seduce me, to murder my son and put himself on the throne.
This much is madness: insane to say, worse to hear, but Gavin Douglas says even more. He claims that the duke keeps my son in poverty, stealing the red velvet and the cloth-of-gold sleeves for his own pages, refusing to let my son see his tutors or even eat. He says that the regent is starving the young king to death and that I am allowing it to happen, and together we will claim the throne. Worse than this—if there could be worse—he claims that the duke poisoned my poor lost boy Alexander. They say that I am bedding the murderer of my son. They say this, in the courts of Westminster and the throne room at Greenwich, and nobody—not my brother the king, not my sister-in-law the queen, not their favorite, my own little sister Mary—leaps up and denies it. Not even Mary cries out that it cannot be true.
How can the three of them not speak up for me? Katherine saw me just months after I had learned of the death of Alexander. She saw me unable to speak his name for grief. She and Mary both held me while I sobbed for him. How can she listen when my proclaimed enemy says that my lover murdered my son, and that I allowed it?
The two of them, my two sisters, have hurt me before, they have ignored me, they have misunderstood me. But this is greater than anything. This time they are making accusations that I would not level at a witch. I think they must have lost their minds. I think that all of them must have lost their minds and have forgotten everything that we were to each other. I said that they were no sisters to me, that I would forget them. But they have gone further than this: they have become my enemies.
EDINBURGH CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1522
My brother sends a Clarenceux Herald to Edinburgh to discover the state of affairs since, apparently, I cannot be trusted to report, and my word is worthless. The great man brings grooms and servants, and his clerks carry letters from my sister Mary and my sister-in-law Katherine.
“Her Grace said to give these to you privately and suggest that you read them alone,” says the herald, awkwardly. He does not know what is in them, but—like everyone in England—he knows what is being said about me.
I nod and take them away to my bedchamber. I lock the door behind me and break the seal. There are two letters. First, I read the one from Katherine, the queen.
Dearest Sister,
I cannot and will not believe the things that I have heard about you. Your husband’s uncle Gavin Douglas speaks of vile things. Please believe that I will not hear them said in my presence.
I am sorry that he has the ear of Cardinal Wolsey and of the king. There is nothing I can do about this, and I dare not try. Your brother used to listen to my advice but now he does not.
I am sure that you are lonely and sad. Believe me, sometimes a good wife has to suffer while her husband is in error. If Archibald returns to you from France, and his uncle swears that he will, then you must take him back. Only reuniting with your husband will silence these terrible stories. If you were only living with him now, nobody could say anything against you.
My dear, it is God’s will that a wife has no choice but to forgive an erring husband. No choice. However much her heart may break. I do not advise this lightly. I did not learn this easily. Your sister,
Katherine
Stubbornly, I screw up the letter into a ball and toss it into the red embers at the back of the fireplace. I break the seal of the Dowager Queen of France, which she still insists on using, and smooth Mary’s crumpled letter on my knee. As always she writes of the court, and of the clothes and of the fashions; as always she brags of her own beauty and the masque that she led and the jewel that Henry gave her. But for once there is a different twist in this old story. Mary’s pretty nose is out of joint because another girl is leading the dancing at court, and it sounds like a merry dance. At once I begin to understand the intensity of Katherine’s unhappy tone. I try to decipher Mary’s terrible handwriting and contain my secret squirm of shameful delight. Mary writes that yet another lady has taken Henry’s eye and captured his fancy and this time it is far more public than any previous affair. He chooses her as his partner in the masques, he walks with her and talks with her, rides out with her and plays cards with her. As one of Katherine’s ladies-in-waiting, she is constantly in the queen’s sight; she is acknowledged, not hidden. She has become the most important woman at court, favored over the queen, and she is pretty and blooming and young. Everyone knows that she is the king’s mistress and closest companion.
I should not smile. But the thought of Katherine having to eat humble pie while yet another girl delights her young husband lifts my spirits. If she had understood my pain when Archibald was unfaithful to me, I would be full of sympathy for her now. But then she said it was God’s will that a wife should forgive.
She is far worse than Bessie for she has no discretion at all. And of course, the girl is very beautiful, and, worst of all, Harry is quite besotted. He carried her handkerchief over his heart in a joust, he told Charles that he can’t stop thinking of her. She makes it worse by running after him wherever she can, and Katherine can’t send her home to her husband because she is married to young Carey and he is most helpful: a shameless cuckold. He is to receive lands and places, all for looking the other way. You would pity Katherine if you could see her. And no signs of another baby yet. It is quite miserable here. You would be sorry, I know.
I can see her writing change as she turns the page and remembers that I have troubles of my own. They are saying the most terrible things about you, Mary tells me, in case this has slipped my attention.
You must take great care that you are never alone with the Duke of Albany. Your reputation must be perfect. You owe that to us, to Katherine and to me, especially now. The three of us—you and me and Katherine—must always be above scandal and above suspicion. If Katherine is to survive Harry’s folly she has to be far above it. If he is to return to her, penitent, when this is over then nobody can say anything against us Tudor sisters and our marriages. Please, Margaret, you cannot let us down. Reme
mber that you are a Tudor princess as we are. You must be above scandal and shame. We all must.
She finishes the letter with love to me and to my son and to Margaret with a reminder that Archibald will be coming back to Scotland to beg a pardon from Albany and that it is essential that I speak for him. A wife’s duty is to forgive, she parrots. Then finally at the very last corner there is a tiny squeezed scatter of words.
Oh God forgive me, I can hardly write. My son Henry has this day died of the Sweat. Pray for us.
I go out of my room to find the Clarenceux Herald. “My sister has lost her son?” I ask.
He is uncomfortable speaking to me, as if I might suddenly strip off my bodice and dance as naked as Salome. God knows what he has heard of me. God knows what he thinks of me.
“Alas, yes.”
“I will write to her,” I say hastily. “You will take my letters to England when you return?”
Absurdly, he looks as if he would like to refuse. “What is the matter?” I demand. “Why are you looking like that?”
“I am instructed that all letters are to be left unsealed. You may write, and I am to carry them, but I am bound in honor to warn you that they are to remain open.”
“Why?”
He shuffles his feet. “So that it is clear that you are not writing love letters,” he says.