“To whom?” I demand.
He gulps. “Anyone.”
If this were not so terrible it would be funny. “Good God, man, do you not know that the lord Dacre reads everything I ever write and always has done so? Spies on my very thoughts before I have them? And still has no evidence against me? Who do you imagine loves me in England, where Gavin Douglas calls me a whore to my brother’s face, and nobody challenges him?”
There is a horrified silence. I realize I have spoken too wildly. I should never ever say the word “whore.” I have to be, as Mary says so clumsily, above scandal.
“Anyway, I can carry your letters if they are unsealed,” he says weakly. “But now I have to speak to the regent.”
“I’ll come with you,” I say.
Clearly, the herald would rather have met with Albany alone, and soon I see why. He has brought a letter from Harry, which accuses Albany of seducing me, of “damnable abusion” and of working for my divorce against my best interests and for his own ends. I am so horrified by these words from my brother to a stranger that I can hardly bear to look at Albany while the herald reads out these accusations in a quiet monotone as if he wishes we could not hear him and he did not have to say them.
Albany is white with fury. He forgets the rules of chivalry and speaks to the herald with contempt. He says that he did indeed apply to the Holy Father for my divorce for me, at my request; but that he himself is a married man and faithful to his wife. He does not look at me, and I know that with my burning face and the tears on my cheeks I look like a guilty fool. Bitingly, the duke tells the English herald that the matter of my divorce is with the Pope, and that the Holy Father will be the sole judge of it. Albany himself merely delivered the message.
“How could my brother say such things?” I whisper to the herald, who glances at me and then dips his head in a little bow.
Albany says that he finds it extraordinary that the King of England should accuse his own sister of becoming another man’s concubine. The herald is crushed into silence. He mutters only that he has a letter that he must put before the Scots lords, and he leaves the room.
As I could have told him, the Scots lords have no time for a herald from England, especially one that comes to slander their regent and their dowager queen together. They scowl at him, and one of the older, angrier lords throws himself out of the council chamber, banging the door behind him. The herald, in the face of grim hostility, reads out Harry’s ridiculous demands with a quiet voice, and the Scots lords reply that they are all willing to serve under the regent, Albany, until the king my son is of age, that they are happy that the regent appoints tutors and guardians from among them, according to my wishes. They regard as slanderous lies the suggestion that the regent and I are lovers. They declare that my husband and his uncle are traitors, banished from the kingdom, and that everyone knows that my son Alexander, the little Duke of Ross, died of ill health. The herald shuffles his feet and leaves. I watch his humiliation with delight.
I hope he goes back to London and tells Harry that he is a fool to speak so to the Scots. I hope he goes back to London and tells Katherine that I live apart from Archibald and I will never return to him, and I don’t agree that a wife has to forgive an erring husband, I don’t agree that a Tudor wife has to be above criticism. I hope he goes back to London and tells Mary that I am sorry for the death of her son but she should be glad that no one suggests that he was murdered. I hope the herald tells her that now Archibald is exiled I have my rents and my fees again, and I am buying new gowns. I don’t need any of them to support me. I have given up on all three of them.
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, AUTUMN 1522
The one thing that my marriage to the King of Scotland was supposed to prevent was war between the country of my birth and the country of my marriage. I have tried to keep peace in Scotland, and peace between Scotland and England, so it is a bitter day for me when the Duke of Albany serves his French king better than his country of Scotland, when he is truer to his French paymaster than he is to me, and marches against the English. Not even the prospect of the humiliation of Lord Dacre can comfort me.
In this emergency, my brother turns to me once more, as if we have never quarreled, and sends me secret messages, asking me what sort of force the French will bring against his men. He reminds me—as if I ever forget—that I am an English princess, bound to him and to my country by unbreakable bonds of love and loyalty. I advise him as best I can and when Albany gives up the attempt to march on England and sails for France, for more funds and men, I find I am left alone in Scotland, the regent gone, my husband exiled, my enemies defeated. Finally, I am the peace bringer, the only leader left standing.
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1523
Amazingly, despite the odds, I find that I am a single woman, in possession of my own fortune, the only regent left in power, and the guardian of my son. I was ill over Christmas but I grow strong again as the days become lighter and then I get a letter, forwarded by Dacre, from my sister Mary. She writes very briefly from her confinement. God has blessed me and I have had another boy, I am calling him Henry.
I know that this is the name of the son that she lost, I know that Mary will be thinking first, before anything else, of the little boy who died so young. But she gives him the name of the Lancaster kings, she gives him our brother’s own name, our father’s name. I am certain that secretly she hopes he will be King of England, Harry’s heir. She must want Harry to pass over me and my son James, and honor her boy. Charles Brandon will be hoping to get his boy on the throne, of course, and there is no one in London who will advocate for me and my son, not my sister nor my sister-in-law.
Of course Mary will listen to scandal against me, and naturally she repeats it. It is wholly in her interest to suggest that I am no true wife, no true Tudor, no true queen. If Harry can be convinced that I am no true mother either then he will disinherit my son. Mary may urge me to a spotless life, but she knows that the real world is not an easy one for a woman with a wicked husband. I have to live as a woman alone; people are bound to gossip. But will Mary let them gossip so much that they turn against my innocent son?
I wonder what Katherine makes of this hidden jostling for inheritance. I wonder how bitter it is for her, whose fault it is that there is no Tudor prince. I wonder if she ever wavers in her loyal love towards my sister, when Mary’s marriage is blessed and she is fertile, and as soon as one Henry dies he is replaced with another? Mary goes on and on having babies, and Katherine has clearly stopped.
England is at peace with Scotland after Albany leaves, and I thought I could make them keep the peace. But Harry sends the son of the Duke of Norfolk, the murderer of Flodden, to arm the North, and there is no doubt that he plans to ruin the country that marched against him. They will do it Dacre’s way—by making a desert of the borderlands. Every building they tear down, every thatch they fire, every castle they destroy. They leave not a sheaf of wheat in the field, not a stook of hay. Not an animal survives the gleaning, not a child is left standing. The poor grab what goods they have left and rush like a tumbling stream of terror north or south, wherever they think they might find help. The soldiers steal their goods and harry them on their way, the women are abused, the children screaming with terror. It is Dacre’s plan to make a desert of the borders so that no army can ever cross them again, and by the start of the summer he has conquered the very land itself—nothing will grow, nothing will ripen, nothing will yield. When I came to Scotland these were fertile wastes where any man could make a living if he did not mind the empty roads and the tiny villages. Any man could seek a night’s rest at any of a thousand little castles where strangers were a rarity and hospitality a law. Now the land is empty. Only the wolves run through the borders and their howls at night are like a lament for the people who once lived here, who have been wiped out by the malice of England.
LINLITHGOW PALACE, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1523
My son James and daug
hter Margaret and I have a summer together as a true royal family at the beautiful palace beside the loch where I have spent so much time—happy times and mourning times. James rides out every day, his master of horse offering him bigger and stronger horses as he grows in confidence and strength. His carver, Henry Stewart, rides with him. He’s a young man in his midtwenties and he has a natural grace and charm that James admires and that I am eager he should copy. Unusually for a Scot, Henry has light brown hair, which curls around his head and tumbles down the nape of his neck, like a statue of a Greek god. He is no pretty boy; he is hard, as all these young men are, from families accustomed to war, but he is always merry. He has the most enchanting smile and his brown eyes dance when he is laughing. Together with the other young men of the court, he teaches James all the games of mounted skill: throwing a lance, shooting an arrow from the saddle, picking up rings on his lance from the ground, and—we all laugh at this—catching a thrown handkerchief on the tip of his lance, as if a lady were offering him her favor.
“Throw for me, Lady Mother!” James demands, and I lean over the tilt yard royal box and drop a handkerchief down for him, and he spurs forward and misses it over and over again until he catches it, and his companions and I applaud.
The Scots lords beg the Duke of Albany to return, but I don’t. In his absence Harry writes to me about a lasting peace treaty between England and Scotland, and peace for the borderlands. He writes a long, thoughtful letter, as if his insults had never been. He writes about the care of his nephew, my son, acknowledging that James is the heir of both England and Scotland. He writes that God has not yet blessed him and the queen with a boy, no one can say why—God’s will cannot be questioned—but it may be that one day James will be called to be king of a united island. Dizzy with ambition, I think that there will never have been a king like James since Arthur of Britain. Cardinal Wolsey writes to me with his customary respect—I can hardly believe that he dines nightly with my estranged husband’s uncle and hears nothing but ill of me. Even Lord Dacre changes his tone, now I am acknowledged once again as a princess of England and Dowager Queen of Scotland—and with Albany back in France, I am the only regent.
There is no reason that my son should not be crowned king next spring, when he will be twelve. Why not? He has been raised to be king, he knows it is his destiny, he has been tutored as a king and guarded faithfully and constantly by Davy Lyndsay and served all his life on bended knee. Nobody meeting him for the first time and seeing him gracious and cautious could doubt for a moment that this is a boy coming into manhood, coming into majesty. Twelve is a good age for a boy to come into his own—old enough for a marriage, so why not old enough for a coronation? What better way to unify the kingdom than the coronation of the king?
Just as I have decided to push this through, against the lords who would rather wait, the Duke of Albany returns without warning, determined on war with England, and Norfolk’s son, the Earl of Surrey—a cruel commander and the son of a cruel commander—destroys the town of Jedburgh and blows up the abbey to show English power over defenseless Scots.
I write to Harry in despair. This is not the way to persuade the Scots lords to accept my son as king! If he wants to command Scotland through James and me he has to give me money to bribe the council, he has to show me as a peacemaker. If he wants to do it by force he had better bring an army to Edinburgh, and impose a rule of law; torturing the poor people of the borders does nothing but make them more furiously opposed to England and the lords more suspicious of me.
Of course, Albany has to respond to the challenge and he brings his fresh troops from France against England with heavy cannon and thousands of mercenaries. This time he brings with him a great army. I am completely torn. Of course I want to further the power and influence of Scotland, of course I am thrilled at the thought of a new border for a new king—if Albany could push the border south and take Carlisle and Newcastle into Scotland then my son would have the great inheritance that his father dreamed for him.
“And the White Rose our ally will invade from the south at the same time,” Albany promises me, confident of my support.
I put a hand on the cool stone of the chimney breast. It steadies me. The great terror of our childhood, as Tudor children, was the coming of the other—the other royal family, our mother’s side of the family—the Plantagenets. Always fertile, always ambitious, my mother’s many sisters and their many children were always on the edge of our kingdom looking for a chance to return. The White Rose—as they call him—is the last of the very many. Richard de la Pole, my mother’s first cousin, has seen one brother after another die in battle against my father or on my father’s scaffold. My father swore an oath that no one from the old royal family would ever take back what the Tudors won at Bosworth, and I have been raised to think of any pretender as a nightmare enemy to our safety and our power.
They were the terrors of my childhood; nothing was as bad as learning that one of our cousins had disappeared from court into open enmity. I can remember even now my mother’s aghast expression when she realized that yet another of her kin had turned against us. Whatever the benefits for my son, I could never join with a Plantagenet cousin against my Tudor brother. Albany cannot have known this when he sought such an ally. I cannot tolerate a Plantagenet. I cannot imagine friendship with this enemy. I could have considered an invasion of England—I would have supported it as an addition to my son’s power and the breadth of his kingdom—I could tolerate an alliance with France; but never, never, never with one of my cursed cousins.
That night I betray the Duke of Albany and—called by my childhood loyalty to the Tudors—I write to my brother:
Albany has German mercenaries and French soldiers but he cannot keep them here in winter. If you can hold him long enough at Wark Castle then the weather will do the work for you. Defend us all against the White Rose. If Richard de la Pole comes to Scotland I will come to you and bring James. We Tudors will stand together against the White Rose forever. Your sister—M.
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, AUTUMN 1523
The Duke of Albany is defeated thanks to my advice, and he and the Earl of Surrey negotiate an uneasy peace without consulting me. Neither of them trusts me with his confidence. There is not another word about me going to England, there is not another word about James taking the throne next year, not another word about him being named as the English heir. Instead Harry cuts my English allowance and throws me into debt with the French. I cannot understand why he should suddenly turn so cold, when only a few months ago I was his spy and confidante. I cannot think what I have done to offend him, I cannot imagine what is wrong; surely I have served him as no fellow monarch or sister has ever done? And then I receive a letter from my sister Mary:
My dear Sister,
Katherine—our sister and queen—has asked me to tell you that your husband, Archibald, Earl of Angus, has come to us from France to be welcomed by the whole court as a friend to the cardinal and a brother to the king. He intends to return to Scotland at once and Katherine and I join together in urging you to receive him kindly and live together as man and wife. He speaks so sweetly of you and his hopes for a reconciliation.
I am sorry to say that our brother is clearly very much in love with Mary Carey (that was Mary Boleyn) and she with him. If she were free and he were free I think he would marry her. But neither of them has that choice. The marriage vow is indissoluble. If a man can set aside his wife because he loves another woman then what would become of us all? What marriage would last beyond the first year? What does an oath before the altar mean if it can be put aside? How could anyone trust an oath of loyalty between king and subject, between master and man, if the oath of marriage is temporary? If marriage is uncertain then everything is uncertain. You cannot be the only Tudor who shows the world that our word is unreliable.
You have to play your part in this, you have to take your husband back and tolerate him as best you can. I beg you. We cannot live in a family
in which annulment or divorce is even mentioned. We are too new to the throne for our behavior to be questioned, for our heirs to be made bastards. Please, Margaret, take your husband back for all of our sakes and write at once and tell me that you will do so.
Your loving sister, Mary, Dowager Queen of France
I take her letter with me and I walk across the steep slope of the castle yard and out through the thick gates that stand open, two French guardsmen watching the people who come and go out of the castle. I take the winding footpath through the woods, and then follow the stream as it falls down towards the village that clusters at the foot of the hill around the market cross. No one comes with me. I am alone under the leafless branches of the trees and I scuff my boots in the dusty-smelling autumn leaves. It is a sharp, clear day, the sky as blue as the shell on a duck egg, the air cold and the sunshine bright. I think of Mary, taking her courage to the sticking point to write me a letter that she knows I will not like, I think of Katherine, bleakly cautioning her that if Harry sets his wife aside, then no woman in England is safe. I know this is true. Women in this world have no power: own nothing, not even their own bodies; hold nothing, not even their own children. A wife must live with her husband and be treated as he wishes, eat at his table, sleep in his bed. A daughter is the property of her father. A wife outside marriage is in the care of no one. Legally she owns nothing and no one will protect her. If a woman cannot marry knowing that she will be a wife till her dying day, then where can she find safety? If a man can put his wife aside on a whim then no woman can count on her fortune, her life, her future. If the king shows that marriage vows mean nothing, then all vows mean nothing, then all laws are nothing—we will live in a world of nothingness as if there is no law and no God.