“Where will you be?” he asks me.
I don’t answer. If they get in, I will be dead. They will step over my corpse to capture my son. This is not play-acting; this is war between Archibald and me, between the Douglas clan and the regency, between the outlaws and the throne. This is our final battle, I know it.
Davy Lyndsay guides my son away. “God bless you,” he says shortly to me. “Where’s young Harry Stewart?”
“Holding the castle for us,” I say. “As soon as it is safe we’ll get up there. Be ready.”
He nods. “Take care, Your Grace.”
“This is to the death,” I reply.
All day we stand at the ready, hearing news of a few casualties, a little unrest, some looting, a rape. All day we hear that Clan Douglas are in every ward and alley in the town, trying to turn out the men to storm the palace and getting no help. The townspeople are afraid of the guns of the castle and of the palace and they are sick of warfare, especially fighting inside the town gate. More than anything else, they are sick of the Red Douglases. Finally, at midday, after dozens of false alarms, we hear the rush of feet and skirl of a pipe, as a force in Douglas colors runs down the street towards us, their pikes before them, their faces contorted with rage, as if they think that we might fail for fear.
“Fire!” I say.
The gunners don’t wait to be told twice. The archers loose their bowstrings, the handguns crackle and then bang and the cannon roar out. Three or four men lie groaning on the cobbles. My hand is to my mouth, my ears ringing, deafened by the noise, I am blinded by the foul-smelling smoke; but I don’t move from behind my guard. “Fire!” I say again.
The Douglas affinity scatter before the second cannonade and drag their groaning wounded away, their blood smearing the stones. Now there is no one before us but we hold our positions; the cannon are rolled back, rearmed, the handgunners blow on their glowing fuses. We glance from one to another, we are alive: we are determined, we are filled with a hard rage that anyone should dare to come against us, should threaten our king. We keep guard. I think we will be here till midnight. I don’t care if we are here for days. I don’t care about the suffering, I don’t care about death. I am gripped with fury. If Archibald were here I would kill him myself.
The smoke starts to clear. My ears are still ringing when high above me, halfway up the steep hill, I see a man on a black horse. It is Ard. I would know him through smoke, I would know him through darkness, I would know him through the heat haze of hell itself. He is looking directly at me, and I raise my eyes and look at him.
It is as if time stands still. All I can see is the outline of the mounted figure and all I can imagine are his dark eyes, which once looked at me with such passion and are looking at me still. He is frozen: only his horse shifts on the cobbles, held tightly by a hard hand. He is looking towards me as if he might speak, as if he might ride downhill and claim me as his own once more.
I don’t drop my gaze like a modest woman. I don’t blush like a woman in love. With my eyes locked on his, I say loudly, loud enough for him to hear:
“Gunners, take aim. On the horseman.”
They set their sights. They await my command to fire. My husband, my enemy, tips his bonnet to me—I can almost see his smile—and he turns his horse away and goes slowly, quite without fear, up the stony hill of the Via Regis and out of sight.
We wait, certain that Ard is regrouping, or secretly climbing the back walls of the palace to come at us from behind. We wait with our nerves raw with fear, a guard at every doorway, arrows on strings, the gunners softly blowing on glowing fuses so they stay alight. Then, at last, we hear the hour bell of Saint Giles tolling four o’clock, and then a high sweet bell tolling a single note over and over again, calling for peace.
“What’s happening?” I demand of the captain. “Send someone out.”
Before he can respond I see a horse riding faster than is safe, skidding and cantering on, down the steep slope from the castle. I see a glimpse of Stewart tartan over the rider’s shoulder. It is Henry Stewart. Only this mad boy would ride so fast downhill on cobbles. He pulls up before the guns and jumps off his horse.
He bows to me. “Are you unhurt?”
I nod.
“Beg to report that the Clan Douglas with Archibald Angus at their head have withdrawn from the city and the gates are shut on them,” he says.
“They’re gone?”
“For now. Come with me. Let’s get you and the king to the castle and safety.”
The captain shouts a message for the stables; someone runs for James. We have all been waiting all day for this moment and the horses are saddled and ready. We go up the hill at a hand gallop. The drawbridge is down, the portcullis up, the gates open, the castle welcoming, and we hammer over the bridge and inside. The gates slam behind us as we hear the creak of the drawbridge going up and the loud scream of iron on iron and the rattle of chains as the portcullis falls.
Henry Stewart turns to me. “You’re safe. God be praised, you’re safe.” His voice cracks with emotion, he lifts me down from the saddle and he wraps his arms around me, as if we are lovers, as if it is natural that he should hold me, and I should rest my head on his shoulder. “God be praised, my love, you are safe.”
He loves me. I think I have known it all along, from the first days when I noticed him among James’s companions, head and shoulders above the others. I think I noticed him when I dropped the handkerchief for James and saw him cheer. When he helped James off with his armor he took my handkerchief, with the embroidered rose in the corner, and kept it. Now, more than a year later he shows me that he has it still. He knew from then, from that moment. I knew only that I liked him, that he made me laugh, that I was glad of his care for me, that I felt safe when he was with me. I had not thought of love. I was so shaken by Ard’s repeated betrayals that I think I had forgotten that I might love.
I step back from his embrace at once. We have to be careful. I cannot have a word said against me while my application for a divorce is going slowly through one stage after another at Rome, while I am regent to a young king, while my brother is openly promiscuous and my sister-in-law upholds the state of marriage as if it were the only gateway to heaven.
“Don’t,” I say quickly.
He releases me at once, springs backwards, his face anxious. “Forgive me,” he says earnestly. “It was the relief of seeing you. I have been in hell all day.”
“Forgiven,” I whisper passionately. I think of the long threat in Ard’s look, I think of the acrid smoke of cannons that swirled between me and my husband. I think of the sudden passion for life that comes when death has been close, and how hatred and love are both a passion. “Oh, God, you are forgiven. Come to me tonight.”
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1525
Nobody can know that Henry Stewart is in love with me. Oh, Davy Lyndsay knows, for he knows everything. My ladies-in-waiting know for they see how he looks at me—he is twenty-eight, he does not know how to hide desire. James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, knows, for he saw me gripped in Henry’s arms in the castle keep; but nobody who might tell England knows that I have a good man to love me and I am not alone against the world any more.
I revel in his attention, it is like salve on a burn. To be loved by a man like Archibald Douglas is to be scorched, to be rejected is to be scarred. I want to heal and forget that I ever knew him. I want to rest in the adoration of Henry Stewart. I want to sleep beside him in the cool Scots nights and never dream of Archibald again.
With Henry I can be peaceful, which is just as well for I have many enemies and no allies. Archibald withdraws to Tantallon Castle and sends a stream of complaints about me to my brother Harry. He says that he has tried to reconcile with me but I am madly dangerous. He says that Harry’s own ambassadors will confirm that I turned the guns on him. Harry and his mouthpiece Cardinal Wolsey urge Archibald to try, and try again. They want the Douglas clan to keep the French out. They say
that he must command me, that he may force me to reconcile. Ugly advice, violent words.
They won’t listen to me, they won’t support me. I hear nothing from them for the whole of the Christmas season and then I get a few pretty gifts and a note from my sister Mary. She speaks of one of the best Christmases ever . . . the clothes and the dancing and the masques and the gifts . . . at the very end she tells me why the court headed by an aging queen is making so very merry.
Mary Carey has a rival in her sister, Anne Boleyn—really! these Boleyn girls! She was my little maid-in-waiting in France, and she is very charming, very witty, very clever. I would never have been so kind to her if I had known what she would do with my lessons. I am sorry to say that she and her sister are turning the whole court wild with an unstoppable round of entertainments. Harry is quite dizzy between the two of them. He is cold to our sister Katherine, who cannot please him whatever she does, and distant to me. The Boleyn girls have been queens of the court this Christmas and they devise all the entertainments and games and Anne Boleyn wins them all. She makes her sister, who was so beloved, seem dull beside her, she makes me seem plain, think how she compares to poor Katherine! She is dazzling. God knows where this will end, but this is no pretty little whore; she is hungry for more.
Nothing about me. It is as if I never commanded Holyrood and turned the cannon up the Via Regis and defied my own husband, stared him down and defeated him. Nobody knows that I have left him, I am not a deserted wife, I am mistress of my own destiny. I am the very center of talk for the whole world but for London, where Harry has a new fancy and is making his queen unhappy. That is all that matters to London. It is against this, no doubt, that Archibald struggles to be heard. This is why I am forgotten. I may be fighting for my son’s rights, plotting to keep him safe, desperate for help from England, planning for Scotland, but all that they think about in London is Anne Boleyn’s promising dark eyes and Harry’s doting smile. Thank God that as I receive this letter I can rest my head on Henry Stewart’s shoulder and know that someone loves me. In London they may have all but forgotten me, but now I have someone who loves me for myself.
But there is no escape from Archibald. The English ambassador insists that Clan Douglas be admitted to Edinburgh and the lords who are in English pay must be admitted to the council. In turn they promise to support me as regent, and we all agree that there shall be peace with England and a betrothal between James and his cousin Princess Mary.
“You will bring peace and an alliance with England,” Archdeacon Magnus promises me. “You will serve both your countries. They will both be grateful to you.”
I am in a terror of being near to Archibald again. I feel as if he can cast a spell on me and I will be helpless before him. I know that I am being foolish, but I feel the helpless horror of a mouse in the yard which will freeze to watch a snake coming closer and closer, knowing that death is coming, incapable of running away.
“I don’t really want to walk with Archibald in procession,” I say feebly to Henry Stewart and James Hamilton, Earl of Arran. But how can I tell these two men that I am shaking at the thought of Archibald coming near me?
“He should be ashamed even to come near you,” Henry says hotly. “Why can’t we insist he stays away?”
“When was the last time you saw him?” Hamilton asks.
I shake my head to clear the vivid picture of Ard, so tall on his black horse, and the sulfurous smoke all around him. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“There has to be a procession,” James Hamilton says. “You don’t have to go handclasped; but you will have to walk in procession. The world has to see that you will work together with the council.”
Henry spits out an oath and goes from the fireside in my privy chamber to stand at the window and look out at the swirling snow. “How can they ask it of you?” he demands. “How can your brother ask it of his innocent sister?”
“They do ask it,” James Hamilton says to me, looking worried. “You have to show that all the lords are united in the council, that the council is as one. The people have to see the council all together. But it’s as bad for him: he has to kneel to you and give you an oath of fealty.”
“You should spit in his face!” Henry swears. He turns to me in sudden despair. “You don’t mean to do it? You’re not going back to him?”
“No! Never! And he can’t kiss me,” I say in sudden panic. “He can’t take my hands.”
“He has to swear fealty,” Hamilton repeats patiently. “He can’t hurt you. We’ll all be beside you. He will kneel to you and put his hands together, you will take his hands in yours. Then he will bow and kiss your hand. That’s all.”
“All!” Henry explodes. “Everyone will think that they are husband and wife once more.”
“They won’t,” I say, finding my courage at his despair. “It means his fealty to me. It means I have won. Thirty paces—we have to take little more than thirty paces. Don’t think that it means anything, don’t think that I don’t love you, don’t think that I take him as my husband again for I swear that I do not. I never will. But I have to walk beside him, and I have to hold his hand, and we have to be dowager queen and the Earl of Angus, her husband, to lead all the lords into the council.”
“I can’t bear it!” He is wild, like an angry child.
“Bear it for me,” I say steadily. “For I have to bear it for my son James.”
At once his gaze softens. “For James,” he says.
“I have to do this for him.”
“It’s only a public oath of fealty,” James Hamilton reminds us both.
I hold myself still so I don’t shiver.
I walk beside my son James dressed in cloth of gold, both of us wearing our crowns as we enter the Tollbooth at Edinburgh. Archibald leads the procession carrying the crown, James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, follows him carrying the scepter, and the Earl of Argyll comes behind him with James’s ceremonial sword. Behind the three of them come James and I, walking side by side, with the cloth of estate carried over our heads. It is bitingly cold—we can see our breath in the air as we walk along—and little snowflakes swirl around us. I am paying a high price for peace between England and Scotland, a high price for the safety of my son. At dinner tonight in Holyroodhouse I will have to share a loving cup with my husband and send him the choicest dishes. He will smile and take the best cuts of meat just as he is legally collecting the rents from my lands once again. I will not look across the room at Henry Stewart where he sits, white-faced, among James’s household, eating nothing.
It is this evening that the English ambassador Archdeacon Thomas Magnus gives me a letter from Katherine herself.
“She sent it to you? Why not directly to me?”
“She wanted me to give it to you on this day, the day that you and your husband led the council.”
“Oh, did the earl dictate it? Just as he decided the procession?” I ask bitterly.
The archdeacon holds it up to show me. “Her Grace wrote it,” he says. “See, here is her seal unbroken. I don’t know what she writes to you, nor does anyone else. But she said you should have it when the Earl of Angus joined the council and swore loyalty to your son.”
“She knew it would happen?”
“She prayed for it as God’s will on earth.”
I take it from him, and he bows and goes from the room so I can read it alone.
My dear Sister,
Harry has told me that he has commanded your husband, the earl, to support you and your son in the council of lords and that he is satisfied that the earl will honor his duty to you and his vows as your husband. I am so glad and so thankful that your troubles are at an end, your husband returned to you, your son accepted as king, and you in power as regent. Your courage has been rewarded, and I thank God for it.
Knowing you as I do, I have begged Harry to urge your husband to be generous to you and patient, and he has promised me that you need not return to Archibald and live as man and wife u
ntil Whitsuntide so that you have time to become accustomed to him again and perhaps so that you have time to grow in love for him who has been so true—in exile and in England—to you. I have watched him and he has convinced me that he is your true and loving husband. You have no reason not to return to him.
I have sworn to Harry on my own honor that the rumors we have heard about you are false. I have pledged my word that you are a good woman and that you would not make your own child a bastard nor make a mockery of your royal name by seeking a divorce, especially from a husband who is seeking your forgiveness.
To be a good wife is to forgive. A queen like you, like me, and like our sister Mary, is especially obliged to show the world that there is no end to marriage, no end to our forgiveness.
So I have agreed with Harry that you will take Archibald back as your husband at Whitsun, and I hope that you will be happy again. As I hope to be too, some day soon.
Your sister the queen,
Katherine
I am not even angry with her for delivering me into the arms of an unfaithful traitor who brought his army against me. I think this is her master stroke.
Archibald is to live at Holyrood with our daughter, my son, and me, and we are to show the world that we are a family reconciled. We are to prove to Harry that there can be no divorce, that a husband always returns to his wife, that marriage is truly till death. To the common people, coming in to see us dine seated side by side, overlooking the magnificent hall, we look like a lord and his wife and his son. The cloth of estate extends over James and me, our chairs are set a little higher than Archibald’s, but it is he who sends the dishes around the hall and walks around and chats to his friends, and commands the music like a great man at his own table.
The kitchens send out feasts with many dishes, as if they revel in cooking for the lord himself again. The musicians play dance tunes, and Archibald teaches everyone the new steps from London, which Anne Boleyn has made fashionable. The players perform the new masques—choosing one of the court and drawing them out to dance and play their part in the drama. Often they select Archibald, and he dances at the center of a swirling circle, his dark eyes smiling at me, a shrug of his shoulders as if to say that he does not seek this praise, it just comes to him. He is the constant center of attention.