He is pleasant to James—not overwhelming him with attention which would make my cautious twelve-year-old son suspicious, but speaking to him of hair’s-breadth escapes, battles, strategies, the wars of Christendom, the plans of the King of England, and the constant adjustment and power plays of the courts of Europe. He has not wasted his time in France, nor in England. He knows all that is happening, and he tells James little stories to teach him statecraft, and claps him on the shoulder and praises his understanding. He takes him into the library, spreads out the maps on the great round table and shows him how the Habsburg family have grown great and greater, and that their lands are spreading across the face of Europe. “This is why we have to have an alliance with England and with France,” he says. “The Habsburgs are a monster that will gobble us up.”
He is loving and easy with Margaret, and she adores him as a father miraculously restored to her. He praises her prettiness and he takes her with him everywhere, buying her ribbons for her hair every time they pass a market. To me he is as charming and as graceful as when he was my carver and could not do enough for me. He throws me a warm smile over James’s head as if to praise me for raising such a boy, he laughs when I make a remark, his arm is always ready to escort me into court. When the court dances, the musicians play, the cards are set out, everything is entirely according to my wish. He knows me so well, he guesses what I want before I have time to command it. He asks after the old pain in my hip, he reminds me of our breakneck ride to safety; our history is a love story that he retells from time to time in little reminiscences, always asking me do I remember the time . . . ? Do I recall the night . . . ? Day by day he draws me to him with a gentle weave of shared interests and shared memories.
Often he turns to James and praises my courage and tells my boy that he is lucky to have a mother who is such a heroine. He tells Margaret about the dozens of gowns that my kingly brother sent me as a reward for my bravery. Always, he suggests that he himself was fighting for my cause, for James’s safety. It is as if he sings a ballad of the story that we know, but it is set to a strange new tune.
Behind Archibald’s cocked attentive head, I see Henry Stewart glowering but powerless. There is nothing I can do to prove to him that I am not soothed and comforted by this new gentle Archibald, for he can see—everyone can see—that I am. I have had so little affection in my life that I am hungry for attention, even from a man who has been my enemy.
I am in love with Henry Stewart, my heart leaps when he comes into court and bows to me, his tawny hair shining in the light of the candles, his hazel gaze direct and honest; but when Archibald stands behind my chair, his hand resting on my shoulder, I know that I am safe: the only man in Scotland who could challenge my power is on my side, my brother’s friend and ally stands beside me, the husband that I married for love, who betrayed me so painfully, has come home.
“This is our happy ending,” he bends over me and whispers, and I cannot find the courage to contradict him.
Henry Stewart comes to my privy chamber in the hour before dinner while everyone is getting dressed. My lady comes and tells me that he is waiting, and I send them away and go out to him, dressed like a queen in green velvet with silver sleeves. He bows and waits for me to sit, but I go towards him, and I look up into his sulky face and I feel a pulse of such desire that I cannot stop myself putting a hand on his chest and whispering: “Henry?”
“I have come to ask permission to leave court,” he says stiffly.
“No!”
“You must see that I can hardly live under the same roof as you and your husband.”
“I can’t bear for you to go. You can’t leave me here with him!”
He clasps my hand to his beautifully embroidered jacket. “I don’t want to go,” he says. “You know that I don’t. But I cannot live in his house as if I were his man.”
“It’s my house! Your loyalty is to me!”
“If he is your husband then everything is his,” he says miserably. “Me as well. I feel ashamed.”
“You’re ashamed of me?”
“No, never. I know you have to share power with him, I know you have to have him here. I understand. It is the agreement with the English, I understand this. But I cannot do it.”
“My love, my darling, you know that my divorce will come and I will be free of him!”
“When?”
I check at his gloomy tone. “Any day now, any day it might come.”
“Or it might never come. In the meantime I cannot wait for you in your husband’s house.”
“Don’t go back to Avondale.” I tighten my grip on his jacket. “If you can’t stay here, don’t go back there.”
“Where else?”
“Go to Stirling,” I say rapidly. “It’s mine—nobody can deny that—go to Stirling and muster the castle guard. Check the reinforcements and make it a safe refuge for us, if it ever goes wrong here.”
I am making work for him, giving him a task that will make him feel important. “Please,” I say. “Though you can’t protect me here, you can give me somewhere safe to go, if we ever need it. Who knows what the Douglas clan will do?”
“They will do whatever the English command,” he says drily. “And you will too.”
“I will for now,” I agree. “I have to, for now. But you know that I am working for my freedom and for the freedom of my son to be a true king of a free country.”
“But still you keep Douglas and his clan on your side,” he says astutely.
I hesitate before telling him the truth. My feelings are so contradictory I can hardly explain them to myself. “I am afraid of him,” I admit. “I know he is ruthless, I don’t know how far he will go. And because of that, when he is on my side I know that I am safe.” I give an unhappy laugh. “I have no enemy outside the castle when he is inside. When he is good to me I know that nothing can hurt me.”
“Don’t you see that you must get free of him?” he demands with the impatient clarity of youth. “You are living with him for fear.”
“My sisters insist,” I say. “My brother insists. I am doing it for James.”
“You will not become his wife in deed as well as in name?”
He is a young man, he cannot tell when I am lying. “Never,” I tell him, thinking that Katherine has promised just that, at Whitsun. “Don’t ever think it.”
“You don’t love him?”
He does not yet know how a woman can love and fear and hate all at the same time. “No,” I say carefully. “It is not love like that.”
He softens, as he bends his head and kisses my clinging hands. “Very well,” he says. “I will go to Stirling and wait for you to send for me. You know that I only want to serve you.”
I endure the spring without my young lover, though I miss his sulky presence and jealous looks from the back of the hall. Every day I grow more anxious as Archibald’s ambition becomes clearer, as he increases his influence on the council of lords, and his determination to rule Scotland becomes more obvious. His connection with England is so strong, his fortune (my fortune) is so great, his authority as a man dominates them all. He remains tender and attentive and easy with me but I am dreading Easter and then Whitsun when he will return to my bed and I can see no way to refuse him. What makes it worse is that he speaks of it as an agreement that we have both entered freely, as if we wanted to wait for the season of summer to mark our reconciliation, as if we hope for another child like a pair of pretty blackbirds nesting in an apple tree. Katherine’s plan—to give me time to become accustomed to him—has become a courtship leading, inexorably, back to our marriage.
He’s too clever to say any of this openly, but he orders new hangings for my bed and new linen, and tells the sempstress that it must be ready for Whitsun. He speaks confidently of the summer and says that we will go to Linlithgow, and farther north, that we must take James around his country on a royal tour, as his father used to do. He says that he will teach Margaret to ride astride, like a boy, so that
she can enjoy hunting and riding out. There is never any doubt in his voice that we will be together, man and wife, this summer and every summer thereafter.
Confidently, he applies to Cardinal Wolsey for the full use of my lands: all my rents and all my fees and all the produce will go to him as my acknowledged husband. I can get no news of the woman that he once called his wife, Janet Stewart of Traquair. I don’t know if she is living at Tantallon Castle in state as its lady or in one of my properties, and no one dares to tell me. I don’t even know if she is discarded and he has abandoned her and she is somewhere, perhaps Traquair House on a knife edge of hope that he might come back to her and fear that he will. He never mentions her, and a terrible awkwardness stops my tongue too. I have lost the courage to challenge him.
By singing the song of our happiness, of our marriage against the odds, of our struggle to be together, he has painted a new picture. I can see how he must have done this so well in London, as he does it here too, in Edinburgh. He convinces my son, almost he convinces me that he and I were deeply in love, separated by accident, true through so many difficulties, and are now restored to each other. I cannot cling on to my own sense of myself. I start to think that he is right, that he loves me, that he is my only safety. His view of the world, his opinion of me, his account of our lives together, slowly overwhelms me.
One day, he even dares to say: “The smoke of the cannons cleared and I saw you behind the guns, and I thought then—my God, that is the only woman I have ever wanted. It’s always been a great passion with us, Margaret, hatred and love all at once.”
“I gave them the order to prepare to fire. I knew it was you,” I tell him.
He smiles, his confidence is quite unshaken. “I know you did, and you saw me look at you, and you knew what I was thinking.”
I remember his silhouette on his horse, as he stood at the height of the Via Regis as if he were daring me to fire on him again.
“No, I didn’t know what you were thinking,” I say stubbornly. “All I wanted was for you to go away.”
“Oh, I’ll never do that.”
He represents my brother, the great king, he has the God-given certainty of my sister-in-law, the Queen of England, he is endorsed by the power of man and of God. He has me in his thrall. I am not in love—God save me from such grief—but he dominates the court and he masters James and he lords it over me and I feel as if there is nothing that I can say or do to claim my freedom. He tells me what I think as if my own mind is subject to him. I can only wait for news from Rome that my divorce has been approved, and only then will I be able to say to him that I am free and that he is a lord of the council and nothing more to me. On that day I will be able to tell him that he is not my husband, he is not stepfather to the king. He is father to my daughter but he does not command me. He may be an ally of the King of England but he is no longer his kinsman. Every night I kneel before my crucifix and pray that the Holy Father’s clerks will write at once and free me from this strange half life where I live with a husband that I dare not defy, and long for a man that I may not even see.
It is unbearable. I have to get away this summer. I cannot ride with Archibald every day and watch him dance every night. I cannot kneel beside him in the chapel and take the Mass beside him, as if we were sharing a loving cup. I know that soon, sometime after Easter, he will come to my bedroom and my ladies will open the door and let him in, curtsey, and leave us alone together. I am so ruled by him and dominated by him and overpowered by him that I know I will not resist. Legally, I know that I cannot resist. Increasingly, I fear that I will have forgotten how to resist: I will not resist.
I must break the engagement that my brother has made for me, break the spell that Katherine has woven. The two of them decided, for their own private reasons, that Archibald and I should honor our marriage vows and reconcile. My marriage with Archibald allows Harry’s passion for Mary Boleyn, for I demonstrate that no betrayal can destroy a marriage. I am to prove this. The two of them—Katherine and Harry—have worked upon the two of us to come to agreement. Harry pays for James’s guard, buys the council of the lords, supports Archibald, on the condition that Archibald represents the interests of England and is true to his marriage to me, the English princess. Harry writes to me, Katherine writes to me, even my sister Mary writes to me, and they all say that my future and the future of my country and of my boy rest in the hands of my good husband. He will be true to me, I must take him back. We will be happy.
Secretly, disguising my hand and sending the letter by the back ways to the port and from there on a French merchant ship to France, I write to the absent Duke of Albany. I say that I will do anything—anything—to obtain my divorce from the Pope. I say that I know he can prevail upon the Vatican for me. I say that I will deliver the council of lords into his keeping, that I will hand over Scotland to the French, if he will only free me of Archibald and this terrible dreamy half life that is drowning me, even as I write for help.
SCONE PALACE, PERTH, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1525
Scone Palace is an abbot’s palace set alongside the abbey buildings beside the church of Scone. It is the famous coronation place of all Scots kings, and I have loved the gray stone abbey, the palace, the little church set high on the hill above Perth, ever since I first came here with my husband James, the king. The landscape is wild here; the mountains rise up high, their lower slopes dark with forest so thick and so deep that nobody lives there and the narrow tracks are followed only by deer and wild boar. The tops of the mountains are white with snow at this time of year, though the lenten lilies are bobbing their heads along the riverbank. It is too cold to walk by the tumbling river, white with winter spate, or in the walled gardens around the monastery, where the first green buds of vegetables are showing in the dark earth beds.
Archibald does not come with us, on this unseasonal visit north, but stays at Edinburgh in council with the lords, and James and I are suddenly free. Only now that we are away from him, do I realize how he holds me in silence, how I watch him. It is as if my son and I go on tiptoes around him, as if he were a sleeping snake that might strike us. Only Margaret misses him—he is so charming and affectionate with her and she does not secretly fear him.
We go out hunting or riding every day and my master of horse leads us up through the woods and into the high bare moorland country where the wind is sharp and cold and strong. My son the king loves these highlands, which are such a large part of his kingdom. He rides out all day with just a handful of companions. They go to a tiny monastery for their breakfast, they hammer on the door of a remote farmhouse for their dinner. People are delighted to find their king among them, and James thrives on the freedom after years of being all but a prisoner in his own castles. He resembles his father: he likes to surprise his people, ride among them like a commoner, talk to them like an equal. I tell him that his father used to go by the name of the Gudeman of Ballengeich, a village near Stirling, and pretended to be a common man so that he could dance with girls and give money to beggars, and James laughs and says he will be a Gudeman too, and go by the name of “Gudemanson.”
Henry Stewart joins us, riding at James’s side, a perfect companion to a young king, speaking of chivalry and nobility and the old stories of Scotland. All day he is James’s companion and friend and at night he comes quietly to my room and takes me in his arms.
“You are my love, my love,” he whispers in my ear, and I say, “hush,” and we make love in whispers and he steals away before dawn so that when I rise for Prime, it is as if I have had a dream of a young lover, and I can hardly believe that we were together at all.
We are so happy in the North, and so remote from the troubles of Edinburgh, that I am surprised when Archdeacon Thomas Magnus is announced at dinner, newly returned from a visit to England. We dine early here, and we go to bed when the wax candles start to gutter in their candlesticks. The sky up here is as dark as black velvet, with little silver pinpricks of stars. There are no lights showing fr
om Perth, there are no torches from the little hamlet of Scone. There is nothing but the gleam of mysterious light—not dawn and yet not starlight—where the unlit earth meets the night-black sky, and the only sound is the haunting call of the owls.
“I did not expect to see you back in Scotland so soon, archdeacon,” I say. “You are very welcome.”
He is not particularly welcome. I know that he has been in London and will be carrying messages from England. I don’t doubt that he has stopped at Edinburgh and shared all the news with Archibald, and received his instructions there. “Is my brother the king in good health? And Her Grace the queen?”
He bows. He says quietly that he has letters for me and very grave news from London.
“My brother is well?” I ask anxiously. “And Her Grace the queen?”
“God be praised,” he says piously. “They are both well. But there has been a terrible battle. I regret to have to tell you that your former ally, the kingdom of France, has been defeated. The King of France himself has been captured.”
“What?” I ask blankly.
I can see—no one could miss—his little gleam of pleasure at my shock, his knowledge that this leaves me without an ally against my brother and his man.
“King Francis has been captured and is being held by the emperor,” he says coolly. “Your friend the Duke of Albany, commanding his troop for his master, has been completely defeated. Your brother’s enemy, Richard de la Pole, the pretender to his throne, has been killed.”