“He was my enemy too,” I say stoutly. “Our kinsman and our enemy, both. Thank God he will trouble us no more.”
“Amen to that,” says the archdeacon as if he would prefer to be the one invoking God. “And so, you will see—a princess of your wit will quickly see—that you have no powerful friends any more but the English, that the French are destroyed and will remain destroyed for a generation, their king is in captivity, his rule broken. He was your ally but now he is a prisoner of the Habsburg Empire. Your brother’s kingdom is safe from attack from the French, your own friend the Duke of Albany is humiliated and defeated.”
“I am glad of anything that makes England safe,” I reply at random, hardly knowing what I am saying. If the French are defeated and the duke humbled, then he cannot speak for me at the Vatican; he can be no help to me in Scotland. The archdeacon is right: I have lost a friend and an ally. I will be dependent on Harry and in Archibald’s power forever.
“This is a shock for you,” the archdeacon says, with unconvincing sympathy. “It is the end of France as a force. All of the Scots lords in the pay of France will find their wages stopped.” He pauses; he knows that the French send money to me. He knows that I am dependent upon them for a pension and for their guards, that half the lords are paid for their support.
“I rejoice for my brother,” I say numbly. “I am so glad for England.”
“And for your sister the Spanish infanta who now sees her nephew rule all of Europe,” the archdeacon prompts.
“Her too,” I say through my teeth.
“They have written to you.” He offers me the package, heavy with royal seals.
I nod to one of my ladies. “Tell the musicians to play out here, I will go to the privy chamber to read the news from London.”
“Good news, I hope,” she says.
I nod with a confidence that I don’t feel, and I let the guards close the door behind me before I go to the abbot’s great chair, set on a dais overlooking the silent empty room, and sit and cut the seal.
I have never read such a letter in my life. I have known Harry to be intemperate, but never anything like this. I have known him to be angry but this is worse than anything. He writes like a man who cannot be crossed, he writes like a man who would kill someone who argued with him. He is wild with rage, his pen spills blots and spatters of ink across the page as if he was spitting with fury. He is mad with rage, quite mad with rage. He says that he knows that I was hand in glove with Albany but I should know that Albany is a broken man, utterly defeated. He says that he has captured my letter that shows that while I was pretending to be publicly reconciled with Archibald I was all along pleading for Albany to hurry my divorce through the Vatican. He says that he read with horror that I said I will do “anything, anything” to be free. He says that he understands very well what I mean—that I was offering myself to Albany to shame myself and my family. He knows that I have been bought by the French, that I was pleading with the French duke to use his influence to set me free. He says I am false, through and through, and that he should never have listened to his wife who swore that I was a good woman and could be trusted. He says that she has no judgment, for she said that I would be reconciled with my husband. He says I have proved her to be a liar and a poor advisor, and that he will never waste his time in listening to her again, and this is my fault. He says that I am a liar and she is a fool.
He says that Katherine’s nephew is the victor of Europe and that the kingdom of France is ended as swiftly as it began. He says that Princess Mary will never marry my son James, but is to be betrothed at once to the emperor and she will be the greatest empress the world has ever known. He says that when he is ready he will personally lead an army to conquer Scotland, and James will be under the throne of England, as Scotland has always been. He says that I need not think that James will inherit the throne of England, for Harry has a son, a hearty strong son, a Tudor through and through, who will be made legitimate and will take the throne as Henry IX, and I need not think that James will ever see the inside of Westminster Abbey. Indeed, I need not think that he will ever see London, except perhaps to pay tribute, and nor will I ever see London again. Harry says that he warned me of this, that Katherine—the stupid woman—warned me of this. Infidelity to my husband will be met with disgrace, disloyalty to England will be met with destruction. I was warned of doom, and now I am lost.
I hold the letter before me and then I realize there is a repeated rustling sound. It is my hands trembling as I hold the letter. I drop the scrawled papers to the floor and I realize that I am shaking all over, as if I have an ague, as if I were some madwoman in a village about to fall down in a fit. I find I cannot breathe and I am so cold, as if I am shivering in an icy wind. I try to stand, but I find that my legs won’t support me. I sink back onto the abbot’s throne and call for help but I have no breath, I have no voice. Now there is a rattling sound of my rings clattering against the gold-inlaid wood of the throne. I clench my hands over the arms of the chair to keep them still; but my knuckles go white and still I am trembling. I think that I will have to endure this fit, this descent into madness, as I have endured other terrible shocks, other terrible losses. My brother has turned against me, my friend has been defeated, the French are destroyed, and the world is too much for me. My husband has won. I am lost.
It is growing dark before I am able to open the letter from Katherine. She writes very briefly. She sounds as if she is filled with sorrow, but I know this is Katherine triumphant.
My husband and I are agreed that if you are determined on divorce then you are unfit to be the guardian of your son or a queen. You will have to go into exile in the keeping of your new lover—we have heard that you favor Henry Stewart. Margaret, if you deny your marriage vows, you are a nobody bound for eternal damnation, and no sister to me nor to my husband.
Katherine
Nothing can end a true marriage. You will see what I have to accept as God’s will and the king’s wish. But it does not end my marriage. Nothing does that. Nothing will ever do that. K.
I have to talk with James. He is a boy of only twelve years old but he is king. He has to know that I have made such a terrible error putting him in alliance with France whose power is defeated, his betrothal has been canceled, and I am publicly shamed. I go to his bedroom as he is saying his prayers with Davy Lyndsay, who looks curiously at my white strained face, and I know myself to be a failure as a mother, a guardian, and a queen.
James kneels for my blessing and I curtsey and kiss him. Then he jumps into bed and looks at me as brightly as if he were still a little boy and I had come to tell him a bedtime story. Davy Lyndsay bows and turns as if to go, but I say:
“You can stay. This will be all over the court tomorrow. You might as well hear it from me.”
James exchanges a surprised glance with Davy and the older man steps back quietly and stands with his back to the door, as if on guard. I turn to my son. “You will have heard of the news from Pavia? Of the decisive defeat of the French?”
James nods. “Archdeacon Magnus told me, but I was not sure what it means to us.”
“He won’t have failed to tell you that it means our ally France is weakened for years, almost destroyed. They don’t even have a king any more. He has been captured and will not be returned.”
“The French will ransom him,” James asserts. “They will buy him back.”
“If they can. But the emperor will get all he can in the way of land and cities and fees before he restores the King of France to his kingdom. He will rewrite the borders of Europe. We have lost an ally, we are without a friend. We have no choice but to make a full peace with England. If they ever choose to make war on us, we have no defender.”
James nods. “My uncle the king was seeking peace with us anyway.”
“He was. He was seeking peace with a little country in alliance with a very great and dangerous power. But now he has nothing to fear from us.” I hesitate. “And he is very, very a
ngry with me.”
My boy looks up at me with his clear gaze. “Why?”
“I have been trying to obtain an annulment of my marriage to Archibald, the Earl of Angus,” I say very quietly.
“I thought that you were reconciled,” my son says.
“Not fully. In my heart I was not.”
Even I can hear how duplicitous I sound. I glance towards Davy Lyndsay whose face is completely impassive, his eyes on his charge. “I had written to the Duke of Albany to ask him to use his influence to speed my divorce through the Vatican,” I say. “I hoped it would come before Whitsun. Then I would have told the earl.”
“But the duke is defeated and France has lost its king,” my son observes.
“It’s worse than that. My brother the King of England has seized my letters to the duke and now he knows that I was trying to divorce my husband, and so I was breaking my agreement with England, and playing them false.” I take a shuddering breath. “He is very angry with me. I have lost his friendship.”
James’s young face is very grave. “If the lords of the council turn against you, we are alone, Lady Mother. If you are not the wife of the Earl of Angus, nor the regent chosen by the French, nor the favored sister of the King of England, then you have no influence.”
I nod.
“And the Earl of Angus will be offended that you were trying to divorce him behind his back while living with him as his wife.”
It sounds so much worse when it is spoken in the clear treble voice of my son.
“I know.”
“And you have played him false? You pretended that you were reconciled with him but all the while you were writing to the Vatican for your divorce?”
“Yes.”
“And were you unfaithful?” he asks coldly.
“I wanted to be free,” I mutter miserably. “I wanted to be free of Archibald.”
“You took a lover?”
I bow my head before my son’s righteous anger. “I wanted to be free.”
“But I am not free,” my son points out. “I am in his keeping and in the keeping of the lords of the council. If you have lost your power then my case is worse than ever. You will be in disgrace and they will have me as their prisoner. He will have me as his stepson.”
“I am so sorry . . .”
He turns a sulky face to me. “You have done very wrong,” he says. “You have ruined us.”
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1525
I lose all influence over the council of the lords; Archibald will not even see me. I go to Stirling Castle and live like a widow, alone. I keep a small court, but I have hardly the money to pay them. I receive nothing from France and get only a small part of my rents and my fees from my lands—a pitiful allowance paid by Archibald from his charity. He is a wronged husband; he would be within his rights to let me starve and nobody would blame him. Henry Stewart greets me with joy, but soon learns that I am in disgrace and that we will never be married. I publicly protest that my case is still before the papal court and that my rents should be paid to me and not to Archibald, that my son should be in my keeping until we have their decision. The council of lords reply that until the marriage is ended I should live with my husband, and that I must come to Edinburgh to answer before them all. They hate me for being a woman trying to win my freedom. They know that I would have sold them all, lock, stock, and barrel, to get my freedom from Archibald. They hate me for betraying them. They feel betrayed as James does—they know that I was trying to get away and leave them in Archibald’s power.
I don’t go to Edinburgh. Not even to see James will I return to Archibald, and in my absence they declare that I have forfeited all my authority. They say that my son shall be kept by a council of nobles, a rotating set of guardians, and Archibald takes first place. Takes it and keeps it. James is in Archibald’s power and will never return to me. I don’t even know if James wants to see me. He feels I have betrayed him and he will not forgive me.
Archibald takes Margaret, too. There is no protest I can make. She is his daughter and he has evidence from the King of England that her mother is shamed. She is glad to go: she is her father’s little pet, his favorite. I think I should try to persuade her to stay with me but I cannot bring myself to beg her, and I have no power to command.
I write to my brother the king to appeal to him in the name of his nephew, even if he is still angry with me. I write to Katherine and say that as a mother she must understand that I cannot bear James to be held by my enemy. Neither of them replies, but I get a letter from my sister Mary that reminds me that my troubles and sorrows mean little in London; they are all convulsed with gossip.
Our brother has ennobled his bastard son Henry Fitzroy. The little boy is made a duke—Duke of Richmond and Duke of Somerset—and so is the greatest duke in the kingdom. He has far greater lands and fees than my husband Charles. Charles says that Harry will name Fitzroy as his heir, to inherit the throne of England.
I can see her writing change as she realizes that she is speaking to the mother of the legitimate heir.
I am sure you will be very troubled by this, but it is only what Charles says. It may be that your boy will inherit the throne in the end. It’s just that, with everyone speaking so badly of you, Harry cannot name your son as an heir. People even ask if we can be sure of James’s fathering. If you are an adulteress now, might you have been so before? This is so very terrible to hear—I am sorry to repeat it. I wish you would reconcile with the Earl of Angus. Everyone thinks so highly of him. Can you not withdraw your application to the Pope? It’s never going to succeed now.
Of course the queen is very saddened by the honoring of Henry Fitzroy, and now Mary Carey is with child again and everyone knows that it is the king’s baby. Her sister Anne Boleyn is at court too and the king is every day with either one or the other of them as they vie for his attention, and Katherine feels this very much. She is living among her rivals and now she sees a bastard boy is housed in as great a palace as that given to the true princess, her daughter. Princess Mary is to go to Ludlow Castle but she is not made Princess of Wales. I cannot see why not, but Charles says that the English would never accept a woman on the throne. So nobody knows what will happen, the queen least of all.
It is not a happy court any more. The two Boleyn girls are quite frantic in their desire to please and entertain Harry—they sport and dance and play music and compose, they hunt and boat and flirt, but the queen seems very tired. And I am tired of it too. I am tired of all of it.
That’s all. She has no new advice for me but to return to Archibald, it is all any of them ever say. I don’t think she has any thought of me. She cannot imagine my life, short of money, lonely for company, unable to see my son, deserted by my daughter, unable to enter my capital city, a queen in name but stripped of power, wealth, and reputation. For Mary the world is fixed in London and the battle between two pretty Boleyn girls, a great question mark hanging over the throne of England like a sparkling cloth of estate. There is so much more to trouble me, but neither she nor my sister-in-law Katherine ever thinks of me.
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1526
At last I am able to return to Edinburgh and see my son. For more than a year he has been in Archibald’s keeping and I have been able to do nothing but write to him and send him little gifts, and beg him to remember that his mother loves him and would be with him if she could. I can’t forget the coldness in his voice, the irritation in his face. He blames me for our defeat—and he is right. I blame myself.
Amazingly, it is Harry, my brother, who makes my return to court possible. Harry orders Archibald to give me my rents and my fees and not keep them for himself. Harry says that I must be allowed to see my son. Harry tells Archibald that I should have a divorce if it can indeed be proved that the marriage was invalid from the very beginning. Harry has changed his mind completely: he is turn and turn about. He has forgiven me, he wants me to be happy.
I am amazed.
I cannot understand this change of heart that has brought me such opportunity. I am so encouraged and so hopeful that I write to him and to Katherine and thank them for their kindness to me, and promise them my gratitude, and my loyalty to the country of my birth. For some reason, the royal favor has returned to me, and I am restored to the family. I don’t know why I am suddenly beloved again, but I am as grateful as a beaten puppy that squirms to lick the hand that held the whip. Harry has all the power, and, suddenly, he bestows his blessing on me.
It is Mary who explains:
You will have heard that the Boleyn girl Mary Carey has given birth to a boy. The king our brother is pleased, as any man is pleased, to have a healthy son to show to the world. His second healthy bastard boy. They are calling him Henry but he will take the husband’s surname of Carey. This spares the queen the humiliation of another bastard named Fitzroy, but that is all that she is spared. Everyone knows that the boy is of the king’s fathering and so everyone knows that it must be the queen’s fault that they only have one child, and that one a frail girl. Katherine is fasting more than ever, she hardly ever eats at dinner, and her hair shirt has scraped her skin raw on her shoulders and her hips. I really think that she will mortify her flesh to death and then Harry will be free. You would be heartbroken to see her, you who love her so well. I, her other sister, can do nothing but watch as she tortures herself. It is unbearable.
The Boleyn girl Mary seems to have lost the attention of our brother who is now publicly at the feet of her sister Anne Boleyn. She queens it around the court as if she were royal born. You would not believe how this girl from next to nowhere behaves at a royal court, at our court. Not even you and I, as princesses of the blood, were ever allowed these freedoms. She takes precedence wherever she can and also where she should not, and Harry leads her in to dinner and out to dance as if she were queen. It is quite extraordinary, she walks before duchesses as if she had a right. Katherine smiles with almost saintly dignity but anyone can see that she is near to despair. I am called upon to admire and accompany the Boleyn girl and I often say that I am unwell or too tired or that I have to go home. I pretend to be sick so that I do not appear to be in her service. Truly, this is how she makes it appear. She decides to do something, and she looks at Harry, and the next moment we are all running to her bidding. It is like a terrible masque of a court, like players trying to enact royalty. There is no grace or laughter or beauty here at all any more, there is just posturing and bitter laughter, the terrible cynicism of the young and the queen’s loneliness.