“I am going to Scotland to my husband; I am going to be a great queen,” I inform Mary. “I will own a fortune, a queen’s fortune. I will write to you and you must reply. You must write properly, not a silly scribble. And I will tell you how I get on as queen in my own court.”
She is seven years old, no longer a baby, but her face puckers up and she reaches out her arms to me. I receive the full sobbing weight of her on my lap. “Don’t cry,” I say. “Don’t cry, Mary. I will come back on visits. Perhaps you will come to visit me.”
She only sobs more passionately, and I meet Katherine’s concerned gaze over her heaving shoulder. “I thought she would be glad for me,” I say. “I thought I should tell her—you know—that a princess is not like a plowman’s daughter.”
“It is hard for her to lose a sister,” she says with ready sympathy. “And she has just lost a mother and a brother.”
“I have too!” I point out.
The older girl smiles and puts her hand gently on my shoulder. “It’s hard for us all.”
“It wasn’t very hard for you.”
I see the shadow pass over her face. “It is,” she says shortly. She kneels beside the two of us and puts her arm around my sister’s thin shaking shoulders. “Little Princess Mary,” she says sweetly. “One sister is leaving you, but one has arrived. I am here. And we will all write to each other, and we will always be friends. And one day, you will go to a beautiful country and be married, and we will always remember our royal sisters.”
Mary raises her tearstained face and reaches out for Katherine’s neck so she is holding us both. It is almost as if we are welded together by sisterly love. I can’t pull away, and I find that I don’t want to. I put my arms around Katherine and Mary and our three golden heads come together as if we were swearing an oath.
“Friends forever and ever,” Mary says solemnly.
“We are the Tudor sisters,” Katherine says, though obviously she’s not.
“Two princesses and one queen,” I say.
Katherine smiles at me, her face close to mine, her eyes shining. “I am sure we will all be queens one day,” she says.
ON PROGRESS, RICHMOND TO COLLYWESTON, ENGLAND, JUNE 1503
Our journey is unbelievably grand, something between a masque and a hunt. First, at the head, free of the dust and setting our own pace, comes my father the king and me: Queen of Scots. He rides behind his royal standard, I behind mine. I change my riding outfits and they are brushed clean every time we stop, sometimes three times a day. I wear Tudor green, dark crimson, a yellow so dark that it is like orange, and a pale blue. My father tends to wear black—always dark colors—but his hat, his gloves and his waistcoat gleam with jewels, and his shoulders are loaded with chains of gold. Our horses are the best that can be had. I have a palfrey, a lady’s horse that has been trained with crowds and fireworks to make sure that nothing startles her, and my groom leads a spare horse. I ride astride, on a thickly padded saddle so that we can go many miles every day, or I can ride behind my master of horse on a pillion saddle embroidered with the emblem of Scotland: the thistle. If I am tired, I have a litter carried by mules, and I can get inside, draw the curtains and sleep while it gently rocks me.
Behind us come the courtiers, as if they were out for a day of pleasure, with the long sleeves of the ladies rippling as we canter, and the cloaks of the gentlemen billowing like standards. The gentlemen of my father’s rooms and my ladies mingle without ceremony, and there is continual laughter and flirtation. Behind them come the mounted guard, though England is supposed to be at peace. My father is perennially suspicious, always afraid that the foolish, wicked people still hold their loyalty to the old royal family. Behind the mounted guard comes the wagon with the hawks and falcons, their leather curtains tied tightly against the dust, and all the birds standing on their traveling perches, their little heads crowned with leather hoods, blinded to all the noise and confusion so they are not frightened.
Around them, baying and yelping, are the big hounds—the wolfhounds and the deerhounds with the huntsmen and the whippers-in riding alongside and keeping them under control. Every now and then one of the dogs gets a scent and gives tongue and all the others are desperate to give chase and follow; but we cannot stop to hunt if we are riding towards a feast or a celebration or a formal welcome. Some days we hunt before breakfast, and sometimes in the cool of the evening, and then the dogs can take a scent and make a run, and the court will spur on their horses, scrambling over ditches and riding through strange woods, laughing and cheering. If we make a kill we present the meat at the next halt to our overnight host.
Ahead of us, starting half a day before we mount, goes the baggage train. First out: half a dozen carts that carry my clothes; one, specially guarded, carries my jewels. The steward of my household and his servants either sit beside the drivers or ride alongside, to make sure that nothing goes missing and nothing is lost. The wagons are strapped with oilskins dyed in the Tudor colors of green and white and sealed with my royal seal. My ladies each have their own wardrobe cart, displaying their own shields, and when the wagons rumble, one after another, it looks like a moving tree of shields from a tournament, as if the Knights of the Round Table had decided to invade the North, all at once.
My father is not amusing company on this great journey. He is unhappy at the state of the roads, and the cost of the travel. He is missing my mother, I suppose, but this does not show itself as grief but in continual complaint: “If Her Grace were here she would do that” or “I never had to order that, it is the queen’s work.” My mother was so beloved, and her family were so accustomed to rule, having been on the throne for generations, that she always used to guide him in the great public occasions, and everyone felt easier when she was at the head of a procession. I begin to think that it would have been thoroughly good for Katherine of Arrogant to have been forced to marry my father: serving him would have humbled her far more than marrying Harry will ever do. She is going to lord it over Harry, I know, but my father would have set her to work.
He is glad when we get to my lady grandmother’s house at Collyweston because here everything is commanded by her to the highest standard, and here he can rest and do nothing. I think he may be ill; certainly, he seems tired, and my lady his mother fusses around him with all sorts of potions of her own mixing and strengthening drinks. Here we will part—he will go back to London and I will go on northward to Scotland. I will not see him again until I come back to England for a visit.
I wonder if my father is distressed at my leaving and hiding it under ill temper, but truly, I think he will feel my loss no more than I feel his. We have never been close; he has never made much of me. I am his daughter, but I resemble the smiling tall blondes of my mother’s family. I am not a precious little doll-faced princess like Mary. I have inherited his temper, but his mother has made sure that I keep it hidden. I have his courage—he spent his life in exile and then came to England against all odds—I think I can be brave too. I have my mother’s hopefulness; my father thinks the worst of everyone and plans to catch them out. Anyone seeing us side by side—he so spare and dark and I round faced and broad shouldered—would never take us for father and elder daughter, no wonder we feel no sense of kinship.
I kneel for his blessing as my train of courtiers waits in the sunshine and my grandmother inspects me for flaws, and when I rise up he kisses me on both cheeks. “You know what you have to do,” he says shortly. “Make sure that husband of yours keeps the peace. England will never be safe if Scotland is an enemy and always stirring up the Northern lands. It’s called the Treaty of Perpetual Peace for a reason. You are there to make sure that it is perpetual.”
“I’ll do what I can, Sire.”
“Never forget you’re an English princess,” he says. “If anything happens to Harry, which God forbid, you will be mother to the next King of England.”
“The grandest thing in the world,” my grandmother adds. She and her son exchange a
warm glance. “Serve God,” she says to me. “And remember your patron saint and mine, the Blessed Margaret.”
I bow my head at the name of the woman who was saved from being eaten by a dragon when her crucifix scratched his belly and he vomited her up.
“Let her life be an example for you,” my lady grandmother urges.
I put my hand on the crucifix at my throat to indicate that, should I be swallowed by a dragon between here and Edinburgh, I am fully prepared.
“God bless you,” she says. Her old face is set firm; there is no danger of her weeping at our parting. I may be her favorite granddaughter, but neither Mary nor I can compare to her passion for her son and grandson. She is founding a dynasty: she only needs boys.
She kisses me, and holds me close for a moment. “Try to have a son,” she whispers. “Nothing else matters but your son on the throne.”
It is a cold farewell to a motherless girl but before I can answer, my master of horse steps forward and lifts me onto my palfrey, the trumpeters blast out a salute, and everyone knows we are ready to leave. The king’s court waves, my lady grandmother’s household cheers, and I lead out my court, flying my standard, on the great north road to Edinburgh.
ON PROGRESS, YORK TO EDINBURGH, JULY 1503
I head for the borderlands of England and Scotland with little regret for what I am leaving behind. So much of my childhood has already gone. In the past year I have lost my adored brother and then my mother, and a little newborn sister with her. But I find that I don’t miss them so much, in this new life that I am entering. Oddly, it is Katherine that I miss as I travel north. I want to tell her about the magnificent greetings that welcome me to every town, and I want to ask about the awkwardness of a long ride and needing the garderobe. I copy her beautiful way of holding her head, I even practice her little roll of the shoulders. I try to say “ridiculous” with a Spanish accent. I think that she will be Queen of England and I will be Queen of Scotland and people will compare us one with another, and that I will learn to be as elegant as she is.
I have daily opportunities for practicing her poise, for I am beginning to discover that one of the greatest features of being royal is being able to think quietly about interesting things while people pray for you or talk at you, or even sing anthems about you. It would be rude to yawn when someone is thanking God for your arrival, so I have learned the trick of drifting off without falling asleep. I sit like Katherine, with my back very straight and my head raised high to lengthen my neck. Most often I lift my gown a tiny fraction of an inch and look at my shoes. I have ordered slippers with the toes embroidered in fanciful designs so that these pious meditations can be yet more interesting.
I look at my toes a lot at every long boring stopping point, while noblemen make speeches at me, all the way northward. My father has ordered that my journey shall be a magnificent procession, and my part in it is to look beautiful in a series of wonderful gowns, and to cast down my eyes in modesty when people thank God for the coming of the Tudors and, in particular, for my passing through their plague-infested, dirty little town. That’s when I look at my toes and think that soon I will be in my own country, Scotland. And then I will be queen. And then I shall be the one to decide where I go, and how long the speeches will take.
I am amazed by the countryside as we ride north. It is almost as if the sky opens up over us, like the lid off a chest. Suddenly the horizon gets farther and farther away, receding as we climb up and down rolling green hills and see more and more hills ahead of us, as if all of England is billowing under our feet. Above us arches the great Northern sky. The air is watery and clear, as if we were submerged. I feel as if we are tiny people, a little train of shrimps crawling along a huge world, and the buzzards that wheel above us, and the occasional eagle even higher than they, see rightly that we are specks on the side of giant rolling hills.
I had no idea it was so far to go, no idea that so much of Northern England is empty of all people: not hedged, not ditched, not farmed, nor worked at all. It is just empty country, wasteland, not even mapped.
Of course, there are people who scrape a living from this untouched landscape. Every now and then we see in the distance a rough stone tower and sometimes we hear the ringing of a warning bell when their watchmen have seen us. These are the wild Northern men who ride these lands, stealing each other’s crops and horses, rounding up each other’s cattle, scraping a living from their tenants and then robbing others. We don’t go near their outposts and we are too numerous and too well armed for them to attack us; but the leader of my escort, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, grinds his old yellow teeth at the very thought of them. He has fought up and down this country and burned out these poor forts to punish these people for their wildness, for their poverty, for their hatred of everything Southern and wealthy and easy.
It is he who prevents me ordering matters as I would like, for everything is commanded by him and his equally disagreeable wife, Agnes. For some reason my father likes and trusts Thomas Howard, and has appointed him to the task of conveying me to Edinburgh, and keeping me to the behavior suitable for a Queen of Scotland. I should think that by now I could be trusted without a Howard at my elbow to give me advice. He’s also here as a spy, since he has fought against the Scots more than once, and he meets with the Northern lords in a little huddle at every town where we halt, to learn of the mood of the Scots border lords, and whether any more of them can be bribed to take our side. He promises our lords that they shall have weapons and money to maintain the defenses of England against Scotland, though the mere fact that I am here will bring a perpetual peace.
Howard does not seem to understand what a change in the world has been made by my marriage to the King of Scotland. He treats me with every outward respect, doffs his hat, bows his knee, accepts dishes from my table, but there is something about his manner that I don’t like. It is as if he does not realize the God-given nature of kingship. It is as if he thinks that he saw my father stumble through the mud of Bosworth Field to pick up his crown, and that he might one day drop it again.
Howard fought against us then, but he persuaded my father that this was commendable loyalty, not treason. He says he was loyal to the crown on that day, he is loyal to the crown now. If the coronet of England were on the head of a baboon from Afric he would be loyal to it then. It is the crown, and the wealth that flows from it, that inspires Howard loyalty. I don’t believe he loves my father and me at all. If he was not such a brilliant general I don’t think I would have to put up with his company. If my mother were alive she would have appointed one of her family. If my brother were alive then my lady grandmother would not be tied at court to guard the only heir we have left. But everything has gone wrong since Katherine came to court and took Arthur away, and these Howards are just an example of how my interests do not come first as they should.
My dislike of them grows at every stop, where they watch how I listen to loyal addresses and prompt me when I am to speak in reply, though I know perfectly well that I have to be admiring in York, and enchanted in Berwick, our northernmost town, a little jewel of a castle set in a bend of the river near to the sea. I don’t have to be told to admire the fortifications; I can see how welcoming Berwick is to me, I know how safe I feel inside these great walls. But Thomas Howard practically dictates the speech of thanks I make to the captain of the castle. He prides himself on his knowledge of tradition. By some means or another he is descended from Edward I, and this means that he thinks he can speak to me about sitting straighter in the saddle and not looking around for the dishes coming into the hall when the speeches go on and on before dinner.
By the time we reach the Scots border, just two hours’ ride from Berwick, I am completely sick of the two Howards, and I resolve that the first thing I shall do when I set up my court is send them home with a note to my father to say that they lack the skills that I require in my courtiers. They may be good enough for him, but not for me. They can serve in Katherine’s court and
she can see what joy Thomas Howard brings her. She can see if she likes knowing that he is so loyal to the crown that he does not care whose head it is on. His grimly ambitious presence can remind her that she too married one Prince of Wales but is now determined to be the wife of another; it is always the crown for the Howards and the crown for Katherine.
But none of this matters when we finally cross the border and are in Scotland at last, and the lady of Dalkeith Castle, the Countess of Morton, whispers to me: “The king is coming!”
It has been such a long journey that I had almost forgotten that at the end of it is this: the throne of Scotland, the thistle crown, but also a man, a real man, not just one who sends gifts and flowery compliments through ambassadors—but a real man who is on his way to see me.
The arrangement was that he would meet me as I entered Edinburgh, but there is a stupid tradition that the bridegroom—like a fairy-tale prince—is supposed to be unable to contain his impatience, and rides out early, like a “parfit gentil knight” in a romance, to meet his bride. This reminds me of Arthur again, who rode in the rain to Dogmersfield to meet a reluctant Katherine, and makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time, remembering the poor reception that he got, and his embarrassment. But it shows at least that the King of Scots knows how things should be done, and is demonstrating a flattering interest in me.
We all get into a panic of readiness and even my chief lady-in-waiting Agnes Howard shows a little excitement when she comes to my room. I am dressed in a gown of deep green with cloth-of-gold sleeves and my best pearls, and we all sit as if we were posing for an artist, listening to music and trying to look as if we are not waiting. Thomas Howard comes in and looks around the room as if he were placing sentries. He leans over my shoulder and whispers in my ear that I should look as if I am completely surprised by the arrival of the king. I should not look like I am waiting. I tell him that I know this, and then we all wait. Hours go by before finally there is a clatter at the gate, and a shout of acclaim, a rattle at the main door, quick steps in noisy riding boots up the stairs, then the sentries throw open the door and in he comes: my husband.