I nearly scream at the sight of him. He has the most enormous ridiculous beard, as red as a fox, almost the size of a fox. I jump to my feet and I let out a little gasp. Agnes Howard gives me a sharp look and if she were nearer I think she would have pinched me to remind me of my manners. But it doesn’t matter, for the king is taking me by the hand and bowing, apologizing for startling me. He takes my wide-eyed, jaw-dropped gape as a compliment at his unexpected arrival, and he laughs at himself for being a troubadour of love, then he greets all my ladies with a smiling confidence, bows over Agnes Howard’s hand, and greets Thomas Howard as if they will be the best of friends and he has quite forgotten that Thomas has invaded Scotland twice already.
He is beautifully dressed, like a European prince, in red velvet edged with cloth of gold, and he remarks that we have both chosen velvet. The jacket is cut like a riding jacket but the material is priceless, and instead of a crossbow over his back, as if he were hunting, he is carrying a lyre. I say, a little faintly, that he is a troubadour indeed if he carries his lyre everywhere, and he tells me that he loves music, and poetry and dance, and that he hopes I do too.
I say that I do and he urges me to dance. Agnes Howard stands up with me and the musicians play a pavane, which I know I perform very gracefully. They serve supper and we sit beside each other and now, while he talks to Thomas Howard, I am able to look at him properly.
He is a handsome man. He is very old of course, being thirty, but he has none of the stiffness or solemnity of an old man. He has a beautiful face: high-arched eyebrows and warm intelligent eyes. All the quickness of his thoughts and the intensity of his feeling seem to shine out of his dark eyes, and his mouth is strongly shaped and, for some reason, it makes me think of kissing. Except for the beard, of course. There is no getting away from the beard. I doubt there is any way to get past the beard. At least he is combed and washed and scented; it is not a beard that might have a mouse nesting in it. But I would have preferred him clean-shaven and I cannot help but wonder if I can mention this. Surely it is bad enough for me to have to marry a man who is old enough to be my father, and with a smaller kingdom than my home, without him bringing a fox’s brush to bed with him?
He leaves at dusk and I remark to Agnes Howard that perhaps she might tell her husband that I would prefer the king clean-shaven. Typically, she tells him at once as if my preferences are ridiculous, and so before I go to bed I have a lecture from them both that I am fortunate to become a queen, and that no husband, especially an ordained king, is going to take advice on his appearance from a young woman.
“Man is made in the image of God; no woman, who was made after God had completed his finest creation, is fit to criticize,” Thomas Howard tells me as if he were pope.
“Oh, amen,” I say sulkily.
In the next four days before the wedding my new husband comes to visit every day, but mostly he talks to Thomas Howard rather than to me. The old man has fought the Scots up and down the borders, but instead of being enemies for life, as anyone would expect, they are inseparable, sharing stories of campaigns and battles. My betrothed, who should be courting me, reruns old wars with my escort, and Thomas Howard, who should be attending to my comfort, forgets I am there and tells the king of his long years of campaigning. They are never happier than when they are drawing a map of ground where they have fought, or when James the king is describing the weaponry he is designing and having built for his castles. Both of them behave, as soldiers together always do, as if women are completely irrelevant to the work of the world, as if the only interesting work is invading someone else’s lands and killing him. Even when I am seated with my ladies and the king comes in with Thomas, he wastes only a few moments on being charming to me, and then asks Thomas if he has seen the new guns, the Dardanelles gun, the new light cannon, if he knows of the famous Scottish cannon Mons, the largest in Europe—which was given to James’s grandfather by the Duke of Burgundy. It is most irritating. I am sure that Katherine would not stand for it.
The day of our entry into Edinburgh is my last day as a Tudor princess before I am crowned in my new kingdom, and the king takes me up behind him on his horse, as if I were a simple lady and he my master of horse, or as if he had captured me and was bringing me home. We enter Edinburgh with me seated behind him, pressed against his back, my arms wrapped around his waist, like a peasant girl coming home from a fair. It pleases everyone. They like the romance of the picture that we make, like a woodcut of a knight and a rescued lady; they like an English princess being brought into their capital city like a trophy. They are an informal, affectionate people, these Scots. I can’t understand a single word that anyone says, but the beaming faces and the kissed waving hands and the cheers show their delight at the sight of the handsome wild-looking king with his long red hair and beard, and the golden princess seated behind him on his horse.
The city is walled with fine gates, and behind them the houses are a mixture of shanties and hovels, some good-sized ones with plastered walls under thick thatched roofs, and a few newly built of stone. There is a castle perched on the very top of an incredibly steep hill at one end of the city, sheer cliffs all around it and only a narrow road to the summit; but there is a new-built palace in the valley at the other end, and outside the tight fortified walls of the town are high hills and forests. Running steeply downhill from castle to palace is a broad cobbled road, a mile long, and the best houses of the tradesmen and guildsmen front this street and their upper stories jut over it. Behind them are pretty courtyards and the dark wynds that lead to inner hidden houses and big gardens, orchards, enclosures, and more houses behind them with secret alleyways that run down the hill.
At every street corner there is a tableau or a masque, with angels, goddesses, and saints praying for love and fertility for me. It is a pretty little city, built as high as it is broad, the castle standing like a mountain above it, the turrets scraping the sky, the flags fluttering among the clouds. It is a jumble of a city, being rebuilt from hovels to houses, from wood to stone, gray slate roofs replacing thatch. But every window, whether open to the cold air, shuttered, or glazed, shows a standard, or colors, and between the overhanging balconies they have strung scarves and chains of flowers. Every poky little doorway is crammed with the family clustered together to wave at me, and where the stone houses have an oriel window or an upper story and a balcony children are leaning out to cheer. The noise of all the people crammed into the little streets and the shouting as our guard push their way through is overwhelming. Ahead and behind us there must be at least a thousand horses with Scots and English lords intermingled to show the new unity that I have brought to Scotland, and we all wind our way through the narrow cobbled streets and then down the hill to the palace of Holyroodhouse.
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, AUGUST 1503
Next day my ladies wake me in the cool light of a blue sky at six in the morning. I attend Lauds in my private chapel and then I take breakfast in my presence chamber with only my ladies attending. Nobody eats very much, we are all too excited, and I am ready to be sick at the very taste of the bread roll and small ale. I go back to my bedroom where a huge bath has been rolled in, filled with steaming water, and my wedding gown is laid out on the bed. My ladies wash and dress me as if I were a wooden poppet, and then they comb my hair so that it is smooth and curling and spread out over my shoulders. It is my best feature, this wealth of fair hair, and we all pause to admire it and tie in extra ribbons. Then, suddenly, there is no time and we have to hurry. I keep remembering a dozen things that I want, and a dozen things that I was going to do. Already I have on my wedding shoes, with embroidered toes and golden laces, quite as fine as Katherine of Arrogant’s, and Agnes Howard is ready to walk behind me, and the ladies all line up behind her, and I have to go.
Down the stone stairs, into the bright sunshine I glide to where the great door of the neighboring abbey is thrown open for me, and then into the abbey, which is crowded with lords and their
ladies dressed in their robes, the air scented with incense, and ringing with the music of the choir. I remember walking up the aisle towards James at the top, and the blaze of gold from the reliquaries on the altar and the heat from the thousands of candles and the high vaulting of the ceiling. I remember the magnificent stone window over the altar, stories high, blazing with color from the stained glass—and then . . . I don’t remember another thing.
I think it is as grand as Arthur’s wedding. It’s not Saint Paul’s, of course, but I wear a gown as good as Katherine’s was on that day. The king at my side is a blaze of jewels, and he is a full king whereas Katherine married only a prince. And I am crowned. She was never crowned, of course, she was a mere princess, and is now even less than that. But I have a double ceremony: I am married and then I am crowned queen. It is so grand and it takes so long that I am in a daze. I have ridden so far, hundreds and hundreds of miles, all the way from Richmond, and been seen by so many people. I have been waiting for this day for years; my father had it planned for most of my life, it is my lady grandmother’s great triumph. I should feel wildly excited, but it is too thrilling to take in. I am only thirteen. I feel like my little sister Mary, when she is allowed to stay up too late at a feast. I am dazzled by my own glory and I pass through everything—the wedding Mass, the coronation and the loyal oaths, the feast, the masquing, the last service at the chapel, and then the procession to bed—as if I were dreaming. The king’s arm is around my waist all the day—if it were not for him I think I would fall. The day goes on forever, and then he goes to confess and pray in his rooms as my ladies take me and put me to bed.
Agnes Howard supervises them as they unlace my sleeves and put them away in lavender bags, untie my gown and help me out of the tight stomacher. I am to wear my finest linen robe, trimmed with French lace, and over it I have a satin gown for the night. They lie me on the bed, propped against the pillows, arrange my gown around my feet and pull and tweak at my sleeves as if I were a wax effigy, like my mother on her coffin. Agnes Howard twists my fair hair into curls and spreads it around my shoulders, pinching my cheeks to make them blush.
“How do I look?” I ask her. “Hand me a mirror.”
“You look well,” she says with a little smile. “A beautiful bride.”
“Like Katherine?”
“Yes,” she says.
“Like my mother?” I gaze at my round childish face in the looking glass.
She studies me with critical, measuring eyes. “No,” she says. “Not really. For she was the most beautiful of all the Queens of England.”
“More beautiful than my sister, then?” I say, trying to find some measure to give me confidence to face my husband this night.
Again, the level, judging look. “No,” she says reluctantly. “But you should never compare yourself with her. Mary is going to be exceptional.”
I give a little irritated exclamation and push the looking glass back at her.
“Be at peace,” she recommends. “You’re the most beautiful Queen of Scotland. Let that be enough for you. And your husband is clearly pleased with you.”
“I wonder he could see me through the beard,” I say crossly. “I wonder he can see anything.”
“He can see you,” she advises me. “There’s not much that he misses.”
The lords of his court escort him to the bedroom door, singing bawdy songs and making jokes, but he does not allow them into our chamber. When he enters he says good night to the ladies so that everyone leaves us and has to abandon the hope that they might watch the bedding. I realize that he does this not out of any shyness, because he has no shyness, but out of kindness to me. There is really no need. I am not a child, I am a princess; I have been born and bred for this. I have lived all my life in the glare of a court. I know that everyone always knows everything about me and constantly compares me to other princesses. I am never judged for myself, I was always viewed as one of four Tudor children, and now I am weighed as one of three royal sisters. It’s never fair.
James undresses himself, like a common man, throwing off his fine long gown so he stands before me in his nightshirt, and then pulls that over his head. I hear a chink like a heavy necklace as his nakedness is revealed to me inch by inch as the nightshirt is stripped off. Strong legs covered in thick, dark hair, a mass of dark hair at his crotch and his pizzle standing up awkwardly like a stallion’s, the dark line of hair over his flat belly, and then—
“What’s that?” I ask as I see a circlet of metal rings around his waist. It was this that made the little revealing chink.
“That’s my manhood,” he says, deliberately misunderstanding me. “I won’t hurt you, I will be gentle.”
“Not that,” I say. I was raised at court but I have been around stables and farm animals for all my life. “I know all about that. What is that around your waist?”
He touches the belt lightly with his finger. “Oh, this.”
I can see now that it has rubbed him raw. It is barbed and it grazes his skin every time he makes a move. The skin is rough and scarred around his waist; he must have worn this for years. He has been in constant irritating discomfort for years as every movement he makes scratches his skin.
“This is a cilice,” he says. “You must have seen one before. You who knows so much of the world that you see your husband’s cock on your wedding night, and already you know all about it?”
I giggle a little. “I didn’t mean that. But what is the cilice for?”
“It’s to remind me of my sin,” he says. “When I was young, about your age, I did something very stupid, something very wrong. I did something that will send me to hell. I wear it to remind me that I am stupid and that I am a sinner.”
“If you were my age then nobody can blame you,” I assure him. “You can just confess. Confess and be given a penance.”
“I can’t be forgiven just because I was young,” he says. “And don’t you think that either. You can’t be forgiven because you are young or because you are royal or in your case because you are a woman and your mind is less steady than a man’s. You are a queen; you have to hold yourself to the highest of standards. You have to be wise, you have to be faithful, your word has to be your bond, you have to answer to God, not to a priest who might absolve you. No one can absolve you for stupidity and sin if you are royal. You have to make sure that you never commit stupidity or sin.”
I look at him, a little aghast, as he towers above me in my bridal chamber, his pizzle standing up and ready, a great chain cutting into his waist, stern as a judge.
“Do you have to wear it now?” I ask. “I mean, now?”
He gives a little laugh. “No,” he says, and he bends his head, unlinks it and removes it. He comes to the bed and gets in beside me.
“It must be better to take it off,” I say, guiding him to the thought that he might lay it aside forever.
“There is no reason that you should be scratched for my sins,” he says gently. “I will take it off when I am with you. There is no reason that this should hurt you at all.”
It does not hurt because he is gentle and quick and he keeps his weight off me—he is not clumsy like a stallion in the field but deft and neat. There is something very pleasant about being stroked all over, like a cat on someone’s lap, and his hands go everywhere on me, behind my ears and in my hair and down my back and between my legs, as if there was nowhere that he could not turn my skin into silk and then into cream. It has been a long day and I feel dizzy and sleepy and there is no pain at all, more a rather surprising intrusion, and then a sort of warm stirring, and just when it starts to get heavy and pushing, and too much, it is finished and I am left feeling nothing but warm and petted.
“That’s it?” I ask, surprised, when he gives a sigh and then comes carefully away and lies back on the pillow.
“That’s it,” he says. “Or at any rate, that’s it for tonight.”
“I thought it hurt and there was blood,” I say.
“Th
ere is a little blood,” he says. “Enough to show on the bedsheets in the morning. Enough for Lady Agnes to report to your grandmother; but it should not hurt. It should be a pleasure, even for a woman. Some physicians think there has to be pleasure to make a child, but I doubt that myself.”
He gets out of bed and picks up his chain belt again.
“Do you have to put that on?”
“I do.” He clips it on and I see his little grimace as the metal scratches against his sore skin.
“What did you do that was so very bad?” I ask, as if he might tell me a story before I go to sleep.
“I led rebel lords against my father the king,” he answers, but he is not smiling and this is not a pleasant story at all. “I was fifteen. I thought he was going to murder me and put my brother in my place. I listened to the lords and I led their army in a treasonous rebellion. I thought that we would capture him and he would rule with better advisors. But when he saw me he did not advance; he would not march against his own son. He was more faithful a father to me than I was a son to him, and so the rebels and I won the battle, and he ran away, and they caught and killed him.”
“What?” I am jolted from sleep by the horror of this story.
“Yes.”
“You rebelled against your father and killed him?” This is a sin against order, against God and against his father. “You killed your own father?”
His shadow on the wall behind him leaps as my bedside candle gutters. “God forgive me, yes,” he says quietly. “And so there is a curse on me as a rebel, a usurper and a man who killed my own king: a son who killed his own father. I am a regicide and a patricide. And I wear this so I never forget to suspect the motives of my allies, and when I make war I always think who may be killed by accident. I am deep in sin. I will never be able to expiate it.”