Three Sisters, Three Queens

HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1508

James rides with me from Stirling Castle to Holyroodhouse while the hilltops are white with snow and the road along the side of the gray river is hard with frost. I have a new steady horse that carries me and my neat round belly safely. We say nothing more about the child we have lost, hoping for the one that is coming this summer.

As soon as we get to Edinburgh, James goes off to the port of Leith where he is building ships and testing cannon. He wants to build another great port, away from the sandbanks. I say that I don’t know why he would want so many ships; my father also rules a country surrounded by seas and he does not have a fleet at his command. James smiles and chucks me under the chin as if I were an ignorant little sailmaker in one of his lofts, and says that perhaps he has a fancy to rule the seas and how shall I like to be queen of all the oceans?

So he is not at court when an emissary comes from my father, a watchful clerk by the name of Thomas Wolsey, who wants to see James about keeping the peace. This makes it particularly awkward for me to say that the king is not at court but testing the firing of new, bigger guns, and overseeing the building of warships.

But this Wolsey will not be denied, for Scotland has breached the alliance and he has a commission to make sure that James intends to keep the peace. It is all the fault of the bastard boys—causing trouble for me yet again. James Hamilton, the new-made Earl of Arran, who was ennobled on my wedding day, escorted the two of them to Erasmus in Italy and came home through England without a safe conduct and got himself arrested. Once again, we see the evil consequences of my husband’s ridiculous attention to his bastards; now it has caused real trouble.

I may not understand everything, though everyone is always trying to explain to me the endless terms and clauses of the treaty, but even I can see what Thomas Wolsey is talking about as we wait for James to return from Leith. Wolsey says that France is trying to get my husband to renew their traditional alliance, and my father is trying to get him to keep to the Treaty of Perpetual Peace. Since our marriage was part of the treaty, my husband should respect it as he does our marriage. He married a princess of England, so he should be at peace forever: that is what perpetual means. He should not make an alliance with France, and he does not need guns and a fleet of ships and the biggest cannon in the world.

Thomas Wolsey must explain this to my husband, so I send for him at once and tell him he must come home. Wolsey talks and talks and talks to me in the hope that I will persuade my husband to brush off the French, and confirm the alliance with England. But my husband is elusive and when he finally returns to court and I manage to speak to him alone he pats me on the cheek and says: “What’s my motto? What will be our son’s motto?”

“ ‘In My Defense,’ ” I say sullenly.

“Exactly,” he says. “I live my life, I make my alliances, I do everything every day in defense of my kingdom; and not even you, peerless princess that you are, will persuade me to endanger my country by insulting the French.”

“The French are no use to us,” I tell him. “The only alliance we need is with England.”

“I am sure you are right, my royal wife,” he says. “And if England becomes a more helpful neighbor than it is at the moment, then our alliance will long continue.”

“I hope you don’t forget that I was born an English princess before I was a Scots queen,” I say to him.

He slaps my bottom gently as if I were one of his sluts. “I never forget your importance,” he says, smiling. “I would never dare.”

“So what will you say to Thomas Wolsey?” I persist.

“I will meet with him, I will talk to him for hours,” he promises. “And at the end I will tell him what I intend to do, what I have always intended to do: to keep the peace with England and keep my friendship with France. Why would I befriend one and not the other? When each is as bad as the other? When all they both want is to swallow me up? And the only reason they care about us at all is to endanger the other.”

Wolsey has brought me a letter from Katherine and while he and James are locked in argument, I read it on my own, in my rooms. She is sympathetic, speaking kindly of the many women who lose a child, especially a first child, and urges me to rest and stay hopeful that God will give me a son and heir. I know of no reason that you should not be fertile and happy, she writes emphatically. I know of nothing against the Tudors. I take it in the spirit that it is meant—kindly sisterhood—and, anyway, I don’t want to think about curses and deaths in childbirth.

As for me, she ends the letter, as if her situation is of little importance,

matters do not go well. My father will not send the rest of my dowry until I am married to the prince, your father will not pay my widow’s jointure until he has my dowry. I am a pawn between two great kings, and I have no money and little company, for though I live at court I am no favorite, and often overlooked. I see your brother so seldom that I wonder if he even remembers we are betrothed; I fear that he has been advised against me. I see your sister Mary only when your father wants to impress the Spanish ambassador. She is growing in beauty and she is so sweet I cannot tell you! She is my only friend at court. I started to teach her Spanish but she is not allowed to come to me often. I am trapped in London, in poverty, and neither a widow nor a bride.

Could you, do you think, speak of me to your lady grandmother who could at least see that my servants are paid? She could loan me gowns from the royal wardrobe. Without gowns I cannot go to dinner and I have to go to bed hungry if the kitchens forget to send anything to my room. Would you help me? I don’t know what to do, and the men who should advise me are determined to use me to their own ends.