Three Sisters, Three Queens

STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, EASTER 1509

We come to Stirling for Easter, in the bitter cold, the horses laboring through drifts of snow, and the carts with the goods bogged down, arriving days late, so my walls are bare of tapestries. I have no curtains around my bed, I have to sleep in coarse linen and there are no crests embroidered on my pillows.

My husband laughs and says that I have been spoiled by the balmy weather of England, but I still cannot believe that it can be so cold and so dark at this time of the year. I long for the sight of green springing grass and the lilt of birdsong in the early morning. I say that I will stay in bed until it is light, and if that proves to be midday then so be it.

He swears that I shall stay in bed and that he himself will bring the wood for my fireplace and mull me a mug of ale at my bedside fire for my breakfast. He is merry and kind to me and I am with child again, warmed with hope and confidence: this time I will be lucky, I think. I have suffered enough.

I think he has come to read to me again, and I hope that it is not Erse poetry, when he enters my rooms one afternoon with a paper in his hand. I can understand it now, but the poems are very long. He does not sit in his usual chair at the fireplace but on the side of my bed, and his face is very grave as he looks around for Eleanor Verney, my senior lady-in-waiting, and makes a little gesture with his hand to tell her to stay with us. I know at once that it is bad news from England.

“Is it my lady grandmother?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “You are going to have to be brave, my dear. It is your father. God rest his soul, he has gone from us.”

“My father is dead?”

He nods.

“Then Harry is king?” I whisper disbelievingly.

“He will be King Henry VIII.”

“It’s not possible.”

He gives me a wry smile. “I was afraid you would be very grieved.”

“Oh I am, I am,” I assure him, feeling nothing. “It’s a shock, and yet I knew he was unwell. My lady grandmother always said that he was unwell.”

“It will make a great difference to the country,” he says. “Your brother is quite unknown, quite untried. Your father gave him no power; he didn’t teach him the ways of governing.”

“It was always meant to be Arthur.”

“Not for years.”

I can feel the tears welling up now. “I am an orphan,” I say piteously.

He sits beside me and puts his arm around me. “You have a family here,” he says. “And if Harry will keep the peace as he should, then perhaps you can visit him when he comes to his throne.”

“I should like that,” I concede.

“If he will keep the peace. What d’you think he will do? He is sworn by the Treaty of Perpetual Peace to respect our borders and our sovereignty. Your father and I were quarreling over raiders and pirates, and he tried to forbid me a friendship with France. Do you think Harry can be persuaded that peace is in the interests of us all? Do you think he will be an easier neighbor than your father? Do you have any influence over him?”

“Oh, I am sure I can persuade him. I am sure I can explain. I could travel to London and tell him.”

“When you have been brought to bed and risen up again with a bonny boy. You shall be an ambassador then. There can be no traveling until you are both well and strong.”

“Oh yes, but then . . .” I think of how wonderful it will be to return to England with my younger brother as King of England, with My Lady the King’s Mother diminished and renamed as my lady the king’s grandmother, and Mary a mere princess, whereas I will be a queen with a prince in the cradle who has brought peace to two countries. I shall have a baggage train that goes on for miles. They will see the jewels that James has given me; they will admire my gowns.

“And you have an inheritance,” my husband remarks.

“I have?”

“Yes. I don’t know exactly what you will have; but he died immensely rich. It will be a substantial sum.”

“Am I to have it all myself?” I ask. “It’s not to go to you?”

He bows his head. “You are to keep it all, my little miser. It is to come to you entire.”

I feel the tears come again. “It will be a comfort. In my loss. In my great loss.”

“Oh, and you will never believe this,” my husband says, gently wiping my tears away with the heel of his hand. “Your brother’s first action is to punish his father’s advisors who were overtaxing the people.”

“Oh, yes?” I have no interest in taxation.

“And his second is to announce his marriage to the dowager princess. He is going to marry Katherine of Aragon at last. She has been on his doorstep for seven years; but they will be married within days. They are probably married already; the roads are so bad that this letter is days old.”

I can feel something like dread. “No. Surely not. Not her. You must have got it wrong. Let me see the letter.”

He hands it over. It is a formal announcement from the herald. It tells simply of my father’s death and the declaration for Harry. I look at his title as if I still cannot believe it. Then comes the announcement that Harry is to be married to the dowager princess. It is in black and white, in ornate handwritten script. There are seals on the bottom: there can be no doubt.

“She will be Queen of England,” I say. At once my sympathy for her lonely years on the fringes of court, ignored by everyone, trying to survive by selling her plate, completely deserts me. I cannot remember my pity for my poor widowed sister. Instead I think that she has played a monstrous gamble and it has paid off. She staked her health and her safety and she has won. She gambled that she would endure longer than my father. She defeated him by outliving him; she practically wished him dead. “That false girl has won.”

James laughs with genuine amusement at the contempt in my voice. “I thought that you loved her?”

“I do!” I say, but the flood of jealousy rushes over me. “I did. I just naturally love her more when she is poor and unhappy than when she is triumphing over me.”

“No, why? She has waited long enough for her reward. She has earned it. They say she was all but starving towards the end.”

“You don’t understand. She failed Arthur and I thought that my father would punish her by never letting her marry Harry, nor go back to Spain. Katherine is years older than Harry. The match is quite unsuitable.”

“Only five years.”

“She’s his brother’s widow!”

“They have a dispensation from the Pope.”

“She is not . . .” I clench my hands into fists; I cannot explain to him. “You don’t know her. She is ambitious—it is the throne that she wants, not Harry. My lady grandmother does not . . . I do not . . . She is proud. She is not fit. She will never fill my mother’s shoes.”

Gently he takes my hands. “Harry will have to take your father’s place, she will have to take your mother’s place. Not in your heart, of course. But on the throne. England has to have a king and queen and it will be Harry and Katherine of Aragon. God bless them and keep them.”

“Amen,” I say sulkily, but I cannot mean it, and I do not mean it.