Three Sisters, Three Queens

METHVEN CASTLE, PERTH, SCOTLAND, JULY 1514

A terrible thing has happened to me, and I cannot comprehend it. I cannot understand the falseness of my sister, my own sister! I cannot believe the duplicity of my own brother. I feel as if I never knew either of them, as if they have betrayed me in some wicked concordance of their own. It is disreputable, it is to brand themselves publicly as liars. They are beneath contempt. They seek to destroy me and my prospects. First they widowed and now they ruin me.

Mary has repudiated her marriage contract with Charles of Castile. Repudiated it! As if it never was! As if she can give her word and accept the jewels and go through with the vows and stand under the canopy of cloth of gold—for I have not forgotten the canopy of cloth of gold, I have not forgotten the woodcut that was printed and went all around the kingdom, everywhere. She did all of that, and now she says that she did not. She did not promise, it will not happen. Mary is not going to marry Charles of Castile.

How is anyone to trust the word of a princess if Mary can be betrothed for years—not for a little while, but for years, with gifts coming every month—and then withdraw her promise, retract her betrothal, and repudiate such a monarch? What of the wardrobe of gowns? The biggest ruby in the world? The grandson of the emperor is suddenly not good enough for her? How high is my sister going to aim? Is this not sinful vanity? Is this not the very sin that my lady grandmother warned her about when she was a little girl in the nursery? Surely someone should tell Mary that she cannot give her word and then break it: the word of a princess should be solid gold.

I am horrified. I am furious. My ladies gather around me and ask if I am ill, for I have blanched white and then blushed feverishly red. I brush them aside. I cannot tell them what is the matter. Nobody must ever know the terrible blow that has fallen on me: for it is the worst thing. The worst thing in the world. Unbelievably, she is going to marry Louis of France.

The very moment that I had decided to accept his proposal, for such politic reasons, for such queenly reasons, Mary has pushed in first and is going to marry him instead of me. In my place! And how could he make a proposal to her when he was in the middle of an offer for me? Is it not dishonorable of him? Everyone says he is a byword for dishonor and oath breaking, but nobody warned me that he might throw me over for my little sister. And what of Harry, who knew that Louis had proposed to me, and that I was considering his offer? Should Harry not say: “How dare you make a proposal to a great queen, and at the same time court her younger sister?” This is double-dealing by Louis—but by Harry and Mary too!

Why should Mary even consider him? Is he not old enough to be her grandfather? Her great-grandfather? Is he not riddled with the pox and a danger to any wife? Did he not drive one wife into a nunnery and the other into an early grave? Why would Mary accept? Why would Harry desire it? Why would Katherine consent? For sure, this will be Harry’s doing: Harry and Katherine’s. God knows it will be they who pull the strings, as if Mary were a little marionette in a morality play. How Harry could do this to his sister is beyond me. Louis is his enemy! The enemy that he marched against only last year. The lifelong enemy of his Spanish wife and all her family!

There is dealing here that is so double and redoubled that I cannot begin to understand it. But one thing is clear—Katherine’s father has changed his mind about France and so his daughter obeys him and marries off her little sister to a monster, humiliating me in the process, leaving me husbandless and helpless in Scotland—a consequence that no one has considered.

If that were all it would be bad enough, but there is more, and it is worse. Our ambassador in France reports that Harry is negotiating with the French and demanding they accept his ownership of the French towns he has conquered, and pay him a massive fee. If Louis marries Mary, he must pay one and a half million crowns. It is a fortune, it is a ransom for a princess beyond imagining. It shows the world how highly Harry prizes his beautiful little sister, and what Louis will pay for her. But if Louis chooses to marry me, he gets me at a discount. If he marries me, he only has to pay England one hundred thousand crowns.

I see it. I see what he thinks of me, what they all think of me. I see how I am valued. Harry has told everyone how I am valued. I am publicly shamed. I see that Mary’s hand is worth one and a half million crowns and the handing over of French towns; but I am priced for a quick sale. Harry has told the world that he thinks she is worth fifteen of me. Louis has confirmed that he will pay almost anything to marry her. I have never been so cruelly insulted in all my life.

I march up and down my presence chamber at Methven, passing the open window without a glance at the warm summer landscape, my gown swishing around like the twitching tail of an angry cat at every turn. One of my ladies runs to my side but I brush her away. Nobody must know of my boiling rage of hurt and wounded vanity. I have to be sly and secret when I am screaming with rage and hurt inside.

I can’t bear it. To think that I had told Louis that I would be his wife, to think that I had decided to sacrifice myself to be Queen of France, and now it will be Mary! I stop in horror at another thought: how humiliated I should be if I had told my council of lords that I was accepting Louis, if the world knew that I had agreed—and then everyone saw him choose Mary! I can’t bear that anyone should know it was my intention; I can’t bear that anyone should even guess it. I should marry my farrier at once so that everyone can see I had no thoughts of Louis. I should marry the emperor. I have to make sure that no one will ever say that the disgusting, dangerous King of France could have married me, but decided against it. That horrid old man proposed to me and proposed to Mary and then decided that he preferred Mary! My little sister! A foolish child with nothing in her favor but a pretty face! Worth more than ten of me at my brother’s own estimate. What does that say about Harry and how he prizes me?

John Drummond and his grandson, my carver Archibald, come in without announcement, as I am pounding up and down the length of my presence chamber, my ladies pressed back against the walls, keeping out of my way. Clearly, one of my ladies, terrified of my temper, slipped away to fetch John Drummond. He takes one look at me and nods to my ladies, who whisk out of the room as if only these two men are strong enough to hear my whispered curses, my hissing rage.

“What’s to do, Your Grace?” John Drummond says gently. “I take it that there is bad news from England?”

“They dare—” I break off. “They shame themselves . . .” I choke. “And I . . .”

I whirl around and I see the tiniest of hand gestures from the older man to the younger, as a shepherd will make to a working dog, a mere movement of a fingertip to tell the dog to curve around the flock and move it smoothly towards the pen. Ard steps forward, his handsome face filled with sympathy.

“What have they done to you?” he asks intensely. “Who has distressed you like this?”

“My brother!” For a moment rage fights with self-pity and then I pitch towards him and find myself held in his arms, his strong arms around me, and I am crying into the beautiful velvet of his jacket as he sways with me, holding me as if I were a hurt child, stroking my hair, and whispering soothing words.

“Ard, Ard, they have shamed me and thrown me down, and they always, always do. They have made me look a fool and feel a fool and set themselves up above me, and they always do this. And I hoped that I would be safe and that I would be a queen for Scotland and that I would have help . . .”

“My dear, my love, my queen,” he says, and it is like a song as sweet as any from the Isles. He rocks me in his arms, swaying from side to side like a balladeer. “My love, my sweet, my beloved.”

“Am I?” I say. “Oh, that they should do this, in concert, against me!”

Behind me, I hear the door gently close as John Drummond takes himself silently out of the room. I hardly hear the key turn as he locks us in, safe from interruption. Ard rocks me in his arms, kisses my wet eyelashes, my closed eyelids, my trembling mouth, kisses my neck, my breasts, and then gently leans me back on the window seat. His warm mouth is on mine and I taste the sweetness of his tongue, and shiver at his touch, and then, almost amazed at myself, feel myself lean back and pull up my beautiful gown, and whisper “Archibald,” as he takes me, and owns me, and I hear my own sobs of temper turn into repeated gasps and then a cry of joy, and I don’t care any more about my selfish brother, or my vain sister, or Louis of France, or anyone at all.