Three Sisters, Three Queens

HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, AUGUST 1514

My council of lords dares to tell me that I have forfeited the regency. They dare to tell Archibald that they will summon him on a charge of marrying me without their consent. They even dare to say that Gavin Douglas shall not be a bishop and that I cannot make him Archbishop of Saint Andrews, since another bishop is already nominated. As if the Church places are not in my keeping! As if I have not asked Harry to support the Douglas claim! I am regent and can marry and honor whomever I wish! The council summon me—the regent! regent!—to meet with them; and Archibald and I storm south to Edinburgh filled with rage and determination that no one shall ever question me or my rights.

We wait for the council in the throne room. Deliberately, I stand before the throne with my handsome husband on my right and his grandfather John Drummond on my left. They can see the power that I have to support me now: Clan Douglas on one side, Clan Drummond on the other. But they are mutinous. They send the herald Sir William Comyn, Lyon King of Arms, to announce that they are rejecting me as regent and taking my sons away from my keeping. At the first moment that he is announced with the weighty respect commanded by all heralds, and he comes in, his standard above him, I feel a sudden pang of dread. I am in far more trouble than I dreamed possible. I knew that the council would not like my marriage, but I did not think that they would turn on me. I did not think that they would take my title, my sons, everything. I thought this was my triumph; now, suddenly, it is my ruin.

The herald addresses me: “My lady Dowager Queen, mother to His Grace our king . . .”

There! It is said. He should be addressing me as queen regent but he denies me. Archibald’s grandfather, blazing with rage, steps forward and punches him full in the mouth before he can say another treasonous word.

It is the most terrible act. A herald’s body has to be sacred. He is the untouchable go-between from one warring party to another. Chivalry itself defends him. Sir William stumbles and nearly goes down but one of the lords catches and steadies him as Archibald cries out: “No, sir! No! Not a herald!”

The herald is terribly shaken. They help him to his feet and he confronts Lord Drummond. “This is dishonorable,” he chokes. “Shame on you!”

Archibald leaps in to support his grandfather, as if he is going to push the Lord Lyon down again. “You don’t cry shame on us!”

I scream, “Archibald, no!” and grab him by the arm. Lord Drummond yells “Angus!” like a battle cry, and flings open the door to my inner chamber and the three of us scramble from the room, leaving the lords and the herald and the Lord Chancellor completely aghast. We pitch into my private room and I fall into Ard’s arms and the two of us cling to each other, crying and laughing at the same time at the terrible thing that has just happened, at the truly terrible thing that his grandfather has just done.

“His face!” Archibald still whoops with laughter, but I am steadying and it does not seem so funny any more. I turn and see the black anger in John Drummond, as he flexes his hand where he hit the Lord Lyon. Ard is still laughing.

“My lord,” I say cautiously.

Drummond looks at me. “They will arrest me for that,” he says. “My temper got the better of me.”

“When you hit him!” Archibald crows.

“Hush,” his grandfather says irritably. “That was wrong of me. It’s no laughing matter.”

Ard tries to look serious but an irrepressible giggle bursts out of him. I am not laughing now. I am afraid. The lords will raise this as a serious complaint against us, and I will have to write to Harry with some kind of account of this that smooths the roughness over, and makes us look less like rash fools, brawling in our very first council, as my lords turn against me and defy my authority.

My young husband and I attend the council meeting like two children called before angry guardians, and then there is a meeting of the parliament. Everyone is furious, the lords are angry and divided, the parliament of lesser men is outraged at my behavior. They were already furious with Ard for aspiring to marry me, and disgusted with me for marrying him, but now they are filled with complaints about the history of the Douglas clan.

Old legends that I never heard before are invoked against my young husband as if centuries-old crimes are all his fault. I am as calm and as thoughtful as I can be, meeting many of them individually, trying to explain to them that Archibald will be a force for unity in this troubled country, that he will help me be a good queen for all the clans. We will not favor Clan Douglas; the throne has not been captured by Clan Drummond. But they swear that the Douglas family has made attempts on the throne before, that my own husband the late king made it his life’s work to keep them humble. They say things about the family and about John Drummond that I cannot believe. They say he sold his own daughter to my royal husband. They tell me that Archibald’s other grandfather, Bell the Cat, fought James for the favors of Janet Kennedy and James threw him into prison indefinitely, only releasing him because he needed his sons to lead their men at Flodden.

“Don’t say that,” I interrupt. I can’t bear to think of Archibald’s bright young honor sullied with any of these old lusts. Ard and I are a groom and bride new-come to each other, fresh to happiness. We have no connection with my husband’s lovers, nothing to do with the messy feuds and quarrels of the Scots lords. We are young and clean; this is old, dirty history. “The Earl of Angus is devoted to me. Nothing that his grandfather or his father did matters now.”

They disagree. They say he is the head of the Red Douglases, a family even worse than the Black Douglases, and that they have been a danger to the throne from the time of James II.

“This is ancient, ancient history,” I say. “Who cares about all this now?”

But they are determined never to forget old injuries. Nobody is newborn in Scotland; everyone is an heir to injustice, plotting revenge. When I say that Ard will sit beside me and share the regency, they swear this will never happen. Despite all that I say, though I remind them of their oaths of loyalty to me, to my son, they will not hear another thing but declare they will send for the Duke of Albany to take my place and be governor.

This is the French-raised duke, an heir to the Scottish throne, the very man that my brother Harry said I should keep out of Scotland. “He may not come,” I tell them.

“We forbid it,” Ard says.

Lord Hume declares that I have lost the regency by losing my widowhood. The Earl of Arran says that as a Hamilton he should have a higher place in government than a Douglas. Ard says simply in my ear, “We’re not safe here, we must go back to Stirling,” and I cannot control my delight at the thought of running away from all this anger and unhappiness. So that very night we take our horses and a small guard and we get away from my capital city as if we were a pair of vagabonds and not the ruling regent and her consort—or co-regent as I swear Ard shall be when we return.