Three Sisters, Three Queens

COLDSTREAM PRIORY, ENGLAND, SEPTEMBER 1515

This time my husband thinks far enough ahead to send one of the servants to warn the priory that we are coming, and as we plod towards them the gates are flung open and I can see the nuns coming down the lane to greet me.

The prioress herself stands by my horse when Archibald lifts me down from the saddle, and she exclaims at my agony, at my huge belly, and summons three nuns forward to help me walk. My legs won’t support me, there is something terribly wrong with my hip. They send for a chair and the lay sisters carry me into the abbey.

The guesthouse is large and comfortable and there is a big bed with good linen and curtains. My ladies strip off my filthy clothes and I get into bed in my dirty linen. “Leave me,” I say. “I have to sleep.”

They don’t wake me until it is afternoon and then they bring me a bowl of gruel and tell me that dinner will be served whenever I wish it. I can come to the guest hall and dine with the prioress or I can have it in my rooms, just as I prefer. “Where is Archibald?” I ask. “Where is he dining?”

Ard is housed in the pilgrim-house, at a distance from the abbey buildings with his brother and the menservants, but he can visit me in the guesthouse if I wish.

“He must come at once,” I say. “And I will take my dinner in the hall. Make sure that I have a suitable chair.”

“There’s no cloth of estate,” my lady-in-waiting reminds me. “And Alice has brushed your gown but it’s not really clean. The prioress has loaned you some linen.”

This silences me. I am not myself unless I am seated beneath a cloth of estate, in beautiful clothes, dining like a queen. All my life I have been on the top table, beside the throne. What will I become, if I am as poor as Katherine was?

“I’ll eat here,” I say sulkily. “And you will have to get me new clothes.”

I don’t discuss with her how, in the middle of the borders, she is to get me new clothes, and she is too wise in the ways of royals to ask me how I think this will happen. She goes to order my dinner and to fetch Archibald and I think, just for a moment, how I made this journey twelve years ago, and came into Berwick and there was a loyal speech, thanking God that I, the senior Tudor princess, had honored the little town with my presence.

Archibald comes in looking boyish and fresh. Breakfast and a wash have restored him to health and energy. He is not bowed down by pregnancy and crippled with pain. A young man can endure much and rise up full of life and joy; but a young woman—and I am still a young woman—has to struggle.

“My poor love,” he says as he kneels to me.

He has borrowed some clean linen and his hair, damp from a bath, is curly and glossy as a ram’s fleece. He gleams with vitality.

“There is nowhere for me to dine,” I say miserably. “And I have no clothes.”

“Couldn’t you borrow a gown from the prioress?” he asks. “She’s a very cultured and thoughtful lady. She has beautiful linen, I am sure.”

“I cannot dress as a nun,” I say shortly. “I cannot wear another woman’s linen, however much she has impressed you. I have to dress as a queen.”

“Yes,” he says vaguely. “Perhaps we can write to Albany and demand that he send your clothes. Perhaps your wagons are already at Tantallon and they can send them on?”

“We can write to Albany? He can know where we are?”

“You’re safe now, in England. You can start to negotiate, I suppose. Indeed, we will have to tell him what we expect.”

“I can?” I have a sudden gleam of hope. I had felt that we were running like criminals from an army of forty thousand Scots who were determined to capture Archibald and try him for treason, determined to imprison me so that I would die in captivity. But now we are safe, now I am home in England, everything is changed.

“I have saved you,” Archibald says. “I did. It’s quite incredible. It’s like a romance, it’s like a fairy tale. That journey! Good God, the ride that went on and on! And now we are here, and we have won.”

“Get me some paper and a pen from the lady abbess. I will write at once,” I declare.

I inform the duke, in the frostiest letter, that I am safe in England. I don’t say where, for I am still frightened at the thought of his army. I say that I will return on a number of conditions. I don’t stint myself: I want my lands back and my dower rents, the full restitution of my fortune, my jewels and especially my clothes. I want a pardon for Archibald and for everyone who has defended me, regardless of whether or not they are facing criminal charges. I want free access to my sons and the right to appoint their governors, tutors and household. I want, in fact, everything that I had that Albany took from me, but I don’t object to him keeping the title of governor as long as he works alongside me (I mean beneath me) for the good of Scotland, as clearly the parliament intended that he should.

I rest. I eat well. I sleep at night without troubling dreams. The pain goes from my hip and I feel the baby squirm and turn so I know he is well and strong too. I talk at length with the prioress, Isabella Hoppringle, who is a thoughtful and astute lady of letters. She advises me to wait to hear from Lord Dacre what I should do next, and that I should put no trust in Albany. She tells me that Lord Dacre will save me. Airily I tell her that I am in control of my own life, winning the war of words with the duke. I show her the letters that pass and repass between us, when he offers me one thing and I demand another. I think that I am playing this hand well. The queen counts high in this game, and I am dealing the best cards to myself.

I am winning. By getting to safety I have restored my power, I am a force to be reckoned with. The Duke of Albany appoints the French ambassador to negotiate between us and he will come to me at Coldstream, carrying all the compliments and courtesies of the duke and of parliament. He will bring me proposals that have been forced through parliament by the duke, anxious that I shall return to my place. The last thing Albany wants is to drag France into war with England over Scotland. Indeed, he is specifically commanded by his king not to allow matters to worsen. He was to bring peace and order to Scotland and now everybody blames him for bringing anarchy and the risk of war. To turn a queen from her own castle is to threaten every monarch in Christendom. Nobody will support him. So I am to have my children at my side, I am to stay wherever I like, I am to have my fortune restored to me, my husband will be pardoned. The ambassador will arrive at midday, and his name on the agreement will make it binding on both sides. I am not winning; I have won.

I walk in the garden with Isabella, and I say to her what a joy it will be to go back to Edinburgh and to see my boys again, and how I never thought that I would long to take my place as Queen Regent of Scots, but that now I do. I tell her that my sister, foolishly, without producing an heir for the throne of France, left her new home, married a commoner and returned to England, and now it will be as if she never went away. The French will forget her in a sennight. She will have to return her jewels. Of course, she may have the pleasures of the English court and the prestige of being the king’s sister—these are trivial pleasures for a foolish girl—but a woman called by God to do her duty by her husband’s country should stay there, serving the country and serving God, as I do. I declare that to be the mother of a king is the greatest calling that a woman could have. I have become as great as my lady grandmother, who bore a king and saw him to the throne. She had God’s hand over her every action and so do I. I am closer to God than a prioress. I have a vocation and a duty. I am that great woman. I will serve Scotland and God.

It’s very pleasant to stroll around the herb garden with the prioress, our skirts swishing against the end-of-summer lavender, releasing the sharp smell on the heady air. As we walk she picks a sprig of mint and sniffs it, I brush my hands over a bush of rosemary. There is rue growing, and the daisy flowers of chamomile, the bright little faces of johnny jump-up and the scented leaves of lemon balm. “I wonder that you trust him,” she says casually.

“What?”

“Albany,” she says. “The Sieur d’Albany.” She says it like a French name, the very accent of deceit. “He has tricked you and betrayed you every single time he has made an agreement with you from his first coming to Scotland. Surely he is false to you? He brought the cannon against you in Stirling; he shamed you before your son. He took the keys of the castle out of your little boy’s hand. He separated you from your two boys. Would you really put yourself in his power again?”

“He’s a duke,” I say. “And a man of great courtesy. And now he acknowledges that I am queen. I have his word in writing.”

She makes a little face and shrugs her shoulders. “He’s a Frenchman,” she says dismissively. “Or as good as. Married a Frenchwoman for her money. Sworn to the French king. False as a Frenchman; and dishonest as a Scot. Between him and your parliament I fear they will destroy you.”

I am horrified. “You surely cannot think that!”

“Ever since he came to Scotland he has been your undoing!” she exclaims. “Why are you here if not driven into exile? Did you choose to leave Stirling? Was it your free choice to leave Edinburgh? Did you not run from Linlithgow in fear of your life? Did you not ride from Tantallon in only the clothes you stood up in?”

I think for a moment that she seems remarkably well informed for a prioress in a border abbey; but perhaps she has been talking to George.

“If I were you I would return to Edinburgh only at the head of an army,” she remarks. “I would do as Lord Dacre advises, and go to his grand house at Morpeth, and muster your forces there.”

I laugh uncertainly. “You make me sound like Katherine and her warlike mother.”

“I am sure you will prove as brave as she. I would have sworn that you were her equal.”

“Oh, I am, certainly I am. Katherine is no braver than I am. I know her, and I know this for a fact.”

“And I am sure that you have a husband as brave as Ferdinand of Spain.”

“Archibald is worth ten of him.”

“Then why should you not reconquer Scotland as Isabella and Ferdinand did Spain? And then you won’t have to argue and bow down to the duke. You will just send him back to France.” She pauses. “Or behead him, as you think fit. If you were ruling queen and not a mere regent, you could do whatever you pleased.”

There is a loud banging on the outer door. I look up in alarm. “Could that be the French ambassador early? Isabella, you will have to show him into the guesthouse hall and make him wait while I dress. I have to sign the agreement with him.”

She waits as a nun from the gatehouse comes through the garden, bobs a curtsey to me, and whispers. Isabella laughs and takes my hand. “You are lucky,” she says. “Great men and women are always lucky, and you have all the luck of a queen in the special keeping of God. That is Lord Dacre at the door, a day ahead of the French liar, bringing you a safe conduct so that you can go anywhere in England. He can take you to London right now.”

I gasp, my hand closing on a leafy bush of rue so the sharp scent fills the air. “To London?”

“Lord Dacre has come!” she says, as delighted as if it were her own triumph. “And you are free!”

I can hardly believe that he has come, with a troop of horse, with a safe conduct, ready to escort me south at once. I kiss Isabella as if she were a sister, and we mount up gladly. I have a little stabbing pain as I sit in the saddle behind my husband, but I can see my future unrolling ahead of me. Isabella is right: I can persuade Harry to do his duty by me, I will return to Scotland at the head of an army and enter Edinburgh in triumph. I can bring up my boys to be the sons their father would have wanted, heirs to the throne of Scotland and even England.

I am in the saddle before I remember: “Oh, but Lord Dacre, the Duke of Albany is sending the French ambassador with proposals. Shouldn’t I wait for him and give him an answer? What if he is offering me the regency? What if he will give me everything I demand?”

“He can send it to you at Morpeth, my castle. He can meet with us at Morpeth,” the old guardian of the borders replies to me. “Better that he discuss with you what terms he will offer when you are behind strong walls in an English castle that will never fall to siege, than when you are in one gown in a priory in the borders, surrounded by the dead of Flodden.”

“But if he is coming, with a capitulation?” I press my case.

“Would you want him to see you like this?” the old lord asks. “So very travel-stained? So very shabby? And—forgive me, Your Grace—but your belly is so big. Shouldn’t you be in confinement? Do you really want to see the French ambassador in this condition? Don’t you think he will tell everyone that you were near your time and riding pillion around the borders like a poor woman?”

I am mortified. If I had my linen from Edinburgh or my furniture from Linlithgow I could meet him, and dare him to glance at my swelling belly. But Lord Dacre is right: I can have no confidence in myself looking like this. When I am washed and dressed I will meet him. He can come to me when I am seated under a cloth of estate in a great castle. Right now, I am dressed as poor as Katherine of Arrogant when my lady grandmother was reducing her to nothing.

“God bless you!” Isabella calls. “And bring you to your own again.”

We go out like English lords, not as we came in, like Scots criminals. Lord Dacre’s standard goes before us, the royal standard of England before that, and my standards as Queen Regent of Scotland at the very head. He has had this all prepared; I think he may have been prepared for months. He knew that I would come to England before I did.

“I do think that we should have waited, out of courtesy to the French ambassador,” I say to his lordship, who reins in his horse so that he can fall back and talk to me, seated on my pillion saddle behind my husband. Lord Dacre hardly troubles to acknowledge Archibald, I could be riding behind my groom. In his turn, Archibald is sullen as a boy.

“Oh, why not set off for London, for a comfortable confinement and then Christmas there?” Dacre asks.

“Because I think the ambassador was authorized to offer me everything that I wanted,” I say. “The letters from the duke made it clear that he had spoken to parliament and forced them to agree to all my demands.”

Dacre shakes his head. “He’s false,” he says simply. “And he’s weak. He is lying to you. He was not coming to meet with you, he was coming to delay you, and to keep you here, right on the borders, in a house that cannot be defended, while the duke gets his army on the road. They would have made you wait here, writing and talking to the French ambassador, while they marched through the borders and snatched you, and even your husband. Your Grace, they would have imprisoned you, perhaps in a nunnery, perhaps in a tower at Glamis, miles away where we could never have reached you. And you, my lord, alas, you would have been hanged like a common criminal on Coldstream priory gates.”

I can feel Archibald stiffen in the saddle. “Good that we left then,” he says. “I saved her from Linlithgow, I took her to Berwick and Coldstream, and now I have saved her from capture here.”

“You have indeed,” Dacre says, like a man praising a child. “All of England will know what you have done for us.”

“At risk,” Archibald insists. “At enormous risk, and no payment.”

“You will be rewarded,” Dacre says smoothly.

Archibald ducks his head. “Everyone else is. How much does the prioress get?”

His lordship gives a little chuckle, but does not answer. “And here, we have to part,” he says firmly. “I have no safe conduct for you, my lord. I cannot take you into England or admit you to my castle at Morpeth. It was all done in such a rush that you, your noble brother, and the lords Hume, were not listed. I can take Her Grace, but that is all.”

“But Archibald has to come with me,” I say, hardly understanding what Lord Dacre is saying. One moment all of England is in Archibald’s debt. The next moment he cannot enter the country. “He is my husband. A safe conduct for me must mean a safe conduct for him.”

Dacre shouts to his troop, who halt as he pulls up his horse at the crossroads. “We have to get you to my castle as soon as we can,” he says. “You should be in confinement within the week. But you, my lord, must grant me your patience. I will send to London for your safe conduct and that of your brother, and then you can join us at Morpeth. It’s just a little delay.”

“I would rather come with you now,” Archibald says. He glances up the road that leads back to Scotland and I guess that he is imagining an army of forty thousand around the next bend.

“And so you shall,” Dacre assures him. “But you would not want me to delay in getting Her Grace to safety? When you can so easily find a refuge, keep out of sight, live off your wits, till I send for you to escort Her Grace your wife to London. I know that the king is eager to greet you, his new brother-in-law. What a hero you will be if you get yourself out of Scotland, on your own skills, not riding on a pillion saddle with your wife.”

“Of course,” Archibald stammers. “But I thought that I would come with you to Morpeth.”

“No safe conduct,” Lord Dacre repeats regretfully. “Will you step down from the saddle, my lord? I have fresh horses for you and your brother, and a purse of gold in the saddlebag that I don’t want any groom to get his hands on.”

Archibald pulls up our horse, and boyishly swings his leg over its neck, jumping down to the ground. He turns and takes my hands where I sit, sideways on the horse, without a rider before me, my face in a grimace of pain.

“Is it your wish?” he asks me urgently. “Shall I leave you here now, in Lord Dacre’s safekeeping, and come to you again at Morpeth Castle when I have my own safe conduct?”

I turn to Lord Dacre. “Can’t he come with us?” I ask.

“Alas, no,” he says.

So he leaves me. I have to be glad that he will find safety. Everyone knows where to find him if he is with me. I cannot bear to endanger him. But he, his brother George, and Alexander Hume ride off at high speed on fresh horses, and I see them, bent over the horses’ necks, racing each other, as if they were boys with nothing to worry about. I have a moment when I think that he is free now, a young man with everything to play for and danger to avoid, and he is free of me. He rides like a young man born to be in the saddle. He is a border lord. He was born to danger and chance and midnight raids. He is out of sight in a moment and I think perhaps I am out of mind before then.

I turn a cold, closed face towards Lord Dacre, who was supposed to be my savior but who has brought me nothing but heartache. “I am having birth pains,” I tell him. “I’m going to have the baby. You have to find me somewhere to give birth.”

Even then there is no easy road to a comfortable refuge. We ride all day, and I cling to a stranger in the saddle before me, but nothing can ease the jolting of the horse as it goes on and onward. The country becomes steeper, the valleys are rich and green and cold under the shade of the thick forests, and I look around us and fear that there are Scots lords waiting for us in an ambush. The road winds through the trees and comes out of the woods into high moorland; as far as the eye can see there is nothing but an unending pelt of weeds and heather and shrubs and reeds. The track is hard to detect: it is almost nothing through the heather and the grasses. It twists and turns up and up and up, and then when we are at the peak there is nothing to see but more hills and more sky and the track looping its way down to the river valley again. The rivers are broad, winding through lush floodplains. If there were men and women to farm these valley floors they would be fertile; but I see no one. Anyone who lives in these bare open lands has learned the trick of lying low like a leveret when someone passes by. Or else they scuttle away into the occasional stone towers that glower over the landscape. Nobody will greet anyone on the road. There are no travelers, and there is no road. I think that I have done little good for my kingdom since I have not made the peace run here. There is a warm sun; but I feel cold in my very belly.

On we go, and I beckon Lord Dacre to ride alongside me.

“How far?” I say through my teeth.

“Not long now.”

“An hour?”

“Maybe more.”

I take a breath. It might be half a day more. I have learned on this long ride that his lordship feels no obligation to accuracy.

“I tell you the truth, I cannot do it.”

“I know you are tired . . .”

“You know nothing. I am telling you. I cannot go on.”

“Your Grace, my house is at your command, it is comfortable and—”

“Do I have to write you a letter in code? I am going to have my baby. I cannot wait. I have to get into a house. My time has come.”

Of course, he reminds me that I am not due till next month, and I tell him that a woman knows, and that a woman with two strong sons and several losses certainly knows, and we pull up the horses and squabble away, standing on the road, till a cold east wind whips up some rain, and I say: “Am I to have this baby in a ditch?” Only then does he give up the idea of Morpeth and says that we will turn aside off the road and go to his little castle of Harbottle.

“Is it near?” I demand.

“Quite near,” he says, and from that I know that I have hours of pain ahead of me.

I rest my head on the groom’s broad back and I feel the horse go down into the valleys and up into the hills, and from time to time I look to the left and right and I see the trees and then the high lands. I see a buzzard circling over a wood. I see a fox slink into the bracken at the side of the track and his red back makes me think of Ard and I wonder where he is right now. Then we pass through a little village that is nothing more than a series of tumbledown shacks with children playing in the dust who run inside when they see us, and Lord Dacre says: “Here we are.”

The track to the castle rises steeply from the village, and as we climb upwards the drawbridge bangs down, and the portcullis rattles up. The horse bows its head and climbs and climbs. The castle is on a little cliff above the village and around me are other empty peaks. We go through a stone gateway and we are inside the curtain wall, and then the groom jumps down from the horse and I let his lordship lift me down and I cling to him as my legs are weak beneath me and he leads me through the guardhouse and into the keep.