Three Sisters, Three Queens

MORPETH CASTLE, ENGLAND, CHRISTMAS 1515

There are gifts waiting for me at Morpeth, as Thomas Dacre promised. Lady Dacre has had them spread out in the great hall so that I can see everything Harry and Katherine have given me; so that everyone can see how my brother treasures me. There are gowns of gold cloth, and gowns of tinsel, there are sleeves of ermine and great bolts of red and purple velvet for me to have made up as I wish. There are headdresses in beaten gold as befits a queen of my importance, there are cloaks, and satin shoes with gold heels. There are heaps of embroidered linen and capes lined with fur. There are bonnets of velvet with brooches of gold. There are perfumed leather gloves and patterned stockings. Finally, there are the jewels of my inheritance, my lady grandmother’s garnets, her crucifix with pearls, my mother’s diamond necklace, and a gold chain. There is everything that a queen should have, and Katherine has chosen it and sent it all to me, to show my brother’s gratitude for my courage in the service of England.

There are letters waiting for me with the gifts. These bring me no joy. Katherine is in her most triumphant mood; I feel that she is taunting me with my losses as she celebrates. She is carrying her child so high, she is certain it is a boy. This baby is stronger, she is sure.

We were all so grieved when we heard that you have had to flee your country.

I grit my teeth at this, since if Harry had supported me, if Katherine had told him to save me, I would have kept my throne.

And so shocked that you left your sons behind.

What does she think I could do? Does she forget that they are fatherless and by her order?

I don’t look far for the reason that she did not insist I was rescued. Why would she save my son and heir, when she is hoping to have one of her own? Her anxiety for me must be a lie. It is to Katherine’s advantage if I am in danger and my sons imprisoned. I know this; her loving words don’t convince me otherwise.

And, my dear, you must be so lonely and afraid without your husband.

This from the woman who ordered my widowhood! I could laugh if I were not so bitter.

I hope you enjoy your gifts—we so want you to have a merry Christmas after the year that you have endured, and come to us as soon as you can.

I make sure that my contempt does not show on my face. Katherine, from her big-bellied greatness, endows me with her sympathy. Yes, she is riding high now, and I am brought as low as can be. I cannot even stand without crutches. But I will recover and, no matter how she is feeling now, there is no certainty in childbirth, she cannot be sure of having a healthy son. She need not crow over me. I may yet win back my kingdom and I still have two royal boys in the nursery and all she has is an empty cradle. She can send me gowns, she can send me furs, she can send me—finally!—my inheritance, but these are all nothing but my due. I am still a queen and a regent, and I am My Lady the King’s Mother.

My sister Mary writes too. She has convinced herself that the baby she is carrying will be a boy. But really, who cares about the baby who will be the heir of the Duke of Suffolk? Mary is inferior to me, her children come after mine, and I have two strong handsome boys: she will never get her son on the throne of England.

Mary’s letter is filled with news of the court and their autumn doings. Henry has built and equipped a great ship, the greatest galley in Europe, and everyone calls her the Princess Mary in a ridiculous compliment to my little sister. Mary writes that they all had the greatest of fun, that Harry took her on board, that he was dressed in a sailor suit of cloth of gold, that he took the wheel and Mary called time for the rowers and banged on the drum like the hortator, that they went faster than the wind, faster than a sailing ship could travel. There are pages and pages of this boasting and a few more pages as to how blessed she is with a loyal husband, which I take as a taunt for having to part from Ard, and how happy they are preparing their country house together, which I understand is her telling me that she knows I could not stay at Tantallon. I hand the whole bundle of letters to the groom of the chamber who is throwing logs on the fire. “Burn this,” I say.

He takes it as if it might scorch him. “Is it secrets?” he asks, awed.

“Sinful vanity,” I say, as irritable as my lady grandmother would have been.

I lie in the great bedchamber, the best room of the house. Lord Dacre and his wife, Elizabeth, have hastily vacated it for me and there are royal hangings on the wall from London, and a cloth of estate over the chair by the fireside. Massive stone carvings, showing the arms of the Greystokes, which Lord Dacre gained from his heiress wife, boast of their importance. But they have to sleep in a lesser chamber while I am here.

They put on a great Christmas feast in the massive old hall in my honor. There has never been a queen in residence at Christmas before, and the steward and the servants and the master of horse have excelled themselves in preparing the castle for the season. Dacre has appointed a witty actor to be master of the feast and every day there is a concert of music, or singing, dancing, a play or an entertainment, a hunt, a race, a challenge. The bleak countryside all around has been stripped of food and provisions so that the castle may feast. Even the woods have their greenery hacked down and carried in so that there are boughs over every door, a Yule log in every fireplace, and the sweet smell of evergreen hanging in the air. The castle is bright in the deep darkness of the North of England, burning like a brand in the night of the North. Travelers from miles away can see the lighted windows as priceless candles are set in every sconce and every fireplace is hot.

Half the nobility of Scotland and all of the North of England come to pay their respects to me and to celebrate the season which is such a promising one for them. They are all determined that England shall make war on the Duke of Albany’s Scotland. They all hope to gain Scottish lands, to steal Scottish goods. The simmering unrest that Thomas Dacre has kept stoked through two reigns is coming to the boil as he declares to every visitor that the King of England will not tolerate such an insult to his sister, that he is certain to invade, that my suffering makes his cause just and (though he never says this) Dacre himself can find his greatest happiness in going to war again.

I cannot receive anyone, though the Dacres make over their great presence chamber to me, and Lord Dacre says that he himself will carry me in his chair. He says he will pad it with cushions and hang the cloth of estate over it and it will be my throne. But I cannot bear even to be lifted from the bed; my leg is swollen so that it is nearly as big as my body. I see only those people whom I admit to my bedchamber, but I can’t leave my bed for them. I have become a cripple, as weak as one of the beggars at the mercat cross who has to be pushed around on a little cart and carried to the steps in the morning.

So Lady Bothwell and Lady Musgrove make their visit to my bedroom to sit with me, and Lady Dacre comes to my chamber a dozen times a day to see if I need anything. I receive Lord Hume, who has been loyal to my cause though it has cost him his lands and his safety, and together we discuss how I shall return and how I shall get my sons back. He looks a little askance as if there is something wrong when I speak of them. “My boys must live with me,” I say. “I don’t intend to put them into the keeping of my brother or his wife. They shall come to me.”

“Of course, of course,” he says with the sudden anxious soothing of a married man who knows that a woman should not be crossed when she is in pain. “We will talk about it more when you are better. And besides, I have some news for you that will be the best physic in the world.”

I can hear the tramp of booted feet along the gallery outside my chamber. “I cannot have visitors,” I start.

“You will welcome this one,” he says confidently, and he throws open the door to my bedchamber and the guard outside steps back . . . and Archibald, my husband, comes in.

I bounce up in bed and I cry out in pain at the same moment as he flings himself across the room. “My love, my love,” he whispers into my hair. He kisses my face, he embraces me tightly, and then gently holds me away from him so that he can see the tears streaming from my eyes as I say, “Archibald, oh, Ard! I never thought that I would see you again. And our little girl! You must see her.”

Lady Bothwell has already sent someone running to the nursery, and now the chief nurse comes with little Margaret in her arms. Ard holds her at arm’s length, looks into her sleeping face, shakes his head in awe at her. “She is so small!” he marvels. “She is so perfect.”

“I thought we would lose her, and that I would die!”

Carefully, he restores her to her nurse and turns back to me. “It must have been terrible for you. So many times I have wished that I was with you.”

“I knew you couldn’t be. You couldn’t risk being in England without a safe conduct!” At once the thought strikes me. “Ard, my love, are you safe now?”

“Your brother the king has sent a safe conduct for me and for Lord Hume, and for my brother. We are all to go to London in honor, as soon as you are well enough to travel.”

“I will be well soon,” I promise him. “The pain has been terrible. Not even Lord Dacre’s best physician from Newcastle knows what is wrong with my leg. But resting in bed is easing the pain, and I am sure the swelling is going down. I will be well enough to go to London, I swear I will, if you can come with me.”

They dine on cygnet and heron, venison and wild boar. They bring the best dishes to my room and Ard sits with me and feeds me from his own spoon. He keeps me company through the twelve days of Christmas and through the cold days, and together we listen to the merriment from the hall, he on a humble stool at my side, for I cannot bear anyone sitting on the bed and making the feather mattress dip. I lie propped low on only one beautifully embroidered pillow, so that my legs and back are still.

“I am no wife to you,” I say fretfully. I cannot hold him, I cannot lie with him, I cannot even stand beside him. In a few months I have become an old lady and he is far stronger and more handsome than when he was the young man appointed to be my carver. He has been hardened and toughened by his winter on the run; he has had to command men, face danger, defy the Regent of Scotland. He is more lithe than ever, quick on his feet, alert to any danger. And I am tired and in pain, fat from pregnancy, unable even to move from my bed without crying out.

“It was being my wife that has brought you to this,” he says. “If you had stayed a widow queen, you would still be in Stirling Castle.”

He is speaking soothingly, almost by rote, but suddenly the enormity of what he has said makes him fall silent and look at me. He swallows, as if he has never before felt the despair of these words on his tongue. “I have been your ruin.”

Bleakly, I look back at him. “And I yours.”

It is true. He has lost his castle Tantallon, his beautiful family home, which stood so proudly, so inviolate on the cliff. He has lost his land, and all the people who were his men and had belonged to his clan for generations have lost their leader and the head of their house. He is a named outlaw, he owns nothing but what he stands up in, he is a landless man, a man without followers: in Scotland that is as good as being a beggar. He is completely identified with the English cause: in Scotland that is as good as being a named traitor; and he is a named traitor.

“I have no regrets,” he says. He is lying. He must have, he does have. So do I.

“If Harry sends his army . . .”

He nods. Of course. Of course, it is what we always say to each other. If Harry sent his army then the world could change again in a moment. We must become warmongers like Thomas Dacre, wishing a merciless invasion on Scotland. We must argue for revenge, we must demand a fleet. If my brother will be a brother to me, if Katherine will advise him as a sister should do, then I will be queen regent again. It all depends on Harry. It all depends on my sister-in-law his wife.

“There is something I have to tell you,” Ard says, picking his words with care. “They did not tell you before, because they feared for your health.”

I feel my belly plummet as if I am falling. I am wildly, suddenly afraid. “What is it? Tell me quickly. Is it Mary, my little sister? She’s not dead in childbirth? God forbid it. It’s not her?”

He shakes his head.

“Katherine has lost her baby,” I say with certainty.

“No, it is your son.”

I knew it. I knew as soon as I saw the gravity on his face. “Is he dead?”

He nods.

I put my hand over my face as if to blot out his sympathy. Beneath my fingers my tears run sideways from my eyes and into my ears. I cannot raise my head to mop my face dry. I cannot cry out at this new pain, having screamed so much at the pain in my joints. “God take him to His own,” I whisper. “God bless and keep him.”

I think, naturally enough, even in the first shock, that at least I had two princes. If one is gone there is still a son and heir. I still have another. I still have an heir for Scotland, an heir for England. I am still the only one of the three queens to have a son. Even if one is dead, even if I have lost my boy, my heir, I still have my especial treasure; I still have my baby.

“Don’t you want to know which one is dead?” Archibald asks awkwardly.

I had assumed it was the king. That would be the worst thing. If the crowned king is dead then what is there to prevent a usurpation but one little baby alone? “Is it not James?”

“No. It was Alexander.”

“Oh God, no!” Now I wail. Alexander is my darling, my pretty boy, my baby boy. This is the baby that James left me with. Not even the new baby, Margaret, has replaced him in my heart. “It can’t be Alexander! He is so bonny and strong.”

Archibald nods, his face pale. “I am so sorry.”

“How did he die?”

Ard shrugs. He is a young man. He does not know how babies die. “He was sick, and then he weakened. My dear, I am so sorry.”

“I should have been there!”

“I know. You should have been. But he had good nursing, and he did not suffer . . .”

“My boy! Alexander! My little boy. This is the third boy that I have lost. My third boy!”

“I’ll leave you to the care of your ladies,” Archibald says formally. He does not know what to say or what to do. He is always having to comfort me. Nothing has ever gone right for us. Now he is bound to a crippled woman screaming for the loss of her son. He gets to his feet, bows to me, and goes from the room.

“My baby, my little boy!”

I swear that the Duke of Albany shall pay for this. However Alexander died, it is the duke who is to blame for it. I should never have been forced away from the boys at Stirling Castle. I should never have been separated from him. My own sister Mary, a royal widow just like me, married a man in secret, and was allowed to leave her country with full honor. Why should I be an exile and my husband with a price on his head, and my son dead? Always, always, I am not granted my due as the senior Tudor princess. Thomas, Lord Dacre, agrees completely with me and together we compile eight pages of charges against the duke to send to London. Dacre adds every instance when the Scots have been allowed to invade English Northern lands, everything they have stolen, every cottage they have burned, every traveler they have robbed. We will destroy the duke; we will persuade Harry to invade. If it causes war with France it is a small price to pay for the revenge that a queen should exact for the death of her son.

The false duke writes to me, sympathizes with my loss, congratulates me on the birth of my daughter and says that he hopes we can come to an agreement. He is sending an emissary to Harry. He hopes we can come to peace.

“Never,” I say flatly to Dacre. “I shall tell him what he has to do before I will consider a peace treaty. He is to release Gavin Douglas, he is to forgive Lord Drummond, he is to lift the outlawry from my husband, he is to send me my jewels and he is to restore my husband’s lands and wealth to him.”

“He can’t do all that,” Dacre says, looking worried.

“He has to,” I say. “I will write to him myself.”

The old border lord looks cautious. “Better not to negotiate with him while he is sending a man to your brother. Better let the two men agree together.”

“Not at all,” I say fiercely. “I am queen regent, not anyone else. I shall tell him my demands, and he will meet them.”

I write also to my sister the Queen of England, Katherine, who seems to have held this child in her belly for all this long time, and tell her that I am praying for her as she nears her time, and ask her to write to me at once, as soon as her baby is born, a little cousin to my Margaret. I think of my two sisters, nearing their time, lapped in luxury, advised by physicians, with gold cradles ready for their babies, and I think that it is the unfairness that hurts me the most. They have no idea of the pain that I suffered; they will suffer nothing like it. They have no idea of the danger I was in. They are sisters together; I am like a changeling, forever excluded.

Albany writes to me promising peace, promising agreement, but at the same time his emissaries write to my brother. Perhaps he is trying for a peace, trying to speak to Harry and agree with me, but I would rather that he deal with me direct. I cannot allow Harry to agree with Albany keeping charge of my son the king. I cannot impress on Harry the importance of my jewels. Everyone thinks that I am thinking of trivial things, women’s things. But I know that Albany treats me with contempt, treats my allies with contempt. Nobody but me seems to understand that the men who fought for me have to be rescued from Albany’s imprisonment. Gavin Douglas is still imprisoned. He must be released and given the see that I said he should have. These are not things that can be lightly traded; they are, like my jewels, my possessions. Anyone who takes them from me is a thief.

Sometimes I think that I should creep back into Stirling Castle and raise a siege again, just so that I can be with my boy. Sometimes I think that I should go to Edinburgh and negotiate with the duke in person. But then Dacre comes to my chamber with letters from London when I am seated before the fire.

“Give them to me!” I say delightedly.

“There is one here from the queen,” he says, indicating her royal crest.

I show an excited and happy face, and put out my hand, eagerly breaking the seal to read. I make sure that I give Dacre not a clue that I am filled with dread, certain that she has given birth to a healthy boy at last, after so many attempts. If she has got a boy then my son has lost his inheritance of the English throne, and there is no reason for Harry to rescue him. I put my hand over my eyes as if to shield my face from the heat of the fire. That would be the worst loss of this year of losses.

And then I see that Katherine has not done her duty. God has not blessed her. Thank God, she has failed again, and her heart will be breaking. Tucked down at the bottom of the page, almost scribbled out by her signature, is the news that makes me smile.

“She’s had a girl,” I say flatly.

“God forgive her. What a pity,” Dacre says, heartfelt, as every Englishman will say. “God save her. What a disappointment.”

I think, I have given birth to four royal sons and I still have one left. And all Katherine has is a girl. “She is going to call her Mary. Princess Mary.”

“After her aunt, the dowager queen?” Dacre asks cheerfully.

“I doubt that,” I snap. “Not since she came home in disgrace married without permission. It will be Mary for Our Lady, as Katherine will want the Queen of Heaven’s protection on this little child, after all her previous sorrows. We must pray that the little one lives; none of the others have.”

“I hear they are very close, Princess Mary and the queen,” Dacre perseveres.

“Not particularly,” I say. “Duchess of Suffolk, she is now.”

“And here is a letter from your brother’s steward,” Dacre says. “And he has written to me.”

“You may read yours here,” I say, and we break the seals and read together.

It is the letter we have both been waiting for. Harry’s master of horse writes to say that he has commissioned a special litter to come for me from London with a guard of honor, extra horses, wagons for my goods, and soldiers to keep me safe through the wild Northern lands. Harry himself has scrawled a note at the side of the careful script to say that I must come at once.

“What about Archibald?” I demand, smiling at my husband as he comes into my room.

He stands behind my chair, and I feel his hand rest gently on my shoulder. I straighten up in pride and ignore the twinge in my hip bone. I know we are a handsome young couple. I see Dacre take in Archibald’s strength and my determination.

Dacre smiles. “I am pleased to be able to tell you that your brother the king has sent a safe conduct for His Grace, your husband. You are to go to London together and the two of you will live there as queen regent and consort. He will be accorded all appropriate honors and you will take precedence before everyone but the queen. You will go before your sister the Dowager Queen Mary and her husband.”

“You shall see what I have tried to describe to you,” I promise Ard. “You shall see me at my home, in the castles that were my childhood homes. I shall present you to my brother, the king. We will follow him and Katherine in to dinner and then everyone else, everyone, will come behind us. You will be the greatest man in England after the king and I will be the greatest woman after Katherine.”

He comes around to my side and he goes down on one knee. He turns his handsome face up to me and I cannot stop myself from putting my hand to his smooth shaved cheek. My God, this is a handsome man. I feel myself yearn for him. It has been so many days that I have had to lie flat as a corpse in a bed while he sat beside me, not daring to touch me for the pain that it would cause. I want to be his wife again, I want to be his lover. I want to be his queen and walk proudly at his side.

“My lady wife, Your Grace, I cannot come,” he says simply.

Dacre and I exchange shocked looks over his head.

“What?”

“I cannot come to London.”

“But you have to,” I say flatly.

“If I go with you, as a Scots outlaw, all the lands will be taken from my kinsmen and my castles will be destroyed,” he says bluntly. “Everything that my father left me, everything that my grandfather owns, will be torn down. My clan will be leaderless, my people will die of starvation. I will have abandoned my birthright, and everyone will know that I left them for the comfort of being your husband in London when I should have been fighting for my home. They will think that I ran away to safety and left them to disaster.”

“You can’t stay here and fight,” Dacre says. “The king himself is trying to get a peace. You can’t stir up trouble now.”

“Are you a gentle dove now, your lordship?” Archibald says bitingly. “I never thought to hear you say that a Scot should not be fighting other Scots.” He turns his attention to me, as if Dacre is too despicable to answer. “My love, my queen, I can’t leave those who have risked everything for your cause. Lord Hume will lose his lands too. Albany has already threatened his wife and his mother with imprisonment. We can’t run away and leave our families behind.”

“But I am your wife! This is your family!”

“It would be dishonorable to run away.”

“Your duty is with me!”

“My duty is in Scotland,” he says. “Your brother will guard you and keep you in England. But no one will guard and keep my people if I abandon them.”

“Think it over,” Dacre recommends. “Don’t be too hasty, my lord. You might be a long time, hiding in the hills. The king may get a peace with France that doesn’t restore you. If you’re not in London, they may forget all about you.” He looks at me. “It is the way of great men, sorry though I am to say it. If your husband is not there he may be forgotten.”

This is a sneer against my husband and against me. Dacre is always my brother’s man first and my servant second. I know very well they will not remember Archibald—they barely remember me. Who would know better than I that a princess passes over the Scots border and disappears from memory? Who would know better than I that they only fight for you when it has all become such a disaster that they can overlook it no longer? I am not Mary, who can come and go without losing her brother’s attention, behave disobediently, disloyally, and be welcomed home with celebrations. I am not Katherine who can fail to give him a son year after year and still be the wife of his choice and the queen of the court. I am Margaret, Queen of Scotland, and they forget me altogether until the extremity of my danger threatens them.

“He will come with me to London!” I say hotly. “They will see us together. They will remember us then!”

Dacre turns to my husband with a small smile, and waits for his reply. I remember that this man has had years pitting one Scot against another, one Englishman against another, Scots against English, English against Scots. Now he is setting a wife against her husband. Dacre is a border man in every sense. He will think that he knows men like Archibald inside out, that he has paid them to dance to his piping. He has always thought him bought, easily turned, easily betrayed.

“I can’t come,” Ard says flatly. “Remembered or forgotten, I can’t come.”

We leave without him. I am only twenty-six years old, and yet I seem to have spent my life leaving the people I love and losing those who should guard me. We leave my son Alexander in the cold ground of Scotland, for Albany buried my boy in December, before I even knew that he was dead. We leave my surviving son the king, a child of four years old, in the keeping of his tutors. I pray that Davy Lyndsay is at his side, for who else is there who can give him comfort? We take Margaret with us, and her wet nurse and her rockers and her endless entourage. We travel as lightly as we can, and yet there is a long train of wagons with my goods, and Dacre’s goods, and the men-at-arms that guard them, and the lords who accompany us—glad of the chance to get to London after years on the border. We take half of Northumberland with us, but we leave without my husband.

He kisses my hand, my wet eyes, my lips, my hands again, before I leave. He swears that he loves me more now than when he was my pretty carver, my knight, my friend. He says that he cannot abandon his friends and his allies, his men, his lowly tenants who know nothing of king or regent or queen regent, but will follow him wherever he leads them. He cannot leave his castle, that great fort overlooking the sighing sea and the crying gulls. He tells me that we will be together again some day. We will be happy again, some day.

“I will come back,” I promise him. “I will come back to you and you will wait for me. I will command Harry to make peace with the French and with the Scots lords and they will allow me to come home and I will be queen regent, as I was, and you will be my consort.”

His loving gaze is as clear and as true as when he was my young carver. “Come back to me, and I will hold my castles and my lands and my power. Come back to Scotland and I will welcome your return as queen. Come back soon.”