Three Sisters, Three Queens

COMPTON WYNYATES, ENGLAND, MAY 1516

I am waiting in the home of my brother’s good friend and servant Sir William Compton, in my best gown of purple velvet with cloth-of-gold lining. My brother the king is coming to accompany me into the city. We will make a great show for all the people—we Tudors know that we have to make a great show—and my authority with the Scots will be greater when they hear that the king himself rode at my side to bring me home again. It has been thirteen years since I saw him, a boastful vain little boy, and in that time we have lost our father and our grandmother, he has become king, I have become a queen, and we have both had and lost children. Everyone tells me that he has grown to be extraordinarily handsome and I am torn between excitement and nerves as I stand by the window in Sir William’s beautiful presence chamber and hear the rattle of the guards’ weapons outside the double doors and the tramp of many feet. Then finally the doors swing open and Harry comes in.

He is changed so much. I left a boy and here is a man. He’s very tall, taller than Archibald, a head taller than me, and the first thing I see, and recoil to see it, is a thick bronze beard beautifully combed and trimmed. It makes him look like a fully grown man, far from the memory I carried of my light-footed, fair-skinned little brother.

“Harry,” I say uncertainly. Then I remember that this is the King of England and I drop into a curtsey: “Your Grace.”

“Margaret,” he says warmly. “Sister,” and he raises me up and kisses me on both cheeks.

His piercing eyes are a bright blue, his features regular and strong. He smiles and shows white even teeth. He is a stunningly handsome man. No wonder that the courts of Europe call him the handsomest prince in Christendom. I think for a swift, spiteful moment that Katherine of Aragon is lucky that she caught him when she did—at the very moment of his coming to the throne. Any woman in the world would be glad to marry my brother now; no wonder Katherine is on constant watch over her ladies-in-waiting.

“I would have known you anywhere,” he says.

I flush with pleasure. I know that I look well. The pain has gone from my legs and I can stand and walk without a limp. I have lost all the weight that I gained before the birth of Margaret, and I am beautifully dressed, thanks to Katherine.

“Anywhere!” he goes on. “You are as beautiful as our lady mother.”

I give him a little mock curtsey. “I am glad you find me so,” I say.

He offers me his arm and we walk a little way down the room, head to head so that no one else can hear us.

“I do, Margaret. I am proud to be a man with two beautiful sisters.”

Mary; already. He has hardly greeted me and already we have to speak of Mary.

“But what of her little namesake?” I demand. “How is your daughter? Is she strong and well?”

“She is.” He beams at me. “Of course we wanted a boy first, but there is no doubt that she will have a little brother at her side soon. And you are older sister to a king, you can tell her how to go on.”

I was not. I was younger sister to Arthur, my brother who should have been king. But I smile and say: “And Her Grace the queen? Is she well also?”

“She has returned to court,” he says. “And you will sit with her at the great joust we have planned this month. The biggest event we have ever planned—to celebrate your coming, and the birth of my daughter, and Mary’s son.”

Mary; again. “I must show you Margaret, your niece.” I nod to her nursemaid, who brings her forward with a low curtsey for Harry to see. She is a plump little thing, brown haired and brown eyed, and she waves her hands and beams at Harry as if she knows that his favor will make her fortune.

“As lovely as her mama,” Harry says fondly, tapping her little fist with his finger. “And as sweet-tempered, I am sure.”

“She is a very good baby,” I say. “She had a hard enough time of it.”

“Good God, what you have suffered!”

I rest my head gently against his shoulder. “I have suffered,” I agree. “But I know that you will make it all right again.”

“I swear that I will,” he promises me. “And you shall go back to Scotland as queen regent. Nobody shall mistreat you again. The very idea!” He seems to swell inside his beautiful green velvet jacket—the huge shoulders get even broader. “And where is your husband? I expected him to be here with you.”

He knows, of course; Dacre will have reported everything as soon as it happened. “He had to stay to protect his people,” I say. “He was heartbroken, he wanted to be with me; we wanted to be together. Especially, he wanted to come to meet you. But he felt that those lords who had supported me, and the poor people who had suffered for keeping me, would be in danger of Albany’s revenge if he were not there to protect them. He is a man of great honor.”

I find that I am talking too much, too fast, trying to convey to Harry the danger and the difficulty of Scotland. He cannot know, safe behind the walls of secure castles in a peaceful land, what it is like trying to rule a country where everything is by agreement, and even the will of the king has to be accepted by his people. “Archibald has stayed in Scotland. To do his duty. He felt that he should.”

My brother looks at me and suddenly there is a hard calculation behind his smile. “Done like a Scot,” is all he says, and I think his voice rings with contempt for a man who could leave his wife in danger. “Done like a Scot.”