Three Sisters, Three Queens

CRAIGMILLAR CASTLE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1517

My son the king is moved from the plague-struck city to Craigmillar Castle, just an hour south of Edinburgh, where the Sieur de la Bastie is living. He says that I may come and stay for as long as I wish, that I must see my son without obstacle. I would be wise to leave Edinburgh during the time of sickness. I say that Archibald will come too, and Antoine rolls his handsome brown eyes and laughs at me. “You are a woman in love,” he says. “And you will not be warned. So come, bring the earl. I am always delighted to see him, whoever he is married to, today.”

I pay no attention to anything but his invitation, and Ard and I ride out, with James’s presents, the very next morning.

It is a tower castle built in the French style, with a handsome courtyard wall. “A toy castle,” Archibald says scathingly. “For a pretend chevalier.”

“Not every castle can be like Tantallon with the North Sea as its moat,” I tease him.

We ride in through the stone archway, the guards at attention on either side. They are beautifully turned out. I see new gates on the doorway and shiny new hinges. De la Bastie takes his duties as James’s guardian very seriously.

He is there to greet us at the doorway of the castle and comes himself to help me down from the saddle. Ard jumps down like a boy to be at my side first; but I see neither of them—not the handsome Frenchman nor the dazzling Scot—for in the doorway is Davy Lyndsay whom I have not seen for two years and beside him, standing alone, is my little boy, five-year-old James.

“Oh, James,” I say. “My boy, my son.”

The moment I see him, the loss of his younger brother, Alexander, strikes me again, and I can hardly stop myself from crying out. I don’t want to disturb him with my tears, so I bite my lip and I go carefully towards him, as if I were approaching a little merlin, a falcon that might bate away from me. He looks up at me, with eyes as bright and as dark as a merlin. “Lady Mother?” he asks in his clear little-boy voice.

I see that he is not sure who I am. He has been told that I will come, but he does not remember me and, in any case, I imagine I am much changed from the woman who kissed him good-bye and swore that she would come for him soon. We were in terrible danger then, I was pregnant, and I left him, certain that his crown and his blood would keep him safe, while Archibald’s name and behavior would endanger him. I left my son for love of my husband, and I don’t know even now if I did the right thing.

I drop to my knees so that he and I are face to face. “I am your mother,” I whisper. “I love you very much. I have missed you every day. I have prayed for you every night. I have longed—” again I have to swallow a sob “—I have longed to be with you.”

He is only five years old, but he seems far older, and reserved. He does not seem to doubt me, but clearly he does not want declarations of love nor his mother’s tears. He looks diffident, as if he would rather I was not kneeling in the yard before him, my eyes filled, my lip trembling.

“You are welcome to Craigmillar,” he says as he has been taught.

Davy Lyndsay bows low to me.

“Oh, Davy! You stayed with my son.”

“I would never leave him,” he says. He corrects himself. “Och, no credit to me, I had nowhere else to go. Who wants a poet in these poor days? And he and I have been here and there together. We always remember you in our prayers, and we made up a song for you, didn’t we, Your Grace? D’you remember our song for the English rose?”

“Did you?” I ask James; but he is silent, and it is the makar who answers.

“Aye. We’ll sing it for you this evening. He’s as good a musician as his father was before him.”

James smiles at the praise, looking up at his tutor. “You said I was deaf as an adder.”

“And here is your stepfather, come to visit too!”

I think I sense a little chill. Davy Lyndsay bows to Archibald, James nods his head. But neither of them greets him with any familiarity, or warmth.

“You will have seen him often?” I ask Ard.

“Not very often,” he replies. “He signed a warrant for my execution, remember.”

“He signed your pardon too,” Davy Lyndsay interjects.

My son the king inclines his head and does not remark on this. This is a child and yet he minds his manners, and takes care what he says. I feel a slow burn of rage that my son has never been carefree. Katherine of Aragon ordered the death of his father and so destroyed his childhood. He was a king before he was out of swaddling; she made him in her own disciplined image. She could not make her own baby, she took mine from me.

“Well, we shall see a lot of each other now,” I declare. “I have been in England, James, and I have won a truce for Scotland. There shall be peace between our countries and peace on the borders, and I shall see you whenever we wish. I shall live with you as your mother again. Won’t that be wonderful?”

“Yes,” says the little boy in his clear Scots accent. “Whatever you wish, Lady Mother. Whatever my guardians allow.”

“They have broken his spirit,” I rage at Ard, striding up and down our room in the tower at Craigmillar. “They have broken my heart.”

“Not at all,” he says gently. “He has been raised carefully and well. You should be pleased that he thinks before he speaks, that he is cautious.”

“He should be running around laughing. He should be boating and playing truant, he should be out on his horse and stealing apples.”

“All at once?”

“I won’t be mocked!”

“Indeed, I see you are distressed.”

“They drive me from the country, they separate me from my son, then they bring him up as quiet as a monk!”

“No, he is playful and he does chatter. I have heard him myself. But of course he is shy with you after so long. He has been waiting for your return—of course he is a little overwhelmed. We all are. You come home more beautiful than any of us remembered.”

“It’s not that.” But I am mollified.

He takes my hand. “It is, my love. Trust me, all will be well. You be as loving to him as I know you long to be, and he will be your little boy again within days. He will play with his sister, and the two of them will be as noisy and as naughty as you could wish.”

I lean towards him. “But Ard, when I left him, he had a little brother. He had a little brother who smiled and cooed when he saw me.”

He puts his arm around my waist and presses my head against his shoulder. “I know. But at least we still have James. And we can make another little brother for him.”

I let my face nestle against his warm neck. “You want another child?”

“At once,” he says. “And this one will be born at Tantallon with every delicacy and luxury you can command. I shall dress you in a cloth-of-gold gown with rings on every finger as you go into confinement. And I shall keep you safe in confinement for month after month. I shall have a bed carved for you enameled with gold and you won’t get up for half a year.”

I smile. “It was so awful with baby Margaret.”

“I know. I thought I would die of fear for you. But everything will be better now.”

“There is nothing to explain or forgive?” I ask. “I hear such gossip.”

“Who knows what people say?” He shrugs and then draws me close again. “You should hear the things they told me about you!”

“Oh, what did they say about me?”

“That you would divorce me and marry the emperor, that your brother was determined to make the match. That Thomas Wolsey had drawn up the peace treaty that would make my poor Scotland the helpless victim of England and the empire. That they would say that our marriage had never happened.”

“I never even considered it,” I lie with my eyes on his.

“I knew you would not,” he says. “I trusted you, whatever they said of you. I knew that we were married for life, for good or bad, forever. I heard all sorts of things about you, but I never even listened.”

“Neither did I,” I say, and feel my passion for him burn me up. I like to hear the loyalty in my voice. “I never listened to one word that anyone ever said against you.”

In the days that follow I set myself to spend time with my son and make up for the missing months. I know it can never be done. I did not teach him to play the lute or sing the songs that Davy Lyndsay has taught him. I didn’t put him on his first shaggy little highland pony, and trot alongside him, holding him steady in the saddle. I didn’t take him out last winter to play in the snow, I did not build him an ice castle with a turret. He tells me all about it and I think, yes—that was when I was at Morpeth Castle, unable to get out of bed for the pain in my hip, when I thought I would die; that was when they told me that my younger son was dead. The closer he and I become, the more he tells me about his adventures while I was away, the more I remember that it was Katherine who gave orders to Thomas Howard to take no prisoners at the Battle of Flodden. The more he tells me of his life behind castle walls the more I resent the Duke of Albany taking power as regent and Katherine not insisting that my boy and I were rescued together.

I introduce him to his little half sister Margaret and he pulls faces at her to make her laugh, and encourages her to run behind him. When she falls he flinches at her loud cry, and I laugh and tell him that she has the temper of the Tudors.

Thomas Dacre, who always knows everything, writes to me that my sister Mary has had a pretty baby, Frances, and that she is well and returned to court. A few days later I get a letter from Mary herself, praising the baby and saying that her confinement was easy this time. She says that she misses me, that she prays I can find happiness with my husband at my home, and that we may both come to England again when it is safe for me to do so. She says that she is my little sister still, even when she is a matron with her children around her. She asks me to write to her to tell her that I am safe and well and that I have seen my son.

I hear that your husband is with you now, and I hope that you are happy,

she writes, as if she doubts that it can be so.

I reply cheerfully. I tell her that I have heard that Albany, the regent, is still in France and does not want to return to Scotland, and I pray that he will not. In his absence the country is at peace. I tell her that Antoine d’Arcy, the Sieur de la Bastie, is a true knight, as handsome as a woodcut in a book, and that we are happy as his guests; he is a nobleman in every way. I don’t say one word about her gossip with Katherine against Archibald’s good name. I ignore her concern for my happiness. She can learn from my silence to hold her tongue.

I speak to Antoine and suggest that we might share power. We might both be Regent of Scotland; we could work together. He never denies that it is possible, he always says it is essential that England keep the peace on the borders. It is from these troubled lands that all the unrest in Scotland flows. If I can persuade my brother, the king, to order Thomas Dacre to honor the peace of the borders then we can plan a future for Scotland together.

“If you will trust me?” Antoine teases me.

“If you will trust me?” I reply, and make him laugh.

He takes my hand and kisses it. “I would trust you and your son,” he says. “I would trust the dowager queen and the king. Nobody else. I cannot make promises to your husband or to any of the Scots lords. I don’t believe a word any of them says.”

“You may not criticize him to me,” I say.

He laughs. “I don’t single him out. I say no worse than I say about any of them. All of them think of their own wealth and their own power and their own ambition before anything else. All of them are true only to their clans. None of them even knows how to serve their king. None of them has any idea of their country. Few of them think of God as anything other than an invisible tribal chief more unpredictable and dangerous than any other. They have no imagination.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” I say flatly.

He laughs. “For you have no imagination either, Your Grace. You do perfectly well without it. Now tell me the scandal of the English court. I hear that your brother, the king, is in love?”

I frown. “I won’t gossip with you,” I say repressively.

“And the young lady is very, very beautiful?”

“Not particularly.”

“And very educated and musical and sweet-tempered?”

“What does it matter?”

“The king, your brother, would not consider putting his wife aside? Since God does not seem to be inclined to give them a son? His wife, the queen, would not consider withdrawing to a convent? So that he might get an heir with this beautiful young lady?”

I feel that instant unworthy flame of delight at the thought that gossip speaks of Katherine being humbled to nothing. Then, immediately, I think of how heartbroken she would be—she who cannot bear the thought of Harry even flirting with another woman. “It would never happen,” I say. “My brother is a great protector of the Church and of all the institutions of the Church. And my sister-in-law would never desert her duty. She will live and die Queen of England.”

“She has been a great enemy to Scotland,” he points out. “We might do better if he listened to a new wife.”

“I know,” I say. “It is a matter of sorrow to us both. But she is my sister. I am bound to be loyal to her.”

We plan that Ard and I should stay at Craigmillar Castle for a few weeks more and then go to my dower lands at Newark Castle. Antoine says that when we all return to Edinburgh, after the plague has passed, he will call a council of the lords and that I shall attend and address them. If I can persuade them that I should be co-regent he will be happy to share power with me. I shall have free access to my son, who is easier with me every day. I shall have a seat in the council chamber. I shall be acknowledged as dowager queen.

“And Archibald on a chair beside mine,” I say. “Equal height.”

The chevalier makes a little gesture with his hands. “Ah, don’t ask it,” he begs. “You love your husband, I know. But he has so many enemies! If you force him down their throats, they will be your enemies too. Be the mother of the king and the dowager queen in your public life. Be his wife in your private rooms. Be his slave there, if you wish. But don’t take him into the council chamber as your equal.”

“He is my husband,” I say impressively. “Of course he is my master. I won’t keep him in my closet.”

“He was granted a pardon only by the generosity of the Duke of Albany,” de la Bastie reminds me. “His cousin and fellow outlaw was beheaded for treason. There are many who think that Hume did only what your husband would have done, if he had the courage.” He holds up his hand as I am about to interrupt. “Hear me out, Your Grace. Scotland will only survive as a kingdom for your son to inherit if we can keep the peace. Your husband and his family and all his affinity are enemies to that peace. They use their castles as a base for raids, they allow their tenants to steal cattle, they disrupt the markets and they rob the tenants and the poor. They collect the royal taxes but they don’t remit them. And whenever they are in danger, they slip over the border to Thomas Dacre, who tells them to continue lawbreaking and pays them to do worse. You are going to have to find some way to confine your husband’s ambition and his violence to your bedroom where, I suppose, you like it. The rest of us don’t want him carving and dancing around us. The rest of us know that he says one thing and does another.”

“How dare you—” I start, when there is a loud knock at the door. It swings open and the captain of the castle is there, his helmet under his arm. “Forgive me,” he says with a bow to me, and then speaks to de la Bastie. “A message from the Tower of Langton. They are under siege from George Hume of Wedderburn and his affinity.”

De la Bastie is on his feet at once. “The Humes again?” he says with a nod to me as if to remind me that these are Archibald’s allies and kinsmen. “How many?”

The messenger steps forward. “Not more than five hundred,” he says. “But they say they will burn out the tower and all who are in it.”

Antoine glances at me. “We have to have peace,” he says. “D’you know George Hume?”

“Kinsman to Alexander?” I ask.

“Exactly,” he says. “An outlaw’s kinsman, continuing his work. I shall arrest him. Will your husband ride with me against lawbreakers?”

I am silenced. I know Ard will never ride against his cousins, the Humes.

De la Bastie laughs. “I thought not,” he says. “How can he be the king’s protector when he does not protect the king’s peace?”

He bows to me and goes to the door, as the captain shouts orders that the guard shall be mustered to ride out.

“How long will you be?” I ask, suddenly nervous.

He looks at the messenger for the answer. “It’s a good half-day’s ride,” the man says.

“Should be back by tomorrow,” he says casually. He bows to me with his hand on his heart, a gleam of his smile, and he is gone.

We expect him for dinner, but they serve and we eat without him. Archibald remarks that perhaps the famous French chevalier could not catch George Hume as easily as he expected. He says that jousting is one thing, a tournament is another, but riding hard across wild country commanding men little better than reivers takes courage that the chevalier would never have needed before.

“They are breaking the peace,” I say shortly. “Of course he has to arrest them.”

“They are defying the regency that sent you into exile and made you a stranger to your son,” he says. “The regency that I had to beg a pardon from before they would let me back to my own.”

“We have to have peace,” I repeat.

“Not on any terms,” my husband says. “I wish I were with them.”

“De la Bastie thought you might ride with him!” I exclaim.

Ard laughs. “No, he didn’t, he just said that to trouble you. He knows, and I know, that there will be no peace for this country until it is ruled by you, the dowager queen, for your son the king. He knows I would fight for no regency commanded by him or the other Frenchman. I am for the queen and England.”

“What’s that?” I say, starting up as I hear the portcullis chains clanking and the roller creaking as the gate is lifted. “Is he back at last?”

Together we go down to the castle door, expecting to see de la Bastie and his guard riding in. Instead there are half a dozen men with his standard. They are carrying it lowered, as if in mourning, as if there has been a death.

“What is it?” I demand, and Ard goes down to the captain of the guard and speaks quickly to him. When he turns back to me his face in the flickering torchlight is bright.

“De la Bastie was defeated. George Hume has escaped,” he says shortly.

“Come and report to me at once,” I say to the captain of the guard. “And bring all your men. They’re not to speak to anyone. They must tell me first.” I turn into the castle and wait beside the great stone fireplace in de la Bastie’s presence chamber as the guards straggle in and stand together.

The captain speaks for them all. “It was an ambush,” he says slowly. “There was no siege of the tower. That was a lie, a feint to draw us out.”

Behind him I can see Ard intently listening. There is no shock on his face, no unease. He might be hearing of the unfolding of a successful plan, perhaps even his own plan.

“Why?” I ask. But I know.

“We met with George Hume and his force just north of Kelso and the chevalier commanded him to come into the town and explain himself. We rode together, side by side, but just outside Langton it turned nasty. Hume drew his sword, all his men drew theirs. The chevalier shouted to us to follow him and gallop back to Duns. They were after us all the way. It wasn’t a battle, it was a trap, an ambush. I thought my lord would get away. He was headed for his castle. But there is a thick part of the wood, you can’t see more than three feet behind you, with a cliff to one side and a steep slope down to the river on your left.” He turns to Archibald. “You know.”

Ard nods. He knows.

“They caught us there, forcing us off the track, driving us down the hill. There’s a marsh at the bend in the river. We fought back but they had the advantage of the ground, and of surprise. More of them poured out of Duns on foot, twisting round the trees, jumping over fallen branches. Our horses struggled, many fell, we got pushed down the hill, and his lordship’s horse went over the bank into the river, the Whiteadder. It’s deep. Most of the other horses went in too. It was a mess: floundering and screaming and men drowning.”

I put my hand to the warm stone of the chimney breast, clinging to it as if the ground is unsafe beneath me as well. “And then?” I hear my voice say thinly. “And then?”

“His lordship came off his horse. His armor weighed him down, but he had one arm around his horse’s neck and they were swimming together, struggling together. I thought he might get to dry land. One of the Humes—John—called out to him, he had one arm around a leaning tree, his feet on the roots, dry-shod in the marsh. He reached out to his lordship and he took his hand.”

“He saved him?” I ask incredulously.

“He drew him towards him like he was pulling him from the marsh, saving him from drowning, and then he stabbed him in the armpit, where he could get the blade in under the armor. His lordship went down and Patrick Hume drew his sword and hacked off his head.”

The other men nod, too stunned to speak.

“You saw this?” Archibald asks. “Where were you?”

“I had fallen over a tree stump,” one man says.

“I was on my horse on the road.”

“I was fighting out of the marsh.”

“I fell from my horse. God forgive me, I lay still.”

“And what then?” I ask unsteadily.

They bow their heads, they shuffle their feet. They ran away, but they don’t want to admit it.

“Did many come home?” Ard asks. “Did the Humes not pursue you? It’s not like them not to finish the task.”

They shake their heads. “We’re the only ones that got away, I think,” the captain says. “But it was getting dark, and you could see nothing among the trees, it wasn’t like a battle at all, more like a brawl. There might be others, run off home. There might be others stuck like fish in a barrel, drowned like kittens in the river.”

“Not like a joust,” Archibald says with a swift smile to me. “And he was always so beautiful in the joust.”