Three Sisters, Three Queens

SCONE PALACE, PERTH, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1525

Scone Palace is an abbot’s palace set alongside the abbey buildings beside the church of Scone. It is the famous coronation place of all Scots kings, and I have loved the gray stone abbey, the palace, the little church set high on the hill above Perth, ever since I first came here with my husband James, the king. The landscape is wild here; the mountains rise up high, their lower slopes dark with forest so thick and so deep that nobody lives there and the narrow tracks are followed only by deer and wild boar. The tops of the mountains are white with snow at this time of year, though the lenten lilies are bobbing their heads along the riverbank. It is too cold to walk by the tumbling river, white with winter spate, or in the walled gardens around the monastery, where the first green buds of vegetables are showing in the dark earth beds.

Archibald does not come with us, on this unseasonal visit north, but stays at Edinburgh in council with the lords, and James and I are suddenly free. Only now that we are away from him, do I realize how he holds me in silence, how I watch him. It is as if my son and I go on tiptoes around him, as if he were a sleeping snake that might strike us. Only Margaret misses him—he is so charming and affectionate with her and she does not secretly fear him.

We go out hunting or riding every day and my master of horse leads us up through the woods and into the high bare moorland country where the wind is sharp and cold and strong. My son the king loves these highlands, which are such a large part of his kingdom. He rides out all day with just a handful of companions. They go to a tiny monastery for their breakfast, they hammer on the door of a remote farmhouse for their dinner. People are delighted to find their king among them, and James thrives on the freedom after years of being all but a prisoner in his own castles. He resembles his father: he likes to surprise his people, ride among them like a commoner, talk to them like an equal. I tell him that his father used to go by the name of the Gudeman of Ballengeich, a village near Stirling, and pretended to be a common man so that he could dance with girls and give money to beggars, and James laughs and says he will be a Gudeman too, and go by the name of “Gudemanson.”

Henry Stewart joins us, riding at James’s side, a perfect companion to a young king, speaking of chivalry and nobility and the old stories of Scotland. All day he is James’s companion and friend and at night he comes quietly to my room and takes me in his arms.

“You are my love, my love,” he whispers in my ear, and I say, “hush,” and we make love in whispers and he steals away before dawn so that when I rise for Prime, it is as if I have had a dream of a young lover, and I can hardly believe that we were together at all.

We are so happy in the North, and so remote from the troubles of Edinburgh, that I am surprised when Archdeacon Thomas Magnus is announced at dinner, newly returned from a visit to England. We dine early here, and we go to bed when the wax candles start to gutter in their candlesticks. The sky up here is as dark as black velvet, with little silver pinpricks of stars. There are no lights showing from Perth, there are no torches from the little hamlet of Scone. There is nothing but the gleam of mysterious light—not dawn and yet not starlight—where the unlit earth meets the night-black sky, and the only sound is the haunting call of the owls.

“I did not expect to see you back in Scotland so soon, archdeacon,” I say. “You are very welcome.”

He is not particularly welcome. I know that he has been in London and will be carrying messages from England. I don’t doubt that he has stopped at Edinburgh and shared all the news with Archibald, and received his instructions there. “Is my brother the king in good health? And Her Grace the queen?”

He bows. He says quietly that he has letters for me and very grave news from London.

“My brother is well?” I ask anxiously. “And Her Grace the queen?”

“God be praised,” he says piously. “They are both well. But there has been a terrible battle. I regret to have to tell you that your former ally, the kingdom of France, has been defeated. The King of France himself has been captured.”

“What?” I ask blankly.

I can see—no one could miss—his little gleam of pleasure at my shock, his knowledge that this leaves me without an ally against my brother and his man.

“King Francis has been captured and is being held by the emperor,” he says coolly. “Your friend the Duke of Albany, commanding his troop for his master, has been completely defeated. Your brother’s enemy, Richard de la Pole, the pretender to his throne, has been killed.”

“He was my enemy too,” I say stoutly. “Our kinsman and our enemy, both. Thank God he will trouble us no more.”

“Amen to that,” says the archdeacon as if he would prefer to be the one invoking God. “And so, you will see—a princess of your wit will quickly see—that you have no powerful friends any more but the English, that the French are destroyed and will remain destroyed for a generation, their king is in captivity, his rule broken. He was your ally but now he is a prisoner of the Habsburg Empire. Your brother’s kingdom is safe from attack from the French, your own friend the Duke of Albany is humiliated and defeated.”

“I am glad of anything that makes England safe,” I reply at random, hardly knowing what I am saying. If the French are defeated and the duke humbled, then he cannot speak for me at the Vatican; he can be no help to me in Scotland. The archdeacon is right: I have lost a friend and an ally. I will be dependent on Harry and in Archibald’s power forever.

“This is a shock for you,” the archdeacon says, with unconvincing sympathy. “It is the end of France as a force. All of the Scots lords in the pay of France will find their wages stopped.” He pauses; he knows that the French send money to me. He knows that I am dependent upon them for a pension and for their guards, that half the lords are paid for their support.

“I rejoice for my brother,” I say numbly. “I am so glad for England.”

“And for your sister the Spanish infanta who now sees her nephew rule all of Europe,” the archdeacon prompts.

“Her too,” I say through my teeth.

“They have written to you.” He offers me the package, heavy with royal seals.

I nod to one of my ladies. “Tell the musicians to play out here, I will go to the privy chamber to read the news from London.”

“Good news, I hope,” she says.

I nod with a confidence that I don’t feel, and I let the guards close the door behind me before I go to the abbot’s great chair, set on a dais overlooking the silent empty room, and sit and cut the seal.

I have never read such a letter in my life. I have known Harry to be intemperate, but never anything like this. I have known him to be angry but this is worse than anything. He writes like a man who cannot be crossed, he writes like a man who would kill someone who argued with him. He is wild with rage, his pen spills blots and spatters of ink across the page as if he was spitting with fury. He is mad with rage, quite mad with rage. He says that he knows that I was hand in glove with Albany but I should know that Albany is a broken man, utterly defeated. He says that he has captured my letter that shows that while I was pretending to be publicly reconciled with Archibald I was all along pleading for Albany to hurry my divorce through the Vatican. He says that he read with horror that I said I will do “anything, anything” to be free. He says that he understands very well what I mean—that I was offering myself to Albany to shame myself and my family. He knows that I have been bought by the French, that I was pleading with the French duke to use his influence to set me free. He says I am false, through and through, and that he should never have listened to his wife who swore that I was a good woman and could be trusted. He says that she has no judgment, for she said that I would be reconciled with my husband. He says I have proved her to be a liar and a poor advisor, and that he will never waste his time in listening to her again, and this is my fault. He says that I am a liar and she is a fool.

He says that Katherine’s nephew is the victor of Europe and that the kingdom of France is ended as swiftly as it began. He says that Princess Mary will never marry my son James, but is to be betrothed at once to the emperor and she will be the greatest empress the world has ever known. He says that when he is ready he will personally lead an army to conquer Scotland, and James will be under the throne of England, as Scotland has always been. He says that I need not think that James will inherit the throne of England, for Harry has a son, a hearty strong son, a Tudor through and through, who will be made legitimate and will take the throne as Henry IX, and I need not think that James will ever see the inside of Westminster Abbey. Indeed, I need not think that he will ever see London, except perhaps to pay tribute, and nor will I ever see London again. Harry says that he warned me of this, that Katherine—the stupid woman—warned me of this. Infidelity to my husband will be met with disgrace, disloyalty to England will be met with destruction. I was warned of doom, and now I am lost.

I hold the letter before me and then I realize there is a repeated rustling sound. It is my hands trembling as I hold the letter. I drop the scrawled papers to the floor and I realize that I am shaking all over, as if I have an ague, as if I were some madwoman in a village about to fall down in a fit. I find I cannot breathe and I am so cold, as if I am shivering in an icy wind. I try to stand, but I find that my legs won’t support me. I sink back onto the abbot’s throne and call for help but I have no breath, I have no voice. Now there is a rattling sound of my rings clattering against the gold-inlaid wood of the throne. I clench my hands over the arms of the chair to keep them still; but my knuckles go white and still I am trembling. I think that I will have to endure this fit, this descent into madness, as I have endured other terrible shocks, other terrible losses. My brother has turned against me, my friend has been defeated, the French are destroyed, and the world is too much for me. My husband has won. I am lost.

It is growing dark before I am able to open the letter from Katherine. She writes very briefly. She sounds as if she is filled with sorrow, but I know this is Katherine triumphant.

My husband and I are agreed that if you are determined on divorce then you are unfit to be the guardian of your son or a queen. You will have to go into exile in the keeping of your new lover—we have heard that you favor Henry Stewart. Margaret, if you deny your marriage vows, you are a nobody bound for eternal damnation, and no sister to me nor to my husband.

Katherine

Nothing can end a true marriage. You will see what I have to accept as God’s will and the king’s wish. But it does not end my marriage. Nothing does that. Nothing will ever do that. K.

I have to talk with James. He is a boy of only twelve years old but he is king. He has to know that I have made such a terrible error putting him in alliance with France whose power is defeated, his betrothal has been canceled, and I am publicly shamed. I go to his bedroom as he is saying his prayers with Davy Lyndsay, who looks curiously at my white strained face, and I know myself to be a failure as a mother, a guardian, and a queen.

James kneels for my blessing and I curtsey and kiss him. Then he jumps into bed and looks at me as brightly as if he were still a little boy and I had come to tell him a bedtime story. Davy Lyndsay bows and turns as if to go, but I say:

“You can stay. This will be all over the court tomorrow. You might as well hear it from me.”

James exchanges a surprised glance with Davy and the older man steps back quietly and stands with his back to the door, as if on guard. I turn to my son. “You will have heard of the news from Pavia? Of the decisive defeat of the French?”

James nods. “Archdeacon Magnus told me, but I was not sure what it means to us.”

“He won’t have failed to tell you that it means our ally France is weakened for years, almost destroyed. They don’t even have a king any more. He has been captured and will not be returned.”

“The French will ransom him,” James asserts. “They will buy him back.”

“If they can. But the emperor will get all he can in the way of land and cities and fees before he restores the King of France to his kingdom. He will rewrite the borders of Europe. We have lost an ally, we are without a friend. We have no choice but to make a full peace with England. If they ever choose to make war on us, we have no defender.”

James nods. “My uncle the king was seeking peace with us anyway.”

“He was. He was seeking peace with a little country in alliance with a very great and dangerous power. But now he has nothing to fear from us.” I hesitate. “And he is very, very angry with me.”

My boy looks up at me with his clear gaze. “Why?”

“I have been trying to obtain an annulment of my marriage to Archibald, the Earl of Angus,” I say very quietly.

“I thought that you were reconciled,” my son says.

“Not fully. In my heart I was not.”

Even I can hear how duplicitous I sound. I glance towards Davy Lyndsay whose face is completely impassive, his eyes on his charge. “I had written to the Duke of Albany to ask him to use his influence to speed my divorce through the Vatican,” I say. “I hoped it would come before Whitsun. Then I would have told the earl.”

“But the duke is defeated and France has lost its king,” my son observes.

“It’s worse than that. My brother the King of England has seized my letters to the duke and now he knows that I was trying to divorce my husband, and so I was breaking my agreement with England, and playing them false.” I take a shuddering breath. “He is very angry with me. I have lost his friendship.”

James’s young face is very grave. “If the lords of the council turn against you, we are alone, Lady Mother. If you are not the wife of the Earl of Angus, nor the regent chosen by the French, nor the favored sister of the King of England, then you have no influence.”

I nod.

“And the Earl of Angus will be offended that you were trying to divorce him behind his back while living with him as his wife.”

It sounds so much worse when it is spoken in the clear treble voice of my son.

“I know.”

“And you have played him false? You pretended that you were reconciled with him but all the while you were writing to the Vatican for your divorce?”

“Yes.”

“And were you unfaithful?” he asks coldly.

“I wanted to be free,” I mutter miserably. “I wanted to be free of Archibald.”

“You took a lover?”

I bow my head before my son’s righteous anger. “I wanted to be free.”

“But I am not free,” my son points out. “I am in his keeping and in the keeping of the lords of the council. If you have lost your power then my case is worse than ever. You will be in disgrace and they will have me as their prisoner. He will have me as his stepson.”

“I am so sorry . . .”

He turns a sulky face to me. “You have done very wrong,” he says. “You have ruined us.”