I take my letters into the quiet of my chapel where I will not be disturbed, not by my son, not by my chattering daughter, not by the quiet smile of James’s handsome treasurer. There is only one personal letter, from my sister Mary. Katherine is silent, and it is the missing letter from the queen that tells me as much as the three pages from my sister. The clue is on Mary’s last page. She says:
Lady Carey (who was a nicer girl when she was Mary Boleyn) has taken to her bed and had a little girl. Of course, everyone knows Harry is the father, and the Boleyn family have grants of land and titles and lord knows what else. Very good for a family from nowhere. Harry, God bless him, is delighted that another child of his making is safely born and thriving, and Charles says that we should all understand that he is a man and he has his pride. Charles says that I am a fool to be troubled by this, it is of no matter, but if you could see our sister’s hurt, you would feel as I do. Charles says that no one cares: a bastard child here or there makes no difference to anyone, but everyone knows—though no one says—that the queen’s childbearing years are over. Harry dines with her, his manners to her are quite beautiful, and sometimes he stays the night in her rooms, but it is for courtesy; she is no longer his lover, she is only his wife in name, and their lack of a son is so marked while Bessie Blount’s boy grows strong and healthy and Mary Boleyn’s daughter coos when she sees her father. What if he has another bastard boy? Another after that?
Katherine has taken to fasting and wearing a hair shirt under her beautiful gowns as if she were at fault. But she makes no complaint; she says nothing. Nothing at all. I think Harry feels awkward, and it makes him boisterous and loud and the whole court has become a little wild. Charles says I am becoming a grumpy old lady, but if you could see Katherine when she withdraws from court early to pray, while they dance till all hours, you would understand what I mean. Everyone is drinking the new baby’s health as if it were a little princess born. People were discreet about Henry Fitzroy but this Boleyn bastard is openly celebrated. Everyone is aware of Henry Fitzroy growing bigger and stronger every day and served in a nursery which is as good as any of ours. Harry is king, of course, he must do as he wishes. But, oh! Maggie! if you could see Katherine you would feel as I do that our happy times are over.
Yes, I think. And how the world turns, especially for women. The young princess from Spain who married my beautiful older brother, Arthur, entranced my father, seduced my young brother and then preached the unbending laws of marriage to me, now watches her husband walk past her to a younger woman. Now she sees a young woman go into confinement and bring out a red-headed Tudor baby. Katherine always got her own way through a combination of intense charm and fierce opinion. Katherine always had God and the law on her side. Now her charms are fading and nobody is listening to her opinion at all. All she has left is God and the law. I think we will see her cling to them.
Of course I am sorry for her, of course I know that vows must be kept, especially by kings and queens, but I also think that this is my opportunity. I have publicly declared that Archibald cannot come near the court, is banished from my presence. I will not be swayed from that. And now I think the chance has come for me to go further. I will get my son on the throne of Scotland and I will get my divorce. While Harry is falling in love with a married woman and owning his bastards he cannot forbid my freedom, he could not be such a hypocrite. Katherine’s decline—sad though it is, a pity though it is—is my opportunity. The world is not as she commands. We do not have to live as she thinks is right. I shall not be sacrificed to prove her point. I will be free, whatever she thinks of me. I will dare to end my marriage vows just as my brother dares to break his.
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, AUTUMN 1524
I am awakened in the darkness by the violent ringing of the church bells pounding out a jangle of tones, the tocsin, an alarm. I jump out of my bed, and the lady-in-waiting who sleeps with me throws my robe around my shoulders and gasps, “What is it? What’s happening?”
I fling open the door of my privy chamber as the guards throw open the door at the other end and Henry Stewart comes running in, wearing his breeches and his boots and pulling on his shirt over his naked chest.
“Dress,” he says to me urgently. “The Douglases have defied your ban. They have entered the city.”
“Archibald?”
“Climbed over the walls and opened the gates from the inside. There are hundreds of them. Do I have your permission to set a siege?”
“Here? We can’t hold a siege here!”
“Depends how many of them there are,” he says tightly.
He turns on his heel and runs out, shouting for the guards to go to battle stations. I run back into my room and pull on a gown and push my feet in my slippers. My lady-in-waiting is plumped down on a stool, crying with fear.
“Fetch the others,” I say to her. “Tell them to go to my presence chamber, and close the shutters on all the windows.”
“The Douglases are coming?” she quavers.
“Not if I can stop them,” I say.
I stride into my presence chamber and find Davy Lyndsay with James. My son is pale and nervous. He tries to smile when he sees me and he bows for my blessing.
“We’re holding the palace,” I say to Davy over James’s bowed head. I raise James up and curtsey and kiss him. “You be brave and make sure that you go nowhere near the windows or out on the walls. Don’t be seen, don’t be a target.”
“What do they want?” he asks.
“They say they want to be restored to the lords’ council and not arraigned as traitors,” Lyndsay says shortly. “They go an odd way about it.”
“Archibald’s way,” I say bitterly. “Hidden weapons, a secret army—he should be ashamed of himself. How many did he kill last time?”
The English ambassadors, half dressed, the archdeacon bare legged, come running in. “Is it the French?”
“Worse,” I say bitingly. “It’s your friend Archibald Douglas, with hundreds of his men at his back and no control over them at all.”
They are literally white with fear. “What will you do?”
“I will destroy them,” I swear.
Holyroodhouse is a palace, not a castle, but the walls are high and there are towers at every corner and a great gate that can be barred shut. I hear the tremendous roar of the guns from the castle and I know that Henry Stewart will have ridden like a madman up the Via Regis to tell them to arm and direct their guns on whoever threatens them; the castle must not fall.
“Roll out our guns,” I say to the captain of the guard. “They can’t come here.”
We don’t have gun stations like a castle, but they roll out the guns before the gate and my men stand behind them, grim-faced, cannonballs stacked behind them, ready to bombard the Via Regis, their own city. Before them, kneeling on the cobbles, are my guard with handguns and bows.
“Before God, I beg of you, don’t fire on your own husband.” The archdeacon appears at my shoulder as I stand at the porter’s gate, looking as anxiously as my gunners for any sign of the Douglas army on the Via Regis ahead of us. “It would be an act of such wifely disobedience. No reconciliation would be possible, no pope could condone—”
“You get back to your lodging,” I spit at him. “These are Scottish matters, and if you had not given him safe conduct he would not be here.”
“Your Grace!”
“Go! Or I will shoot you myself!”
He falls back, stricken. He throws one aghast look up the cobbles as if he fears a horde of madmen running down in their plaids with their knives in their teeth, and he scuttles away.
I glance behind me. James is there, his English sword on his hip. “You go to the presence chamber,” I order him. “If it all goes wrong, let them find you on the throne. If they get in, be calm and surrender to them. Davy will guide you. Don’t let them touch you. They must not put a hand on you.” I turn to James Hamilton, Earl of Arran. “Guard him,” I say. “And get horses ready in case he has to escape.”