It is unbearable. I have to get away this summer. I cannot ride with Archibald every day and watch him dance every night. I cannot kneel beside him in the chapel and take the Mass beside him, as if we were sharing a loving cup. I know that soon, sometime after Easter, he will come to my bedroom and my ladies will open the door and let him in, curtsey, and leave us alone together. I am so ruled by him and dominated by him and overpowered by him that I know I will not resist. Legally, I know that I cannot resist. Increasingly, I fear that I will have forgotten how to resist: I will not resist.
I must break the engagement that my brother has made for me, break the spell that Katherine has woven. The two of them decided, for their own private reasons, that Archibald and I should honor our marriage vows and reconcile. My marriage with Archibald allows Harry’s passion for Mary Boleyn, for I demonstrate that no betrayal can destroy a marriage. I am to prove this. The two of them—Katherine and Harry—have worked upon the two of us to come to agreement. Harry pays for James’s guard, buys the council of the lords, supports Archibald, on the condition that Archibald represents the interests of England and is true to his marriage to me, the English princess. Harry writes to me, Katherine writes to me, even my sister Mary writes to me, and they all say that my future and the future of my country and of my boy rest in the hands of my good husband. He will be true to me, I must take him back. We will be happy.
Secretly, disguising my hand and sending the letter by the back ways to the port and from there on a French merchant ship to France, I write to the absent Duke of Albany. I say that I will do anything—anything—to obtain my divorce from the Pope. I say that I know he can prevail upon the Vatican for me. I say that I will deliver the council of lords into his keeping, that I will hand over Scotland to the French, if he will only free me of Archibald and this terrible dreamy half life that is drowning me, even as I write for help.
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.”