We muster an army, and a number of lords join us with their armed retainers. Some are Archibald’s sworn enemies and would join any venture against him, some hope for the profit and opportunity of a battle, but some—a good number—want to see my son freed. We plan to attack Archibald’s new ally, my former friend the turncoat, James Hamilton, the Earl of Arran, at the village of Linlithgow Bridge, before Archibald can bring up his army from Edinburgh. The Earl of Arran and the Hamilton clan hold the bridge and so Lennox takes his army through the river and through boggy ground to attack their flank. They wheel to meet him, and then the Douglas army comes up in a rush from the south. My lords are horrified to see the royal standard at the rear of Archibald’s forces. The wicked man, my husband, has brought James to his first battle. He has brought James to watch his mother’s men dying in the fight to free him.
Of course, this is not just spite, it is a brilliant tactic. He is using James just as I did when I sent him out, a boy of just three years old, to surrender the keys of Stirling Castle. This child has been hauled about like an icon before the people since he was born, and now Archibald is putting James and the royal standard at the heart of a treasonous army. Half of our men will not raise arms against the royal standard; it is like blasphemy for them. The Earl of Lennox looks around helplessly as his allies hang back, but the men at the front of both armies are bitterly engaged, shouting insults, stabbing with pikes, hacking with axes and swinging great battle swords. It is bloody and dreadful, and James, trapped at the back, can hear the cries of men mad with rage and those screaming as they go down. He thinks he sees a chance to get away and spurs his horse forward to weave through the armies, and it is then that the new master of the king’s household, George Douglas, my husband’s brother, snatches my boy by the arm, and holds him in a cruel grip in his metaled fist. George yells into my boy’s face that he had better stay with them for the Douglas clan will never let him go.
“Bide where you are, sir, for if they get hold of one of your arms, we will pull you in pieces rather than part with you.”
James, terrorized, turns his head away from the man who sits so high on his horse and holds him so hard, but he obeys. He does not dare try to get to the Earl of Lennox any more. The struggle breaks off—it was doomed as soon as they raised the royal standard—and our men fall away and scatter. One leader fails to retreat; we have to leave the Earl of Lennox injured on the field, and when we recover his body it has been stabbed over and over again. Our forces fall back to Stirling Castle and Archibald pursues us, coming behind us on the dirty tracks as we wind through the hills and splash through the fords, and climb up and up the rocky road to the castle where we scuttle inside, raise the bridge, drop the portcullis, and set the siege.
Just as James promised me, all those years ago, Stirling Castle is strong. Archibald cannot take the castle until he brings the cannons, but there is nobody to rescue us.
“We have to go,” Henry says to me and to Archbishop Beaton. “We’ll have to surrender the castle, and it will be better if he does not find us here.”
I look at him miserably. “We surrender?”
“We lost,” he says shortly. “You’d better go back to Linlithgow and hope that Archibald will come to terms with you. You can’t stay here and wait for him to capture you.”
The archbishop does not need telling twice. He is throwing off his good cloak and his thickly padded jacket. “I’ll go out of the sally port,” he says. “I’ll get a crook off one of the shepherds and his jacket too. I won’t be taken by the Douglas clan. They’ll behead me like they did the chevalier. I don’t want my head nailed on the mercat cross.”
I look from the man I love to the man I trust. They are both desperate to get away from my castle, to hide from my husband. They are in terror of the man who is coming for them, coming for me. I realize, once again, that no one is going to help me. I am going to have to save myself.
I ride cross-country with just a handful of men to guard me. It rains and the torrential water blots out the signs of our passing, and muffles the sound of the horses. Archibald, riding his men hard through the storm towards Stirling Castle, does not know that I pass within a mile of him. I know his army is there, on the road, headed north, but I cannot see him nor hear the splash and clatter of his cavalry. The country is so empty and so wild that there is no one to tell him of our hard ride over the twenty miles from Stirling to Linlithgow. No one sees us go by, not even the rain-soaked fishermen, not even the herdboys. When the castle at Stirling lowers the drawbridge and opens the gates in a shameful surrender Archibald learns that, once again, he does not have me, he cannot hold me, I am gone.
LINLITHGOW PALACE, SCOTLAND, AUTUMN 1526
But he knows that he has won. I don’t need a letter from Cardinal Wolsey in London to tell me that open warfare against my husband is a disaster. Nobody can support a militant queen, never if she is arming against her lord and husband. But the cardinal writes very mildly; he is not so violent an advocate of Tudor marriage as he once was:
Of course, my dear daughter in Christ, it may be that the Holy Father will find that there are grounds for an annulment, and if so, it would be my advice that you should try to agree with your husband about your lands and your daughter. He will want to rule the council of the lords and you would have to assent to his preeminence. We are all agreed that he is the best ruler that Scotland could have, and the safest guardian for your son. If you could only agree with the earl, you would have an honored place at court and be able to see your son and your daughter, even if you were to marry another man in the future.
This is such a far cry from the usual insistence from London that I must stay married or I will overthrow the Church itself that I hold it and reread it for a little while wondering what the cardinal intends from the smooth words in the clerkly hand. I decide that fathoming the cardinal is probably beyond me; but when Archibald writes pleasantly to me, as urbane and courteous as if his army had not murdered a wounded man, the Earl of Lennox, as if his brother had not laid violent hands on my son, I understand that the English policy has changed, completely changed.
Now we are to separate, but I must not overthrow Archibald. I can be free if I surrender my power. Clearly, someone in England no longer thinks that a royal divorce is anathema. Someone in London thinks that a royal divorce can take place and the husband and wife can come to terms. Someone in London believes that a royal marriage can end and the parties remarry. My guess is that someone is Anne Boleyn.
How shameful it is that the great-granddaughter of a silk merchant should be advising English policy in Scotland! Katherine abused her power and was a tyrant more than a queen, but at least she was born royal. Anne Boleyn is a commoner, her father was proud to serve me in my household, her grandparents were born lower even than those of Charles Brandon, Mary’s husband. But, thanks to Harry’s love for the vulgar and showy, Charles is married to my sister and Anne is advising the King of England. No wonder that my troubles with Archibald shrink by comparison. No wonder it matters less to them that I am in love with Henry Stewart—a Scots lord with royal blood. What could they say against him? What can they say against me, when the King of England chooses his friends and his whore from the dross of his country and passes them off as gold?