“My reputation is above reproach,” I say icily.
He takes my hands as if he would console me. “Ah, my dear, there is always gossip. I am afraid that your brother has heard from the French that you are in constant communication with the Duke of Albany.”
“I am supposed to be in constant communication with him! He is Regent of Scotland!”
“Even so. Your brother believes that you are hoping to marry him.”
“This is ridiculous!”
“And someone has told your brother that you have taken a lover, Henry Stewart.”
I don’t stammer. “I deny it completely.”
“Someone has told him that you and Henry Stewart are planning to kidnap your son and put him on the throne as a pawn of the Stewart clan.”
“Oh, who would that be?” I say bitterly. “Who is my brother’s spy, who has such detail, and is heard so sympathetically in England?”
Archibald presses my hands to his lips. “Not me, actually. But since I know how much your family means to you, and since the king is inquiring into the validity of his own marriage—it matters all the more to him that there is no scandal about you.”
“Harry is inquiring into the validity of his own marriage?”
“Of course.”
“You believe that he means to leave Katherine?” I whisper.
“He should,” Archibald says, as if pronouncing sentence on her, a blameless woman, a woman of no power.
“I heard that a papal legate was coming to England to reconcile them?”
Archibald gives a short laugh. “To tell her to let him go.”
I turn away from him and go to the window and look down into the gardens. The blossom is whirling down from the apple trees as if it were snow in springtime. I don’t know whether I feel triumphant or bereft. It is as if the high cliff that they call Arthur’s Seat has suddenly shifted and sunk; the horizon has changed completely. Katherine has dominated my life; I have envied her and loved her and been irritated by her and been nearly destroyed by her more than once. Can she suddenly disappear? Can she suddenly be unimportant?
“She will never ever agree,” I predict.
“No, but if the marriage is shown to be invalid, then it is not up to her.”
“On what possible grounds could it be invalid?”
“Because she was married to your brother Arthur,” Archibald says simply, as if it is obvious.
I remember Mary’s letter, warning me what I was to say. My two sisters whispering together will have prepared a reply to every question. They don’t consult me, they instruct me. “There was a dispensation,” I say, as Mary told me to say.
“Perhaps the dispensation was not valid.”
I look blankly at him. “What sort of argument is this? Of course a papal dispensation is valid.”
“It hardly matters now. The queen’s nephew holds the Pope in his keeping. I doubt that the Holy Father will be brave enough to put shame on his jailor’s kinswoman. He will never allow your brother’s divorce. He will never allow yours.”
“But this has nothing to do with me!” I exclaim.
“The Pope has his own troubles—he won’t care about yours. And Harry won’t want anyone to get a divorce but himself.” Archibald sums up with complete accuracy the focus of Harry’s growing vanity and his habitual selfishness. “He won’t want anyone to think that a Tudor applies for an annulment for any reason but God’s proven will. The last thing he wants is you—with your history of marrying for your own desire, so far from God, such a scandalous woman—applying for a divorce before him, and besmirching his own reputation. He will want everyone’s behavior to be beyond question so that he can apply for an annulment without any suggestion of his . . .” He breaks off, looking for the right word.
“His what?”
“Selfish lust.”
I look at him, shocked at his naming Harry’s vice so bluntly. “You should not say that of him, not even to me.”
“Be very sure he won’t want it said of you.”
I think that Henry Stewart may as well come to court so that we can have the comfort of each other’s company since we will never be free to marry, but to my surprise, it is my son James who refuses permission. He draws himself up to his full height, just a little taller than I am, and says that he cannot condone any immorality at his court.
I almost laugh in his face. “But James!” I say, speaking to him as if he is a cross little boy. “You may not be the judge of my friends.”
“Indeed I shall,” he says. He speaks coldly, not like my boy at all. “Be very sure that it is my household and I will be the judge of who is here. I have one stepfather set over me, I won’t have another. I thought you had enough of husbands.”
“Henry would not try to rule you!” I exclaim. “He has always been such a friend to you. He’s so charming, I like him so much, he is a pleasure to be with.”
“Those are the very reasons I would not want him here,” James says stiffly.
“He is not your stepfather; he can never be my husband.”
“This makes it worse. I would have thought that you would have seen that.”
“Son, you mistake yourself,” I say, my temper rising.
“Lady Mother, I do not.”
“I will not be ruled by anyone. Not even you, my son. I am a Tudor princess.”
“That name is becoming a byword for scandal,” James says pompously. “Your brother’s adultery is known throughout the world, your own name is slandered. I will not have my mother spoken of in every tavern.”
“How dare you? When everyone knows that you and your court gamble and fornicate, that they are a lewd company and drink to excess! How dare you reproach me? I have done nothing but marry once for love and been betrayed. Now I want to marry again. What could be wrong with that?”
He says nothing. He looks at me steadily, as his father would have done.
I turn without curtseying and I fling myself out of the room.
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1527
I go to Stirling, and at once someone tells Harry that I have been banned from my own son’s court and that I am living adulterously with a lover. Someone has told him that my son pleaded with me to amend my ways and turn away from sin and that when I would not, he rightly sent me away. Harry sends me an outraged letter in which he threatens me with eternal damnation if I will not give up my adultery. He writes to James too and tells him that he also must reform. He must stop drinking, stop whoring, and commit himself to knightly practice and noble sports. I am baffled by this stern new morality until I get a scribbled note from Mary: Mademoiselle Anne will not yield to the king. They talk a great deal about her virtue and how she is storm-tossed. I have never seen a seduction like it, we are all to ponder her chastity while she wears her gowns cut low and her hoods pushed back. She pretends to a French accent and reads heretical books. This is a modern young woman indeed. We have become fervently chaste while dancing like whores. The queen is ill; I really don’t know how she manages to get through dinner while the rich dishes go out to the young women and they lick their spoons.
I can hardly bear court. I would not go at all if Charles did not make me. Katherine asks you to assure her that you will do nothing to undermine the state of marriage. She has heard that you have left your son’s court in order to live with your lover. I told her that this must be a lie. I know you would not do such a thing. Not for your own sake, not for ours. You would not, would you? Swear to me that you would not.
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, AUTUMN 1527