I head for the borderlands of England and Scotland with little regret for what I am leaving behind. So much of my childhood has already gone. In the past year I have lost my adored brother and then my mother, and a little newborn sister with her. But I find that I don’t miss them so much, in this new life that I am entering. Oddly, it is Katherine that I miss as I travel north. I want to tell her about the magnificent greetings that welcome me to every town, and I want to ask about the awkwardness of a long ride and needing the garderobe. I copy her beautiful way of holding her head, I even practice her little roll of the shoulders. I try to say “ridiculous” with a Spanish accent. I think that she will be Queen of England and I will be Queen of Scotland and people will compare us one with another, and that I will learn to be as elegant as she is.
I have daily opportunities for practicing her poise, for I am beginning to discover that one of the greatest features of being royal is being able to think quietly about interesting things while people pray for you or talk at you, or even sing anthems about you. It would be rude to yawn when someone is thanking God for your arrival, so I have learned the trick of drifting off without falling asleep. I sit like Katherine, with my back very straight and my head raised high to lengthen my neck. Most often I lift my gown a tiny fraction of an inch and look at my shoes. I have ordered slippers with the toes embroidered in fanciful designs so that these pious meditations can be yet more interesting.
I look at my toes a lot at every long boring stopping point, while noblemen make speeches at me, all the way northward. My father has ordered that my journey shall be a magnificent procession, and my part in it is to look beautiful in a series of wonderful gowns, and to cast down my eyes in modesty when people thank God for the coming of the Tudors and, in particular, for my passing through their plague-infested, dirty little town. That’s when I look at my toes and think that soon I will be in my own country, Scotland. And then I will be queen. And then I shall be the one to decide where I go, and how long the speeches will take.
I am amazed by the countryside as we ride north. It is almost as if the sky opens up over us, like the lid off a chest. Suddenly the horizon gets farther and farther away, receding as we climb up and down rolling green hills and see more and more hills ahead of us, as if all of England is billowing under our feet. Above us arches the great Northern sky. The air is watery and clear, as if we were submerged. I feel as if we are tiny people, a little train of shrimps crawling along a huge world, and the buzzards that wheel above us, and the occasional eagle even higher than they, see rightly that we are specks on the side of giant rolling hills.
I had no idea it was so far to go, no idea that so much of Northern England is empty of all people: not hedged, not ditched, not farmed, nor worked at all. It is just empty country, wasteland, not even mapped.
Of course, there are people who scrape a living from this untouched landscape. Every now and then we see in the distance a rough stone tower and sometimes we hear the ringing of a warning bell when their watchmen have seen us. These are the wild Northern men who ride these lands, stealing each other’s crops and horses, rounding up each other’s cattle, scraping a living from their tenants and then robbing others. We don’t go near their outposts and we are too numerous and too well armed for them to attack us; but the leader of my escort, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, grinds his old yellow teeth at the very thought of them. He has fought up and down this country and burned out these poor forts to punish these people for their wildness, for their poverty, for their hatred of everything Southern and wealthy and easy.
It is he who prevents me ordering matters as I would like, for everything is commanded by him and his equally disagreeable wife, Agnes. For some reason my father likes and trusts Thomas Howard, and has appointed him to the task of conveying me to Edinburgh, and keeping me to the behavior suitable for a Queen of Scotland. I should think that by now I could be trusted without a Howard at my elbow to give me advice. He’s also here as a spy, since he has fought against the Scots more than once, and he meets with the Northern lords in a little huddle at every town where we halt, to learn of the mood of the Scots border lords, and whether any more of them can be bribed to take our side. He promises our lords that they shall have weapons and money to maintain the defenses of England against Scotland, though the mere fact that I am here will bring a perpetual peace.
Howard does not seem to understand what a change in the world has been made by my marriage to the King of Scotland. He treats me with every outward respect, doffs his hat, bows his knee, accepts dishes from my table, but there is something about his manner that I don’t like. It is as if he does not realize the God-given nature of kingship. It is as if he thinks that he saw my father stumble through the mud of Bosworth Field to pick up his crown, and that he might one day drop it again.
Howard fought against us then, but he persuaded my father that this was commendable loyalty, not treason. He says he was loyal to the crown on that day, he is loyal to the crown now. If the coronet of England were on the head of a baboon from Afric he would be loyal to it then. It is the crown, and the wealth that flows from it, that inspires Howard loyalty. I don’t believe he loves my father and me at all. If he was not such a brilliant general I don’t think I would have to put up with his company. If my mother were alive she would have appointed one of her family. If my brother were alive then my lady grandmother would not be tied at court to guard the only heir we have left. But everything has gone wrong since Katherine came to court and took Arthur away, and these Howards are just an example of how my interests do not come first as they should.
My dislike of them grows at every stop, where they watch how I listen to loyal addresses and prompt me when I am to speak in reply, though I know perfectly well that I have to be admiring in York, and enchanted in Berwick, our northernmost town, a little jewel of a castle set in a bend of the river near to the sea. I don’t have to be told to admire the fortifications; I can see how welcoming Berwick is to me, I know how safe I feel inside these great walls. But Thomas Howard practically dictates the speech of thanks I make to the captain of the castle. He prides himself on his knowledge of tradition. By some means or another he is descended from Edward I, and this means that he thinks he can speak to me about sitting straighter in the saddle and not looking around for the dishes coming into the hall when the speeches go on and on before dinner.
By the time we reach the Scots border, just two hours’ ride from Berwick, I am completely sick of the two Howards, and I resolve that the first thing I shall do when I set up my court is send them home with a note to my father to say that they lack the skills that I require in my courtiers. They may be good enough for him, but not for me. They can serve in Katherine’s court and she can see what joy Thomas Howard brings her. She can see if she likes knowing that he is so loyal to the crown that he does not care whose head it is on. His grimly ambitious presence can remind her that she too married one Prince of Wales but is now determined to be the wife of another; it is always the crown for the Howards and the crown for Katherine.