I ride south to the borders, to join James. He is holding courts, executing sheep stealers and cattle rustlers, regardless of whether they come from the south or the north of the border, promising war with England.
“I will have peace in the borderlands,” he says tersely. “I will not stop till I get the English out of our sheepfolds and our towers.”
“This isn’t the way to do it,” I say gently. “You cannot frighten people into peace.”
“That was the Douglas way,” he observes.
“It was.”
“Do you ever think of him?”
I smile and shake my head, as if I am deeply uninterested in Ard: “Hardly ever.”
“You know I have to make the borders safe.”
“I do, and I think you are the king that will do it. But don’t threaten Harry with war. He will only bluster back. He has more troubles in his life than he can solve. If he continues to declare against the Pope, to insult the aunt of the emperor, he will find himself named a heretic king and all the Catholic kings will be authorized to make war on him. That is when you should declare against him. Not before. And now, while he is getting a reputation so terrible that kings will shrink from him—this is the time that you should negotiate with him for whatever you want.”
“I thought you were an English princess and the Tudors would always come first,” James remarks. “You’ve changed your tune.”
“I came here to bring peace between England and Scotland, but Harry has made it impossible,” I say frankly. “Again and again I have been loyal to him, but he has not been loyal to me, nor to my sister, nor to my sister-in-law, his wife. I think he has become a man that no one can trust.”
“That’s true,” James nods.
“He has moved my sister-in-law to a little house at Bishop’s Hatfield and forbidden her daughter from seeing her. He has put a whore in my mother’s rooms. He has gone too far. I cannot support my brother, I have to cleave to my sisters. I cannot be on his side.”
James looks at me, measuring my intent. “Yet when he calls for you, you’ll go running to him.”
“Not this time,” I say. “Not ever again.”
WESTHORPE HALL, ENGLAND, AUTUMN 1532
Harry is preparing another state visit to France and is spending a fortune on gowns and jewels, horses and jousts to impress Francis of France (ransomed home but proud as ever). I have said I am too ill to go, I cannot bear the thought of it and I have such a heaviness in my belly and my bowels that I truly am too ill to face it. I couldn’t dance at such a feast, my feet would not lift. When I think of the Field of the Cloth of Gold when we were so young and so happy! I could not sail to France again with a shameless woman in the place of the true queen.
Harry does not think of taking Katherine, he has not even seen her this year. He sends her the coldest of messages and she has to move house again and go to Enfield, because so many people are visiting her that Harry is shamed. I write to her, but Charles says that I may not go. It would displease Harry too much and I have to show loyalty to him, my brother and king, before anyone else. I have to greet the Boleyn woman with the respect due to the greatest woman in the land. I don’t dare say a word against her. I do it. I do everything that Harry and Charles ask of me, with a heart like stone, and when she sends out a dish to me I pretend to eat while my stomach turns over.
She is all smiles. All smiles and glitter in Katherine’s jewels. She shines like poison.
I have not seen Katherine for ten months, not for all this year, and I used to see her almost every day. She does not write to me often, she says that there is nothing for her to say. There is this terrible gulf in my life where she used to be. It is as if she were dead, as if my brother had wiped her from the face of the earth. You will think I am exaggerating but I truly feel that Harry has killed her—as if a king could execute a queen!
At any rate, I shall not go to France with the woman Anne. None of us will. And I hear that none of the royal ladies of France will greet her. How can they? She is Harry’s mistress and her father has a title so new that no one can remember it and everyone still calls him Sir Thomas out of habit. The only companions she can command are those who support her ambition: her sister, her sister-in-law, and her mother—and the gossips say that Harry has had all three of them. They are hated all round England. She and Harry had to come home early from this year’s progress because she was booed whenever she was seen.
I swear that sometimes I wake in the morning and I forget that all this has happened. I think Harry is a handsome king new-come to his throne, Katherine a beloved queen and his most trusted advisor, and I am a girl again, and for a moment I am happy, and then I remember and I am filled with such a terrible sickness that I retch up bile as green as envy. Thank God that our dear mother died before seeing this woman sitting in her place and bringing such shame on our sister, on us and on our name.
Mary
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, WINTER 1532
Davy Lyndsay comes to court for a poetry joust. We hold a “flyting,” when one poet laughingly abuses another in a stream of extempore insults. James is witty and he has the court roaring at his abuse of his companion, complaining of everything from his terrible snoring to outrageous claims that he gets his rhymes from a book. Davy replies with a strong complaint about James’s promiscuity. I clap my hands over my ears and say that I will hear no more, but James laughs and says that Davy says no worse than the truth and that he must be married or he will repopulate the barren Marches with little Jameses.
When the laughter and poetry have finished there is dancing and Davy comes to kiss my hand and watch the dancers at my side. “He’s no worse than any young man,” I say.
“I am sorry to disagree with you,” Davy says. “But he is. Every night he rides out to visit a woman in the town or outside it, and when he doesn’t go beyond the palace walls he’s with one of the serving maids or even with one of the ladies. He’s a coney, Your Grace.”
“He’s very handsome,” I say indulgently. “And he’s a young man. I know my ladies flirt with him, how should he refuse them?”
“He should be married,” Davy says.
I nod. “I know. It’s true.”
“The Princess Mary will never do for him,” Davy says determinedly. “I am sorry to pass a comment on your family, Your Grace, but your niece will not do. Her title cannot be relied upon. Her position is not certain.”
I cannot disagree any more. Harry did not take his own legitimate daughter with him on a state visit to France; he took his bastard boy, Henry Fitzroy, and left him there on a visit with the King of France’s own children, as if he were a born prince. Nobody can be sure what title Henry Fitzroy will be given next, but Harry looks as if he is preparing him to be royal. Nobody can be sure that Princess Mary will keep her title; nobody even knows if you can take a title from a princess. No king, in the history of the world, has tried to do such a thing before.
“She was born with royal blood. Nobody can deny that.”
“Alas,” is all he says.
We are silent for a minute.
“Do you hear of your own daughter, Lady Margaret?” Davy asks gently.
“Archibald will not let her come to me. He’s put her in service to Lady Anne Boleyn.” I feel my mouth twist with contempt, and I smooth out my expression. “She is high in favor with the king her uncle. It is said to be an enviable position.”
“Young James wants to marry the French king’s daughter,” Davy remarks. “It’s been considered for years, she has a handsome dowry and it is the Auld Alliance.”
“Harry won’t like it,” I predict. “He won’t want France meddling in the affairs of Scotland.”