I can see now that it has rubbed him raw. It is barbed and it grazes his skin every time he makes a move. The skin is rough and scarred around his waist; he must have worn this for years. He has been in constant irritating discomfort for years as every movement he makes scratches his skin.
“This is a cilice,” he says. “You must have seen one before. You who knows so much of the world that you see your husband’s cock on your wedding night, and already you know all about it?”
I giggle a little. “I didn’t mean that. But what is the cilice for?”
“It’s to remind me of my sin,” he says. “When I was young, about your age, I did something very stupid, something very wrong. I did something that will send me to hell. I wear it to remind me that I am stupid and that I am a sinner.”
“If you were my age then nobody can blame you,” I assure him. “You can just confess. Confess and be given a penance.”
“I can’t be forgiven just because I was young,” he says. “And don’t you think that either. You can’t be forgiven because you are young or because you are royal or in your case because you are a woman and your mind is less steady than a man’s. You are a queen; you have to hold yourself to the highest of standards. You have to be wise, you have to be faithful, your word has to be your bond, you have to answer to God, not to a priest who might absolve you. No one can absolve you for stupidity and sin if you are royal. You have to make sure that you never commit stupidity or sin.”
I look at him, a little aghast, as he towers above me in my bridal chamber, his pizzle standing up and ready, a great chain cutting into his waist, stern as a judge.
“Do you have to wear it now?” I ask. “I mean, now?”
He gives a little laugh. “No,” he says, and he bends his head, unlinks it and removes it. He comes to the bed and gets in beside me.
“It must be better to take it off,” I say, guiding him to the thought that he might lay it aside forever.
“There is no reason that you should be scratched for my sins,” he says gently. “I will take it off when I am with you. There is no reason that this should hurt you at all.”
It does not hurt because he is gentle and quick and he keeps his weight off me—he is not clumsy like a stallion in the field but deft and neat. There is something very pleasant about being stroked all over, like a cat on someone’s lap, and his hands go everywhere on me, behind my ears and in my hair and down my back and between my legs, as if there was nowhere that he could not turn my skin into silk and then into cream. It has been a long day and I feel dizzy and sleepy and there is no pain at all, more a rather surprising intrusion, and then a sort of warm stirring, and just when it starts to get heavy and pushing, and too much, it is finished and I am left feeling nothing but warm and petted.
“That’s it?” I ask, surprised, when he gives a sigh and then comes carefully away and lies back on the pillow.
“That’s it,” he says. “Or at any rate, that’s it for tonight.”
“I thought it hurt and there was blood,” I say.
“There is a little blood,” he says. “Enough to show on the bedsheets in the morning. Enough for Lady Agnes to report to your grandmother; but it should not hurt. It should be a pleasure, even for a woman. Some physicians think there has to be pleasure to make a child, but I doubt that myself.”
He gets out of bed and picks up his chain belt again.
“Do you have to put that on?”
“I do.” He clips it on and I see his little grimace as the metal scratches against his sore skin.
“What did you do that was so very bad?” I ask, as if he might tell me a story before I go to sleep.
“I led rebel lords against my father the king,” he answers, but he is not smiling and this is not a pleasant story at all. “I was fifteen. I thought he was going to murder me and put my brother in my place. I listened to the lords and I led their army in a treasonous rebellion. I thought that we would capture him and he would rule with better advisors. But when he saw me he did not advance; he would not march against his own son. He was more faithful a father to me than I was a son to him, and so the rebels and I won the battle, and he ran away, and they caught and killed him.”
“What?” I am jolted from sleep by the horror of this story.
“Yes.”
“You rebelled against your father and killed him?” This is a sin against order, against God and against his father. “You killed your own father?”
His shadow on the wall behind him leaps as my bedside candle gutters. “God forgive me, yes,” he says quietly. “And so there is a curse on me as a rebel, a usurper and a man who killed my own king: a son who killed his own father. I am a regicide and a patricide. And I wear this so I never forget to suspect the motives of my allies, and when I make war I always think who may be killed by accident. I am deep in sin. I will never be able to expiate it.”
The bed ropes creak as he gets into bed beside me, this king killer, this murderer. “Can you not go on pilgrimage?” I ask faintly. “Can you not go on crusade? Can the Holy Father not dispense for your sin?”
“I hope to do so,” he says quietly. “This country has never been peaceful enough for me to safely leave, but I would like to go on crusade. I hope to go to Jerusalem one day—that would wash my soul clean.”
“I didn’t know,” I say quietly. “I didn’t know anything about this.”
He shrugs and pulls the covers up over his belly, spreading himself out in the bed, feet to both corners, arms folded across his broad chest, as if all the bed is his and I must fit into one corner, or mold myself around him.
“Your own father led a rebellion against a crowned ordained king,” he says, as if it is not the most terrible thing to do. “And he married your mother against her will, and he killed her kinsmen, young men of royal blood. To take the throne and to hold it, you sometimes have to do terrible things.”
I let out a little squeak of protest. “No, he did not! Not any of those things, or at any rate, not like that!”
“Sin is sin,” the murderer tells me, and then he goes to sleep.
The next morning is the best day of my life. It is a tradition that the Scots kings give their brides their dower lands the morning after the wedding, and I go into James’s privy chamber where he and I sit either side of a heavy table as he signs over the deeds of one enormous forest and one great castle after another until I know that I am indeed as wealthy as any queen. I am happy and the court is happy for me. They too have gleaned gifts at my harvest. James Hamilton, who negotiated the marriage treaty, is to be Earl of Arran, a title created for him in reward for his work and to acknowledge his kinship to the king. All my ladies receive gifts, all the Scots lords are given money and some of them get titles.
Then the king turns to me, and says with a slight smile: “I am informed that you don’t like my beard, Your Grace. This too can be at your command. Behold, I am a willing Samson. I will be shorn for love.”
He has surprised me. “You will?” I say. “Who told you? I never said anything about it.”
“You would rather I kept it long?” He strokes the great bush of it from his chin to his belly.
“No! No!” I shake my head and this makes him laugh again.
He turns and nods to one of his companions and the man opens the door to the presence chamber. All the people outside peep in to see what their betters are doing, as a servant comes in with a bowl and a jug, linen, and a great pair of golden scissors.
At once my ladies laugh and clap their hands, but I feel awkward and I am glad when the door is shut and the petitioners and visitors can’t see us. “I don’t know what you mean to do. Can’t we send for a barber?”
“You do it,” he says teasingly. “You don’t want my beard, you take it off. Or are you afraid?”
“I’m not afraid,” I say boldly.
“I think you are,” he says, his smile gleaming through the fox brush. “But Lady Agnes will help you.”
I glance at her in case this is not allowed, but she is smiling and laughing.
“May I?” I say doubtfully.