We hold a magnificent joust to celebrate the birth and the undeniable champion is a mystery knight called “the wild man.” He jousts with the white knight—the Sieur de la Bastie, the handsome French-born knight who fought before me at my wedding. Once again, Antoine delights the crowd and all the ladies with his ice-white armor and the white scarf streaming on his lance. He and James have a bet about the proper treatment of a charger’s feet, and James loses and gives the chevalier a cask of wine to wash his horse’s hooves. The greatest joust of the tournament is when the white knight comes against the wild man. There’s a wonderful series of broken lances and then we all scream with excitement when the wild man challenger takes off his helmet and throws down his disguise—and it is my husband, who has fought all comers and defeated everyone! He is delighted with himself, with me, and with our son, who is named James, Prince of Scotland and the Isles and Duke of Rothesay, so Marion Boyd’s Alexander can step back into half-bred obscurity and play at being archbishop and the bastard James can settle for being an earl.
Everything should be perfect since our marriage is visibly blessed by God, except that my husband doubts, or says that he doubts, my father’s good faith. Scottish reivers raid the lands of the English farmers, stealing sheep and cows and sometimes robbing travelers, and my father rightly complains that this is a breach of the Treaty of Perpetual Peace. James counters with my father’s treatment of Scots merchant shipping, and both of them endlessly write claim and counterclaim about the unreliable justice and constant warring of the borderlands.
My father expected my marriage to bring a peace that would last forever between England and Scotland, but I don’t know how I am supposed to bring it about. James is not a boy to become besotted with an older experienced king, as Mary tells me Harry was with Philip of Castile. James is a grown man, an older man, who will not submit himself to the authority of my father. He would never dream of asking for my advice, and when I offer it—even though I am a princess of England—he takes no notice. I say with great dignity that as a princess of England, Queen of Scotland, and mother of the next King of Scotland, I have thoughts on this, and many matters, and I expect them to be regarded.
And he bows low and says: “God save the Queen!”
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, CHRISTMAS 1507
I am with child again by Christmas and it is only this triumph that helps me to be serene, as serene as a madonna, when I hear the news that Mary my sister is officially betrothed to Charles of Castile. She is to have a dowry of two hundred fifty golden crowns, and his grandfather the emperor sent her a ruby so big that some fool wrote a poem about it. She was betrothed by proxy and made a speech in perfect French, and she takes the title Princess of Castile.
She writes to me herself to boast of her triumph, in a letter so ill written and spelled so wildly that I take nearly an hour to understand it.
I will be married when the prince is fourteen, seven years from now, and I don’t mind waiting at all, though it is a lifetime, because I am to stay at home and learn Spanish. It’s a tremendously difficult language but Katherine says that she will teach me, I think I should pay her for being my tutor as she lives very humbly at court, her parents don’t support her and we won’t pay her widow’s dower until they have paid her dowry. But I am not allowed to see her very often or give her anything.
I am to have a very grand wedding but, until then, I will stay at home. I shall have my title at once, I have it now! I am Princess of Castile and they are sewing my coronet onto all my things. I shall precede my lady grandmother and of course Katherine on every occasion—you can imagine how my lady grandmother likes that! She gave me a tremendous talk about false pride and told me to look at Katherine who is a dowager princess and yet is humbled to dust every day. When you come on a visit you can see my ruby. It is the biggest stone I have ever seen in my life, you could drown a cat with it.
My love, Mary
It is hardly worth the effort of spelling out this combination of triumphing over her sister-in-law and bragging of her own wealth, but I do not let it disturb me. My comfort is that I am a queen, and will continue to outrank her for years; but it is very hard to remember to be as serene as a madonna when she sends me the poem about her ruby, and a drawing of my father and my brother Prince Harry witnessing her triumph, standing on a dais under an awning of cloth of gold. The English ambassador told James that everyone ate off gold plate. Gold plate for Mary! The idea is quite ridiculous.
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1508
I think that this has always been an unlucky castle for me. I had my first quarrel with my husband here, and though I emptied it of his bastards, I often think of the children whose home it was, and the alchemist in his tower. I feel as if I miss them every time I enter under the heavy portcullis and climb up the sloping courtyard.
And it is here that the worst thing happens. The worst thing that can possibly happen. My baby, James, Prince James of Scotland and the Isles, Duke of Rothesay, dies in his sleep, in his royal cradle. Nobody knows why; nobody knows if he could have been saved. I am no longer the mother of the next King of Scotland. My belly is full with the next child; but I have an empty cradle, and I think I will never stop crying.
My husband comes to me and I am reminded of the to and fro between my mother and father’s rooms when Arthur died, so I look up when James comes in, and I think he is going to comfort me.
“I am so very unhappy,” I sob at him. “I wish I was dead myself.”
“Out,” he says shortly to my ladies, and they melt as if they are breath on cold air. “I have to ask you to be brave as I need to know something.” He is frowning, just as he is when he listens to someone explaining something mechanical, as if I am a puzzle to be solved, not a wife to be comforted with gifts.
“What?” I say, catching my breath.
“Do you think it possible that you are cursed?”
I sit up in my bed, my sobs silenced, and I stare at him, wordless.
“Your father had three sons and two of them are dead. Your brother never got a bairn, though he died at fifteen. You were barren for nearly three years and now our son has died. It’s a reasonable question.”
I wail out loud, and pitch into my pillow, both furious and heartbroken. This is typical of him, like his interest in what makes the teeth rot in a beggar’s head. He is fascinated by everything, however disgusting. I don’t know why Arthur died of the Sweat that spared Katherine. How should I know? I don’t even think of Edmund, my little brother who died before he was weaned. I don’t know why Arthur did not have a child with Katherine, I don’t like to think what she meant by “Alas, it never happened for us” and I am not going to discuss it now, when I am heartbroken and people should be comforting me, and diverting me, not coming into my room and asking me terrible questions in a cold voice.
“Because Prince Richard himself told me that the Tudors were cursed,” he goes on.
I clap my hands over my ears as if to ensure that I am deaf to these blasphemies. It is incredible to me that a husband so kind, so gentle, should come to me at this time, at the very pinnacle of my grief, and say things that are like the bad spells of his alchemist, which will translate life to death, gold to dross, everything into dark matter.
“Margaret, I need you to answer me,” he says, not raising his voice, as if he knows that I can hear everything through my fists, through my pillow.
“You mean Perkin Warbeck, I suppose,” I say, sullenly lifting my face.
“We all know that was not his name,” he says, as if it is a simple fact. “We all know that is the name that your father pinned on him. But he was Prince Richard, and your uncle. He was one of the two boy princes that Richard III put in the Tower of London, that your father says were happily never seen again. I know it. Richard came here to me before we invaded England. He was my dearest friend; we lived together as brother kings. I gave him my cousin in marriage, your lady-in-waiting Katherine Huntly. I rode out to battle at his side. And he told me that whoever tried to kill him and his brother Edward, was cursed.”
“You don’t know he was a prince at all,” is all I can stammer. “Nobody knows that. My lady grandmother will not allow anyone to say it. It’s treason to say it. And Katherine Huntly never, ever speaks of her husband.”
“I do know it. He told me himself.”