“Let me see him. Let me see you.”
I rise up from my great state bed, for the little one I used in childbirth is cleared away, and now I rest under curtains of cloth of gold and sleep on pillows under a headboard carved and gilded with the thistle and the rose. I beckon the rocker to bring the baby to the screen and I stand beside her, in my beautifully embroidered robe, and spread the lace on the baby’s gown for his father to admire. James’s dark intent face is bent to his small son; he does not notice the Mechlin lace at all, though it cost a small fortune. The baby is asleep, his dark eyelashes laid on pale cheeks. He is tiny. I had forgotten how tiny a newborn baby is. He would fit into one of his father’s broad hands; he is like a little pearl in a sea of the finest silk.
“He is well.” James says it like a command.
“He is.”
“We will name him James.”
I bow my head.
“And you are in no pain?”
I think I would have died after my first birth if James had not interceded with the saint. This time too was a hard birth but the most sacred girdle of Our Lady helped me in my ordeal. I will never forget that Katherine shared it with me, that she thought of me and trusted me with her greatest treasure to help me to this joy. “There is pain, but the relic eased the worst of it.”
He crosses himself. “I shall stay up all night praying; but you must drink some birth ale and sleep.”
I nod.
“And when he is christened we will have days of jousting and feasting to celebrate his birth.”
“A joust as good as . . . ?”
He knows I am thinking of the tournament they had at Westminster when Harry’s son Henry was born. “Better,” he says. “And I will get them to send your inheritance from England so you can wear your jewels. So sleep well, and get well soon, my dear.”
I go back to my bed. I take one fold of the curtain in my hand so that I can feel the threads of gold and I close my eyes and imagine the jewels of my inheritance as I go to sleep.
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, AUTUMN, 1512
I am too ill for a great celebration of our son and heir. In any case, James is desperately trying to keep the peace between the kings of Christendom who have all forgotten their duty to God. It is impossible for him to call the monarchs of Europe to a crusade if they insist on quarreling among themselves. The worst offender, obviously, is Katherine of Aragon’s father, Ferdinand.
I write to Katherine, as a sister and a sister-queen, asking her to influence Henry for peace. It is not easy for me to write her a long letter in my own hand as I am with child again and terribly tired this time. The baby sits heavily and low and I suffer from aches in my back and shooting pains in my belly. But James insists that I appeal to Katherine, telling me that we have to persuade my brother and his wife not to destroy the peace of Christendom, that Harry should be going to the Holy Land with James and not invading France with Ferdinand. “Tell her that I am afraid of sin,” he urges me. “Tell her everything. Tell her you are with child again and that I have to go on crusade to fulfill my promise, to keep you safe.”
Nobody cares for peace as my husband does. Nobody else has his driving desire to go on crusade. The sorrowful thing is that he cannot even tell them why he wants to go on crusade so badly. He cannot trust his brother kings with the story of his sin, or his fears of a curse on the Tudors.
When I lose my baby, a little girl who comes before her time in November too small to live, I share his urgency. He is right, I know it. I am convinced that there is sin to be expiated and none of us—not me, nor Katherine, nor even my little sister Mary—will be able to feel safe in the future of our children until Jerusalem is back in Christian hands, the curse is lifted from the Tudor line, and James is forgiven his sins.
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1513
But nothing will stop my brother from invading France. He will not even cancel his plans for fear of a war with my husband on his Northern border. I am insulted at the suggestion that the perpetual peace created in honor of my marriage could be broken; Harry just sends an emissary to my husband to order James not to invade England while Harry is hell-bent on invading France.
There is no point in sending a man to speak so to us. James would never stoop to act against the rules of chivalry, he would never take up arms first, but he is in alliance with the French and they have promised to pay him the cost of any punitive raid and, even more, to finance an entire crusade when they have finished with Harry. My brother is a fool to make war on the French—of course the first thing that they are going to do is suborn his neighbors to rise up against him. Why can he not see that the future of these islands is to live in peace, one with another? My baby son is his heir! Is he going to risk war with his heir’s father? Is he going to make war on his own sister’s country and on her husband?
James spends all of Lent in the monastery. Unlike my brother—who is so ostentatious in his theology studies—or Katherine, his wife, always draped in crucifixes, my husband is a genuinely spiritual man. So Doctor Nicholas West, hailed as a peacemaker and a cunning diplomat, makes the long journey from London and finds that my devout husband is missing, and he has to deal with me instead.
All dinner, which is lean fare, for this is the very last day of Lent, he speaks of how wonderfully tall Harry has grown and how handsome he has become. He almost makes the slip of saying that he takes after our mother’s family, the famously beautiful Plantagenets, but he manages to stop himself in time and refer to Tudor physique. This is ridiculous, as my father and grandmother were both dark and spare, mean with their smiles and hopelessly lacking in charm. Katherine, too, is apparently beyond beautiful and now she is blooming. I wonder if she is with child again, but I cannot ask Doctor West. Privately, I wonder if she will carry any baby to full term. Doctor West tells me that everyone praises her beauty and her health, her certain fertility. I nod; they always do. It means nothing.
Doctor West boasts that Henry is taking an interest in governing, as if this should not be his principal duty. I roll my eyes and don’t say that my husband lives for his country. He too is a composer and poet and a great prince, but he does not waste his time like my brother does. Then Doctor West praises the ships that Harry is building. Now I do interrupt, and I tell him about those my husband has designed and planned, and that the Great Michael is the biggest ship at sea.
I am afraid that we bicker then, a little, as if he thinks I am boasting of the greatness of my own country of Scotland. As it is Lent and there is no music or dancing I tell him that we are a devout court and that we go to chapel after dinner, and we part company with very little joy.
It is no better when we have the feast of Easter, though it is good to be able to eat meat again. And on the second day of Eastertide we almost come to blows as Doctor West tells me bluntly that Harry is depending upon me to honor my birthright as an English princess by ensuring that James keeps the peace.
“You owe him this loyalty,” he says pompously. “You owe the love of a sister to him and to your sister-queen.”
“And what about what England owes me?” I demand. “Have you brought my jewels? My inheritance?”
He looks a little embarrassed. “These are matters of state,” he says. “Not for discussion between me and a royal lady.”