We pass laws, we issue commands. Soldiers returning from Flodden must be supported, but they must not steal and rape. Orphans must be provided for. But there are not enough lords to enforce the laws and the good men who rode with them are dead.
It is a dark council. But I have one piece of good news for them. “I must inform you, my lords, that I am with child,” I say quietly, my eyes on the table. Of course this should be done by an announcement by herald, from a queen to her royal husband: but nothing is as it should be.
There is an embarrassed murmur of sympathy and congratulation from the lords but old Bell the Cat does not respond as a lord but as a father. He puts his hand over mine, though he should not touch a royal person, and he looks at me with rough sympathy. “God bless you, poor little bairn,” he says shockingly. “And God bless you that James has left us something to remember him by. And are you due in the spring?”
I gasp at his familiarity, and the three ladies seated behind my chair rise to their feet and come forward as if to shield me from rudeness. Someone’s head goes up and someone says a short angry word, but then I see that there are tears in the earl’s eyes and I realize that he is not thinking of me as a queen, or an untouchable English princess, but like one of his own, one of the many Scots widows who will have children in the cradle and babies in the womb and no husband coming home to help them ever again.
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, CHRISTMAS 1513
We have a quiet Christmas. I have no money to spend on feasting and dances, and no one is in the mood for a celebration. The court is in mourning, still shocked by the loss of so many men. There is no handsome king to call for music or wine, and there is no money to pay for either.
The old advisor, the Earl of Angus, retires to his castle, perched on a cliff at Tantallon, and dies at Whithorn to the sound of calling gulls. The title goes to his grandson, a young man in my household who serves as my carver, and I have lost another experienced man. My council is divided between those who would like to make peace with England, our dangerous neighbor, and those who will never forgive the English for our losses and long to take French money to make war on them for our revenge.
But we have one visitor who makes the arduous journey north from London, traveling slowly through the mud and the ice, struggling through the snowdrifts, rising late in the dark mornings, having to find shelter in the dark afternoons. Friar Bonaventure Langley brings me the condolences of my sister-in-law, as if all my troubles were not made by her. Incredibly, Katherine, knowing that I am widowed, knowing that I am with child, knowing that I am alone in a dangerous kingdom with a little boy in my keeping, knowing that I am penniless and heartbroken, thinks that the most helpful thing she can do is to send me a confessor.
Gently, he takes my hands; kindly, he signs the cross over my bowed head. I kiss the crucifix he offers me as he helps me to rise, and then he says: “Can you assure me, daughter, that he really is dead? There is a fearsome rumor in England and abroad that the King of Scots is alive. The queen must know—she has promised her husband that she will discover the truth.”
I feel a wave of nausea and bile rises into my mouth. I put my hand to my face and swallow it down like grief. “She sent you all this way to ask me this? In the steps of the army who killed him?”
“She promised the King of England that it was done. She has a body. She has to know for sure that it is the right body.”
What a ghoul this woman is.
“He’s dead,” I say bitterly. “Oh, reassure her. Set her loving heart at rest. She has not boasted to her husband without reason. She didn’t steal the wrong corpse. She killed my husband and half the nobility of Scotland. He’s dead all right. She can set her tender heart at peace. Make sure you thank her for her kind inquiry.”
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1514
In the cold dark months of the new year, as my belly broadens, I grow more and more weary of the lords of my council, more and more tired of their suspicion of me, confined to my rooms by the darkness and storms of snow before I am confined by childbirth. I write to my sisters—for who else do I have in all the world?—weeping a little with self-pity, in case this is the last they ever hear of me:
Dear Sisters, Katherine and Mary,
I am writing to you as I go into confinement, conscious that life is uncertain and children are born into sorrow. If I should not survive this, then I beg the two of you to take care of my boy and my new baby if it lives. There is no one here that I can trust more than the two of you, who, I know, love me and mine, whatever has passed between our countries.
Mary, as my younger sister, I require you to ensure that my son is raised as a King of Scotland and that he is kept safe from his enemies. Katherine, as my sister twice over, I require you to ensure that my son inherits the kingdom his father left him and whatever else is his by right.
If I live, I shall hope to serve the two of you as a dear sister and trusted ally. And if I live, I hope to receive my lady grandmother’s jewels and the rest of my inheritance.
God bless you both,
Your sister,
Margaret
With no father to pray for my baby’s safety, with no king to go on pilgrimage or promise a crusade, it is a long, painful birthing and no sign of any help from God; but at the end of it I have a boy, another boy for the Stewart house, and I name him Alexander. Last time, James insisted on coming to see me, breaking all the rules of the confinement chamber. Last time he took me to his bed the moment that I was churched, ignoring feast days and fast days and the commands of the Church, desperate to give me another child before he had to leave for war. But this time no husband comes to the screen in the confinement room, no impatient father demands to see his son. This time I lie alone at night, the baby in the nursery next door, listening to the quiet squeak of the rocking chair of the night nurse. This time I lean back on cool pillows and know there will be no tap at the door and no bobbing candle as the king comes to visit. This time I am alone, I am very alone. I really cannot bear to be so alone.
I write to my brother, Harry, who has returned in triumph from France to find that Katherine, his wife, can kill a king and steal his body but not bring a healthy child to full term. Apparently she lost a son while Harry was away at war. I am sorry for her, but I am not surprised. I don’t see how any woman who could send the bloodstained coat of a kinsman as a symbol of triumph could be woman enough to bear a child. How can Katherine be in a state of grace? How can God forgive her for her savagery? Surely He must love the widow more than the murderer. No wonder that He gives me a strong boy and Katherine gets a dead child. What else does she deserve? I hope she never gets a baby. I hope she fails to give Harry a live boy since she reveled in giving him a dead king.
My sister Mary writes me a letter of congratulations. She spends but a moment of her misspelled crisscrossed letter on the birth of my child, she is so full of her own news. Charles Brandon—Henry’s great friend and companion—has been made master of horse; Charles Brandon rode with Harry to France and never left his side through danger and battle, and was so engaging to the Archduchess Margaret at Flanders that everyone says he will marry her. They say that this is a disgrace for such a noble lady but Mary does not think so.
Do you think so? Do you not think it would be a wonderful thing to marry for love? If you were Archduchess Margaret, would you be able to resist him? For he is the most handsome man in England and the bravest and the best jouster.
I am very glad to know that you have had a son, your letter made my cry so much that Charles Brandon said that my tears were like sapphires in a river and that a brave knight would want to drink from such a stream.