I reply briefly to her:
Of course, the archduchess, like all noble ladies, must marry for the benefit of her family and the safety of her country to the choice of her father or guardian. And anyway, I believe that Charles Brandon is betrothed already?
Then I take up a page and write to Katherine. I spend some time on the letter: it is a masterpiece of spite. I say that I am grieved, deeply grieved, that she has lost yet another child. I wish she too had the happiness of a newborn son, another son. I tell her that he is to be called Alexander and he will carry the traditional title of the second son of Scotland: Duke of Ross. I remark (in case it has slipped her murderer’s mind), that this is all I have left of my husband.
It was a long birth but he is a strong baby. His little brother, our king, is well also. I am so glad to have two sons, my two little heirs. I do hope that you, Queen of England and trusted advisor to the king, will work for peace between our two kingdoms for the sake of myself—the king’s sister—and my two little boys—his nephews and heirs.
I am not surprised that she does not have the gall to reply to this, but Harry sends a message to me by the Warden of the Marches, Thomas Lord Dacre, the man who bundled the body of the King of Scots onto a cart as the spoils of war, the man who is destroying the peace of the kingdom, gnawing on the border castles like a dog on a bone. My brother gives me a warning that the French are going to send John Stuart, Duke of Albany, my husband’s French-born cousin—apparently to help me, but actually to rule Scotland in my place. Henry demands that I refuse entry to the Duke of Albany, and ensure that he gains no power.
“How?” I ask John Drummond, the justice-general, a great Scots lord, who has brought this letter from Edinburgh and is seated beside me at dinner. “How exactly does he think I am to do this?”
The young Earl of Angus carves a pheasant for us with nonchalant skill and places a beautiful slice of meat before me, his queen, and before his grandfather. John Drummond smiles at me. “That’s not a question he has to answer. He only has to give the command. That’s the joy of being a king.”
“It’s not the joy of being a queen,” I retort. “I cannot collect my rents and my tenants refuse to pay. Half my stewards and servants are dead anyway. I cannot send a guard to collect my money as I cannot pay the guard; and without money and a great household I cannot command the country.”
“You will have to sell the king’s ship,” Drummond says.
I sigh at the thought of the Great Michael going to the French. “I have done so already.”
“And if the Crown has no money, then you must secure the treasury,” he says quietly. “For yourself. The little king’s household has to be guarded.”
I flush. This is theft—royal theft—but it is theft all the same. “I have done so,” I say. “I keep the keys, nobody can draw any gold without my consent.”
His slow smile acknowledges that I have acted rightly, if not legally. “What about the lords who agreed to rule with you? Do they have keys?”
“There’s only one key, not six.”
Again I see the little gleam at my ruthlessness. “Aye, well, that was well done. We can explain it when the council find out.”
“They won’t like it. They don’t like being ruled by a woman.”
He pauses for a moment. “Perhaps you would be well advised to take another husband?”
“My Lord Drummond—I have not yet been a year widowed. I have just come out from confinement. My husband appointed me regent and told me that I should rule Scotland alone.”
“But he wasn’t to know the difficulties you would face in council. I don’t think anyone could have imagined it. God knows, it is a different country without him.”
“There’s the emperor,” I remark, thinking of the great men of Europe who are seeking a wife. “Not that I can marry for a year. And the King of France has just lost his wife.”
“So you have been thinking? Fool that I am! Of course you have.”
“I had no one to talk to in confinement, and I have long dark nights alone. Of course I consider my future. I know that I will be expected to marry again.”
“You will, and your brother will want to advise you. He’ll want you to marry for the advantage of England. He won’t want the little King of Scotland to have a stepfather who is his enemy. He would forbid you to marry the King of France, for instance.”
“If my sister Mary married Charles of Castile, and I married Louis of France, then I would be the greater queen,” I remark. “And if I were to be Queen of France, then I would be the equal of Katherine.”
“Superseding your sisters is not important. What matters more is that Scotland has a powerful ally, not which of you has the bigger crown.”
“I know, I know,” I say a little irritably. “But if you had seen Katherine of Aragon when she married my brother Prince Arthur, you would understand that I never want to come second to her—” I break off, remembering the bloodstained coat. “Now more than ever.”
“Aye, I understand it well enough. But think again, Your Grace. If you married one of these distant kings, you’d have to go and live in Burgundy or in France, and the council would keep your boys in Scotland. On the other hand, if you married a Scots nobleman, then you’d still be Queen of Scots, you’d still be regent, you’d still have your title and your fortune, you’d live with your sons, and yet you’d have someone to keep you warm at night and safe in your castles.” He pauses, looking at my thoughtful face. “And you’d be his master,” he adds. “You’d be his wife, but you’d still be his queen.”
I look down the dining hall at my court, the mixture of the wild and the cultured. The highlanders who cut their meat with their daggers and eat it off the points of their knives, the young men who have been raised in France and use the new forks and have napkins tossed over their shoulders to wipe their fingertips. Those who eat at the trestle tables from a common bowl, arguing in broad Erse, and the lords from the distant islands and mountains who come to court very seldom and sit with their households, proudly ignoring each other, speaking their own incomprehensible language.
“Yes, but there’s no one,” I say desolately to myself. “There is no one I can trust.”