As soon as I wake in the morning, tingling with lust, I want to see him at once. The court has learned that now we go to chapel very early and that he must be standing beside the royal chair so that I can see him, even if we cannot speak. As the priest celebrates the Mass before us I close my eyes as if in prayer but actually I am already dreaming of how he will kiss me and how he will touch me the moment that we are alone. I feel as if I am running a fever, I am so hot with desire. At breakfast, he must stand beside me to carve the ham and cold beef and now I eat slice after slice for the pleasure of having him lean towards me and slide the meat onto my plate. Sometimes his arm just brushes my shoulder and I look up at him and see his eyes on my mouth as if he too is longing for a kiss. When we ride out his horse must pace beside mine, and I want to talk only to him. Anyone else who approaches us is an interruption, and I can’t wait for them to leave. We ride our horses shoulder to shoulder, so close that our knees gently brush one against the other, and he can reach over and pat my gloved hand on the reins. I dance only with him; I cannot bear to see him partner anyone else. When the pattern of the dance turns him towards another woman and he takes her hand I feel an instant dislike for her and wonder that she can bear to attend my court and push herself forward. I have no interest in the affairs of state, I don’t even look for letters from Lord Dacre, lecturing me about what would be best for England. I have no interest in Katherine and her pregnancy, Mary and her betrothal. Especially, I don’t want to hear about Mary and her double-dealing betrothal to Louis of France. They are far away and they don’t care about me—why should I trouble myself about them? I forget my council, my country, I am even neglectful of my little boys in this burning constant urgent need to be with him—just to be with him.
This is love, and I am fascinated by it. I never knew that it felt like this, I never expected to feel this at all. I reread my romances to see if this is what the troubadours are talking about, and I command the musicians to sing songs of love and longing. I wonder if this is what Harry felt for Katherine— Can he possibly have felt like this? Was it this uncritical desire that made him overlook everything about her that grates on me? I wonder if my silly little sister Mary is in this urgent fever for Charles Brandon? Can Mary, young as she is, fool as she is, long for Charles Brandon as I long for Ard? If she does, then I really pity her—not because I have the better man (though I do), but because she is faced with renunciation and loneliness whereas I, in blessed freedom, can marry the man that I love. I could not let him go. If she feels as I do, she will not be able to let Charles Brandon go, and to marry the King of France will break her heart. Thank God, I do not have to walk that terrible path.
Instead, Archibald’s cousin the Dean of Dunblane meets us at dawn and opens the door to his chapel. I walk down the little aisle in my green gown, with my hair spread loose over my shoulders as if I were a virgin bride. Why should I not? This is just as Katherine did at her second wedding. A choirboy sings a psalm, his voice achingly sweet as the sun comes through the arched windows and falls on our feet as if to say that the path before us will be warm and golden. I laugh when I find that Ard has no ring, and I take one of my own off my right hand and he gives it back to me, putting it on my wedding finger. I don’t even think of Charles of Castile and the ruby. The dean celebrates Mass, and we share the bread, the wine, the holiness of the moment, and then we quietly leave the chapel, and I feel filled with thankfulness that he is free and I am free, that we are young and beautiful, that we are healthy and God has blessed us with desire for each other, and that is now a holy desire. I think we will be happy, deeply happy forever, and I will never envy anyone again, for I have married a young man who could have courted any woman in the world and won her favor, but he fell in love with me. He chose me for myself, he loves me for myself, not for my name or my title or my inheritance. I think he is the first person in the world to love me for myself since I lost my brother Arthur.
“God bless you,” says Archibald’s uncle Gavin Douglas, the Dean of Saint Giles, Edinburgh, and one of the greatest makars of my first husband’s court. “I would write a poem but I don’t think I could capture the joy in your face. I only wish you could have been married in a great ceremony and blessed by a bishop.”
I give him my hand and he bows over it and kisses it reverently.
“You bless me, Uncle,” I say impulsively, bowing my head, and he makes the sign of the cross over me. “There!” I say triumphantly. “And so I have been blessed by a bishop, because I will make you Archbishop of Saint Andrews.”
He bows again, hiding his delight. “I am honored, Your Grace. I will serve you, your new husband, and God.”
Archibald and I ride back to the castle and go at once to my rooms, bold as a pair of young lovers who now have nothing to hide. I am still in my first year of mourning, Ard has broken his betrothal to Janet Stewart. But it means nothing. Nothing can stand in our way. We are married, I have his ring on my finger and I may well have his child in my belly. We walk hand in hand past my astonished ladies and we close my bedroom door in their aghast faces. It is done. I have married the man I love, and Katherine of Aragon, who had to wait for years before Harry would condescend to marry her, and my sister Mary, who will be tied to a rotting lecher, can envy me from this day forward. Everything is changed. They will envy me.
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, AUGUST 1514
My council of lords dares to tell me that I have forfeited the regency. They dare to tell Archibald that they will summon him on a charge of marrying me without their consent. They even dare to say that Gavin Douglas shall not be a bishop and that I cannot make him Archbishop of Saint Andrews, since another bishop is already nominated. As if the Church places are not in my keeping! As if I have not asked Harry to support the Douglas claim! I am regent and can marry and honor whomever I wish! The council summon me—the regent! regent!—to meet with them; and Archibald and I storm south to Edinburgh filled with rage and determination that no one shall ever question me or my rights.
We wait for the council in the throne room. Deliberately, I stand before the throne with my handsome husband on my right and his grandfather John Drummond on my left. They can see the power that I have to support me now: Clan Douglas on one side, Clan Drummond on the other. But they are mutinous. They send the herald Sir William Comyn, Lyon King of Arms, to announce that they are rejecting me as regent and taking my sons away from my keeping. At the first moment that he is announced with the weighty respect commanded by all heralds, and he comes in, his standard above him, I feel a sudden pang of dread. I am in far more trouble than I dreamed possible. I knew that the council would not like my marriage, but I did not think that they would turn on me. I did not think that they would take my title, my sons, everything. I thought this was my triumph; now, suddenly, it is my ruin.
The herald addresses me: “My lady Dowager Queen, mother to His Grace our king . . .”
There! It is said. He should be addressing me as queen regent but he denies me. Archibald’s grandfather, blazing with rage, steps forward and punches him full in the mouth before he can say another treasonous word.
It is the most terrible act. A herald’s body has to be sacred. He is the untouchable go-between from one warring party to another. Chivalry itself defends him. Sir William stumbles and nearly goes down but one of the lords catches and steadies him as Archibald cries out: “No, sir! No! Not a herald!”
The herald is terribly shaken. They help him to his feet and he confronts Lord Drummond. “This is dishonorable,” he chokes. “Shame on you!”
Archibald leaps in to support his grandfather, as if he is going to push the Lord Lyon down again. “You don’t cry shame on us!”
I scream, “Archibald, no!” and grab him by the arm. Lord Drummond yells “Angus!” like a battle cry, and flings open the door to my inner chamber and the three of us scramble from the room, leaving the lords and the herald and the Lord Chancellor completely aghast. We pitch into my private room and I fall into Ard’s arms and the two of us cling to each other, crying and laughing at the same time at the terrible thing that has just happened, at the truly terrible thing that his grandfather has just done.
“His face!” Archibald still whoops with laughter, but I am steadying and it does not seem so funny any more. I turn and see the black anger in John Drummond, as he flexes his hand where he hit the Lord Lyon. Ard is still laughing.
“My lord,” I say cautiously.
Drummond looks at me. “They will arrest me for that,” he says. “My temper got the better of me.”
“When you hit him!” Archibald crows.
“Hush,” his grandfather says irritably. “That was wrong of me. It’s no laughing matter.”
Ard tries to look serious but an irrepressible giggle bursts out of him. I am not laughing now. I am afraid. The lords will raise this as a serious complaint against us, and I will have to write to Harry with some kind of account of this that smooths the roughness over, and makes us look less like rash fools, brawling in our very first council, as my lords turn against me and defy my authority.