He gives me such joy! Even though we are entrapped by our own strategy, locked up in our own castle, it does not feel like defeat while Ard is with me. I long for the nights when he comes to my room—and he comes every night through feast day and fast, and he laughs with me and says he will have to confess lust, passion, love, and even idolatry. These are the words he says as he kisses my eyelids, the achingly hard tips of my breasts, my belly button, even my hidden sex. He loves me without hesitation, as if I am his kingdom and he is coming into his own. And I, sprawled like a whore, longing for his touch, let him say and do whatever he would like, as long as his mouth is against mine. I have become shameless, I am entranced. I had no idea that pleasure was like this, that a man could inspire such sensuality that I am hardly conscious, hardly queen, hardly a mother. I am all nerves and yearning. All day I am damp with desire. I cannot wait for nighttime and his quiet closing of my bedroom door. I cannot wait for his smile that tells me that he will come to me later. I cannot bear dawn, when we have to get up and go to chapel and put on our daytime faces and pretend that we are not wholly absorbed, wholly obsessed, with each other.
During the day I have to be queen, I have to guard like a captain and plan like a Lord Chancellor. The news is bad. Although I gave Archibald’s cousin Gavin Douglas the archbishopric of Saint Andrews, the Scots council opposed him, and, even though Harry supported my choice, the Pope denied the appointment. The Scots lords sent their army to the castle of Saint Andrews, and Gavin Douglas is besieged there, just as we are held in Stirling. It was a bad gift that I gave him as his reward on my wedding day.
Then I have Christmas letters. A long one from Mary telling me of her extraordinary jewels and the glamour of the French court. They have lavished wealth on her wedding and her marriage is a dazzling success. Charles Brandon carried her colors in the wedding joust and gossip says that her husband’s heir, Francis, has fallen in love with her, just as much as the old king Louis. She says it is true; I can almost see her simper.
It is embarrassing, he is so wildly in love with me, he says he would die for love of me. My husband the king says that I must send him away, and that he is jealous.
She writes a long inventory of what Louis has given her and how many people said that she was as beautiful as a painting, how the rich clothes suit her and how the king insists that she receive every honor. Her coronation as queen, the wealth of Paris, her ladies, her amusements . . . she goes on and on, and I turn over two or three pages barely reading the words:
You would be amazed if you could see how I am revered. The French are so silly, they say that I am beautiful as a saint, and the king says that he will have a dozen portraits painted of me but nothing will capture my looks. He says that no country in Christendom has a queen to match me, none is better loved, that every queen is jealous of me.
No, I am not jealous, I think to myself. Don’t count me among the women who wish they had your looks, your jewels, your gowns. I am going to win my country by my merits as a governor, not by being the most beautiful woman. I am a queen regnant, not a pretty doll.
Then I look at the brief note I have from Katherine.
I am sorry to have to tell you that I have lost another child. He came too early and though we thought we might have saved him, he slid away from us. He was a boy. This is my fourth dead child. God have mercy on me and spare me another day like this. Pray for me, Margaret, I beg you, and for his poor little soul. I don’t know that I can bear another loss. I don’t know how to bear this one, after all the others.
I sit by the fire with the letters in my lap, my constant awareness of the rise and fall of these two women stilled for once, my envy at bay. I don’t think I can judge which of us is in the best position: myself married for love but under siege from my own people; Mary sold into a beautiful slavery, as much a whore as any in the bathhouses of Southwark; Katherine bowing her head against the most terrible ill luck, breaking her heart every year with another loss.
A fourth dead baby? Is this possible without a curse? Would God send four tragedies to a queen that He loved? Does God refuse to raise another Tudor boy to the throne of England? Is He showing us this? Or is it Katherine who is cursed? For insisting on the death of my cousin Warwick and the boy we called Perkin, for killing my husband, an ordained monarch?
Ard comes into the room and I know that my face lights up when I see him. “Are you sitting in half darkness?” he asks, smiling. “I think we can still afford candles!” And he goes quickly and gracefully round the room, lighting the expensive wax candles one after another as if he were still my carver and devoted to my service and I were still the most beautiful queen.
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, JANUARY 1515
It was no joyful Christmas for us as newlyweds for we were surrounded by an army led by the Earl of Arran, James Hamilton, who chose me to be his king’s wife, danced at my proxy wedding and received his title when I was crowned. Now we are enemies and he has to set a siege against me in midwinter, constantly undermined by Albany, who refuses to come from France unless his ancestral home is guaranteed for him, and his title, and his lands.
“Can they not see that he will fleece them like sheep?” I demand of Archibald. He shakes his head. He is playing with James, setting up a line of nodding toys for him to move the first so that they all tumble down. They do this over and over again, while I sit at the table and read impossible demands from the lords’ council and want to scream at the distracting chatter between the two of them, and then the clatter of the toys as they fall.
There is the noise of marching feet, and a quick exchange of passwords. I jump up, always afraid now. I thought that the Douglas family would own me and keep me safe, but all I find is that their enemies are added to mine. A messenger comes in with a packet of letters.
“Will you read these?” I ask Archibald.
“If you wish,” he says unwillingly. “But shouldn’t it be you? They’re from your brother. Shall James and I go and play in the nursery tower?”
“For God’s sake, open them,” John Drummond says grimly from the shadowy corner. He has been quiet for so long that I thought he was asleep, lulled by James and Archibald’s repetitive game. “Open them and see the news. God knows it can’t get worse.”
This is no way for a lord to speak to a co-regent, but I try to nod cheerfully, and I sit on the floor beside James. “I will play with you while your lord father reads the letters,” I say.
“No,” he whines at once, and I look around for Davy Lyndsay to take him away. I can’t set up the little game to James’s liking and he starts to whimper in disappointment and asks for Ard to come back and play.
“Here, see this,” says Davy, and shows him some hand-carved skittles and a little round ball.
“Oh, go and play with that,” I say impatiently.
“Good God,” Archibald says, reading the messages. “Louis of France has died. Weakened and died.”
“Poison?” John Drummond asks.
“They’re saying exhaustion,” Archibald says, reading intently, a quiver of laughter in his voice. “Because of his beautiful young wife. The King of England writes that Francis will take the throne, and he is no friend to England. Your brother says we cannot let Albany come, he will deliver the keys of the North of England to the French.”
He reads slowly, his smooth brow furrowed. “Your brother says he will do what he can to delay Albany. But you have to reverse the council’s decision and forbid him to come.”
“How?” I say flatly. “I have spent all the gold and goods in the treasury on this siege. There is no money, and no army and no power. Your men slip away every day, we can’t hold out.”
“Write and tell your brother,” Drummond recommends. “Tell the king that you will do his bidding but if he does not want a French governor for Scotland then he has to send us money. We will hold the country independent, or as an English fief—we don’t care which—but he has to send us the money. Look! This is the best thing that could happen for us. Now he needs us. Make it clear that he has to pay us to hold Scotland for him. We can name our price.”
“But what about Mary?” I ask, as I take my place and pick up my pen to write my begging letter. “What does he say about her?”
“He says nothing.” Archibald looks through the secretary’s careful handwriting. “Oh, he says that he is sending the Duke of Suffolk, Charles Brandon, to France to bring her home, if she is not carrying the French king’s child.”
“He’s sending Brandon?” I can hardly believe my brother’s folly. He might as well give his little sister to this nobody as throw them together in the first month of her widowhood. Who did he imagine that Mary wanted when she forged the agreement that she should be free to choose a second husband? He cannot have been thinking at all.
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, APRIL 1515