I give a little gasp. “I don’t agree at all.”
“And your husband’s grandfather will have to answer for his assault on the Lyon Herald,” he goes on, his voice low and patient. “You cannot allow your new kinsmen any special favors—it destroys your reputation as a just queen.”
“He barely touched him!” I protest. “Perhaps his sleeve swept his face.”
He looks at me ruefully, his blue eyes smiling. His charm is completely self-aware; he is so beautifully mannered. “You had better think about this, Your Grace,” he says. “I cannot keep you in your place and restore your dower rents and get the government to pay you what they owe, and honor you as they should, if you do not make your new kinsmen behave as they should.”
“I must have my rents. I am practically penniless.”
“You shall have them. But your kinsmen must obey the law.”
“I am queen regent!” I exclaim.
He nods. I see now that he has an air of superiority, as if he had foreseen this conversation and prepared for it. “You are,” he says. “But—I am sorry to say—your young husband is neither royal nor courtly, and his family are known rogues.”
I am so furious, so insulted, and also—to tell the truth—so afraid, that I call Bishop Gavin Douglas and Lord John Drummond and Archibald into my privy chamber and send my ladies away so that we can whisper together.
“I don’t think we should have insisted that you were made bishop,” I confess to Gavin. “And we shouldn’t have bribed you into Dunkeld.”
“I was the best choice,” he says, quite unrepentant.
“You may be, but the parliament don’t like the Drummonds and Douglases getting everything.”
“It’s not unreasonable,” Lord Drummond says, his hand on my husband’s shoulder. “We are the natural rulers.”
“And we’re not getting everything,” Gavin adds, as if he hopes for more.
Archibald nods. “You are queen regent: the right to make Church appointments is in your hands. You cannot be commanded by others. And of course you favor my family. Who else should you favor? Who else has shown you any support?”
“You shouldn’t have struck the Lyon Herald.” I find the courage to confront John Drummond, though I quail beneath his sharp look. “I am sorry, my lord, but the duke says you will have to answer for it. I didn’t know what to reply.”
“You were there, you know it was nothing.”
“I know that you struck him.”
“You should have denied it,” he says simply.
“I have denied it! But clearly the herald has made a complaint and it is his word against yours.”
“His word against yours,” he emphasizes. “You will continue to deny it. Nobody can challenge the word of a queen.”
“But they do challenge it!” I wail, really afraid now. “I won’t get my dower rents if Albany does not think I am being a good queen. And he will take my boys into his keeping! He will take them away from me.” I put my hand over my belly. “You know I am with child. I dare not go into confinement and leave all this mess. Who will look after—” I break off. I nearly said, who will look after Archibald? “Who will look after my sons?” I correct myself.
“We will,” Lord Drummond says. “Their Douglas and Drummond kinsmen, their stepfather Archibald. And that fool Albany has made his first mistake. He insulted Lord Hume at the first moment of their meeting, so he has lost his greatest ally. Hume has come over to our side, and he will bring in the Bothwells. Soon, the lords on our side will outnumber those that called for Albany and we can throw him out of the country and send him back to France.”
This is good news, but the favor of the lords gives me neither money nor power until they vote for me in parliament. Until then, Albany has a thousand men in his train, ten thousand to follow them, French backing; and I have only the Douglas men but no money to pay them. I don’t even have money for the household; I cannot even feed my servants.
“Hadn’t you better go to your brother?” Archibald asks. “As Lord Dacre suggested? As your brother invites you? We have lost the first round here. Hadn’t you better go to England and get an army and money?”
I turn a burning look on him. “To England? And leave you? Do you want to be rid of me now?”
“My love! Of course not!” He catches up my hand and kisses it. “But think of your boys. Should you not take them to King Henry? He has invited you: go to him for your own safety. You could come back home when it is safe.”
“Go to my brother like a beggar? And walk behind Katherine like a pauper?”
He does not understand the importance of precedence. “It’s all going wrong here,” he says, as simple as a boy. “The country is splitting into clan against clan, as it used to be. You have not kept the lords in unity as your husband did. What can you do but go back to your brother? Even if you are nothing more than a dowager queen, a woman who once was queen? As long as you are safe. As long as the boys are safe. What does it matter if you walk behind the Queen of England, as long as you are safe?”
“I am damned if she eats humble pie!” His grandfather rounds on him, and makes my heart leap with pride. “Why should she? When she has everything to play for here? And where would you go? Are you sick of the fight? When you tell her to run away, where would you go? Back to Janet Stewart?”
I never thought I would hear her name again. I look from my angry councillor to my white-faced husband. “What? What is this? Who speaks of Janet Stewart?”
Archibald shakes his head. “It’s nothing,” he says. “I was thinking only of your safety. There is no need for this.” He scowls at his grandfather. “Does this help us?” he demands quietly. “All quarreling among ourselves? Are you helping me?”
“We’ll go back to Stirling,” I say suddenly. I cannot bear this. “And you will come with me, Archibald. We’ll set the castle for a siege again. We’ll protect my sons and I’ll have my baby there.” I glare at him. “Our baby,” I remind him. “Yours and mine, our first child together. There will be no talk of going to England. There will be no thought of our parting. We are married in the sight of God, once privately and once before the congregation, and we will never be parted.”
He kneels at my feet and takes my hand and crushes it to his lips. “My queen,” he says.
I bend over his bowed head and kiss the nape of his neck. His soft curly hair is warm beneath my lips; he smells clean, like a boy. He is mine and I will never leave him. “And there will be no talk of Janet Stewart of Traquair,” I whisper. “Never another word.”
There is a thunderous knocking on the door, we start apart and all look at one another. The door is swung open by my guards, and there are Albany’s men, his captain of the guard wearing his sword in the French fashion, and in his hand he has warrants of arrest, the ribbons trailing from the seals.
“What are you doing here?” I demand. I am proud that my voice does not tremble. I sound outraged because I am outraged.
“I have a warrant of arrest for John Lord Drummond, for striking the Lyon Herald, and for Gavin Douglas, wrongly named bishop, for fraudulently taking the see of Dunkeld.”
“You can’t,” I say. “I forbid it. I, the queen, forbid it.”
“The regent commanded it,” the captain explains as the guard comes into the room and leads them away, closing the door quietly behind them, leaving Archibald and me quite alone, with no one to support us. Ard raises his hand as if to protest and the captain gives him a steady look. “This is the law,” he says. “These men have broken the law. They are to be tried and sentenced. This is by order of the duke regent.”