We leave at first light and I climb wearily onto the horse behind him. The touch of his jacket against my cheek comforts me like an embrace. The scent of him, the glimpse of his profile when he looks back and smiles at me and says, “Are you all right?”—all these things make me feel treasured and protected by him.
I push disloyal thoughts to the back of my mind. I will not think that we are going to William Hume because Ard does not know what else to do, and, even worse, that if Dacre has been paying the border lords to rebel, was he paying my husband, too? Was he paying the Douglases before I married Ard? Did I marry Dacre’s spy?
There is no road, there is no lane. There is a track wide enough for a single man riding alone from village to village; but little more than that, and some of the way we ride across fields, the crop standing in stooks. We know the direction only by keeping the sea cliffs on our left and our faces to the south. The skies arch above us, it is enormous countryside, and when I look up I can see the fields rolling away to the distant horizon, to the distant hills. Archibald knows the land for miles all around his castle and after that we take up a lad from every village we pass to guide us to the next.
I go into a daze of tiredness and pain, and I fall asleep against my husband’s back, clinging to him and moaning a little at a new ominous pain in my hip, like something grinding into the very bone.
I wake to see a horseman coming towards us, his mount muddied to the shoulders and sweat creaming his withers and neck. “Who is it?” I demand fearfully.
“One of mine,” Archibald reassures me, and jumps down from the saddle and goes to talk with him.
When he comes back to me his young face is grim. “We can’t stay at Blackadder Castle,” he says flatly. “Albany has raised a troop and is coming down the road from Edinburgh for you. We’re going to have to head for the border.” He pauses. “Dacre was right, we should have gone to England straight away. Albany has sworn he will recapture you and he is mustering an army.”
“An army?” I say, and my voice trembles. “He is leading an army after me?”
“Forty thousand men,” Archibald says tightly. “We can do nothing against such a force. Blackadder wouldn’t hold, we’re safe nowhere but over the border.”
“Forty thousand?” I repeat in a shriek. “Forty thousand? Why would he send so many? Why would he come himself? If he just agreed to my demands I would return to my sons in peace!”
“We’re past that,” Archibald says bluntly. “That’s what the forty thousand shows. It’s war. It’s not you and him trying to come to agreement—it’s not a private quarrel—you have split the nation. The army of the governor will set siege to the Lord Chamberlain’s castle if you are inside.” He turns to his horse and rests his head against its neck as if he would weep. “It’s the very thing that your husband prevented. It’s the very thing he never wanted: Scotland divided on itself, a war of brother against brother; and I have helped to bring it about. I have led you into danger, I have left your sons in danger, and I have set the stage for a whole new battle.”
“It’s not our fault,” I say stoutly. I snap my fingers for a groom to lift me down from the saddle, ignoring the shooting pain that goes from hip to toes, clinging to the footrest of the saddle with my hands so that my knees do not give way beneath me. “If they had accepted my rule—”
“It is our fault,” he insists. “If you had been more amenable to Albany when he came, or if you had been fairer to the Scots lords, if we had waited before marrying, if we had asked for their consent . . .”
“Why should I ask for consent?” I demand furiously. “My sister Mary married who she pleased and my brother forgave her in a moment. Why should Mary marry the man she loves and you—my own husband!—tell me that I should be bound where she is free, that I should be less of a princess than her! That I should be a lonely widow but she can celebrate her second wedding the moment she steps out of her widow’s confinement? How can you tell me that Mary can be happy and I cannot?”
“Nobody but you cares about Mary!” he shouts at me, before everyone. Everyone turns around to look at us. My ladies, white-faced, know that a Tudor princess, a queen regent, cannot be abused. But Archibald is furious. “Not about Mary and not whether you get the things she has, not about Katherine. It’s not about the rivalry of three foolish women! This is about Scotland—my God—it’s about your late husband’s wishes, about his wisdom. And I have not been guided by him, but by you, and by the enemies of Scotland. And we have all been advised by the man who took your husband’s body off the battlefield as a trophy. Yes! It was Dacre who did that! No need to look as if you did not know! And now he tells me to bring you to England as if you were another royal corpse! And I know that you will never get back to Scotland if I do. You will never get back to Scotland. We will never bring the king’s body home. Your son will never get to the throne. He is advising me to destroy the royal family and my country, and he is our only advisor!”
“And what is he paying you?” I spit. “What are you getting? What is Alexander Hume getting? What is your brother George getting? What are the Douglases getting from Lord Dacre? What did he pay you to conspire against my husband the king?”
There is a terrible silence.
His face is white. “You insult my honor,” he says, suddenly quiet, and I have a pang of fear. We have never quarreled like this before. I have never seen him beside himself with anger, and then suddenly grow icy like this. We have quarreled like lovers, hot words forgotten in hot kisses. But this is something new and terrible. “I will take you to safety in England, and then I will leave you. If you think I am a traitor to you I can serve you no longer.”
“Archibald!”
He cannot choose to leave me. I am queen regent: he has to wait until he is dismissed. But he bows very low and he gestures to the groom to lift me back up on the horse. “Mount up,” he says. “We’re going to Berwick.”
My face pressed to his unyielding back, I cry silently. I feel my big belly heaving with my sobs and I think this child is having the worst preparation for the world possible. Surely he will never survive this. Then I think that I will never survive this, and then I think I hope that I don’t. Archibald can struggle with his honor and his conscience, and my brother can be merry with his wife and my sister, and everyone can forget that I ever lived and tried to do the right thing for my two countries and my two sons while they all squander a fortune and throw away political advantage to satisfy their own desires. I sniffle a little with jealousy and self-pity as it starts to rain, and I fall asleep, my cheek against my husband’s back, my hood shrouding my face, and my shoulders getting steadily more damp.
I wake when they stop to water the horses and for everyone to eat. The sky is a beautiful hazy dark blue; clouds like gray gauze laid over blue satin define the horizon. Archibald lifts me down from the horse and helps me to a seat on the ground where someone has spread a rug. My lady brings me wine, a little bread, some meat, my maid kneels before me to hold the cup. I do not dare to tell anyone how very ill I feel.
The countryside is wild and open—it is wasteland, nobody lives here, nobody farms, nobody even hunts here. These are the open lands of the border where it is too wild to live and unsafe for any house less than a fortified tower. I have a sense of huge overarching skies and our little procession crawling like ants across a massive plain. At least nobody will find us, I think. There is so much wild land and so few roads, nobody will be able to guess where we are.
I eat some bread, I drink some wine and water. My ladies press me to have more but the pain in my belly is so intense that I think I will vomit if I eat more than a mouthful.
Archibald comes over while they are urging me to drink some small ale.
“We have to go on,” he says bluntly.