“What?”
“Albany,” she says. “The Sieur d’Albany.” She says it like a French name, the very accent of deceit. “He has tricked you and betrayed you every single time he has made an agreement with you from his first coming to Scotland. Surely he is false to you? He brought the cannon against you in Stirling; he shamed you before your son. He took the keys of the castle out of your little boy’s hand. He separated you from your two boys. Would you really put yourself in his power again?”
“He’s a duke,” I say. “And a man of great courtesy. And now he acknowledges that I am queen. I have his word in writing.”
She makes a little face and shrugs her shoulders. “He’s a Frenchman,” she says dismissively. “Or as good as. Married a Frenchwoman for her money. Sworn to the French king. False as a Frenchman; and dishonest as a Scot. Between him and your parliament I fear they will destroy you.”
I am horrified. “You surely cannot think that!”
“Ever since he came to Scotland he has been your undoing!” she exclaims. “Why are you here if not driven into exile? Did you choose to leave Stirling? Was it your free choice to leave Edinburgh? Did you not run from Linlithgow in fear of your life? Did you not ride from Tantallon in only the clothes you stood up in?”
I think for a moment that she seems remarkably well informed for a prioress in a border abbey; but perhaps she has been talking to George.
“If I were you I would return to Edinburgh only at the head of an army,” she remarks. “I would do as Lord Dacre advises, and go to his grand house at Morpeth, and muster your forces there.”
I laugh uncertainly. “You make me sound like Katherine and her warlike mother.”
“I am sure you will prove as brave as she. I would have sworn that you were her equal.”
“Oh, I am, certainly I am. Katherine is no braver than I am. I know her, and I know this for a fact.”
“And I am sure that you have a husband as brave as Ferdinand of Spain.”
“Archibald is worth ten of him.”
“Then why should you not reconquer Scotland as Isabella and Ferdinand did Spain? And then you won’t have to argue and bow down to the duke. You will just send him back to France.” She pauses. “Or behead him, as you think fit. If you were ruling queen and not a mere regent, you could do whatever you pleased.”
There is a loud banging on the outer door. I look up in alarm. “Could that be the French ambassador early? Isabella, you will have to show him into the guesthouse hall and make him wait while I dress. I have to sign the agreement with him.”
She waits as a nun from the gatehouse comes through the garden, bobs a curtsey to me, and whispers. Isabella laughs and takes my hand. “You are lucky,” she says. “Great men and women are always lucky, and you have all the luck of a queen in the special keeping of God. That is Lord Dacre at the door, a day ahead of the French liar, bringing you a safe conduct so that you can go anywhere in England. He can take you to London right now.”
I gasp, my hand closing on a leafy bush of rue so the sharp scent fills the air. “To London?”
“Lord Dacre has come!” she says, as delighted as if it were her own triumph. “And you are free!”
I can hardly believe that he has come, with a troop of horse, with a safe conduct, ready to escort me south at once. I kiss Isabella as if she were a sister, and we mount up gladly. I have a little stabbing pain as I sit in the saddle behind my husband, but I can see my future unrolling ahead of me. Isabella is right: I can persuade Harry to do his duty by me, I will return to Scotland at the head of an army and enter Edinburgh in triumph. I can bring up my boys to be the sons their father would have wanted, heirs to the throne of Scotland and even England.
I am in the saddle before I remember: “Oh, but Lord Dacre, the Duke of Albany is sending the French ambassador with proposals. Shouldn’t I wait for him and give him an answer? What if he is offering me the regency? What if he will give me everything I demand?”
“He can send it to you at Morpeth, my castle. He can meet with us at Morpeth,” the old guardian of the borders replies to me. “Better that he discuss with you what terms he will offer when you are behind strong walls in an English castle that will never fall to siege, than when you are in one gown in a priory in the borders, surrounded by the dead of Flodden.”
“But if he is coming, with a capitulation?” I press my case.
“Would you want him to see you like this?” the old lord asks. “So very travel-stained? So very shabby? And—forgive me, Your Grace—but your belly is so big. Shouldn’t you be in confinement? Do you really want to see the French ambassador in this condition? Don’t you think he will tell everyone that you were near your time and riding pillion around the borders like a poor woman?”
I am mortified. If I had my linen from Edinburgh or my furniture from Linlithgow I could meet him, and dare him to glance at my swelling belly. But Lord Dacre is right: I can have no confidence in myself looking like this. When I am washed and dressed I will meet him. He can come to me when I am seated under a cloth of estate in a great castle. Right now, I am dressed as poor as Katherine of Arrogant when my lady grandmother was reducing her to nothing.
“God bless you!” Isabella calls. “And bring you to your own again.”
We go out like English lords, not as we came in, like Scots criminals. Lord Dacre’s standard goes before us, the royal standard of England before that, and my standards as Queen Regent of Scotland at the very head. He has had this all prepared; I think he may have been prepared for months. He knew that I would come to England before I did.
“I do think that we should have waited, out of courtesy to the French ambassador,” I say to his lordship, who reins in his horse so that he can fall back and talk to me, seated on my pillion saddle behind my husband. Lord Dacre hardly troubles to acknowledge Archibald, I could be riding behind my groom. In his turn, Archibald is sullen as a boy.
“Oh, why not set off for London, for a comfortable confinement and then Christmas there?” Dacre asks.
“Because I think the ambassador was authorized to offer me everything that I wanted,” I say. “The letters from the duke made it clear that he had spoken to parliament and forced them to agree to all my demands.”
Dacre shakes his head. “He’s false,” he says simply. “And he’s weak. He is lying to you. He was not coming to meet with you, he was coming to delay you, and to keep you here, right on the borders, in a house that cannot be defended, while the duke gets his army on the road. They would have made you wait here, writing and talking to the French ambassador, while they marched through the borders and snatched you, and even your husband. Your Grace, they would have imprisoned you, perhaps in a nunnery, perhaps in a tower at Glamis, miles away where we could never have reached you. And you, my lord, alas, you would have been hanged like a common criminal on Coldstream priory gates.”
I can feel Archibald stiffen in the saddle. “Good that we left then,” he says. “I saved her from Linlithgow, I took her to Berwick and Coldstream, and now I have saved her from capture here.”
“You have indeed,” Dacre says, like a man praising a child. “All of England will know what you have done for us.”
“At risk,” Archibald insists. “At enormous risk, and no payment.”
“You will be rewarded,” Dacre says smoothly.
Archibald ducks his head. “Everyone else is. How much does the prioress get?”