“But you have to,” I say flatly.
“If I go with you, as a Scots outlaw, all the lands will be taken from my kinsmen and my castles will be destroyed,” he says bluntly. “Everything that my father left me, everything that my grandfather owns, will be torn down. My clan will be leaderless, my people will die of starvation. I will have abandoned my birthright, and everyone will know that I left them for the comfort of being your husband in London when I should have been fighting for my home. They will think that I ran away to safety and left them to disaster.”
“You can’t stay here and fight,” Dacre says. “The king himself is trying to get a peace. You can’t stir up trouble now.”
“Are you a gentle dove now, your lordship?” Archibald says bitingly. “I never thought to hear you say that a Scot should not be fighting other Scots.” He turns his attention to me, as if Dacre is too despicable to answer. “My love, my queen, I can’t leave those who have risked everything for your cause. Lord Hume will lose his lands too. Albany has already threatened his wife and his mother with imprisonment. We can’t run away and leave our families behind.”
“But I am your wife! This is your family!”
“It would be dishonorable to run away.”
“Your duty is with me!”
“My duty is in Scotland,” he says. “Your brother will guard you and keep you in England. But no one will guard and keep my people if I abandon them.”
“Think it over,” Dacre recommends. “Don’t be too hasty, my lord. You might be a long time, hiding in the hills. The king may get a peace with France that doesn’t restore you. If you’re not in London, they may forget all about you.” He looks at me. “It is the way of great men, sorry though I am to say it. If your husband is not there he may be forgotten.”
This is a sneer against my husband and against me. Dacre is always my brother’s man first and my servant second. I know very well they will not remember Archibald—they barely remember me. Who would know better than I that a princess passes over the Scots border and disappears from memory? Who would know better than I that they only fight for you when it has all become such a disaster that they can overlook it no longer? I am not Mary, who can come and go without losing her brother’s attention, behave disobediently, disloyally, and be welcomed home with celebrations. I am not Katherine who can fail to give him a son year after year and still be the wife of his choice and the queen of the court. I am Margaret, Queen of Scotland, and they forget me altogether until the extremity of my danger threatens them.
“He will come with me to London!” I say hotly. “They will see us together. They will remember us then!”
Dacre turns to my husband with a small smile, and waits for his reply. I remember that this man has had years pitting one Scot against another, one Englishman against another, Scots against English, English against Scots. Now he is setting a wife against her husband. Dacre is a border man in every sense. He will think that he knows men like Archibald inside out, that he has paid them to dance to his piping. He has always thought him bought, easily turned, easily betrayed.
“I can’t come,” Ard says flatly. “Remembered or forgotten, I can’t come.”
We leave without him. I am only twenty-six years old, and yet I seem to have spent my life leaving the people I love and losing those who should guard me. We leave my son Alexander in the cold ground of Scotland, for Albany buried my boy in December, before I even knew that he was dead. We leave my surviving son the king, a child of four years old, in the keeping of his tutors. I pray that Davy Lyndsay is at his side, for who else is there who can give him comfort? We take Margaret with us, and her wet nurse and her rockers and her endless entourage. We travel as lightly as we can, and yet there is a long train of wagons with my goods, and Dacre’s goods, and the men-at-arms that guard them, and the lords who accompany us—glad of the chance to get to London after years on the border. We take half of Northumberland with us, but we leave without my husband.
He kisses my hand, my wet eyes, my lips, my hands again, before I leave. He swears that he loves me more now than when he was my pretty carver, my knight, my friend. He says that he cannot abandon his friends and his allies, his men, his lowly tenants who know nothing of king or regent or queen regent, but will follow him wherever he leads them. He cannot leave his castle, that great fort overlooking the sighing sea and the crying gulls. He tells me that we will be together again some day. We will be happy again, some day.
“I will come back,” I promise him. “I will come back to you and you will wait for me. I will command Harry to make peace with the French and with the Scots lords and they will allow me to come home and I will be queen regent, as I was, and you will be my consort.”
His loving gaze is as clear and as true as when he was my young carver. “Come back to me, and I will hold my castles and my lands and my power. Come back to Scotland and I will welcome your return as queen. Come back soon.”
ON THE ROAD SOUTH, ENGLAND, SPRING 1516
It is a long journey but there are signs of my returning power. The farther we go, by slow, painful stages, the grander becomes our procession. I enter York in state and process through the city which remembers my entrance as a princess all those years ago. Every day we add more followers. I appoint new people in my household, and I am surrounded by hangers-on and petitioners. Dacre says that he cannot house and feed so many on the road, and I shrug and say that I have always been beloved in England; he should have listened to me when I told him that the people would flock to be with me.
I receive letters from London: from Katherine, saying that her new baby is thriving and strong, and from my sister Mary, who has given birth to a boy. It is hard to be glad for her. This is not a boy who will be a stepping stone to greatness for his mother, my little sister. This is not a boy who is going to take up a great place in the world. His parents are all but bankrupt since they have to pay the royal exchequer a massive fine for their marriage. The boy’s very title was only a reward to his father for being an amusing friend; Brandon has no talent or breeding or merit. They are calling the little mite Henry in an attempt to win my brother’s favor. I expect they will ask Thomas Wolsey, that rising star, to be godfather, as he is to my baby. They will have to do something to turn their fortune around. So I cannot celebrate the birth of this boy, who will be nothing but a cost to the family.