“I thank you for the gowns, and for everything,” I say awkwardly. “I was glad to get my inheritance.”
She puts her hand over my own. “All this is no more than you should have,” she says gently. “You should have your throne again, and the wealth of Scotland. My husband the king has sworn that you will have all that is yours again, and he will make sure that it is so, and I will speak in your favor.”
“I am grateful,” I say, though it costs me to say such a thing to her.
Her palm is warm, the rings are heavy on her little fingers. “We were not good sisters to each other before,” she says quietly. “I was very afraid that I would never be married to your brother, and I was homesick, and terribly poor. You don’t know what I went through in the years that I waited. I was never happy after your mother died. When she had gone it was as if I lost my only friend in the family.”
“My grandmother . . .” I begin.
She shrugs her shoulders. Rubies gleam at her throat. “My Lady the King’s Mother never cared for me,” she says shortly. “She would have sent me home if she could have done so. She tried to say—” She breaks off. “Oh! All sorts of things. She tried to prevent my marriage to the prince. She advised him against me. But when he came to the throne he took me, despite everything.”
“She was always ambitious for him,” I say quietly. And she was right, I think to myself—he could have done better than a widow who cannot bear a son.
“So I understand what it is to be far from home, and to think that no one cares for you, that you are in danger and no one will help you. I was very, very sorry when I learned that you were widowed and had lost the guardianship of your son. I swore then that I would do what I could to help you, and to be a good sister to you. We are both Tudors. We should help each other.”
“I always thought you looked down on me,” I confess. “You always seemed so very grand.”
Her ripple of laughter makes her ladies look up and smile. “I ate day-old fish that we bought cheap from the market,” she says. “I pawned my plate to pay my household. I was a princess in rags.”
I clasp her hand in my own. “I too have been a princess in rags,” I say quietly.
“I know,” she says. “That is why I have urged Harry to send an army to put you back on your throne.”
“Will he listen to you?” I ask curiously, thinking of how James would chuck me under the chin and go and fulfill his own plans, ignoring anything I said. “Does he take your advice?”
A shadow crosses her face. “He used to,” she says. “But Thomas Wolsey has grown very great recently. You know that he advises the king on everything? He is Lord Chancellor, he is very able, a very able man. But he thinks only of how to do what the king wishes. He doesn’t consider God’s will as well as the king’s desire. Indeed, it has become very rare for anyone to advise the king against his desire.”
“He is the king,” I say flatly. Really, I don’t understand her at all; why should anyone advise him against his wishes?
“But not infallible,” she says with a ghost of a smile.
“Is Thomas Wolsey in favor of my return to Scotland? He must want the best for my daughter, as her godfather?”
She hesitates. “I think he has greater plans for you than just your return,” she says. “He knows that the Scots must accept you and that your boy must be in your keeping, but I think he hopes . . .”
“He hopes what?” I ask.
She bows her head for a moment as if in prayer, as if she has to think what she says next: “I believe that he hopes that your present marriage can be annulled and you shall marry the emperor.”
I am so shocked that I say nothing. I just look at her, my mouth agape.
“What?” I say, when I find my voice. “What?”
She nods. “I thought you did not know of this. Thomas Wolsey is playing for high stakes in Europe. He would be very pleased to have an ally bound by marriage to England, to hold against France. Especially now that he is trying to get the French out of Scotland.”
“But I am married already! What is he thinking of?”
“The Lord Chancellor thinks that your marriage could be annulled,” she says quietly. “And then Harry observed that your husband did not accompany you, though he had a safe conduct. Harry thought that you might be estranged. He thought that you might welcome a separation.”
“Archibald has duties in Scotland! I told the king myself. He is obliged, by his honor . . .”
“You would be empress,” she remarks.
That silences me again. As the wife of the Holy Roman Emperor I would be queen of enormous lands, half of Europe. I would outrank Katherine. Indeed I would be married to her kinsman. Mary, the wife of a nonentity like Charles Brandon, would be nothing beside me, she would have to serve me on bended knee. I would never see either of them again, and I would be wealthier than my brother Harry. This is the destiny that slipped away from me when I considered the emperor and the King of France as husbands, and then found that the King of France had jilted me for my little sister. When I married Archibald I lost my chance of being one of the great rulers of Europe. Now, once again, the possibility of greatness opens before me.
“How could it be done?”
Katherine is no longer smiling. She withdraws her hands from mine as if the touch of an unfaithful wife might contaminate her. “I am sure that if you consent, the Lord Chancellor will find a way,” she says coolly. “I have performed my task in asking you if you would consider it. The king says that Scotland was under excommunication when you married the Earl of Angus. The Lord Chancellor argues that no marriage during that time could be valid. And also, your husband was betrothed to marry another woman, was he not? The Lord Chancellor will argue that it was a full marriage, not merely a betrothal. That your husband was married to Janet Stewart, a marriage that took place before yours, and while Scotland was in communion with Rome. His marriage to her predates yours, and yours was not valid.”
“He was not. He never sees her!” I say fiercely. “He does not care for her. He married me. He was free to marry me. He is faithful to me.”
Katherine looks at me and I see that it is not just the loss of her four babies that has put the darkness in her gaze. She has been disappointed by Harry too.
“It doesn’t matter if a husband is faithful or not,” she says quietly. “It doesn’t matter if he loves you or another. What matters is that you swore to be together before God. The priest was a witness to your vows but you made them to God. A marriage cannot be dissolved because great men wish that a woman is free. A marriage cannot be dissolved because a husband has been so foolish and so weak as to fall in love with another woman. A genuine marriage, made before God, cannot be dissolved, ever.” Her gaze drifts from me to her companions, her ladies-in-waiting, chattering together, whiling away the time until they can go back to Greenwich Palace and dine with the men. One or more of them will have caught the eye of the king, one or more will already have been in his bed, one or more will be hoping.
“I know that,” I say. “I know that nothing matters more than the marriage vows. Archibald and I made those vows. He is my husband and will be until death.”
She bows her head. “That’s what I believe to be true,” she says quietly. “If Harry asks me for my opinion I will tell him that you are married in the sight of God and that neither the Lord Chancellor nor the Holy Roman Emperor nor the King of England himself can change that.”
GREENWICH PALACE, ENGLAND, MAY 1516