The joust to celebrate my arrival in England is to take place at Greenwich, and I travel in the queen’s barge downriver to the most beautiful of all our London palaces. I so wish that Archibald was with me to hear how the people of Greenwich cheer as our barges go by, to hear the sound of the musicians playing and the roar of the cannons welcoming me home again.
The new Tudor baby, Princess Mary, is in the arms of her nurse, on our barge. Katherine keeps her close and watches her all the time. My little Margaret, just a few months older, is so much brighter and more alert; her color is rosy and she looks around her and smiles when she sees me or her nursemaid. But to see Katherine or Henry dote on their baby you would think that no other child had ever been born.
Privately, I swear to myself that my Margaret will be acknowledged as the prettier girl. I will see that she is dressed to perfection; I will ensure that she marries well. She may not be a princess, and her father could not give her a crown, but she is every inch royal and she is half a Tudor. Who knows what the future will be for these two babies? I swear that my child will never suffer for the comparison. Nobody is going to send her to a foreign country and then fail to support her. Nobody is going to praise Mary over her. Nobody is going to neglect her and praise the other to her little face.
I cannot say that I am neglected now. I am dressed beautifully from the royal wardrobe, in cloth-of-gold gowns, and though I follow the Queen of England, everyone else follows me. I am addressed as Queen Regent of Scotland, and Thomas Wolsey pays my debts from the royal treasury without hesitation or query. As I follow Katherine off the royal barge and smile at the royal household drawn up on either side of the carpet that leads us to the wide open doors of the royal palace, I have no complaints. I might wish that Archibald were here to see me, in the place of greatest honor, I might wish that everyone could see my handsome husband, that he might ride in the joust, but I myself am where I should be. It’s all that I’ve always wanted.
“We’ll go to the wardrobe rooms,” Katherine rules. She smiles at me. “I hope that Mary will be there already, choosing her gown.”
At last I am to see her again. Mary, my darling little sister, has come from her country house for my joust. Charles Brandon is to do what he does best—perhaps his only skill other than whoring and spending money; he and Harry will take on all comers.
“She’s here already?” I am so impatient to see her, and I also hope that we get there before she has chosen the best of the gowns for herself. I hope that Katherine has ordered the groom of the wardrobe to make sure that we three queens have gowns of equal quality. It would spoil everything if Mary’s is French cut or more richly embroidered, or more fashionable. She has become used to the very best; but she should not be allowed to outshine the queen. It is a disservice to all the royal ladies if Mary is encouraged to exceed her situation. She may be Dowager Queen of France but she is married to a commoner, not a nobleman like Archibald. I don’t want her to stand out, or put herself forward. I don’t want people to shout her name and throw flowers and encourage her to show off before everyone, just as she did when we were little girls.
The yeomen of the guard, standing either side of the door, salute us and swing the doors open to the shaded rooms where the royal gowns of state hang in great linen pouches, lavender heads stuffed into sleeves to ward off moths, gorse prickles at the wainscoting to deter rats. In the half-light of the shuttered room I see the little elfin face under the elegant French hood and I have the illusion that my sister is unchanged from the girl that I left behind thirteen years ago, my little pet, my little sister, my little pretty doll.
At once I forget everything about her getting the best gown, everything about her being overdressed, everything about precedence. “Oh, Mary,” I say simply. I stretch out my arms and she falls into them and clings to me.
“Oh, Margaret! Oh, my dear! Oh, Maggie! And I was so sorry about your boy Alexander!”
I gasp at his name. Nobody has spoken of him since I left Morpeth. No one has even mentioned him. They have all offered me condolences for the death of the king, but no one has spoken of my child. It is as if Alexander never was. And all at once I am crying for him, my lost little boy; and Mary—a little girl no longer, but a woman who has known loneliness and heartbreak like me—embraces me, unpins my hood, pulls my head to her shoulder and rocks with me, whispering like a mother soothing a hurt child. “Hush,” she says. “Ah, Maggie. Hush. God bless him, God bless him in heaven.”
Katherine comes closer. “It’s her son,” Mary says over my shoulder. “She’s crying for Alexander.”
“God bless and keep him and take him to His own,” Katherine says instantly, and I feel her arm around my shoulder as she and Mary and I hold each other, our heads pressed together, and I remember that Katherine, too, has lost a boy, more than one. Katherine’s losses are never mentioned either. She too has buried little coffins and is required to forget them. Nothing in the world is worse than the death of a child, and we share that too, in a sisterhood of loss.
We three stand together, clinging to each other in silence in the darkened room, for a long time, and then the storm of grief passes me, and I glance up and say: “I must look a fright.” I know that my hair is all tumbled and my nose will be red. My face and neck will be flushed and blotchy and my eyelids swollen. Katherine looks ten years older, ugly from grief. Two tears balance like pearls on Mary’s thick eyelashes, her rosy lips tremble, and there is a flush like a sunrise in her cheeks. “Me too.” She smiles.
The jousting arena at Greenwich is as fine as any in Europe. The queen’s box is set opposite the king’s, and my sisters and I, with our ladies, sit in the center of the stand, curtains billowing in the warm winds, facing the tilt rail. Harry and his friends are never in their box, of course; they are challengers, not spectators. There are long rippling flags flying all around the arena. The ground is sifted sand, white as snow. The seats in the stands are packed with people in their very best clothes. Only the nobility and their favorites are invited—you cannot buy a ticket, this is a diversion for the very cream of the country. The merchants of London and the country people come to this great spectacle, wait behind the half walls of the arena and jostle one another for room. The younger ones, the bolder ones, climb the sides to get a better view and are cuffed and pushed down when they bob up alongside the nobility. Everyone laughs as they tumble down.
The poorer people cannot even get into the palace, but they line the riverbank where they can watch the ceaseless coming and going of the barges of the noble houses, bringing the guests. They stand along the lane that runs from the gates of the walled palace to Greenwich and the docks. This is where the horses are brought in, and they see the magnificent saddles and the beautiful jousting costumes as the big chargers, sidling and snorting, come down the road ridden by the squires, or led by the grooms.