“One of your ladies?” I dare to ask.
She nods. “That makes it twice as bad,” she says. “It feels like a double betrayal. I thought of her as my friend, I thought of her tenderly.”
I can hardly breathe, I want to know so much which one it is. I don’t think I can ask. There is something about Katherine, something forbidding, even sitting on a stool before a fire, side by side with her sister.
“But it’s not serious,” I state. “It’s an amusement, for a young man, as all these young men do. Harry is gallant, he likes to play at chivalrous love.”
“It is not serious to him perhaps,” she says with quiet dignity. “But it is serious to me; and of course it is serious to her. I say nothing about it, and I treat her as kindly as I have always done. But it troubles me. On the nights that he does not come to my bed, I wonder if he is with her. And of course,” her voice quavers, just a little, “I am afraid.”
“Afraid?” I would not have thought she was ever afraid. She sits so straight, she looks out of the window to the sunlit river as if she would know all the secrets of the world and is afraid of nothing. “I never think of you as fearful, I think of you as indomitable.”
She laughs at that. “You left England before I was diminished. But you must have known I was defeated by your lady grandmother. She set out to bring me very low, and she was successful.”
“But you recovered your place. You married Harry.”
She gives a little shrug. “Yes, I thought I had won him and I would keep him forever. The girl—it is Bessie Blount, you know, the pretty girl, the fair one, very musical, very charming . . .”
“Oh,” I say, thinking of that blond head bent over a lute and that sweet clear voice.
“She is young and, I expect, fertile. If he were to get a child on her . . .” Katherine breaks off and I see that her eyes are filled with tears. She blinks them away as if they mean nothing. “If she were to give him a son before I do, then I think my heart would break.”
“But you’ll have a son next time!” I declare with false certainty. She has had four dead babies and one live little girl.
She looks at me; this is not a woman for an optimistic lie. “If God wills,” she says. “But I held a boy in my arms and named him Henry for his father, and then I had to bury him, and pray for his immortal soul. I don’t think I could bear for Bessie to have a son from my husband.”
“Oh, but surely he’d never let her call him Henry,” I remark, as if it matters.
Katherine smiles and shakes her head. “Ah, well. It’s not happened yet. Perhaps it will never happen.”
“So she must be married off to someone,” I say. “At least you can arrange her wedding and get her sent away from court.”
Katherine makes a little gesture with her hand. “I don’t know that it would be very fair to her, or to her husband,” she says. “She’s very young, I would not want to order her to marry a man who might resent it. He would know that she was the king’s leavings. He might be cruel to her.”
I simply cannot understand why she should care about Bessie’s happiness, and my bewilderment must show in my face, for Katherine laughs and pats my cheek. “Ah, my sister,” she says. “I was raised by a woman whose husband broke her heart over and over. I am always on the side of the woman. Even if the woman is my rival. And little Bessie is not really my rival. She is just a lover, not the first, and I doubt if she will be the last. But I am always the queen. Nobody can take that from me. He will always come back to me. I am his first, his true love. I am his wife, his only wife.”
“And I am Archibald’s,” I say, comforted by her certainty. “And you’re right that I should be pleased that my husband has gained a pardon from Albany and can live in his own castle again. Of course I am glad that he is safe. I can go home to him there and perhaps my son can come to us.”
“You must miss him so much,” she says.
“I do,” I agree. But I am thinking of Archibald, and she is thinking of my son James. “And at least he has been living on his wits in the borderlands,” I continue. “It’s hard to find somewhere safe for the night, hard to get enough to eat. There are no beautiful girls composing songs there.”
Katherine does not smile. “I hope that he never turns from you, wherever he lives,” she says. “It is an awful bereavement, when the man who has your love and your happiness in his keeping forgets about you.”
“Is that how it feels for you?” I ask, thinking of my wild fury with James and his open infidelities; of all the little bastards who came running towards him, and I knowing that their mothers lived conveniently nearby and that he rode out to see them on his way to holy pilgrimage.
“It makes me feel as if I am of no use,” she says quietly. “And I don’t know how to remind him that his honor and his heart are mine, sworn to me. I don’t know how to recall him to do his duty before God, as I do mine. Even if we never have another child—though I pray every day that we have a son—but even if we never have another child I am his partner and his helpmeet, at his side through war and through peace. I am his wife and his queen. He cannot forget me.”
I have a moment of shame that my little brother should treat his wife so badly. “He’s a fool,” I say abruptly.
She stops me with a small gesture of her heavily ringed hand. “I cannot allow a criticism of him,” she says. “Not even from you. He is the king. I have promised him my love and obedience forever.”
RICHMOND PALACE, ENGLAND, SUMMER 1517
I am to leave England again. It has been a long and beautiful year, but I always knew that I would return north on the long road to Scotland. Once again I have to say good-bye to my family and my friends, once again I have to travel that journey and hope to succeed at the end of it.
“Do you have to go?” Mary asks childishly. We are beyond the formal privy garden, strolling beside the river, and we turn to sit on a little bench under a tree, the sun warm on our backs, and watch the barges and boats bringing visitors and goods to entertain and feed the insatiable court. Mary’s hand rests on her swelling belly. She is with child again. “I so hoped you would stay.”
I don’t dare to say that I was beginning to hope so too. It seems very hard that Katherine should live here, and Mary with her, and that I am the only sister who has to go far away, to such an uncertain future in a country that has been so hard-hearted to me.
“It’s been like being girls again, having you home. Why don’t you stay longer? Why don’t you live with us and never go back at all?”
“I have to do my duty,” I say stiffly.
“But why now?” she asks lazily. “At the start of summer, which is the best time of year.”
“It is the best time of year for me to do the journey and I have my safe conduct to Scotland.” I cannot keep the bitterness from my voice. “My son, my five-year-old son, has sent me safe conduct.”
That catches her attention, she sits up. “You have to have little James’s permission to go to him?”
“Of course I do. He’s the king, it is under his seal. It isn’t him really, of course. It is Albany who has decided that I can come home. And he sends conditions: no more than twenty-four companions, no rebels at my side, and then there are conditions for seeing my son. I may not go as his tutor, not as regent. Just as his mother.”
“The French are very powerful,” she says. “But I found them kind if you obey their rules. They love pretty things and courtesy. If you could only agree . . .”