“Of course, you would be on their side, since they pay your allowance,” I say sharply. “Everyone knows that you have nothing to live on but your dower money from them. But they do not pay mine, they do not honor their debts to me, so you cannot expect me to jump to their piping like you and Brandon.”
She flushes a little. “Of course I need the money,” she says. “We are paupers, we are royal paupers. And every day there is a new masque or a new dance or a new pageant and the king insists that I lead it. If there is a joust he insists that Brandon fight in it. The horses alone are worth their weight in gold and a suit of armor costs ten times as much as a gown.” She puts her hand to her belly to comfort herself. “Anyway, perhaps this is another boy and he will make our fortune. He will be heir to the throne after his brother and after your son James, after all.”
“Only if Katherine has no son,” I remind her smartly.
“God grant it.” She wishes her son out of the succession with complete sincerity. “But, Maggie, I do really think that you should try to agree with France. Can’t you make a better agreement with Albany? He is such a well-mannered nobleman. I liked him and his wife. And now she is ill and he is bound to want to go home to her. He might go back to France and leave Scotland to your rule? You could trust him, you could talk to him.”
“How much do they pay you for this?” I ask suddenly. “The French? And could you tell them, when you report back to your spymaster, that I would be happy to agree with them if they would take their soldiers out of my country and see to the paying of the rents on my dower lands, just as they pay you? You have been cheaply bought; but I have a country to take care of. I come at a higher price.”
I see the flush of her temper in her cheeks. “I am no spy. I take French money and so does half the court. There’s no need to throw it in my face. And I know you’ve been borrowing money from Wolsey, just as we all do. You’re no better than us and you have no right to scold me.”
“I certainly have,” I say. “I am your older sister—it is my duty to tell you when you are wrong. You’re as bad as a traitor—in the pay of the French. You can tell them to pay me my rents if you are so friendly with them.”
“I can’t tell them,” she blazes out. “It would do you no good if I spoke to them. You’re such a fool! It’s not the French who have been keeping your rents, but your own husband. You can’t blame Albany for it. Your husband has been collecting your rents in your name and not passing them on to you.”
“That’s a lie! A stupid lie as well as a wicked one. Archibald would never do such a thing. He’s not like your husband, who married you only for your fortune and title. Archibald is a great lord in his own right, he has great lands in his own right. He wouldn’t stoop to cheat me. You wouldn’t know. You’ve never loved anyone but an adventurer. A commoner, a climber! Of course Brandon would take your lands. He lives off you and every woman he has ever married. My God! Brandon makes Wolsey look well bred.”
She leaps to her feet, her blue eyes blazing with temper. “You think your husband doesn’t cheat you? When he makes peace with Albany without you? When he lives with a woman he calls his wife? When he tells everyone you will never go back to Scotland, and he is glad of it? You dare to compare your traitor to my Charles, who has never been disloyal to Harry or faithless to me?”
I feel as if she has punched me in the belly, as if the air is knocked out of me. I double up as if I am winded. “What? What? What are you saying?” I hear the words ringing in my ears, but I cannot understand them. “What did you say? A wife?”
At once she is sorry. She pitches heavily on her knees beside me to peer up into my face, her own face still wet with angry tears. “Oh, Maggie! Oh, Maggie! I am so sorry! Forgive me! I am so wicked! Oh, my dear! I should not have said. We agreed we would say nothing—and then I . . . ! It was when you spoke against Charles! But I should never have said a word!”
She is patting my gown and stroking my shoulder, and pushing my chin up so that she can look into my face. I keep my head down, my face hidden. I am speechless with humiliation.
“I am so sorry. I should not have said anything. She made me promise to say nothing.”
“Who?” I ask. I put my hands over my face so that she cannot see my burning eyes, my blanched cheeks. “Who told you to say nothing?”
“Katherine,” she whispers.
“She says this? She told you all this? About my rents? About Archibald living with a woman?”
The golden head nods. “But we swore that we would not tell you. She said that it would break your heart. She made me promise I would say nothing. She said that you could not bear to hear that he is unfaithful. That you must talk to him yourself. It must be between the two of you.”
“Oh, rubbish,” I say. All at once, I am completely furious at the thought of this mealy-mouthed gossip. “She’s such an old maid. As if all men don’t take lovers! As if Ard was going to live like a monk for months at a time! As if a wife should care!”
“Don’t you care?” my little sister asks me, aghast.
“Not at all!” I lie furiously. “She is a nothing. She is nothing to him and so she is nothing to me. Katherine is making a fuss out of nothing because she is grieved that Harry has taken Bessie Blount for a lover and she wants the world to think that Ard is as bad as he. That it matters, for God’s sake! That anyone cares!”
“Did you know about your husband’s woman then?”
“?’Course I did,” I say. “Half of Scotland knows of her, and her easy virtue. Half the lords have probably had her. Why should I care about a whore?”
“Because she says she is his wife,” she says softly.
“As do all whores.”
Mary wants to believe me. She has always looked up to me. She wants to take my word for this. “Didn’t he marry you for love? And it was a proper wedding? He was not married to her at all?”
“What d’you mean at all? You’re such a fool. No. Never. They were betrothed when she was a child. It was never intended it should go ahead. He left her for me, for love of me, he preferred me to all the other women in Scotland. So what if he now amuses himself while I am away? As soon as I return to Scotland he will leave her again.”
“But my dear, they say that she lives in your house as his wife.”
“It means nothing to me.”
“But what if they have a child?”
“Why would I care about another bastard?” I demand, furious at the parroting of Katherine’s sentimentality. “James had dozens and our grandmother and our father sent me to marry him, knowing full well that he housed them in my dower castle. You think I care that Janet Stewart might have a baby when my husband the king had his own regiment of bastards? When he named one of them as his heir before I had my boy!”
She sits back on her heels, her eyelashes dark with tears, her forehead crumpled with a puzzled frown. “Really? You really don’t care?”
“Not at all,” I say. “And when you find your husband has lain with some slut, you won’t care either. It should make no difference to you, one way or the other.”
She puts her hand to where her pulse is beating in the little hollow at the base of her throat. “Oh, I would care,” she says. “I would, and Katherine does.”
“Then you’re a pair of fools,” I declare. “I am queen, I am his queen. He looks up to me and loves me as a subject and a lover and a man, my man. It doesn’t matter to me if he eats his dinner off a wooden platter now and then. It does not devalue my gold plates.”
Wonderingly, she looks at me, her blue eyes wide. “I never thought of it that way. I always thought a husband and wife should be all in all to each other. Like Brandon is to me.”
“You should rest,” I say abruptly, suddenly noticing the creamy pallor of her perfect skin. “You’re not carrying a prince, but you should still take care. You shouldn’t be crying, you shouldn’t be kneeling. Get up.”
I put out an unfriendly hand to her and haul her to her feet. I take her arm and lead her back through the gardens, into the cool of the garden stairs.
“You are sure he will come back to you when you get to Scotland?”
“I am his wife. Where else should he go?”