I look from one furious frustrated man to another. There is no sympathy, just rage that I have been fooled and that I have tried to fool them in turn. I think: he chose Janet Stewart in preference to me. When I left for England he went to her. While I was struggling with the ambassadors and borrowing money from Wolsey he was happy with her, his first choice.
I don’t know how I get out of the council chamber, how I get down the hill, that steep mile to Holyroodhouse. I don’t know how I dismount from my horse and wave aside my ladies and get to my own bedroom and find myself terribly alone in the beautiful royal rooms.
I put myself to bed as if I am a little girl, overtired by the day. The ladies come and ask me, am I well? Shall I dine with the court? I say I am sick with women’s troubles. They think I mean that I am bleeding, but I think that these are women’s troubles indeed—when a woman loves a man who betrays her. Betrays her completely—in thought and word and deed. In plan and in whisper, in the day and in the night, and—worst of all—in public, before the world.
They bring me a dark sweet ale, they bring me hot mead. I don’t say that I don’t need this, that the women’s troubles are those of jealousy, bile, envy, hate. I drink the ale, I sip the mead. I say that Archibald may not come to me, that I must be alone. I lie on my bed and I allow myself to cry. Then I sleep.
I wake in the night, thinking I am the greatest fool that ever lived and I am humbled to dust for my stupidity. I think of Katherine marrying a King of England and standing at his side, never considering her own feelings, never pursuing her own desires, but being ceaselessly, faultlessly loyal to him because she had given her word. She has constancy of purpose. She makes up her mind to something and nothing moves her. That is why she is a great woman.
I think of me, married to a king, giving him my word that I would be a good regent, and then falling in love with a handsome face, a youth that I knew to be promised to another. I think of my determination that he should like me best, even when I knew he was betrothed. I think of my delight that I took him from another—in truth—I preferred it that he was not free, I triumphed over a girl I had never even seen. I took her sweetheart from her, I stole her betrothed. Now, for the first time, I feel ashamed of this.
I feel so low that I even think that my little sister Mary has made more sense of her life than I have done. I have called her a fool and yet she has played her cards with more skill than me. She married a man for love and she took him with simple authority and now she is his wife. She lives with him, I know that he never looks at another woman. They are never apart. But I—I turn my face into my pillow and I muffle my groan of despair at my own folly. I go to sleep again with my head buried as if I never want to see the dawn.
In the morning when I wake, I hear that Archibald has gone hunting, but he has left me a dozen loving messages and promised to bring me a fat buck for my dinner. I suppose that he has heard what the lords said to me: this is a city of spies and gossip. I suppose that he is planning on brazening it out, or sliding his arm around my waist and seducing me into stupidity once again. From the quiet attentive service that my ladies give me as they dress me and bring my things for the day, I suppose that they know too. I imagine everyone in Edinburgh knows that the queen has been told that her husband has stolen her fortune and was all along married to another woman—the wife of his choice. Half of them will be laughing at this humiliation to an English princess, and the other half shrugging at the folly of women of any nation. They will say that women are not fit to rule. They will say that I have proved that women are not fit to rule.
I go to Prime but I cannot hear the prayers. I go to breakfast but I cannot eat. A delegation of the lords is coming from the council and I have to receive them in the presence chamber. I dress carefully, patting rice powder onto my swollen pink eyelids, a little red ochre on my pale cheeks and lips. I choose a white gown with Tudor green sleeves, I wear my silver slippers with the gold laces. I let them enter when I am seated on my throne with my ladies around me and my household servants ranged obediently against the walls. We put on as good a show as we can; but it is an empty show, like a canvas castle in a masque. I have no power, and they know it. I have no fortune, and they know who has it. I have no husband and everyone but me has known that for months.
They bow with the appearance of respect. I note that James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, who negotiated my wedding settlement to James the king and was made an earl for his trouble, is towards the back, unusually modest, and that the lord at the front has a paper in his hand, spotted with seals. Clearly, they have agreed to something and are coming to me to announce it. Clearly, James Hamilton is not going to be the one who speaks first.
“My lords. I thank you for your attentiveness.” I must not sound sulky, though Our Lady knows I feel it.
They bow. Clearly, they are uncomfortable at my subdued shame.
“We have elected a new regent,” one of the lords says quietly. I see the door at the back of the presence chamber open, and Archibald comes. He stands there quietly listening, his intense gaze on me. Perhaps he thinks I have been able to force the lords to do his will. Perhaps he hopes that they are going to say his name. Perhaps he is waiting to see if I can face down the humiliation that he has caused.
The lords hand me the scroll of paper. I glance at the name of the new regent. As I guessed, it is James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, grandson to James II, kinsman to my first husband the king. I look up; Archibald is watching me, prompting me to speak.
“And this is the wish of you all?” I ask.
“It is,” they say.
James Hamilton himself gives a modest little bow and starts to come forward.
“I would suggest that there are two regents, ruling together,” I say. “Myself and the noble Earl of Arran, James Hamilton, who has always been my friend.” I completely ignore Archibald, but fix my gaze on James Hamilton’s frowning face. “I am sure that you would want to work with me, my lord? We have been friends for so long.”
He pauses. Certainly, he does not leap at the chance. “As the council wishes,” he says unenthusiastically.
One of the older lords, a man I don’t know, speaks up from the back of the room, and he doesn’t mince his words. “Not if you’re the wife of a traitor and bound to obey him.”
Archibald darts forward to stand by my side. He’s still dressed for hunting and although all blades are forbidden at court everyone knows that he has his hunting dagger in his boot. “Who dares say this?” he demands. “Who dares slander me and the queen, my wife? Who dares defy us and the English king?”
At once there is an angry swell of noise as the lords object to his tone. Ard ignores them, and turns to me. “Propose me,” he says sharply.
“They never will . . .”
“I want to see who refuses.”
“Would you accept a regency with the Earl of Arran and the Earl of Angus?” I say, giving Archibald his full title, looking around at the furious faces.
“Never,” someone says shortly from the back, and all the lords—every single lord present—say, “Nay.”
I turn to Archibald. “I think you’ve seen well enough,” I say bitterly. “And now James Hamilton is regent and the guardian of my boy, and I am despised.”
The lords bow again, and file out of the presence chamber. I hardly notice them go. “See what you’ve done!” I say to Archibald. “You’ve ruined everything!”
“It’s what you’ve done!” he says, quick as a whip. “It is your brother who has failed you. He is making peace with the council without consulting you. It was he who secretly agreed to Arran being regent, and you being nothing. It is he who has made you a nothing here.”
It must be a lie; Harry would not make an agreement behind my back with the council. “He loves me,” I gasp. “He would never abandon me. He promised . . . He sent me back here and he promised!”
“He has abandoned you,” Archibald says. “You see the result.”