They call me “la reine blanche” and say that there has never been a more beautiful Queen of France. It is so silly, but so dear of them. It is lovely to be beloved in two countries, a princess in one, a queen of another, and applauded in both!
That’s all she writes. That is all my little sister writes to me when she knows that her letter will be carried by a friar who is coming to me to urge me to act against my own interests and serve those of my country, to return me to a marriage with a man who has betrayed me; when she knows that I am alone in a difficult country, trying to see my son, trying to escape from a marriage that has become an insult to me. All she writes about are the thirty new gowns and the adorable little crown that Harry is commissioning especially for her. She remembers, almost too late to find any space on the page, that the French ladies are wearing their capes very short and their hoods pushed back on their heads. Nobody, she tells me, underlining it three times, Nobody is wearing a gable hood any more at all.
I put her letter down. She feels very far away. I am so far from her thoughts she does not even recall me while she is writing. If Harry goes to France and renews his treaty with King Francis, and persuades him never to send the Duke of Albany back to Scotland as regent, then the lords and I will struggle on, not really at peace, on the edge of rebellion for another year. I don’t even know if we can manage another month. I don’t know if Mary knows this, or if she is just not interested. Clearly, she does not think much about my worries. I doubt she thinks of me at all, other than as someone who might be interested in how to wear a French hood.
I open the letter from Katherine. Unlike Mary’s scrawl, it is very short. She says that she sent me Friar Chadworth to tell me the will of God. She says that to even think of leaving a husband is to condemn my soul to eternal damnation. She says that she will do anything in her power to help me if I will step back from this terrible plan. She says that she and Harry were appalled to hear that I have written to the Duke of Albany for his help. She says I have held up my shame to the world, that I have no cause for divorce and no cause to even speak of such a sin. She says that she cannot bear that I should rush to hell like this. That it would be better for my son James if I had died with his father than for him to know that he has a whore for a mother.
Can she really think that I would be better dead than shamed?
I read her letter in silence and I step to the fireplace where a little fire keeps the evening chill away, and I put the letter on the flames. It flares up, the red seal twists and writhes in the heat, the ribbon makes a little popping noise, and then it is just a blanket of ash over the logs.
Can my own sister really think that I would be better dead than shamed?
Surely she can never have loved me at all if she thinks only of the Word of God and not of the words she says to me. She can never have cared for me as a true sister if she thinks of the sin of divorce and not of the sinner—me—a woman alone and unhappy. Does she not understand that I am heartbroken at the loss of my husband, publicly humiliated, fearful of sin and far from the grace of God?
I think of her watching Mary trying on crowns, the most beautiful young woman in two kingdoms, who effortlessly, constantly, casts Katherine into a shadow. I think of her knowing that Bessie’s baby boy is named Henry Fitzroy, so that everyone knows the king has acknowledged him as his own. I think of how a proud woman like Katherine must feel when she is second at her own court, with no son in her belly nor in her cradle, and less and less chance with every year that goes by. And then I think—well, she need not take it out on me.
Friar Chadworth watches in silence as the letters burn. “Well?” he asks. “Do they persuade you to repent your sins?”
“No,” I say. “They say nothing to comfort me, and they give me no reason to think that they will help me.”
“They will not,” he confirms. “There will be no help for you unless you reconcile with your husband. You have no choice. I am here to tell you that you have no choice. Without your husband at your side you will get no support from England. Without support from England you will never command your council. Without your council you cannot rule your kingdom and you will never see your son again. He will be raised without a mother or a father. He will be an orphan.”
There is a long silence. I wonder that he can be so cruel.
I bow my head. “Very well,” is all I say. “You win.”
I cannot bear to meet with Archibald in public. I am mortified, as if it is I who has stolen and lived as an adulterous thief. I know that my ladies will think the less of me for taking him back, my son will hear of it and think that I have no pride, that I am a beaten dog. Everyone who saw us at Berwick when I was a lovesick fool will think that I am drunk on desire again. So I say that he must come to the top of the tower, where I have my little eyrie, the tiny stone-built room where—such a long time ago—James my husband said good-bye to me, and told me not to watch for him. My lady sends Archibald up the winding stairs, I can hear his boots ring on the stone, and she closes the door at the bottom, so that no one can hear what we say to each other. She will think that she is concealing a tryst, she will think that the door will silence the noise of lovemaking.
I am so angry and so distressed that I am shaking by the time he walks around to the little doorway of the tower and ducks his head to come under the stone lintel. He kneels at my feet, drops down like a penitent pilgrim without a word. He takes my hands, he feels me tremble and exclaims at the coldness of my fingers.
“Beloved,” he says.
“You have no right!” I say, choked.
Vehemently, he shakes his head. “No right at all.”
“You have stolen my rents!”
“God forgive me. But I have kept your lands in good heart, and protected your tenants and your good name as a landlord.”
“You put another woman in my place!”
“My love, my love, no woman could take your place. Forgive me.”
“I never will.”
He bows his head. “You should not. I have been like a madman. You are good, you are kinder than I deserve, just to let me come to you, and beg your pardon. I would not want to die with this on my conscience. My will and my happiness have been destroyed by our troubles, both public and private. I have seen terrible things in your service, I have had to contemplate terrible crimes to bring you to your rightful place. In defending your throne I have sinned against God. It’s not surprising that my will broke, my determination failed me.”
He glances up at me. “I couldn’t go on. I didn’t have the strength to continue,” he says. “For a mad month or two I thought I might escape. I thought for a moment that I could be a private man, a man with a wife and little daughter in a little house. When de la Bastie died and you failed to seize power and blamed me, I just wanted to run away. I felt that I had failed you so badly—I had done so much and still failed. My love, my wife, I was wrong to go. I am called to greater things, I am called to be your husband. Forgive me for failing you this once. I will never fail you again.”
“You wanted to be free of all these troubles?”
He bows his head. “It is the only time my courage has failed me. In all these five years. I could see no way to bring you to victory. It was my mistake. I thought if I could not restore your son to you, and you to your place, then I had better do nothing, go right away. I even thought that I should kill myself, that it would be better for you if I were dead.”