A tiny hesitation, a flick of his glance sideways, gives me a second’s pause. “Are you going hunting?” I ask. “Archibald, where are you going?”
He comes close so that the people around us cannot hear him. “I am meeting Thomas Dacre,” he says in my ear. “I am about your business, my love. I will ride in the night to our meeting, get news of your brother and his plans, and come home quickly.”
“Tell Lord Dacre that we have to come to terms with the French regent,” I say. “We cannot oppose James Hamilton as acting regent, and the Duke of Albany will come back sooner or later. We have to work with them both, we have to make me regent and get custody of James.”
“Albany will never return,” Archibald promises me. “He will never come back. It is your brother’s wish—and it is my preference—that we never see him again. Your brother has served us well. He has trapped Albany in France, he has made his exile from Scotland as part of the treaty with France, he has done so much for us! And without him, Hamilton is no more than the leader of another clan. He can call himself deputy regent—he can call himself whatever he likes!—but the French will not support Hamilton against the English. We can destroy him, as soon as we are ready.”
“No, no,” I say. “No more fighting. We have to do all we can to hold the peace till James is old enough to take the throne. Hamilton or Albany, the regent or the deputy regent has to run the council and keep the lords at peace. I must work with them.”
“I’ll tell Dacre that’s what you think,” Archibald promises me. “You know that I want Scotland kept at peace for your son. I want nothing else.”
We walk down to the stable yard with our arms around each other’s waists, entwined like young lovers. I kiss him good-bye in a turn of the stairs where no one can see how he holds me, how I cling to him.
“Will you be back tomorrow night?” I ask longingly.
“The night after,” he says. “It’s not safe in the borders after dark.”
“Don’t take risks. Stay another night rather than ride after sunset.”
“I’ll come back safe to you.”
“Two nights,” I whisper.
“No more.”
“You do know where he is?” James Hamilton, the deputy regent, asks me. “It is a matter of common knowledge.”
I feel cold at his tone, as if he had put an icy hand on the nape of my neck. “What is a matter of common knowledge?” I return.
I have ridden out from Holyrood, through the Canongate, around the great looming mountain that people call Arthur’s Seat, knowing that James Hamilton and the lords who favor France are hunting in the wild fields and marshes south of the city. Hamilton, the Earl of Arran, sent me a private message, telling me that he wanted to talk with me beyond the listening walls and spying windows of the city, and I need to know what he will say. I cannot help but trust him, I have known him for years. Of course, I want to hear his plans for Scotland, what the word is from France; but I don’t want to hear gossip about my husband.
“Archibald is visiting his estates in the borders,” I say flatly. My horse, held too tightly as my hands grip the pommel, sidles and shifts his head. “Our estates. He cares for my lands. He will be away for only two nights.”
“I am sorry to tell you, Your Grace, but he is lying to you again. He has gone to Lady Janet Stewart at Newark Castle,” he says bluntly. “I thought that you did not know.”
“Certainly, it is not for you to tell me,” I say sharply. I speak very grandly but I have a sense of foreboding, almost a premonition. I don’t want this old friend to tell me any more. I don’t want this man who saw me as a princess at my father’s court and judged me fit to marry a king to judge me now as a fool who clings to an unfaithful husband and lets him shame her before the world.
“Who else would tell you?” he asks. “Who is on your side? All his clan are sworn to secrecy and loyal only to him. Dacre defends him because he has bought your husband lock, stock, and barrel with English gold. Will your sisters not advise you?”
Unwillingly, I shake my head. “They will not speak against lawful marriage.”
“Then you have no counsellors.”
Around us my ladies are chatting with his men. They are hunting with falcons, the sleek birds waiting on the falconers’ fists to be released as soon as his lordship gives the word. The beaters will drive the game upwards, the falconers will release their birds and they will soar in the sky above us and look down. From that height, we are as nothing, a scattering of figures on a vast unmapped country.
“I have advisors,” I say coldly. “They would warn me.”
“You have no one. Thomas Lord Dacre is your husband’s master. He won’t warn you against him. He works for the King of England and not for you. They have bought your husband; they’re not going to tell you that.”
This is so near to my fears that I cannot reply at first. I give a little laugh. “If Dacre has bought him he will command him to be faithful to me and mine. James, you do wrong to warn me. Archibald and I are reconciled. There’s no division between us. He will come home to me. You do wrong to speak against a husband to his wife.”
“Oh, is he your husband? I thought he was precontracted? And Dacre couldn’t care less. All Dacre does is pay him to keep him on the side of the English. He doesn’t care where he gets his bed and board. Thomas Dacre looks the other way when Douglas steals your rents and is unfaithful to you. Thomas Dacre may tell the king that your husband is not the best husband in Scotland, but he does not warn him that the Red Douglas clan will destroy the council of the lords. For Dacre the only thing that matters is English influence in Scotland, and he believes the safest way to secure that is to keep Archibald married to you and you in his thrall.”
“I will not be used!” I exclaim. “I will not be abused. I am not enthralled.”
“You must judge for yourself,” he says quietly. “But I tell you that the man you call your husband is snug in another woman’s bed tonight. And he calls her his wife. He suborns the council and he courts you to serve his paymaster: England.”
“I am queen regent.”
“So take your own power. Deal with me and with the Duke of Albany, and keep that traitor out of our business.”
“What if Albany never comes back?”
“He will come back. He knows his duty is to see your son safely to the throne. It is in your interest that he returns.”
“I am an English princess. Your master the king knew it when he married me. You knew it when you came to London to see me and I was just a little girl. I was married to bring an alliance between England and Scotland. I came here to break the French alliance, not to keep it.”
“King James said that he would make you a Scot, and that your son would be a true Scot, born and bred,” Hamilton says to me gently. “D’you think he was at peace with your kinsmen when he rode to Flodden? He knew that there is no agreeing with the English. And for all your kinship, the English have not proved so loving to you. It is not just the peace of the Scots that they destroy. Your peace and happiness do not matter to them, not to any of them.”
I run my fingers through my horse’s mane. It is true what James Hamilton says. Nobody cares for my peace or happiness; not even my sisters. All they want is to ensure that I do not reflect badly on them. “Do you swear that I would be safe if the Duke of Albany returned? Would I be able to see my son? Would I sit in council?”
“He would share the regency with you,” he assures me. “Not with the Earl of Angus. Never with him. None of us trusts him. But with you, on your own. You could have a joint regency with the duke, you could have your power back, and your son in your keeping, and the wealth and power of France behind you.”
“I’ll write to him,” I decide. My mistrust of Archibald, my sense that my sisters have betrayed me for their own ends, Katherine’s hardness of heart, Mary’s ignorance of everything that matters—these prompt me to work for myself, against them all. “I will write to the duke and invite him to come home.”