Three Sisters, Three Queens

HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, AUTUMN 1526

The citizens of Edinburgh line the streets and cheer me as I enter the city and proceed, more like a victor than a defeated estranged wife, to Holyrood. Retainers and servants, Stewart and Douglas, bow and doff their hats to me as I dismount, and Archibald greets me as courteously as if we have never been anything but queen and head of the council. He escorts me to James’s private rooms and he leaves me at the door.

“Whatever he says,” he nods at the closed door behind the grim-faced Douglas men who guard it, “whatever he says, I would not hurt him. I have loved him like my own son. You know that.”

“Yes, I do know that,” I say grudgingly. “But what complaint can he make of you?”

He gives me his rueful smile. “I keep him from the throne,” he admits. “He cannot take power. I have to rule the lords until I am certain that I and my house are safe and the kingdom in alliance with England. You know that.”

I nod. I do know that.

They swing the doors open and I go in to my son.

He jumps up from the floor where he was playing with dice, right hand against left, and he strides across the room to me. He has grown to become a young man, I see it at once. Only last year he would have bounced over the floor like a fawn. Now he comes quickly, but his shoulders are set like a man’s, and he plants his feet, he does not skip. He has presence—he never had it before.

“Every time we meet, you are changed,” I mourn, scanning his face and seeing the shadow of a moustache, and the beginning of a straggly beard on his cheeks. “A beard! You are never growing a beard?”

“You are always the same,” he says gallantly. “Always beautiful.”

“It’s been terrible,” I say bluntly. “I tried and tried to get you away.”

“I know. I tried to come to you.” He drops his voice. “They laid hands on me,” he says. “They said they would tear me limb from limb. You told me never to let them touch me, but they would have dismembered me. I had no authority. They had no respect and I could not make them.”

Miserably, we look at each other. “I’ve failed you,” I say. “God forgive me, and I hope you will forgive me.”

“No,” he says quickly. He has thought about this. “You have always tried to do the best for me, hold the power, get me to the throne. Those who have failed me are your brother the king, your husband my guardian, and the lords who have let themselves be led like sheep following a wolf. You are not at fault for these men and these fools.”

“I have no money and no army and no support from England,” I say bluntly. “I have no plan.”

“I know,” he says, and suddenly his father’s joyful smile lights up his face. “So I thought we would just be happy together. Even if we are imprisoned. I thought that we might be happy this winter and spend Christmas the three of us, and know that every year that I grow older, every month that my beard grows in, the end of the rule of the Red Douglas comes closer. Archibald cannot hold me as his prisoner when I am a full-grown man. We will win in the end just by surviving.”

I take his hands and I kiss his cheeks where the scattering of dark hairs are as soft as his baby curls. We are the same height now, my boy is as tall as I am, and still growing. “Very well,” I say. “Let us send for Margaret and all be happy.”