Three Sisters, Three Queens

HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, WINTER 1529

Our court is as bright and as cultured as any in Europe. We bring in the greenwood tree in the old Christmas tradition and we have a piper every night and we dance the wild, fast reels of Scotland as well as the courtly dances of France. We have poetry every dinnertime from the great makars, reciting in their booming Scots, poems about freedom and the beauty of the mountains and the stormy seas of the North. We have ballads from the lowland country and love songs and troubadour poems in French and Latin. James loves music as much as his father did, and he will play on his lute for the court and dance all the night. He is a lover of women and drink—just as his father was—and I say nothing against this during the season of Christmas, for every young man goes roistering and whoring at this time of year and every young man is drunk. I did not bring him up to be a saint but to be a king, and I would rather have a son who was an open bawdy lover of women than the tortured secretive man that my brother has become.

James honors the members of his court who have served him well this year, and gives rich gifts to all his favorites. Davy Lyndsay, still in royal service, never failing in his love and loyalty to the baby that I put in his keeping, is knighted and made Lyon King of Arms—a herald of great importance. This is an especially good choice for Davy, who has spent his life studying chivalry and poetry. Who better to represent James with messages to other kings or emperors? James invests the new herald himself and embraces him in public. “You have been a father to me,” he whispers to him. “I will never forget it.”

The old man is greatly moved. I kiss his cheeks and find them damp with his tears. “Our boy is going to be a great king, thanks to your training,” I tell him.

“He is a great king for he is the son of a great queen,” he tells me.

We receive gifts from England, nothing that shows the loving care that Katherine used to put into the yards of silk that she chose for me, or the embroidered shirts she would give James. These courtesy gifts from one court to another come from the master of ceremonies, as part of his duties, not from a woman who loves her sister. I wonder what sort of Christmas Katherine will have now she is still a wife but no longer beloved; still a queen, but badly served. I have a letter from Mary after the twelve days which starts with the most important thing to her. I would laugh if I did not understand that she is describing the unraveling of Harry’s court. This is the end of order, the order that my lady grandmother encoded in her great book. This is the end of everything:

He let her go before me.

Mary writes with painful simplicity. Almost, I can see her shaking her golden head, seeing again before her Mademoiselle Anne overthrowing the sacred rules of precedence, the order of the nobles, hitching up her skirt and dancing into line before my sister, the sister of the King of England, the Dowager Queen of France.

Maggie, she went before me. It was the ennobling of her father, a perfectly nice man, I have nothing against him; he served as Cousin Margaret’s steward, and he was carver for you—you will remember him. Thomas Boleyn is a good servant of the Crown, I know.

I can hear Mary retracing her thinking, her unending puzzlement.

Harry has made him Earl of Ormond, not only that, but also Earl of Wiltshire, which is no honor to Wiltshire I am sure. His son is to be called Viscount Rochford.

I rest the pages so that I can think. Is this to be her price? Is Harry ennobling the father to buy his daughter’s honor? If this is so, then we may be at the end of our ordeal. Her father straps on the order of a double earldom, her mother becomes a bawd and a countess in the same moment, and the brother a viscount and a pimp. Why not? If Anne Boleyn will accept these honors in return for her own much-vaunted maidenhead then we can all be happy again.

Harry gave them a great dinner to celebrate their ennoblement. Of course the queen could not attend so I took her place and led in the ladies and the Duchess of Norfolk came behind me, and we were all about to go to our usual seats when I saw that the queen’s chair was behind the table, beside Harry’s, and while I paused, the master of ceremonies led me to a table beside Harry’s, and Anne Boleyn (Lady Anne as she is now) walked past me, walked up the steps to the dais and sat beside Harry on his right hand, as if she were queen crowned.

The old Duchess of Norfolk and I looked at each other agape like peasants seeing a two-headed pig at a fair. I didn’t know what to do or say. Maggie, I have never been so unhappy. I have never been so insulted. I looked across at Charles and he gestured to me to sit and eat and pretend to notice nothing. And so I sat, and SHE SENT OUT A DISH TO ME! She did. She favored me as if I should be grateful. Harry was watching, he said nothing: neither to stop her, nor to encourage her. She taunted me. I served myself and pretended to eat. I thought that I should be sick of shame. Harry must be mad to treat me so, his own sister. He has put his whore ahead of his wife, he has put her ahead of me—she was my own maid-in-waiting. I think I will die of the dishonor.

I wish you a happier Christmas than we will have. Katherine says that she thinks that Anne Boleyn is determined to convert Harry to the reformed religion and then he will not need to consult the Pope or the laws of the Church but only what his conscience tells him. That’s all they believe in, these Lutherans. But what conscience can he have?