Three Sisters, Three Queens

WESTMINSTER ABBEY, LONDON, ENGLAND, FEBRUARY 1503

I think this must be the most miserable day of my life. I had thought that nothing would be worse than the loss of Arthur but now, only a year later, I have lost my mother, in childbed—trying to give my father and the country a son to replace the one we have lost. As if any child could ever replace Arthur! It was an insult to him to even think it, it was madness for her to attempt it. She wanted to console my father, to do the duty of a good queen to provide two heirs, and then she had a hard pregnancy and nothing to show at the end of it but a girl; so it was not worth the effort, anyway. I am in a rage of grief, furious with her, with my father, with God Himself, for the way that one terrible loss has turned into three: first Arthur and then my mother, and then her baby. And yet we still have Katherine of Arrogant. Why would we lose those three and keep her?

The funeral is a triumph of my lady grandmother’s ability to put on a grand show. She has always said that the royal family have to blaze before the people like saints in an altarpiece, and my mother’s death is an opportunity to remind the country that she was a Plantagenet princess who married a Tudor king. She did what the country should have done: submit to the Tudors and learn to love them. My mother’s coffin is draped in black with cloth of gold forming a cross on the hearse. They make a beautiful effigy of her for the top of the coffin, and my little sister Mary thinks it is her real mother, just sleeping, and that she will wake up soon and everything will be as it was. This fails to move me to tears, though it makes Princess Katherine bow her head and take Mary’s hand in her own. I think it is just part of the whole irritating stupidity of my family and the way that, except for my lady grandmother, we can never be anything but ridiculous. Now my father has disappeared, refusing to rule, refusing to eat, refusing to see any of us, even me. This is all so miserable that I can barely speak for bad temper and grief.

It should be me, as Queen of Scotland, who takes over my mother’s rooms and the running of the court. I should have the best rooms and her ladies should serve me. But it is all done wrong: her household is turned away without my being consulted, and her ladies go back to live with their families in their London houses, in rooms at court or on their country estates. Although I am now the most important Tudor lady, and the only queen in England, I keep my old rooms. I don’t even have new mourning clothes but I have to wear the same things from when Arthur died. I keep expecting to see her, I keep listening for her voice. One day I find I am going to her rooms to see her, and then I remember that they are closed up and empty. It is strange that someone who was so quiet and discreet, who was always happy to step back and hold her peace, should leave such an aching silence when she is gone. But it is so.

My lady grandmother tells me that the death of my mother is God’s way of showing me that in every joy there is sorrow, and that titles and worldly show are passing pleasures. I don’t doubt that God speaks directly to my lady grandmother for she is always so certain about everything and her confessor, Bishop Fisher, is the holiest man I know. But God does not succeed in teaching me to disdain worldly show; on the contrary, the death of my mother, coming so soon after the loss of my brother, makes me long for the safety of wealth and my own crown more than ever before. I feel as if everyone I love best has gone from the world and no one can be trusted. The only reliable thing in this world is a throne and a fortune. The only thing I have left is my new title. The only things I trust are my jewel box, the wardrobe for my wedding, and the enormous fortune that will come to me on marriage.

I am to leave England in the summer; the plans are unchanged and I am glad of it, as there is nothing to keep me here. King James of Scotland is as good as his word on the marriage treaty and I will have a fortune in rents—six thousand pounds a year from the lands he has given me, as well as one thousand Scots pounds a year for my allowance. He will pay the wages of my twenty-four English servants and the expenses of my court. If he should be so unfortunate as to die—and this is possible as he is so very old—then I will be a wealthy widow: I will have Newark Castle and Ettrick Forest, and much, much more. This is something I can count on: this fortune and my crown. Everything else, even my mother’s love, can vanish overnight. I know this now.

But I am surprised to feel that I don’t want to leave home without making friends with my brother Harry, and I go to look for him. He is in my lady grandmother’s rooms, reading to her from a Latin psalter. I can hear his clear boy’s voice and his beautiful pronunciation through her door, and he does not stop as the doors are swung open by the guard, though he glances up and sees me. The two of them are framed by the carved stone arch of the window, as if posing for a painting about Youth and Age. They are both beautifully dressed in black velvet; a shaft of sunlight illuminates Harry’s golden head like a halo. My grandmother is wearing a severe white headdress, a wimple like a nun’s. They should both stop and bow, but my lady grandmother gives a nod of her head and gestures that Harry shall go on, as if his words are more important than my precedence. I look at them with exhausted resentment. They are both so lean and tall and beautiful and I am so dumpy and ruffled and hot. They look completely royal, enormously spiritual, and I look overdressed.

I curtsey to my grandmother in silence and sit on a cushion on the window seat that raises me slightly higher than her, while Harry finishes reading. It takes forever before she says: “That was beautiful, Your Grace, my dear boy, thank you.” And he bows and closes the book and hands it back to her and says: “It is I that should thank you for putting such words of wisdom, so beautifully illustrated, into my hands.”

Then they look at each other with mutual admiration and she goes to her small privy chapel to pray, her ladies follow her to kneel at the back, and Harry and I are alone.

“Harry, I am sorry that I said that, when Arthur died,” I stumble bluntly.

Graciously, he raises his head. Harry loves an apology.

“I was so unhappy,” I add. “I didn’t know what I was saying.”

“And then it got worse.” His moment of pride is gone. I can almost smell his misery—the misery of a boy, not yet a man, who has lost his mother, the only person who truly loved him.

Awkwardly, I get to my feet and stretch my arms out to him, and hold him. It is almost like holding Arthur, he is so tall and strong. “My brother,” I say, trying out the words; I have never felt tenderly towards Harry before. “My brother,” I repeat.

“My sister,” he says.

We hold each other in silence for a moment and I think: this is comforting. This is my brother—strong as a colt and lonely, as I am. I can, perhaps, trust him. He can trust me.

“You know, I am going to be King of England one day,” he says, his face pressed against my shoulder.

“Not for years yet,” I say consolingly. “Father will come back to court and it will be like it was.”

“And I am to marry Katherine,” he says shyly. He releases me. “She was never truly married to Arthur—she is to marry me.”

I am so stunned that I just gape silently, breathless with surprise. Harry sees the blankness of my face and gives a little embarrassed laugh. “Not at once, of course. We will wait until I am fourteen. But we will be betrothed at once.”

“Not again!” bursts out of me, as I think of the gold laces and the extravagant wedding.

“It’s agreed.”

“But she’s Arthur’s widow,” I say.

“Not really,” he says awkwardly.

“What do you mean?” Then, in an instant, all at once I know. I think of Katherine of Arrogant saying, “Alas, it never happened for us,” and my wondering what she meant by that, and why she should say such a thing.

“Alas,” I say, watching him narrowly. “It never happened for them.”

“No,” he says, relieved. I could bet that he even recognizes the words. “No, alas, it didn’t.”

“Is this her plan?” I demand furiously. “Is this how she gets to stay here, forever? Is this how she gets to be Princess of Wales and then become Queen of England even though her husband died? Because she has set her heart on this? She was never in love with Arthur, it was always for the throne.”

“It’s father’s plan,” Harry says innocently. “It was agreed before Lady Mother’s . . . Lady Mother’s death.”

“No, it will be her plan,” I am certain. “She promised Arthur something before he died. I think it was this.”

Harry smiles like a glowing angel. “Then I have my brother’s blessing,” he says. He raises his head, like when he was reading the Latin psalm, and he repeats from memory. “ ‘If brethren dwell together, and one of them dieth without children, the wife of the deceased shall not marry to another: but his brother shall take her, and raise up seed for his brother.’ ”

“Is that the Bible?” I ask, feeling my ignorance, but thinking it remarkable that God should plan this convenient arrangement for the expensive widow. This way we get her dowry, and don’t pay her widow’s jointure. How mysterious are the ways of the Lord! How nice for her and how cheap for my father!

“Deuteronomy,” says my brother the scholar. “It is God’s will that I marry Katherine.”

Harry goes for his riding lesson and I remain seated in my lady grandmother’s rooms till she comes out of her private chapel followed by her ladies-in-waiting, and I see that behind her, Princess Katherine is holding Mary’s hand. Apparently, Katherine often prays with my sister in the privy chapel. I quickly take in her hood, her gown, her shoes, and I note that she has nothing new. The skirts of her gown look new, but actually they have been turned inside out; her shoes are worn. Katherine of Arrogant is having to pinch pennies, her parents are sending her no funds until the betrothal is confirmed, and my father is not paying her jointure since she will no longer be a widow. I cannot help but be pleased to see that the cost of her ambition is falling on her.

My lady grandmother sees me and beckons me into her chapel as the others leave, and we are alone in the shadowy room that always smells lingeringly of incense and books.

“Have you ever spoken privately with the Dowager Princess of Wales?” she asks me.

“Not much,” I say. I don’t know what answer she wants to hear. But I can tell by the grim lines grooved around her mouth that she is very displeased with somebody. I only hope it’s not me.

“Did she tell you anything of our beloved son Arthur?”

I note that my grandmother now refers to Arthur as our beloved son, as if my mother had never been at all. “She once said that he asked her to comfort us in our loss,” I reply.

“Not that,” the old lady snaps. “Not that. Did she say anything about her marriage, before he was ill?”

“Alas, it never happened for us,” I think to myself. Aloud, I say: “No. She hardly speaks to me.”

I see my grandmother’s face fold up into an expression of deep displeasure. Something has occurred that she dislikes—someone will be sorry for that. She puts a bony hand over mine, a deep, rich ruby glowing on her finger, the band clipping my knuckle. “You ask her,” she orders. “Ask her for advice. You are a young woman, about to be married. Ask her for the advice of a mother. What takes place in the marriage bed. Whether she was afraid, or in pain on her wedding night.”

I am quite shocked. I am a royal bride. I am not supposed to know anything. I am not supposed to ask.

She makes a little impatient noise in the back of her throat. “Ask her,” she says. “And then come and tell me exactly what she says.”

“But why?” I say, bemused. “Why am I to ask her? It was more than a year ago.”

The face she turns to me is bleached with fury. I have never seen her like this before. “She is saying they never bedded,” she hisses. “Age sixteen and near six months married, and now she says they never bedded? Put to bed before the whole court and rising up smiling in the morning with not a word against it? And now she says that she is a virgin untouched.”

“But why should she say such a thing?”

“Her mother!” my lady grandmother exclaims as if the words are an insult. “Her clever, wicked mother, Isabella of Castile, will have told her to deny Arthur so that she can marry without a dispensation, so she can be a virgin bride.”

Now she can’t sit still, she is so enraged. She gets up from her prie-dieu and strides about the small space, her black skirts swishing the rushes on the floor back and forth so they release the perfume of bedstraw, meadowsweet, and lavender in dusty clouds. “Virgin bride? A viper bride! I know what they are thinking, I know what they are planning. But I will see her dead before she takes my son’s throne.”

I am frightened. I crouch down on my footstool like a fat duckling in the nest when a sleek raptor flies over. My grandmother suddenly stops, puts her hands on my shoulder like a stooping peregrine. Her grip is as hard as a claw. I look up waveringly.

“You don’t want her to marry Harry?” I whisper. “I don’t either.” I try a sycophantic smile. “I don’t like her. I don’t want her to marry my brother.”

“Your father,” she says, and it is as if she shatters into a thousand sharp pieces of jealousy and grief. “I am certain that she wants to seduce and marry your father! She has set her sights on my son! My boy, my precious boy! But she will never do it. I will never allow it.”