Three Sisters, Three Queens

HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, AUGUST 1503

Next day my ladies wake me in the cool light of a blue sky at six in the morning. I attend Lauds in my private chapel and then I take breakfast in my presence chamber with only my ladies attending. Nobody eats very much, we are all too excited, and I am ready to be sick at the very taste of the bread roll and small ale. I go back to my bedroom where a huge bath has been rolled in, filled with steaming water, and my wedding gown is laid out on the bed. My ladies wash and dress me as if I were a wooden poppet, and then they comb my hair so that it is smooth and curling and spread out over my shoulders. It is my best feature, this wealth of fair hair, and we all pause to admire it and tie in extra ribbons. Then, suddenly, there is no time and we have to hurry. I keep remembering a dozen things that I want, and a dozen things that I was going to do. Already I have on my wedding shoes, with embroidered toes and golden laces, quite as fine as Katherine of Arrogant’s, and Agnes Howard is ready to walk behind me, and the ladies all line up behind her, and I have to go.

Down the stone stairs, into the bright sunshine I glide to where the great door of the neighboring abbey is thrown open for me, and then into the abbey, which is crowded with lords and their ladies dressed in their robes, the air scented with incense, and ringing with the music of the choir. I remember walking up the aisle towards James at the top, and the blaze of gold from the reliquaries on the altar and the heat from the thousands of candles and the high vaulting of the ceiling. I remember the magnificent stone window over the altar, stories high, blazing with color from the stained glass—and then . . . I don’t remember another thing.

I think it is as grand as Arthur’s wedding. It’s not Saint Paul’s, of course, but I wear a gown as good as Katherine’s was on that day. The king at my side is a blaze of jewels, and he is a full king whereas Katherine married only a prince. And I am crowned. She was never crowned, of course, she was a mere princess, and is now even less than that. But I have a double ceremony: I am married and then I am crowned queen. It is so grand and it takes so long that I am in a daze. I have ridden so far, hundreds and hundreds of miles, all the way from Richmond, and been seen by so many people. I have been waiting for this day for years; my father had it planned for most of my life, it is my lady grandmother’s great triumph. I should feel wildly excited, but it is too thrilling to take in. I am only thirteen. I feel like my little sister Mary, when she is allowed to stay up too late at a feast. I am dazzled by my own glory and I pass through everything—the wedding Mass, the coronation and the loyal oaths, the feast, the masquing, the last service at the chapel, and then the procession to bed—as if I were dreaming. The king’s arm is around my waist all the day—if it were not for him I think I would fall. The day goes on forever, and then he goes to confess and pray in his rooms as my ladies take me and put me to bed.

Agnes Howard supervises them as they unlace my sleeves and put them away in lavender bags, untie my gown and help me out of the tight stomacher. I am to wear my finest linen robe, trimmed with French lace, and over it I have a satin gown for the night. They lie me on the bed, propped against the pillows, arrange my gown around my feet and pull and tweak at my sleeves as if I were a wax effigy, like my mother on her coffin. Agnes Howard twists my fair hair into curls and spreads it around my shoulders, pinching my cheeks to make them blush.

“How do I look?” I ask her. “Hand me a mirror.”

“You look well,” she says with a little smile. “A beautiful bride.”

“Like Katherine?”

“Yes,” she says.

“Like my mother?” I gaze at my round childish face in the looking glass.

She studies me with critical, measuring eyes. “No,” she says. “Not really. For she was the most beautiful of all the Queens of England.”

“More beautiful than my sister, then?” I say, trying to find some measure to give me confidence to face my husband this night.

Again, the level, judging look. “No,” she says reluctantly. “But you should never compare yourself with her. Mary is going to be exceptional.”

I give a little irritated exclamation and push the looking glass back at her.

“Be at peace,” she recommends. “You’re the most beautiful Queen of Scotland. Let that be enough for you. And your husband is clearly pleased with you.”

“I wonder he could see me through the beard,” I say crossly. “I wonder he can see anything.”

“He can see you,” she advises me. “There’s not much that he misses.”

The lords of his court escort him to the bedroom door, singing bawdy songs and making jokes, but he does not allow them into our chamber. When he enters he says good night to the ladies so that everyone leaves us and has to abandon the hope that they might watch the bedding. I realize that he does this not out of any shyness, because he has no shyness, but out of kindness to me. There is really no need. I am not a child, I am a princess; I have been born and bred for this. I have lived all my life in the glare of a court. I know that everyone always knows everything about me and constantly compares me to other princesses. I am never judged for myself, I was always viewed as one of four Tudor children, and now I am weighed as one of three royal sisters. It’s never fair.

James undresses himself, like a common man, throwing off his fine long gown so he stands before me in his nightshirt, and then pulls that over his head. I hear a chink like a heavy necklace as his nakedness is revealed to me inch by inch as the nightshirt is stripped off. Strong legs covered in thick, dark hair, a mass of dark hair at his crotch and his pizzle standing up awkwardly like a stallion’s, the dark line of hair over his flat belly, and then—

“What’s that?” I ask as I see a circlet of metal rings around his waist. It was this that made the little revealing chink.

“That’s my manhood,” he says, deliberately misunderstanding me. “I won’t hurt you, I will be gentle.”

“Not that,” I say. I was raised at court but I have been around stables and farm animals for all my life. “I know all about that. What is that around your waist?”

He touches the belt lightly with his finger. “Oh, this.”

I can see now that it has rubbed him raw. It is barbed and it grazes his skin every time he makes a move. The skin is rough and scarred around his waist; he must have worn this for years. He has been in constant irritating discomfort for years as every movement he makes scratches his skin.

“This is a cilice,” he says. “You must have seen one before. You who knows so much of the world that you see your husband’s cock on your wedding night, and already you know all about it?”

I giggle a little. “I didn’t mean that. But what is the cilice for?”

“It’s to remind me of my sin,” he says. “When I was young, about your age, I did something very stupid, something very wrong. I did something that will send me to hell. I wear it to remind me that I am stupid and that I am a sinner.”

“If you were my age then nobody can blame you,” I assure him. “You can just confess. Confess and be given a penance.”

“I can’t be forgiven just because I was young,” he says. “And don’t you think that either. You can’t be forgiven because you are young or because you are royal or in your case because you are a woman and your mind is less steady than a man’s. You are a queen; you have to hold yourself to the highest of standards. You have to be wise, you have to be faithful, your word has to be your bond, you have to answer to God, not to a priest who might absolve you. No one can absolve you for stupidity and sin if you are royal. You have to make sure that you never commit stupidity or sin.”

I look at him, a little aghast, as he towers above me in my bridal chamber, his pizzle standing up and ready, a great chain cutting into his waist, stern as a judge.

“Do you have to wear it now?” I ask. “I mean, now?”

He gives a little laugh. “No,” he says, and he bends his head, unlinks it and removes it. He comes to the bed and gets in beside me.

“It must be better to take it off,” I say, guiding him to the thought that he might lay it aside forever.

“There is no reason that you should be scratched for my sins,” he says gently. “I will take it off when I am with you. There is no reason that this should hurt you at all.”

It does not hurt because he is gentle and quick and he keeps his weight off me—he is not clumsy like a stallion in the field but deft and neat. There is something very pleasant about being stroked all over, like a cat on someone’s lap, and his hands go everywhere on me, behind my ears and in my hair and down my back and between my legs, as if there was nowhere that he could not turn my skin into silk and then into cream. It has been a long day and I feel dizzy and sleepy and there is no pain at all, more a rather surprising intrusion, and then a sort of warm stirring, and just when it starts to get heavy and pushing, and too much, it is finished and I am left feeling nothing but warm and petted.

“That’s it?” I ask, surprised, when he gives a sigh and then comes carefully away and lies back on the pillow.

“That’s it,” he says. “Or at any rate, that’s it for tonight.”

“I thought it hurt and there was blood,” I say.

“There is a little blood,” he says. “Enough to show on the bedsheets in the morning. Enough for Lady Agnes to report to your grandmother; but it should not hurt. It should be a pleasure, even for a woman. Some physicians think there has to be pleasure to make a child, but I doubt that myself.”

He gets out of bed and picks up his chain belt again.

“Do you have to put that on?”

“I do.” He clips it on and I see his little grimace as the metal scratches against his sore skin.

“What did you do that was so very bad?” I ask, as if he might tell me a story before I go to sleep.

“I led rebel lords against my father the king,” he answers, but he is not smiling and this is not a pleasant story at all. “I was fifteen. I thought he was going to murder me and put my brother in my place. I listened to the lords and I led their army in a treasonous rebellion. I thought that we would capture him and he would rule with better advisors. But when he saw me he did not advance; he would not march against his own son. He was more faithful a father to me than I was a son to him, and so the rebels and I won the battle, and he ran away, and they caught and killed him.”

“What?” I am jolted from sleep by the horror of this story.

“Yes.”

“You rebelled against your father and killed him?” This is a sin against order, against God and against his father. “You killed your own father?”

His shadow on the wall behind him leaps as my bedside candle gutters. “God forgive me, yes,” he says quietly. “And so there is a curse on me as a rebel, a usurper and a man who killed my own king: a son who killed his own father. I am a regicide and a patricide. And I wear this so I never forget to suspect the motives of my allies, and when I make war I always think who may be killed by accident. I am deep in sin. I will never be able to expiate it.”

The bed ropes creak as he gets into bed beside me, this king killer, this murderer. “Can you not go on pilgrimage?” I ask faintly. “Can you not go on crusade? Can the Holy Father not dispense for your sin?”

“I hope to do so,” he says quietly. “This country has never been peaceful enough for me to safely leave, but I would like to go on crusade. I hope to go to Jerusalem one day—that would wash my soul clean.”

“I didn’t know,” I say quietly. “I didn’t know anything about this.”

He shrugs and pulls the covers up over his belly, spreading himself out in the bed, feet to both corners, arms folded across his broad chest, as if all the bed is his and I must fit into one corner, or mold myself around him.

“Your own father led a rebellion against a crowned ordained king,” he says, as if it is not the most terrible thing to do. “And he married your mother against her will, and he killed her kinsmen, young men of royal blood. To take the throne and to hold it, you sometimes have to do terrible things.”

I let out a little squeak of protest. “No, he did not! Not any of those things, or at any rate, not like that!”

“Sin is sin,” the murderer tells me, and then he goes to sleep.

The next morning is the best day of my life. It is a tradition that the Scots kings give their brides their dower lands the morning after the wedding, and I go into James’s privy chamber where he and I sit either side of a heavy table as he signs over the deeds of one enormous forest and one great castle after another until I know that I am indeed as wealthy as any queen. I am happy and the court is happy for me. They too have gleaned gifts at my harvest. James Hamilton, who negotiated the marriage treaty, is to be Earl of Arran, a title created for him in reward for his work and to acknowledge his kinship to the king. All my ladies receive gifts, all the Scots lords are given money and some of them get titles.

Then the king turns to me, and says with a slight smile: “I am informed that you don’t like my beard, Your Grace. This too can be at your command. Behold, I am a willing Samson. I will be shorn for love.”

He has surprised me. “You will?” I say. “Who told you? I never said anything about it.”

“You would rather I kept it long?” He strokes the great bush of it from his chin to his belly.

“No! No!” I shake my head and this makes him laugh again.

He turns and nods to one of his companions and the man opens the door to the presence chamber. All the people outside peep in to see what their betters are doing, as a servant comes in with a bowl and a jug, linen, and a great pair of golden scissors.

At once my ladies laugh and clap their hands, but I feel awkward and I am glad when the door is shut and the petitioners and visitors can’t see us. “I don’t know what you mean to do. Can’t we send for a barber?”

“You do it,” he says teasingly. “You don’t want my beard, you take it off. Or are you afraid?”

“I’m not afraid,” I say boldly.

“I think you are,” he says, his smile gleaming through the fox brush. “But Lady Agnes will help you.”

I glance at her in case this is not allowed, but she is smiling and laughing.

“May I?” I say doubtfully.

“If Samson comes to be shorn, who shall refuse him?” Agnes Howard says. “But we don’t want to cut off your strength, Your Grace. We would not hurt you for the world.”

“You shall make me as handsome as an English courtier,” he assures her. “If Her Grace the little Queen of Scots does not want a handsome Highland beard in her bed, she need not endure one. She has to have me, wild enough for any woman—she need not have a great beard as well.”

He sits down on a stool, tucks the napkin around his neck and presents the scissors to me. I take them and make a nervous snip. A whole clump of red pelt falls into his lap. Aghast, I stop, but the king laughs and says: “Bravo, Bravo, Queen Margaret! Go to it!” And I make another snip and then another until it is all off. He is still thickly bearded, but the cascade of hair that tumbled over his chest is now lying on the floor.

“Now, Lady Agnes,” he says, “I swear that you know how to shave a man. Show Her Grace how it is done and make sure that you don’t cut my poor throat.”

“Should we not send for a barber?” she asks, just as I did.

He laughs. “Oh, give me a noble shearing,” he says, and Lady Agnes sends for hot water and a razor and the finest soap and sets about him while I watch and the king laughs at my appalled expression.

At the end she wraps him in warm linen and he pats his newly bared face gently and then unwraps for me.

“What do you think?” he asks. “Do I please you now, Your Grace?”

His lower face is white-skinned, far paler than the rest, as it has been shaded from the sun and wind by his beard while his cheeks and his brow are deeply tanned, and he has white smile lines around his eyes. He looks odd, but his chin is strong and slightly dimpled and his mouth is sensual, the lips full and shapely.

“You do,” I say, for I can hardly say anything else.

He gives me a warm kiss on the mouth, and Agnes Howard claps her hands as if all the credit is due to her.

“Wait till they see me,” he says. “My loyal lords will know that I am wedded and bedded to an English princess indeed, for I have become so very English and smart.”

We stay in Holyroodhouse Palace until the autumn and there are constant jousts and celebrations. The French knight Antoine d’Arcy, the Sieur de la Bastie, is a great favorite, and swears that he would be my chevalier were he not already promised to Anne of Brittany. I pretend to be offended, but then he tells me that in honor of her he wears armor and trappings of pure white, and nothing suits him better. He really cannot switch to green. This makes me laugh and I agree that he has to be “the white knight” for the rest of his life, but that I will know and he will know that his heart is mine. This is very pretty nonsense, especially from a young man so dazzlingly good-looking, and it is part of the work of being a beautiful queen.