Three Sisters, Three Queens

HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, CHRISTMAS 1509

We celebrate Christmas in the grandest way that Scotland can afford, with masques and disguisings, dances and feasts, and John Damien the alchemist builds a machine that can fly around the room like a captive bird, which makes people scream with fright. James gives me a chain of gold, and jewels for my hair, and tells me that I am the finest queen that Scotland has ever had. I look well, I know. My gowns are too tight and they have let out the seams and lace me loosely, but James says that I am bonny and blithe, as a wife should be, and that he has no objection to a warm armful.