Three Sisters, Three Queens

STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1514

In the cold dark months of the new year, as my belly broadens, I grow more and more weary of the lords of my council, more and more tired of their suspicion of me, confined to my rooms by the darkness and storms of snow before I am confined by childbirth. I write to my sisters—for who else do I have in all the world?—weeping a little with self-pity, in case this is the last they ever hear of me:

Dear Sisters, Katherine and Mary,

I am writing to you as I go into confinement, conscious that life is uncertain and children are born into sorrow. If I should not survive this, then I beg the two of you to take care of my boy and my new baby if it lives. There is no one here that I can trust more than the two of you, who, I know, love me and mine, whatever has passed between our countries.

Mary, as my younger sister, I require you to ensure that my son is raised as a King of Scotland and that he is kept safe from his enemies. Katherine, as my sister twice over, I require you to ensure that my son inherits the kingdom his father left him and whatever else is his by right.

If I live, I shall hope to serve the two of you as a dear sister and trusted ally. And if I live, I hope to receive my lady grandmother’s jewels and the rest of my inheritance.

God bless you both,

Your sister,

Margaret

With no father to pray for my baby’s safety, with no king to go on pilgrimage or promise a crusade, it is a long, painful birthing and no sign of any help from God; but at the end of it I have a boy, another boy for the Stewart house, and I name him Alexander. Last time, James insisted on coming to see me, breaking all the rules of the confinement chamber. Last time he took me to his bed the moment that I was churched, ignoring feast days and fast days and the commands of the Church, desperate to give me another child before he had to leave for war. But this time no husband comes to the screen in the confinement room, no impatient father demands to see his son. This time I lie alone at night, the baby in the nursery next door, listening to the quiet squeak of the rocking chair of the night nurse. This time I lean back on cool pillows and know there will be no tap at the door and no bobbing candle as the king comes to visit. This time I am alone, I am very alone. I really cannot bear to be so alone.

I write to my brother, Harry, who has returned in triumph from France to find that Katherine, his wife, can kill a king and steal his body but not bring a healthy child to full term. Apparently she lost a son while Harry was away at war. I am sorry for her, but I am not surprised. I don’t see how any woman who could send the bloodstained coat of a kinsman as a symbol of triumph could be woman enough to bear a child. How can Katherine be in a state of grace? How can God forgive her for her savagery? Surely He must love the widow more than the murderer. No wonder that He gives me a strong boy and Katherine gets a dead child. What else does she deserve? I hope she never gets a baby. I hope she fails to give Harry a live boy since she reveled in giving him a dead king.

My sister Mary writes me a letter of congratulations. She spends but a moment of her misspelled crisscrossed letter on the birth of my child, she is so full of her own news. Charles Brandon—Henry’s great friend and companion—has been made master of horse; Charles Brandon rode with Harry to France and never left his side through danger and battle, and was so engaging to the Archduchess Margaret at Flanders that everyone says he will marry her. They say that this is a disgrace for such a noble lady but Mary does not think so.

Do you think so? Do you not think it would be a wonderful thing to marry for love? If you were Archduchess Margaret, would you be able to resist him? For he is the most handsome man in England and the bravest and the best jouster.

I am very glad to know that you have had a son, your letter made my cry so much that Charles Brandon said that my tears were like sapphires in a river and that a brave knight would want to drink from such a stream.

I reply briefly to her:

Of course, the archduchess, like all noble ladies, must marry for the benefit of her family and the safety of her country to the choice of her father or guardian. And anyway, I believe that Charles Brandon is betrothed already?

Then I take up a page and write to Katherine. I spend some time on the letter: it is a masterpiece of spite. I say that I am grieved, deeply grieved, that she has lost yet another child. I wish she too had the happiness of a newborn son, another son. I tell her that he is to be called Alexander and he will carry the traditional title of the second son of Scotland: Duke of Ross. I remark (in case it has slipped her murderer’s mind), that this is all I have left of my husband.

It was a long birth but he is a strong baby. His little brother, our king, is well also. I am so glad to have two sons, my two little heirs. I do hope that you, Queen of England and trusted advisor to the king, will work for peace between our two kingdoms for the sake of myself—the king’s sister—and my two little boys—his nephews and heirs.

I am not surprised that she does not have the gall to reply to this, but Harry sends a message to me by the Warden of the Marches, Thomas Lord Dacre, the man who bundled the body of the King of Scots onto a cart as the spoils of war, the man who is destroying the peace of the kingdom, gnawing on the border castles like a dog on a bone. My brother gives me a warning that the French are going to send John Stuart, Duke of Albany, my husband’s French-born cousin—apparently to help me, but actually to rule Scotland in my place. Henry demands that I refuse entry to the Duke of Albany, and ensure that he gains no power.

“How?” I ask John Drummond, the justice-general, a great Scots lord, who has brought this letter from Edinburgh and is seated beside me at dinner. “How exactly does he think I am to do this?”

The young Earl of Angus carves a pheasant for us with nonchalant skill and places a beautiful slice of meat before me, his queen, and before his grandfather. John Drummond smiles at me. “That’s not a question he has to answer. He only has to give the command. That’s the joy of being a king.”

“It’s not the joy of being a queen,” I retort. “I cannot collect my rents and my tenants refuse to pay. Half my stewards and servants are dead anyway. I cannot send a guard to collect my money as I cannot pay the guard; and without money and a great household I cannot command the country.”

“You will have to sell the king’s ship,” Drummond says.

I sigh at the thought of the Great Michael going to the French. “I have done so already.”

“And if the Crown has no money, then you must secure the treasury,” he says quietly. “For yourself. The little king’s household has to be guarded.”

I flush. This is theft—royal theft—but it is theft all the same. “I have done so,” I say. “I keep the keys, nobody can draw any gold without my consent.”

His slow smile acknowledges that I have acted rightly, if not legally. “What about the lords who agreed to rule with you? Do they have keys?”

“There’s only one key, not six.”

Again I see the little gleam at my ruthlessness. “Aye, well, that was well done. We can explain it when the council find out.”

“They won’t like it. They don’t like being ruled by a woman.”

He pauses for a moment. “Perhaps you would be well advised to take another husband?”

“My Lord Drummond—I have not yet been a year widowed. I have just come out from confinement. My husband appointed me regent and told me that I should rule Scotland alone.”

“But he wasn’t to know the difficulties you would face in council. I don’t think anyone could have imagined it. God knows, it is a different country without him.”

“There’s the emperor,” I remark, thinking of the great men of Europe who are seeking a wife. “Not that I can marry for a year. And the King of France has just lost his wife.”

“So you have been thinking? Fool that I am! Of course you have.”

“I had no one to talk to in confinement, and I have long dark nights alone. Of course I consider my future. I know that I will be expected to marry again.”

“You will, and your brother will want to advise you. He’ll want you to marry for the advantage of England. He won’t want the little King of Scotland to have a stepfather who is his enemy. He would forbid you to marry the King of France, for instance.”

“If my sister Mary married Charles of Castile, and I married Louis of France, then I would be the greater queen,” I remark. “And if I were to be Queen of France, then I would be the equal of Katherine.”

“Superseding your sisters is not important. What matters more is that Scotland has a powerful ally, not which of you has the bigger crown.”

“I know, I know,” I say a little irritably. “But if you had seen Katherine of Aragon when she married my brother Prince Arthur, you would understand that I never want to come second to her—” I break off, remembering the bloodstained coat. “Now more than ever.”

“Aye, I understand it well enough. But think again, Your Grace. If you married one of these distant kings, you’d have to go and live in Burgundy or in France, and the council would keep your boys in Scotland. On the other hand, if you married a Scots nobleman, then you’d still be Queen of Scots, you’d still be regent, you’d still have your title and your fortune, you’d live with your sons, and yet you’d have someone to keep you warm at night and safe in your castles.” He pauses, looking at my thoughtful face. “And you’d be his master,” he adds. “You’d be his wife, but you’d still be his queen.”

I look down the dining hall at my court, the mixture of the wild and the cultured. The highlanders who cut their meat with their daggers and eat it off the points of their knives, the young men who have been raised in France and use the new forks and have napkins tossed over their shoulders to wipe their fingertips. Those who eat at the trestle tables from a common bowl, arguing in broad Erse, and the lords from the distant islands and mountains who come to court very seldom and sit with their households, proudly ignoring each other, speaking their own incomprehensible language.

“Yes, but there’s no one,” I say desolately to myself. “There is no one I can trust.”

John Drummond is right to think ahead. Almost as soon as I am out of confinement the marriage proposals arrive. God forgive me, I find it hard to hide my delight at the thought of the courts of Europe gossiping about my future and seeing me, once again, as a prize. Once again I am a trophy to be won, not a wife tucked away in the ownership of a king, of interest only when I am with child. I am a princess and I must choose a husband—who is it going to be? Katherine may wear the crown of England (though she has no baby in the cradle and I have two), Mary may have been drenched in jewels and betrothed to Charles of Castile, but I am free to choose either Maximilian, the Holy Roman Emperor, or Louis, the King of France. These are the wealthiest and most important men in Christendom. I feel my ambition rise. Graciously, I receive emissaries from both courts. It is clear that both great kings would be glad to marry me, both of them would endow me with a fortune, and make me queen of huge lands and wealthy beautiful courts. One of them would make me an empress.

This is not a personal matter, it is a decision about a dynasty. My brother will have to negotiate the terms and advise me; I will have to consider very carefully what is best for my country of Scotland, my home of England, and my future. My Scots advisors will have a say in my decision too, since I am regent, and my choice will affect the country, taking us into alliances, making new enemies. If I choose well, Scotland could be enriched by my new husband, and guarded by him. If I choose badly, I will give them a tyrant, my son an evil guardian, and myself a lifetime of unhappiness. There is no more important decision. Divorce is unthinkable, and anyway unattainable. Whoever I choose, I will have him till death.

Suddenly, I am high in Harry’s favor. He remembers that he has a sister now that I am a player in the continual struggle for power in Europe. My throne is the gateway to England—whoever marries me is married to England’s dangerous neighbor. My country is poor, but powerfully fortified and learned. My fortune is not great, but I am fertile, and I am young and in the flush of beauty. Harry is very warm and friendly, happy to advise, writing to me through Lord Dacre, recommending him as a good neighbor and reliable advisor, urgent that I must consider what is best for my sons and for myself. Harry thinks that an alliance with the emperor would be the best. Of course he does, he is married to the emperor’s kinswoman and desperate to go to war with France again.

I shall decide for myself, I say, looking at Harry’s letter, written in a perfect clerk’s hand by one of his secretaries. Obviously, he has dictated it while busy with something else. But at the end he has scrawled his good wishes and signed his own name. Katherine has written an affectionate note in the margin.

I should be so happy to call you cousin by marriage as well as sister, and I know that my uncle Maximilian would keep you safe and prosperous. I do hope that you don’t think of France, my dear. I hear that Louis the king is very old and diseased and vicious in his habits, and we would never see you. It would be very dreadful if yet another husband of yours were to make war on England, when you think of the last outcome.

I read and reread this odd mixture of affection, threat, and spite where she warns me against marrying the King of France, and even dares to threaten me with another husband’s death.

Mary encloses a page of news of her studies in Spanish and her music and her new gowns. I see, with a little added bitterness, how much more attentive they are now that I have such prospects. If I become empress, I will be more important than my brother, and I will never again write him a letter in my own hand. As empress I shall outrank Katherine, as empress I shall outrank Mary, whose boy husband—the emperor’s grandson—will not inherit until the emperor dies.

This gives me pause; there will be a great pleasure in taking a throne seated beside a man who outranks my sisters’ husbands—but when he dies I will be widowed again. He is fifty-five years old now—how much longer can he live? I don’t want to be widowed again and worse, worst of all, I would be Dowager Empress and Mary, my little sister, would step up into my place and inherit my crown while I would have to step back and watch her do it. I know I couldn’t bear that.

I do want a great husband, but I want a friend and a lover, a companion and a comrade. I hate sleeping alone, I hate dining in front of the whole court without a husband at my side. My only comfort at the great dinners when I am seated alone before the whole court is my carver, Archibald Douglas, the only man allowed to be at my table. The haunches of meat are put beside me on the high table and he carves my portion and slices for the rest of the lords, and he smiles at me and talks to me quietly so that I don’t feel so lonely.

I really can’t marry Louis of France, I think. He is nearly as old as Maximilian, almost decrepit, and he is quite vile. He divorced his first wife, declaring her to be too malformed to allow lovemaking, then he forced his second wife to marry him and still could make nothing but dead boys and two girls. Marriage to him would put me at the head of a great power, a Scot ally to be sure, but constantly at war with England. I don’t want to be in a country facing an English army ever again. Also, I cannot believe that we would have a healthy child. He is certain to die and leave me a widow again so I lose the crown almost as soon as I win it. Besides, the man is a monster.

It is a choice between two evils. The only handsome young king in Europe is my brother and Katherine showed me that you have to snatch a husband young. I will take a risk whatever I choose. I order my court to Perth for the summer and promise myself that when I am among the green hills and far away from Katherine’s malevolent letters, I will decide what I should do.