Three Sisters, Three Queens

THE PALACE OF SCOTLAND, LONDON, ENGLAND, AUTUMN 1516

They have sent the Bishop of Galloway and the Commendator of Dryburgh. Monsieur du Plains comes too, to represent the French interest and to persuade us all to a compromise that leaves the duke as regent. They have half a dozen clerks as well and a couple of minor lords. I receive them in the throne room. The palace is terribly dilapidated; nobody has used it since the visit of the Scottish lords for my proxy wedding and that was thirteen years ago. But the fresh rushes hide the worn stones and the old floorboards, and Katherine has loaned tapestries to keep out the draughts from the doors where the timbers have shrunk. The building itself is imposing and Harry’s groom of the household has given me massive oak furniture, including a throne inlaid with silver. As always, the appearance of royalty matters more than the reality. Nobody approaching the throne room of the Palace of Scotland could doubt for a moment that I am a great queen.

I sit on my throne beneath a cloth of estate as they come in, as still as if I were the Spanish princess, on her best, most formal manners, all those years ago, and I let them bow to me, without rising from my chair.

I speak with a balance of majesty and diplomacy. I have thought long and hard what agreement I will make. I cannot be impulsive and angry about my son James, my husband, or the deep terrible loss of Alexander. I have to win them over. I have to make them want me to return.

I see them warm to me. I have the Tudor charm—we all have it, Mary and Harry and I—we all know that we do—and I am patronizingly pleasant as I listen to them, and pretend an interest in their views. I play them, as my lady grandmother used to play the great men of England: asking them for their opinions, consulting them as experts, feigning deference, while all the time she had her own plan. And all the while, they are standing before me, and I am seated under a cloth of gold, the cloth of estate of majesty. The duke that they call regent may rule them but he does not sit under cloth of gold, his sleeves are not trimmed with the white ermine of royalty.

I speak to them frankly. I say that I must have my goods returned to me. There were gowns and jewels sent to Archibald’s castle at Tantallon, my summer wardrobe in Linlithgow—I expect them to be sent to me here in London. The regent owes me the rents on all my lands in Scotland: my dower lands, which were given to me by my husband the King of Scotland himself. Albany cannot say that he is ruling a country at peace, and then pretend that rents cannot be collected. And it must be me who appoints my son’s tutors. I have to hear from James, my son. I have to be free to return to Scotland and he must live with me. My husband and his grandfather and all his family must be pardoned, they must be free to live with me.

The Scots suggest quietly, politely, that I cannot return and expect to rule. I tell them that is exactly what I do expect. They were wrong to put Albany in my place; they have obeyed the French king, not me, their true queen. Look at their ally of France, advancing unstoppably across Europe! I give Monsieur du Plains a little smile as if to say that I perfectly understand his interests, he does not fool me. Who can doubt that France hopes to hold Scotland by this transparent device? If Scotland continues to side with the French spy Albany, with his French wife and loyalties, they will lead the kingdom of Scotland into war with England. My brother will not tolerate the French army on his doorstep. He insists on my safe return. Do they really want another war with England? Have they so many sons that they want to lose another generation at another Flodden? When we are still grieving for the last one?

Monsieur du Plains protests quietly at this, saying that France has no intention of capturing Scotland by deceit, that the duke is a Scot, heir to the throne after my son, not a Frenchman. I smile beyond him to the commendator and the bishop. My smile says—we know, we three Scots, that he is lying. And they smile back at me. We know, we three Scots.