Three Sisters, Three Queens

RICHMOND PALACE, ENGLAND, SUMMER 1517

I am to leave England again. It has been a long and beautiful year, but I always knew that I would return north on the long road to Scotland. Once again I have to say good-bye to my family and my friends, once again I have to travel that journey and hope to succeed at the end of it.

“Do you have to go?” Mary asks childishly. We are beyond the formal privy garden, strolling beside the river, and we turn to sit on a little bench under a tree, the sun warm on our backs, and watch the barges and boats bringing visitors and goods to entertain and feed the insatiable court. Mary’s hand rests on her swelling belly. She is with child again. “I so hoped you would stay.”

I don’t dare to say that I was beginning to hope so too. It seems very hard that Katherine should live here, and Mary with her, and that I am the only sister who has to go far away, to such an uncertain future in a country that has been so hard-hearted to me.

“It’s been like being girls again, having you home. Why don’t you stay longer? Why don’t you live with us and never go back at all?”

“I have to do my duty,” I say stiffly.

“But why now?” she asks lazily. “At the start of summer, which is the best time of year.”

“It is the best time of year for me to do the journey and I have my safe conduct to Scotland.” I cannot keep the bitterness from my voice. “My son, my five-year-old son, has sent me safe conduct.”

That catches her attention, she sits up. “You have to have little James’s permission to go to him?”

“Of course I do. He’s the king, it is under his seal. It isn’t him really, of course. It is Albany who has decided that I can come home. And he sends conditions: no more than twenty-four companions, no rebels at my side, and then there are conditions for seeing my son. I may not go as his tutor, not as regent. Just as his mother.”

“The French are very powerful,” she says. “But I found them kind if you obey their rules. They love pretty things and courtesy. If you could only agree . . .”

“Of course, you would be on their side, since they pay your allowance,” I say sharply. “Everyone knows that you have nothing to live on but your dower money from them. But they do not pay mine, they do not honor their debts to me, so you cannot expect me to jump to their piping like you and Brandon.”

She flushes a little. “Of course I need the money,” she says. “We are paupers, we are royal paupers. And every day there is a new masque or a new dance or a new pageant and the king insists that I lead it. If there is a joust he insists that Brandon fight in it. The horses alone are worth their weight in gold and a suit of armor costs ten times as much as a gown.” She puts her hand to her belly to comfort herself. “Anyway, perhaps this is another boy and he will make our fortune. He will be heir to the throne after his brother and after your son James, after all.”

“Only if Katherine has no son,” I remind her smartly.

“God grant it.” She wishes her son out of the succession with complete sincerity. “But, Maggie, I do really think that you should try to agree with France. Can’t you make a better agreement with Albany? He is such a well-mannered nobleman. I liked him and his wife. And now she is ill and he is bound to want to go home to her. He might go back to France and leave Scotland to your rule? You could trust him, you could talk to him.”

“How much do they pay you for this?” I ask suddenly. “The French? And could you tell them, when you report back to your spymaster, that I would be happy to agree with them if they would take their soldiers out of my country and see to the paying of the rents on my dower lands, just as they pay you? You have been cheaply bought; but I have a country to take care of. I come at a higher price.”

I see the flush of her temper in her cheeks. “I am no spy. I take French money and so does half the court. There’s no need to throw it in my face. And I know you’ve been borrowing money from Wolsey, just as we all do. You’re no better than us and you have no right to scold me.”

“I certainly have,” I say. “I am your older sister—it is my duty to tell you when you are wrong. You’re as bad as a traitor—in the pay of the French. You can tell them to pay me my rents if you are so friendly with them.”

“I can’t tell them,” she blazes out. “It would do you no good if I spoke to them. You’re such a fool! It’s not the French who have been keeping your rents, but your own husband. You can’t blame Albany for it. Your husband has been collecting your rents in your name and not passing them on to you.”

“That’s a lie! A stupid lie as well as a wicked one. Archibald would never do such a thing. He’s not like your husband, who married you only for your fortune and title. Archibald is a great lord in his own right, he has great lands in his own right. He wouldn’t stoop to cheat me. You wouldn’t know. You’ve never loved anyone but an adventurer. A commoner, a climber! Of course Brandon would take your lands. He lives off you and every woman he has ever married. My God! Brandon makes Wolsey look well bred.”

She leaps to her feet, her blue eyes blazing with temper. “You think your husband doesn’t cheat you? When he makes peace with Albany without you? When he lives with a woman he calls his wife? When he tells everyone you will never go back to Scotland, and he is glad of it? You dare to compare your traitor to my Charles, who has never been disloyal to Harry or faithless to me?”

I feel as if she has punched me in the belly, as if the air is knocked out of me. I double up as if I am winded. “What? What? What are you saying?” I hear the words ringing in my ears, but I cannot understand them. “What did you say? A wife?”

At once she is sorry. She pitches heavily on her knees beside me to peer up into my face, her own face still wet with angry tears. “Oh, Maggie! Oh, Maggie! I am so sorry! Forgive me! I am so wicked! Oh, my dear! I should not have said. We agreed we would say nothing—and then I . . . ! It was when you spoke against Charles! But I should never have said a word!”

She is patting my gown and stroking my shoulder, and pushing my chin up so that she can look into my face. I keep my head down, my face hidden. I am speechless with humiliation.

“I am so sorry. I should not have said anything. She made me promise to say nothing.”

“Who?” I ask. I put my hands over my face so that she cannot see my burning eyes, my blanched cheeks. “Who told you to say nothing?”

“Katherine,” she whispers.

“She says this? She told you all this? About my rents? About Archibald living with a woman?”

The golden head nods. “But we swore that we would not tell you. She said that it would break your heart. She made me promise I would say nothing. She said that you could not bear to hear that he is unfaithful. That you must talk to him yourself. It must be between the two of you.”

“Oh, rubbish,” I say. All at once, I am completely furious at the thought of this mealy-mouthed gossip. “She’s such an old maid. As if all men don’t take lovers! As if Ard was going to live like a monk for months at a time! As if a wife should care!”

“Don’t you care?” my little sister asks me, aghast.

“Not at all!” I lie furiously. “She is a nothing. She is nothing to him and so she is nothing to me. Katherine is making a fuss out of nothing because she is grieved that Harry has taken Bessie Blount for a lover and she wants the world to think that Ard is as bad as he. That it matters, for God’s sake! That anyone cares!”

“Did you know about your husband’s woman then?”

“ ’Course I did,” I say. “Half of Scotland knows of her, and her easy virtue. Half the lords have probably had her. Why should I care about a whore?”

“Because she says she is his wife,” she says softly.

“As do all whores.”

Mary wants to believe me. She has always looked up to me. She wants to take my word for this. “Didn’t he marry you for love? And it was a proper wedding? He was not married to her at all?”

“What d’you mean at all? You’re such a fool. No. Never. They were betrothed when she was a child. It was never intended it should go ahead. He left her for me, for love of me, he preferred me to all the other women in Scotland. So what if he now amuses himself while I am away? As soon as I return to Scotland he will leave her again.”

“But my dear, they say that she lives in your house as his wife.”

“It means nothing to me.”

“But what if they have a child?”

“Why would I care about another bastard?” I demand, furious at the parroting of Katherine’s sentimentality. “James had dozens and our grandmother and our father sent me to marry him, knowing full well that he housed them in my dower castle. You think I care that Janet Stewart might have a baby when my husband the king had his own regiment of bastards? When he named one of them as his heir before I had my boy!”

She sits back on her heels, her eyelashes dark with tears, her forehead crumpled with a puzzled frown. “Really? You really don’t care?”

“Not at all,” I say. “And when you find your husband has lain with some slut, you won’t care either. It should make no difference to you, one way or the other.”

She puts her hand to where her pulse is beating in the little hollow at the base of her throat. “Oh, I would care,” she says. “I would, and Katherine does.”

“Then you’re a pair of fools,” I declare. “I am queen, I am his queen. He looks up to me and loves me as a subject and a lover and a man, my man. It doesn’t matter to me if he eats his dinner off a wooden platter now and then. It does not devalue my gold plates.”

Wonderingly, she looks at me, her blue eyes wide. “I never thought of it that way. I always thought a husband and wife should be all in all to each other. Like Brandon is to me.”

“You should rest,” I say abruptly, suddenly noticing the creamy pallor of her perfect skin. “You’re not carrying a prince, but you should still take care. You shouldn’t be crying, you shouldn’t be kneeling. Get up.”

I put out an unfriendly hand to her and haul her to her feet. I take her arm and lead her back through the gardens, into the cool of the garden stairs.

“You are sure he will come back to you when you get to Scotland?”

“I am his wife. Where else should he go?”

We walk for a few moments in silence.

“How do you know all this anyway?” I cannot hide my irritation that she and Katherine have been sorrowfully whispering about me. I cannot stand the thought that they have been mumbling over news from Scotland, all big-eyed and anxious.

“Thomas Wolsey told Katherine, and she told me. Thomas Wolsey knows everything that goes on in Scotland. He has spies everywhere.”

“Spying on my husband,” I remark.

“Oh, I am sure not. Not specially. Just if he is—” She breaks off before saying that they suspect him of disloyalty to my country as well as to me. She hesitates. “May I tell Katherine that you are not concerned about this rumor? She will be so relieved.”

“Why, do you have to tell her everything? Is she your confessor now?”

“No, it’s just that we always tell each other everything.”

I snort. “That must please your husbands. Did you tell her that Harry was bedding her maid-in-waiting Bessie?”

She dawdles behind me, up the stairs. “Yes,” she whispers. “I tell her everything I know, even when it breaks my heart to tell her.”

“And does she tell you of your husband’s flirtations?”

She puts her hand to the stone wall as her feet fail her. “Oh! No! He has none.”

I cannot claim, even in my temper, that he does. “None that I know of,” I say disagreeably. “But he will have someone while you are like this, the size of a barn and unable to lie with him. Every man takes some slut when his wife goes into confinement.”

Once again the easy tears well up into her eyes. “Don’t say that! I am sure he does not. I am sure that he would not. He comes to my bed and sleeps beside me, he likes to hold me. I like to sleep in his arms. I really don’t think he has a lover. I really believe he would not.”

“Oh, go and cry with Katherine,” I say, irritated beyond endurance, as we reach the top of the stairs. “The two of you make a fine pair weeping over nothing. But keep your spiteful tongues off my husband and me.”

“We didn’t gossip!” she exclaims. “We were keeping it secret for fear that you should be distressed. I promised I would say nothing. It was very wrong of me to say anything.”

“You’re so stupid,” I say, falling into nursery abuse. “I look at you, and all I think is that it is as well you are pretty for God knows you are the stupidest girl I know. For Katherine, old and plain as she is, there is no hope at all.”

She turns her head away from this unkindness and hurries up the stairs to the queen’s rooms. I turn away to my own rooms. I am cured of my longing to stay here. I want to go home to Scotland. I am sick of this household of women; I am sick of these women who call themselves my sisters but gossip about me behind my back. The English queen and the French queen, I hate them both.

I am not the only one who is sick of the French and the way that they buy the favorites at court. Mary and her husband are openly French pensioners, and half the English court is taking bribes. The French merchants and craftsmen have taken bread from honest English mouths in every trade and store in the city. I warn Harry that the French won’t have to invade by coming with a fleet, they are so numerous already that you can hardly hear English spoken on a London street, it is so packed with m’sieurs and milords.

Harry laughs—nothing can penetrate his sunny mood. He spends all his day hawking, while all the work of kingship is done by Thomas Wolsey, who brings him the documents to sign when he should be listening to Mass. Harry scrawls his signature, attending neither to God nor to his duty.

But the people of London feel as I do, that there are too many foreigners stealing a living from the trusting Englishmen. Every day there are half a dozen incidents reported of foreign tradesmen cheating, of French seductions and abductions, of good Englishmen shouldered off the highway, or pushed out of jobs. When the French are summonsed they bribe the magistrates, and walk away scot-free. The people of London become more and more angry.

The apprentices take the freedoms of Easter, when ale flows freely and everyone is exuberantly liberated from the long fast of Lent. They get stormingly drunk and arm themselves against French intruders. A powerful French-baiting sermon in Spitalfields stirs them up. The masters give the lads the day off for May Day, and they are armed with the weapons that they have to carry for the defense of the City. It all turns into a potent brew for the young men who would as soon fight as drink, and find that on this day they can do both. Bigger and bigger gangs of lads come together and roam around smashing the windows of the foreign merchants, bawling abuse at the doors of foreign lords. The Portuguese ambassador has the filth from the midden thrown at his walls and tightly closed gate, the Spanish ambassador’s servants sally out for a battle, the French traders batten down their shutters and sit in darkness in the back rooms of their houses. But wherever there is a French name over a shop door, or a swinging sign in French, or anything that might be French—for the apprentice boys are not the most educated of youths—they catcall at the windows, and lever up the cobblestones, throw a hail of dirt and pebbles and bellow insults.

Even Thomas Wolsey—a man from their own class—does not escape. His beautiful new London house is ringed by a mob who shout that he shall answer to them for his attempt to distribute charity to the poor. There shall be no charity to foreigners, they warn him. They don’t like him and his clever ways. Besides, if they were paid a good wage they would need no charity. Demand succeeds demand as they chant for good times to come, for justice to be restored. The Lord Chancellor, listening behind his stout doors with his enormous household armed and ready, fears that sooner or later someone is going to call for the white rose, for the Plantagenets, for my mother’s defeated family, and those are the words that cannot be allowed. He sends for the king to turn out the yeomen of the guard, who are keeping a safe distance from the city at Richmond Palace.

“I shall ride against my own people,” Harry says grandly. It is late in the evening, the dark blue evening of a summer midnight. We have been dining and drinking late into the night. Katherine looks exhausted, but Mary’s husband Charles Brandon and Harry are flushed with exercise and with wine and look as if they would dance till dawn. Mary, exquisite in cream and pearls, with her arms linked with the two men, looks up in concern at her brother. “Oh, but you can’t!” she says.

“They can’t get out of hand,” Harry announces. He tips his head to me. “Ask the Queen of Scots: she knows,” he says. “She knows that you have to keep the people in their place with all the skill you have. But once they disobey, you have to smash them down. Don’t you? Smash them down.”

I can’t deny it, though both Mary and Katherine look to me to soothe Harry. “When they rise up they have to be put down,” I say simply. “Look at me—d’you think I would not be on my throne now, but for the people turning against me in their folly?”

“But that was because—” starts Mary and I see, though no one else does, that her husband pinches her hand, to tell her to be silent. Charles Brandon is Harry’s favorite friend, his companion for jousting and drinking, dancing and card-playing. And he has kept his place at the king’s side, month after month, year after year, by never disagreeing with his royal friend and master. Whatever Harry says, Charles agrees. He’s like one of those hinged dolls that Archibald gave to James that just nods its head: nod, nod, nod. Brandon can be nothing but agreeable to his royal master. The hinge of his neck only works one way: nod, nod, nod—“yes, yes, yes.”

“I shall ride out,” Harry insists. He turns to the captain of the guard behind him. “Send for the Duke of Norfolk and his son the earl.”

“My lord—” Katherine begins. Harry has listened to her since the first days of their marriage. But he was bedding her then, besotted with her, and certain that together they would make a son and heir. Now, after all the losses, he doubts that she knows so very much. He doubts that she speaks God’s truth. He doubts that he could learn anything from her. He gives a little swagger and glances round to see that Bessie Blount has noticed his courage. He interrupts Katherine: “We ride tonight.”

Brandon knows they’re in no hurry, and doesn’t even bother to arm. They don’t leave that night, not until late the next morning. Brandon orders his horse in its finest trappings, and rides beside Harry, but they go at a leisurely pace and while they are on their way, the Howards, father and son, take the heavily armed guard through the streets and sweep them clear of the lads. The apprentice boys, some of them grown men, some of them little more than children, are sobering up and tiring, wishing that they were not so far from home, and starting to find the way back to their own districts, when they hear the ring of many hooves on cobbles and see, coming round the corner, the Duke of Norfolk at the head of his men, his visor down, a small army behind him with grim, unforgiving faces, riding them down as if they were Scots at Flodden.

The boys go under the hooves of the warhorses, like children falling beneath a plow. Norfolk takes it upon himself to be judge and jury. Dozens are killed in the first charge, forty lads are hanged, drawn and quartered for the crime of not taking to their heels fast enough, and hundreds—nobody knows how many—two hundred? three hundred? four?—are herded into every prison in the city, awaiting a mass trial and a mass execution, by the time that Harry and Brandon and half a dozen lords ride in.

The ladies of the court follow the noblemen, and a date is set within the week for the trial of all of the young men, regardless of age, or intent, or act. Mostly, they are boys in their first year of training, drawn from homes in the country, new to the City. They were excited by the sermon and fired up against the French; they were drunk on the May Day ales and free from work in a long four-year apprenticeship. Their masters laughed and told them to burn down the houses of rivals. Nobody told them to stay home. Nobody warned them what would happen—how should they know? Who would bring an army against children in their own capital city? These are boys working to learn the trades of maltsters, saddlers, butchers, smiths. Some of them have inky fingers from the presses, some of them are scalded from making candle wax. Some of them are regularly beaten by their masters, most of them are hungry. It does not matter, no individual matters at all. Henry is too great a king to worry about a little lad, to trouble himself about an orphan boy. They will be judged all together in one great trial, and Thomas Wolsey, whose father was once an apprentice boy like these, opens their trial at Westminster with a long speech that reproves them for causing a breach of the peace and warns them that the penalty is death.

I think sourly that they probably know that already, as each one of them is standing with a rope around his neck, holding the spare end in his shaking hand. They are to go out of here and queue up at the public gallows that have been put up at street corners all around the city, each wearing his own halter, carrying his own rope, and wait in line to be hanged.

“We’re going to have to do something,” Katherine says quietly to me. “We cannot allow hundreds of apprentices to be killed. We will speak out.”

Mary is white. “Can we ask for mercy?” Her belly is large before her; she has never looked more beautiful. She is like a swollen bud with a white petal face. The three of us huddle closely together, like angels conspiring to turn tyranny into mercy.

“Has Harry asked us to plead for pardon?” I question Katherine.

Her quick gesture of denial tells me everything. “No, no, it should look like our idea. It is the queen’s prerogative. He should stand for justice, we should beg him for kindness.”

“What do we do?” Mary asks.

“I am asking you to plead with me,” Katherine says.

“Of course we will,” I say, cutting off Mary’s enthusiastic assent. “It’s just another dance in a new masque. We should do it beautifully. Do you know your cue?”

Mary is puzzled. “Don’t you want to save them, Maggie?” she asks me. “See, the youngest ones are barely more than children. Think of your little boy. Don’t you want them to have a royal pardon at your request?”

“Go on then,” I say. “Let’s see you beg your wonderful brother.” I turn to Katherine. “Let us see the Queen of England begging the king for the good of the people. This is better than a play, better than a masque. Let’s have a joust of pitiful tears. Which of us can be the more poignant? Which of us will do it most beautifully?”

Mary is confused by my bitter tone. “I am sorry for the boys.”

“So am I,” I say. “I am sorry for everyone who comes up against the Howards. They’re not famous for chivalry.”

Katherine’s sideways glance at me shows that the barb has hurt her. But she takes Mary’s hand. “Let’s all sue for mercy,” she says.

The younger boys are dumb with terror; they don’t understand what is being said. The fat Lord Chancellor in his blazing red robes is an incomprehensible figure to them, the great hall of Westminster Palace, draped with gold banners and the standards of the lords, is overwhelmingly bright, too rich for them to dare to look around. Many of them are openly crying; a couple are craning their necks to see beyond the great men and women to where the common people are standing in silence. One calls out “Mama!” and someone slaps him.

“Don’t you want to see them freed?” Mary whispers.

“I don’t like masques,” I say shortly.

“This is real!” Katherine snaps at me.

“No, it’s not.”

Thomas Wolsey gets down from his judgment seat and goes to where Harry is sitting on his throne, a golden cloth of estate over his head, his crown on his auburn hair, his handsome face stern. The fat fool Wolsey kneels slowly onto a huge hassock that just happens to be conveniently placed before the king. I see, behind Wolsey, equally positioned, three smaller hassocks, embroidered with gold thread. I imagine these are for us. I wait. Katherine will know what is to be done. She will have designed this with her husband. They may even have consulted a dancing master.

A sigh goes through the four hundred boys as they see Wolsey put his hands together in the sign of fealty. They realize now that the great man is pleading for their lives from the great king who still sits in silence. Some of the common people whisper “Please!” Some of the mothers are weeping. “À Tudor!” someone calls, as if to remind Harry of old loyalties.

Henry’s face is as grave as a beautiful statue. He shakes his head. “No,” he says.

A shudder goes through the hall. Do all these boys have to die? Every one of them? Even the little one who knuckles his eyes and whose grubby face is tracked with tears?

Katherine turns to Margaret Pole, who stands beside her. “My headdress,” she whispers. Margaret Pole, my mother’s cousin, who has seen this before, knows what is to be done. Mary at once copies Katherine as if she is her little mirror, removing her headdress. I turn to my ladies. “Take off my hood,” I order. In a moment we are all bareheaded. Katherine’s graying hair is spread over her shoulders; I toss my head, and my hair, a fairer shade than Harry’s, falls limply down my back, Mary puts her hands to her head and sweeps back a mass of the finest blond curls that tumbles to her waist like a golden mane.

Katherine leads us forward, as the Lord Chancellor bows even lower. First Katherine, then I, then Mary kneel before Harry and put out our hands like exquisitely gowned beggars. “I beg for mercy,” the queen says.

“I beg for mercy,” I repeat.

“I beg for mercy,” Mary says, her voice thick with tears. Of all of us, she is probably the only one who believes in this charade. She really thinks that Harry may forgive these poor boys on our pleading.

I can hear a shuffle like quiet thunder as all the apprentices go down on their knees, and behind them the common people drop down too. Harry looks over the great hall of Westminster at all the bowed heads, he listens to the susurration of pleas, then he gets to his feet and stretches out his arms like Christ blessing the world and he says: “Mercy.”

Everyone cries, even I cry. The apprentices pull the hangman’s ropes from their necks and the guards stand aside and let them run through the crowds to their parents. People call down blessings on the king, purses filled with gold, that would have bribed the hangman to make a quick end by tugging on a lad’s kicking feet to break his neck before the disemboweling, are dropped at Harry’s feet and picked up by his pages. The Duke of Norfolk, Harry’s executioner, is smiling as if he is delighted by forgiveness. Everyone is bowing to the throne, pulling off their caps, saying: “God bless King Harry! God bless Queen Katherine!” Never has London loved a king more, not even one of the Plantagenet kings. Harry has spared the boys. They will live because of this great king. He is a reverse Herod, he has given life to a generation. People start to cheer, and someone starts to sing the bold tune of a Te Deum.

Katherine is flushed with delight at the success of her gesture. Margaret Pole, behind her, keeps tight hold of her gold-plated headdress—she, for one, does not trust a crowd. Harry, in a lordly gesture, stretches his hand out to Katherine and she comes to stand beside him, smiling warmly at the loyal cheers. Unbidden, Mary goes to his other side, sure of her welcome, and the radiant three beam at the crowd like a trio of angels, more beautiful, more powerful, richer than any of these people could even dream. Harry smiles at me, reveling in my admiration of the picture that the three of them make.

“This is how I rule England,” he says. “This is kingship.”

I smile and nod; but inside I say—no, it’s not.

I set off for Scotland with that picture of the three of them—the King of England and my two sisters—bright in my mind, the only bright thing in my intense inner darkness. I feel outcast from the Eden that is Tudor England, from the court of wealth and glamour where my brother playacts the part of king, with his wife, who cannot even give him a son, as his pretend queen. My sister, without a fortune and with a nobody for a husband, leads all the dances, the most beautiful girl at the court. I think: this is all false, this is all portrait and no reality, this is all masque and no battle. They glory in themselves, in the picture that they make to people so poor that they cannot tell pretense from life. My sisters flaunt their beauty and blessings and persuade themselves that they are rightfully blessed.

But it is not like that for me. Everything I have has to be won. The people in my kingdom will not kneel to me with halters around their necks, my husband will not proudly embrace me before everyone. My sisters are not at my side. I have to go away, up the long road north. Not for Mary, the clamber into the saddle every morning, and the summoning of the courage to ride into drizzle or cold winds. Not for Katherine, the patient waiting on the back of a tired horse while my host for the night recites a long lecture of greeting. Not for Harry, the ceaseless plotting of the capture of a kingdom and the struggle for rightful power. My little girl rides in the arms of her nursemaid; she does not sleep in a gold cradle like her cousins. While I trudge northward my brother and my two sisters go on pilgrimage to Walsingham, riding a short journey in good weather, inviting the blessing of Our Lady on Katherine’s empty womb: denying the omen of barrenness. I go on and on, wondering what Ard is doing. I am solitary, lonely, traveling every day, weary as a beaten dog every night.