Three Sisters, Three Queens

HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1517

I have every reason for confidence this summer as I come back to my country and my power. Ard has done great work in my absence. Not only did he negotiate a free pardon from the Duke of Albany, but he has recovered his lands, his wealth, and has rejoined the council, where he can choose the guardians who are appointed to my son. He has prepared the council for my return, and encouraged Albany to go home to France to his sick wife. “I have done everything to persuade them that you as regent and an alliance with England is our future,” he says quietly in my ear as he lifts me down from the saddle in the courtyard before the palace. “I think we can take Scotland together, my love.”

As always, as he lifts me down from my horse and holds me, I feel the warmth of his breath on my neck.

“I have to go and see my son at once,” I say unsteadily. Truth be told, I cannot even remember that I am a mother, that I am a princess. I have forgotten that I am a dowager queen with national ambitions. I would go in a moment to my bedchamber like an eager girl, and lie with him.

He smiles at me as if he knows this perfectly well. “Go,” he says. “And when you come back we will dine and we will go to bed. I had to wait for you for a year of absence. I can wait another hour or two.”

“Ard . . .” I whisper.

“I know,” he says. “Be as quick as you can. I want you. I want you with a hunger.”

I give a little smothered gasp and I walk back to the wagons to see that the gifts I have brought for my boy are unpacked at once, and tell my master of horse that I will take a fresh mount up the Via Regis to the castle. The horse must have my English saddle with white damask cloth of gold that Henry commissioned for my journey; the people will watch me ride up the steep cobbled hill and I want them to see that I am returned in my power, surrounded by rich, beautiful things. The acting regent, Antoine, the Sieur de la Bastie, is as handsome and as smiling as if the hard years have never been, the same young man who rode at my wedding joust. He tells me he will come with me, appearing in the stable yard dressed in his usual dazzling white, and I say that he matches my livery. I laugh. “You are the beauty that they call you,” I say. “You will outshine me.”

“I am the moon to your sun,” he says with his attractive French accent. “And I should be honored to ride with you to your castle to visit your boy. I have had the pleasure of meeting with him often, and I tell him about jousting and what a chevalier his father was. I promised him that I would bring his mother as soon as you arrived. But say the word and I shall stay here and you go alone. Whatever you wish, Your Grace.”

“Oh, you can come,” I say as if it does not matter to me; but I am flattered that he wants to ride with me. He is a handsome man; any woman would be glad to have him at her side. Since he is regent in Albany’s absence I need to befriend him. God knows, I still don’t have enough friends on the council.

The horses slip a little on the cobbles and lean forward to get up the hill. Just as I expected, the people call blessings on me from their windows, and come out of the dark doorways to wave and smile. The market women stand with their baskets wedged on their jutting hips and bellow their good wishes to me in Erse and in the dialect of the borders. I can understand them; but Antoine de la Bastie laughs at the incomprehensible language and takes off his hat with the white plume and bows to one side and the other. “I am hoping they are wishing me well,” he says to me. “For all I know, they could be damning me to hell.”

“They are glad to see me home, at any rate,” I say. “And no woman under ninety ever has a bad word to say against you. They call you the M’sieur of Beauty.”

“Because they can’t say my title,” he laughs. “There’s only one beauty here.”

I smile. “They admire you, but I don’t think your regency is popular with the people.”

“Nobody likes to pay taxes, nobody likes to obey laws. If the Scots lords did not have a regent to command them, they would just murder each other.”

“But I should be the regent,” I say. “My husband, your friend, left the authority to me at his death.”

“Oh yes,” he says, his accent very strong. “But he was not to know that you would marry the first handsome boy you set eyes on! Who could have guessed such a thing?”

“Archibald is the Earl of Angus and a great lord among the lords,” I say furiously. “No mere boy. And you should remember that you are speaking to a princess of England and a Dowager Queen of Scotland.”

He tips his head towards me as if to whisper. “I don’t forget who you are,” he says. “I was at your wedding. I would never forget your first husband, who was a great king. But I tell you, without fear or favor, that your second husband is not his match.”

“How dare you?” I demand.

He shrugs. Someone cheers us and he flashes his brilliant smile at an upstairs window and someone throws a flower. “Your Grace, you have been away a long time. Your handsome young carver is now serving himself.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ah, bah!” he says. “Who am I to speak of a straying husband? You must ask him yourself whether he is in command of the lords. Ask him yourself where are your rents? And ask him yourself where he has been living while you have been in exile, and if his life was very hard? Ask him who gets the best cuts now?”

“He was in the borders,” I say firmly. “I know all this. And his life was very hard. He was an outlaw until he could negotiate his own peace with the regent, the Duke of Albany.”

“A hero no doubt; he should have his own makar, like your first husband, to compose poems of his many victories,” and then he waves at the sentries on the wall of Edinburgh Castle to raise the portcullis and drop the drawbridge.

Nothing happens. The two of us rein in our horses and wait. My master of horse goes forward: “Her Grace, the Dowager Queen of Scotland,” he yells.

I sit proudly in the saddle, waiting for the bridge to come crashing down and the portcullis to roll up, but still nothing happens. I am smiling, thinking of seeing my son for the first time in two years, when Antoine says: “There is some difficulty, I think.”

From the sally port at the side of the gate the captain of the castle comes out, sweeps off his bonnet and bows low to me and then to Antoine. “I apologize,” he says. He looks embarrassed. “I am not allowed to open the castle to anyone without a letter of entry from the council.”

“But this is Her Grace, the king’s mother,” the chevalier exclaims. “And I, the deputy regent, at her side.”

“I know that,” the captain says, red to the ears. “But without a letter I am not allowed to open the gates. Besides, there is plague in the city and we may not admit anyone without a letter from a physician saying they are well.”

“Capitaine!” Antoine shouts. “It is I! Escorting the dowager queen. Are you closing the gate to us?”

“You can’t come in without a letter.” The captain is anguished. He bows to me, he bows to the chevalier. “Forgive me, Your Grace, there is nothing I can do.”

“This is to insult me,” I gasp. I am near to tears with fury and disappointment. “I will have that man beheaded for this.”

“There is nothing he can do,” Antoine confirms. “Let’s go back to Holyroodhouse. I’ll get that letter signed and sent to us. It’s how we run Scotland now. It is all done by the clerks. It’s the only way we keep the peace. The strictest of rules and everything allowed only by permits. If we did not have rules we would have unending war. It would be as bad as the borders, and we would all be ruined. It is I who am to blame. I should have got a permit at once. I did not think.”

“My son will be waiting to see me! The King of Scotland! Is he to be disappointed?”

“They will tell him you came at once, they will tell him that you will come back. I will tell him when I see him after dinner this evening. And I will get the permit so that you can come tomorrow.”

“Archibald would never have let them close the door to me.”

Diplomatically, he says nothing.

Archibald is waiting for me, leaning against my throne in my presence chamber. He comes to me as I walk in and wraps me in his arms. He sees my flushed face and the tears in my eyes and at once he soothes me, whispers words of love in my ear, draws me away from all the people waiting to see me: the tenants who have come miles, the petitioners with their lawsuits, the debtors with their pledges, the endless population of people with troubles. “Her Grace will see you tomorrow,” he announces to the room and leads me to the privy chamber, past my waiting ladies, and into my bedroom. He closes the door behind us and unties the bow of my cape.

“Ard, I . . .”

“My love.”

Carefully, he unpins my velvet riding bonnet and puts it to one side. He pulls ivory hairpins from my plaited hair and it tumbles down over my shoulders. As if he cannot stop himself, he buries his face in it and inhales the scent of me. I hesitate, shaken with desire.

“The castle was locked . . .”

“I know.”

His skilled hands unlace my gown at the back and over my shoulders, shuck me out of the stiff stomacher, untie the ribbons of my skirt, drop it to the ground.

“I could not . . .”

“The chevalier is a weak fool. I adore you.”

He peels the embroidered sleeves from my arms, lifts the hem of my beautiful fine linen petticoat, and takes it over my head. I am naked before him but for a little shift. I fold my arms over my breasts and belly. Suddenly I am terribly shy. I have not stood naked in daylight before him since the birth of our baby, and I am conscious of the fatness of my belly, the roundness of my breasts.

Gently he takes one hand and puts it on the back of his neck, as if I should pull him into a kiss. He takes the other and puts it on the front of his breeches. He is not wearing a codpiece; the hard warmth under my hand is all him, all his desire for me.

“Oh, Ard,” I whisper. Everything that has happened this morning—my disappointment in being kept from my son, the locked castle, the insinuations of the chevalier—all fades away at his touch as he presses me against him, his hands on my half-naked buttocks, pulling me closer, as his mouth comes down on mine.

An hour later, when we are stirring in the big bed, I remember. “There are rumors against you,” I say.

“There are always rumors against great men,” he replies. He sits on the edge of my rumpled bed and pulls on his riding breeches over his lean thighs. I sit in the bed, a sheet caught up to my throat, and watch him. Even now, after an hour of lovemaking, I feel my desire rise at the sight of him. He knows this. He stands before me and lets me watch him lace the opening at the front of his breeches, drop a linen shirt over his broad, smooth chest, tie the white laces at his tanned throat.

I crawl down the bed towards him. I kneel up to put my lips to the base of his neck where I feel his pulse speed at the touch of my mouth. His hands come onto my shoulders, he presses me back towards the bed. I yield dreamily. “We have to go to dinner,” I remind him. “Everyone will be waiting.”

“Let them wait,” he says, and he pulls the sheet away from me.

Slowly, luxuriously, he takes a handful of my hair and kisses my neck, just below my ear. I let him trace a line of kisses down my breast.

“They tell me that you have my rents,” I say, distracted by the tide of pleasure that is rising up in me again.

“Hmm, some of them,” he says. “The tenants have no money. There is no law in the borders. How can anyone collect rents?”

“But you have some of them?”

He stops his gentle caress. “I do,” he says softly. “Of course. I never stopped working for you, though you were far away. I have done all I can to collect your dues.”

“Thank you,” I say.

He slides his thigh against me. I grip his waist and pull him towards me. His riding breeches are the softest of leathers, the touch of them against my naked skin causes ripples of pleasure. “And have you been living in my houses?”

“Yes, of course. How else could I guard your lands and collect your rents?”

He unties the laces on his breeches and I am eager for his touch. I pull the strings from the holes and feel for him.

“They will have told you about Janet Stewart,” he guesses, as my hands find him, and I give a little sigh.

“I did not believe a word,” I swear.

“It’s nothing,” he promises me. He is close, he is gently entering me; I can feel that I am dissolving with desire. “Just gossip. Believe in me now. Believe in this. Believe in us.”

With each command he thrusts gently inside me and I breathe “Yes. Yes. Yes.”