Three Sisters, Three Queens

NEWARK CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SEPTEMBER 1517

We go to Newark Castle as we planned, leaving Craigmillar with the chevalier’s standard at half-mast in deepest mourning. It is a miserable journey in cold driving rain. I am glad that my boy, James, does not come with us and Margaret stays behind in the nursery. But it is odd to ride into my own castle that I hardly know. I find I am looking around for any signs that another woman has lived here, but my rooms are bare and clean and the bed linen fresh and newly changed and the strewing rushes green on the floor. There is no evidence at all that anyone has used this house. I think that the chevalier must have forgotten his code of honor when he spoke against Archibald to me. And Ard is right—all great people are the subject of slander.

My son James cannot come with us because the lords of the council command that he goes back to the greater safety of Edinburgh Castle. Now, since the death of Antoine de la Bastie, they fear their own shadows. They don’t trust me not to steal him away to England, and now that the deputy regent has been murdered they fear that this is the start of an uprising against the regency.

“They suspect that your uncle Gavin Douglas will kidnap my son for me,” I say to Archibald. “They have no faith in anyone.”

“Foolish,” he says levelly. “Is there any charge?”

“No! It is just gossip,” I say. Something in his face makes me hesitate. “Surely it is nothing but gossip, isn’t it?” I ask him. “Nobody would be so mad as to try to kidnap James and take him from his own country? Your uncle would not think of such a thing? Ard—you would not allow such a thing?”

“Wouldn’t James be safer in England?” Archibald asks me. “Wouldn’t we all be safer over the border? If they can kill the deputy regent, your partner?”

“No! James has to stay here. How will he ever get his throne if he is in exile?”

“If he were in England, wouldn’t your brother feel honor-bound to restore him? He gave you money and sent you home to rule.”

“I don’t know.” I cannot promise for Harry. I have hardly heard from him since I came home. I am afraid that when I am not there before him, I slip from his mind. He is careless. He is a careless young man.

It is not just the lords’ council who are fearful and shocked by the death of de la Bastie. They say that George Hume took a handful of the chevalier’s beautiful long brown hair and tied his severed head to his saddlecloth like a trophy. He rode with it banging against his knees all the way to Duns and he nailed it to the mercat cross.

“This is savagery,” I say.

“It’s opportunity,” Ard corrects me. He takes my hand and draws me away from the smoking fire in the center of the great hall. It is early in the morning and the autumn light is bright and clear. If I were in England in weather like this I would go hunting. It is a perfect day, the air so cold, the ground frost-hard, the light so bright. Here, I stay indoors and look from the window, and wonder if I am safe.

“Walk with me,” Ard says, his voice warm.

I let him put my hand on his back, tucked into his belt, while he walks with his arm around my waist. He leads me away from the household preparing the hall for dinner, out of the heavy wooden doorway and down the steps to the green outside. A few steps more and we are over the drawbridge and looking down on the forest tumbling down the hill below us, the heads of the trees bronze and copper, only the pines dark deep green.

“The country is without a leader,” Ard says. “Albany away, and never coming back, de la Bastie dead. The only person here who can take the regency is you.”

“I won’t profit from his death,” I say with sudden revulsion.

“Why not? He would have done so if he had the chance. Since he is dead, you can take your rightful place.”

“They don’t trust me,” I say resentfully.

“They are all in the pay of the French. But the French regent is away and the French deputy regent is dead. Now is the chance for England and for those who love the English princess.”

“Harry himself told me that we must have peace. I was married to bring peace to Scotland and I came back to try again.”

“And now we can. Before we could not, not under a foreign power. But now we can, under you with the power of England.”

The way Ard speaks is a seduction; his arm around my waist is as persuasive as his optimism. “Think,” he whispers. “Think of being regent again and bringing your son to the throne. We would be a royal family to match Henry and Katherine. They have a throne, but no boy to inherit. You would be queen regent, I would be your consort, and your boy would be king. We would be a ruling royal family with a young king. Think how that would be.”

I am persuaded. The very thought of ruling like a queen again is enough to tempt me. The thought of being a greater queen than Katherine is irresistible. “How would we do it?”

He gives me a little sly smile. “It’s half done already, beloved. De la Bastie is dead, and you have me at your side.”

Scotland lies before us like a banquet ready for feasting. Thomas Dacre writes to advise that I seize my chance at the regency. He hints that my brother will ensure that the Duke of Albany never comes back to Scotland. Scotland needs a regent—it should be me.

“Accept,” Ard breathes in my ear, reading the letter over my shoulder. “This is your victory.”

I accept. I think: these are my days, at last. This is what it is to be a queen. This is what Katherine felt when Harry named her regent. This is what I was born for, and what I knew I should be. I am a beloved wife, I am a reigning queen, I am the mother of the king. My brother and my husband have won this for me; I shall take it. My son will come into my keeping. Already my happiest days are those that we spend together and nobody could mistake the way his little face lights up when he sees me.

The lords are sick of French rulers. They would rather follow a woman than a French nobleman. They are weary of the constant jockeying for power—they want a queen who was born higher than them all. I can do what my dead husband, the king, asked of me: care for his country and his son like a clever woman, not like a fool. I can be his true widow. I can honor my marriage vows to him and all that he taught me. I can honor his memory. I can even bear to think of him as a hidden survivor of the battle, perhaps walking in the wild country, a terrible scar on his head, content to be as the dead, knowing that I have come back to his country and taken the throne again, knowing that I am doing my best, knowing that when my moment came, I did not fail him.

So I think that my first meeting with my council will be a decisive one: they will welcome my return, I will be gracious with them. I plan to remind them that I bring peace with England, and that they can serve me as dowager queen and an English princess.

I go alone, telling Ard to wait at Holyroodhouse, to come when he is invited. As soon as the lords are seated, I tell them that I will accept the regency and my husband will serve beside me as co-regent. There is instant uproar, as one man after another pounds the table and yells out his objection. I am shocked at the outburst of fury, the same old rivalry, the same rage that Archibald warned me about. Once again, Scotland tears itself apart for no reason but that they cannot work together. But then, over the general noise, a few of them make themselves heard. They make me listen. They make me understand. Slowly, I hear what they are saying. Slowly, like a growing chill, I comprehend.

They ask me—they don’t tell me—they ask me what rents I received in England from my Scottish lands. I start to complain—they should know the answer to this, it was their duty to send the money—nothing! Nothing! Next to nothing! And they say: they were paid. Hear us! The rents were faithfully paid. We sent the money.

There is a silence. They look at me with contempt, at my slowness, at my stupidity. “Paid to whom?” I say with icy majesty; but I know. Although they can see that I know, they tell me. They say that the rents were paid to Archibald, my husband, and it was he that sent nothing on to me. It was he that left me in England forced to borrow from the butcher’s son, forced to have my household bills paid by my rich sister, to wear her cast-off dresses.

They ask me, where do I think that Archibald has been living since his pardon? I say that it is no business of theirs where he has been living, as long as his parole has been unbroken. I had believed till this minute that he was in Tantallon. They shake their heads at my arrogance and tell me, “no,” he has hardly been at his own castle. He has gone from one of my dower houses to another, collecting my rents, drinking out of my cellars, hunting my game, taking food from the storehouses of the peasants, employing my cooks, living like a lord.

“He has every right to live in my houses: he is my husband,” I say staunchly. “Everything that I have is his by law.”

One of the old lords drops his head and bangs his forehead on the table with a terrible thud, as if he would knock himself senseless with frustration.

I look blankly at him; I can say nothing. I feel that I am a fool, worse than a fool: a woman who has chosen blindness and lust instead of reason.

“Exactly,” says one of them. “He is your husband, he lives in your houses, he takes your rents, he does not send them to you.”

The old lord raises his head, a red bruise on his forehead, and looks at me. “And who is the lady of the house?” he asks. “Your house? Who sleeps on your fine linen, who dines at the head of your table, who tells your cooks to bring the finest of dishes for her to eat off your golden plates? Who has been wearing your jewels? Who sends for your musicians? Who rides your horses?”

“I will not listen to scandal,” I warn them. My hands are as cold as ice. All my rings turn loosely on my white fingers. “I care nothing for gossip.”

I think: I will show them. I will be a queen like Katherine of Aragon, I won’t even remark when my husband falls in love with my lady-in-waiting. Katherine’s heart was broken, her trust shaken, but she never said one word of complaint to Harry. She never even frowned at Bessie Blount. I know that a husband’s fidelity does not matter. I will show them queenly pride. I will show them that I care nothing for their petty worries. I am a queen. No one can displace me. Even if someone else eats off my plates, even if someone else wears my jewels, I am still Archibald’s wife, I am still dowager queen, I am still the mother of the king, the mother of Ard’s daughter.

“It is his own wife that he has put in your house,” someone says from so far down the table that I understand that even the lowest of the lords knows everything. He is a man so unimportant that he is standing with the commoners at the back of the room. “It is his own wife, whom he married long before his grandfather made him swear to you. Bonny Janet Stewart of Traquair. She has been living like his lady, as she should, as an honest wife should. And the two of them have made merry on your rents and on your cellars and in your bed. You are not his wife. You never were. You are his ambition, his clan’s bloody ambition. He was married to her, years ago, not betrothed. He was married. He pretended to marry you, and you have given him everything and now you want to give him Scotland.”

“I don’t believe it,” is the first thing I can say. Deny them! Deny everything! I say to myself. “You are lying. Where did they live together? Where was all this marital joy?”

“In Newark Castle,” they say, one after another. They are united in this, it has to be the truth. “Didn’t you notice the swept floor, the fresh rushes, the clean linen?”

“Janet Stewart moved out the day before you moved in and left it clean and tidy for her husband, like the good wife she is.”

“She even took your stockings to mend.”

I look from one furious frustrated man to another. There is no sympathy, just rage that I have been fooled and that I have tried to fool them in turn. I think: he chose Janet Stewart in preference to me. When I left for England he went to her. While I was struggling with the ambassadors and borrowing money from Wolsey he was happy with her, his first choice.

I don’t know how I get out of the council chamber, how I get down the hill, that steep mile to Holyroodhouse. I don’t know how I dismount from my horse and wave aside my ladies and get to my own bedroom and find myself terribly alone in the beautiful royal rooms.

I put myself to bed as if I am a little girl, overtired by the day. The ladies come and ask me, am I well? Shall I dine with the court? I say I am sick with women’s troubles. They think I mean that I am bleeding, but I think that these are women’s troubles indeed—when a woman loves a man who betrays her. Betrays her completely—in thought and word and deed. In plan and in whisper, in the day and in the night, and—worst of all—in public, before the world.

They bring me a dark sweet ale, they bring me hot mead. I don’t say that I don’t need this, that the women’s troubles are those of jealousy, bile, envy, hate. I drink the ale, I sip the mead. I say that Archibald may not come to me, that I must be alone. I lie on my bed and I allow myself to cry. Then I sleep.

I wake in the night, thinking I am the greatest fool that ever lived and I am humbled to dust for my stupidity. I think of Katherine marrying a King of England and standing at his side, never considering her own feelings, never pursuing her own desires, but being ceaselessly, faultlessly loyal to him because she had given her word. She has constancy of purpose. She makes up her mind to something and nothing moves her. That is why she is a great woman.

I think of me, married to a king, giving him my word that I would be a good regent, and then falling in love with a handsome face, a youth that I knew to be promised to another. I think of my determination that he should like me best, even when I knew he was betrothed. I think of my delight that I took him from another—in truth—I preferred it that he was not free, I triumphed over a girl I had never even seen. I took her sweetheart from her, I stole her betrothed. Now, for the first time, I feel ashamed of this.

I feel so low that I even think that my little sister Mary has made more sense of her life than I have done. I have called her a fool and yet she has played her cards with more skill than me. She married a man for love and she took him with simple authority and now she is his wife. She lives with him, I know that he never looks at another woman. They are never apart. But I—I turn my face into my pillow and I muffle my groan of despair at my own folly. I go to sleep again with my head buried as if I never want to see the dawn.

In the morning when I wake, I hear that Archibald has gone hunting, but he has left me a dozen loving messages and promised to bring me a fat buck for my dinner. I suppose that he has heard what the lords said to me: this is a city of spies and gossip. I suppose that he is planning on brazening it out, or sliding his arm around my waist and seducing me into stupidity once again. From the quiet attentive service that my ladies give me as they dress me and bring my things for the day, I suppose that they know too. I imagine everyone in Edinburgh knows that the queen has been told that her husband has stolen her fortune and was all along married to another woman—the wife of his choice. Half of them will be laughing at this humiliation to an English princess, and the other half shrugging at the folly of women of any nation. They will say that women are not fit to rule. They will say that I have proved that women are not fit to rule.

I go to Prime but I cannot hear the prayers. I go to breakfast but I cannot eat. A delegation of the lords is coming from the council and I have to receive them in the presence chamber. I dress carefully, patting rice powder onto my swollen pink eyelids, a little red ochre on my pale cheeks and lips. I choose a white gown with Tudor green sleeves, I wear my silver slippers with the gold laces. I let them enter when I am seated on my throne with my ladies around me and my household servants ranged obediently against the walls. We put on as good a show as we can; but it is an empty show, like a canvas castle in a masque. I have no power, and they know it. I have no fortune, and they know who has it. I have no husband and everyone but me has known that for months.

They bow with the appearance of respect. I note that James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, who negotiated my wedding settlement to James the king and was made an earl for his trouble, is towards the back, unusually modest, and that the lord at the front has a paper in his hand, spotted with seals. Clearly, they have agreed to something and are coming to me to announce it. Clearly, James Hamilton is not going to be the one who speaks first.

“My lords. I thank you for your attentiveness.” I must not sound sulky, though Our Lady knows I feel it.

They bow. Clearly, they are uncomfortable at my subdued shame.

“We have elected a new regent,” one of the lords says quietly. I see the door at the back of the presence chamber open, and Archibald comes. He stands there quietly listening, his intense gaze on me. Perhaps he thinks I have been able to force the lords to do his will. Perhaps he hopes that they are going to say his name. Perhaps he is waiting to see if I can face down the humiliation that he has caused.

The lords hand me the scroll of paper. I glance at the name of the new regent. As I guessed, it is James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, grandson to James II, kinsman to my first husband the king. I look up; Archibald is watching me, prompting me to speak.

“And this is the wish of you all?” I ask.

“It is,” they say.

James Hamilton himself gives a modest little bow and starts to come forward.

“I would suggest that there are two regents, ruling together,” I say. “Myself and the noble Earl of Arran, James Hamilton, who has always been my friend.” I completely ignore Archibald, but fix my gaze on James Hamilton’s frowning face. “I am sure that you would want to work with me, my lord? We have been friends for so long.”

He pauses. Certainly, he does not leap at the chance. “As the council wishes,” he says unenthusiastically.

One of the older lords, a man I don’t know, speaks up from the back of the room, and he doesn’t mince his words. “Not if you’re the wife of a traitor and bound to obey him.”

Archibald darts forward to stand by my side. He’s still dressed for hunting and although all blades are forbidden at court everyone knows that he has his hunting dagger in his boot. “Who dares say this?” he demands. “Who dares slander me and the queen, my wife? Who dares defy us and the English king?”

At once there is an angry swell of noise as the lords object to his tone. Ard ignores them, and turns to me. “Propose me,” he says sharply.

“They never will . . .”

“I want to see who refuses.”

“Would you accept a regency with the Earl of Arran and the Earl of Angus?” I say, giving Archibald his full title, looking around at the furious faces.

“Never,” someone says shortly from the back, and all the lords—every single lord present—say, “Nay.”

I turn to Archibald. “I think you’ve seen well enough,” I say bitterly. “And now James Hamilton is regent and the guardian of my boy, and I am despised.”

The lords bow again, and file out of the presence chamber. I hardly notice them go. “See what you’ve done!” I say to Archibald. “You’ve ruined everything!”

“It’s what you’ve done!” he says, quick as a whip. “It is your brother who has failed you. He is making peace with the council without consulting you. It was he who secretly agreed to Arran being regent, and you being nothing. It is he who has made you a nothing here.”

It must be a lie; Harry would not make an agreement behind my back with the council. “He loves me,” I gasp. “He would never abandon me. He promised . . . He sent me back here and he promised!”

“He has abandoned you,” Archibald says. “You see the result.”

“It is you who abandoned me,” I say bitterly. “I know all about Janet Stewart.”

“You know nothing about her,” he says coldly. “Nothing now, and you never will. You cannot imagine her.”

“She is a whore!” I blaze at him. “What is there to imagine in a whore?”

“I will not allow you to speak like that about her,” he says, with strange dignity. “You are the queen. Act like one.”

“I am your wife!” I shout at him. “I should not even hear of her.”

He bows in silence. “You will hear nothing of her from me,” he says icily, and he walks out.