Three Sisters, Three Queens

HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1519

Christmas comes and goes and I have no news of my husband. It is hard to make merry without him carving the meat, or dancing with the ladies. Nobody speaks of him, but I hear that he is snowed-in with Janet Stewart at Newark Castle. The council do not consult me. I give no advice to Lord Dacre. It is as if I have stepped away from the regency, from my marriage, from life itself.

My poor brother has lost a child, again. All their high hopes came to nothing and I am truly sad for him, and for her too. I hear late, long after their grief; the letter from Thomas Lord Dacre comes through only when the first spring thaw clears the road from the south. Bundled in his letter comes a note from Katherine.

God did not grant us the happiness of her birth. Blessed is His Holy Name, and who can doubt His will? She was a little girl and she came early. I hoped it would not be too early, we had physicians and midwives ready when I thought she was coming and I tried to hold her into this unsteady life . . . but Our Father knew better, and I bow to His will, though I cannot understand it.

I know that your life is not easy but I urge you to spend your time with your son, who is such a gift from heaven to a queen and a mother. This was my sixth child and yet I have only one in the nursery, and she is not the prince that I prayed for. God’s will be done, I tell myself this: God’s will be done. I say the words over and over, all through the night when I cannot sleep for crying.

Our sister Mary is with child again, thank God, and in my own sorrow I cannot do too much for her. I can hardly bear to let her out of my sight and I pray for her safety in her ordeal that is to come. I wish I felt better able to help her, but I am weary and exhausted by disappointment. You will understand how low I feel when I tell you that my maid in-waiting, little Bessie Blount, has left court to give birth. I cannot write more. The ways of God are mysterious indeed. I hope you will pray for me that I learn to resign myself gladly to His will.

Oh, dear Margaret, I feel that I am ready to die with grief . . .

Katherine

I cannot face the spring weather with the courage that I should. Every day is Tudor green, every day the snow melts away and the sun shines a little more strongly. In front of the church the snowdrops are lifting their heads above the whiteness of the frost under the silver birch trees. The birds are starting to sing in the mornings, and the smell of new buds and of the turned earth comes in through the open windows and makes me feel that renewal is possible, that I might recover from this long winter of disappointment.

The council does not let me see my son more than once a week but this much at least they allow. I send no message to Archibald, I think that I will never see him again and it is as if I am a widow. I wish I could grieve for the loss of him; once again I am a widow with no body to bury. He sends me neither messages nor money. He keeps all my rents and all my fees are paid to him. To get through these cold days I have been forced to pawn all the gifts that I brought from England. My last two gold cups I sent to Lord Dacre as a pledge for a loan. Now, as we come to the end of the winter quarter, I dismiss my household staff so that I am served by no more than a handful of people. I lend my horses to private stables, I send my ladies back to their homes. I live as if I were a private gentlewoman of scant means. The council are full of sympathy but they can do nothing. Archibald collects all my rents as my husband, and he lives like a lord in Newark Castle, with the woman who calls herself his wife. She has given birth to a child—a daughter. They live well, the castle fortified, the household staffed. They are rich, on the fees that are paid by my tenants. Undeniably, he is my husband and he has a legal right to my fortune. He is the lord and master of my houses and he can live where he pleases; his treatment of me does not amount to grounds for divorce. He is a bad husband: but the Church does not concern itself with that. He is still my husband, he still has my fortune.

The only way I could defend myself would be to declare that he is indeed Lady Janet’s husband; she is the Countess of Angus, our marriage is bigamous, our daughter is a bastard, and I am an adulterous whore. The question of whether I should regard myself as a betrayed wife or a sinful adulteress wakes me in the early hours of the morning, and haunts me all the day.

I have lost my position as a wife, and also my authority as a queen. Another woman makes merry in my house and revels in the love of her husband who was once mine. I can see no one and go nowhere; I shall become like my dead husband—a ghost that people say still lives, but one that is never seen. They will write ballads about us and say that one day we will return to bring peace to Scotland and set our boy on the throne. People will see us in mists and tell stories about us when they are drunk.

I know that I should fight this half death, this nonlife. I have to surrender all my hopes of Archibald and give him up. I must take the shame of being a whore and declare him my enemy. I must forget that I ever loved him. I must go to England and throw myself into my brother’s arms, and call on him to help me get a divorce from Archibald.

Now I think wistfully: if only I had taken the advice of the good Lord Chancellor Thomas Wolsey I would be the Dowager Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, with a treasure house of jewels and a wardrobe full of gowns. No one would be powerful enough to refuse my command that my son lives with me. I would be called “Her Majesty” and I would create an imperial court in Scotland. I was such a fool to tell Thomas Wolsey and my brother that I would be true to Archibald. Wolsey is a papal legate now, he could win me a divorce from Archibald with one letter. I should never have spoken of vows that cannot be broken and love that cannot be denied. There is only one bond that I trust and that is between a woman and her sisters. Only the three of us are indissoluble. We never take our eyes off each other. In love and rivalry, we always think of each other.

I write to Harry. I don’t speak of Archibald’s infidelity; I say only that we are not together and that he has taken my rents. I say to Harry that I will come back to London to live at court, and that I will only be married again with his advice. I am saying, as clearly as can be: I will be divorced. I will be your sister again, I will be all Tudor and no Stewart. You can use me as you will, marry me to where I can serve you, as long as you keep me as you should. I don’t expect to be a rival monarch, I don’t expect to outshine your wife, Katherine. I see that she has done what I could not do—even my little sister Mary has done better than I. The two of them married for love and kept their husbands. Once, I jealously compared myself with them and was filled with pride; now I am humbled. I write to Katherine and to Mary and I send the letters in the same package. I tell them that I am brought very low and that I want to come home.