Three Sisters, Three Queens

LINLITHGOW PALACE, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1519

It is a long summer before I receive any reply from my brother Harry. A long summer, when my son is moved from plague-sick Edinburgh; but I am not invited to travel with him. A long summer when nobody visits me and I turn from sorrow to coldness, when I resolve that from this summer onward I shall never again be guided by passion, but only by my interests. A long summer when I see that my only friends, my only true loves, are my sisters, who know what it is to lose a child, who know what sorrow means for a woman, who write to me.

Harry is silent; I know why. He will be traveling away from the crowded, dirty city of London. He will be visiting the beautiful palaces on the Thames and then hunting around the great houses of Southern England, always delightedly welcomed, always offered the very best that the countryside can provide. He will leave Thomas Wolsey with all the work of the kingdom; he will not trouble himself to write to anyone, least of all me. He will not think of me, abandoned by my husband, unprotected by my brother, constantly trying to come to some accord with the lords of the council, constantly appealing to the absent Duke of Albany.

My sister Mary does not neglect me. She writes and tells me that she has given birth to another girl—the Brandons do seem to run to girls—and has called her Eleanor. For sure, they would have preferred another boy, anyone would. A second Brandon boy would have been another heir to the throne to follow my son James. Their oldest boy is one step behind mine, and my James looks more and more likely to inherit every day that goes by. If the last lost baby was Katherine’s final attempt—and surely soon she must reach the end of her fertile years—then it will be my boy who takes the throne after Harry.

It is impossible not to think like this, however hard-hearted it feels. I pity Katherine very truly. I wept when I read her letter telling me of the loss of her baby, but I cannot help but know that while she has no son, my boy stands to inherit the kingdom of England and Ireland as well as Scotland. Surely Mary too must think like this? Surely Mary must wish that she had another boy? She cannot love Katherine so selflessly that she does not hope for the end of her fertile years. Can anyone love a sister so much that she puts her interests first?

But perhaps Mary is a better sister to the queen than I, for she writes very gaily that the new baby is the prettiest of children with skin like the petal of a pale rose and that they are all delighted with a daughter.

And something very dreadful has happened. Bessie Blount, who was such a dear little maid-in-waiting to our sister, left court without leave from the queen and simply disappeared. The young woman has had a baby and, oh Maggie, I am sorry to say—she has had a boy and it is, without doubt, Harry’s son.

I put down her letter and walk to the window and look out, not seeing the waves cresting white on the gray waters as the wind moves across the loch. I think firstly: I need not worry; this does not matter. This baby will have no place in the line of inheritance, he is a bastard and counts for nothing. But then I think more coolly that he is the first Tudor bastard that Harry has ever made, and that counts for something. That counts for a lot. Bessie has shown the world that Harry can get a boy, and if the child lives, he will show the world that Harry can get a healthy boy.

This is no small thing on its own. And—in turn—it proves that the fault with all these dead heirs lies with Katherine, and not with my handsome brother. Everyone thought this before, but nobody dared to say it. Now it is proven as the truth. She is older than he—only by a few years, to be sure; but she is thirty-three now, with a string of miscarriages and stillbirths behind her. She comes from a family that is riddled with death and sickness, and in all these years she has managed only one delicate little girl. But Harry’s mistress, the lively, healthy, young Bessie, has given him a bonny boy in the fifth year of their affair. This is a triumphant proof of my brother’s virility and denies, contradicts, and silences forever the belief that the Tudors are cursed for their invasion of England and for the disappearance of the princes in the Tower. Whoever it was that killed the princes and was left with a curse on their line, it is not us. For I have a strong boy, Mary has Henry Brandon, and now my brother has a fat little bastard. They are calling him Henry Fitzroy. Henry for the king and Fitzroy to indicate a royal bastard. They could not have chosen two names that would hurt Katherine more. I should think it will break her heart. Now she will know what grief is. Once she taught heartbreak to me; now Bessie Blount has taught her.