Three Sisters, Three Queens

EDINBURGH CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1522

My brother sends a Clarenceux Herald to Edinburgh to discover the state of affairs since, apparently, I cannot be trusted to report, and my word is worthless. The great man brings grooms and servants, and his clerks carry letters from my sister Mary and my sister-in-law Katherine.

“Her Grace said to give these to you privately and suggest that you read them alone,” says the herald, awkwardly. He does not know what is in them, but—like everyone in England—he knows what is being said about me.

I nod and take them away to my bedchamber. I lock the door behind me and break the seal. There are two letters. First, I read the one from Katherine, the queen.

Dearest Sister,

I cannot and will not believe the things that I have heard about you. Your husband’s uncle Gavin Douglas speaks of vile things. Please believe that I will not hear them said in my presence.

I am sorry that he has the ear of Cardinal Wolsey and of the king. There is nothing I can do about this, and I dare not try. Your brother used to listen to my advice but now he does not.

I am sure that you are lonely and sad. Believe me, sometimes a good wife has to suffer while her husband is in error. If Archibald returns to you from France, and his uncle swears that he will, then you must take him back. Only reuniting with your husband will silence these terrible stories. If you were only living with him now, nobody could say anything against you.

My dear, it is God’s will that a wife has no choice but to forgive an erring husband. No choice. However much her heart may break. I do not advise this lightly. I did not learn this easily. Your sister,

Katherine

Stubbornly, I screw up the letter into a ball and toss it into the red embers at the back of the fireplace. I break the seal of the Dowager Queen of France, which she still insists on using, and smooth Mary’s crumpled letter on my knee. As always she writes of the court, and of the clothes and of the fashions; as always she brags of her own beauty and the masque that she led and the jewel that Henry gave her. But for once there is a different twist in this old story. Mary’s pretty nose is out of joint because another girl is leading the dancing at court, and it sounds like a merry dance. At once I begin to understand the intensity of Katherine’s unhappy tone. I try to decipher Mary’s terrible handwriting and contain my secret squirm of shameful delight. Mary writes that yet another lady has taken Henry’s eye and captured his fancy and this time it is far more public than any previous affair. He chooses her as his partner in the masques, he walks with her and talks with her, rides out with her and plays cards with her. As one of Katherine’s ladies-in-waiting, she is constantly in the queen’s sight; she is acknowledged, not hidden. She has become the most important woman at court, favored over the queen, and she is pretty and blooming and young. Everyone knows that she is the king’s mistress and closest companion.

I should not smile. But the thought of Katherine having to eat humble pie while yet another girl delights her young husband lifts my spirits. If she had understood my pain when Archibald was unfaithful to me, I would be full of sympathy for her now. But then she said it was God’s will that a wife should forgive.

She is far worse than Bessie for she has no discretion at all. And of course, the girl is very beautiful, and, worst of all, Harry is quite besotted. He carried her handkerchief over his heart in a joust, he told Charles that he can’t stop thinking of her. She makes it worse by running after him wherever she can, and Katherine can’t send her home to her husband because she is married to young Carey and he is most helpful: a shameless cuckold. He is to receive lands and places, all for looking the other way. You would pity Katherine if you could see her. And no signs of another baby yet. It is quite miserable here. You would be sorry, I know.

I can see her writing change as she turns the page and remembers that I have troubles of my own. They are saying the most terrible things about you, Mary tells me, in case this has slipped my attention.

You must take great care that you are never alone with the Duke of Albany. Your reputation must be perfect. You owe that to us, to Katherine and to me, especially now. The three of us—you and me and Katherine—must always be above scandal and above suspicion. If Katherine is to survive Harry’s folly she has to be far above it. If he is to return to her, penitent, when this is over then nobody can say anything against us Tudor sisters and our marriages. Please, Margaret, you cannot let us down. Remember that you are a Tudor princess as we are. You must be above scandal and shame. We all must.

She finishes the letter with love to me and to my son and to Margaret with a reminder that Archibald will be coming back to Scotland to beg a pardon from Albany and that it is essential that I speak for him. A wife’s duty is to forgive, she parrots. Then finally at the very last corner there is a tiny squeezed scatter of words.

Oh God forgive me, I can hardly write. My son Henry has this day died of the Sweat. Pray for us.

I go out of my room to find the Clarenceux Herald. “My sister has lost her son?” I ask.

He is uncomfortable speaking to me, as if I might suddenly strip off my bodice and dance as naked as Salome. God knows what he has heard of me. God knows what he thinks of me.

“Alas, yes.”

“I will write to her,” I say hastily. “You will take my letters to England when you return?”

Absurdly, he looks as if he would like to refuse. “What is the matter?” I demand. “Why are you looking like that?”

“I am instructed that all letters are to be left unsealed. You may write, and I am to carry them, but I am bound in honor to warn you that they are to remain open.”

“Why?”

He shuffles his feet. “So that it is clear that you are not writing love letters,” he says.

“To whom?” I demand.

He gulps. “Anyone.”

If this were not so terrible it would be funny. “Good God, man, do you not know that the lord Dacre reads everything I ever write and always has done so? Spies on my very thoughts before I have them? And still has no evidence against me? Who do you imagine loves me in England, where Gavin Douglas calls me a whore to my brother’s face, and nobody challenges him?”

There is a horrified silence. I realize I have spoken too wildly. I should never ever say the word “whore.” I have to be, as Mary says so clumsily, above scandal.

“Anyway, I can carry your letters if they are unsealed,” he says weakly. “But now I have to speak to the regent.”

“I’ll come with you,” I say.

Clearly, the herald would rather have met with Albany alone, and soon I see why. He has brought a letter from Harry, which accuses Albany of seducing me, of “damnable abusion” and of working for my divorce against my best interests and for his own ends. I am so horrified by these words from my brother to a stranger that I can hardly bear to look at Albany while the herald reads out these accusations in a quiet monotone as if he wishes we could not hear him and he did not have to say them.

Albany is white with fury. He forgets the rules of chivalry and speaks to the herald with contempt. He says that he did indeed apply to the Holy Father for my divorce for me, at my request; but that he himself is a married man and faithful to his wife. He does not look at me, and I know that with my burning face and the tears on my cheeks I look like a guilty fool. Bitingly, the duke tells the English herald that the matter of my divorce is with the Pope, and that the Holy Father will be the sole judge of it. Albany himself merely delivered the message.

“How could my brother say such things?” I whisper to the herald, who glances at me and then dips his head in a little bow.

Albany says that he finds it extraordinary that the King of England should accuse his own sister of becoming another man’s concubine. The herald is crushed into silence. He mutters only that he has a letter that he must put before the Scots lords, and he leaves the room.

As I could have told him, the Scots lords have no time for a herald from England, especially one that comes to slander their regent and their dowager queen together. They scowl at him, and one of the older, angrier lords throws himself out of the council chamber, banging the door behind him. The herald, in the face of grim hostility, reads out Harry’s ridiculous demands with a quiet voice, and the Scots lords reply that they are all willing to serve under the regent, Albany, until the king my son is of age, that they are happy that the regent appoints tutors and guardians from among them, according to my wishes. They regard as slanderous lies the suggestion that the regent and I are lovers. They declare that my husband and his uncle are traitors, banished from the kingdom, and that everyone knows that my son Alexander, the little Duke of Ross, died of ill health. The herald shuffles his feet and leaves. I watch his humiliation with delight.

I hope he goes back to London and tells Harry that he is a fool to speak so to the Scots. I hope he goes back to London and tells Katherine that I live apart from Archibald and I will never return to him, and I don’t agree that a wife has to forgive an erring husband, I don’t agree that a Tudor wife has to be above criticism. I hope he goes back to London and tells Mary that I am sorry for the death of her son but she should be glad that no one suggests that he was murdered. I hope the herald tells her that now Archibald is exiled I have my rents and my fees again, and I am buying new gowns. I don’t need any of them to support me. I have given up on all three of them.