Three Sisters, Three Queens

HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, AUTUMN 1524

I am awakened in the darkness by the violent ringing of the church bells pounding out a jangle of tones, the tocsin, an alarm. I jump out of my bed, and the lady-in-waiting who sleeps with me throws my robe around my shoulders and gasps, “What is it? What’s happening?”

I fling open the door of my privy chamber as the guards throw open the door at the other end and Henry Stewart comes running in, wearing his breeches and his boots and pulling on his shirt over his naked chest.

“Dress,” he says to me urgently. “The Douglases have defied your ban. They have entered the city.”

“Archibald?”

“Climbed over the walls and opened the gates from the inside. There are hundreds of them. Do I have your permission to set a siege?”

“Here? We can’t hold a siege here!”

“Depends how many of them there are,” he says tightly.

He turns on his heel and runs out, shouting for the guards to go to battle stations. I run back into my room and pull on a gown and push my feet in my slippers. My lady-in-waiting is plumped down on a stool, crying with fear.

“Fetch the others,” I say to her. “Tell them to go to my presence chamber, and close the shutters on all the windows.”

“The Douglases are coming?” she quavers.

“Not if I can stop them,” I say.

I stride into my presence chamber and find Davy Lyndsay with James. My son is pale and nervous. He tries to smile when he sees me and he bows for my blessing.

“We’re holding the palace,” I say to Davy over James’s bowed head. I raise James up and curtsey and kiss him. “You be brave and make sure that you go nowhere near the windows or out on the walls. Don’t be seen, don’t be a target.”

“What do they want?” he asks.

“They say they want to be restored to the lords’ council and not arraigned as traitors,” Lyndsay says shortly. “They go an odd way about it.”

“Archibald’s way,” I say bitterly. “Hidden weapons, a secret army—he should be ashamed of himself. How many did he kill last time?”

The English ambassadors, half dressed, the archdeacon bare legged, come running in. “Is it the French?”

“Worse,” I say bitingly. “It’s your friend Archibald Douglas, with hundreds of his men at his back and no control over them at all.”

They are literally white with fear. “What will you do?”

“I will destroy them,” I swear.

Holyroodhouse is a palace, not a castle, but the walls are high and there are towers at every corner and a great gate that can be barred shut. I hear the tremendous roar of the guns from the castle and I know that Henry Stewart will have ridden like a madman up the Via Regis to tell them to arm and direct their guns on whoever threatens them; the castle must not fall.

“Roll out our guns,” I say to the captain of the guard. “They can’t come here.”

We don’t have gun stations like a castle, but they roll out the guns before the gate and my men stand behind them, grim-faced, cannonballs stacked behind them, ready to bombard the Via Regis, their own city. Before them, kneeling on the cobbles, are my guard with handguns and bows.

“Before God, I beg of you, don’t fire on your own husband.” The archdeacon appears at my shoulder as I stand at the porter’s gate, looking as anxiously as my gunners for any sign of the Douglas army on the Via Regis ahead of us. “It would be an act of such wifely disobedience. No reconciliation would be possible, no pope could condone—”

“You get back to your lodging,” I spit at him. “These are Scottish matters, and if you had not given him safe conduct he would not be here.”

“Your Grace!”

“Go! Or I will shoot you myself!”

He falls back, stricken. He throws one aghast look up the cobbles as if he fears a horde of madmen running down in their plaids with their knives in their teeth, and he scuttles away.

I glance behind me. James is there, his English sword on his hip. “You go to the presence chamber,” I order him. “If it all goes wrong, let them find you on the throne. If they get in, be calm and surrender to them. Davy will guide you. Don’t let them touch you. They must not put a hand on you.” I turn to James Hamilton, Earl of Arran. “Guard him,” I say. “And get horses ready in case he has to escape.”

“Where will you be?” he asks me.

I don’t answer. If they get in, I will be dead. They will step over my corpse to capture my son. This is not play-acting; this is war between Archibald and me, between the Douglas clan and the regency, between the outlaws and the throne. This is our final battle, I know it.

Davy Lyndsay guides my son away. “God bless you,” he says shortly to me. “Where’s young Harry Stewart?”

“Holding the castle for us,” I say. “As soon as it is safe we’ll get up there. Be ready.”

He nods. “Take care, Your Grace.”

“This is to the death,” I reply.

All day we stand at the ready, hearing news of a few casualties, a little unrest, some looting, a rape. All day we hear that Clan Douglas are in every ward and alley in the town, trying to turn out the men to storm the palace and getting no help. The townspeople are afraid of the guns of the castle and of the palace and they are sick of warfare, especially fighting inside the town gate. More than anything else, they are sick of the Red Douglases. Finally, at midday, after dozens of false alarms, we hear the rush of feet and skirl of a pipe, as a force in Douglas colors runs down the street towards us, their pikes before them, their faces contorted with rage, as if they think that we might fail for fear.

“Fire!” I say.

The gunners don’t wait to be told twice. The archers loose their bowstrings, the handguns crackle and then bang and the cannon roar out. Three or four men lie groaning on the cobbles. My hand is to my mouth, my ears ringing, deafened by the noise, I am blinded by the foul-smelling smoke; but I don’t move from behind my guard. “Fire!” I say again.

The Douglas affinity scatter before the second cannonade and drag their groaning wounded away, their blood smearing the stones. Now there is no one before us but we hold our positions; the cannon are rolled back, rearmed, the handgunners blow on their glowing fuses. We glance from one to another, we are alive: we are determined, we are filled with a hard rage that anyone should dare to come against us, should threaten our king. We keep guard. I think we will be here till midnight. I don’t care if we are here for days. I don’t care about the suffering, I don’t care about death. I am gripped with fury. If Archibald were here I would kill him myself.

The smoke starts to clear. My ears are still ringing when high above me, halfway up the steep hill, I see a man on a black horse. It is Ard. I would know him through smoke, I would know him through darkness, I would know him through the heat haze of hell itself. He is looking directly at me, and I raise my eyes and look at him.

It is as if time stands still. All I can see is the outline of the mounted figure and all I can imagine are his dark eyes, which once looked at me with such passion and are looking at me still. He is frozen: only his horse shifts on the cobbles, held tightly by a hard hand. He is looking towards me as if he might speak, as if he might ride downhill and claim me as his own once more.

I don’t drop my gaze like a modest woman. I don’t blush like a woman in love. With my eyes locked on his, I say loudly, loud enough for him to hear:

“Gunners, take aim. On the horseman.”

They set their sights. They await my command to fire. My husband, my enemy, tips his bonnet to me—I can almost see his smile—and he turns his horse away and goes slowly, quite without fear, up the stony hill of the Via Regis and out of sight.

We wait, certain that Ard is regrouping, or secretly climbing the back walls of the palace to come at us from behind. We wait with our nerves raw with fear, a guard at every doorway, arrows on strings, the gunners softly blowing on glowing fuses so they stay alight. Then, at last, we hear the hour bell of Saint Giles tolling four o’clock, and then a high sweet bell tolling a single note over and over again, calling for peace.

“What’s happening?” I demand of the captain. “Send someone out.”

Before he can respond I see a horse riding faster than is safe, skidding and cantering on, down the steep slope from the castle. I see a glimpse of Stewart tartan over the rider’s shoulder. It is Henry Stewart. Only this mad boy would ride so fast downhill on cobbles. He pulls up before the guns and jumps off his horse.

He bows to me. “Are you unhurt?”

I nod.

“Beg to report that the Clan Douglas with Archibald Angus at their head have withdrawn from the city and the gates are shut on them,” he says.

“They’re gone?”

“For now. Come with me. Let’s get you and the king to the castle and safety.”

The captain shouts a message for the stables; someone runs for James. We have all been waiting all day for this moment and the horses are saddled and ready. We go up the hill at a hand gallop. The drawbridge is down, the portcullis up, the gates open, the castle welcoming, and we hammer over the bridge and inside. The gates slam behind us as we hear the creak of the drawbridge going up and the loud scream of iron on iron and the rattle of chains as the portcullis falls.

Henry Stewart turns to me. “You’re safe. God be praised, you’re safe.” His voice cracks with emotion, he lifts me down from the saddle and he wraps his arms around me, as if we are lovers, as if it is natural that he should hold me, and I should rest my head on his shoulder. “God be praised, my love, you are safe.”

He loves me. I think I have known it all along, from the first days when I noticed him among James’s companions, head and shoulders above the others. I think I noticed him when I dropped the handkerchief for James and saw him cheer. When he helped James off with his armor he took my handkerchief, with the embroidered rose in the corner, and kept it. Now, more than a year later he shows me that he has it still. He knew from then, from that moment. I knew only that I liked him, that he made me laugh, that I was glad of his care for me, that I felt safe when he was with me. I had not thought of love. I was so shaken by Ard’s repeated betrayals that I think I had forgotten that I might love.

I step back from his embrace at once. We have to be careful. I cannot have a word said against me while my application for a divorce is going slowly through one stage after another at Rome, while I am regent to a young king, while my brother is openly promiscuous and my sister-in-law upholds the state of marriage as if it were the only gateway to heaven.

“Don’t,” I say quickly.

He releases me at once, springs backwards, his face anxious. “Forgive me,” he says earnestly. “It was the relief of seeing you. I have been in hell all day.”

“Forgiven,” I whisper passionately. I think of the long threat in Ard’s look, I think of the acrid smoke of cannons that swirled between me and my husband. I think of the sudden passion for life that comes when death has been close, and how hatred and love are both a passion. “Oh, God, you are forgiven. Come to me tonight.”