Three Sisters, Three Queens

STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1525

I lose all influence over the council of the lords; Archibald will not even see me. I go to Stirling Castle and live like a widow, alone. I keep a small court, but I have hardly the money to pay them. I receive nothing from France and get only a small part of my rents and my fees from my lands—a pitiful allowance paid by Archibald from his charity. He is a wronged husband; he would be within his rights to let me starve and nobody would blame him. Henry Stewart greets me with joy, but soon learns that I am in disgrace and that we will never be married. I publicly protest that my case is still before the papal court and that my rents should be paid to me and not to Archibald, that my son should be in my keeping until we have their decision. The council of lords reply that until the marriage is ended I should live with my husband, and that I must come to Edinburgh to answer before them all. They hate me for being a woman trying to win my freedom. They know that I would have sold them all, lock, stock, and barrel, to get my freedom from Archibald. They hate me for betraying them. They feel betrayed as James does—they know that I was trying to get away and leave them in Archibald’s power.

I don’t go to Edinburgh. Not even to see James will I return to Archibald, and in my absence they declare that I have forfeited all my authority. They say that my son shall be kept by a council of nobles, a rotating set of guardians, and Archibald takes first place. Takes it and keeps it. James is in Archibald’s power and will never return to me. I don’t even know if James wants to see me. He feels I have betrayed him and he will not forgive me.

Archibald takes Margaret, too. There is no protest I can make. She is his daughter and he has evidence from the King of England that her mother is shamed. She is glad to go: she is her father’s little pet, his favorite. I think I should try to persuade her to stay with me but I cannot bring myself to beg her, and I have no power to command.

I write to my brother the king to appeal to him in the name of his nephew, even if he is still angry with me. I write to Katherine and say that as a mother she must understand that I cannot bear James to be held by my enemy. Neither of them replies, but I get a letter from my sister Mary that reminds me that my troubles and sorrows mean little in London; they are all convulsed with gossip.

Our brother has ennobled his bastard son Henry Fitzroy. The little boy is made a duke—Duke of Richmond and Duke of Somerset—and so is the greatest duke in the kingdom. He has far greater lands and fees than my husband Charles. Charles says that Harry will name Fitzroy as his heir, to inherit the throne of England.

I can see her writing change as she realizes that she is speaking to the mother of the legitimate heir.

I am sure you will be very troubled by this, but it is only what Charles says. It may be that your boy will inherit the throne in the end. It’s just that, with everyone speaking so badly of you, Harry cannot name your son as an heir. People even ask if we can be sure of James’s fathering. If you are an adulteress now, might you have been so before? This is so very terrible to hear—I am sorry to repeat it. I wish you would reconcile with the Earl of Angus. Everyone thinks so highly of him. Can you not withdraw your application to the Pope? It’s never going to succeed now.

Of course the queen is very saddened by the honoring of Henry Fitzroy, and now Mary Carey is with child again and everyone knows that it is the king’s baby. Her sister Anne Boleyn is at court too and the king is every day with either one or the other of them as they vie for his attention, and Katherine feels this very much. She is living among her rivals and now she sees a bastard boy is housed in as great a palace as that given to the true princess, her daughter. Princess Mary is to go to Ludlow Castle but she is not made Princess of Wales. I cannot see why not, but Charles says that the English would never accept a woman on the throne. So nobody knows what will happen, the queen least of all.

It is not a happy court any more. The two Boleyn girls are quite frantic in their desire to please and entertain Harry—they sport and dance and play music and compose, they hunt and boat and flirt, but the queen seems very tired. And I am tired of it too. I am tired of all of it.

That’s all. She has no new advice for me but to return to Archibald, it is all any of them ever say. I don’t think she has any thought of me. She cannot imagine my life, short of money, lonely for company, unable to see my son, deserted by my daughter, unable to enter my capital city, a queen in name but stripped of power, wealth, and reputation. For Mary the world is fixed in London and the battle between two pretty Boleyn girls, a great question mark hanging over the throne of England like a sparkling cloth of estate. There is so much more to trouble me, but neither she nor my sister-in-law Katherine ever thinks of me.