Three Sisters Three Queens Read online

  I feel a wave of nausea and bile rises into my mouth. I put my hand to my face and swallow it down like grief. “She sent you all this way to ask me this? In the steps of the army who killed him?”

  “She promised the King of England that it was done. She has a body. She has to know for sure that it is the right body.”

  What a ghoul this woman is.

  “He’s dead,” I say bitterly. “Oh, reassure her. Set her loving heart at rest. She has not boasted to her husband without reason. She didn’t steal the wrong corpse. She killed my husband and half the nobility of Scotland. He’s dead all right. She can set her tender heart at peace. Make sure you thank her for her kind inquiry.”

  STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1514

  In the cold dark months of the new year, as my belly broadens, I grow more and more weary of the lords of my council, more and more tired of their suspicion of me, confined to my rooms by the darkness and storms of snow before I am confined by childbirth. I write to my sisters—for who else do I have in all the world?—weeping a little with self-pity, in case this is the last they ever hear of me:

  Dear Sisters, Katherine and Mary,

  I am writing to you as I go into confinement, conscious that life is uncertain and children are born into sorrow. If I should not survive this, then I beg the two of you to take care of my boy and my new baby if it lives. There is no one here that I can trust more than the two of you, who, I know, love me and mine, whatever has passed between our countries.

  Mary, as my younger sister, I require you to ensure that my son is raised as a King of Scotland and that he is kept safe from his enemies. Katherine, as my sister twice over, I require you to ensure that my son inherits the kingdom his father left him and whatever else is his by right.

  If I live, I shall hope to serve the two of you as a dear sister and trusted ally. And if I live, I hope to receive my lady grandmother’s jewels and the rest of my inheritance.

  God bless you both,

  Your sister,

  Margaret

  With no father to pray for my baby’s safety, with no king to go on pilgrimage or promise a crusade, it is a long, painful birthing and no sign of any help from God; but at the end of it I have a boy, another boy for the Stewart house, and I name him Alexander. Last time, James insisted on coming to see me, breaking all the rules of the confinement chamber. Last time he took me to his bed the moment that I was churched, ignoring feast days and fast days and the commands of the Church, desperate to give me another child before he had to leave for war. But this time no husband comes to the screen in the confinement room, no impatient father demands to see his son. This time I lie alone at night, the baby in the nursery next door, listening to the quiet squeak of the rocking chair of the night nurse. This time I lean back on cool pillows and know there will be no tap at the door and no bobbing candle as the king comes to visit. This time I am alone, I am very alone. I really cannot bear to be so alone.

  I write to my brother, Harry, who has returned in triumph from France to find that Katherine, his wife, can kill a king and steal his body but not bring a healthy child to full term. Apparently she lost a son while Harry was away at war. I am sorry for her, but I am not surprised. I don’t see how any woman who could send the bloodstained coat of a kinsman as a symbol of triumph could be woman enough to bear a child. How can Katherine be in a state of grace? How can God forgive her for her savagery? Surely He must love the widow more than the murderer. No wonder that He gives me a strong boy and Katherine gets a dead child. What else does she deserve? I hope she never gets a baby. I hope she fails to give Harry a live boy since she reveled in giving him a dead king.

  My sister Mary writes me a letter of congratulations. She spends but a moment of her misspelled crisscrossed letter on the birth of my child, she is so full of her own news. Charles Brandon—Henry’s great friend and companion—has been made master of horse; Charles Brandon rode with Harry to France and never left his side through danger and battle, and was so engaging to the Archduchess Margaret at Flanders that everyone says he will marry her. They say that this is a disgrace for such a noble lady but Mary does not think so.

  Do you think so? Do you not think it would be a wonderful thing to marry for love? If you were Archduchess Margaret, would you be able to resist him? For he is the most handsome man in England and the bravest and the best jouster.

  I am very glad to know that you have had a son, your letter made my cry so much that Charles Brandon said that my tears were like sapphires in a river and that a brave knight would want to drink from such a stream.

  I reply briefly to her:

  Of course, the archduchess, like all noble ladies, must marry for the benefit of her family and the safety of her country to the choice of her father or guardian. And anyway, I believe that Charles Brandon is betrothed already?

  Then I take up a page and write to Katherine. I spend some time on the letter: it is a masterpiece of spite. I say that I am grieved, deeply grieved, that she has lost yet another child. I wish she too had the happiness of a newborn son, another son. I tell her that he is to be called Alexander and he will carry the traditional title of the second son of Scotland: Duke of Ross. I remark (in case it has slipped her murderer’s mind), that this is all I have left of my husband.

  It was a long birth but he is a strong baby. His little brother, our king, is well also. I am so glad to have two sons, my two little heirs. I do hope that you, Queen of England and trusted advisor to the king, will work for peace between our two kingdoms for the sake of myself—the king’s sister—and my two little boys—his nephews and heirs.

  I am not surprised that she does not have the gall to reply to this, but Harry sends a message to me by the Warden of the Marches, Thomas Lord Dacre, the man who bundled the body of the King of Scots onto a cart as the spoils of war, the man who is destroying the peace of the kingdom, gnawing on the border castles like a dog on a bone. My brother gives me a warning that the French are going to send John Stuart, Duke of Albany, my husband’s French-born cousin—apparently to help me, but actually to rule Scotland in my place. Henry demands that I refuse entry to the Duke of Albany, and ensure that he gains no power.

  “How?” I ask John Drummond, the justice-general, a great Scots lord, who has brought this letter from Edinburgh and is seated beside me at dinner. “How exactly does he think I am to do this?”

  The young Earl of Angus carves a pheasant for us with nonchalant skill and places a beautiful slice of meat before me, his queen, and before his grandfather. John Drummond smiles at me. “That’s not a question he has to answer. He only has to give the command. That’s the joy of being a king.”

  “It’s not the joy of being a queen,” I retort. “I cannot collect my rents and my tenants refuse to pay. Half my stewards and servants are dead anyway. I cannot send a guard to collect my money as I cannot pay the guard; and without money and a great household I cannot command the country.”

  “You will have to sell the king’s ship,” Drummond says.

  I sigh at the thought of the Great Michael going to the French. “I have done so already.”

  “And if the Crown has no money, then you must secure the treasury,” he says quietly. “For yourself. The little king’s household has to be guarded.”

  I flush. This is theft—royal theft—but it is theft all the same. “I have done so,” I say. “I keep the keys, nobody can draw any gold without my consent.”

  His slow smile acknowledges that I have acted rightly, if not legally. “What about the lords who agreed to rule with you? Do they have keys?”

  “There’s only one key, not six.”

  Again I see the little gleam at my ruthlessness. “Aye, well, that was well done. We can explain it when the council find out.”

  “They won’t like it. They don’t like being ruled by a woman.”

  He pauses for a moment. “Perhaps you would be well advised to take another husband?”

  “My Lord Drummond—I have not