Three Sisters Three Queens Read online

  He goes to take my hand, but he checks himself.

  “Pardon Gavin Douglas,” I beg him. “And Lord Drummond. All they have done has been in my defense. You don’t know what the lords are like! They will turn on you too.”

  He is beautifully mannered: he begs me not to cry and from inside his silk jacket he produces his own handkerchief, also silk, embroidered by his wife, a French heiress, with her crest and initials. Who carries a handkerchief in Scotland? They wouldn’t even know what one was.

  I hold it to my eyes. It has the lightest of perfumes. I peep at him over it. “My lord?” I ask. I think I have won him over.

  He bows low but he speaks coldly: “Alas, Your Grace, I cannot oblige you in this,” and then he goes from the room.

  Goes from the room! Without being dismissed! Without a word more! And I am left with tears on my cheeks, having to get up and ride back to Archibald and tell him that his grandfather and his uncle will stay imprisoned, and that Albany knows what we are plotting, and so we are lost. I cannot force this duke to do anything. He is all but incorruptible. I have nothing to show for this but the knowledge that they know our plans before we do, and a silk handkerchief.

  But then—just as I knew they would—the lords turn against the Duke of Albany. Perversely, in a fit of temper at foreign manners and French etiquette, the parliament order that Lord Drummond is to be freed in the autumn. He may have been in the wrong to strike the Lyon Herald, but he is a Scots lord, and if anyone can be in the wrong in Edinburgh with everyone’s blessing, it is a Scots lord. They only obey the rules that they admire, and they are not going to be taught manners by a French-raised newcomer.

  I write to my brother that now is our chance. The lords have had their moment of love for Albany, now they want to return to their true king. If Harry will help me, I can buy some of them, hire others, and persuade the rest. But he must be aware that I am surrounded by enemies. If they make me write to him against my will I will sign my letter with the signature of our grandmother, Margaret R; if I am writing my own mind I will sign Margaret. He must watch for this, he must conspire with me, he must send me soldiers at once. We have everything to play for now, we Tudors. We are about to win.

  STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1515

  The duke regent, Albany, may have been bested by the parliament, but they agree with him that my son the king is not safe in my keeping. He is going to come for my son. Both my sons. He won’t take James without my baby Alexander. Both my children are to be taken from me and I have no power to resist.

  Albany may be a great courtier, but I am a great queen. I allow the parliament to come to the drawbridge at Stirling Castle and I stand in the great gateway holding my eldest little boy by the hand. We look both pathetic and indomitable. I have taught James to hold up his head and not to say a word, not to scuff his feet or gaze about. It is as well that I have coached him in the ways of majesty, for outside the castle walls is the whole of the town, come as if to a fair, to see what will happen when the French duke brings the newly appointed royal guardians to take the little king away from his mother.

  It’s as good as a play for them, and I make sure that we look like the heroine and her child in a play. Behind me, my hundred-strong household servants and guards stand to attention, in complete silence, their faces grave. My handsome young husband waits with his hand on his sword as if he would challenge anyone to single combat if they dare to come against me.

  Little James is perfect. I have dressed him in green and white to remind everyone that he is a Tudor prince, but on his back he carries his father’s lyre. It’s a beautiful touch. I am wearing white, widow white, and a cloth-of-gold train and a heavy gable hood in gold like a crown. My belly is broad, as if to remind everyone that I gave King James sons and heirs. Beside me the nursemaid holds the baby Alexander in his white lawn gown with a perfectly white lace shawl gathered around him. Here is the widowed queen—we say it just by standing here. Here is the King of Scotland, here is his brother, the Duke of Ross. We are dressed in white like the heavenly host. Who is going to dare to part us? Who would bring us down to earth?

  People roar with approval at the sight of the three of us. We are royal Stewarts, we are beloved. Nobody can hear anything over the shouts. The people are mad for the sight of their little king and his mother dressed like a martyr, pale as a widow, her belly large with another Scot.

  The delegates from parliament come forward and I call out: “Stay and declare the cause of your coming!”

  I see the grimace from the councillor in front. This is not going to look well, given the mood of the crowd, and he is wishing himself elsewhere, doubting that he can do this at all. In a voice so low that the crowd shout out, “Sing up!” and “What does he say?” and “Only villains whisper!” he tells me quietly that they have come for the king. He must live in the care of his new guardians who have been appointed by the Duke of Albany and the council.

  I make a little gesture with my hand and the portcullis slams down before us, the delegation shut out, my household and myself safely within. James jumps at the rattle of the chain and the scream of the metal coming down and the crash of the teeth on stone, and I pinch his little hand to remind him not to cry. The people roar with approval and I raise my voice and shout to them that I am my son’s guardian, and his mother, that I will consider the recommendations of parliament, but my son is my son, he will always be my son and I must always be with him.

  The roar of approval is an endorsement. I let the adulation wash over me, restore me, and then I meet the eyes of the parliamentary delegation through the stout portcullis with bold triumph. I have won this match, they have lost. I smile at them and turn and lead my son and household back inside. Archibald follows.

  I try to hold that moment of triumph. I try to remember the deep bellow of the crowd and my knowledge that the people of Scotland love me. I try to remember the endearing touch of James’s little hand in mine, knowing that I have a son, knowing that my son is a king. What greater joy can a woman have than this? I have achieved what it took my grandmother a hard lifetime to achieve, and I am still only twenty-five. I have a royal family, and I have a husband who risks everything to be with me.

  I am clinging to the love that the Scots had for my husband, have for my son, surely have for me. I am clinging to my love for Ard—I cannot consider what it has cost me—when I get a letter from England with Mary’s scrawl over the front and her seal on the flap. She is using the royal seal of France; she will forever call herself the Queen of France, I know it.

  Dear Sister, dearest Sister, I am so happy, this must be my greatest day. I have married my beloved Charles, for the second time, in England, and Harry and Katherine came to the wedding and rejoiced in my happiness. We have a terrible debt to pay, we will never have any money, we will have to live on prayer like Franciscans, but at least I have got my way. Even queens can marry where they love. Katherine did, you did, I have. Why should I not choose my happiness when she and you did? And everyone who says that I am a fool can ask themselves—who married the greatest king in Christendom and then married for love? Me!

  There is more. It goes on and on. She predicts that Harry will be unable to be angry for long. He has fined them into poverty, they will never be out of debt to him, but he loves his friend Charles and he adores her . . . and so on, and so on, crisscross over the page, with foolish exclamations about her happiness added in the margins.

  At the very end she says that she must surely be forgiven the debt because Harry is in the greatest of spirits about Katherine’s pregnancy. They are certain this time the baby will go to full term, and all the physicians say that she is carrying him well.

  I hold the letter in my lap and look out of the window. I remind myself that I have two sons in the nursery, and I am carrying another child. I have not married a nobody that I am trying to foist on my family and drag into the nobility. My son with Ard will not be a prince, but he will be born an earl in his own right. W