Three Sisters Three Queens Read online

  Obviously, we should have done that to say that we were coming, and he did not think to do so, and now we have this cold welcome, and a delay until they open up, and I have longer to wait before I can be comfortable.

  There are lights at the hatch and someone glares out at us and then at last the gate opens but it does not swing back to admit us. A man comes out with two guards on either side of him, a cape thrown over his nightgown. He stares at me for a moment and then he bows very low. “Your Grace, forgive me.”

  “Anything! If you will let me in and give me a bed for the night,” I say, trying to keep the fury out of my voice. “I am very tired and I am with child and we have come all the way from Scotland. I expected a better welcome to my own country than this.”

  He bows his head and then looks at Archibald. “Do you have papers of safe conduct?” he asks.

  Obviously, we don’t. We don’t have food or my jewels or my wardrobe or my shoes. We don’t have my horses or my hawks or my furniture. We don’t have my tapestries or my silver plate. We don’t have my books or my musicians or my secretary. We don’t have the late King James’s lute. We don’t have a safe conduct because we are seeking safety.

  “This is the queen regent!” Archibald shouts. “She doesn’t need a safe conduct to get into her own brother’s castle! You should be on your knees welcoming her in. She is carrying my child! She is the mother of the King of Scotland. Open the gates or by God I will—”

  He breaks off. He does not say what he will do. Of course, this just reminds everyone that there is nothing he can do. We are a party of a dozen people and three of us are ladies and one of us is eight months pregnant. What are we going to do if the governor refuses us entry?

  “Sir Anthony,” George Douglas says pleasantly, “out of chivalry, out of loyalty, you must admit the king’s sister in the middle of the night when she is flying from Scots traitors.”

  “I can’t,” he says miserably. He bows low to me. “I am commanded, absolutely commanded by the king himself, to admit no one from Scotland without a safe conduct from the king himself. Without a signed and sealed safe conduct, my gates must be kept closed.”

  “To the king’s sister?” I repeat.

  He bows in silence and I think, this is what sisterhood with those two women has brought me: nothing.

  “What are we to do?” Archibald goes from rage to helplessness. “We have to get her somewhere safe. She is less than a month from her time. We have to get somewhere safe!”

  “What about Coldstream Priory?” Sir Anthony says, eager to move us on. “The abbess will admit her, and from there you can send for help from London.”

  “She has to come in here!” Archibald rages again. “I insist!”

  “How far is it to Coldstream?” I ask shortly.

  “Only about four hours,” the governor replies. “Three,” he says when he sees my face.

  George throws his reins to one of the servants and comes to Archibald and myself. “He won’t let us in; he can’t,” he says. “We waste time and we lose our dignity begging here. Coldstream is our best chance. We’re in England now, we should be safe. Albany probably won’t cross the border. Let’s force this fool to give us food and we’ll go down the road and get a bed for the night in an abbey or a house or somewhere, and go on to Coldstream in the morning.”

  “I’m so tired,” I say quietly. “I don’t think I can.”

  “We’ll stop as soon as we can,” George promises me.

  “I tell you, I can’t,” I say, my voice catching on a sob.

  “You’ve got to,” Archibald replies. “You should not have left Linlithgow if you were not prepared to run to England.”

  COLDSTREAM PRIORY, ENGLAND, SEPTEMBER 1515

  This time my husband thinks far enough ahead to send one of the servants to warn the priory that we are coming, and as we plod towards them the gates are flung open and I can see the nuns coming down the lane to greet me.

  The prioress herself stands by my horse when Archibald lifts me down from the saddle, and she exclaims at my agony, at my huge belly, and summons three nuns forward to help me walk. My legs won’t support me, there is something terribly wrong with my hip. They send for a chair and the lay sisters carry me into the abbey.

  The guesthouse is large and comfortable and there is a big bed with good linen and curtains. My ladies strip off my filthy clothes and I get into bed in my dirty linen. “Leave me,” I say. “I have to sleep.”

  They don’t wake me until it is afternoon and then they bring me a bowl of gruel and tell me that dinner will be served whenever I wish it. I can come to the guest hall and dine with the prioress or I can have it in my rooms, just as I prefer. “Where is Archibald?” I ask. “Where is he dining?”

  Ard is housed in the pilgrim-house, at a distance from the abbey buildings with his brother and the menservants, but he can visit me in the guesthouse if I wish.

  “He must come at once,” I say. “And I will take my dinner in the hall. Make sure that I have a suitable chair.”

  “There’s no cloth of estate,” my lady-in-waiting reminds me. “And Alice has brushed your gown but it’s not really clean. The prioress has loaned you some linen.”

  This silences me. I am not myself unless I am seated beneath a cloth of estate, in beautiful clothes, dining like a queen. All my life I have been on the top table, beside the throne. What will I become, if I am as poor as Katherine was?

  “I’ll eat here,” I say sulkily. “And you will have to get me new clothes.”

  I don’t discuss with her how, in the middle of the borders, she is to get me new clothes, and she is too wise in the ways of royals to ask me how I think this will happen. She goes to order my dinner and to fetch Archibald and I think, just for a moment, how I made this journey twelve years ago, and came into Berwick and there was a loyal speech, thanking God that I, the senior Tudor princess, had honored the little town with my presence.

  Archibald comes in looking boyish and fresh. Breakfast and a wash have restored him to health and energy. He is not bowed down by pregnancy and crippled with pain. A young man can endure much and rise up full of life and joy; but a young woman—and I am still a young woman—has to struggle.

  “My poor love,” he says as he kneels to me.

  He has borrowed some clean linen and his hair, damp from a bath, is curly and glossy as a ram’s fleece. He gleams with vitality.

  “There is nowhere for me to dine,” I say miserably. “And I have no clothes.”

  “Couldn’t you borrow a gown from the prioress?” he asks. “She’s a very cultured and thoughtful lady. She has beautiful linen, I am sure.”

  “I cannot dress as a nun,” I say shortly. “I cannot wear another woman’s linen, however much she has impressed you. I have to dress as a queen.”

  “Yes,” he says vaguely. “Perhaps we can write to Albany and demand that he send your clothes. Perhaps your wagons are already at Tantallon and they can send them on?”

  “We can write to Albany? He can know where we are?”

  “You’re safe now, in England. You can start to negotiate, I suppose. Indeed, we will have to tell him what we expect.”

  “I can?” I have a sudden gleam of hope. I had felt that we were running like criminals from an army of forty thousand Scots who were determined to capture Archibald and try him for treason, determined to imprison me so that I would die in captivity. But now we are safe, now I am home in England, everything is changed.

  “I have saved you,” Archibald says. “I did. It’s quite incredible. It’s like a romance, it’s like a fairy tale. That journey! Good God, the ride that went on and on! And now we are here, and we have won.”

  “Get me some paper and a pen from the lady abbess. I will write at once,” I declare.

  I inform the duke, in the frostiest letter, that I am safe in England. I don’t say where, for I am still frightened at the thought of his army. I say that I will return on a number of conditions. I don’t stint mysel