Three Sisters Three Queens Read online

  “I have no regrets,” he says. He is lying. He must have, he does have. So do I.

  “If Harry sends his army . . .”

  He nods. Of course. Of course, it is what we always say to each other. If Harry sent his army then the world could change again in a moment. We must become warmongers like Thomas Dacre, wishing a merciless invasion on Scotland. We must argue for revenge, we must demand a fleet. If my brother will be a brother to me, if Katherine will advise him as a sister should do, then I will be queen regent again. It all depends on Harry. It all depends on my sister-in-law his wife.

  “There is something I have to tell you,” Ard says, picking his words with care. “They did not tell you before, because they feared for your health.”

  I feel my belly plummet as if I am falling. I am wildly, suddenly afraid. “What is it? Tell me quickly. Is it Mary, my little sister? She’s not dead in childbirth? God forbid it. It’s not her?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Katherine has lost her baby,” I say with certainty.

  “No, it is your son.”

  I knew it. I knew as soon as I saw the gravity on his face. “Is he dead?”

  He nods.

  I put my hand over my face as if to blot out his sympathy. Beneath my fingers my tears run sideways from my eyes and into my ears. I cannot raise my head to mop my face dry. I cannot cry out at this new pain, having screamed so much at the pain in my joints. “God take him to His own,” I whisper. “God bless and keep him.”

  I think, naturally enough, even in the first shock, that at least I had two princes. If one is gone there is still a son and heir. I still have another. I still have an heir for Scotland, an heir for England. I am still the only one of the three queens to have a son. Even if one is dead, even if I have lost my boy, my heir, I still have my especial treasure; I still have my baby.

  “Don’t you want to know which one is dead?” Archibald asks awkwardly.

  I had assumed it was the king. That would be the worst thing. If the crowned king is dead then what is there to prevent a usurpation but one little baby alone? “Is it not James?”

  “No. It was Alexander.”

  “Oh God, no!” Now I wail. Alexander is my darling, my pretty boy, my baby boy. This is the baby that James left me with. Not even the new baby, Margaret, has replaced him in my heart. “It can’t be Alexander! He is so bonny and strong.”

  Archibald nods, his face pale. “I am so sorry.”

  “How did he die?”

  Ard shrugs. He is a young man. He does not know how babies die. “He was sick, and then he weakened. My dear, I am so sorry.”

  “I should have been there!”

  “I know. You should have been. But he had good nursing, and he did not suffer . . .”

  “My boy! Alexander! My little boy. This is the third boy that I have lost. My third boy!”

  “I’ll leave you to the care of your ladies,” Archibald says formally. He does not know what to say or what to do. He is always having to comfort me. Nothing has ever gone right for us. Now he is bound to a crippled woman screaming for the loss of her son. He gets to his feet, bows to me, and goes from the room.

  “My baby, my little boy!”

  I swear that the Duke of Albany shall pay for this. However Alexander died, it is the duke who is to blame for it. I should never have been forced away from the boys at Stirling Castle. I should never have been separated from him. My own sister Mary, a royal widow just like me, married a man in secret, and was allowed to leave her country with full honor. Why should I be an exile and my husband with a price on his head, and my son dead? Always, always, I am not granted my due as the senior Tudor princess. Thomas, Lord Dacre, agrees completely with me and together we compile eight pages of charges against the duke to send to London. Dacre adds every instance when the Scots have been allowed to invade English Northern lands, everything they have stolen, every cottage they have burned, every traveler they have robbed. We will destroy the duke; we will persuade Harry to invade. If it causes war with France it is a small price to pay for the revenge that a queen should exact for the death of her son.

  The false duke writes to me, sympathizes with my loss, congratulates me on the birth of my daughter and says that he hopes we can come to an agreement. He is sending an emissary to Harry. He hopes we can come to peace.

  “Never,” I say flatly to Dacre. “I shall tell him what he has to do before I will consider a peace treaty. He is to release Gavin Douglas, he is to forgive Lord Drummond, he is to lift the outlawry from my husband, he is to send me my jewels and he is to restore my husband’s lands and wealth to him.”

  “He can’t do all that,” Dacre says, looking worried.

  “He has to,” I say. “I will write to him myself.”

  The old border lord looks cautious. “Better not to negotiate with him while he is sending a man to your brother. Better let the two men agree together.”

  “Not at all,” I say fiercely. “I am queen regent, not anyone else. I shall tell him my demands, and he will meet them.”

  I write also to my sister the Queen of England, Katherine, who seems to have held this child in her belly for all this long time, and tell her that I am praying for her as she nears her time, and ask her to write to me at once, as soon as her baby is born, a little cousin to my Margaret. I think of my two sisters, nearing their time, lapped in luxury, advised by physicians, with gold cradles ready for their babies, and I think that it is the unfairness that hurts me the most. They have no idea of the pain that I suffered; they will suffer nothing like it. They have no idea of the danger I was in. They are sisters together; I am like a changeling, forever excluded.

  Albany writes to me promising peace, promising agreement, but at the same time his emissaries write to my brother. Perhaps he is trying for a peace, trying to speak to Harry and agree with me, but I would rather that he deal with me direct. I cannot allow Harry to agree with Albany keeping charge of my son the king. I cannot impress on Harry the importance of my jewels. Everyone thinks that I am thinking of trivial things, women’s things. But I know that Albany treats me with contempt, treats my allies with contempt. Nobody but me seems to understand that the men who fought for me have to be rescued from Albany’s imprisonment. Gavin Douglas is still imprisoned. He must be released and given the see that I said he should have. These are not things that can be lightly traded; they are, like my jewels, my possessions. Anyone who takes them from me is a thief.

  Sometimes I think that I should creep back into Stirling Castle and raise a siege again, just so that I can be with my boy. Sometimes I think that I should go to Edinburgh and negotiate with the duke in person. But then Dacre comes to my chamber with letters from London when I am seated before the fire.

  “Give them to me!” I say delightedly.

  “There is one here from the queen,” he says, indicating her royal crest.

  I show an excited and happy face, and put out my hand, eagerly breaking the seal to read. I make sure that I give Dacre not a clue that I am filled with dread, certain that she has given birth to a healthy boy at last, after so many attempts. If she has got a boy then my son has lost his inheritance of the English throne, and there is no reason for Harry to rescue him. I put my hand over my eyes as if to shield my face from the heat of the fire. That would be the worst loss of this year of losses.

  And then I see that Katherine has not done her duty. God has not blessed her. Thank God, she has failed again, and her heart will be breaking. Tucked down at the bottom of the page, almost scribbled out by her signature, is the news that makes me smile.

  “She’s had a girl,” I say flatly.

  “God forgive her. What a pity,” Dacre says, heartfelt, as every Englishman will say. “God save her. What a disappointment.”

  I think, I have given birth to four royal sons and I still have one left. And all Katherine has is a girl. “She is going to call her Mary. Princess Mary.”

  “After her aunt, the dowager queen?”