Three Sisters Three Queens Read online

I let my face nestle against his warm neck. “You want another child?”

  “At once,” he says. “And this one will be born at Tantallon with every delicacy and luxury you can command. I shall dress you in a cloth-of-gold gown with rings on every finger as you go into confinement. And I shall keep you safe in confinement for month after month. I shall have a bed carved for you enameled with gold and you won’t get up for half a year.”

  I smile. “It was so awful with baby Margaret.”

  “I know. I thought I would die of fear for you. But everything will be better now.”

  “There is nothing to explain or forgive?” I ask. “I hear such gossip.”

  “Who knows what people say?” He shrugs and then draws me close again. “You should hear the things they told me about you!”

  “Oh, what did they say about me?”

  “That you would divorce me and marry the emperor, that your brother was determined to make the match. That Thomas Wolsey had drawn up the peace treaty that would make my poor Scotland the helpless victim of England and the empire. That they would say that our marriage had never happened.”

  “I never even considered it,” I lie with my eyes on his.

  “I knew you would not,” he says. “I trusted you, whatever they said of you. I knew that we were married for life, for good or bad, forever. I heard all sorts of things about you, but I never even listened.”

  “Neither did I,” I say, and feel my passion for him burn me up. I like to hear the loyalty in my voice. “I never listened to one word that anyone ever said against you.”

  In the days that follow I set myself to spend time with my son and make up for the missing months. I know it can never be done. I did not teach him to play the lute or sing the songs that Davy Lyndsay has taught him. I didn’t put him on his first shaggy little highland pony, and trot alongside him, holding him steady in the saddle. I didn’t take him out last winter to play in the snow, I did not build him an ice castle with a turret. He tells me all about it and I think, yes—that was when I was at Morpeth Castle, unable to get out of bed for the pain in my hip, when I thought I would die; that was when they told me that my younger son was dead. The closer he and I become, the more he tells me about his adventures while I was away, the more I remember that it was Katherine who gave orders to Thomas Howard to take no prisoners at the Battle of Flodden. The more he tells me of his life behind castle walls the more I resent the Duke of Albany taking power as regent and Katherine not insisting that my boy and I were rescued together.

  I introduce him to his little half sister Margaret and he pulls faces at her to make her laugh, and encourages her to run behind him. When she falls he flinches at her loud cry, and I laugh and tell him that she has the temper of the Tudors.

  Thomas Dacre, who always knows everything, writes to me that my sister Mary has had a pretty baby, Frances, and that she is well and returned to court. A few days later I get a letter from Mary herself, praising the baby and saying that her confinement was easy this time. She says that she misses me, that she prays I can find happiness with my husband at my home, and that we may both come to England again when it is safe for me to do so. She says that she is my little sister still, even when she is a matron with her children around her. She asks me to write to her to tell her that I am safe and well and that I have seen my son.

  I hear that your husband is with you now, and I hope that you are happy,

  she writes, as if she doubts that it can be so.

  I reply cheerfully. I tell her that I have heard that Albany, the regent, is still in France and does not want to return to Scotland, and I pray that he will not. In his absence the country is at peace. I tell her that Antoine d’Arcy, the Sieur de la Bastie, is a true knight, as handsome as a woodcut in a book, and that we are happy as his guests; he is a nobleman in every way. I don’t say one word about her gossip with Katherine against Archibald’s good name. I ignore her concern for my happiness. She can learn from my silence to hold her tongue.

  I speak to Antoine and suggest that we might share power. We might both be Regent of Scotland; we could work together. He never denies that it is possible, he always says it is essential that England keep the peace on the borders. It is from these troubled lands that all the unrest in Scotland flows. If I can persuade my brother, the king, to order Thomas Dacre to honor the peace of the borders then we can plan a future for Scotland together.

  “If you will trust me?” Antoine teases me.

  “If you will trust me?” I reply, and make him laugh.

  He takes my hand and kisses it. “I would trust you and your son,” he says. “I would trust the dowager queen and the king. Nobody else. I cannot make promises to your husband or to any of the Scots lords. I don’t believe a word any of them says.”

  “You may not criticize him to me,” I say.

  He laughs. “I don’t single him out. I say no worse than I say about any of them. All of them think of their own wealth and their own power and their own ambition before anything else. All of them are true only to their clans. None of them even knows how to serve their king. None of them has any idea of their country. Few of them think of God as anything other than an invisible tribal chief more unpredictable and dangerous than any other. They have no imagination.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about,” I say flatly.

  He laughs. “For you have no imagination either, Your Grace. You do perfectly well without it. Now tell me the scandal of the English court. I hear that your brother, the king, is in love?”

  I frown. “I won’t gossip with you,” I say repressively.

  “And the young lady is very, very beautiful?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “And very educated and musical and sweet-tempered?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “The king, your brother, would not consider putting his wife aside? Since God does not seem to be inclined to give them a son? His wife, the queen, would not consider withdrawing to a convent? So that he might get an heir with this beautiful young lady?”

  I feel that instant unworthy flame of delight at the thought that gossip speaks of Katherine being humbled to nothing. Then, immediately, I think of how heartbroken she would be—she who cannot bear the thought of Harry even flirting with another woman. “It would never happen,” I say. “My brother is a great protector of the Church and of all the institutions of the Church. And my sister-in-law would never desert her duty. She will live and die Queen of England.”

  “She has been a great enemy to Scotland,” he points out. “We might do better if he listened to a new wife.”

  “I know,” I say. “It is a matter of sorrow to us both. But she is my sister. I am bound to be loyal to her.”

  We plan that Ard and I should stay at Craigmillar Castle for a few weeks more and then go to my dower lands at Newark Castle. Antoine says that when we all return to Edinburgh, after the plague has passed, he will call a council of the lords and that I shall attend and address them. If I can persuade them that I should be co-regent he will be happy to share power with me. I shall have free access to my son, who is easier with me every day. I shall have a seat in the council chamber. I shall be acknowledged as dowager queen.

  “And Archibald on a chair beside mine,” I say. “Equal height.”

  The chevalier makes a little gesture with his hands. “Ah, don’t ask it,” he begs. “You love your husband, I know. But he has so many enemies! If you force him down their throats, they will be your enemies too. Be the mother of the king and the dowager queen in your public life. Be his wife in your private rooms. Be his slave there, if you wish. But don’t take him into the council chamber as your equal.”

  “He is my husband,” I say impressively. “Of course he is my master. I won’t keep him in my closet.”

  “He was granted a pardon only by the generosity of the Duke of Albany,” de la Bastie reminds me. “His cousin and fellow outlaw was beheaded for treason. There are many who think tha