Three Sisters Three Queens Read online

  But as it starts to grow cold, and the leaves of the silver birches turn yellow and shiver in the cold winds, and the oak leaves whirl around us as we ride beside the silvery waters of the lake, I receive a travel-stained package from France and inside is a letter from the duke himself, the absent regent, and he says that he thinks he will stay away for longer still (he does not say, but I guess he is all but a prisoner of the agreement between my brother and Francis of France). In the meantime, he proposes smoothly, I should go to the council of lords as his nominated deputy. I should be regent again; I may take his place.

  I cannot believe he has written so kindly. At last, someone who thinks of the good of the country; at last someone who thinks of me. Of course, it is the right solution. It is the regency that the late king wanted, it is the regency that I want. Who better to be regent than the king’s mother? Anyone who had seen my lady grandmother’s care of England would know that the best person to rule a country is the mother of the king. Albany makes it clear that Archibald is to have no place in the council. He makes it clear that he thinks of Archibald as Dacre’s spy—his little bleached talbot, his puppy. Archibald has taken the English shilling and will never be trusted in Scotland again. Oddly enough, I—an English princess—am known to be more independent.

  I will accept. It is the right solution for me even though it puts me in firm alliance with the French. But there is more. Albany offers to do me a service in return for my taking up the duties. He tells me that he is going to Rome, that he has much influence with the Vatican. As regent, all the Scots Church benefices are in his keeping. He is powerful in the Church, can meet with the Holy Father himself—and he offers to urge the matter of my divorce from Archibald. If I wish it. If I believe that my husband has deserted me for another woman and I want to be free of him.

  It is as if I am at the top of my tower in my little stone lookout and finally I can breathe the clean air. I can be free. I can defy Katherine, and I can punish Archibald for his open adultery. Katherine may have to endure an unfaithful husband and pretend that his bonny boy was never born; but I do not. She can be more of a wife than I am—accepting everything that her husband does—but I can be more of a queen than she—taking my independent power. We shall see whose reputation is the greatest in the end.

  Recklessly, delightedly, I rush on in my mind. Archibald can be Janet Stewart’s husband; she can have him. I will not be his step to the regency, his drawbridge to my son, his entry to power. He can keep Janet Stewart and her insipid daughter, and his little life, and I will be Regent of Scotland without him. I will be Regent of Scotland with the support of the French, not the English. I will forget my hopes of my brother just as he forgets me. I will not yearn for the love of my sisters. Katherine can disown me and Mary can think only of her hoods, and if I have no sisters at all, then so be it. I am My Lady the King’s Mother and regent. That is better than being a sister, that is better than being a wife.

  EDINBURGH CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1520

  Finally accepted by the lords as Regent of Scotland and head of the council, I am allowed to enter Edinburgh Castle to see my son. I can even stay in the castle if I wish. They no longer fear that I will run away with him to England: they no longer think that I will give the Douglas clan the keys to the castle. They start to trust me, they start to understand my determination to see my son become king of a country with a chance of survival. Together we are starting to agree that England is an awkward neighbor, the nearest and the most dangerous. I acknowledge to them my disappointment that the greatest English influence in Scotland is not me, working for peace, but Thomas Dacre, working for uproar. Carefully, I convince them that Archibald does not speak for me, is not my husband in anything but name, cannot be trusted with my interests. We are publicly estranged. Carefully, they tell me that he must be charged with treason, for his actions against Scotland, for his spying for my brother. I nod. They need say no more. I know that Archibald has betrayed his country as well as his wife.

  “Do you consent that we issue a warrant for his arrest for treason?” they ask me.

  I hesitate. The penalty for treason is death, unless a man can win a pardon. With a sudden pulse of desire I think that Ard might beg me for pardon, I might have the upper hand. I might forgive him.

  “Arrest him,” I say.

  To my delight, I am allowed into my son’s apartments and I sit with him to hear him at his lessons and I play with him when he is at leisure. We meet early in the morning, before breakfast, on the battlements of the castle, to rehearse a comical play that Davy Lyndsay has written, in three parts. James and Davy and I have become actors in our own little masque. We are going to perform for the court at dinnertime, and as the sun comes up and melts the frost on the slates of the roof, we start to rehearse.

  It is based on the old fable of the fox and the grapes. One after another Davy and then James and then I sit on the battlement and recite a poem to the imaginary grapes dangling, far too high, quite unreachable, over our heads, and then invent our own reason why the grapes are not really desirable. Davy is particularly funny as he declaims that the grapes are English and come at too high a price. You have to buy the grapes but you also have to pay for the wall, the earth that the vine is growing in, the rain that fell on the vine to make it grow, and the sun that shone to ripen the grapes. And then the English expect you to be grateful for the taste of them, and tip the gardener. James laughs and laughs and then does his own little play in French, when he says that the grapes are very fine, but not as fine as we might get in Bordeaux, that nothing is as good as the Bordeaux grape and that if we had any sense we would chop down the vine altogether and use the wood to make a boat to sail to Bordeaux and buy grapes there.

  Now it is my turn, and I swagger along the wall in a fair mimicry of Thomas Dacre’s bluster when something below catches my eye, a glint of bright metal in the spring sunlight, and I say: “What’s that?”

  Davy follows my gaze, and the humor drains from his face. “Soldiers,” he says. “In Douglas colors.”

  Without another word he turns and yells at the guard who stands on sentry duty by the portcullis. “Are you blind?” He bellows a string of curses. “Drop the gate!”

  I clutch James’s cold hand in mine as we hear the portcullis slam down, chain screaming on the wheel, and the groan and creak as the drawbridge is raised and bolted up. All around the castle we can hear the shout of trumpets as men are called to their muster stations, and the rumble as the cannons are rolled out, and the bellowed orders as men run from one post to another and everyone turns and looks down into the narrow streets.

  “What’s happening?” I demand of Davy Lyndsay.

  “James Hamilton is arresting your husband Archibald Douglas, for treason,” he says quietly. “Looks like he is not going quietly.”

  “Archibald is in the city? I didn’t know.” I glance down and see that James, my son, is watching me, his eyes narrowed, as if he would understand what he is seeing, as if he would see through me, see through the words I say to the truth. “I didn’t know,” I tell him. “I swear I knew nothing of this. Not that the council had summoned him, not that he was here.”

  “No, they wouldn’t tell you,” Davy Lyndsay says. “A wife may not keep a secret from her husband by law. If he asked you anything, you would be honor-bound to answer. They would want to spare you that—they wouldn’t want you to know.”

  “James Hamilton is arresting Archibald?”

  “Looks as if the Douglas clan are resisting. Shall I go and discover what’s amiss?”

  “Go! Go!”

  He is back in a moment.

  “What is happening?” James asks, and I smile to hear him take command like the little king he is. Davy does not smile but answers us both, as his equal masters.

  “It’s as I thought. The council locked the city gates to keep Archibald and his household inside but then found they are outnumbered. There are five hundred of the Douglas clan in the city and they are ar