Three Sisters Three Queens Read online

  “To whom?” I demand.

  He gulps. “Anyone.”

  If this were not so terrible it would be funny. “Good God, man, do you not know that the lord Dacre reads everything I ever write and always has done so? Spies on my very thoughts before I have them? And still has no evidence against me? Who do you imagine loves me in England, where Gavin Douglas calls me a whore to my brother’s face, and nobody challenges him?”

  There is a horrified silence. I realize I have spoken too wildly. I should never ever say the word “whore.” I have to be, as Mary says so clumsily, above scandal.

  “Anyway, I can carry your letters if they are unsealed,” he says weakly. “But now I have to speak to the regent.”

  “I’ll come with you,” I say.

  Clearly, the herald would rather have met with Albany alone, and soon I see why. He has brought a letter from Harry, which accuses Albany of seducing me, of “damnable abusion” and of working for my divorce against my best interests and for his own ends. I am so horrified by these words from my brother to a stranger that I can hardly bear to look at Albany while the herald reads out these accusations in a quiet monotone as if he wishes we could not hear him and he did not have to say them.

  Albany is white with fury. He forgets the rules of chivalry and speaks to the herald with contempt. He says that he did indeed apply to the Holy Father for my divorce for me, at my request; but that he himself is a married man and faithful to his wife. He does not look at me, and I know that with my burning face and the tears on my cheeks I look like a guilty fool. Bitingly, the duke tells the English herald that the matter of my divorce is with the Pope, and that the Holy Father will be the sole judge of it. Albany himself merely delivered the message.

  “How could my brother say such things?” I whisper to the herald, who glances at me and then dips his head in a little bow.

  Albany says that he finds it extraordinary that the King of England should accuse his own sister of becoming another man’s concubine. The herald is crushed into silence. He mutters only that he has a letter that he must put before the Scots lords, and he leaves the room.

  As I could have told him, the Scots lords have no time for a herald from England, especially one that comes to slander their regent and their dowager queen together. They scowl at him, and one of the older, angrier lords throws himself out of the council chamber, banging the door behind him. The herald, in the face of grim hostility, reads out Harry’s ridiculous demands with a quiet voice, and the Scots lords reply that they are all willing to serve under the regent, Albany, until the king my son is of age, that they are happy that the regent appoints tutors and guardians from among them, according to my wishes. They regard as slanderous lies the suggestion that the regent and I are lovers. They declare that my husband and his uncle are traitors, banished from the kingdom, and that everyone knows that my son Alexander, the little Duke of Ross, died of ill health. The herald shuffles his feet and leaves. I watch his humiliation with delight.

  I hope he goes back to London and tells Harry that he is a fool to speak so to the Scots. I hope he goes back to London and tells Katherine that I live apart from Archibald and I will never return to him, and I don’t agree that a wife has to forgive an erring husband, I don’t agree that a Tudor wife has to be above criticism. I hope he goes back to London and tells Mary that I am sorry for the death of her son but she should be glad that no one suggests that he was murdered. I hope the herald tells her that now Archibald is exiled I have my rents and my fees again, and I am buying new gowns. I don’t need any of them to support me. I have given up on all three of them.

  HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, AUTUMN 1522

  The one thing that my marriage to the King of Scotland was supposed to prevent was war between the country of my birth and the country of my marriage. I have tried to keep peace in Scotland, and peace between Scotland and England, so it is a bitter day for me when the Duke of Albany serves his French king better than his country of Scotland, when he is truer to his French paymaster than he is to me, and marches against the English. Not even the prospect of the humiliation of Lord Dacre can comfort me.

  In this emergency, my brother turns to me once more, as if we have never quarreled, and sends me secret messages, asking me what sort of force the French will bring against his men. He reminds me—as if I ever forget—that I am an English princess, bound to him and to my country by unbreakable bonds of love and loyalty. I advise him as best I can and when Albany gives up the attempt to march on England and sails for France, for more funds and men, I find I am left alone in Scotland, the regent gone, my husband exiled, my enemies defeated. Finally, I am the peace bringer, the only leader left standing.

  STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1523

  Amazingly, despite the odds, I find that I am a single woman, in possession of my own fortune, the only regent left in power, and the guardian of my son. I was ill over Christmas but I grow strong again as the days become lighter and then I get a letter, forwarded by Dacre, from my sister Mary. She writes very briefly from her confinement. God has blessed me and I have had another boy, I am calling him Henry.

  I know that this is the name of the son that she lost, I know that Mary will be thinking first, before anything else, of the little boy who died so young. But she gives him the name of the Lancaster kings, she gives him our brother’s own name, our father’s name. I am certain that secretly she hopes he will be King of England, Harry’s heir. She must want Harry to pass over me and my son James, and honor her boy. Charles Brandon will be hoping to get his boy on the throne, of course, and there is no one in London who will advocate for me and my son, not my sister nor my sister-in-law.

  Of course Mary will listen to scandal against me, and naturally she repeats it. It is wholly in her interest to suggest that I am no true wife, no true Tudor, no true queen. If Harry can be convinced that I am no true mother either then he will disinherit my son. Mary may urge me to a spotless life, but she knows that the real world is not an easy one for a woman with a wicked husband. I have to live as a woman alone; people are bound to gossip. But will Mary let them gossip so much that they turn against my innocent son?

  I wonder what Katherine makes of this hidden jostling for inheritance. I wonder how bitter it is for her, whose fault it is that there is no Tudor prince. I wonder if she ever wavers in her loyal love towards my sister, when Mary’s marriage is blessed and she is fertile, and as soon as one Henry dies he is replaced with another? Mary goes on and on having babies, and Katherine has clearly stopped.

  England is at peace with Scotland after Albany leaves, and I thought I could make them keep the peace. But Harry sends the son of the Duke of Norfolk, the murderer of Flodden, to arm the North, and there is no doubt that he plans to ruin the country that marched against him. They will do it Dacre’s way—by making a desert of the borderlands. Every building they tear down, every thatch they fire, every castle they destroy. They leave not a sheaf of wheat in the field, not a stook of hay. Not an animal survives the gleaning, not a child is left standing. The poor grab what goods they have left and rush like a tumbling stream of terror north or south, wherever they think they might find help. The soldiers steal their goods and harry them on their way, the women are abused, the children screaming with terror. It is Dacre’s plan to make a desert of the borders so that no army can ever cross them again, and by the start of the summer he has conquered the very land itself—nothing will grow, nothing will ripen, nothing will yield. When I came to Scotland these were fertile wastes where any man could make a living if he did not mind the empty roads and the tiny villages. Any man could seek a night’s rest at any of a thousand little castles where strangers were a rarity and hospitality a law. Now the land is empty. Only the wolves run through the borders and their howls at night are like a lament for the people who once lived here, who have been wiped out by the malice of England.

  LINLITHGOW PALACE, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1523

  My son James and daug