Three Sisters Three Queens Read online

  He is pleasant to James—not overwhelming him with attention which would make my cautious twelve-year-old son suspicious, but speaking to him of hair’s-breadth escapes, battles, strategies, the wars of Christendom, the plans of the King of England, and the constant adjustment and power plays of the courts of Europe. He has not wasted his time in France, nor in England. He knows all that is happening, and he tells James little stories to teach him statecraft, and claps him on the shoulder and praises his understanding. He takes him into the library, spreads out the maps on the great round table and shows him how the Habsburg family have grown great and greater, and that their lands are spreading across the face of Europe. “This is why we have to have an alliance with England and with France,” he says. “The Habsburgs are a monster that will gobble us up.”

  He is loving and easy with Margaret, and she adores him as a father miraculously restored to her. He praises her prettiness and he takes her with him everywhere, buying her ribbons for her hair every time they pass a market. To me he is as charming and as graceful as when he was my carver and could not do enough for me. He throws me a warm smile over James’s head as if to praise me for raising such a boy, he laughs when I make a remark, his arm is always ready to escort me into court. When the court dances, the musicians play, the cards are set out, everything is entirely according to my wish. He knows me so well, he guesses what I want before I have time to command it. He asks after the old pain in my hip, he reminds me of our breakneck ride to safety; our history is a love story that he retells from time to time in little reminiscences, always asking me do I remember the time . . . ? Do I recall the night . . . ? Day by day he draws me to him with a gentle weave of shared interests and shared memories.

  Often he turns to James and praises my courage and tells my boy that he is lucky to have a mother who is such a heroine. He tells Margaret about the dozens of gowns that my kingly brother sent me as a reward for my bravery. Always, he suggests that he himself was fighting for my cause, for James’s safety. It is as if he sings a ballad of the story that we know, but it is set to a strange new tune.

  Behind Archibald’s cocked attentive head, I see Henry Stewart glowering but powerless. There is nothing I can do to prove to him that I am not soothed and comforted by this new gentle Archibald, for he can see—everyone can see—that I am. I have had so little affection in my life that I am hungry for attention, even from a man who has been my enemy.

  I am in love with Henry Stewart, my heart leaps when he comes into court and bows to me, his tawny hair shining in the light of the candles, his hazel gaze direct and honest; but when Archibald stands behind my chair, his hand resting on my shoulder, I know that I am safe: the only man in Scotland who could challenge my power is on my side, my brother’s friend and ally stands beside me, the husband that I married for love, who betrayed me so painfully, has come home.

  “This is our happy ending,” he bends over me and whispers, and I cannot find the courage to contradict him.

  Henry Stewart comes to my privy chamber in the hour before dinner while everyone is getting dressed. My lady comes and tells me that he is waiting, and I send them away and go out to him, dressed like a queen in green velvet with silver sleeves. He bows and waits for me to sit, but I go towards him, and I look up into his sulky face and I feel a pulse of such desire that I cannot stop myself putting a hand on his chest and whispering: “Henry?”

  “I have come to ask permission to leave court,” he says stiffly.

  “No!”

  “You must see that I can hardly live under the same roof as you and your husband.”

  “I can’t bear for you to go. You can’t leave me here with him!”

  He clasps my hand to his beautifully embroidered jacket. “I don’t want to go,” he says. “You know that I don’t. But I cannot live in his house as if I were his man.”

  “It’s my house! Your loyalty is to me!”

  “If he is your husband then everything is his,” he says miserably. “Me as well. I feel ashamed.”

  “You’re ashamed of me?”

  “No, never. I know you have to share power with him, I know you have to have him here. I understand. It is the agreement with the English, I understand this. But I cannot do it.”

  “My love, my darling, you know that my divorce will come and I will be free of him!”

  “When?”

  I check at his gloomy tone. “Any day now, any day it might come.”

  “Or it might never come. In the meantime I cannot wait for you in your husband’s house.”

  “Don’t go back to Avondale.” I tighten my grip on his jacket. “If you can’t stay here, don’t go back there.”

  “Where else?”

  “Go to Stirling,” I say rapidly. “It’s mine—nobody can deny that—go to Stirling and muster the castle guard. Check the reinforcements and make it a safe refuge for us, if it ever goes wrong here.”

  I am making work for him, giving him a task that will make him feel important. “Please,” I say. “Though you can’t protect me here, you can give me somewhere safe to go, if we ever need it. Who knows what the Douglas clan will do?”

  “They will do whatever the English command,” he says drily. “And you will too.”

  “I will for now,” I agree. “I have to, for now. But you know that I am working for my freedom and for the freedom of my son to be a true king of a free country.”

  “But still you keep Douglas and his clan on your side,” he says astutely.

  I hesitate before telling him the truth. My feelings are so contradictory I can hardly explain them to myself. “I am afraid of him,” I admit. “I know he is ruthless, I don’t know how far he will go. And because of that, when he is on my side I know that I am safe.” I give an unhappy laugh. “I have no enemy outside the castle when he is inside. When he is good to me I know that nothing can hurt me.”

  “Don’t you see that you must get free of him?” he demands with the impatient clarity of youth. “You are living with him for fear.”

  “My sisters insist,” I say. “My brother insists. I am doing it for James.”

  “You will not become his wife in deed as well as in name?”

  He is a young man, he cannot tell when I am lying. “Never,” I tell him, thinking that Katherine has promised just that, at Whitsun. “Don’t ever think it.”

  “You don’t love him?”

  He does not yet know how a woman can love and fear and hate all at the same time. “No,” I say carefully. “It is not love like that.”

  He softens, as he bends his head and kisses my clinging hands. “Very well,” he says. “I will go to Stirling and wait for you to send for me. You know that I only want to serve you.”

  I endure the spring without my young lover, though I miss his sulky presence and jealous looks from the back of the hall. Every day I grow more anxious as Archibald’s ambition becomes clearer, as he increases his influence on the council of lords, and his determination to rule Scotland becomes more obvious. His connection with England is so strong, his fortune (my fortune) is so great, his authority as a man dominates them all. He remains tender and attentive and easy with me but I am dreading Easter and then Whitsun when he will return to my bed and I can see no way to refuse him. What makes it worse is that he speaks of it as an agreement that we have both entered freely, as if we wanted to wait for the season of summer to mark our reconciliation, as if we hope for another child like a pair of pretty blackbirds nesting in an apple tree. Katherine’s plan—to give me time to become accustomed to him—has become a courtship leading, inexorably, back to our marriage.

  He’s too clever to say any of this openly, but he orders new hangings for my bed and new linen, and tells the sempstress that it must be ready for Whitsun. He speaks confidently of the summer and says that we will go to Linlithgow, and farther north, that we must take James around his country on a royal tour, as his father used to do. He says that he will teach Margaret to ride astride, like a boy, so that