Three Sisters Three Queens Read online

  I nearly scream at the sight of him. He has the most enormous ridiculous beard, as red as a fox, almost the size of a fox. I jump to my feet and I let out a little gasp. Agnes Howard gives me a sharp look and if she were nearer I think she would have pinched me to remind me of my manners. But it doesn’t matter, for the king is taking me by the hand and bowing, apologizing for startling me. He takes my wide-eyed, jaw-dropped gape as a compliment at his unexpected arrival, and he laughs at himself for being a troubadour of love, then he greets all my ladies with a smiling confidence, bows over Agnes Howard’s hand, and greets Thomas Howard as if they will be the best of friends and he has quite forgotten that Thomas has invaded Scotland twice already.

  He is beautifully dressed, like a European prince, in red velvet edged with cloth of gold, and he remarks that we have both chosen velvet. The jacket is cut like a riding jacket but the material is priceless, and instead of a crossbow over his back, as if he were hunting, he is carrying a lyre. I say, a little faintly, that he is a troubadour indeed if he carries his lyre everywhere, and he tells me that he loves music, and poetry and dance, and that he hopes I do too.

  I say that I do and he urges me to dance. Agnes Howard stands up with me and the musicians play a pavane, which I know I perform very gracefully. They serve supper and we sit beside each other and now, while he talks to Thomas Howard, I am able to look at him properly.

  He is a handsome man. He is very old of course, being thirty, but he has none of the stiffness or solemnity of an old man. He has a beautiful face: high-arched eyebrows and warm intelligent eyes. All the quickness of his thoughts and the intensity of his feeling seem to shine out of his dark eyes, and his mouth is strongly shaped and, for some reason, it makes me think of kissing. Except for the beard, of course. There is no getting away from the beard. I doubt there is any way to get past the beard. At least he is combed and washed and scented; it is not a beard that might have a mouse nesting in it. But I would have preferred him clean-shaven and I cannot help but wonder if I can mention this. Surely it is bad enough for me to have to marry a man who is old enough to be my father, and with a smaller kingdom than my home, without him bringing a fox’s brush to bed with him?

  He leaves at dusk and I remark to Agnes Howard that perhaps she might tell her husband that I would prefer the king clean-shaven. Typically, she tells him at once as if my preferences are ridiculous, and so before I go to bed I have a lecture from them both that I am fortunate to become a queen, and that no husband, especially an ordained king, is going to take advice on his appearance from a young woman.

  “Man is made in the image of God; no woman, who was made after God had completed his finest creation, is fit to criticize,” Thomas Howard tells me as if he were pope.

  “Oh, amen,” I say sulkily.

  In the next four days before the wedding my new husband comes to visit every day, but mostly he talks to Thomas Howard rather than to me. The old man has fought the Scots up and down the borders, but instead of being enemies for life, as anyone would expect, they are inseparable, sharing stories of campaigns and battles. My betrothed, who should be courting me, reruns old wars with my escort, and Thomas Howard, who should be attending to my comfort, forgets I am there and tells the king of his long years of campaigning. They are never happier than when they are drawing a map of ground where they have fought, or when James the king is describing the weaponry he is designing and having built for his castles. Both of them behave, as soldiers together always do, as if women are completely irrelevant to the work of the world, as if the only interesting work is invading someone else’s lands and killing him. Even when I am seated with my ladies and the king comes in with Thomas, he wastes only a few moments on being charming to me, and then asks Thomas if he has seen the new guns, the Dardanelles gun, the new light cannon, if he knows of the famous Scottish cannon Mons, the largest in Europe—which was given to James’s grandfather by the Duke of Burgundy. It is most irritating. I am sure that Katherine would not stand for it.

  The day of our entry into Edinburgh is my last day as a Tudor princess before I am crowned in my new kingdom, and the king takes me up behind him on his horse, as if I were a simple lady and he my master of horse, or as if he had captured me and was bringing me home. We enter Edinburgh with me seated behind him, pressed against his back, my arms wrapped around his waist, like a peasant girl coming home from a fair. It pleases everyone. They like the romance of the picture that we make, like a woodcut of a knight and a rescued lady; they like an English princess being brought into their capital city like a trophy. They are an informal, affectionate people, these Scots. I can’t understand a single word that anyone says, but the beaming faces and the kissed waving hands and the cheers show their delight at the sight of the handsome wild-looking king with his long red hair and beard, and the golden princess seated behind him on his horse.

  The city is walled with fine gates, and behind them the houses are a mixture of shanties and hovels, some good-sized ones with plastered walls under thick thatched roofs, and a few newly built of stone. There is a castle perched on the very top of an incredibly steep hill at one end of the city, sheer cliffs all around it and only a narrow road to the summit; but there is a new-built palace in the valley at the other end, and outside the tight fortified walls of the town are high hills and forests. Running steeply downhill from castle to palace is a broad cobbled road, a mile long, and the best houses of the tradesmen and guildsmen front this street and their upper stories jut over it. Behind them are pretty courtyards and the dark wynds that lead to inner hidden houses and big gardens, orchards, enclosures, and more houses behind them with secret alleyways that run down the hill.

  At every street corner there is a tableau or a masque, with angels, goddesses, and saints praying for love and fertility for me. It is a pretty little city, built as high as it is broad, the castle standing like a mountain above it, the turrets scraping the sky, the flags fluttering among the clouds. It is a jumble of a city, being rebuilt from hovels to houses, from wood to stone, gray slate roofs replacing thatch. But every window, whether open to the cold air, shuttered, or glazed, shows a standard, or colors, and between the overhanging balconies they have strung scarves and chains of flowers. Every poky little doorway is crammed with the family clustered together to wave at me, and where the stone houses have an oriel window or an upper story and a balcony children are leaning out to cheer. The noise of all the people crammed into the little streets and the shouting as our guard push their way through is overwhelming. Ahead and behind us there must be at least a thousand horses with Scots and English lords intermingled to show the new unity that I have brought to Scotland, and we all wind our way through the narrow cobbled streets and then down the hill to the palace of Holyroodhouse.

  HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, AUGUST 1503

  Next day my ladies wake me in the cool light of a blue sky at six in the morning. I attend Lauds in my private chapel and then I take breakfast in my presence chamber with only my ladies attending. Nobody eats very much, we are all too excited, and I am ready to be sick at the very taste of the bread roll and small ale. I go back to my bedroom where a huge bath has been rolled in, filled with steaming water, and my wedding gown is laid out on the bed. My ladies wash and dress me as if I were a wooden poppet, and then they comb my hair so that it is smooth and curling and spread out over my shoulders. It is my best feature, this wealth of fair hair, and we all pause to admire it and tie in extra ribbons. Then, suddenly, there is no time and we have to hurry. I keep remembering a dozen things that I want, and a dozen things that I was going to do. Already I have on my wedding shoes, with embroidered toes and golden laces, quite as fine as Katherine of Arrogant’s, and Agnes Howard is ready to walk behind me, and the ladies all line up behind her, and I have to go.

  Down the stone stairs, into the bright sunshine I glide to where the great door of the neighboring abbey is thrown open for me, and then into the abbey, which is crowded with lords and their