Three Sisters Three Queens Read online

  The bed ropes creak as he gets into bed beside me, this king killer, this murderer. “Can you not go on pilgrimage?” I ask faintly. “Can you not go on crusade? Can the Holy Father not dispense for your sin?”

  “I hope to do so,” he says quietly. “This country has never been peaceful enough for me to safely leave, but I would like to go on crusade. I hope to go to Jerusalem one day—that would wash my soul clean.”

  “I didn’t know,” I say quietly. “I didn’t know anything about this.”

  He shrugs and pulls the covers up over his belly, spreading himself out in the bed, feet to both corners, arms folded across his broad chest, as if all the bed is his and I must fit into one corner, or mold myself around him.

  “Your own father led a rebellion against a crowned ordained king,” he says, as if it is not the most terrible thing to do. “And he married your mother against her will, and he killed her kinsmen, young men of royal blood. To take the throne and to hold it, you sometimes have to do terrible things.”

  I let out a little squeak of protest. “No, he did not! Not any of those things, or at any rate, not like that!”

  “Sin is sin,” the murderer tells me, and then he goes to sleep.

  The next morning is the best day of my life. It is a tradition that the Scots kings give their brides their dower lands the morning after the wedding, and I go into James’s privy chamber where he and I sit either side of a heavy table as he signs over the deeds of one enormous forest and one great castle after another until I know that I am indeed as wealthy as any queen. I am happy and the court is happy for me. They too have gleaned gifts at my harvest. James Hamilton, who negotiated the marriage treaty, is to be Earl of Arran, a title created for him in reward for his work and to acknowledge his kinship to the king. All my ladies receive gifts, all the Scots lords are given money and some of them get titles.

  Then the king turns to me, and says with a slight smile: “I am informed that you don’t like my beard, Your Grace. This too can be at your command. Behold, I am a willing Samson. I will be shorn for love.”

  He has surprised me. “You will?” I say. “Who told you? I never said anything about it.”

  “You would rather I kept it long?” He strokes the great bush of it from his chin to his belly.

  “No! No!” I shake my head and this makes him laugh again.

  He turns and nods to one of his companions and the man opens the door to the presence chamber. All the people outside peep in to see what their betters are doing, as a servant comes in with a bowl and a jug, linen, and a great pair of golden scissors.

  At once my ladies laugh and clap their hands, but I feel awkward and I am glad when the door is shut and the petitioners and visitors can’t see us. “I don’t know what you mean to do. Can’t we send for a barber?”

  “You do it,” he says teasingly. “You don’t want my beard, you take it off. Or are you afraid?”

  “I’m not afraid,” I say boldly.

  “I think you are,” he says, his smile gleaming through the fox brush. “But Lady Agnes will help you.”

  I glance at her in case this is not allowed, but she is smiling and laughing.

  “May I?” I say doubtfully.

  “If Samson comes to be shorn, who shall refuse him?” Agnes Howard says. “But we don’t want to cut off your strength, Your Grace. We would not hurt you for the world.”

  “You shall make me as handsome as an English courtier,” he assures her. “If Her Grace the little Queen of Scots does not want a handsome Highland beard in her bed, she need not endure one. She has to have me, wild enough for any woman—she need not have a great beard as well.”

  He sits down on a stool, tucks the napkin around his neck and presents the scissors to me. I take them and make a nervous snip. A whole clump of red pelt falls into his lap. Aghast, I stop, but the king laughs and says: “Bravo, Bravo, Queen Margaret! Go to it!” And I make another snip and then another until it is all off. He is still thickly bearded, but the cascade of hair that tumbled over his chest is now lying on the floor.

  “Now, Lady Agnes,” he says, “I swear that you know how to shave a man. Show Her Grace how it is done and make sure that you don’t cut my poor throat.”

  “Should we not send for a barber?” she asks, just as I did.

  He laughs. “Oh, give me a noble shearing,” he says, and Lady Agnes sends for hot water and a razor and the finest soap and sets about him while I watch and the king laughs at my appalled expression.

  At the end she wraps him in warm linen and he pats his newly bared face gently and then unwraps for me.

  “What do you think?” he asks. “Do I please you now, Your Grace?”

  His lower face is white-skinned, far paler than the rest, as it has been shaded from the sun and wind by his beard while his cheeks and his brow are deeply tanned, and he has white smile lines around his eyes. He looks odd, but his chin is strong and slightly dimpled and his mouth is sensual, the lips full and shapely.

  “You do,” I say, for I can hardly say anything else.

  He gives me a warm kiss on the mouth, and Agnes Howard claps her hands as if all the credit is due to her.

  “Wait till they see me,” he says. “My loyal lords will know that I am wedded and bedded to an English princess indeed, for I have become so very English and smart.”

  We stay in Holyroodhouse Palace until the autumn and there are constant jousts and celebrations. The French knight Antoine d’Arcy, the Sieur de la Bastie, is a great favorite, and swears that he would be my chevalier were he not already promised to Anne of Brittany. I pretend to be offended, but then he tells me that in honor of her he wears armor and trappings of pure white, and nothing suits him better. He really cannot switch to green. This makes me laugh and I agree that he has to be “the white knight” for the rest of his life, but that I will know and he will know that his heart is mine. This is very pretty nonsense, especially from a young man so dazzlingly good-looking, and it is part of the work of being a beautiful queen.

  ON PROGRESS, SCOTLAND, AUTUMN 1503

  When it gets a little colder and the leaves start to crisp and change color, my husband takes me on a progress to see some of the lands that are mine as queen. I think of my lady grandmother’s keen stewardship of her lands and her quiet avarice in adding to her landholding, and I look around me as I ride westwards out of the city, along the raised tracks that weave through the marshy lands at the edge of a great river, the Forth, and hope that my land is being profitably managed.

  The trees grow down to the water’s edge and rain their leaves on us as if we were in a parade and people were throwing flowers. The woods are all the colors of bronze and gold, red and brown, and the higher slopes of the hills are ablaze with the red of rowan trees. The few villages along the way are surrounded by a patchwork of little fields and all the hedgerows are bright with hips and hawthorn berries, and in the thicker clumps there is the fat gleam of sloes as black as jet. Above our heads the geese flying south cross the sky in huge processions, one behind the other, and we often hear the loud creak of great wings as flights of swans go south away from the cold weather of the north. Every morning and every dusk we see herds of deer disappearing through the trees, moving so silently that the hounds cannot see them, and at night sometimes we hear wolves.

  We travel agreeably together. James loves music and I play for him and the court musicians come with us. He has a passion for poetry and writing, and his court carries its own makar—a poet who travels with us everywhere like a cook, as if you might need poetry like dinner when you stop for the evening. To my surprise, James does need poetry like this; he wants it like wine before dinner, and he has an appetite for talk about books and philosophy. He expects me to learn their language, for unless I do I will never appreciate the beauty of the poems in the evening. He says they cannot be translated, you have to hear them as they were first sung. He says that they speak of the people and the land and they cannot be translated into English. “