Three Sisters Three Queens Read online

  I have to know more and I have to know what I can do. While I wait for advice from my lady grandmother I consult my lady-in-waiting Lady Katherine Huntly. She is from the Gordon clan and is a kinswoman to my husband. She can speak Erse as he does—as they all do—and she knows these people; she probably knows the mothers of the children. I suppose that half of them are related to her. This is not a nobility, it is a tribe—and these are little bastard savages.

  I wait till my musicians are playing and we are seated at our sewing. We are working on an altar cloth that shows Saint Margaret as she confronts the dragon. I think that I too am forced to confront a dragon of sin, and Katherine can tell me how to defeat it.

  “Lady Katherine, you may sit beside me,” I say, and she comes and takes a stool beside me and starts to work on my corner of the embroidery.

  “You can leave that,” I say and, pleasant as ever, she puts it down and unthreads her needle and stores it safely in its silver case.

  “I wanted to talk to you about the king,” I say.

  She turns her calm face to listen.

  “About these children.”

  She is silent.

  “These very many children.”

  She nods.

  “They have to go!” I exclaim suddenly.

  She looks at me consideringly. “Your Grace, this is a matter for the king and yourself.”

  “Yes, but I don’t know anything about them. I don’t know what is usual. I can’t command him.”

  “No, you cannot command him. But I think that you could ask.”

  “Who are they anyway?”

  She thinks for a moment. “Are you sure that you want to know?”

  Tightly, I nod, and she looks at me with a gentle sympathy. “As you wish, Your Grace. The king is a man of little more than thirty years, remember. He has been King of Scotland since he was a boy. He came to his throne in violence, and he is a man of high passions and power, a lusty man of appetites. Of course he has fathered children. He is unusual only in that he keeps them together in his finest castle, and loves them so dearly. Most men have children outside their marriage and leave them to be raised by their mothers, or sometimes they are farmed out and neglected. The king should perhaps be honored for recognizing his own.”

  “No, he shouldn’t be,” I say flatly. “My father has only us. He never took a mistress.”

  She looks down at her hands as if she knows better. I have always hated that about Katherine Huntly; she always looks as if she is carrying a secret.

  “Your father was very blessed in his wife, your mother,” she says. “Perhaps King James will never take another mistress, now that he has you.”

  I feel a rush of anger at the thought of anyone in my place, anyone preferred to me. I don’t even like the thought of anyone making comparisons between me and another girl. Part of my relief in leaving England was that no one could again look from dainty Katherine to me, that no one can compare me to my sister Mary. I hate being compared—and now I discover my husband has half a dozen lovers. “Who was this Marion Boyd, the mother of Alexander, the oldest boy, who is allowed to be so forward?” I ask.

  Her raised eyebrows ask me am I sure that I want to know all this?

  “Who is she? Is she dead too?”

  “No, Your Grace. She is a kinswoman of the Earl of Angus. A very important family, the Douglas clan, you know.”

  “Was she my husband’s mistress for long?”

  Katherine considers. “I believe so. Alexander Stewart is a little more than ten years old is he not?”

  “How would I know?” I demand sharply. “I don’t look at him.”

  “Yes,” she says and stops speaking.

  “Go on,” I say crossly. “Is he the only bastard the king has got on her?”

  “No, she had three children by the king, a boy died. But her daughter Catherine is here with her older brother.”

  “The little girl with fair hair? About six years old?”

  “No, that’s Margaret, she is the daughter of Margaret Drummond.”

  “Margaret!” I exclaim. “He gave his bastard my name?”

  She bows her head and is silent. My ladies glance across at her as if they are sorry she is trapped in the window bay with me. I am known for my temper and none of them ever want to tell me bad news.

  “He gave them all his name,” she says quietly. “They are all called Stewart.”

  “Why don’t they take the husbands’ names, if they are all cuckolds’ brats?” I am furious now. “Why doesn’t the king demand that the husbands house their wives and children all together? Keep these women in their place at home?”

  She says nothing.

  “But he called one James. Which one is James?”

  “He is the son of Janet Kennedy,” she says quietly.

  “Janet Kennedy?” I recognize the name. “And where is she? Not here?”

  “Oh no,” Katherine says quickly, as if that would be impossible. “She lives at Darnaway Castle, far away. You will never meet her.”

  I can be glad of this, at least. “The king does not see her any more?”

  Katherine picks up the corner of the tapestry as if she wishes she were working on it. “I don’t know, Your Grace.”

  “So he does see her?”

  “I could not say.”

  “And what about the others?” I continue with my interrogation.

  “The others?”

  “All the other children. By Saint Margaret there must be half a dozen of them!”

  She ticks them off on her fingers: “There are Alexander and Catherine, the children of Marion Boyd; and Margaret, the daughter of Margaret Drummond; and Janet Kennedy’s boy James; and the three youngest who are still so small that they usually live with their mother Isabel Stewart, not here at court: Jean, Catherine, and Janet.”

  “How many are there altogether?”

  I can see her calculating. “There are seven of them here. There may be more of course, unacknowledged.”

  I look at her blankly. “I won’t have any of them under the same roof as me,” I say. “Do you understand me? You’ll have to tell him.”

  “I?” She shakes her head, perfectly calm. “I could not tell the King of Scotland that his children are not welcome here in Stirling Castle, Your Grace.”

  “Well, my chamberlain will have to do it. Or my confessor, or someone has to tell him. I won’t bear it.”

  Lady Huntly does not flinch at my raised voice. “You will have to tell him yourself, Your Grace,” she says respectfully. “He’s your husband. But if I were you—”

  “You could not be me,” I say flatly. “I am a Tudor princess, the oldest Tudor princess. There is no one like me.”

  “If I were so blessed as to be in your position,” she corrects herself smoothly.

  “You were the wife of a pretender,” I say meanly. “Obviously, you did not achieve my position.”

  She bows her head. “I merely say that if I were a new wife of a great king I would ask it of him as a favor, not demand it as a right. He is kind to you, and he loves his children very deeply. He is capable of great love and affection. You could ask it as a favor. Although . . .”

  “Although what?” I snap.

  “He will be saddened,” she says. “He loves his children.”

  A Tudor does not ask for favors. As a Tudor princess I expect my due. Katherine of Arrogant did not share Ludlow Castle with anyone but our Plantagenet cousin Margaret Pole and her husband, Arthur’s guardian. Nobody would have asked such a thing of her. When my little sister, Princess Mary, is married—probably to a Spanish prince—she will go to her new country with honor. She will not meet bastards or half bloods or whores. I shall not be treated less well than these princesses, who are inferior to me either by birth or age.

  I wait till the next day when we have observed Mass in the chapel, and before we leave the hallowed ground I put a hand on my husband’s arm to hold him at the chancel steps and say: “My lord husband, I