Three Sisters, Three Queens by Philippa Gregory
LINLITHGOW PALACE, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1512
The king cannot possibly go on crusade without an heir to succeed him. Even his religious advisors know that, but as I am with child again, and getting near my time, he goes on constant pilgrimages to holy shrines in his own country, dispensing justice and praying for mercy for himself at the same time. He has done all he can to prepare for a crusade as soon as a son is born to us; so we, a little country, have one of the greatest fleets in Europe. He has ideas about the way ships can be used in battle—no one has ever waged a sea battle as my husband thinks it should be done. He designs a mighty, beautiful ship, the Great Michael; and he oversees the building of it himself, stripped down to his shirt, working alongside the artisans: the blacksmiths and the carpenters, the shipwrights and the sailmakers. He tries, constantly, to persuade the Pope to make an alliance with the King of France, Louis XII, so that all the princes of Europe can unite in one powerful attack against the infidels who have captured the holy places and defiled the birthplace of Christ.
But the Pope has other plans and makes an alliance between Spain and the Venetians, and then my foolish young brother—completely under the sway of his Spanish wife, Katherine of Arrogant—joins what they are calling the Holy League, which will break the unity of the Christian kings. She makes Harry serve his Spanish father-in-law and drags him into war against France, just as James was hoping that all of Europe would go on crusade.
Everything that James hoped for is overthrown, Europe is divided again, and all so that my brother can pursue his dream of winning Aquitaine back for England, as if he were the heroic Henry V and not a king from a quite different family in a quite different time. I blame Harry for vanity and a foolish young man’s lust for war, but I know that he is under the influence of Katherine and I think of her as absolutely wicked to lead Harry—and England—into a war that we cannot possibly win, which will plunge all of Christendom into an internal battle when we should be fighting the infidel.
How is my husband going to organize his crusade if the Christian kings are fighting among themselves? But all that Katherine thinks of is pleasing her father and giving him an English army for his use. My brother is completely ruled by his cunning wife. I see again the boy who was my mother’s pet, a slave to our grandmother. Once again, he has found a woman who will tell him what to think. She should be ashamed of herself—rescued from poverty by the King of England, but encouraging him to endanger himself. She is thinking only of her own importance. Her mother was a queen who ruled in her own right; Katherine wants to do the same. She hopes to be a royal partner, a queen who is equal to a king. She wants to send Harry to war on a wild goose chase and be regent in his place. I know her. I know her secret ambition is to be like her mother: the greatest woman in Christendom. That is why she married Arthur, so that she could rule England through him. This is why she married Harry, and now she is getting her way.
I think I will write to Katherine and tell her how wrong she is to advise Harry to go to war in alliance with his father-in-law. But before I start my letter, a messenger comes from England with a package for me. When I open it I find inside, carefully wrapped in silk and parchment, a sacred relic: the holy girdle of the Virgin Herself, and a short letter from Katherine.
Dear Sister,
Knowing that your time is at hand I send you this, the most precious thing that I own, that helped me both in my time and in my loss. It is the sacred girdle of Our Lady, which she wore when she gave birth to Our Lord. It comes to you with Her sanctity and my deep affection and hopes for you and your new child. I pray that it is a strong boy. God bless you,
Katherine
My justifiable irritation with Katherine’s meddling with the governance of England melts away as I hold in my hands this most sacred relic. I know her devotion—this will be more to her than all the silver in Spain. She could not give me anything more precious, and if it grants me a safe delivery of a healthy son, she has given me my heart’s desire.
Dearest Sister, I give you deepest thanks for the loan of this precious girdle. You could not give me a greater gift. I am fearful as I approach my time, we seem to be so unlucky with our babies. My husband has a painfully uneasy conscience and is afraid that his sins fall on me and our unborn children.
This is why the girdle will comfort me as I go into confinement and bear me up in my time, and bring, I hope, an heir safely into my arms and to his throne. God grant us all forgiveness for our sins and let His mercy fall on us. God bless you for giving me this, you are a true sister. Ask Mary to pray for me too as I know that you do. Margaret.
Louis of France, alarmed by the allies massing against him, promises my husband that he shall have anything he wants if he will keep the “Auld Alliance” between France and Scotland. I am preparing to go into confinement when James comes to find me in the tiny room at the top of the tower, looking out over the water meadows and the loch.
“I thought I would find you here,” he says. “I am surprised you can make it up these steep stairs with that good belly on you.”
“I am breathing the air and taking the sun before I have to go into confinement,” I say.
He sits beside me. There is barely room for the two of us on the circular stone bench that lines the round room, but the unglazed windows show the countryside all around the castle and the swallows weave around this highest point. I can see for miles and miles in every direction and the huge sky arches over the tower as if it were the highest point in the world.
“I will work for peace while you are bringing us joy,” James says. He takes my hand and holds it to his chest, against his heart. “And when you next come up here we will carry our boy and let him see his kingdom.”
We get to our feet and step outside the little room, leaning on the parapet and looking down at the loch below where it ripples with the wind, blue under a blue sky. “If I am in alliance with the French, your brother will not invade them. He will not dare, for fear that I might invade the Northern lands while he is away.”
“You can’t do that! Our marriage sealed the Treaty of Perpetual Peace.”
“I won’t do that, but your brother is young and foolish and needs to fear a danger near home to keep him from seeking other dangers far away.”
“It’s her,” I say miserably. “It’s her. She wants him in alliance with her father, and her father is the most untrustworthy man in Christendom. My own father never liked him.”
James laughs shortly. “You’re right about that,” he says. “But you go to your work and be sure that I am keeping this country and even England safe for the boy that you may give us. Who knows? He might be heir to both kingdoms.”
I find my mouth trembles a little as I try to ask him if he has given up thoughts of a curse. “You don’t think . . . ?”
He knows at once what I mean, and with a quick gesture he draws me to his side and kisses my downturned head. “Hush,” he urges me. “I have the whole of the Church in Scotland in my keeping, and they are every one of them praying for you, for your boy, and for us. Go with a glad heart, Margaret, and do your work. Come on, I’ll take you down to it.”
He goes before me down the tight curves of the winding stone stair and makes me walk with one hand on his shoulder so that I cannot stumble. We enter my presence chamber, and all of my household is waiting to say farewell and wish me well. The two bastards, James and Alexander, kneel to me and wish me good health. At the doorway of my bedchamber, shrouded in darkness, my chamberlain gives me a cup of ale and my husband gives me a kiss on the mouth.
“God speed, my love,” he says. “Be of good heart. I will be waiting out here for news.”
I try to smile but I go into the darkened room with my head down, and my shoulders hunched. I am afraid; I am afraid that my family is under a curse for what we did to get the throne of England, and that the curse will fall on me and the baby that I have got to bring into the world.
I have a boy. Perhaps it is the blessing of the Virgin’s g
“Go away,” I say. “You know you’re not allowed here.”
“Let me see him. Let me see you.”
I rise up from my great state bed, for the little one I used in childbirth is cleared away, and now I rest under curtains of cloth of gold and sleep on pillows under a headboard carved and gilded with the thistle and the rose. I beckon the rocker to bring the baby to the screen and I stand beside her, in my beautifully embroidered robe, and spread the lace on the baby’s gown for his father to admire. James’s dark intent face is bent to his small son; he does not notice the Mechlin lace at all, though it cost a small fortune. The baby is asleep, his dark eyelashes laid on pale cheeks. He is tiny. I had forgotten how tiny a newborn baby is. He would fit into one of his father’s broad hands; he is like a little pearl in a sea of the finest silk.
“He is well.” James says it like a command.
“He is.”
“We will name him James.”
I bow my head.
“And you are in no pain?”
I think I would have died after my first birth if James had not interceded with the saint. This time too was a hard birth but the most sacred girdle of Our Lady helped me in my ordeal. I will never forget that Katherine shared it with me, that she thought of me and trusted me with her greatest treasure to help me to this joy. “There is pain, but the relic eased the worst of it.”
He crosses himself. “I shall stay up all night praying; but you must drink some birth ale and sleep.”
I nod.
“And when he is christened we will have days of jousting and feasting to celebrate his birth.”
“A joust as good as . . . ?”
He knows I am thinking of the tournament they had at Westminster when Harry’s son Henry was born. “Better,” he says. “And I will get them to send your inheritance from England so you can wear your jewels. So sleep well, and get well soon, my dear.”
I go back to my bed. I take one fold of the curtain in my hand so that I can feel the threads of gold and I close my eyes and imagine the jewels of my inheritance as I go to sleep.
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, AUTUMN, 1512
I am too ill for a great celebration of our son and heir. In any case, James is desperately trying to keep the peace between the kings of Christendom who have all forgotten their duty to God. It is impossible for him to call the monarchs of Europe to a crusade if they insist on quarreling among themselves. The worst offender, obviously, is Katherine of Aragon’s father, Ferdinand.
I write to Katherine, as a sister and a sister-queen, asking her to influence Henry for peace. It is not easy for me to write her a long letter in my own hand as I am with child again and terribly tired this time. The baby sits heavily and low and I suffer from aches in my back and shooting pains in my belly. But James insists that I appeal to Katherine, telling me that we have to persuade my brother and his wife not to destroy the peace of Christendom, that Harry should be going to the Holy Land with James and not invading France with Ferdinand. “Tell her that I am afraid of sin,” he urges me. “Tell her everything. Tell her you are with child again and that I have to go on crusade to fulfill my promise, to keep you safe.”
Nobody cares for peace as my husband does. Nobody else has his driving desire to go on crusade. The sorrowful thing is that he cannot even tell them why he wants to go on crusade so badly. He cannot trust his brother kings with the story of his sin, or his fears of a curse on the Tudors.
When I lose my baby, a little girl who comes before her time in November too small to live, I share his urgency. He is right, I know it. I am convinced that there is sin to be expiated and none of us—not me, nor Katherine, nor even my little sister Mary—will be able to feel safe in the future of our children until Jerusalem is back in Christian hands, the curse is lifted from the Tudor line, and James is forgiven his sins.
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1513
But nothing will stop my brother from invading France. He will not even cancel his plans for fear of a war with my husband on his Northern border. I am insulted at the suggestion that the perpetual peace created in honor of my marriage could be broken; Harry just sends an emissary to my husband to order James not to invade England while Harry is hell-bent on invading France.
There is no point in sending a man to speak so to us. James would never stoop to act against the rules of chivalry, he would never take up arms first, but he is in alliance with the French and they have promised to pay him the cost of any punitive raid and, even more, to finance an entire crusade when they have finished with Harry. My brother is a fool to make war on the French—of course the first thing that they are going to do is suborn his neighbors to rise up against him. Why can he not see that the future of these islands is to live in peace, one with another? My baby son is his heir! Is he going to risk war with his heir’s father? Is he going to make war on his own sister’s country and on her husband?
James spends all of Lent in the monastery. Unlike my brother—who is so ostentatious in his theology studies—or Katherine, his wife, always draped in crucifixes, my husband is a genuinely spiritual man. So Doctor Nicholas West, hailed as a peacemaker and a cunning diplomat, makes the long journey from London and finds that my devout husband is missing, and he has to deal with me instead.
All dinner, which is lean fare, for this is the very last day of Lent, he speaks of how wonderfully tall Harry has grown and how handsome he has become. He almost makes the slip of saying that he takes after our mother’s family, the famously beautiful Plantagenets, but he manages to stop himself in time and refer to Tudor physique. This is ridiculous, as my father and grandmother were both dark and spare, mean with their smiles and hopelessly lacking in charm. Katherine, too, is apparently beyond beautiful and now she is blooming. I wonder if she is with child again, but I cannot ask Doctor West. Privately, I wonder if she will carry any baby to full term. Doctor West tells me that everyone praises her beauty and her health, her certain fertility. I nod; they always do. It means nothing.
Doctor West boasts that Henry is taking an interest in governing, as if this should not be his principal duty. I roll my eyes and don’t say that my husband lives for his country. He too is a composer and poet and a great prince, but he does not waste his time like my brother does. Then Doctor West praises the ships that Harry is building. Now I do interrupt, and I tell him about those my husband has designed and planned, and that the Great Michael is the biggest ship at sea.
I am afraid that we bicker then, a little, as if he thinks I am boasting of the greatness of my own country of Scotland. As it is Lent and there is no music or dancing I tell him that we are a devout court and that we go to chapel after dinner, and we part company with very little joy.
It is no better when we have the feast of Easter, though it is good to be able to eat meat again. And on the second day of Eastertide we almost come to blows as Doctor West tells me bluntly that Harry is depending upon me to honor my birthright as an English princess by ensuring that James keeps the peace.
“You owe him this loyalty,” he says pompously. “You owe the love of a sister to him and to your sister-queen.”
“And what about what England owes me?” I demand. “Have you brought my jewels? My inheritance?”
He looks a little embarrassed. “These are matters of state,” he says. “Not for discussion between me and a royal lady.”
“These are personal matters,” I correct him. “My father left me an inheritance, and my lady grandmother left me jewels of equal value to those that she gave to Katherine and Mary. Have they
Doctor West shifts in his chair as if he has a little tiara pricking him in his pockets. “You will have them,” he assures me. “There can be no doubt of that.”
“I have no doubt of that,” I say. “For they are mine, left to me by my beloved father and my grandmother. My own brother would not stoop to withhold them and defy the wishes of his own father, of his own grandmother! If he has given Katherine and Mary their inheritance, then I should have mine.”
“No, he does not withhold it,” Doctor West stutters. He has flushed red with embarrassment and he is looking around as if someone might come and help him out of this trap. He can look all he likes; this is a Scots court and the English are not and never have been great favorites. They make an exception for me because James shows that he loves me and I have given them a Scots prince.
“Then why have you not brought it?”
“You will receive all your inheritance when the king is assured that your husband will keep the peace.”
“But he does keep the peace!” I burst out. “He has been working for peace all this time while the rest of them have been arming for war.”
“He is arming . . .” Doctor West interrupts, “his weapons, his huge guns . . .”
At once I see that this is a spy as well as an emissary, and I am sorry that I boasted about Great Michael.
“Will I not get my jewels without my husband’s assurance of peace?”
“No,” he says, finally finding his voice. “His Grace your brother commands me to say that if your husband makes war on him he will not only keep your jewels, but he will take from your husband the best towns that he has.”
I jump to my feet, my hand closing on my goblet, really thinking that I will fling my wine into Doctor West’s startled face, when the door behind the high table opens and James emerges, composed and smiling as ever, returned from the monastery, shining from his bath, and perfectly informed of this conversation. I would guess that he has probably been quietly listening at the door for all of this time.