Three Sisters, Three Queens by Philippa Gregory
And I don’t forget, not even in my joy at my return, that my misfortune has come about because Henry broke my treaty and insisted on war with Scotland, and because Katherine commanded the Howards to lead a brutal army, ordered to spare no one. For all that the Howards’ new standard flaunts emblems of my husband’s defeat, they were not the ones who decided to take no prisoners. That was Katherine: ruthless and bloodthirsty as her mother, who took a Christian sword through Spain. For all that she sends me loving letters now, and promises that we shall fall into each other’s arms on meeting, I don’t forget that she ordered my husband’s naked body to be pickled in a jar and sent as a trophy of war to my brother. A woman who can think of that is not a woman that I can ever call my sister. I don’t even know where James’s poor body is buried in England. I don’t even know where his bloodstained jacket is—in some cupboard somewhere, I suppose. There is bad blood between Katherine and me. She has been generous and kind to me since my terrible downfall, and I have profited from her uneasy conscience; but she was the cause and reason for that downfall and I don’t forgive or forget.
The day that we are about to leave York there is a tap at the door of my privy chamber and it swings open, without my consent. I look up to see who comes in without announcement to the private rooms of the Dowager Queen of Scotland, and there before me, bonnet in his hand, smiling and heartbreakingly handsome, is my husband, Archibald.
I get to my feet—I can stand now without pain—I reach for him and he is across the room and on his knees at my feet in a moment. “Go,” I whisper to my ladies, and they scurry out of the room and close the door behind them as he rises up and wraps me in a tight, hot embrace. He kisses my wet eyelids, my lips, my throat, his hands are warm through my tight stomacher. He bends his head and kisses the top of my breasts, and I feel him untie my laces.
“Come,” is all I say, and I lead him into my bedroom and let him strip me as if I were a peasant girl in a hay barn, push my rich skirts and my fine lace-trimmed linen to one side and enter me with as much desire as when we were first married and thought we would rule Scotland together.
It is blissful. We lie together in a tumble of clothes and bedding as the sun shines in through the window and I hear the church bells of York toll one after another for the afternoon service of None. “My love,” I say sleepily.
“My queen,” he replies.
I take his tanned smiling face in my hands and I kiss him on the lips. “You came to me,” I say. “I thought I had lost you forever.”
“I couldn’t let you go like that,” he says. “I couldn’t let you go without knowing that my love is with you, as faithful as I always am, as much in love with you as I ever have been.”
“I am so glad,” I say quietly. I rest my head on his shoulder and I feel, through the thin linen of his shirt, the beat of his steady heart.
“And you are treated well?” he murmurs. “I see you have beautiful gowns and ladies in attendance and a fine household around you?”
“I am cared for like the Tudor princess I was born to be, and the Scots queen I am,” I say. “Dacre is a most loyal servant.”
“As he should be,” Ard says irritably. “And has he given you money from your brother?”
“I am rich again,” I confirm. “And everyone tells me that I will get my jewels and goods back from Albany. You need not fear for me, my darling. I am well provisioned.”
“Thank God,” he says. “And when do they plan that you shall come back to Scotland?”
“Nobody knows yet. They will have to deal with Albany. But Harry says he will speak with nobody until he has first heard from me. And Dacre and I have compiled a great book of my grievances. Albany shall answer for them, the Scots lords who supported him shall answer for them. You and I will be avenged.”
There is a knock at the door and a voice says: “Your Grace, will you be dining in the hall?”
I turn with a lazy smile to Ard. “Everyone will know that we have been to bed in the afternoon,” I say.
“We are husband and wife,” he says. “They can know that. I can tell them that I will sleep in your bed tonight, if they want to know.”
I chuckle. “In my bed every night all the way to London.”
A little shadow crosses his face. “Ah, love. Don’t let’s speak of it.”
“What?” I ask with sudden alarm. I call out to the lady-in-waiting. “Yes! Yes! Come and dress me in a little while.”
“I can’t come to London,” Ard says. “Nothing has changed for me in Scotland though you are wealthy and well guarded now. But I am still an outlaw. I am still running and hiding for my life in the hills.”
“But you will stay with me now. You too will be wealthy and well guarded.”
“I cannot,” he says gently. “My people still need me. I must lead them and protect them against your enemies.”
“You came just to say good-bye?”
“I couldn’t stay away,” he whispers. “Forgive me. Did I do wrong?”
“No, no, I would rather see you for a moment than not at all. But, Ard, are you sure you cannot come?”
“My castle and my lands and my tenants will all be in danger if I don’t go back. You will forgive me?”
“Oh yes! Oh yes! I would forgive you anything; but I can’t bear you to leave me.”
He gets up from the bed and pulls on his leather riding breeches. They are worn soft and pliable from hard rides in all weathers.
“But you are not going now?”
“I will stay to dinner, if I may. I have had few good dinners in the last few weeks. And I will sleep in your bed tonight. I have had no soft pillows and no tender loving. And I will leave at dawn. It is my duty.”
“At dawn?” I repeat, feeling my lips tremble.
“I am afraid I must.”
I love him for his pride and for his sense of honor. I get up at dawn with him and watch him dress in his old worn breeches. “Here!” I say. “At least take these shirts.” I give him half a dozen fine linen shirts, beautifully hand-sewn and trimmed with lace.
“Where did you get these?” he demands, drawing one over his lean back.
“I commandeered them from Lord Dacre,” I confess. “He was most unwilling but he can get more made for himself, and you should have nothing but the best.”
He laughs shortly and pulls on his old riding boots. “Do you get enough to eat?” I demand. “Where do you sleep?”
“I stay with other outlaws in their castles and forts all along the border,” he answers. “Sometimes I sleep rough, under the sky, but usually I know a friend, someone loyal to your cause, who will take the risk of having me under their roof. Sometimes I even get back near to Tantallon, where everyone would risk their lives to give me a bed for the night.”
I know that Janet Stewart would open the doors of Traquair to him. But I won’t mention her name.
“Do you need money?” I ask eagerly.
“Money would help,” he says wryly. “I have to buy arms and clothes and food for those who ride with me, and I like to pay for my hospitality, especially when the people are poor.”
I go to my chest. “Here,” I say. “Dacre gave me this from my brother, for my benevolences on the way. He can give me more. Take it all.”
He weighs the purse in his hand. “Gold?”
“Yes,” I say. “And take this too.”
I open my treasure box and take out a long chain of gold links. “You can break it up and sell it as you need,” I say. “Take it, wear it around your neck and keep it safe.”
“This is worth a fortune,” he protests.
“You are worth a fortune to me,” I assure him. “Take it. And take these too.”
I find a handful of heavy gold coins at the bottom of the box.
“This is too much,” he says, but he lets me press the gold into his hands. “My wife, you are good to me.”
“I would do so much more for you if I could,” I swear. “When I come home to Scotland you will have
He bends his knee and bows his head for my blessing, then he rises up and takes me in his arms. I close my eyes, inhaling the smell of him, adoring him. I would give him the rings off my fingers, I would give him the jewels from my hair, I would promise him the world.
“Come back to me,” I whisper.
“Of course,” he says.
COMPTON WYNYATES, ENGLAND, MAY 1516
I am waiting in the home of my brother’s good friend and servant Sir William Compton, in my best gown of purple velvet with cloth-of-gold lining. My brother the king is coming to accompany me into the city. We will make a great show for all the people—we Tudors know that we have to make a great show—and my authority with the Scots will be greater when they hear that the king himself rode at my side to bring me home again. It has been thirteen years since I saw him, a boastful vain little boy, and in that time we have lost our father and our grandmother, he has become king, I have become a queen, and we have both had and lost children. Everyone tells me that he has grown to be extraordinarily handsome and I am torn between excitement and nerves as I stand by the window in Sir William’s beautiful presence chamber and hear the rattle of the guards’ weapons outside the double doors and the tramp of many feet. Then finally the doors swing open and Harry comes in.
He is changed so much. I left a boy and here is a man. He’s very tall, taller than Archibald, a head taller than me, and the first thing I see, and recoil to see it, is a thick bronze beard beautifully combed and trimmed. It makes him look like a fully grown man, far from the memory I carried of my light-footed, fair-skinned little brother.
“Harry,” I say uncertainly. Then I remember that this is the King of England and I drop into a curtsey: “Your Grace.”
“Margaret,” he says warmly. “Sister,” and he raises me up and kisses me on both cheeks.
His piercing eyes are a bright blue, his features regular and strong. He smiles and shows white even teeth. He is a stunningly handsome man. No wonder that the courts of Europe call him the handsomest prince in Christendom. I think for a swift, spiteful moment that Katherine of Aragon is lucky that she caught him when she did—at the very moment of his coming to the throne. Any woman in the world would be glad to marry my brother now; no wonder Katherine is on constant watch over her ladies-in-waiting.
“I would have known you anywhere,” he says.
I flush with pleasure. I know that I look well. The pain has gone from my legs and I can stand and walk without a limp. I have lost all the weight that I gained before the birth of Margaret, and I am beautifully dressed, thanks to Katherine.
“Anywhere!” he goes on. “You are as beautiful as our lady mother.”
I give him a little mock curtsey. “I am glad you find me so,” I say.
He offers me his arm and we walk a little way down the room, head to head so that no one else can hear us.
“I do, Margaret. I am proud to be a man with two beautiful sisters.”
Mary; already. He has hardly greeted me and already we have to speak of Mary.
“But what of her little namesake?” I demand. “How is your daughter? Is she strong and well?”
“She is.” He beams at me. “Of course we wanted a boy first, but there is no doubt that she will have a little brother at her side soon. And you are older sister to a king, you can tell her how to go on.”
I was not. I was younger sister to Arthur, my brother who should have been king. But I smile and say: “And Her Grace the queen? Is she well also?”
“She has returned to court,” he says. “And you will sit with her at the great joust we have planned this month. The biggest event we have ever planned—to celebrate your coming, and the birth of my daughter, and Mary’s son.”
Mary; again. “I must show you Margaret, your niece.” I nod to her nursemaid, who brings her forward with a low curtsey for Harry to see. She is a plump little thing, brown haired and brown eyed, and she waves her hands and beams at Harry as if she knows that his favor will make her fortune.
“As lovely as her mama,” Harry says fondly, tapping her little fist with his finger. “And as sweet-tempered, I am sure.”
“She is a very good baby,” I say. “She had a hard enough time of it.”
“Good God, what you have suffered!”
I rest my head gently against his shoulder. “I have suffered,” I agree. “But I know that you will make it all right again.”
“I swear that I will,” he promises me. “And you shall go back to Scotland as queen regent. Nobody shall mistreat you again. The very idea!” He seems to swell inside his beautiful green velvet jacket—the huge shoulders get even broader. “And where is your husband? I expected him to be here with you.”
He knows, of course; Dacre will have reported everything as soon as it happened. “He had to stay to protect his people,” I say. “He was heartbroken, he wanted to be with me; we wanted to be together. Especially, he wanted to come to meet you. But he felt that those lords who had supported me, and the poor people who had suffered for keeping me, would be in danger of Albany’s revenge if he were not there to protect them. He is a man of great honor.”
I find that I am talking too much, too fast, trying to convey to Harry the danger and the difficulty of Scotland. He cannot know, safe behind the walls of secure castles in a peaceful land, what it is like trying to rule a country where everything is by agreement, and even the will of the king has to be accepted by his people. “Archibald has stayed in Scotland. To do his duty. He felt that he should.”
My brother looks at me and suddenly there is a hard calculation behind his smile. “Done like a Scot,” is all he says, and I think his voice rings with contempt for a man who could leave his wife in danger. “Done like a Scot.”
BAYNARD’S CASTLE, LONDON, ENGLAND, MAY 1516
Katherine sent me a white palfrey for my state entry into London. She sent me headdresses of gold in the heavy gable style that she prefers. She sent me gowns, and rich materials for more gowns. I think it is she who gave the orders for the great wooden furniture to be installed in every room of the castle, and for fresh rushes with meadowsweet and lavender to be scattered on every floor. She certainly appointed the heads of my household so that it can run as a great palace, and her steward bought the food in the larders. The king pays for my household servants: my carver Sir Thomas Boleyn, my chaplain, all the yeomen of my household—ushers, cellarers, and guards—and for the ladies who attend me. Katherine has loaned me jewels to add to the inheritance which she finally sent to Morpeth, and I have furs from the royal wardrobe and sleeves lined with royal ermine.
And then, finally, she comes herself. One of her ladies, the wife of Sir Thomas Parr, comes in the morning to tell me that the queen will give herself the pleasure of calling on me in the afternoon, if I wish. I say that this will be a pleasure for me, but my assent is nothing but a formality as Maud Parr and I both know. Katherine can come whether it is convenient or not. She is Queen of England; she can do anything she wishes. I grit my teeth when I think that she will come and go as she pleases and I owe her thanks for the attention.
I hear her guard of honor accompanying her down Dower Gate and I hear the cheers that follow her. The English love the Spanish princess who waited and waited for the day when she would finally be queen. I cannot see her from my window, though I press my face against the glass. I have to sit on my throne in my presence chamber to wait for her to arrive.
They throw open the doors. I rise to my feet and advance to greet her, for however I remember her from our girlhood—pale, sorrowful, poor—she is Queen of England now and I am the exiled Queen of Scotland and it is me waiting for my luck to change, not her. I curtsey to her, she curtseys to me, then she opens her arms and we hug. I am surprised by her warmth. She pats my face and says that I have grown into a beauty, what lovely hair I have. How well the gown suits me.
I give her one searching glance, and I could laugh alo
She says at once, “Don’t let’s talk here among everyone. Can we go to your privy chamber?” and I hear once again that familiar, irritating Spanish accent, which she has ostentatiously retained, thinking it makes her special, after fourteen years of speaking English.
“Of course,” I say, and even though I live here, I have to step back and show her into the room that leads off the presence chamber, just before my private rooms.
Informally, she takes a seat in the window and beckons me to join her, seated beside her at the same height, as if we are equals. Her ladies and mine sit on stools out of earshot, though they are all dying to know how we will make friends, when everyone knows there is so much between us, and so much of it bad.
“You are looking so well,” she says warmly. “In such good looks! After all that you have endured.”
“And you too,” I lie. When I last saw her she was a young widow, hoping against all the evidence that my father would let her marry Harry, fragile in black, dainty as a doll. Now, she has achieved her heart’s desire, and found it lacking. They married for love—passionate boyish love on his part—but they have had five pregnancies and only one healthy child, and she is a girl. Harry takes a lover every time Katherine is pregnant, and she is pregnant almost every year. They are not the golden couple of her dreams. I expect she thought that she would be like her mother and father, equally proud, equally beautiful, equally powerful, in love forever.