Three Sisters, Three Queens by Philippa Gregory
My mother is still in bed, her bedroom fire just flickering into life. Her lady is bringing gowns for her to choose for the day, the heavy headdresses are laid out on the table. She looks up as I dawdle into her bedroom. I think I should say something, but I don’t know what.
“You’re up early, Margaret,” she remarks.
“I went to Prime with my lady grandmother.”
“Is she joining us for breakfast?”
“Yes.” And I think: my lady grandmother will know what to do when the confessor comes in with his face the color of a manuscript and grief written all over it.
“Is everything all right, little queen?” she asks me tenderly.
I can’t bear to answer her. I take a seat at the window and look out at the garden, and listen for the footsteps that soon come heavily along the corridor. Then, at last, after what seems like a long long time, I hear the outer doors to her presence chamber open, the sound of footsteps, the inner doors to the privy chamber open and then finally, unstoppably, the door to her bedroom is opened, and my father’s confessor comes into my mother’s rooms, his head bowed as low as the poorest drudge pulling a plow. I jump to my feet when he comes in, and I put out my hand as if I can stop him from speaking. I say suddenly: “No! No!” but he says quietly, “Your Grace, the king bids you come to his rooms at once.”
Terribly, my mother turns to me. “What is it? You know, don’t you?”
Terribly, I reply: “It’s Arthur. He’s dead.”
They say that he died of the Sweat—and this only makes it worse for us Tudors. The disease came in from the jails of France with my father’s convict army. Wherever he marched, from Wales, through Bosworth to London, people died in an instant. England had never known such a disease. My father won the battle against Richard III with his sickly force, but he had to delay his coronation because of the horror that they brought with them. They called it the Tudor curse and said that the reign that had begun in sweat would end in tears. And now here we are, not anywhere near the end of our reign, but deep in sweat and tears, and the curse of the invading army has fallen on my innocent brother.
My father and my mother take the loss of their elder son very hard. They don’t just lose their boy—and he was not yet sixteen—they lose their heir, the boy they trained to be the next king, the Tudor who was to come to the throne with acclaim, a Tudor that the people wanted, not one that was forced on them. My father had to fight for his throne and then defend it. He has to defend it still, even now, against the older royal family who would take it if they could, the Plantagenet cousins who are in open enmity in Europe, or those who stay uncertainly at court. Arthur was going to be the first Tudor that all of England welcomed to the throne, the son of both the old royal family and the new. They called him the sweet briar, the Tudor rose, the bush that was the union of two roses, the Lancaster red and the York white.
This is the end of my childhood. Arthur was my brother, my darling, my friend. I looked up to him as my senior, I acknowledged him as my prince, I thought I would see him come to the throne as king. I imagined him ruling in England and I as Queen of Scotland with a Treaty of Perpetual Peace and a regular exchange of visits and letters, loving each other as brother and sister and neighboring monarchs. And now that he is dead I realize how bitterly I resent the days that we did not spend together, the months when he was with Katherine in the Welsh Marches and I did not see him, nor write often enough. I think of the days of our childhood when we were taught by different tutors, when they kept us apart so that I might learn needlework and he Greek, and how few days I had with him, my brother. I don’t know how I can bear it without him. We were four Tudor children, and now we are only three, and the firstborn and the finest has gone.
I am walking down the gallery away from my mother’s rooms when I see Harry, his face all puffed and his eyes red from crying, coming the opposite way. When he sees me his little mouth goes downturned as if he is about to wail, and all my anger and my grief turns on him, this worthless boy, this brat, who presumes to cry as if he were the only person in the world to lose a brother.
“Shut up,” I say fiercely. “What have you got to cry about?”
“My brother!” he gulps. “Our brother, Margaret.”
“You weren’t fit to polish his boots.” I am choking with resentment. “You weren’t fit to groom his horse. There will never be another like him. There will never be another prince like him.”
Amazingly, this stops his tears. He goes white and almost stern. His head rears up, his shoulders go back, he sticks out his thin little-boy chest, he plants his fists on his hips, he almost manages to swagger. “There will be another prince like him,” he swears. “Better than him. Me. I am the new Prince of Wales and I shall be King of England in his place, and you can get used to it.”
WINDSOR CASTLE, ENGLAND, SUMMER 1502
We do get used to it. That’s the difference between being royal and being a commoner of no importance. We can grieve and pray and break our hearts on the inside, but on the outside we still have to make the court the center of beauty and fashion and art, my father still has to pass laws and meet with the Privy Council and guard against rebels and the constant threat of the French, and we still have to have a Prince of Wales, even though the true prince, the beloved Prince Arthur, will never take his seat next to the throne again. Harry is the Prince of Wales now and, as he predicted, I get used to it.
But they won’t send him to Ludlow. This makes me angrier than anything; but since we are royal I can say nothing. Darling Arthur had to go to Ludlow to rule his principality, to learn the business of being king, to prepare him for the greatness that was to be his; but now that they have lost him they won’t let Harry out of their sight. My mother wants her last surviving son at home. My father is fearful that he might lose his only heir. And my grandmother advises my father that between the two of them they can teach Harry everything he needs to know to be a king, and that they had better keep him at court. Precious Harry does not have to go far away, nor marry a strange princess. No veiled beauty is going to be brought in to lord it over all of us. Harry can be under his grandmother’s eye, under her wing, under her thumb as if they would keep him a spoiled baby forever.
Katherine of Arrogant—not arrogant at all now, but white-faced and thin and pale—comes back from Ludlow in a closed litter. My lady mother is absurdly indulgent to her, though she has done nothing for our family at all but steal Arthur away from us for the last months of his life. Mother weeps over her, and holds her hand, walks with her and they pray together. She invites her to visit, so we have her black silks and velvets, her incredibly rich black mantilla, her stupid silent Spanish presence, sweeping up and down the galleries all the time, and my lady mother orders that we all say nothing that might upset her.
But really, whatever would upset her? She pretends to understand neither English nor French as I speak it; and I am not going to attempt a conversation in Latin. Even if I wanted to pour out my grief and jealousy, I would not be able to find words that she would understand. When I speak to her in French, she looks completely blank; and when I am sitting next to her at dinner I turn my shoulder to show that I have nothing to say to her. She went to Ludlow with the most beautiful, kind, loving prince the world has ever known and she failed to keep him, so now he is dead and she is marooned in England—and I am supposed not to upset her? Should not my lady mother consider that perhaps she upsets me?
She is living, at enormous expense, at Durham House in the Strand. I suppose they will send her home to Spain, but my father is unwilling to pay her jointure as a widow when he still has not received her full dowry as a bride. The wasted wedding alone cost thousands: the castle with the dancers, the peach silk sails of the masquing boat! The treasure house of England is always empty. We live very grandly, as a royal family should do, but my father pays out a fortune on spies and couriers to watch the courts of Europe for fear of our Plantagenet cousins in exile plotting to return and seize our thr
She is supposed to be in mourning, living in seclusion, but she is always here. I come into the nursery one afternoon to find the room in uproar, and she is at the very center of it, playing at jousting with my sister Mary. They have lined up cushions to serve as the tilt rail that divides one horse from the other, and they are running either side of the tilt and hitting each other with cushions as they pass. Mary, who has developed little unconvincing sobs every time that Arthur is named in our memorial prayers in chapel, is now romping and laughing, and her cap has fallen off, her mass of golden curls is tumbled down, and her gown is tucked into her waistband so that she can run as if she were a milkmaid chasing cows. Katherine, no longer the silent, dark-gowned widow, has her black dress bunched in one hand so that she can paw the ground with her expensive black leather shoe, and canter down her side of the list and bump my little sister on her head with a cushion. The ladies of the nursery, far from calling for decorum, are placing bets and laughing and cheering them on.
I march in and I snap as if I were my lady grandmother: “What is this?”
It’s all I say; but I swear that Katherine understands. The laughter dies in her eyes and she turns to face me, a little shrug suggesting that there is nothing very serious here, just playing in the nursery with my sister. “Nothing. This is nothing,” she says in English, her Spanish accent strong.
I see that she understands English perfectly, just as I had always thought.
“These are not the days for silly games,” I say slowly and loudly.
Again that little foreign roll of the shoulders. I think with a pang of pain that perhaps Arthur found that little gesture charming. “We are in mourning,” I say sternly, letting myself look around the room, resting my eyes on every downcast face, just as my lady grandmother does when she scolds the entire court. “We are not playing silly games like idiots on the village green.”
I doubt that she understands “idiots on the village green,” but no one could misunderstand my tone of contempt. Her color rises as she pulls herself up to her greatest height. She is not tall; but now she seems to be above me. Her dark blue eyes look into mine and I stare back at her, daring her to argue with me.
“I was playing with your sister,” she says in her low voice. “She needs a happy time. Arthur did not want . . .”
I can’t bear her to say his name, this girl who came from Spain and took him away from court and watched him die. How dare she so casually say “Arthur” to me—who cannot speak his name for grief?
“His Grace would want his sister to behave as a Princess of England,” I spit out, more like my grandmother than ever. Mary lets out a wail and runs to one of the ladies to cry in her lap. I ignore her completely. “The court is in full mourning, there are to be no loud games, or dances, or heathen pursuits.” I look Katherine up and down with disdain. “I am surprised at you, Dowager Princess. I shall be sorry to tell my lady grandmother that you were forgetful of your place.”
I think I have shamed her in front of everyone, and I turn to the door glowing with triumph. But just as I am about to go out she says quietly and simply, “No, it is you who are wrong, Sister. Prince Arthur asked me to play with Princess Mary, and to walk and talk with you. He knew that he was dying, and he asked me to comfort you all.”
I spin round and I fly at her and pull her arm, drawing her away from the others, so that no one else can hear. “He knew? Did he give you a message for me?”
In that moment I am certain he has sent me words of farewell. Arthur loved me, I loved him, we were everything to each other. He would have sent a private good-bye just for me. “What did he tell you to tell me? What did he say?”
Her eyes slide away from mine and I think: there is something here that she is not telling me. I don’t trust her. I press her close to me as if I were embracing her.
“I am sorry, Margaret. I am so sorry,” she says, detaching herself from my hard grip. “He said nothing more than that he hoped no one would grieve for him and that I would comfort his sisters.”
“And you?” I say. “Did he command you not to grieve for him?”
Her eyelids lower; now I know there is some secret here. “We spoke privately before he died,” is all she says.
“About what?” I ask rudely.
She looks up suddenly and her eyes are blazing dark blue with passion. “I gave him my word,” she flares out. “He asked for a promise and I gave it.”
“What did you promise?”
The fair eyelashes shield her eyes again; once more she looks down, keeping her secret, keeping my brother’s last words from me.
“Non possum dicere,” she says.
“What?” I give her arm a little shake as if she were Mary and I might slap her. “Speak in English, stupid!”
Again she gives me that burning look. “I may not say,” she says. “But I assure you that I am guided by his last wishes. I will always be guided by his wishes. I have sworn.”
I feel completely blocked by her determination. I can’t persuade her and I can’t bully her. “Anyway, you shouldn’t be running about and making a noise,” I say spitefully. “My lady grandmother won’t like it, and my lady mother is resting. You have probably disturbed her already.”
“She is with child?” the young woman asks me quietly. Really, it is none of her business. And besides, my mother would not have had to conceive another child if Arthur had not died. It is practically Katherine’s fault that my mother is exhausted and facing another confinement.
“Yes,” I say pompously. “As you should be. We sent a litter to Ludlow to bring you home so you did not have to ride because we thought that you would be with child. We were being considerate to you, but it seems that there was no need for our courtesy.”
“Alas, it never happened for us,” she says sadly, and I am so furious that I go out of the room slamming the door, before I have time to wonder just what she means by that. “Alas, it never happened for us”?
What never happened?
WESTMINSTER ABBEY, LONDON, ENGLAND, FEBRUARY 1503
I think this must be the most miserable day of my life. I had thought that nothing would be worse than the loss of Arthur but now, only a year later, I have lost my mother, in childbed—trying to give my father and the country a son to replace the one we have lost. As if any child could ever replace Arthur! It was an insult to him to even think it, it was madness for her to attempt it. She wanted to console my father, to do the duty of a good queen to provide two heirs, and then she had a hard pregnancy and nothing to show at the end of it but a girl; so it was not worth the effort, anyway. I am in a rage of grief, furious with her, with my father, with God Himself, for the way that one terrible loss has turned into three: first Arthur and then my mother, and then her baby. And yet we still have Katherine of Arrogant. Why would we lose those three and keep her?
The funeral is a triumph of my lady grandmother’s ability to put on a grand show. She has always said that the royal family have to blaze before the people like saints in an altarpiece, and my mother’s death is an opportunity to remind the country that she was a Plantagenet princess who married a Tudor king. She did what the country should have done: submit to the Tudors and learn to love them. My mother’s coffin is draped in black with cloth of gold forming a cross on the hearse. They make a beautiful effigy of her for the top of the coffin, and my little sister Mary thinks it is her real mother, just sleeping, and that she will wake up soon and everything will be as it was. This fails to move me to tears, though it makes Princess Katherine bow her head and take Mary’s ha
It should be me, as Queen of Scotland, who takes over my mother’s rooms and the running of the court. I should have the best rooms and her ladies should serve me. But it is all done wrong: her household is turned away without my being consulted, and her ladies go back to live with their families in their London houses, in rooms at court or on their country estates. Although I am now the most important Tudor lady, and the only queen in England, I keep my old rooms. I don’t even have new mourning clothes but I have to wear the same things from when Arthur died. I keep expecting to see her, I keep listening for her voice. One day I find I am going to her rooms to see her, and then I remember that they are closed up and empty. It is strange that someone who was so quiet and discreet, who was always happy to step back and hold her peace, should leave such an aching silence when she is gone. But it is so.
My lady grandmother tells me that the death of my mother is God’s way of showing me that in every joy there is sorrow, and that titles and worldly show are passing pleasures. I don’t doubt that God speaks directly to my lady grandmother for she is always so certain about everything and her confessor, Bishop Fisher, is the holiest man I know. But God does not succeed in teaching me to disdain worldly show; on the contrary, the death of my mother, coming so soon after the loss of my brother, makes me long for the safety of wealth and my own crown more than ever before. I feel as if everyone I love best has gone from the world and no one can be trusted. The only reliable thing in this world is a throne and a fortune. The only thing I have left is my new title. The only things I trust are my jewel box, the wardrobe for my wedding, and the enormous fortune that will come to me on marriage.