Three Sisters, Three Queens by Philippa Gregory

  HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1518

  I receive merry news from the court in England. I wonder if they realize that it is like a physical pain to me to hear that they are well and happy and prosperous, making confident plans for the future, secure in their loves and their fortunes? I wonder if Mary ever stops to think that her breathless scribble about dresses, or the plans for a glorious betrothal of little Princess Mary to the French king’s son, makes me feel miserably excluded? She writes page after page and I decipher the excited crisscrossed script and picture the plans for the masque and the dancing and the joust, the dresses that must be ordered, the shoes that must be made, the tirewomen coming and going with gold wire and woven flowers and little diamonds, Harry’s laughter, Harry’s joy, Harry’s triumph at making peace with France and sealing it with the betrothal of his daughter, a baby of little more than two years old. At the very end of it she writes:

  And I have saved the best news of all—our dear sister Katherine is with child again, Our Lady of Walsingham has answered our prayers. God willing, the baby will be born in the Christmas season. Think what a Christmas we will have this year, with a new Tudor in the royal cradle!

  She commands me to think of their joy—she need not! I cannot stop myself thinking. I am haunted by their happiness. I know only too well what sort of a Christmas there will be at court, and I not there, and never even mentioned. While I am abandoned by my husband, shamed before my council, with my brother conspiring against me, Katherine will go into her confinement and Mary will be unchallenged queen, the leader in all the dances, the prizewinner in all the games, the mistress of the wealthiest court in Europe. Then when Katherine comes out with a baby in her arms, there will be a tremendous christening to honor the precious new child, the parties will begin all over again. If she has a boy there will be an enormous tournament and the celebrations will last for days and spread all over the kingdom. If she has a boy Harry will give her the key to the treasury of England and she can wear a new crown every day of the year, and my son will be disinherited.

  I look out of my window at the driving rain, at the gray mountains, shrouded in cloud, and the gray sky above them. I can hardly believe that such a world of joy and music and happiness still exists somewhere, and that once that world was mine. I don’t even begrudge their happiness without me. I cannot really blame them for forgetting about me. Myself, I can barely remember their faces.

  HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1519

  Christmas comes and goes and I have no news of my husband. It is hard to make merry without him carving the meat, or dancing with the ladies. Nobody speaks of him, but I hear that he is snowed-in with Janet Stewart at Newark Castle. The council do not consult me. I give no advice to Lord Dacre. It is as if I have stepped away from the regency, from my marriage, from life itself.

  My poor brother has lost a child, again. All their high hopes came to nothing and I am truly sad for him, and for her too. I hear late, long after their grief; the letter from Thomas Lord Dacre comes through only when the first spring thaw clears the road from the south. Bundled in his letter comes a note from Katherine.

  God did not grant us the happiness of her birth. Blessed is His Holy Name, and who can doubt His will? She was a little girl and she came early. I hoped it would not be too early, we had physicians and midwives ready when I thought she was coming and I tried to hold her into this unsteady life . . . but Our Father knew better, and I bow to His will, though I cannot understand it.

  I know that your life is not easy but I urge you to spend your time with your son, who is such a gift from heaven to a queen and a mother. This was my sixth child and yet I have only one in the nursery, and she is not the prince that I prayed for. God’s will be done, I tell myself this: God’s will be done. I say the words over and over, all through the night when I cannot sleep for crying.

  Our sister Mary is with child again, thank God, and in my own sorrow I cannot do too much for her. I can hardly bear to let her out of my sight and I pray for her safety in her ordeal that is to come. I wish I felt better able to help her, but I am weary and exhausted by disappointment. You will understand how low I feel when I tell you that my maid in-waiting, little Bessie Blount, has left court to give birth. I cannot write more. The ways of God are mysterious indeed. I hope you will pray for me that I learn to resign myself gladly to His will.

  Oh, dear Margaret, I feel that I am ready to die with grief . . .

  Katherine

  I cannot face the spring weather with the courage that I should. Every day is Tudor green, every day the snow melts away and the sun shines a little more strongly. In front of the church the snowdrops are lifting their heads above the whiteness of the frost under the silver birch trees. The birds are starting to sing in the mornings, and the smell of new buds and of the turned earth comes in through the open windows and makes me feel that renewal is possible, that I might recover from this long winter of disappointment.

  The council does not let me see my son more than once a week but this much at least they allow. I send no message to Archibald, I think that I will never see him again and it is as if I am a widow. I wish I could grieve for the loss of him; once again I am a widow with no body to bury. He sends me neither messages nor money. He keeps all my rents and all my fees are paid to him. To get through these cold days I have been forced to pawn all the gifts that I brought from England. My last two gold cups I sent to Lord Dacre as a pledge for a loan. Now, as we come to the end of the winter quarter, I dismiss my household staff so that I am served by no more than a handful of people. I lend my horses to private stables, I send my ladies back to their homes. I live as if I were a private gentlewoman of scant means. The council are full of sympathy but they can do nothing. Archibald collects all my rents as my husband, and he lives like a lord in Newark Castle, with the woman who calls herself his wife. She has given birth to a child—a daughter. They live well, the castle fortified, the household staffed. They are rich, on the fees that are paid by my tenants. Undeniably, he is my husband and he has a legal right to my fortune. He is the lord and master of my houses and he can live where he pleases; his treatment of me does not amount to grounds for divorce. He is a bad husband: but the Church does not concern itself with that. He is still my husband, he still has my fortune.

  The only way I could defend myself would be to declare that he is indeed Lady Janet’s husband; she is the Countess of Angus, our marriage is bigamous, our daughter is a bastard, and I am an adulterous whore. The question of whether I should regard myself as a betrayed wife or a sinful adulteress wakes me in the early hours of the morning, and haunts me all the day.

  I have lost my position as a wife, and also my authority as a queen. Another woman makes merry in my house and revels in the love of her husband who was once mine. I can see no one and go nowhere; I shall become like my dead husband—a ghost that people say still lives, but one that is never seen. They will write ballads about us and say that one day we will return to bring peace to Scotland and set our boy on the throne. People will see us in mists and tell stories about us when they are drunk.

  I know that I should fight this half death, this nonlife. I have to surrender all my hopes of Archibald and give him up. I must take the shame of being a whore and declare him my enemy. I must forget that I ever loved him. I must go to England and throw myself into my brother’s arms, and call on him to help me get a divorce from Archibald.

  Now I think wistfully: if only I had taken the advice of the good Lord Chancellor Thomas Wolsey I would be the Dowager Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, with a treasure house of jewels and a wardrobe full of gowns. No one would be powerful enough to refuse my command that my son lives with me. I would be called “Her Majesty” and I would create an imperial court in Scotland. I was such a fool to tell Thomas Wolsey and my brother that I would be true to Archibald. Wolsey is a papal legate now, he could win me a divorce from Archibald with one letter. I should never have spoken
of vows that cannot be broken and love that cannot be denied. There is only one bond that I trust and that is between a woman and her sisters. Only the three of us are indissoluble. We never take our eyes off each other. In love and rivalry, we always think of each other.

  I write to Harry. I don’t speak of Archibald’s infidelity; I say only that we are not together and that he has taken my rents. I say to Harry that I will come back to London to live at court, and that I will only be married again with his advice. I am saying, as clearly as can be: I will be divorced. I will be your sister again, I will be all Tudor and no Stewart. You can use me as you will, marry me to where I can serve you, as long as you keep me as you should. I don’t expect to be a rival monarch, I don’t expect to outshine your wife, Katherine. I see that she has done what I could not do—even my little sister Mary has done better than I. The two of them married for love and kept their husbands. Once, I jealously compared myself with them and was filled with pride; now I am humbled. I write to Katherine and to Mary and I send the letters in the same package. I tell them that I am brought very low and that I want to come home.

  LINLITHGOW PALACE, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1519

  It is a long summer before I receive any reply from my brother Harry. A long summer, when my son is moved from plague-sick Edinburgh; but I am not invited to travel with him. A long summer when nobody visits me and I turn from sorrow to coldness, when I resolve that from this summer onward I shall never again be guided by passion, but only by my interests. A long summer when I see that my only friends, my only true loves, are my sisters, who know what it is to lose a child, who know what sorrow means for a woman, who write to me.

  Harry is silent; I know why. He will be traveling away from the crowded, dirty city of London. He will be visiting the beautiful palaces on the Thames and then hunting around the great houses of Southern England, always delightedly welcomed, always offered the very best that the countryside can provide. He will leave Thomas Wolsey with all the work of the kingdom; he will not trouble himself to write to anyone, least of all me. He will not think of me, abandoned by my husband, unprotected by my brother, constantly trying to come to some accord with the lords of the council, constantly appealing to the absent Duke of Albany.

  My sister Mary does not neglect me. She writes and tells me that she has given birth to another girl—the Brandons do seem to run to girls—and has called her Eleanor. For sure, they would have preferred another boy, anyone would. A second Brandon boy would have been another heir to the throne to follow my son James. Their oldest boy is one step behind mine, and my James looks more and more likely to inherit every day that goes by. If the last lost baby was Katherine’s final attempt—and surely soon she must reach the end of her fertile years—then it will be my boy who takes the throne after Harry.

  It is impossible not to think like this, however hard-hearted it feels. I pity Katherine very truly. I wept when I read her letter telling me of the loss of her baby, but I cannot help but know that while she has no son, my boy stands to inherit the kingdom of England and Ireland as well as Scotland. Surely Mary too must think like this? Surely Mary must wish that she had another boy? She cannot love Katherine so selflessly that she does not hope for the end of her fertile years. Can anyone love a sister so much that she puts her interests first?

  But perhaps Mary is a better sister to the queen than I, for she writes very gaily that the new baby is the prettiest of children with skin like the petal of a pale rose and that they are all delighted with a daughter.

  And something very dreadful has happened. Bessie Blount, who was such a dear little maid-in-waiting to our sister, left court without leave from the queen and simply disappeared. The young woman has had a baby and, oh Maggie, I am sorry to say—she has had a boy and it is, without doubt, Harry’s son.

  I put down her letter and walk to the window and look out, not seeing the waves cresting white on the gray waters as the wind moves across the loch. I think firstly: I need not worry; this does not matter. This baby will have no place in the line of inheritance, he is a bastard and counts for nothing. But then I think more coolly that he is the first Tudor bastard that Harry has ever made, and that counts for something. That counts for a lot. Bessie has shown the world that Harry can get a boy, and if the child lives, he will show the world that Harry can get a healthy boy.

  This is no small thing on its own. And—in turn—it proves that the fault with all these dead heirs lies with Katherine, and not with my handsome brother. Everyone thought this before, but nobody dared to say it. Now it is proven as the truth. She is older than he—only by a few years, to be sure; but she is thirty-three now, with a string of miscarriages and stillbirths behind her. She comes from a family that is riddled with death and sickness, and in all these years she has managed only one delicate little girl. But Harry’s mistress, the lively, healthy, young Bessie, has given him a bonny boy in the fifth year of their affair. This is a triumphant proof of my brother’s virility and denies, contradicts, and silences forever the belief that the Tudors are cursed for their invasion of England and for the disappearance of the princes in the Tower. Whoever it was that killed the princes and was left with a curse on their line, it is not us. For I have a strong boy, Mary has Henry Brandon, and now my brother has a fat little bastard. They are calling him Henry Fitzroy. Henry for the king and Fitzroy to indicate a royal bastard. They could not have chosen two names that would hurt Katherine more. I should think it will break her heart. Now she will know what grief is. Once she taught heartbreak to me; now Bessie Blount has taught her.

  LINLITHGOW PALACE, SCOTLAND, AUTUMN 1519

  Not until the leaves are turning to bronze and gold in the woods that surround the loch do I receive a reply from my brother, wrapped and sealed by Lord Dacre, whose messengers have carried it, and whose spies will have read it. I don’t care. At last, here is my safe conduct, this is my escape. I knew that my brother would respond to me and that Thomas Wolsey would find a way to make it right. I have no doubt that this is my invitation to return to London, get my accursed marriage dissolved and—if I know Thomas Wolsey—find a brilliant match. Why should he not? It was just what he was begging me to do three years ago, with my brother promising me that it would be the best choice that I ever made.

  I take the letter to the little stone-walled room at the very top of the tower where I will not be disturbed and in my haste to open it I actually tear the heavy seal from the page. I see at once that it is not in Harry’s scrawl. He has dictated to a clerk. I imagine him, seated behind a table, sprawled and smiling, a glass of wine in his hand, Thomas Wolsey dealing out papers for signature like a winning hand of cards, as the groom of the ewery serves him dainties to eat. Charles Brandon, my self-seeking brother-in-law, lounges nearby, other men—Thomas Howard, Thomas Boleyn—stand back against the walls, quick to laugh, swift with a word of advice, as Harry dashes off a quick letter to me, one of the many duties that he has left too long, but which really cannot be delayed longer. It is nothing to him—an invitation to me to come to London. To me it is a release from prison.

  At first, I cannot understand the words on the page. I have to read and then reread them, they are so far from what I was expecting. Harry is not encouraging. Instead he chooses to be stern, as pompous as a little chorister. He speaks of the divine ordinance of inseparable matrimony, and he tells me that all disagreement between husband and wife is evil, and a sin. I turn the page to be sure that he has signed this farrago. This from a man whose bastard has broken his wife’s heart!

  Then I return to reading. Incredibly, he orders me to return to Archibald in thought and word and deed. We must live together as husband and wife or he will regard me as a sinner bound for hell, never more to be his sister. Archibald, his brother-in-law, has written to him, and Harry has listened to my faithless husband rather than to me. Perhaps this is the worst of all the terrible things that he says: that he has listened to Archibald and not to me. He has taken the man’s word for it, and been deaf to
his own sister. Helpfully, he tells me that Archibald will take me back without complaint, that only with Archibald at my side can I hope to regain my authority in Scotland. Only with Archibald at my side will he, the king, or his spymaster Lord Dacre, support me. Ignorant as ever, he explains that Archibald has authority over the lords of Scotland, only he can keep me on the throne. I drop my head in my hands: Dacre will have read this. And all his spies.

  Then Harry writes more. As if it were not enough to break my heart, he writes more, turning my shock into rage. He tells me that Katherine agrees. Apparently Katherine’s opinion counts heavily in all of this and she has decided that if I intend to defy God and live as a miserable sinner then I can be no sister of hers. I am not to come to England, I am not to divorce my husband, I am not to be happy. Katherine has decreed this, and so it will be. Katherine will not invite me to England: a divorced woman can never be her guest; her court could not be shamed, an adulteress could not come near her.

  For ye are yet carnal—Harry quotes Saint Paul at me, as if I did not know by heart every word that the old woman-hater said—for whereof is there among you envying and strife and divisions, are ye not carnal?

  I am so shocked by Harry’s tone, by his intent, by his leap from younger brother to preacher, from king to Pope, that I read the letter through several times in silence and then I go in silence down the steep stone stairs. One of my ladies is sitting in the window seat at the bottom. I wave away her exclamation at my white face and red eyes. “I must pray on this,” I say quietly.

  “There is an Observant Friar from London,” she warns me. “Sent by the Queen of England to assist you. He is waiting to see you.”