My dear sister, of course I will write to my lady grandmother and to my father too, I shall do what I can for you. Who would have thought that you would have come to England so grandly—I remember I was so entranced by your gold laces!—and now find yourself reduced so low? I pity you with all my heart and I shall pray for your safe return to Spain if matters cannot be settled in England. Your sister, Margaret the Queen.
I have the pyx in my rooms ready for my time, and my confessor and the good canons of Holyrood Abbey praying for me at all hours. I have no fear, despite what my husband says. I think to myself, scornfully, that he is a man who wears a hair shirt, who belts himself with a cilice, who killed his own father, an ordained king; of course he sees curses and doom everywhere. Really, he should go to Jerusalem as soon as possible. How else can he regain God’s favor if not with a crusade? His sins are not ordinary errors that you can wash away with a few Hail Marys from an absent-minded priest. He is not like me, who was born for greatness with God’s blessing.
I am not afraid of this birth and it is an easy one. The baby is a great disappointment as it is a princess but I think I will call her Margaret and ask my lady grandmother to be her godmother and come to her baptism. The baby goes to the wet nurse’s breast quietly enough but she does not suckle well and I see the woman exchange a glance with one of the rockers as if she is uneasy. They don’t say anything to me and I let them wash me and bind my private parts with moss and herbs, and I go to sleep. When I wake up she is dead.
This time my husband speaks to me kindly. He comes into my confinement chamber though no man is supposed to enter—even the priest prayed with me from the other side of a veiled screen. But James comes in quietly, waving the women aside as they flap and scold him, and he holds my hand as I lie in the bed, even though I have not yet been churched and am still unclean. I am not crying; it is strange that he does not remark on my silence. I don’t feel like crying, I feel like going to sleep. I wish I could sleep and never wake up again.
“My poor love,” he says.
“I am sorry.” I can hardly speak, but I owe him the apology. There must be something wrong with me, to have two babies die one after the other. And now Katherine and Mary in England will hear of my loss and I am sure Katherine will think that there is something wrong with me, something wrong with the Tudors, and “Alas, it never happened for any of us.” Mary is too young and stupid to know that to lose a child is the worst thing a queen can do, but Katherine will be quick to compare me to her fertile mother and her symbol of the pomegranate and press her own case to be married to Harry.
“It’s nothing but bad luck,” James says, as if he has never heard of a curse and never spoken of it to me. “But the main thing is that we know we can make children and that you can carry them. That’s the greatest challenge, believe me, sweetheart. The next one will live, I am certain of it.”
“A boy,” I say quietly.
“I will pray,” he says. “I will make a pilgrimage. And you will rest and get well and strong and when we are old and surrounded by grandchildren and great-grandchildren we will pray for the souls of these little ones. We will remember them only in our prayers, we will forget this sorrow. It will all be well, Margaret.”
“You said about a curse . . .” I begin.
He makes a little gesture of dismissal. “I spoke from anger and grief and fear. I was wrong to speak so to you. You are too young and you were raised to think yourself above fault. Life will teach you differently. You don’t need me to humble you. I would be a poor husband if I were to try to hurry you into the wisdom of despair.”
“I am no fool,” I say with dignity.
He bows his head. “That’s good, for I certainly am,” he says.
I think I will write to my sister Mary, since she is now betrothed to the heir of the greatest of the Christian kings, and warn her not to be overproud, for it may be that she marries a great man but cannot give him an heir. Every report from England goes on and on that she is growing more and more beautiful, but that does not mean she will be fertile or able to raise a strong baby. I think she should know that my grief may be hers; she need not be certain that she will get off scot-free. I think I will tell her it may be that the Tudors are not so high and mighty and blessed by God. I think I will tell her that she may not have as great a destiny as everyone confidently predicts, she should not think that she will be spared just because she has always been everyone’s pet, and always the prettiest child.
But then, something stops me. It’s odd that I should have a pen and paper before me and find that I don’t want to caution her. I don’t want to cast a shadow over her. Of course the thought of her dancing around Richmond Palace, queening it at Greenwich, being the center of fashion and beauty and extravagance at a wealthy court, grates on me, but I don’t want to be the one to tell her that our family may not be as blessed as we imagined. We may not always be lucky. There may be some shadow that hangs over our name: we may have to pay for the death of Edward of Warwick; for the hanging of the boy we called Perkin Warbeck, whoever he was. Without doubt, it was us who won the greatest benefit from the disappearance of the two Plantagenet princes from the Tower. We may have done nothing but we gained the most.
So I write instead to my lady grandmother and tell her of my disappointment and sorrow, and I ask her—for perhaps she knows—if there is any reason why God would turn His face from me and not bless me with a son? Why would a Tudor princess not be able to get and keep a boy? I don’t say anything about a curse on the Tudors, or about Katherine in poverty at court—for why would she listen to me?—but I ask her if she knows of any reason that our line should not be strong. I do wonder what she will reply. I wonder if she will tell me the truth.
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, EASTER 1509
We come to Stirling for Easter, in the bitter cold, the horses laboring through drifts of snow, and the carts with the goods bogged down, arriving days late, so my walls are bare of tapestries. I have no curtains around my bed, I have to sleep in coarse linen and there are no crests embroidered on my pillows.
My husband laughs and says that I have been spoiled by the balmy weather of England, but I still cannot believe that it can be so cold and so dark at this time of the year. I long for the sight of green springing grass and the lilt of birdsong in the early morning. I say that I will stay in bed until it is light, and if that proves to be midday then so be it.
He swears that I shall stay in bed and that he himself will bring the wood for my fireplace and mull me a mug of ale at my bedside fire for my breakfast. He is merry and kind to me and I am with child again, warmed with hope and confidence: this time I will be lucky, I think. I have suffered enough.
I think he has come to read to me again, and I hope that it is not Erse poetry, when he enters my rooms one afternoon with a paper in his hand. I can understand it now, but the poems are very long. He does not sit in his usual chair at the fireplace but on the side of my bed, and his face is very grave as he looks around for Eleanor Verney, my senior lady-in-waiting, and makes a little gesture with his hand to tell her to stay with us. I know at once that it is bad news from England.
“Is it my lady grandmother?” I ask.