LINLITHGOW PALACE, SCOTLAND, AUGUST 1513
I dream terrible dreams: of James sinking beneath the waves and pearls bubbling from his drowning mouth; of walking on a seashore and calling to him, pearls crunching under my feet; of sitting before a mirror and watching him fasten a magnificent necklace of diamonds about my neck which melts into dripping pearls as he ties it. I wake in tears and I say to him: “You will die, I know you will die, and I will never wear diamonds again. I will have to wear pearls for mourning, nothing but pearls, and I will be alone with my son and how will I ever bring him safely to the throne?”
“Hush,” he says gently. “Nothing can stop it going forward.”
He bids me a formal farewell, as if we are a king and queen of a romance. He bows before me and I put my hand on his stubborn red head and give him my blessing. He rises up and kisses my hand. I give him a silk handkerchief embroidered with my initials and he tucks it inside his jacket, as if it were a favor and he was only going jousting. He wears his finest jacket of crimson red embroidered with his name on the collar in gold thread and with his crest of thistles all over the front. I embroidered it myself, it looks very fine. He turns from me and vaults into the saddle of his warhorse, vaults like a boy as if to show me that he is as young and lusty as my brother. He raises his hand, and his personal guard close up behind him and then they move off. The hooves are like thunder, hundreds of big horses moving like one great beast. The dust rises in a cloud. I gesture for the nursemaid to take our boy inside; but I stand and watch till the men are out of sight.
Then we have to wait. I find I keep hoping for a last-minute change of plans. I am a symbol of the perpetual peace; I cannot make myself understand that the peace is broken. They bring me news almost daily. James takes Norham Castle, and then Wark, Etal Castle and others. These are no petty victories; these are great fortresses, engraved on the hearts of the border men, and we are moving the border, pushing it farther and farther south, towards Newcastle. We are taking English castles, we are taking English land. The area that they call the “debatable lands” will be debated no more; it will become Scotland. This is becoming a great expedition: no mere raid, this is a victorious invasion.
Each time the messenger draws close to the castle on the loch, the king’s standard rippling before him, a guard thundering behind him, we become more confident. As we foresaw, Thomas Howard brings all the forces that he can muster, but Thomas Howard is underprovisioned and fearful. He has no reserves, he has no local support. His own English border lords rob his wagon train and steal his horses. His allies are uncertain, and begrudge sending servants to fight at the border when they have already paid fees for a war in France. Harry has taken the flower of his nobility to France to make war for his father-in-law, to oblige his wife. He has left England woefully unprotected. He is a fool. We can win this war against an absent king and halfhearted defenders.
Then James sends a short message to say that they will come to open battle. He will take possession of Branxton Hill. He has outmaneuvered Howard who should, if he had any sense, withdraw to Newcastle. Howard’s soldiers are hungry, thirsty, stealing their own rations, and the borderers—wild men, English and Scots—set upon stragglers, kill them, and strip them naked. James’s army, well fed and well armed, is established on the high ground of Flodden Edge. The English will have to fight uphill against Scots gunners.
I wait for news. A battle must have been joined. Thomas Howard dare not go back to London to face Katherine without a battle to report. If he returns defeated, then the Howard family will be ruined. He has everything to lose. His reputation and the friendship of his king hang in the balance; I know how doggedly, how bitterly he will pursue his only course. But James need not fight, James could withdraw. He and his army could melt away back across our border, and boast of another successful raid on England that frightened them to death in the Northern counties and showed Harry that he cannot treat us with contempt.
I am sure that is what James will do—it is how the Scots have always tormented the English—but then a message comes and tells us that battle has been joined. Half a day later someone comes from Edinburgh with news that we have won the day, and the Scots are marching south. They may march as far as London! What is to stop them if they have defeated the English army? Then another report comes from a runaway soldier that there was a terrible battle, but when he fled it was going against us.
It pours with rain, a wall of water that holds us in the castle as if the sky has decided that no news shall come through. Every morning I wake to the patter of raindrops against the window and hear the gurgle of rainwater in the cisterns and the rush from the stone-carved gargoyle faces splashing down their streams into the stone courtyard. I think of my husband outside in the wind and the storm; I think of his archers with wet bowstrings, his gunners with damp powder. I swear that no one is to believe anything, they are not even to speak, until we hear from James himself. I have to be, as he called on me to be, a true queen, a Queen of Scots, a gallant heart and a proud one. But then they tell me that a messenger has come from the lords’ council in Edinburgh, with definite news, and he is waiting in my presence chamber.
I find my heart is thudding fast and I feel sick, as if I am with child again. I put my hand to my throat and feel my pulse race. Everyone who has any business to be in my rooms and anyone who has any excuse to attend has crowded into the great chamber. I walk slowly from the chapel, where I was praying for James to come home, defeated or victorious—I find I don’t care as long as he comes home. The guards throw open the doors and the babble of speculation goes instantly silent as I walk through the massed crowd of strange faces and mount the steps to my throne, turn and stand before them, looking calmly around me. I think, irrelevantly, God help me, I am only twenty-three years old. Someone else should be here listening to this, someone who knows what to do. Katherine would know how to stand, how to listen, how to respond. I feel as if I am like my little sister Mary—too young to be part of important times.
The messenger is standing before me in James’s livery, his writ from the lords’ council in his hand. “What news?” I say, and I try to speak steadily. “Good news, I hope?”
The man is filthy from his ride from Edinburgh, muddy and wet from fording rivers, soaked from his head to his dirty boots. They will have told him to let nothing delay him and to report only to me. He kneels and I realize at once from the anguish in his face that there is no point in my saying “Good news, I hope?” in my stupid little-girl voice. It is not good news and I know it.
“Speak,” I say quietly.
“Defeated,” he chokes, as if he is ready to take my place and weep.
“The king?”
“Dead.”
I sway but the carver of my household holds me upright, as if I have to hear this news on my feet, though my husband is facedown in the mud.