“I insist,” I say weakly. “I have to have my baby at Linlithgow with my husband at my side.”
“I will make sure of it,” he promises me.
I nod, I don’t even thank him, as the faintness sweeps over me as I lean back in the arms of my ladies. They lay me down on the goose-down pillows, they flutter around the litter, and I wave them away and command them to drop the curtains. When the litter is shielded by the thick curtains of cloth of gold and they are mounting their horses to escort me, and Albany is gone, I sit up and hug myself, and have to put my hands over my mouth to muffle my joyous laughter.
LINLITHGOW PALACE, SCOTLAND, SEPTEMBER 1515
I am seated in a chair at the fireside, in a loose silver night robe. My hair is combed out and spread over my shoulders like a golden veil. When the captain of Albany’s troop brings my husband into the room I raise my eyes and make a little gesture as if to show that I cannot rise, as Archibald, tanned and smiling after weeks of hard riding, runs to fling himself at my feet and bends his smooth fox head into my lap.
“Your Grace,” he says, muffled. “My wife, my beloved.”
“I’ll leave you,” the captain says, anxious to be out of the perfumed room. “My lord—you are on parole. I will report to the Duke of Albany in Edinburgh that you are safely here and on your honor to stay here within the palace walls.”
My husband turns his head and smiles at our enemy. “Thank him for this,” he says. “I am grateful. Whatever happens in the future, he has behaved with the courtesy of a lord of chivalry.”
The captain puffs up a little, and bows and goes out.
Silently, Archibald tiptoes across the room and locks the door behind him. He turns back to me. “Ready?” His dark eyes are sparkling with excitement.
“Ready,” I say. I throw off the billowing night robe, underneath I am wearing my riding gown. Archibald himself kneels at my feet and helps me into my riding boots. My lady-in-waiting hands me a dark cape and I draw the hood over my head.
“You have everything?”
“Tom, my groom, has my jewels and what money I have to hand,” I say. “The luggage train will come after.”
He nods. “You know the stairs?”
I lead him through the adjoining door to the little chapel. Behind the altar is a hidden doorway, used only by the visiting priests. It opens without a creak and I take a candle from the altar and lead him down the winding steps. The door at the bottom is unbolted, Archibald pulls it open and there, waiting for us, are George Douglas and a couple of servants and men-at-arms.
“Can you ride?” George asks, eyeing my swollen belly.
“I have to,” I say simply. “I will tell you if I have to stop.”
They have a pillion saddle on Archibald’s horse and a man-at-arms lifts me up behind him. My maid and my lady-in-waiting go on their own horses and the grooms lead a couple of spares.
“Not too fast,” I say to Archibald.
“We have to get away,” he reminds me. “We have to meet with Alexander Hume and his guard, and ride to my castle before they know you are gone.”
I wrap my arms around him and I put my belly against his back. My baby’s father is going to save us. He has rescued us from an unjust imprisonment. We are free.
TANTALLON CASTLE, FIRTH OF FORTH, SCOTLAND, SEPTEMBER 1515
We ride all night through country that I sense, but cannot see. There are wide skies above, and a rolling landscape around us. I hear owls, and once a white-faced ghost of a barn owl lifts off the hedge before us, making the horse shy, and I grip onto Ard in fright. For most of the journey I can hear the sea, which grows louder and louder, and then I hear the piercing cry of seagulls.
It is dawn before we come to Tantallon Castle, Ard’s own fortress, his family home, and I gasp when there is a gap in the trees and I see it for the first time. It is a formidable hulk of a building, beautifully designed with proud turrets each capped with a conical roof. It is faced with gray limestone but here and there the stone has been battered away by hard weather, and the plum color of the local stone makes the castle gleam as warm as sunrise.
It faces the North Sea, where the sun is showing long brilliant rays across the rolling waves. The sound of the sea roars on, as loud as our hoofbeats; the smell of the sea makes me lift my head, and breathe the salt air. The seagulls cry, whirling in the dawn light, and beyond the castle I see the Bass Rock: a great dome of rock like a mountain, blazing white in the morning light, with a cloud of seabirds around its cliffs and a little fort perched facing the land. Castle and island face each other, equally impregnable. Round the castle there is a constant swirl of house martins, and now I hear their screaming cries.
“We can’t stay here long,” Angus says. “It’s too small, there’s no comfort for you, and it can’t withstand a siege.”
“Surely it could hold out forever!”
He shakes his head. “Not if Albany brings up cannon. We know he has Mons. If we set a siege we can’t get out again, and he could wait us out. This is a good castle for short battles, for defense and attack. But we can’t wait for your brother. Are you sure he will come?”
“He will not forget me,” I say awkwardly. “My sisters will tell him . . .”
“Will he send Lord Dacre?”
“I promise you, Harry loves me. His wife will tell him; the Dowager Queen of France will speak for me. He will not forget a Tudor princess. He will act now I have escaped. He will come for me, or I will go to him.”
“I certainly hope so,” Archibald says unpleasantly. “For if he does not rescue you, I don’t know what we’re going to do. Or where we will go next.”
“Next?” I ask. “But I need to rest, Archibald. I need to be somewhere safe to have my child.” The excitement of the escape has worn off and I am anxious about my boys, left in Albany’s keeping in Stirling. Someone will tell my son that his mother has run away and left him and his brother to their enemies.
“You can rest here,” he says begrudgingly. “We will tell Lord Dacre that you have escaped, as he demanded. We are near to the border. He must come for you.”
We ride down a narrow track and cross a massive ditch, deep enough to lose a regiment of cavalry. They would go down and never ride up again. There is an open field and then the castle moat crossed by a wooden bridge to the gatehouse.
The guards recognize my husband, and I have a flush of pride that the drawbridge falls down and the portcullis rattles up without a word being spoken. Ard rides into his own, like the lord that he is.
Inside the curtain walls it is a jumble like a poor village. The farmers and the peasants and serfs who live outside the castle have learned, in the way that these people always learn, that Archibald has ridden against the governor in the service of his wife, the queen regent. They may not understand what this means but they know that trouble is coming their way. Everyone who lives within a score of miles in any direction has piled inside the castle walls, and they have brought their livestock too. I see what Archibald means, that such a great castle cannot withstand a siege. The people will eat up everything in days.
“They shouldn’t be here,” I say to Ard, quietly against his back. “You’ll have to send them away.”
“These are my people,” he says grandly. “Of course they come to me when we are in danger. My danger is their danger. They want to share it.”
Ard jumps off the horse and turns to lift me down. I am cramped from sitting behind him for so long, and weary and hungry.