“And what is he paying you?” I spit. “What are you getting? What is Alexander Hume getting? What is your brother George getting? What are the Douglases getting from Lord Dacre? What did he pay you to conspire against my husband the king?”
There is a terrible silence.
His face is white. “You insult my honor,” he says, suddenly quiet, and I have a pang of fear. We have never quarreled like this before. I have never seen him beside himself with anger, and then suddenly grow icy like this. We have quarreled like lovers, hot words forgotten in hot kisses. But this is something new and terrible. “I will take you to safety in England, and then I will leave you. If you think I am a traitor to you I can serve you no longer.”
“Archibald!”
He cannot choose to leave me. I am queen regent: he has to wait until he is dismissed. But he bows very low and he gestures to the groom to lift me back up on the horse. “Mount up,” he says. “We’re going to Berwick.”
My face pressed to his unyielding back, I cry silently. I feel my big belly heaving with my sobs and I think this child is having the worst preparation for the world possible. Surely he will never survive this. Then I think that I will never survive this, and then I think I hope that I don’t. Archibald can struggle with his honor and his conscience, and my brother can be merry with his wife and my sister, and everyone can forget that I ever lived and tried to do the right thing for my two countries and my two sons while they all squander a fortune and throw away political advantage to satisfy their own desires. I sniffle a little with jealousy and self-pity as it starts to rain, and I fall asleep, my cheek against my husband’s back, my hood shrouding my face, and my shoulders getting steadily more damp.
I wake when they stop to water the horses and for everyone to eat. The sky is a beautiful hazy dark blue; clouds like gray gauze laid over blue satin define the horizon. Archibald lifts me down from the horse and helps me to a seat on the ground where someone has spread a rug. My lady brings me wine, a little bread, some meat, my maid kneels before me to hold the cup. I do not dare to tell anyone how very ill I feel.
The countryside is wild and open—it is wasteland, nobody lives here, nobody farms, nobody even hunts here. These are the open lands of the border where it is too wild to live and unsafe for any house less than a fortified tower. I have a sense of huge overarching skies and our little procession crawling like ants across a massive plain. At least nobody will find us, I think. There is so much wild land and so few roads, nobody will be able to guess where we are.
I eat some bread, I drink some wine and water. My ladies press me to have more but the pain in my belly is so intense that I think I will vomit if I eat more than a mouthful.
Archibald comes over while they are urging me to drink some small ale.
“We have to go on,” he says bluntly.
“My leg hurts,” I say. “I don’t think I can get back onto the saddle.”
“I am sorry, but you have no choice. We have to get to England. Albany will know that we are heading for Berwick. We’ve got about six miles still to go; we’re halfway there. We have to get over the border. Lord Dacre says that we must make sure there is no shot exchanged between Albany and ourselves. King Henry’s orders. A single shot would mean war between England and Scotland. And France would send an army to support Scotland. He says we must not be the cause of breaking the peace.”
“I don’t care,” I say stubbornly. “Let Albany come! Let us make a stand and start a war. It can serve Harry right for not coming earlier.”
“D’you know where you are?” Archibald asks me. His young voice is taunting, as if he were bullying another child in the schoolroom. “Do you know where you are, when you talk about starting a war?”
I shake my head.
My lady-in-waiting bends down to whisper in my ear. “We are on the route your husband the king took when he marched south to Flodden, Your Grace. My own husband died on the way, and is buried near here.”
Archibald sees my aghast face and laughs harshly. “There will be no war for you,” he says. “We would all be dead before Henry’s army took one step out of London. The cannon would plow these fields again, before your brother even called his parliament. You forget what a great general your husband was—he said that his cannon would mean the end of the old warfare, the end of all chivalry, and he was right. We have to live in the world that he foresaw. Now get up. We have to go.”
I cry out and cling to Archibald when they lift me onto the pillion saddle behind him. I think that my hip must have broken, the pain is so intense. It is like a sword thrust every time I move, and I am jolted at every pace as the horse starts to plod south again.
“We’re going to Berwick Castle.” Archibald tightens my hands around his waist and pats them gently, reassuringly. He is kind again, now that we are on the move. Resentfully, I think that he can be loving only when we are on the road. It is when we halt that he is so afraid that he hides it in anger. “We’re going to England and we’ll be there in about two hours.”
“I can’t ride for two hours,” I whisper. “I can’t.”
He puts his hand inside his jacket and hands me back a horn flask. “Take a sip,” he says. “Only a sip. It’s uisge beatha—whisky.”
The smell is like a potion from James’s old alchemist. “Ugh,” I say.
He gives a little grunt of irritation. “It’ll ease the pain,” he says. “And your temper,” he adds in an undertone.
I take a sip and it burns my throat, but then the burning spreads to my belly and all through my body. “It helps,” I say.
“Be brave,” Archibald recommends. “We’re going to get to safety tonight. To England.”
BERWICK CASTLE, ENGLAND, SEPTEMBER 1515
The town is closed; the curfew is dusk to dawn. Alexander Hume goes to the gate in the curtain wall and hammers on the door. There is a bell rope beside it and he pulls on it. A great bell tolls over our heads, and I can see lights coming on in the guardroom. A hatch in the great door opens, and a dark face peers out.
“Who goes there?”
“The Queen Regent of Scotland and the Earl of Angus, her husband, demand admittance,” Alexander bellows.
I sit a little straighter in the saddle, expecting the bolts to shoot back and the huge gate to open. This is a fortified town, an English town. I have come home, I have come to my own country. I remember Berwick: the town square, and the castle with its own portcullis and drawbridge. I remember the welcome they gave me when I rested here on my way to Scotland. I am thinking of dinner and the merciful release from pain when I can get into bed.
“Who?”
“The Queen Regent of Scotland and the Earl of Angus, her husband, demand admittance. Send for the governor to welcome them at once.”
There is a scuffling from behind the gate but still the bolts are not opened. Archibald glances over my shoulder. “We couldn’t send ahead,” he says.
Obviously, we should have done that to say that we were coming, and he did not think to do so, and now we have this cold welcome, and a delay until they open up, and I have longer to wait before I can be comfortable.
There are lights at the hatch and someone glares out at us and then at last the gate opens but it does not swing back to admit us. A man comes out with two guards on either side of him, a cape thrown over his nightgown. He stares at me for a moment and then he bows very low. “Your Grace, forgive me.”