I rest. I eat well. I sleep at night without troubling dreams. The pain goes from my hip and I feel the baby squirm and turn so I know he is well and strong too. I talk at length with the prioress, Isabella Hoppringle, who is a thoughtful and astute lady of letters. She advises me to wait to hear from Lord Dacre what I should do next, and that I should put no trust in Albany. She tells me that Lord Dacre will save me. Airily I tell her that I am in control of my own life, winning the war of words with the duke. I show her the letters that pass and repass between us, when he offers me one thing and I demand another. I think that I am playing this hand well. The queen counts high in this game, and I am dealing the best cards to myself.
I am winning. By getting to safety I have restored my power, I am a force to be reckoned with. The Duke of Albany appoints the French ambassador to negotiate between us and he will come to me at Coldstream, carrying all the compliments and courtesies of the duke and of parliament. He will bring me proposals that have been forced through parliament by the duke, anxious that I shall return to my place. The last thing Albany wants is to drag France into war with England over Scotland. Indeed, he is specifically commanded by his king not to allow matters to worsen. He was to bring peace and order to Scotland and now everybody blames him for bringing anarchy and the risk of war. To turn a queen from her own castle is to threaten every monarch in Christendom. Nobody will support him. So I am to have my children at my side, I am to stay wherever I like, I am to have my fortune restored to me, my husband will be pardoned. The ambassador will arrive at midday, and his name on the agreement will make it binding on both sides. I am not winning; I have won.
I walk in the garden with Isabella, and I say to her what a joy it will be to go back to Edinburgh and to see my boys again, and how I never thought that I would long to take my place as Queen Regent of Scots, but that now I do. I tell her that my sister, foolishly, without producing an heir for the throne of France, left her new home, married a commoner and returned to England, and now it will be as if she never went away. The French will forget her in a sennight. She will have to return her jewels. Of course, she may have the pleasures of the English court and the prestige of being the king’s sister—these are trivial pleasures for a foolish girl—but a woman called by God to do her duty by her husband’s country should stay there, serving the country and serving God, as I do. I declare that to be the mother of a king is the greatest calling that a woman could have. I have become as great as my lady grandmother, who bore a king and saw him to the throne. She had God’s hand over her every action and so do I. I am closer to God than a prioress. I have a vocation and a duty. I am that great woman. I will serve Scotland and God.
It’s very pleasant to stroll around the herb garden with the prioress, our skirts swishing against the end-of-summer lavender, releasing the sharp smell on the heady air. As we walk she picks a sprig of mint and sniffs it, I brush my hands over a bush of rosemary. There is rue growing, and the daisy flowers of chamomile, the bright little faces of johnny jump-up and the scented leaves of lemon balm. “I wonder that you trust him,” she says casually.
“What?”
“Albany,” she says. “The Sieur d’Albany.” She says it like a French name, the very accent of deceit. “He has tricked you and betrayed you every single time he has made an agreement with you from his first coming to Scotland. Surely he is false to you? He brought the cannon against you in Stirling; he shamed you before your son. He took the keys of the castle out of your little boy’s hand. He separated you from your two boys. Would you really put yourself in his power again?”
“He’s a duke,” I say. “And a man of great courtesy. And now he acknowledges that I am queen. I have his word in writing.”
She makes a little face and shrugs her shoulders. “He’s a Frenchman,” she says dismissively. “Or as good as. Married a Frenchwoman for her money. Sworn to the French king. False as a Frenchman; and dishonest as a Scot. Between him and your parliament I fear they will destroy you.”
I am horrified. “You surely cannot think that!”
“Ever since he came to Scotland he has been your undoing!” she exclaims. “Why are you here if not driven into exile? Did you choose to leave Stirling? Was it your free choice to leave Edinburgh? Did you not run from Linlithgow in fear of your life? Did you not ride from Tantallon in only the clothes you stood up in?”
I think for a moment that she seems remarkably well informed for a prioress in a border abbey; but perhaps she has been talking to George.
“If I were you I would return to Edinburgh only at the head of an army,” she remarks. “I would do as Lord Dacre advises, and go to his grand house at Morpeth, and muster your forces there.”
I laugh uncertainly. “You make me sound like Katherine and her warlike mother.”
“I am sure you will prove as brave as she. I would have sworn that you were her equal.”
“Oh, I am, certainly I am. Katherine is no braver than I am. I know her, and I know this for a fact.”
“And I am sure that you have a husband as brave as Ferdinand of Spain.”
“Archibald is worth ten of him.”
“Then why should you not reconquer Scotland as Isabella and Ferdinand did Spain? And then you won’t have to argue and bow down to the duke. You will just send him back to France.” She pauses. “Or behead him, as you think fit. If you were ruling queen and not a mere regent, you could do whatever you pleased.”
There is a loud banging on the outer door. I look up in alarm. “Could that be the French ambassador early? Isabella, you will have to show him into the guesthouse hall and make him wait while I dress. I have to sign the agreement with him.”
She waits as a nun from the gatehouse comes through the garden, bobs a curtsey to me, and whispers. Isabella laughs and takes my hand. “You are lucky,” she says. “Great men and women are always lucky, and you have all the luck of a queen in the special keeping of God. That is Lord Dacre at the door, a day ahead of the French liar, bringing you a safe conduct so that you can go anywhere in England. He can take you to London right now.”
I gasp, my hand closing on a leafy bush of rue so the sharp scent fills the air. “To London?”
“Lord Dacre has come!” she says, as delighted as if it were her own triumph. “And you are free!”
I can hardly believe that he has come, with a troop of horse, with a safe conduct, ready to escort me south at once. I kiss Isabella as if she were a sister, and we mount up gladly. I have a little stabbing pain as I sit in the saddle behind my husband, but I can see my future unrolling ahead of me. Isabella is right: I can persuade Harry to do his duty by me, I will return to Scotland at the head of an army and enter Edinburgh in triumph. I can bring up my boys to be the sons their father would have wanted, heirs to the throne of Scotland and even England.
I am in the saddle before I remember: “Oh, but Lord Dacre, the Duke of Albany is sending the French ambassador with proposals. Shouldn’t I wait for him and give him an answer? What if he is offering me the regency? What if he will give me everything I demand?”
“He can send it to you at Morpeth, my castle. He can meet with us at Morpeth,” the old guardian of the borders replies to me. “Better that he discuss with you what terms he will offer when you are behind strong walls in an English castle that will never fall to siege, than when you are in one gown in a priory in the borders, surrounded by the dead of Flodden.”