And then I see that Katherine has not done her duty. God has not blessed her. Thank God, she has failed again, and her heart will be breaking. Tucked down at the bottom of the page, almost scribbled out by her signature, is the news that makes me smile.
“She’s had a girl,” I say flatly.
“God forgive her. What a pity,” Dacre says, heartfelt, as every Englishman will say. “God save her. What a disappointment.”
I think, I have given birth to four royal sons and I still have one left. And all Katherine has is a girl. “She is going to call her Mary. Princess Mary.”
“After her aunt, the dowager queen?” Dacre asks cheerfully.
“I doubt that,” I snap. “Not since she came home in disgrace married without permission. It will be Mary for Our Lady, as Katherine will want the Queen of Heaven’s protection on this little child, after all her previous sorrows. We must pray that the little one lives; none of the others have.”
“I hear they are very close, Princess Mary and the queen,” Dacre perseveres.
“Not particularly,” I say. “Duchess of Suffolk, she is now.”
“And here is a letter from your brother’s steward,” Dacre says. “And he has written to me.”
“You may read yours here,” I say, and we break the seals and read together.
It is the letter we have both been waiting for. Harry’s master of horse writes to say that he has commissioned a special litter to come for me from London with a guard of honor, extra horses, wagons for my goods, and soldiers to keep me safe through the wild Northern lands. Harry himself has scrawled a note at the side of the careful script to say that I must come at once.
“What about Archibald?” I demand, smiling at my husband as he comes into my room.
He stands behind my chair, and I feel his hand rest gently on my shoulder. I straighten up in pride and ignore the twinge in my hip bone. I know we are a handsome young couple. I see Dacre take in Archibald’s strength and my determination.
Dacre smiles. “I am pleased to be able to tell you that your brother the king has sent a safe conduct for His Grace, your husband. You are to go to London together and the two of you will live there as queen regent and consort. He will be accorded all appropriate honors and you will take precedence before everyone but the queen. You will go before your sister the Dowager Queen Mary and her husband.”
“You shall see what I have tried to describe to you,” I promise Ard. “You shall see me at my home, in the castles that were my childhood homes. I shall present you to my brother, the king. We will follow him and Katherine in to dinner and then everyone else, everyone, will come behind us. You will be the greatest man in England after the king and I will be the greatest woman after Katherine.”
He comes around to my side and he goes down on one knee. He turns his handsome face up to me and I cannot stop myself from putting my hand to his smooth shaved cheek. My God, this is a handsome man. I feel myself yearn for him. It has been so many days that I have had to lie flat as a corpse in a bed while he sat beside me, not daring to touch me for the pain that it would cause. I want to be his wife again, I want to be his lover. I want to be his queen and walk proudly at his side.
“My lady wife, Your Grace, I cannot come,” he says simply.
Dacre and I exchange shocked looks over his head.
“What?”
“I cannot come to London.”
“But you have to,” I say flatly.
“If I go with you, as a Scots outlaw, all the lands will be taken from my kinsmen and my castles will be destroyed,” he says bluntly. “Everything that my father left me, everything that my grandfather owns, will be torn down. My clan will be leaderless, my people will die of starvation. I will have abandoned my birthright, and everyone will know that I left them for the comfort of being your husband in London when I should have been fighting for my home. They will think that I ran away to safety and left them to disaster.”
“You can’t stay here and fight,” Dacre says. “The king himself is trying to get a peace. You can’t stir up trouble now.”
“Are you a gentle dove now, your lordship?” Archibald says bitingly. “I never thought to hear you say that a Scot should not be fighting other Scots.” He turns his attention to me, as if Dacre is too despicable to answer. “My love, my queen, I can’t leave those who have risked everything for your cause. Lord Hume will lose his lands too. Albany has already threatened his wife and his mother with imprisonment. We can’t run away and leave our families behind.”
“But I am your wife! This is your family!”
“It would be dishonorable to run away.”
“Your duty is with me!”
“My duty is in Scotland,” he says. “Your brother will guard you and keep you in England. But no one will guard and keep my people if I abandon them.”
“Think it over,” Dacre recommends. “Don’t be too hasty, my lord. You might be a long time, hiding in the hills. The king may get a peace with France that doesn’t restore you. If you’re not in London, they may forget all about you.” He looks at me. “It is the way of great men, sorry though I am to say it. If your husband is not there he may be forgotten.”
This is a sneer against my husband and against me. Dacre is always my brother’s man first and my servant second. I know very well they will not remember Archibald—they barely remember me. Who would know better than I that a princess passes over the Scots border and disappears from memory? Who would know better than I that they only fight for you when it has all become such a disaster that they can overlook it no longer? I am not Mary, who can come and go without losing her brother’s attention, behave disobediently, disloyally, and be welcomed home with celebrations. I am not Katherine who can fail to give him a son year after year and still be the wife of his choice and the queen of the court. I am Margaret, Queen of Scotland, and they forget me altogether until the extremity of my danger threatens them.
“He will come with me to London!” I say hotly. “They will see us together. They will remember us then!”
Dacre turns to my husband with a small smile, and waits for his reply. I remember that this man has had years pitting one Scot against another, one Englishman against another, Scots against English, English against Scots. Now he is setting a wife against her husband. Dacre is a border man in every sense. He will think that he knows men like Archibald inside out, that he has paid them to dance to his piping. He has always thought him bought, easily turned, easily betrayed.
“I can’t come,” Ard says flatly. “Remembered or forgotten, I can’t come.”
We leave without him. I am only twenty-six years old, and yet I seem to have spent my life leaving the people I love and losing those who should guard me. We leave my son Alexander in the cold ground of Scotland, for Albany buried my boy in December, before I even knew that he was dead. We leave my surviving son the king, a child of four years old, in the keeping of his tutors. I pray that Davy Lyndsay is at his side, for who else is there who can give him comfort? We take Margaret with us, and her wet nurse and her rockers and her endless entourage. We travel as lightly as we can, and yet there is a long train of wagons with my goods, and Dacre’s goods, and the men-at-arms that guard them, and the lords who accompany us—glad of the chance to get to London after years on the border. We take half of Northumberland with us, but we leave without my husband.
He kisses my hand, my wet eyes, my lips, my hands again, before I leave. He swears that he loves me more now than when he was my pretty carver, my knight, my friend. He says that he cannot abandon his friends and his allies, his men, his lowly tenants who know nothing of king or regent or queen regent, but will follow him wherever he leads them. He cannot leave his castle, that great fort overlooking the sighing sea and the crying gulls. He tells me that we will be together again some day. We will be happy again, some day.