“I will come back,” I promise him. “I will come back to you and you will wait for me. I will command Harry to make peace with the French and with the Scots lords and they will allow me to come home and I will be queen regent, as I was, and you will be my consort.”
His loving gaze is as clear and as true as when he was my young carver. “Come back to me, and I will hold my castles and my lands and my power. Come back to Scotland and I will welcome your return as queen. Come back soon.”
ON THE ROAD SOUTH, ENGLAND, SPRING 1516
It is a long journey but there are signs of my returning power. The farther we go, by slow, painful stages, the grander becomes our procession. I enter York in state and process through the city which remembers my entrance as a princess all those years ago. Every day we add more followers. I appoint new people in my household, and I am surrounded by hangers-on and petitioners. Dacre says that he cannot house and feed so many on the road, and I shrug and say that I have always been beloved in England; he should have listened to me when I told him that the people would flock to be with me.
I receive letters from London: from Katherine, saying that her new baby is thriving and strong, and from my sister Mary, who has given birth to a boy. It is hard to be glad for her. This is not a boy who will be a stepping stone to greatness for his mother, my little sister. This is not a boy who is going to take up a great place in the world. His parents are all but bankrupt since they have to pay the royal exchequer a massive fine for their marriage. The boy’s very title was only a reward to his father for being an amusing friend; Brandon has no talent or breeding or merit. They are calling the little mite Henry in an attempt to win my brother’s favor. I expect they will ask Thomas Wolsey, that rising star, to be godfather, as he is to my baby. They will have to do something to turn their fortune around. So I cannot celebrate the birth of this boy, who will be nothing but a cost to the family.
But I am glad that Mary is out of danger. I always thought that she would be fertile and strong. All of our mother’s family are prolific breeders. The Plantagenets flower like the weed of their name. I was certain she would not be weakly like Katherine. I am delighted that she is up and well, and that she will be able to greet me when we get to London. The thought of seeing her again, even seeing Katherine, becomes more and more exciting as we get closer to the capital city. It has been thirteen years of exile. I never really thought that I would get home again. I never thought that I would sleep under an English roof with the Tudor standard flying over my head again. There were times when I never thought to see any of them, ever again.
And I don’t forget, not even in my joy at my return, that my misfortune has come about because Henry broke my treaty and insisted on war with Scotland, and because Katherine commanded the Howards to lead a brutal army, ordered to spare no one. For all that the Howards’ new standard flaunts emblems of my husband’s defeat, they were not the ones who decided to take no prisoners. That was Katherine: ruthless and bloodthirsty as her mother, who took a Christian sword through Spain. For all that she sends me loving letters now, and promises that we shall fall into each other’s arms on meeting, I don’t forget that she ordered my husband’s naked body to be pickled in a jar and sent as a trophy of war to my brother. A woman who can think of that is not a woman that I can ever call my sister. I don’t even know where James’s poor body is buried in England. I don’t even know where his bloodstained jacket is—in some cupboard somewhere, I suppose. There is bad blood between Katherine and me. She has been generous and kind to me since my terrible downfall, and I have profited from her uneasy conscience; but she was the cause and reason for that downfall and I don’t forgive or forget.
The day that we are about to leave York there is a tap at the door of my privy chamber and it swings open, without my consent. I look up to see who comes in without announcement to the private rooms of the Dowager Queen of Scotland, and there before me, bonnet in his hand, smiling and heartbreakingly handsome, is my husband, Archibald.
I get to my feet—I can stand now without pain—I reach for him and he is across the room and on his knees at my feet in a moment. “Go,” I whisper to my ladies, and they scurry out of the room and close the door behind them as he rises up and wraps me in a tight, hot embrace. He kisses my wet eyelids, my lips, my throat, his hands are warm through my tight stomacher. He bends his head and kisses the top of my breasts, and I feel him untie my laces.
“Come,” is all I say, and I lead him into my bedroom and let him strip me as if I were a peasant girl in a hay barn, push my rich skirts and my fine lace-trimmed linen to one side and enter me with as much desire as when we were first married and thought we would rule Scotland together.
It is blissful. We lie together in a tumble of clothes and bedding as the sun shines in through the window and I hear the church bells of York toll one after another for the afternoon service of None. “My love,” I say sleepily.
“My queen,” he replies.
I take his tanned smiling face in my hands and I kiss him on the lips. “You came to me,” I say. “I thought I had lost you forever.”
“I couldn’t let you go like that,” he says. “I couldn’t let you go without knowing that my love is with you, as faithful as I always am, as much in love with you as I ever have been.”
“I am so glad,” I say quietly. I rest my head on his shoulder and I feel, through the thin linen of his shirt, the beat of his steady heart.
“And you are treated well?” he murmurs. “I see you have beautiful gowns and ladies in attendance and a fine household around you?”
“I am cared for like the Tudor princess I was born to be, and the Scots queen I am,” I say. “Dacre is a most loyal servant.”
“As he should be,” Ard says irritably. “And has he given you money from your brother?”
“I am rich again,” I confirm. “And everyone tells me that I will get my jewels and goods back from Albany. You need not fear for me, my darling. I am well provisioned.”
“Thank God,” he says. “And when do they plan that you shall come back to Scotland?”
“Nobody knows yet. They will have to deal with Albany. But Harry says he will speak with nobody until he has first heard from me. And Dacre and I have compiled a great book of my grievances. Albany shall answer for them, the Scots lords who supported him shall answer for them. You and I will be avenged.”
There is a knock at the door and a voice says: “Your Grace, will you be dining in the hall?”
I turn with a lazy smile to Ard. “Everyone will know that we have been to bed in the afternoon,” I say.
“We are husband and wife,” he says. “They can know that. I can tell them that I will sleep in your bed tonight, if they want to know.”
I chuckle. “In my bed every night all the way to London.”
A little shadow crosses his face. “Ah, love. Don’t let’s speak of it.”
“What?” I ask with sudden alarm. I call out to the lady-in-waiting. “Yes! Yes! Come and dress me in a little while.”
“I can’t come to London,” Ard says. “Nothing has changed for me in Scotland though you are wealthy and well guarded now. But I am still an outlaw. I am still running and hiding for my life in the hills.”