“I swear that I will,” he promises me. “And you shall go back to Scotland as queen regent. Nobody shall mistreat you again. The very idea!” He seems to swell inside his beautiful green velvet jacket—the huge shoulders get even broader. “And where is your husband? I expected him to be here with you.”
He knows, of course; Dacre will have reported everything as soon as it happened. “He had to stay to protect his people,” I say. “He was heartbroken, he wanted to be with me; we wanted to be together. Especially, he wanted to come to meet you. But he felt that those lords who had supported me, and the poor people who had suffered for keeping me, would be in danger of Albany’s revenge if he were not there to protect them. He is a man of great honor.”
I find that I am talking too much, too fast, trying to convey to Harry the danger and the difficulty of Scotland. He cannot know, safe behind the walls of secure castles in a peaceful land, what it is like trying to rule a country where everything is by agreement, and even the will of the king has to be accepted by his people. “Archibald has stayed in Scotland. To do his duty. He felt that he should.”
My brother looks at me and suddenly there is a hard calculation behind his smile. “Done like a Scot,” is all he says, and I think his voice rings with contempt for a man who could leave his wife in danger. “Done like a Scot.”
BAYNARD’S CASTLE, LONDON, ENGLAND, MAY 1516
Katherine sent me a white palfrey for my state entry into London. She sent me headdresses of gold in the heavy gable style that she prefers. She sent me gowns, and rich materials for more gowns. I think it is she who gave the orders for the great wooden furniture to be installed in every room of the castle, and for fresh rushes with meadowsweet and lavender to be scattered on every floor. She certainly appointed the heads of my household so that it can run as a great palace, and her steward bought the food in the larders. The king pays for my household servants: my carver Sir Thomas Boleyn, my chaplain, all the yeomen of my household—ushers, cellarers, and guards—and for the ladies who attend me. Katherine has loaned me jewels to add to the inheritance which she finally sent to Morpeth, and I have furs from the royal wardrobe and sleeves lined with royal ermine.
And then, finally, she comes herself. One of her ladies, the wife of Sir Thomas Parr, comes in the morning to tell me that the queen will give herself the pleasure of calling on me in the afternoon, if I wish. I say that this will be a pleasure for me, but my assent is nothing but a formality as Maud Parr and I both know. Katherine can come whether it is convenient or not. She is Queen of England; she can do anything she wishes. I grit my teeth when I think that she will come and go as she pleases and I owe her thanks for the attention.
I hear her guard of honor accompanying her down Dower Gate and I hear the cheers that follow her. The English love the Spanish princess who waited and waited for the day when she would finally be queen. I cannot see her from my window, though I press my face against the glass. I have to sit on my throne in my presence chamber to wait for her to arrive.
They throw open the doors. I rise to my feet and advance to greet her, for however I remember her from our girlhood—pale, sorrowful, poor—she is Queen of England now and I am the exiled Queen of Scotland and it is me waiting for my luck to change, not her. I curtsey to her, she curtseys to me, then she opens her arms and we hug. I am surprised by her warmth. She pats my face and says that I have grown into a beauty, what lovely hair I have. How well the gown suits me.
I give her one searching glance, and I could laugh aloud. She has run to fat after five pregnancies, her skin has gone dull and sallow. Her beautiful golden hair is hidden under an unflattering hood, she is loaded with chains around her neck, reaching to her broad waist, a crucifix resting at her throat; her little plump hands have rings on every finger. I note with unworthy triumph that she looks all of her thirty years, she looks tired and disappointed, but I am still a young woman with everything to hope for.
She says at once, “Don’t let’s talk here among everyone. Can we go to your privy chamber?” and I hear once again that familiar, irritating Spanish accent, which she has ostentatiously retained, thinking it makes her special, after fourteen years of speaking English.
“Of course,” I say, and even though I live here, I have to step back and show her into the room that leads off the presence chamber, just before my private rooms.
Informally, she takes a seat in the window and beckons me to join her, seated beside her at the same height, as if we are equals. Her ladies and mine sit on stools out of earshot, though they are all dying to know how we will make friends, when everyone knows there is so much between us, and so much of it bad.
“You are looking so well,” she says warmly. “In such good looks! After all that you have endured.”
“And you too,” I lie. When I last saw her she was a young widow, hoping against all the evidence that my father would let her marry Harry, fragile in black, dainty as a doll. Now, she has achieved her heart’s desire, and found it lacking. They married for love—passionate boyish love on his part—but they have had five pregnancies and only one healthy child, and she is a girl. Harry takes a lover every time Katherine is pregnant, and she is pregnant almost every year. They are not the golden couple of her dreams. I expect she thought that she would be like her mother and father, equally proud, equally beautiful, equally powerful, in love forever.
It has not turned out like that. Harry has grown taller and more handsome, wealthier and more kingly than she could have hoped, and he casts a great shadow over her—over everyone. She is tired, she aches with mysterious pains. She fears that God does not favor their marriage, and she spends half the day on her knees asking Him what is His will. She has none of the radiant confidence of her mother, the crusader. Now she comes to befriend me but even here she brings guilt. She has blood on her hands: her army killed my husband, and I do not forget it.
“I hope that you can stay with us for a long time,” she says. “It would be such a pleasure to have both the king’s sisters at court.”
“Both of us? Is Mary here very much?” I ask. “I didn’t think she could afford to live at court.”
Katherine flushes. “She comes often,” she says with dignity. “As my guest. We have become very good friends. I know that she is longing to see you.”
“I don’t know how long I can stay, I will have to go home as soon as the Scots lords have agreed to my rule,” I say. “It is my duty. I cannot walk away from my husband’s country.”
“Yes, you have been called to a great office,” she says, “in a country that I know is not easy to rule. I was so sorry for the death of your husband the king.”
For a moment I cannot speak. I cannot even glare at her. I cannot imagine how she dares to talk of his death as if it were a distant event, beyond anyone’s control.
“The fortunes of war,” she says.
“An unusually cruel war,” I remark. “I have never heard before of English troops being ordered to take no prisoners.”
She has the decency to look abashed. “These border wars are always cruel,” she says. “As when neighbors fight. Lord Dacre tells me—”
“It was he who found my husband’s body.”
“So sad,” she whispers. “I am so sorry.” She turns her face and, hidden by the enormous headdress, wipes her eyes. “Forgive me. I have recently lost my father and I—”
“They told me that after Flodden you were triumphant,” I interrupt, suddenly finding the courage to speak out.
She bows her head but she does not shrink from the truth. “I was. Of course I was glad to keep England safe while the king was far away, and fighting himself. It was my duty as his queen. They said that the King of Scots was planning to march on London. You would not believe how afraid we all were of his coming. Of course I was glad that we won. But I was very sorry for you.”