I pay no attention to anything but his invitation, and Ard and I ride out, with James’s presents, the very next morning.
It is a tower castle built in the French style, with a handsome courtyard wall. “A toy castle,” Archibald says scathingly. “For a pretend chevalier.”
“Not every castle can be like Tantallon with the North Sea as its moat,” I tease him.
We ride in through the stone archway, the guards at attention on either side. They are beautifully turned out. I see new gates on the doorway and shiny new hinges. De la Bastie takes his duties as James’s guardian very seriously.
He is there to greet us at the doorway of the castle and comes himself to help me down from the saddle. Ard jumps down like a boy to be at my side first; but I see neither of them—not the handsome Frenchman nor the dazzling Scot—for in the doorway is Davy Lyndsay whom I have not seen for two years and beside him, standing alone, is my little boy, five-year-old James.
“Oh, James,” I say. “My boy, my son.”
The moment I see him, the loss of his younger brother, Alexander, strikes me again, and I can hardly stop myself from crying out. I don’t want to disturb him with my tears, so I bite my lip and I go carefully towards him, as if I were approaching a little merlin, a falcon that might bate away from me. He looks up at me, with eyes as bright and as dark as a merlin. “Lady Mother?” he asks in his clear little-boy voice.
I see that he is not sure who I am. He has been told that I will come, but he does not remember me and, in any case, I imagine I am much changed from the woman who kissed him good-bye and swore that she would come for him soon. We were in terrible danger then, I was pregnant, and I left him, certain that his crown and his blood would keep him safe, while Archibald’s name and behavior would endanger him. I left my son for love of my husband, and I don’t know even now if I did the right thing.
I drop to my knees so that he and I are face to face. “I am your mother,” I whisper. “I love you very much. I have missed you every day. I have prayed for you every night. I have longed—” again I have to swallow a sob “—I have longed to be with you.”
He is only five years old, but he seems far older, and reserved. He does not seem to doubt me, but clearly he does not want declarations of love nor his mother’s tears. He looks diffident, as if he would rather I was not kneeling in the yard before him, my eyes filled, my lip trembling.
“You are welcome to Craigmillar,” he says as he has been taught.
Davy Lyndsay bows low to me.
“Oh, Davy! You stayed with my son.”
“I would never leave him,” he says. He corrects himself. “Och, no credit to me, I had nowhere else to go. Who wants a poet in these poor days? And he and I have been here and there together. We always remember you in our prayers, and we made up a song for you, didn’t we, Your Grace? D’you remember our song for the English rose?”
“Did you?” I ask James; but he is silent, and it is the makar who answers.
“Aye. We’ll sing it for you this evening. He’s as good a musician as his father was before him.”
James smiles at the praise, looking up at his tutor. “You said I was deaf as an adder.”
“And here is your stepfather, come to visit too!”
I think I sense a little chill. Davy Lyndsay bows to Archibald, James nods his head. But neither of them greets him with any familiarity, or warmth.
“You will have seen him often?” I ask Ard.
“Not very often,” he replies. “He signed a warrant for my execution, remember.”
“He signed your pardon too,” Davy Lyndsay interjects.
My son the king inclines his head and does not remark on this. This is a child and yet he minds his manners, and takes care what he says. I feel a slow burn of rage that my son has never been carefree. Katherine of Aragon ordered the death of his father and so destroyed his childhood. He was a king before he was out of swaddling; she made him in her own disciplined image. She could not make her own baby, she took mine from me.
“Well, we shall see a lot of each other now,” I declare. “I have been in England, James, and I have won a truce for Scotland. There shall be peace between our countries and peace on the borders, and I shall see you whenever we wish. I shall live with you as your mother again. Won’t that be wonderful?”
“Yes,” says the little boy in his clear Scots accent. “Whatever you wish, Lady Mother. Whatever my guardians allow.”
“They have broken his spirit,” I rage at Ard, striding up and down our room in the tower at Craigmillar. “They have broken my heart.”
“Not at all,” he says gently. “He has been raised carefully and well. You should be pleased that he thinks before he speaks, that he is cautious.”
“He should be running around laughing. He should be boating and playing truant, he should be out on his horse and stealing apples.”
“All at once?”
“I won’t be mocked!”
“Indeed, I see you are distressed.”
“They drive me from the country, they separate me from my son, then they bring him up as quiet as a monk!”
“No, he is playful and he does chatter. I have heard him myself. But of course he is shy with you after so long. He has been waiting for your return—of course he is a little overwhelmed. We all are. You come home more beautiful than any of us remembered.”
“It’s not that.” But I am mollified.
He takes my hand. “It is, my love. Trust me, all will be well. You be as loving to him as I know you long to be, and he will be your little boy again within days. He will play with his sister, and the two of them will be as noisy and as naughty as you could wish.”
I lean towards him. “But Ard, when I left him, he had a little brother. He had a little brother who smiled and cooed when he saw me.”
He puts his arm around my waist and presses my head against his shoulder. “I know. But at least we still have James. And we can make another little brother for him.”
I let my face nestle against his warm neck. “You want another child?”
“At once,” he says. “And this one will be born at Tantallon with every delicacy and luxury you can command. I shall dress you in a cloth-of-gold gown with rings on every finger as you go into confinement. And I shall keep you safe in confinement for month after month. I shall have a bed carved for you enameled with gold and you won’t get up for half a year.”
I smile. “It was so awful with baby Margaret.”
“I know. I thought I would die of fear for you. But everything will be better now.”
“There is nothing to explain or forgive?” I ask. “I hear such gossip.”
“Who knows what people say?” He shrugs and then draws me close again. “You should hear the things they told me about you!”
“Oh, what did they say about me?”
“That you would divorce me and marry the emperor, that your brother was determined to make the match. That Thomas Wolsey had drawn up the peace treaty that would make my poor Scotland the helpless victim of England and the empire. That they would say that our marriage had never happened.”
“I never even considered it,” I lie with my eyes on his.
“I knew you would not,” he says. “I trusted you, whatever they said of you. I knew that we were married for life, for good or bad, forever. I heard all sorts of things about you, but I never even listened.”
“Neither did I,” I say, and feel my passion for him burn me up. I like to hear the loyalty in my voice. “I never listened to one word that anyone ever said against you.”
In the days that follow I set myself to spend time with my son and make up for the missing months. I know it can never be done. I did not teach him to play the lute or sing the songs that Davy Lyndsay has taught him. I didn’t put him on his first shaggy little highland pony, and trot alongside him, holding him steady in the saddle. I didn’t take him out last winter to play in the snow, I did not build him an ice castle with a turret. He tells me all about it and I think, yes—that was when I was at Morpeth Castle, unable to get out of bed for the pain in my hip, when I thought I would die; that was when they told me that my younger son was dead. The closer he and I become, the more he tells me about his adventures while I was away, the more I remember that it was Katherine who gave orders to Thomas Howard to take no prisoners at the Battle of Flodden. The more he tells me of his life behind castle walls the more I resent the Duke of Albany taking power as regent and Katherine not insisting that my boy and I were rescued together.