“Foolish,” he says levelly. “Is there any charge?”
“No! It is just gossip,” I say. Something in his face makes me hesitate. “Surely it is nothing but gossip, isn’t it?” I ask him. “Nobody would be so mad as to try to kidnap James and take him from his own country? Your uncle would not think of such a thing? Ard—you would not allow such a thing?”
“Wouldn’t James be safer in England?” Archibald asks me. “Wouldn’t we all be safer over the border? If they can kill the deputy regent, your partner?”
“No! James has to stay here. How will he ever get his throne if he is in exile?”
“If he were in England, wouldn’t your brother feel honor-bound to restore him? He gave you money and sent you home to rule.”
“I don’t know.” I cannot promise for Harry. I have hardly heard from him since I came home. I am afraid that when I am not there before him, I slip from his mind. He is careless. He is a careless young man.
It is not just the lords’ council who are fearful and shocked by the death of de la Bastie. They say that George Hume took a handful of the chevalier’s beautiful long brown hair and tied his severed head to his saddlecloth like a trophy. He rode with it banging against his knees all the way to Duns and he nailed it to the mercat cross.
“This is savagery,” I say.
“It’s opportunity,” Ard corrects me. He takes my hand and draws me away from the smoking fire in the center of the great hall. It is early in the morning and the autumn light is bright and clear. If I were in England in weather like this I would go hunting. It is a perfect day, the air so cold, the ground frost-hard, the light so bright. Here, I stay indoors and look from the window, and wonder if I am safe.
“Walk with me,” Ard says, his voice warm.
I let him put my hand on his back, tucked into his belt, while he walks with his arm around my waist. He leads me away from the household preparing the hall for dinner, out of the heavy wooden doorway and down the steps to the green outside. A few steps more and we are over the drawbridge and looking down on the forest tumbling down the hill below us, the heads of the trees bronze and copper, only the pines dark deep green.
“The country is without a leader,” Ard says. “Albany away, and never coming back, de la Bastie dead. The only person here who can take the regency is you.”
“I won’t profit from his death,” I say with sudden revulsion.
“Why not? He would have done so if he had the chance. Since he is dead, you can take your rightful place.”
“They don’t trust me,” I say resentfully.
“They are all in the pay of the French. But the French regent is away and the French deputy regent is dead. Now is the chance for England and for those who love the English princess.”
“Harry himself told me that we must have peace. I was married to bring peace to Scotland and I came back to try again.”
“And now we can. Before we could not, not under a foreign power. But now we can, under you with the power of England.”
The way Ard speaks is a seduction; his arm around my waist is as persuasive as his optimism. “Think,” he whispers. “Think of being regent again and bringing your son to the throne. We would be a royal family to match Henry and Katherine. They have a throne, but no boy to inherit. You would be queen regent, I would be your consort, and your boy would be king. We would be a ruling royal family with a young king. Think how that would be.”
I am persuaded. The very thought of ruling like a queen again is enough to tempt me. The thought of being a greater queen than Katherine is irresistible. “How would we do it?”
He gives me a little sly smile. “It’s half done already, beloved. De la Bastie is dead, and you have me at your side.”
Scotland lies before us like a banquet ready for feasting. Thomas Dacre writes to advise that I seize my chance at the regency. He hints that my brother will ensure that the Duke of Albany never comes back to Scotland. Scotland needs a regent—it should be me.
“Accept,” Ard breathes in my ear, reading the letter over my shoulder. “This is your victory.”
I accept. I think: these are my days, at last. This is what it is to be a queen. This is what Katherine felt when Harry named her regent. This is what I was born for, and what I knew I should be. I am a beloved wife, I am a reigning queen, I am the mother of the king. My brother and my husband have won this for me; I shall take it. My son will come into my keeping. Already my happiest days are those that we spend together and nobody could mistake the way his little face lights up when he sees me.
The lords are sick of French rulers. They would rather follow a woman than a French nobleman. They are weary of the constant jockeying for power—they want a queen who was born higher than them all. I can do what my dead husband, the king, asked of me: care for his country and his son like a clever woman, not like a fool. I can be his true widow. I can honor my marriage vows to him and all that he taught me. I can honor his memory. I can even bear to think of him as a hidden survivor of the battle, perhaps walking in the wild country, a terrible scar on his head, content to be as the dead, knowing that I have come back to his country and taken the throne again, knowing that I am doing my best, knowing that when my moment came, I did not fail him.
So I think that my first meeting with my council will be a decisive one: they will welcome my return, I will be gracious with them. I plan to remind them that I bring peace with England, and that they can serve me as dowager queen and an English princess.
I go alone, telling Ard to wait at Holyroodhouse, to come when he is invited. As soon as the lords are seated, I tell them that I will accept the regency and my husband will serve beside me as co-regent. There is instant uproar, as one man after another pounds the table and yells out his objection. I am shocked at the outburst of fury, the same old rivalry, the same rage that Archibald warned me about. Once again, Scotland tears itself apart for no reason but that they cannot work together. But then, over the general noise, a few of them make themselves heard. They make me listen. They make me understand. Slowly, I hear what they are saying. Slowly, like a growing chill, I comprehend.
They ask me—they don’t tell me—they ask me what rents I received in England from my Scottish lands. I start to complain—they should know the answer to this, it was their duty to send the money—nothing! Nothing! Next to nothing! And they say: they were paid. Hear us! The rents were faithfully paid. We sent the money.
There is a silence. They look at me with contempt, at my slowness, at my stupidity. “Paid to whom?” I say with icy majesty; but I know. Although they can see that I know, they tell me. They say that the rents were paid to Archibald, my husband, and it was he that sent nothing on to me. It was he that left me in England forced to borrow from the butcher’s son, forced to have my household bills paid by my rich sister, to wear her cast-off dresses.
They ask me, where do I think that Archibald has been living since his pardon? I say that it is no business of theirs where he has been living, as long as his parole has been unbroken. I had believed till this minute that he was in Tantallon. They shake their heads at my arrogance and tell me, “no,” he has hardly been at his own castle. He has gone from one of my dower houses to another, collecting my rents, drinking out of my cellars, hunting my game, taking food from the storehouses of the peasants, employing my cooks, living like a lord.
“He has every right to live in my houses: he is my husband,” I say staunchly. “Everything that I have is his by law.”
One of the old lords drops his head and bangs his forehead on the table with a terrible thud, as if he would knock himself senseless with frustration.
I look blankly at him; I can say nothing. I feel that I am a fool, worse than a fooclass="underline" a woman who has chosen blindness and lust instead of reason.