Ahead of us, starting half a day before we mount, goes the baggage train. First out: half a dozen carts that carry my clothes; one, specially guarded, carries my jewels. The steward of my household and his servants either sit beside the drivers or ride alongside, to make sure that nothing goes missing and nothing is lost. The wagons are strapped with oilskins dyed in the Tudor colors of green and white and sealed with my royal seal. My ladies each have their own wardrobe cart, displaying their own shields, and when the wagons rumble, one after another, it looks like a moving tree of shields from a tournament, as if the Knights of the Round Table had decided to invade the North, all at once.
My father is not amusing company on this great journey. He is unhappy at the state of the roads, and the cost of the travel. He is missing my mother, I suppose, but this does not show itself as grief but in continual complaint: “If Her Grace were here she would do that” or “I never had to order that, it is the queen’s work.” My mother was so beloved, and her family were so accustomed to rule, having been on the throne for generations, that she always used to guide him in the great public occasions, and everyone felt easier when she was at the head of a procession. I begin to think that it would have been thoroughly good for Katherine of Arrogant to have been forced to marry my father: serving him would have humbled her far more than marrying Harry will ever do. She is going to lord it over Harry, I know, but my father would have set her to work.
He is glad when we get to my lady grandmother’s house at Collyweston because here everything is commanded by her to the highest standard, and here he can rest and do nothing. I think he may be ill; certainly, he seems tired, and my lady his mother fusses around him with all sorts of potions of her own mixing and strengthening drinks. Here we will part—he will go back to London and I will go on northward to Scotland. I will not see him again until I come back to England for a visit.
I wonder if my father is distressed at my leaving and hiding it under ill temper, but truly, I think he will feel my loss no more than I feel his. We have never been close; he has never made much of me. I am his daughter, but I resemble the smiling tall blondes of my mother’s family. I am not a precious little doll-faced princess like Mary. I have inherited his temper, but his mother has made sure that I keep it hidden. I have his courage—he spent his life in exile and then came to England against all odds—I think I can be brave too. I have my mother’s hopefulness; my father thinks the worst of everyone and plans to catch them out. Anyone seeing us side by side—he so spare and dark and I round faced and broad shouldered—would never take us for father and elder daughter, no wonder we feel no sense of kinship.
I kneel for his blessing as my train of courtiers waits in the sunshine and my grandmother inspects me for flaws, and when I rise up he kisses me on both cheeks. “You know what you have to do,” he says shortly. “Make sure that husband of yours keeps the peace. England will never be safe if Scotland is an enemy and always stirring up the Northern lands. It’s called the Treaty of Perpetual Peace for a reason. You are there to make sure that it is perpetual.”
“I’ll do what I can, Sire.”
“Never forget you’re an English princess,” he says. “If anything happens to Harry, which God forbid, you will be mother to the next King of England.”
“The grandest thing in the world,” my grandmother adds. She and her son exchange a warm glance. “Serve God,” she says to me. “And remember your patron saint and mine, the Blessed Margaret.”
I bow my head at the name of the woman who was saved from being eaten by a dragon when her crucifix scratched his belly and he vomited her up.
“Let her life be an example for you,” my lady grandmother urges.
I put my hand on the crucifix at my throat to indicate that, should I be swallowed by a dragon between here and Edinburgh, I am fully prepared.
“God bless you,” she says. Her old face is set firm; there is no danger of her weeping at our parting. I may be her favorite granddaughter, but neither Mary nor I can compare to her passion for her son and grandson. She is founding a dynasty: she only needs boys.
She kisses me, and holds me close for a moment. “Try to have a son,” she whispers. “Nothing else matters but your son on the throne.”
It is a cold farewell to a motherless girl but before I can answer, my master of horse steps forward and lifts me onto my palfrey, the trumpeters blast out a salute, and everyone knows we are ready to leave. The king’s court waves, my lady grandmother’s household cheers, and I lead out my court, flying my standard, on the great north road to Edinburgh.
ON PROGRESS, YORK TO EDINBURGH, JULY 1503
I head for the borderlands of England and Scotland with little regret for what I am leaving behind. So much of my childhood has already gone. In the past year I have lost my adored brother and then my mother, and a little newborn sister with her. But I find that I don’t miss them so much, in this new life that I am entering. Oddly, it is Katherine that I miss as I travel north. I want to tell her about the magnificent greetings that welcome me to every town, and I want to ask about the awkwardness of a long ride and needing the garderobe. I copy her beautiful way of holding her head, I even practice her little roll of the shoulders. I try to say “ridiculous” with a Spanish accent. I think that she will be Queen of England and I will be Queen of Scotland and people will compare us one with another, and that I will learn to be as elegant as she is.
I have daily opportunities for practicing her poise, for I am beginning to discover that one of the greatest features of being royal is being able to think quietly about interesting things while people pray for you or talk at you, or even sing anthems about you. It would be rude to yawn when someone is thanking God for your arrival, so I have learned the trick of drifting off without falling asleep. I sit like Katherine, with my back very straight and my head raised high to lengthen my neck. Most often I lift my gown a tiny fraction of an inch and look at my shoes. I have ordered slippers with the toes embroidered in fanciful designs so that these pious meditations can be yet more interesting.
I look at my toes a lot at every long boring stopping point, while noblemen make speeches at me, all the way northward. My father has ordered that my journey shall be a magnificent procession, and my part in it is to look beautiful in a series of wonderful gowns, and to cast down my eyes in modesty when people thank God for the coming of the Tudors and, in particular, for my passing through their plague-infested, dirty little town. That’s when I look at my toes and think that soon I will be in my own country, Scotland. And then I will be queen. And then I shall be the one to decide where I go, and how long the speeches will take.
I am amazed by the countryside as we ride north. It is almost as if the sky opens up over us, like the lid off a chest. Suddenly the horizon gets farther and farther away, receding as we climb up and down rolling green hills and see more and more hills ahead of us, as if all of England is billowing under our feet. Above us arches the great Northern sky. The air is watery and clear, as if we were submerged. I feel as if we are tiny people, a little train of shrimps crawling along a huge world, and the buzzards that wheel above us, and the occasional eagle even higher than they, see rightly that we are specks on the side of giant rolling hills.