They all bow or curtsey with a trained grace. I incline my head but am completely lost as to what I should do. Wildly, I wonder if he was married before and nobody told me? Surely he cannot have a secret wife, the mother to all these children, hidden away here, in my castle. What should I do? If she were faced with these terrible circumstances, what would Katherine do?
“Do they have a mother?” I ask.
“Several,” James says cheerfully.
The eldest boy bows to me but I do not acknowledge him. I do not smile on the little bowed heads and, gently, James hands the baby back to her nurse. One of the Stirling ladies, seeing my frosty face, takes the hand of the toddler and shepherds the children towards the open doorway to the tower.
“Mothers,” the king shows no trace of awkwardness. “One, God bless her, Margaret Drummond, is dead. My dear friend Marion will not come to court again. Janet lives elsewhere, and Isabel too. They need not trouble you, you need not concern yourself with them. They will not be your friends or ladies-in-waiting.”
Not trouble me? Four mistresses? Four mistresses and only one of them thankfully dead? As if I will not be wondering about them and comparing myself to them every moment for the rest of my life. As if I will not be looking into the pretty faces of the little girls and wondering if they take after their mothers. As if I will not be thinking every time that James leaves court that he is visiting one of this pack of fertile women, or mourning the one who is mercifully gone.
“These will be half brothers and sisters to our own child when he comes,” the king says pleasantly. “Aren’t they like a band of little angels? I thought you would be pleased to meet them.”
“No,” is all that I am able to say. “I am not.”
STIRLING CASTLE, SCOTLAND, AUTUMN 1503
I write to my lady grandmother that my husband is mired in sin. I spend hours on my knees in the chapel puzzling over what I can tell her to ensure that she is as outraged as I am. I am very careful what I say about the certainty of his damnation because I don’t want to mention his rebellion and the death of his father. Rebellion is an awkward topic for us Tudors since we took the throne from the Plantagenets and they were ordained kings and every Englishman had sworn fealty to them. I am pretty sure that my lady grandmother crafted the rebellion against King Richard after swearing an unbreakable oath of loyalty to him. Certainly she was the great friend of his wife and carried her train at her coronation.
So I don’t speak of my husband’s rebellion against his father, but I stress to my lady grandmother that he is deep in sin and I am surprised and unhappy to encounter these bastard children. I don’t know what to make of the oldest boy, Alexander, who is placed next to his father at dinner, where they sit as family in descending order from ten-year-old Alexander right down to the baby on her nurse’s lap, who bangs on the table with her own silver spoon—with a thistle on the handle! The royal emblem! James behaves as if I should be happy to have them all at the royal table, as if these handsome children are a credit to us both.
This is a sin, I write. And also, it is an insult to me, the queen. If my father knew anything of them before my marriage, he should have ruled that these children could not stay in my castle. They should live far away from my dower lands. Surely I cannot be expected to house them? Really, they should never have been born. But I don’t know what I can do to dismiss them.
At least I can keep them out of my rooms. Their nursery and schoolroom are in one tower, the philosopher—as if it were not bad enough that I have to house him—is in the other. I have the queen’s interconnected rooms, presence chamber, privy chamber, and bedchamber, the most beautiful that I have ever seen. I make it clear to my ladies and to the king’s steward that only my ladies are to attend my rooms. There are to be no “bairns” of any age or description, regardless of their parentage, running in and out as if I wanted their company.
I have to know more and I have to know what I can do. While I wait for advice from my lady grandmother I consult my lady-in-waiting Lady Katherine Huntly. She is from the Gordon clan and is a kinswoman to my husband. She can speak Erse as he does—as they all do—and she knows these people; she probably knows the mothers of the children. I suppose that half of them are related to her. This is not a nobility, it is a tribe—and these are little bastard savages.
I wait till my musicians are playing and we are seated at our sewing. We are working on an altar cloth that shows Saint Margaret as she confronts the dragon. I think that I too am forced to confront a dragon of sin, and Katherine can tell me how to defeat it.
“Lady Katherine, you may sit beside me,” I say, and she comes and takes a stool beside me and starts to work on my corner of the embroidery.
“You can leave that,” I say and, pleasant as ever, she puts it down and unthreads her needle and stores it safely in its silver case.
“I wanted to talk to you about the king,” I say.
She turns her calm face to listen.
“About these children.”
She is silent.
“These very many children.”
She nods.
“They have to go!” I exclaim suddenly.
She looks at me consideringly. “Your Grace, this is a matter for the king and yourself.”
“Yes, but I don’t know anything about them. I don’t know what is usual. I can’t command him.”
“No, you cannot command him. But I think that you could ask.”
“Who are they anyway?”
She thinks for a moment. “Are you sure that you want to know?”
Tightly, I nod, and she looks at me with a gentle sympathy. “As you wish, Your Grace. The king is a man of little more than thirty years, remember. He has been King of Scotland since he was a boy. He came to his throne in violence, and he is a man of high passions and power, a lusty man of appetites. Of course he has fathered children. He is unusual only in that he keeps them together in his finest castle, and loves them so dearly. Most men have children outside their marriage and leave them to be raised by their mothers, or sometimes they are farmed out and neglected. The king should perhaps be honored for recognizing his own.”
“No, he shouldn’t be,” I say flatly. “My father has only us. He never took a mistress.”
She looks down at her hands as if she knows better. I have always hated that about Katherine Huntly; she always looks as if she is carrying a secret.
“Your father was very blessed in his wife, your mother,” she says. “Perhaps King James will never take another mistress, now that he has you.”
I feel a rush of anger at the thought of anyone in my place, anyone preferred to me. I don’t even like the thought of anyone making comparisons between me and another girl. Part of my relief in leaving England was that no one could again look from dainty Katherine to me, that no one can compare me to my sister Mary. I hate being compared—and now I discover my husband has half a dozen lovers. “Who was this Marion Boyd, the mother of Alexander, the oldest boy, who is allowed to be so forward?” I ask.
Her raised eyebrows ask me am I sure that I want to know all this?
“Who is she? Is she dead too?”
“No, Your Grace. She is a kinswoman of the Earl of Angus. A very important family, the Douglas clan, you know.”
“Was she my husband’s mistress for long?”
Katherine considers. “I believe so. Alexander Stewart is a little more than ten years old is he not?”
“How would I know?” I demand sharply. “I don’t look at him.”
“Yes,” she says and stops speaking.