“Go on,” I say crossly. “Is he the only bastard the king has got on her?”
“No, she had three children by the king, a boy died. But her daughter Catherine is here with her older brother.”
“The little girl with fair hair? About six years old?”
“No, that’s Margaret, she is the daughter of Margaret Drummond.”
“Margaret!” I exclaim. “He gave his bastard my name?”
She bows her head and is silent. My ladies glance across at her as if they are sorry she is trapped in the window bay with me. I am known for my temper and none of them ever want to tell me bad news.
“He gave them all his name,” she says quietly. “They are all called Stewart.”
“Why don’t they take the husbands’ names, if they are all cuckolds’ brats?” I am furious now. “Why doesn’t the king demand that the husbands house their wives and children all together? Keep these women in their place at home?”
She says nothing.
“But he called one James. Which one is James?”
“He is the son of Janet Kennedy,” she says quietly.
“Janet Kennedy?” I recognize the name. “And where is she? Not here?”
“Oh no,” Katherine says quickly, as if that would be impossible. “She lives at Darnaway Castle, far away. You will never meet her.”
I can be glad of this, at least. “The king does not see her any more?”
Katherine picks up the corner of the tapestry as if she wishes she were working on it. “I don’t know, Your Grace.”
“So he does see her?”
“I could not say.”
“And what about the others?” I continue with my interrogation.
“The others?”
“All the other children. By Saint Margaret there must be half a dozen of them!”
She ticks them off on her fingers: “There are Alexander and Catherine, the children of Marion Boyd; and Margaret, the daughter of Margaret Drummond; and Janet Kennedy’s boy James; and the three youngest who are still so small that they usually live with their mother Isabel Stewart, not here at court: Jean, Catherine, and Janet.”
“How many are there altogether?”
I can see her calculating. “There are seven of them here. There may be more of course, unacknowledged.”
I look at her blankly. “I won’t have any of them under the same roof as me,” I say. “Do you understand me? You’ll have to tell him.”
“I?” She shakes her head, perfectly calm. “I could not tell the King of Scotland that his children are not welcome here in Stirling Castle, Your Grace.”
“Well, my chamberlain will have to do it. Or my confessor, or someone has to tell him. I won’t bear it.”
Lady Huntly does not flinch at my raised voice. “You will have to tell him yourself, Your Grace,” she says respectfully. “He’s your husband. But if I were you—”
“You could not be me,” I say flatly. “I am a Tudor princess, the oldest Tudor princess. There is no one like me.”
“If I were so blessed as to be in your position,” she corrects herself smoothly.
“You were the wife of a pretender,” I say meanly. “Obviously, you did not achieve my position.”
She bows her head. “I merely say that if I were a new wife of a great king I would ask it of him as a favor, not demand it as a right. He is kind to you, and he loves his children very deeply. He is capable of great love and affection. You could ask it as a favor. Although . . .”
“Although what?” I snap.
“He will be saddened,” she says. “He loves his children.”
A Tudor does not ask for favors. As a Tudor princess I expect my due. Katherine of Arrogant did not share Ludlow Castle with anyone but our Plantagenet cousin Margaret Pole and her husband, Arthur’s guardian. Nobody would have asked such a thing of her. When my little sister, Princess Mary, is married—probably to a Spanish prince—she will go to her new country with honor. She will not meet bastards or half bloods or whores. I shall not be treated less well than these princesses, who are inferior to me either by birth or age.
I wait till the next day when we have observed Mass in the chapel, and before we leave the hallowed ground I put a hand on my husband’s arm to hold him at the chancel steps and say: “My lord husband, I do not think it right that your bastard children should be housed in my castle. This is my dower castle, my own property, and I don’t want them here.”
He takes my hand and he holds it, looking into my eyes as if we were plighting our troth before the altar. “Little wife, these are the children of my begetting and of my heart. I was hoping that you might be kind to them and that you might give them the company of a little brother.”
“My son will be born in wedlock to two royal parents,” I say stiffly. “He will not share a nursery with bastards. He will be raised with noble companions.”
“Margaret,” he says even more softly, “these little bairns take nothing from you; their mothers are not your rivals. You are queen above all others, my one and only wife. Your son when he comes will be a prince of Scotland, and heir to England. They can live here and be no trouble to you. We will only be here a few times in the year; you will barely see them. It will be nothing to you; but I will know that they are in the safest place in the country.”
I don’t smile, though he is swinging my hand gently. I don’t melt, though his touch is warm. I have seen my father terrorized by the sons and cousins and bastards of my grandfather. The Plantagenets are named for a weed that grows unstoppably and, through them, we Tudors are entwined with children of the blood and children of half blood, boys who claim kinship and boys who are ghosts, boys who are no kin at all. I won’t have my castle filled with boys from nowhere. My father put the neck of his wife’s cousin under the axe, so that there should be no doubt about who was the son and heir to the English throne. Katherine’s parents demanded that he was dead before she came to England from Spain. I won’t have less than her. I won’t allow rival heirs to my son before he is even born. I won’t have rivals to me.
“No,” I say flatly, though my pulse is drumming in my ears and I am afraid of defying him.
He bows his head for a moment and I think that I have won, but then I see that he is silent, not humbled at all, but mastering himself and curbing his anger. When he looks up again his eyes are very cold. “Very well,” he says. “But this is small of you, Your Grace. Small and mean, and—worst of all—stupid.”
“Don’t you dare.” I drag my hand from his and I round on him with a blaze of temper, but he just bows his head slightly to me, and makes a deep obeisance to the altar and walks away just as I am about to treat him to the full blast of a Tudor rage. He goes as if he has no interest in my tantrum and leaves me shaking with fury but with nothing to say and no one to hear.
I write again to my lady grandmother. How dare he call me stupid? How dare he—with a castle full of bastards, and the murder of his own father on his conscience—dream of calling me stupid? Who is more stupid? A Tudor princess who defends her rights as queen? Or a man who meets with philosophers by day and whores by night?
EDINBURGH CASTLE, SCOTLAND, WINTER 1503
My grandmother’s reply to my first letter passes my angry second letter on the way. The messengers cross, not even seeing the other on the arduous road, and when hers arrives we are back in Edinburgh for my fourteenth birthday and the celebrations for Christmas. The seal has been broken on her letter. It is not damaged, it has been deliberately cut, and from this I know that my husband has read her answer to me and has probably already read my complaints of him.
My lady grandmother writes:
Richmond Palace,