Everyone was so kind to me, and they say that I must learn Spanish! Mary writes, her letters looping across the page and then getting cramped and small at the corners. Think if I should marry Charles and be the Holy Roman Empress! Think how lovely that would be! And we should all three of us be queens.
This is such a foolish plan that it makes me laugh and laugh and quite restores my sisterly affection. Charles of Castile is a baby of six years old. Mary will find herself betrothed and stuck in England for eight years at least unless they take her to live with them in Castile as nursemaid to her baby husband. Of course, he will have a great title; but there is no certainty that he will live to see it, and she will have a lifetime to wait before she can call herself queen.
Katherine and I are much together as she has come to live at court, Mary writes, misunderstanding as usual that this is a massive snub to Katherine, who has clearly failed to keep her own house, and now has to live at my father’s board as a hanger-on.
Our father stopped her allowance and dismissed her duenna for poor advice. I am so glad! I love having her at court, even though she finds it hard to make ends meet and cannot dine every day when she has no suitable clothes. She is terribly shabby, as her father will not send her money; but my lady grandmother says that I cannot give her anything and she says that she does not mind.
I wonder why my father and my lady grandmother are driving Katherine to such straits. I suppose they are still punishing her for sharp practice with her dowry. So I send her my love, and I congratulate Mary on her brilliant prospects, giggling as I write. I say that I am happy for her, that it is a fine thing to be a queen in a fair country. I say that I am happy with my husband the king, a fine man, a grown man, a real man, and that I wish her every happiness too, when her bridegroom is grown also—a decade from now. Poor Mary! Foolish Mary! She is so dazzled by his title that she has not realized she will not marry for years, and nobody knows when Katherine will get Harry. Yes, my two sisters, my rivals, may be betrothed to the greatest matches in Europe, but Katherine cannot afford a gown to dance in with her bridegroom and Mary’s betrothed can barely sit on his own little pony. I can hardly sign my name for laughing at the foolish pride of the two of them, my silly sisters.
And then in the summer my joy is complete. I write a proud letter to England to announce to my lady grandmother, to them all, that, finally, I am with child.
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, MARCH 1507
There is no doubt in my mind who is now the foremost of the three princesses, my sister-in-law Katherine of Aragon, my sister Mary, or myself: it is obviously me. Katherine failed to conceive a child with Arthur and then told everyone, “Alas, it never happened for us,” and now her marriage is never mentioned and she is a poor relation, an unwanted hanger-on. People may praise Mary’s beauty and her talents, but her betrothal to Charles of Castile is still only a plan, and he is nothing more than a child himself. His father has died so he is now heir to the Holy Roman Emperor. But still, he is a little boy and she won’t be able to marry or present the Habsburgs with a son any time in the next eight years. But I have conceived, carried and birthed a boy. It nearly cost me my life. I was deathly ill, everyone thought that they would lose me. But my husband went on pilgrimage, on foot for hundreds of miles, at least a hundred, to Saint Ninian at Whithorn and at the very moment that he knelt before the altar, I recovered. It is a miracle, a son and heir for Scotland, and a message from God that he blesses my queenship and our marriage.
Our child is an heir for England too. If anything were to happen to Harry (which God forbid, of course) it is my baby who would be heir to the throne of England through me. Katherine and Mary cannot dream of that for themselves, whereas I could be My Lady the King’s Mother, and as great as our grandmother, who runs the English court through her son and has done so ever since he came to the throne, married or widowed.
We hold a magnificent joust to celebrate the birth and the undeniable champion is a mystery knight called “the wild man.” He jousts with the white knight—the Sieur de la Bastie, the handsome French-born knight who fought before me at my wedding. Once again, Antoine delights the crowd and all the ladies with his ice-white armor and the white scarf streaming on his lance. He and James have a bet about the proper treatment of a charger’s feet, and James loses and gives the chevalier a cask of wine to wash his horse’s hooves. The greatest joust of the tournament is when the white knight comes against the wild man. There’s a wonderful series of broken lances and then we all scream with excitement when the wild man challenger takes off his helmet and throws down his disguise—and it is my husband, who has fought all comers and defeated everyone! He is delighted with himself, with me, and with our son, who is named James, Prince of Scotland and the Isles and Duke of Rothesay, so Marion Boyd’s Alexander can step back into half-bred obscurity and play at being archbishop and the bastard James can settle for being an earl.
Everything should be perfect since our marriage is visibly blessed by God, except that my husband doubts, or says that he doubts, my father’s good faith. Scottish reivers raid the lands of the English farmers, stealing sheep and cows and sometimes robbing travelers, and my father rightly complains that this is a breach of the Treaty of Perpetual Peace. James counters with my father’s treatment of Scots merchant shipping, and both of them endlessly write claim and counterclaim about the unreliable justice and constant warring of the borderlands.
My father expected my marriage to bring a peace that would last forever between England and Scotland, but I don’t know how I am supposed to bring it about. James is not a boy to become besotted with an older experienced king, as Mary tells me Harry was with Philip of Castile. James is a grown man, an older man, who will not submit himself to the authority of my father. He would never dream of asking for my advice, and when I offer it—even though I am a princess of England—he takes no notice. I say with great dignity that as a princess of England, Queen of Scotland, and mother of the next King of Scotland, I have thoughts on this, and many matters, and I expect them to be regarded.
And he bows low and says: “God save the Queen!”
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, CHRISTMAS 1507
I am with child again by Christmas and it is only this triumph that helps me to be serene, as serene as a madonna, when I hear the news that Mary my sister is officially betrothed to Charles of Castile. She is to have a dowry of two hundred fifty golden crowns, and his grandfather the emperor sent her a ruby so big that some fool wrote a poem about it. She was betrothed by proxy and made a speech in perfect French, and she takes the title Princess of Castile.
She writes to me herself to boast of her triumph, in a letter so ill written and spelled so wildly that I take nearly an hour to understand it.
I will be married when the prince is fourteen, seven years from now, and I don’t mind waiting at all, though it is a lifetime, because I am to stay at home and learn Spanish. It’s a tremendously difficult language but Katherine says that she will teach me, I think I should pay her for being my tutor as she lives very humbly at court, her parents don’t support her and we won’t pay her widow’s dower until they have paid her dowry. But I am not allowed to see her very often or give her anything.