I go back to my rooms and write to Katherine:
Praise God, my son is strong and very healthy. We are blessed indeed to have him. I am so sorry to hear of your mistake. I pray for you in your sorrow and your embarrassment.
“Don’t write that,” my husband says, looking over my shoulder and rudely reading my private letter.
I scatter it with sand to dry the ink, and I wave it in the air so he cannot read my sympathetic words. “It’s just a sisterly letter,” I say.
“Don’t send it. She has enough trouble without you adding your sympathy to her burdens.”
“Sympathy is hardly a burden.”
“It’s one of the worst.”
“Anyway, what is a woman like her troubled with?” I demand. “She has everything that she ever dreamed of but a child, and surely one will come.”
I see him look away as if he has a secret. “James! Tell me! What have you heard?”
He pulls forward a stool and sits on it, smiling up at me. “You must not rejoice in the misfortune of others,” he instructs me.
I cannot hide my smile. “You know that I would not be so unkind. Is it Katherine’s misfortune?”
“You will rewrite the letter.”
“I will. If you will tell me what you know.”
“Well, for all his gentle upbringing, your sainted brother Harry is no better than a mere sinner like me,” he says. “For all that you reproach me for the bairns and send them away from their little nursery, your brother Harry is no better a husband than I; he is no better than the rest of us. While his wife was in confinement he was caught in bed with one of her ladies-in-waiting.”
“Oh! No! Which one? Who?” I gasp. “Actually in bed with her?”
“Anne Hastings,” he says. “So now there is a great row between her brother the Duke of Buckingham, the whole Stafford family, and the king.”
I sigh as if he has just given me a rich gift. “How very dreadful,” I say delightedly. “How unfortunate. I am very shocked.”
“And the Staffords are very great,” he reminds me. “And of royal blood from Edward III. They won’t like to be held up for shame, nor to have Henry dallying with one of theirs. He’s a fool to make enemies of his lords.”
“I suppose you never do.”
“I don’t,” he says with quiet pride. “If I make an enemy, then I kill him or imprison him, I don’t upset him and let him go off to his own lands to cause trouble against me. I know what I have to do to hold this kingdom together. Your brother is new to the throne and careless.”
“Anne Hastings,” I say lingeringly. “Katherine’s own lady-in-waiting. She must be absolutely furious. She must be spitting with rage. She must be sick with disappointment. After her great wedding! After her marriage for love! All those ridiculous madrigals!”
He lifts a finger as if to warn me. “Never again scold me for having a mistress,” he says. “You always say that your father never looked at another woman and that your brother married for love. Now you see. It is perfectly normal for a man to take a mistress, especially when his wife is confined. It is perfectly normal for a king to have his pick of the court. Never reproach me again.”
“It is neither normal nor moral,” I retort. “It is against the laws of God and of man.” I can’t maintain my grandmother’s tone. “Oh, James, tell me more! Is Katherine going to have to keep Lady Anne as her lady-in-waiting? Is she going to have to turn a blind eye to it all? Will Harry keep Anne as his whore?” I gasp. “He’ll never set her up as his mistress, like a French king, will he? He’ll never let her run his court and send Katherine away?”
“I don’t know,” he says, chucking me under the chin. “What a very vulgar child you are to want to know all the details! Shall I tell my ambassador to report at once?”
“Oh yes,” I say. “I want to know everything!”
EDINBURGH CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1510
But the next news we have from England is not amusing scandal but good news: the best. Katherine is with child again. I cross myself when they tell me, for I am worried about my son, Arthur. Katherine and I have been so turn and turn about for good fortune—my betrothal coinciding with her widowhood, the death of my father meant her marriage and coronation—that I fear that the birth of an heir to the Tudor throne in England will be the death of the present heir in Scotland.
James does not laugh at my fears, but sends for his best physician to come to Edinburgh Castle and go to the nursery where everyone is on tiptoe around the rocker who strips the little linen shirt off my son and swears that he is getting hotter and hotter every hour, that he is burning up.
He is only nine months old, he is tiny. It does not seem as if there is enough baby to fight the fever that makes his skin so hot to the touch and makes his eyes sink into his face. They soak his sheets in cold water, they close the shutters against the sun, but they cannot make the fever break. And though they cup him, draining blood from his rosy little heel, and purge him so that he vomits and cries in pain, nothing makes him better. While I am kneeling on the floor beside his chief nursemaid, watching her pat his sweating skin with a cool towel, he closes his eyes and he stops crying. He turns his head away as if he just wants to sleep and then he is still, and she says, her voice filled with horror: “He’s gone.”
Dear Sister, I am so unhappy at his loss. I cannot write more. Pray for his little soul and pray for me, your sister, in this time of my trouble. I have been guilty of pride and envy but surely this terrible blow cannot be to teach me humility? I am so sorry if I have ever sinned against you. I pray you to forgive me for anything that I have ever said or done against you. Forgive my unkind and unsisterly thoughts that I have never even voiced. Give Mary my love, I miss you both so much. I am brought so very low. I have never known pain like this. Margaret.
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1511
Katherine goes into confinement in January and they send us the news of the triumphant birth on vellum that has been illustrated with Tudor roses and Spanish pomegranates. The letters are illuminated with gold leaf. They obviously had it drawn up for weeks; they had monks hand-painting the borders for months. They must have been very certain of the blessing of God to have such work done, with such brash confidence, on the chancy outcome of childbed. They bring me the letter as I lie on my bed in the afternoon. I find that I cannot stop crying. I trace the words with my fingertip; their joy seems very far away. I don’t know how they dare.
But their hubris goes unpunished, as God smiles on the Tudors. Katherine has a boy. They call him Henry—of course. I think bitterly that it is as if my brother Arthur never was, as if my brother has forgotten that the name of Arthur was to be given to the firstborn Tudor boy, and the name Henry allocated to the second son. But of course Henry thinks of himself as the first son, and proudly gives his name to his boy. So there is no Arthur Tudor at all. Not my brother, not my son.
Katherine does not write of her triumph directly to me. She leaves me to be informed as if I should be grateful to be treated as any other European monarch, as if her good luck does not make me feel worse about the loss of my little boy. She did not even reply to my letter that told her of my grief. All I receive is this gold-enameled boast.
Our ambassador sends us news of the magnificent tournament and feast that they hold to celebrate the birth of a son for Henry and an heir for his throne. The fountains of London flow with wine, so that everyone can drink the health of the new baby. They roast oxen at Smithfield so everyone can share in the royal joy. At the joust—they hold an enormous joust, of course, which goes on for days—for the first time ever, Henry allows himself to fight all comers. He risks himself as if he is a man at last. With a son and heir in the cradle, he can take challenges. He wins convincingly, beating everyone, as if he and Katherine and their son are untouchable.