As soon as the feast is over, the double doors at the end of the hall open and a great float comes in, pulled by dancers in Tudor green. It is a huge castle, beautifully decorated with eight ladies inside, the principal dancer dressed as a Spanish princess, and on each turret there is a boy from the chapel choir singing her praises. It is followed by a float dressed as a sailing ship with billowing sails of peach silk, manned by eight knights. The ship docks at the castle but the ladies refuse to dance, so the knights attack the castle with pretend jousting until the ladies throw them paper flowers and then step down. The castle and the ship are hauled away and they all dance together. Katherine of Arrogant claps her hands and bows her thanks to my father the king for the elaborate compliment. I am so furious that I wasn’t given a part in this that I cannot bring myself to smile. I catch her looking at me, and I feel certain she is taunting me with the honor that my father is doing her. She is the center of everything, it’s quite sickening in the middle of dinner.
Then it is Arthur’s turn. He dances with one of my mother’s ladies, and then Harry and I take to the floor for our galliard. It is a fast, bright dance with music as tempting as a village jig. The musicians take it at a quick pace and Harry and I are excellent partners, well matched and well trained. Neither of us misses a step, nobody could do it better. But in one part when I am circling, arms outstretched, dancing a little step on the spot, my feet and ankles shown by my swirling gown, and all eyes are on me—at that exact moment—Harry chooses to step to one side and throw off his bulky jacket and then spring back to my side in his billowing linen shirt. Father and Mother applaud and he looks flushed and so boyishly handsome that everyone cheers him. I keep smiling, but I am completely furious, and when we hold hands in the dance, I pinch his palm as hard as I can.
Of course, I am not at all surprised by this scene stealing; I half expected him to do something to draw all eyes to him. It’s been killing him all day to have to play second son to Arthur. He escorted Katherine up the aisle of the abbey, but had to hand her over at the top and step back and be quite forgotten. Now, following Arthur’s restrained dance, he gets his chance to shine. If I could stamp on his toe I would, but I catch Arthur’s eye and he gives me a broad wink. We are both thinking the same thing: Harry is always indulged and everyone but Mother and Father can see what we see: a boy spoiled beyond enduring.
The dance comes to an end and Harry and I bow together, hand in hand, making a pretty picture as we always do. I glance across at the Scots lords, who are watching me intently. They, at least, have no interest in Harry. One of them, James Hamilton, is the King of Scotland’s own kinsman. He will be glad to see that I will be a merry queen; his cousin, King James, likes dancing and feasting and will meet his match in me. I see the lords exchange a few quick words and I feel certain that they will agree the next wedding, my wedding, will be soon. And Harry will not be dancing at that and stealing the show, for I will not allow it, and Katherine will have to wear her hair hidden under her hood and it will be me who stands and welcomes the ship with peach silk sails and all the dancers.
Neither Harry nor I are allowed to stay to the end of the feast, the escorting of the princess to bed, and the prayers over the wedding bed. I think it is very wrong and bad mannered to treat us like children. My grandmother sends us to our rooms and though I glance over to my mother, expecting her to say that Harry must go but I can stay up longer, she is blandly looking aside. Always, it is my grandmother’s word that is law: she is the hanging judge, my mother only grants the occasional rare royal pardon. So we make our bows and curtseys to the king and to my mother and to my lady grandmother, and to darling Arthur and Katherine of Arrogant, and then we have to go, dawdling as slowly as we dare, from the bright rooms where the white wax candles are burning down as if they cost no more than tallow, and the musicians are playing as if they are going to go on all night.
“I am going to have a wedding just like this,” Harry says as we go up the stairs.
“Not for years yet,” I say to irritate him. “But I shall be married very soon.”
When I get to my room I kneel at my prie-dieu and, though I had intended to pray for Arthur’s long life and happiness, and remind God of His special debt to the Tudors, I find I can only pray that the Scottish ambassadors tell the king to send for me at once, for I want a marriage feast as grand as this one, and a wardrobe of clothes as good as Katherine of Arrogant’s, and shoes—I will have hundreds and hundreds of pairs of shoes, I swear it, and every one of them will have embroidered toes and gold laces.
RICHMOND PALACE, ENGLAND, JANUARY 1502
My prayer is answered, for God always listens to the prayers of the Tudors, and the King of Scotland orders his ambassadors to negotiate with my father’s advisors. They agree a price for my dowry, for my servants, for my allowance, for the lands that will become my own in Scotland, and all through the Christmas feast the letters come and go between Scotland Yard and Richmond Palace until my lady grandmother comes to me and says: “Princess Margaret, I am pleased to say that it is the will of God that you are to be married.”
I rise up from my dutiful curtsey and look as maidenly and surprised as I can. But since I had been told this very morning that my lady grandmother and mother would see me before dinner, and that I was to wear my best gown as befits a great occasion, I am not too amazed. Really, they are quite ridiculous.
“I am?” I say sweetly.
“Yes,” my mother says. She entered the room ahead of my grandmother but somehow managed to be second with the announcement. “You are to marry King James of Scotland.”
“Is it my father’s wish?” I say, as my lady governess has taught me.
“It is,” my lady grandmother speaks out of turn. “My son, the king, has made an agreement. There is to be a lasting peace between ourselves and Scotland; your marriage will seal it. But I have requested that you stay with us, here in England, until you are a woman grown.”
“What?” I am absolutely horrified that my grandmother is going to spoil everything, as she always does. “But when will I go? I have to go now!”
“When you are fourteen years old,” my lady grandmother rules, and when my mother seems about to say something, she raises her hand and goes on: “I know—no one knows better than I—that an early marriage is very dangerous for a young woman. And the Scots king is not . . . He cannot be trusted not to . . . We felt that the King of Scots might . . .”
For once, she seems to be lost for words. This has never happened before in the history of England that runs from Arthur of the Britons to my lady grandmother in a completely unbroken line. My lady grandmother has never failed to finish a sentence; no one has ever interrupted her.
“But when am I to marry? And where?” I ask, thinking of Saint Paul’s Cathedral carpeted with red, and thousands of people crowding to see me, and a crown on my head and a cloth-of-gold train from my shoulders, and gold shoes and jewels, and jousts in my honor, and a masque, and the pretend sailing ship with peach sails and everyone admiring me.
“This very month!” my mother says triumphantly. “The king will send his representative and you will be betrothed by proxy.”
“A proxy? Not the king himself? Not in Saint Paul’s?” I ask. This sounds as if it is hardly worth doing at all. Not to leave for two years? That’s a lifetime to me now. Not in Saint Paul’s Cathedral like Katherine of Arrogant? Why would she get a better wedding than me? No king? Just some old lord?