I remind him, rather plaintively, that they are planning that I shall go to Scotland the summer before I turn fourteen, and I want to see him before I leave. Surely he wants to see me before I go to be Queen of Scotland in person as well as in name? Surely he will want to see my new gowns? I am making a list of everything I shall need and I will have to have a baggage train of a hundred carts. Also, I think but don’t tell him, now I outrank his wife and she can follow behind me and see how she likes it now that I am the newly made queen and she still a mere princess. If she comes to court she will find that she has to curtsey to me, and follow me when we go in to dinner. There will be no more carefully judged equal curtseys; she has to sink down as low as a princess goes to a queen. I long to see her do that to me. I really wish he would bring her just so that I could see her pride humbled.
I tell him that Harry cannot recover from the shock that I go before him on every state occasion, that I am served on bended knee, that I am a queen as great as our lady mother. I tell Arthur that we all miss him at court, though Christmas was merry. I tell him my father is spending a small fortune on the clothes that I shall take to Scotland, while making a note of every penny. I have to have everything new, red bed curtains made of sarsenet, everything embroidered with gold thread. Even so, they think it will all be ready by next summer and I will set off as soon as the King of Scotland confirms the marriage by transferring my dower lands to me. But Arthur must come home to say good-bye. Arthur must come home to see me leave. If not—when will I see him again? “I miss you,” I write.
I send my letter to Ludlow in a bundle with my mother and lady grandmother’s letters. The messenger will take days to get to Arthur’s court. The roads to the west are crumbling and in disrepair; my father says there is no money to spend on them. The messenger will have to lead his own change of horses for fear that there are none available for hire on the way. He will have to spend the nights in abbeys and monasteries along the route, or if he finds himself snowed in or benighted he will have to beg for hospitality in a manor or farmhouse. Everyone is obliged to assist the king’s messenger; but if the road is a quagmire, or a bridge swept away by a flood, there is little anyone can do but advise him to take the long way round, and find his way as best he can.
So I don’t expect a swift reply and I don’t think much of it when, early one morning in April, walking to my room with a candle after attending Prime with my lady grandmother, I see a king’s messenger step from a barge and walk quickly across the quay and through the private door to the royal quarters. He looks exhausted, leaning against the carved column as he says something quietly to a yeoman of the guard that leads the man to throw down his pike and gallop indoors.
I guess that he’s going to my father the king’s private rooms so I leave my post at the window and walk along the gallery to see what is so urgent that the messenger has arrived at first light and the guards are downing their arms and running. But even before I get to the door, I can see the yeoman and two or three of my father’s counselors going quickly down the privy stairs to the courtyard below. Curiously, I watch as they huddle together, and then someone breaks away, runs up the stairs, and goes to the chapel to fetch my father’s confessor. The priest comes hurrying out. Now, I step forward. “What’s the matter?” I ask.
Friar Peter’s face is sallow as if all the blood has gone from his cheeks, as if he has turned to parchment. “Forgive me, Your Grace,” he says with a little bow. “I am on your father’s business and can’t stop.”
And with that he walks past me! Scuttles past me! As if I am not Queen of Scotland and taking up my throne next summer! I wait for a moment, wondering if it would be too undignified to run after him and insist that he wait until dismissed; but then I hear him returning, coming up the stairs so slowly that I don’t understand why he rushed down. Now, there is no hurry; he is dragging his feet, looking as if he wishes he were not going towards my father’s rooms at all. The advisors trail behind him, looking as sick as if they are poisoned. He sees me waiting; but it is as if he does not see me, for he does not bow—he does not even acknowledge me. He walks past me as if his eyes are fixed on a ghost and he cannot see mere mortals, not even royals.
That’s when I know for sure. I think I knew before. I think I knew as soon as I saw the messenger slumped against the column, as if he wished he had died before bringing this news to us. I step before the priest, and I say: “It’s Arthur, isn’t it?”
My beloved brother’s name makes him see me but he says only, “Go to your lady mother,” as if he can give me orders, and he turns away and slips into my father’s rooms, without knocking, without announcement, one hand on the door, the other clutching the crucifix which hangs from his belt, as if it might give him strength.
I go, not because I have to do as my father’s confessor tells me, for I am a queen now and I have to obey only my parents and my husband; but because I am afraid that they will come to my mother and tell her something terrible. I almost think that I will bar her door so that they cannot come in. If we don’t know, perhaps it hasn’t happened. If nobody tells us that there is something terribly wrong with Arthur then perhaps he is still well in Ludlow, hunting, enjoying the spring weather, traveling into Wales to show the people their prince, learning how to rule his principality. Perhaps he is happy with Katherine of Arrogant; I would be glad even if she was the cause of his happiness. Perhaps she is with child and they have brought us good news. I would even like good news of her. I keep thinking of all the wonderful news that the messenger might have brought, in such a hurry. I keep thinking that Arthur is such a darling, beloved of everyone, so dear to me, that nothing can have gone wrong. The news cannot be bad.
My mother is still in bed, her bedroom fire just flickering into life. Her lady is bringing gowns for her to choose for the day, the heavy headdresses are laid out on the table. She looks up as I dawdle into her bedroom. I think I should say something, but I don’t know what.
“You’re up early, Margaret,” she remarks.
“I went to Prime with my lady grandmother.”
“Is she joining us for breakfast?”
“Yes.” And I think: my lady grandmother will know what to do when the confessor comes in with his face the color of a manuscript and grief written all over it.
“Is everything all right, little queen?” she asks me tenderly.
I can’t bear to answer her. I take a seat at the window and look out at the garden, and listen for the footsteps that soon come heavily along the corridor. Then, at last, after what seems like a long long time, I hear the outer doors to her presence chamber open, the sound of footsteps, the inner doors to the privy chamber open and then finally, unstoppably, the door to her bedroom is opened, and my father’s confessor comes into my mother’s rooms, his head bowed as low as the poorest drudge pulling a plow. I jump to my feet when he comes in, and I put out my hand as if I can stop him from speaking. I say suddenly: “No! No!” but he says quietly, “Your Grace, the king bids you come to his rooms at once.”
Terribly, my mother turns to me. “What is it? You know, don’t you?”
Terribly, I reply: “It’s Arthur. He’s dead.”
They say that he died of the Sweat—and this only makes it worse for us Tudors. The disease came in from the jails of France with my father’s convict army. Wherever he marched, from Wales, through Bosworth to London, people died in an instant. England had never known such a disease. My father won the battle against Richard III with his sickly force, but he had to delay his coronation because of the horror that they brought with them. They called it the Tudor curse and said that the reign that had begun in sweat would end in tears. And now here we are, not anywhere near the end of our reign, but deep in sweat and tears, and the curse of the invading army has fallen on my innocent brother.