Ellen sighed at this. ‘I will remember her in my prayers; I canna help but feel sorry for her.’
‘You were always better than I,’ I told her with mock petulance. ‘And you are the only person I dinna begrudge for being so. But! Enough about my brother; I shall be embroiled in discussions about him all weekend. You are coming, are you not? We are going to the Highlands, Ellen; they are so beautiful! You would love it. It is so different there, not bleak and rocky like it is here. Everything is green and beautiful and steeped in traditions of old.’
Ellen drew in a shaky breath. ‘I will remain behind and look after Dorothea, along with her nurses,’ she told me. ‘Let you enjoy your time with Lord Methven and His Majesty.’
‘Very well,’ I consented, though I was sad to leave my dearest friend behind. ‘You don’t know what you will be missing!’
‘All the better, then,’ Ellen said. ‘This way I shall have no regrets.’
For some reason those words struck me and I wondered if Ellen had any regrets thus far.
Surely no one could have as impressive a catalogue of regrets as I.
Oh, the Highlands! They always surpassed my expectations with the lushness of the foliage, so green it seemed almost painted on by some faerie hand, and the kindness of the Highlanders as they received us into their strange world. We were met with cheers and blessings as we made our progress to where we would meet the Earl of Atholl. It was the old days for me again, my days with my husband Jamie, when life was merry and the kingdom was at rest.
My son, Jamie, was as beloved as his father and as handsome. The young maids fawned over him as they struggled to be the first among the throngs that lined the roads, waving and shouting, hoping he would cast his gaze upon them and favour them as he had been rumoured to favour many a lass. Though it grated on me, I could not begrudge them; it elevated a woman’s status in life to be loved by a king, and if she was fortunate enough to bear him a child, she would be rewarded. And my son was rewarding many women. He now had five children by five different mistresses.
At least he had established the fertility of the house of Stewart.
The Earl of Atholl had built a marvellous reception hall of woven birches and green timber that smelled so fresh, I inhaled as if it were the sweetest pomander. Tapestries hung from the roughly hewn walls, the windows were glazed, and we stood on a floor strewn with a carpet of sweet-smelling herbs and flowers. It was a marvellous marriage of courtly elegance and the simplicity of the forest.
‘Oh, but it is just wonderful! It is like the court of Robin Hood!’ I exclaimed as I was seated to table, which was laden with the finest foods and wines. I was eager to sample everything, from the breads, to the mutton, moorfowl, capercaillie, swans, and rabbits, to the blackcock, partridges, ducks, and, my favourite, peacocks.
We sat to devour the magnificent bounty before us and the papal nuncio was quite impressed. Harry was impressed with the scene as well; however, what seemed most captivating to him was not our surroundings but the Earl of Atholl’s young daughter Janet. With her curling black hair, skin pale as cream, and elfin green eyes, even I could not deny that she was a great beauty.
I never had any luck with women whose names began with the letter J. My Jamie had loved a Janet Kennedy, and Angus had his Jane Stewart. No, J names were never good to me. My heart clenched in my chest. It was Jamie and Angus all over again. Perhaps it was all men.
I did my best to ignore Harry’s flirtatious statements about his hunting prowess, and Janet’s overindulgent laughter. I sighed, trying to excuse it. Here I was, stout after the birth of a child, and none too appealing to my own self let alone a man. And hadn’t we had a bit of a rough start, with our marriage steeped in the intrigues of Jamie and the court? Didn’t Harry deserve a bit of a diversion? I had told him I did not expect faithfulness from him; I had told him long ago. I only asked that he not humiliate me. Thus far, the flirtation was subtle enough.
In any event, what were the odds that he would see her again?
I told myself this as I ate helping after helping of the generous earl’s fare.
But as we stood at the night’s end watching the lodgings go aflame in a blazing bonfire, as was Highland tradition, it was nothing to the fire lighting my husband’s eyes.
We returned to Stirling to find Dorothea ill with fever. All thoughts of Highland seductresses were put aside as we tended our daughter.
‘Why didn’t they send a messenger to us?’ I demanded as I held my daughter, who was so hot her flesh was scalding to the touch.
‘By the time a messenger would reach you, you would have been on your way back,’ Ellen told me.
‘’Tis a childhood fever, Margaret,’ Harry assured me. ‘We’ve all had them. She will be fine, you’ll see.’
But I knew too well. I bathed my daughter in icy water myself, hoping to abate the fire in her humours to no avail. Her blue eyes began to roll in her head and her body jarred and jerked with fits.
Harry paced the rooms as we waited for the physician.
‘She is bound to recover,’ he insisted. ‘She is bound to!’
I knelt on the floor beside my daughter, whom I placed in the centre of one of the carpets that she might move freely without harming herself. She flopped about like a fish and I covered my eyes with my hands. I did not want to see this. Oh, I did not want to see this …
At once the flopping stopped. Dorothea was still.
I met Harry’s stricken gaze as he knelt down beside her, reaching out to feel the pulse of life. He searched her neck, laying his big hand on her tiny chest. I shook my head. Harry rose, as if burned by the fever now ebbing with the life force from the little body. He looked upon me, blue eyes wide in horror.
‘Oh, Harry …’ I looked up at him, appealing with my eyes that he might take me in his arms, that we might comfort each other. ‘Harry, darling—’
‘Sometimes,’ he said, his voice low, ‘I do believe you are a curse.’
He turned on his heel and quit the room, leaving me to keep vigil alone over our dead child.
‘It is because of Margaret that God took her,’ I told Ellen in my apartments the night after the interment. Harry would not attend Dorothea’s burial. She was laid to rest beside her half siblings after services subtle and unfit for a Princess of Scotland. The coffin was so small …
‘Why do you say that?’ Ellen asked me.
‘Because I failed her,’ I explained. ‘I failed her as a mother and I failed Dorothea, too. I should never have gone to the Highlands. We never should have gone,’ I added, thinking of Harry and the earl’s fair daughter.
Ellen rose from her chair and gathered me in her arms as I at last began to sob for the first time since Dorothea’s passing.
‘You did not fail,’ Ellen told me. ‘You have always done what you thought was best at the time. You have always done the best with who you are and what you had. You must hold on to that.’
I shook my head. ‘I wish I could believe that,’ I confessed brokenly. ‘To Harry I am a curse. Maybe I have always been a curse.’
‘No, darling, no …’ Ellen soothed. ‘You have been a blessing to me,’ she told me.
‘Jamie,’ I breathed. ‘I must not fail Jamie. I must do right by him at least; I must protect him. He is all that is left to me.’
‘But, Your Grace, you still do have a living daughter,’ Ellen told me.
‘It is too late for us,’ I sobbed. ‘It was too late the moment she crossed the Border.’
Ellen stroked my hair and back, rocking to and fro. ‘It is never too late,’ she told me. ‘You have been as good a mother as possible, considering the circumstances.’ How gracefully she lied! ‘And you have ever been a faithful and good mother to His Majesty. Now you must just take care of yourself.’
‘Yes, I best,’ I spat, my tone hard with bitterness. ‘I am all I have.’
BOOK 6
Margaret R
22
Distractions
I did not see Harry much after Dorothea passed. He called upon me now and again out of formal obligation, but his heart was no longer there; his blue eyes were distant, longing to be elsewhere. The Highlands …
One evening when he came to me I presented myself in a warm brown satin gown trimmed with otter fur, making certain my hair, which still shone coppery despite my age, was worn long as he had once preferred it. I ordered a dinner of his favourite roasted fowl and greeted Harry with a smile.
‘We should not carry on as we are, Harry,’ I told him, reaching out to take his limp hand in mine. ‘We have so much to live for. Jamie is such a triumph! He’s restored my lands that Angus stole and named you governor of Newark Castle. He even had that border terror Johnny Armstrong hanged. He is putting Scotland right, Harry. We should put our marriage right as well.’
Harry bowed his head. ‘Of course I want peace with you, Margaret,’ he said in soft tones.
‘Then stay with me tonight, Harry,’ I urged, hoping he would respond to my aggressive passions as he had in the past. ‘We lost our precious Dorothea, but we can still have more children. It is not too late. I am still lusty with health.’
Harry withdrew his hand as though I were as fevered as Dorothea had been the night we lost her and he was at risk for contracting it. He shook his head. ‘Margaret, no. Whatever you may think, I do worry after your health and how taxing it would be to bear another child. And perhaps it is your age that cursed Dorothea with such ill health. I do not want to risk that upon future children.’
‘But that is ridiculous!’ I cried, rising, balling my hands into fists. ‘It is just that you dinna want me any more, do you, Harry? You’ve found another, younger maid to warm your bed and now you want to put me aside, isn’t that it? It’s Janet Stewart, isn’t it?’
Harry rose. ‘I do not want to hurt you, Margaret, please believe that.’
I laughed, tossing my hair over my shoulder. ‘Of course not, they never do.’ I shook my head, dismissing him with an impatient gesture. ‘Go to her, then. I am sure I have only been an impediment to your plans. Go!’
Harry offered a blow and I sank to my seat once again.
Somehow I had known the night would play out that way.
Perhaps in some perverse sense, I had planned it thus all along.
I threw myself into the reign of my son with more enthusiasm. I had nothing else. And whether he liked it or not, I would be there to advise him against the foolish impulsivity of his youth and give him the clear-headed guidance he yearned for, even if he did not know it.
One of the foremost priorities, in my mind at least, was Jamie’s impending marriage. My brother had sent Lord William Howard to court to discuss a possible alliance with the Princess Mary.
I received Lord William in my apartments at Edinburgh Castle, thrilled to discuss such a delightful enterprise.
‘Lord William!’ I cried to the smiling young lord, so different from his darker, more brooding older brother, the Duke of Norfolk. ‘How happy We are to see you! Tell Us of England and Our brother. Tell Us of his court. Is he well? What news of the divorce from Queen Catherine?’
‘Still a confounding, difficult endeavour, Your Grace,’ Lord William said with a grimace. ‘Let us hope we can make these arrangements with more ease. Is His Majesty in favour of a wedding to the Princess Mary, then?’
I offered a half smile. ‘Our son seems to have his own ideas. We are still working toward making the sense of that end clear to him.’
‘Ah, I see,’ Lord William replied with a laugh. ‘Well, then, I suppose it would be best to discuss the matter with him directly.’
I was reluctant to agree to this, but then Jamie was king. It would be good to allow him to think he had say in a matter as important as his marriage.
Lord William rose. As he bowed, he said in a light voice, ‘And the Lady Margaret Douglas, Your Grace … I am happy to report that she is thriving and doing well at the court of His Majesty, King Henry.’
Her name jarred me. I was ashamed I hadn’t asked of her. There was too much else on my mind, as there had always been where Margaret was concerned.
‘Ah,’ I answered, matching his light tone. ‘That is good … that is good.’
I did not cry till after he quit my rooms.
‘I will go to war with Henry if I have to!’ Jamie told me, his cheeks ruddy with rage as we discussed the matter of my brother’s insistent support of Angus in his apartments. Despite my trying to steer the conversation toward the lighter fare of marriage, Jamie would not be dissuaded. Talk of Angus inflamed him. ‘Do not think I am above going to war against my uncle if he keeps undermining the peace of Scotland!’
I shook my head with a heavy sigh. ‘Nothing will surprise me. Brothers war against brother, son against father … nephew against uncle is nothing new,’ I said, my tone weary. ‘But please, Jamie, think of Scotland and the peace I have worked for these past thirty years. Please think of that, of how hard won it has been.’
‘Of course I want to maintain the peace, Mother,’ Jamie told me. ‘But I will not tolerate betrayal. By anyone.’
‘I have offered myself as mediator,’ I said. ‘I want to honour the treaty of Berwick; perhaps we can renew it. England is too mighty an enemy to have at one’s border, Jamie. We canna afford it.’
‘I know, Mother, I know, by God,’ Jamie answered, his voice thin with impatience. ‘Meantime, what of the English court? You know more than I, I am sure.’ This was not true; Jamie was indulging me, but for the sake of indulging his need for distraction I told him. Anything to be relieved of the topic of Angus.
‘Henry wrested his wish for a divorce at least from the English people,’ I informed him. ‘Though His Holiness was none too eager to grant him a thing, and excommunicated him.’
‘His soul is in peril, then,’ Jamie observed, wide-eyed. For as much of a profligate my son was proving to be, it amused me how prudish he could be when the occasion called for it. He was not as different from his uncle Henry as he thought.
I laughed. ‘Well, he separated from Rome and made himself head of the new Church of England, with one of his own as Archbishop of Canterbury. So I imagine he sees his soul as quite reconciled with the Lord, Jamie.’ I could not help but admire my brother’s tenacity and great strength of will. He managed to carve out a way where no way seemed possible and was ruled by no one but himself. Had I only been as strong …
‘So he married his Anne, then,’ Jamie said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And she is even expecting a prince already,’ I noted.
‘Well, I suppose all is as he wants it now and he can address English matters of policy with more focus.’
‘Indeed,’ I agreed. ‘Perhaps one of those matters should be your own marriage, Jamie. To the Princess Mary?’ I could not keep the hopefulness from my voice.
‘Mother, you canna be serious,’ Jamie said with a laugh. ‘With the king remarried, the princess is now illegitimate. I have advised the Duke of Albany and Lord William Howard of the same. The marriage is not to be considered.’
‘How can that be? My daughter Margaret is recognised even though Angus and I are divorced,’ I pointed out.
‘King Henry wants no one standing in the way of future male heirs, Mother,’ Jamie told me. ‘You must know that.’
I suppose I did. ‘Well, then,’ I said, not without a bit of sadness in seeing my long-held dream of the cousins wed dying. ‘What did Albany say?’ I asked then, my heart still thrilling after all these years at the thought of him.
‘He has proposed his niece by marriage, Catherine de’ Medici,’ Jamie informed me.
‘Oh, an Italian,’ I said with a dismissive wave of my hand.
‘A very wealthy Italian,’ Jamie told me.
‘She’d never survive Scotland,’ I told him.
‘Albany was told the same thing,’ Jamie returned with a laugh. ‘But what think you, Mother, of Margaret Erskine?’
‘What, a Scotswoman?’ I was scandalis
ed at the thought. ‘What on earth could she offer you?’
‘She is a noblewoman, Mother, and the mother of my son,’ Jamie told me. ‘I think she could offer me a great deal. I am very fond of her.’
‘Perish the thought,’ I said. ‘What has love ever gotten us? You are better off with a foreign princess who can give you an alliance and a good dowry.’
Jamie sighed at this. ‘Sometimes I think you have been through too much, Mother,’ he observed, his tone thick with sadness. ‘It is making you cold.’
I pursed my lips at this, too afraid to speak past the painful lump growing in my throat. ‘Well. Be that as it may. If you won’t take my good advice about marriage, then perhaps we can at least set to organising a personal meeting between you and Henry.’ I blinked away the onset of tears, allowing myself to be captivated by the new dream. ‘Oh, but I would love that! It would be a great spectacle, like Henry’s Field of Cloth and Gold with King Francois long ago. Wouldn’t it be wonderful? An historic meeting between two great monarchs.’
‘Now, now, Mother, dinna get ahead of yourself,’ Jamie cautioned, but he was smiling. ‘It would be a great thing, were we able to achieve it. But first, we must achieve some sort of lasting peace, else a personal meeting could go drastically awry.’
I would not lose hope for it, though. Ah, but wouldn’t Father be proud! If I could achieve such a meeting between the two men I loved most in the world, it would be my greatest glory … Peace, lasting peace, between our realms, orchestrated by me. My dreams would have all come true, marriage or no marriage between Jamie and my brother’s daughter. My purpose would still have been fulfilled.
I could die happy then.
As I prayed for peace between my son and my brother, a messenger delivered more heartbreak from England. My sister, Mary, was dead. I prayed for her soul when I learned of it, saddened as I recalled her wistful beauty, wondering if she had found happiness with her Brandon after all, wondering many things. I recalled the years when I was jealous of her beauty and her fortune; she had gone after the man she loved and won him, with little consequence from my brother. Had it been worth it then? I knew little of Brandon. I knew little of her.
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