by D. L. Bogdan
I had failed her as I had failed so many times before.
“What are we to do?” I breathed. Ellen took my hand, rubbing it. Mine was limp in hers. “Oh, God, Harry, what are we to do?”
“She is at Berwick,” Harry said. “You may wish to consult His Majesty King Henry on this; perhaps he can be of help.”
I nodded, numb. “Yes . . . yes, of course.” I turned to Ellen, reaching out to pat her cheek. “Leave us, darling,” I said, and she rose to do my bidding. Once we were alone, I reached out my hands. Harry took them.
“Harry . . . if we had gone to Methven, like you said . . .” I could not speak. Tears choked me. “Oh, Harry—”
Harry shook his head, drawing me from my bed to hold me near. His steady heartbeat beneath his doublet was strong, reassuring. I nuzzled against his shoulder.
“It is not your fault, Margaret,” he told me, stroking the back of my hair. “It is not your fault.”
But I knew better. Harry was being charitable, that we might keep the peace, which had been so delicate of late.
It was completely and entirely my fault.
My labor pains began on my birthday; it was a bit early but not dangerously so. I bore down, anticipating another dreadful birthing experience, wondering how I could ever pursue young Margaret and Angus if my recovery was as slow as when I had Margaret. With Ellen and my ladies and a competent midwife, I endured. It was a blessing that it proved not to be as hard as I dreaded, and my fair-haired little girl was brought into the world with relative ease on 29 November.
I took her in my arms, grateful I was able to hold her so soon after the birth, unlike many times before when I had been too ill to hold my other children. She was tiny and pale, thinner than her siblings.
“What will you call her?” Ellen asked me.
“I rather like the name Dorothea,” I said. “Harry fancies it, too.”
“It is a lovely name,” Ellen assured me, reaching out to take the baby. “Now get some rest while Lord Methven is fetched. He will want to see his new little angel.”
Weariness overcame me as soon as the word “rest” fled Ellen’s lips, and I sank back into the pillows. “I hope he is happy. Perhaps next time it will be a boy . . . but of course perhaps God is sending me this little girl to replace young Margaret. . . .”
Ellen cocked her head, scrunching her nose up and regarding me as if I had said something strange.
I closed my eyes and allowed sleep to carry me away, to lands where I could see the other babies I had borne, babies who were no longer here....
My family was as broken as it had ever been. The months passed, Christmas falling short of my expectations once again, as no one was in a celebratory mood and I was still weak from Dorothea’s birth. Though I wrote to Wolsey, my brother’s adviser, and my brother himself, no one would venture to rescue my Margaret. Instead, Henry arranged that she be brought to his court and be raised beside the Princess Mary. She was gone. I had lost her as surely as if she had died, and I knew I would never see her again, as I would never see the court of England again. She was the daughter of an English princess and would be raised to be a good English maid.
Was it a kinder fate than what Scotland could offer?
I wanted to think so.
“I never talked to her,” I confessed to Ellen one night while I rocked Dorothea in her ornate cradle Harry himself helped fashion for her. He did not seem the least bit offended that I had given him a girl; in fact, he seemed mad for the little golden-haired cherub. As for me, I spent as much time with her as I could; I would not repeat with Dorothea my mistakes with Margaret, mistakes that haunted me almost every waking moment.
“Did you know? I never talked to her,” I repeated, referring again to Margaret. “I canna even remember one meaningful word we have ever, ever spoken to one another, beyond letters and such. Oh, I fussed over her as a babe and whenever we saw each other as she grew I petted her, of course. But . . . I never really talked to her. She is thirteen years old and I have never even talked to her!”
“I know, Your Grace,” Ellen said. Of course she knew. She knew everything, every dark recess of my soul, which I was certain was now damned, if it hadn’t been before. “I know,” she said again, in her cooing voice.
“At least I have Dorothea,” I sighed, looking down into the cradle where lay the sleeping babe. Tears clouded my vision. “At least I have her. . . .”
“Lessons abound, Your Grace,” Ellen said.
I was tired of learning them.
By the next summer I had recovered well. I was still stouter than I hoped to be, but I was now forty and could not expect much. I was lucky to have lived to forty, as it were. My brother, in a comic twist of irony, was making any attempt he could to further his cause of divorcing Queen Catherine in favor of Anne Boleyn.
“What do you make of that?” Ellen had asked me one evening as we were preparing to receive an ambassador from the Vatican to assess our perspective on the situation.
“I find it hilarious,” I said. “In light of the vulgar things he said about me, and to me, when I dared go against convention and divorce Angus. He didn’t even wait two years before seriously pursuing his own divorce. Ah, hypocrisy . . .” I chuckled. “Only my brother. He can justify any move he makes and never see the parallels between himself and those he criticizes for the same choices.”
Ellen echoed my laughter. “Poor Queen Catherine, I wonder how she fares.”
I shrugged. “I couldn’t care less. After her triumph over my husband’s death, and her joining in my scolding for the Angus affair, I see it as divine retribution. I wonder how above me she sees herself now that her own daughter is kept from her and she canna do anything about it, especially after her criticism of me when I was separated from my boys.” I remembered the conversation at Baynard’s Castle too well, when she dared imply my unfitness as a mother. Divine retribution has a bitter taste, doesn’t it, Catherine? I thought with a sneer.
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 faery 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 favor them as he had been rumored to favor 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 differ
ent mistresses.
At least he had established the fertility of the house of Stewart.
The Earl of Atholl had built a marvelous 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 marvelous 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 favorite, 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 humors 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 center 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 favorite 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 anymore, 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 a
m 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 clearheaded 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 endeavor, Your Grace,” Lord William said with a grimace. “Let us hope we can make these arrangements with more ease. Is His Majesty in favor 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.”
