Tudor Princess, The (39 page)

‘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

22

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.’