Tudor Princess, The (13 page)

T
he suffocating heat of summer permeated my confinement chambers and I was slick with sweat, engulfed in darkness once more. All was still; my body would not obey me. I was gripped by pain but could not respond to it; my throat would not emit sound and was as dry as my eyes. I lay, unable to writhe, unable to call out, rendered a helpless slave to a dark force that claimed me once more.

God allowed me the use of my ears and, though I could not respond, I heard the midwife and ladies. I heard the footfalls, running about in a frantic flutter of anxiety. I wanted to ask after Jamie but could not will my mouth to move. I lay. I breathed. Darkness … oh, this darkness …

‘She bleeds,’ the midwife told the assemblage in urgent tones. ‘God help me, I canna stop the bleeding!’ A cool hand was laid across my forehead. ‘And the poor child burns with fever.’

‘God save the queen,’ someone murmured, their voice far away.

Yes, God save me
…
God save me …

I was enfolded in the darkness; what terrified me moments before became a comfort, a refuge. My womb shuddered and quivered, tensing and relaxing till it pushed something forth, a great wailing thing that was proclaimed to be a princess of Scotland. My legs shook. Something slippery gushed from between them. I was carried on waves of red, my life draining from me. I wanted to see her. I longed to see my little girl …

‘Princess Margaret!’ Jamie was crying. ‘We shall name her for her dear mother.’

Princess Margaret. I wanted to smile. Was she pretty? I wanted to ask. Was she a lusty Stewart girl?

No one could tell me. No one heard my thoughts and I was alone in the darkness.

I heard her crying for me. I knew it was for me. Her little cries grew weaker and weaker. I could not help her. I could not mother her. She was christened; I heard that from one of the ladies in my room. And when she cried no more she was buried beside her brother, the prince.

Still I could not move; the darkness consumed me. My body was numb, weak. My voice could not be summoned forth, not even to cry for my child, the baby I never laid eyes upon.

Jamie sat at my bedside stroking my face. ‘Can you forgive me if I go?’ he whispered. ‘I canna lose you, Maggie. God restored you to me last time; if I go, if I do more penance, I know He will have mercy.’ His lips brushed against my forehead, my cheeks, my mouth. ‘I love you, Maggie, God, how much! I go to plea for your life.’

I needed to summon the strength to beg him not to. He did his penance in sincerity but could never resist the temptation along the way …
Please, Jamie, do not go!
But the words stayed silent, stuck in my impotent throat.

Jamie left. He always left.

‘I’m starting to believe that His Grace does have the ear of God,’ I said in weak tones to Ellen as she sat at my bedside. We were playing chess and she was losing on purpose. ‘Seems the moment he leaves I recover.’

‘In body, perhaps,’ observed my attendant. ‘But has your heart, Your Grace? There is none to remain strong for. No one would condemn a mother’s tears.’

I pursed my lips. ‘I fear for myself, Ellen,’ I confessed. ‘I want to cry. Sometimes I lie here trying to will the tears to come. But my eyes remain dry, so dry it is painful. I wonder, have I grown so cold, so heartless, that I am rendered incapable of human grief?’ I shook my head in bewildered terror.

Ellen removed the chessboard to scoot closer to me. She took my hand, shaking her head. ‘No, Your dearest Grace. You are being affected in a different way is all.’

‘I never saw her, Ellen,’ I said in soft tones. ‘I never saw my baby girl. I heard her cry sometimes, even through that strange black mist that claimed me. And I thought … I thought she must be crying for me. Yearning for me. And I couldn’t be there! I … I couldn’t be a mother to her. She was all alone. Perhaps that is why she died, because she did not feel my love—’

Ellen’s face was writ with pity and I averted my head. ‘I am certain that is not true. Please, Your Grace, do not punish yourself for this.’

‘No, His Grace has seized those reins,’ I said, my voice edgy with bitterness. ‘No one punishes themselves with greater competence and skill than my husband.’

Ellen bowed her head.

‘Oh, dismissed, Ellen. I’ll not draw you into our hell,’ I ordered with a wave of my hand.

Ellen rose. ‘I would stay, Your Grace. I am your devoted servant and friend for life.’

I tried to smile, but what twisted my lips could be called nothing more than a contemptuous sneer. ‘Then you curse yourself,’ I told her. ‘For this is hell, and hell is where you’ll surely be while serving me.’

Ellen shook her head once more, then offered a deep curtsy and retreated, tears glistening upon her cheeks.

I stared with envy at the space she once occupied, longing for those tears to fall upon my cheeks, from my eyes.

Something was wrong with me.

I could not cry.
Please, God
, I prayed,
let me cry!

Jamie returned battered and bloody, thinner than before. I was told he had added strict fasting onto his exercise in piety, and indeed when he took supper with me in my chambers he ate very little. As he sat in his shift I noted his knees were raw from kneeling at prayer, and he limped into bed. But he held me fast. His tears wetted my forehead and ran down my cheeks, his shoulders quaking with sobs.

I no longer accused him of anything; no questions were asked. I did not want to know in any case. I only stared at this tortured man and upon doing so found at last my ability to cry cleansing, healing tears. I did not cry for the children; that grief had been sorted out in my days of hardness. I bore their loss as my mother bore hers, telling myself over and over as would a chanting monk that God took them for His purposes. Death had always been a reality for me and its constancy was something I well understood. Jamie’s life was not.

He could not inflict upon himself enough pain. He no longer reserved his self-flagellation for his pilgrimages but did so at our homes as well. At night I peered inside the candlelit chapel, watching him bring the whip across his back. I flinched upon hearing it snap and whir through the air, starting as it met with his tender flesh. Horror clenched my heart and twisted my gut as I beheld the rivulets of blood streaming down his body, which was wracked with broken sobs.

His wounds had no time to heal before he inflicted more. His face became void of his once contagious enthusiasm, as though he feared that to experience any emotion resembling happiness would mean he enjoyed a life he did not deserve.

‘This has to stop, my Jamie,’ I told him in bed one night, grateful one aspect of our lives had not changed but rather became more passionate and loving with each passing year.

‘I know,’ he replied in the intoxicating tone I loved so well. ‘It is not enough. I have written the Kings of England, France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian. I have for years thought that a Crusade would best demonstrate my faith, that if I can succeed in driving the Infidels from the Holy Land God will at last see my sincere wish to be His child. That He will see how sorry I am …’

‘Jamie …’

He offered a heavy sigh. ‘They respond with well wishes but no real commitments. They are afraid.’

‘They’ve every right,’ I said, angered by this useless goal. ‘Who has ever met with success in the Holy Land? Jamie, it is a fool’s mission. Do not think on it any more. Think of Scotland, of what can be done to improve
our
land. Surely that will show God the kind of king you wish to be.’

Jamie lay silent. ‘Do you think I am a good king, Maggie?’

‘Yes,’ I said with conviction, for no one was as sincere as Jamie; no one wished to do as much good. Romantic he may have been, misguided at times indeed, but good? Yes, despite everything, Jamie was a good man.

‘Yes, Jamie,’ I repeated, my voice heated with fervour as I seized his chin between my fingers. ‘You are a good king and a better man. For love of me, please see that!’

Jamie reached up and cupped my cheek but saw nothing. His vision was clouded with tears and self-loathing and there was nothing I could do about it.

In the winter of 1509, just a few months after the birth and death of my daughter, I was with child again; an autumn arrival was expected. I tried not to think of it, even as my belly swelled, even as it kicked and tumbled about in my womb. Panels were added to my gowns. A beautiful cradle of state was placed in the nursery, but I never ventured near it; I did not want to see it. I did not sew baby garments, leaving that task to my ladies.

Jamie went on pilgrimage once more and spent his time at Tain, whipping himself by the shrine of Saint Duthlac. His fervour frightened me; the enthusiasm he once exhibited for hunting and music was channelled into religion, and for his efforts the Pope named him Protector of the Christian Faith, sending a beautiful sword with a gem-encrusted gold sheath and purple diadem. This fuelled his passion even more. If the Pope recognised his potential goodness, surely God would, too. Heretics were persecuted, their ashes carried on the winds. I shivered in fear. Jamie would show God, he said, how sorry he was and how devoted he was to the tenets of the Church of Rome. Perhaps those demonstrations would lift the curse on the Stewarts and ensure us a healthy prince. Oh, poor Jamie, my poor, foolish king …

When Jamie was not at Tain he dealt with new matters that had arisen on the Border that could threaten the treaty our marriage was meant to represent. Our Warden of the Middle Marches was murdered by a devil named John Heron – called the Bastard by those who knew of his barbaric antics – and two of his companions, who were both delivered up to my husband for their crime. Heron escaped, however, which caused Jamie anxiety. He never trusted my father completely – a Scot trusted an Englishman no more than an Englishman trusted a Scot and I could not help but wonder if Jamie thought my father was hiding Heron out somewhere, despite my strident reassurance that he would have done no such thing.

And yet if he would order the death of Jamie’s mistress Margaret Drummond … but there was no proof of that. Why would I think such a thing?

Jamie was vexed further when Father took Jamie’s cousin, the Earl of Arran, captive. He had taken Jamie’s son the fourteen-year-old Archbishop of St Andrews (an appointment that still caused my face to flush with rage) to France to study with the celebrated scholar Erasmus, and though the earl had a letter of marque from Jamie permitting him safe conduct, he did not obtain one to go through England on his return trip a year later.

Father could have ignored it, even I knew that, but instead he had him arrested, fearing that the earl was really in France to restore the Auld Alliance. He sent his almoner Thomas Wolsey as his ambassador, but when he arrived, after many delays and aggravations, Jamie made the portly priest wait.

Wolsey was uncomfortable in my presence and I in his. I did not know what to say, how to deal with affairs of state. I never had to before. Now I sat, with child and wanting nothing more than to lie down, but instead I was obligated to play hostess and diplomat at the same time.

Arran’s brother Patrick Hamilton arrived during this ordeal and confused matters by telling me that Father treated him well but then informing Jamie of the opposite. He was obliged to say that, I argued, as he was a Scot.
No, he was saying that to win your favour
, I was told.

I grew weary of it all and awaited a resolution, angry at Father for upsetting the peace between our countries and caught very much in the middle. Though the incidents were eventually ironed out, Arran being returned to Scotland as a means of compensating for England’s inability to capture the Bastard, something changed in me. For the first time I became interested in matters beyond myself; I was interested in what it meant to be Queen of Scotland. For the first time I wanted to understand politics and learn how to forge an understanding between the country of my birth and the country of my adoption.

I was told before I came to Scotland that I was to be a daughter of England before I was a wife to my new country, but was there not a way I could reconcile the two? Was there not a way I could be both?

Father never anticipated upon issuing that order how much I would love my Jamie. The balance was a delicate one. I was unsure of my footing and gripped by new fears as at last the realisation of my purpose settled upon me.

Determination surged through my veins. I throbbed with it, tingling with motivation. I was an English girl and a Scottish queen and by God I would do my countries proud.

Both of them.

Father was dead. I sat in my chambers numb. All previous resolve was replaced by an acute attack of homesickness. A few months prior Father had sent gifts with his ambassadors, beautiful horses for Jamie and me to ride. I delighted in my new ponies, remembering the palfreys that had been sacrificed to that dreaded fire when first I arrived.

I will never see you again.

We had written. How unhappy I was in the beginning! He reassured me without ever addressing the matters to which I wrote. He reassured me with the knowledge that he was there, in England, my beloved father. He sent part of my dowry, arranged my life and secured peace with Scotland through my marriage. Now he was gone forever, taking his wisdom and caution and stoicism with him. He lay beside my mother in the grand tomb he had obsessively erected upon her death.

Henry, my eager, lively, feisty brother, ascended the throne as the eighth of that name. He wed Princess Catherine of Aragon and the world bowed before him, the handsome golden boy. He had great plans, I was told; he would usher in a New Age. At that my throat constricted as I recalled the words of my precious brother Arthur. We had planned to usher in that age together, that sparkling New Age when knowledge and tolerance would flow from the conduits like wine. Did Henry have the same goals? Would he be the grand king Arthur no doubt would have been had God allowed him to sit on the throne? Would Henry do our illustrious father proud?