The Nymph from Heaven, page 45
part #1 of The Tudor Chronicles Series
Margaret winced at the memory. What a willing pupil she had been! She had let her passionate nature blind her to all else for an entire year. She was no longer naïve enough to think that James had given up his mistresses, or even might not have others that neither she nor Lady Erskine knew about. She simply refused to let it all annoy her anymore. As quickly as it had sprung up, something died within her when she discovered the extent of James’ previous dallyings. Henceforward she resolved to view her handsome but flawed husband as nothing more than a partner in a political alliance. She would not love again; had not Grandmother Beaufort, that most pragmatic of women, once told her that love was not for such as she? Why hadn’t she listened? Had she done so, she could have saved everyone a great deal of trouble, and herself a hurtful lesson.
During that time of physical awakening she discovered that James the husband was good for only one thing beyond the political, and henceforth, she would use him as he used her.
When she became pregnant for the first time, the court, the entire country, rejoiced. She was vindicated, justified; other women might be able to fill James’ bed and his nursery, but only her children meant anything. The others were just useless appendages, little more than proof of James’ manhood.
She was smug and very satisfied with herself for nine months. And then her pains began. Nothing, but nothing, had prepared her for the sheer torture, the ceaseless painful living hell that was childbirth. And when it was all over and she had given Scotland an heir, she was sick unto death for weeks, so sick that James feared for her life and had made a bare-footed pilgrimage to a sacred shrine to pray God to spare her life.
Her firstborn son was a year old when she conceived for the second time. Again, she was smug and self-satisfied; was she not, after all, fulfilling her purpose as queen? She was truly happy for the first time since she had made that devastating discovery at Stirling. And then two years of misery ensued. Her little son died. And that summer, as plague raged throughout Scotland, her second child, a girl, was stillborn. She conceived again to great rejoicing, but the happy words had barely left her lips when word came that her father, Henry VII, had died. He had been a good father to her, and she loved him dearly. She was not to be comforted.
And then, after once again enduring the pains of hell, Arthur was born, a lovely, happy little baby, her third child. It seemed as if all might be well once again, but after barely a year, Arthur was dead. She did not conceive again for almost two years. Although Margaret had now learned to fear and dread childbirth, this frightened her more than she let on. Margaret viewed pregnancy and the production of heirs as her profession. Without the power to conceive and give birth, her presence in Scotland was practically meaningless.
At that thought she suddenly remembered some words of her father’s that were to prove, could she but know it, very prophetic. Henry the Seventh had said that if all his male progeny were to fail, his throne would, by law, devolve upon her, Margaret, and her heirs. For perhaps the very first time, the importance of this struck her. She was, unless and until her brother Henry produced a son, heir to the throne of England. This worried the English council a great deal, as they feared that Scotland would absorb England if she were to inherit the English crown. But her wise father had argued that because England was greater than Scotland, it should certainly be the other way around; England would dominate Scotland.
Her father’s words, which had been sleeping in her memory awaiting an opportunity to awaken and make themselves useful to her, now spread their wings in her mind like a colorful butterfly. She realized that she had a much higher destiny than simply being the wife of the King of Scotland. She might one day be Queen of England. And for now, she considered herself Henry’s vicereine in Scotland. Her function in Scotland, far from being little more than a brood mare, was much more important. She must start to pay more attention to, become involved in, affairs of state. Hadn’t Grandmother Beaufort told her that she might be Queen of Scotland, but that she should always be first a Princess of England?
This revelation, along with James’ infidelities, combined to make her see Scotland, really see it, for what it really was, perhaps for the first time. Far from being the wild, romantic land of her handsome husband, she saw it now as the miasmic, stinking pit that it was. Standards here were simply lower than those of England. The rooms of every castle they stayed in were dim, airless and stifling in summer, with the stench of moat and open privies constantly offending one’s nose; in winter the huge, drafty halls were impossible to heat and the walls that stayed perpetually damp in summer formed an icy moisture that chilled one to the very bones in winter. At all times of year the gutters ran with garbage and excrement, and unspeakable things were piled onto the muckheaps that adorned every street corner of Edinburgh. Everywhere all one could smell were smoking chimneys, filth, and the stale spices that people used to try to cover it all up.
This land, ever to rise above beautiful, cosmopolitan England? Never! Certainly, London had its share of running sores; but on the whole it was like a summer’s day compared with Scotland, which she now saw as an inferior country, and England’s vassal. Yes, from now on, her mission would be vastly different.
Just when she was beginning to fear that she would not be able to conceive again, she became pregnant for the fourth time. She had no living children; she must try again to fulfill her destiny. But that meant facing once again the agonizing ordeal, the illness, and at the end of it all, possibly, death. No matter. It would all be as God willed. And Margaret Tudor did not believe for an instant that God wished her dead. She had important things to do.
Despite some reassuring words from her ladies, she suffered just as much as in her previous pregnancies, worse perhaps, to bring little James into the world. And despite being desperately ill after his birth, she conceived again just a month later. It had been too soon; she felt ill the entire time until she gave premature birth to a daughter just seven months after Prince James’ birth. But her son, her only child, was thriving, and that was a good sign.
All was well for a time. But it seemed that James was not content just to rule Scotland. He wanted Scotland to be a recognized power in Europe. As with so many alliances based on marriage, James decided that he no longer cared about England or Henry, and to Margaret’s chagrin, sought an alliance with King Louis XII of France. It was to be a revival of the Auld Alliance of Scotland and France against England, and Louis was delighted. He knew that Henry was gearing up to make war against him. Perhaps he might be able to wreak a little havoc at Henry’s back door to prevent him from coming to wage war on France.
What James did not know was that Henry, Louis, Maximilian, Ferdinand, even the Pope, viewed him as a rank amateur and Scotland as a political backwater of little importance in European politics. But it seemed that James could not leave well enough alone; he must make his mark somehow.
The result of James’ ambition was a battle, a name, which would ring down the ages as one of the blackest in Scotland’s history: Flodden Field. Margaret raged at him, his Council begged him on bended knee, but it seemed that nothing could dissuade James from allying with Louis and attacking England while Henry was laying siege to Therouanne. When it was all over, ten thousand Scots lay dead on the field of battle to England’s fifteen hundred. The flower of Scottish manhood was practically wiped out.
Lawlessness prevailed in the dark days after the battle. Three months pregnant with her sixth child, Margaret, at twenty-three, was appointed regent according to the terms of James’ will, and there was little time for mourning. She could not mourn James as a husband in any case; James the man had lost her affection long ago due to his infidelities; but the loss of James the king was a blow to Scotland. As far as she was concerned, her husband was a fool who had gotten what he deserved for breaking his word and bringing needless ruin upon her, upon Scotland, and upon his young heir. As she had done so many times before, Margaret hardened her heart and looked to her duty.
She hastily bargained with Henry for a truce to prevent the English from invading Scotland. Scotland had been the aggressor at Flodden, ignominiously invading England while its monarch was across the water. The hot-headed Scots resented the idea of a truce; they wanted the English to attack them so that they could avenge their fathers, sons, brothers, the husbands of their sisters. They could not, or would not see, that Scotland was decimated; attack would mean certain defeat. And Margaret was not, in the final analysis, willing to give up Scotland to her brother. She wanted it for her new love: her little son, now King James the Fifth at the tender age of seventeen months.
The common people and the merchants agreed with her, if the Council and what was left of the nobles did not. At least the common people could see sense. What Scotland needed now was peace, time for recovery, not more war based on a desire for vengeance. But the Council only saw the Queen Mother of Scotland (how shocking her new title sounded in her ears!) as King Henry’s sister, not their own dear little King James’ mother. They viewed her as an ally of England, and feared what might become of a defeated Scotland that was ruled by the victor’s sister. She simply could not make them see sense, and they hated her for trying.
No one knew for certain if the body they had found on Flodden Field was that of James IV. Some said it was; others declared that it couldn’t be. For that reason, rumors that James was still alive persisted long after his death. Many even believed that James had gone on his long-desired pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Practical, pragmatic Margaret neither knew nor cared; James’ piety and pilgrimages had always bored her. She had enough to do keeping order in Scotland. She did not have time to wonder about her husband’s dead body, which, if it were indeed his, had been taken to London to await the English King’s pleasure as to what was to become of it. So it would have been somewhat incorrect to say that James was hardly cold in his grave before Henry sought to make another political marriage for his elder sister. Henry had wasted no time in sounding both Maximilian of Austria and King Louis of France. But any further parley on the matter must be shelved until Margaret gave birth to her child, as it was considered in poor taste to bargain for her hand while she still held another man’s child in her belly.
Things were moving fast, just as Margaret was, of necessity, slowing down. She had held out a frail hope that this delivery, her sixth, might be somewhat easier than her previous experiences of childbirth. But it was a vain hope. She had been as startled as anyone who had attended the difficult birth that she had awakened to the sound of her baby’s cries after the ordeal, so certain was she that she would die. But finally, all was over and she held another little boy in her arms. She named him Alexander, and he was created Duke of Ross, as were all the second sons of the Scottish royal line.
It was just the situation for which the council had been waiting. The Queen Mother was ill after her ordeal; ruling was not for women. A man was needed to take over the affairs of Scotland. In direct contradiction to the dead king’s will, it was decided that the Council should call upon the Duke of Albany to come from France to take up the regency. John Stuart was the son of King James IV’s uncle, who had rebelled and been attainted and exiled to France. John Stuart had never even seen Scotland, was married to a French woman, and had no desire to leave his French home. But, as King Louis pointed out, he was the little King of Scot’s second cousin, and his nearest relative in the male line; he must go to the little boy’s aid. Louis practically licked his lips at the thought of a French-born Scot in the regency of Scotland. But Margaret knew that once she let the French get a toe-hold, all would be lost. She was an English princess; her brother was the King of England. She would manage without French help. The Council reluctantly agreed, and signed the truce with England.
All through the spring and summer of 1514, things seemed finally to settle down and all was well. And then she must needs fall in love again.
She certainly hadn’t meant for it to happen. But she was a passionate, lusty woman, and she had discovered that she really needed a man in her life, and in her bed. She wanted no more kings to dominate her; she would make that plain to Henry in due time. She would have neither Louis nor Maximilian as a husband. No, she knew whom she wanted to marry. He was a nineteen-year-old boy, who had become Earl of Angus and Chief of the Clan Douglas upon his father’s untimely death on Flodden field. He was handsome, and Margaret had a penchant for handsome young men. Yes, she thought, young Archibald Douglas would do very well indeed. She married him secretly on a hot, sultry night in August. And when she slept with him for the first time, she truly believed that she had made the right decision.
It was impossible to keep such a thing secret for long, nor had she meant to. Marrying secretly simply made it a fait accompli, and once it was done it was done. Henry, the Council, the Scottish people would have to accept it. The common people approved, just as they had accepted her regency. A woman needed a protector after all, and they cared little about which of the bloody-minded clans was in power.
But the Council objected long and loudly. They claimed that by remarrying she had forfeited her right to the regency, which was nonsense; she was regent by right of King James’ will, and nothing in that will prevented her from remarrying. But she knew why the outcry was so vehement; they hated Angus as they hated all Douglases. Margaret gave a mental shrug as she reviewed the history of the Douglases in her mind. Most of the Scottish clans had grudges against all the others; it was this lack of unity that had kept Scotland from greatness in the past and probably always would. So they hated her husband. Were they not glad to have her married to a Scot, and not to some foreign prince who would rule them?
Henry was livid that she had done something so foolish as to choose her own husband, a man who was her own subject, and one not much liked by others. What else could one expect from headstrong Margaret? But how much better would it have been to have married her to King Louis, who would have promptly used his position as regent of Scotland to annoy Henry from the border? What was the matter with all these men? Why could they not see beyond the moment, to the future? Any foreign alliance she made would be good for neither Scotland nor England in the long run.
And yet it had not taken long for her to realize that by marrying for love, by marrying the man she wanted, she had effectively destroyed her power base. It was inconceivable. She still called herself, believed herself to be, regent of Scotland, by virtue of the fact that she had custody of the little king’s person. But she could almost see her power slipping through her fingers. The Scots Council was calling loudly for the Duke of Albany; it would not be long before he arrived to wrest from her what little power she had left.
And most puzzling of all was Angus’s attitude of late. Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, had enough to do to see to the welfare of his clan; and yet by virtue of his marriage to the Queen Mother, he now believed himself to be a potentate whom none dared to challenge. Had she been unwise, in her early besotted state, to declare him co-regent? Perhaps. But if Angus made her days trying, he made up for it at night…
When John Stuart, Duke of Albany arrived in Scotland on a fine spring day in 1514, Margaret, who had been dreading his arrival, was pleasantly surprised to find him charming, polite and cultured, almost benign. In short, all of the things that the men of her Scottish Council were not. He assured her that his heart was in France, that he had been forced to come to Scotland by his sovereign lord, the king of France; and that he wanted nothing more than to set things to rights in Scotland, appoint a suitable deputy, and go home to his ailing wife.
For a short time all seemed well. And then Albany had had two of Angus’ troublesome clan arrested, and had tried to take her children from her. In that he had finally succeeded, and she had been forced to flee Scotland without them, even while sick unto death and pregnant with her seventh child, Angus’ child... She had begged Henry to send an army to her aid; instead he had advised her to leave Scotland and come to England.
Things had reached a pretty pass, indeed. She could see now that marrying the Earl of Angus, her beloved Archibald, in the heat of the moment, had been a grave error. Except for that mistake, she could not see what she should have done differently. Marrying Angus might have been her only real mistake, but what a mistake it was!
The sound of trumpets brought her out of her reverie. She peered ahead and saw the dust rising. Henry and his escort were approaching. And then suddenly there he was, her big, bluff, larger-than-life brother, a boy no longer, but a man, a man so large and so commanding that somehow in that moment she knew that he would get it all back for her.
She was not helpless; she had proved that. But she had suffered. She had lost all but two of her children, a far worse showing for her efforts than the expected mortality rate for children; she had lost her husband in the prime of his life, to the army of her own brother and homeland; she had lost custody of her sons to Albany, who had betrayed her trust. And now one of them was dead, little Alexander having died at Christmas; she had been forced to flee her realm. But through it all she had never admitted defeat, she had never despaired, never for an instant had she become resigned or even submissive. She had remained resolute; she had fought. She had survived. She had Angus’ daughter, even if Albany had the little king.
She looked around her; here was England, here was London, here was her dear brother. Henry would soon set things to rights, she was sure of it. With his help, she would regain all that she had lost; her son, her regency, her rents and her jewels, her very life. And she had no intention of leaving England until she did.
A great, booming voice greeted her. “Well met, Sister!” cried Henry.
“Greetings, Dear Brother,” she replied. They sized each other up as their horses cavorted restively around each other. She held out her hand; Henry skillfully caught and kissed it from his saddle. She noticed that his hand was twice the size of hers, noticed the red and gold hairs curling on the back of it. What a man, what a king he had become!
During that time of physical awakening she discovered that James the husband was good for only one thing beyond the political, and henceforth, she would use him as he used her.
When she became pregnant for the first time, the court, the entire country, rejoiced. She was vindicated, justified; other women might be able to fill James’ bed and his nursery, but only her children meant anything. The others were just useless appendages, little more than proof of James’ manhood.
She was smug and very satisfied with herself for nine months. And then her pains began. Nothing, but nothing, had prepared her for the sheer torture, the ceaseless painful living hell that was childbirth. And when it was all over and she had given Scotland an heir, she was sick unto death for weeks, so sick that James feared for her life and had made a bare-footed pilgrimage to a sacred shrine to pray God to spare her life.
Her firstborn son was a year old when she conceived for the second time. Again, she was smug and self-satisfied; was she not, after all, fulfilling her purpose as queen? She was truly happy for the first time since she had made that devastating discovery at Stirling. And then two years of misery ensued. Her little son died. And that summer, as plague raged throughout Scotland, her second child, a girl, was stillborn. She conceived again to great rejoicing, but the happy words had barely left her lips when word came that her father, Henry VII, had died. He had been a good father to her, and she loved him dearly. She was not to be comforted.
And then, after once again enduring the pains of hell, Arthur was born, a lovely, happy little baby, her third child. It seemed as if all might be well once again, but after barely a year, Arthur was dead. She did not conceive again for almost two years. Although Margaret had now learned to fear and dread childbirth, this frightened her more than she let on. Margaret viewed pregnancy and the production of heirs as her profession. Without the power to conceive and give birth, her presence in Scotland was practically meaningless.
At that thought she suddenly remembered some words of her father’s that were to prove, could she but know it, very prophetic. Henry the Seventh had said that if all his male progeny were to fail, his throne would, by law, devolve upon her, Margaret, and her heirs. For perhaps the very first time, the importance of this struck her. She was, unless and until her brother Henry produced a son, heir to the throne of England. This worried the English council a great deal, as they feared that Scotland would absorb England if she were to inherit the English crown. But her wise father had argued that because England was greater than Scotland, it should certainly be the other way around; England would dominate Scotland.
Her father’s words, which had been sleeping in her memory awaiting an opportunity to awaken and make themselves useful to her, now spread their wings in her mind like a colorful butterfly. She realized that she had a much higher destiny than simply being the wife of the King of Scotland. She might one day be Queen of England. And for now, she considered herself Henry’s vicereine in Scotland. Her function in Scotland, far from being little more than a brood mare, was much more important. She must start to pay more attention to, become involved in, affairs of state. Hadn’t Grandmother Beaufort told her that she might be Queen of Scotland, but that she should always be first a Princess of England?
This revelation, along with James’ infidelities, combined to make her see Scotland, really see it, for what it really was, perhaps for the first time. Far from being the wild, romantic land of her handsome husband, she saw it now as the miasmic, stinking pit that it was. Standards here were simply lower than those of England. The rooms of every castle they stayed in were dim, airless and stifling in summer, with the stench of moat and open privies constantly offending one’s nose; in winter the huge, drafty halls were impossible to heat and the walls that stayed perpetually damp in summer formed an icy moisture that chilled one to the very bones in winter. At all times of year the gutters ran with garbage and excrement, and unspeakable things were piled onto the muckheaps that adorned every street corner of Edinburgh. Everywhere all one could smell were smoking chimneys, filth, and the stale spices that people used to try to cover it all up.
This land, ever to rise above beautiful, cosmopolitan England? Never! Certainly, London had its share of running sores; but on the whole it was like a summer’s day compared with Scotland, which she now saw as an inferior country, and England’s vassal. Yes, from now on, her mission would be vastly different.
Just when she was beginning to fear that she would not be able to conceive again, she became pregnant for the fourth time. She had no living children; she must try again to fulfill her destiny. But that meant facing once again the agonizing ordeal, the illness, and at the end of it all, possibly, death. No matter. It would all be as God willed. And Margaret Tudor did not believe for an instant that God wished her dead. She had important things to do.
Despite some reassuring words from her ladies, she suffered just as much as in her previous pregnancies, worse perhaps, to bring little James into the world. And despite being desperately ill after his birth, she conceived again just a month later. It had been too soon; she felt ill the entire time until she gave premature birth to a daughter just seven months after Prince James’ birth. But her son, her only child, was thriving, and that was a good sign.
All was well for a time. But it seemed that James was not content just to rule Scotland. He wanted Scotland to be a recognized power in Europe. As with so many alliances based on marriage, James decided that he no longer cared about England or Henry, and to Margaret’s chagrin, sought an alliance with King Louis XII of France. It was to be a revival of the Auld Alliance of Scotland and France against England, and Louis was delighted. He knew that Henry was gearing up to make war against him. Perhaps he might be able to wreak a little havoc at Henry’s back door to prevent him from coming to wage war on France.
What James did not know was that Henry, Louis, Maximilian, Ferdinand, even the Pope, viewed him as a rank amateur and Scotland as a political backwater of little importance in European politics. But it seemed that James could not leave well enough alone; he must make his mark somehow.
The result of James’ ambition was a battle, a name, which would ring down the ages as one of the blackest in Scotland’s history: Flodden Field. Margaret raged at him, his Council begged him on bended knee, but it seemed that nothing could dissuade James from allying with Louis and attacking England while Henry was laying siege to Therouanne. When it was all over, ten thousand Scots lay dead on the field of battle to England’s fifteen hundred. The flower of Scottish manhood was practically wiped out.
Lawlessness prevailed in the dark days after the battle. Three months pregnant with her sixth child, Margaret, at twenty-three, was appointed regent according to the terms of James’ will, and there was little time for mourning. She could not mourn James as a husband in any case; James the man had lost her affection long ago due to his infidelities; but the loss of James the king was a blow to Scotland. As far as she was concerned, her husband was a fool who had gotten what he deserved for breaking his word and bringing needless ruin upon her, upon Scotland, and upon his young heir. As she had done so many times before, Margaret hardened her heart and looked to her duty.
She hastily bargained with Henry for a truce to prevent the English from invading Scotland. Scotland had been the aggressor at Flodden, ignominiously invading England while its monarch was across the water. The hot-headed Scots resented the idea of a truce; they wanted the English to attack them so that they could avenge their fathers, sons, brothers, the husbands of their sisters. They could not, or would not see, that Scotland was decimated; attack would mean certain defeat. And Margaret was not, in the final analysis, willing to give up Scotland to her brother. She wanted it for her new love: her little son, now King James the Fifth at the tender age of seventeen months.
The common people and the merchants agreed with her, if the Council and what was left of the nobles did not. At least the common people could see sense. What Scotland needed now was peace, time for recovery, not more war based on a desire for vengeance. But the Council only saw the Queen Mother of Scotland (how shocking her new title sounded in her ears!) as King Henry’s sister, not their own dear little King James’ mother. They viewed her as an ally of England, and feared what might become of a defeated Scotland that was ruled by the victor’s sister. She simply could not make them see sense, and they hated her for trying.
No one knew for certain if the body they had found on Flodden Field was that of James IV. Some said it was; others declared that it couldn’t be. For that reason, rumors that James was still alive persisted long after his death. Many even believed that James had gone on his long-desired pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Practical, pragmatic Margaret neither knew nor cared; James’ piety and pilgrimages had always bored her. She had enough to do keeping order in Scotland. She did not have time to wonder about her husband’s dead body, which, if it were indeed his, had been taken to London to await the English King’s pleasure as to what was to become of it. So it would have been somewhat incorrect to say that James was hardly cold in his grave before Henry sought to make another political marriage for his elder sister. Henry had wasted no time in sounding both Maximilian of Austria and King Louis of France. But any further parley on the matter must be shelved until Margaret gave birth to her child, as it was considered in poor taste to bargain for her hand while she still held another man’s child in her belly.
Things were moving fast, just as Margaret was, of necessity, slowing down. She had held out a frail hope that this delivery, her sixth, might be somewhat easier than her previous experiences of childbirth. But it was a vain hope. She had been as startled as anyone who had attended the difficult birth that she had awakened to the sound of her baby’s cries after the ordeal, so certain was she that she would die. But finally, all was over and she held another little boy in her arms. She named him Alexander, and he was created Duke of Ross, as were all the second sons of the Scottish royal line.
It was just the situation for which the council had been waiting. The Queen Mother was ill after her ordeal; ruling was not for women. A man was needed to take over the affairs of Scotland. In direct contradiction to the dead king’s will, it was decided that the Council should call upon the Duke of Albany to come from France to take up the regency. John Stuart was the son of King James IV’s uncle, who had rebelled and been attainted and exiled to France. John Stuart had never even seen Scotland, was married to a French woman, and had no desire to leave his French home. But, as King Louis pointed out, he was the little King of Scot’s second cousin, and his nearest relative in the male line; he must go to the little boy’s aid. Louis practically licked his lips at the thought of a French-born Scot in the regency of Scotland. But Margaret knew that once she let the French get a toe-hold, all would be lost. She was an English princess; her brother was the King of England. She would manage without French help. The Council reluctantly agreed, and signed the truce with England.
All through the spring and summer of 1514, things seemed finally to settle down and all was well. And then she must needs fall in love again.
She certainly hadn’t meant for it to happen. But she was a passionate, lusty woman, and she had discovered that she really needed a man in her life, and in her bed. She wanted no more kings to dominate her; she would make that plain to Henry in due time. She would have neither Louis nor Maximilian as a husband. No, she knew whom she wanted to marry. He was a nineteen-year-old boy, who had become Earl of Angus and Chief of the Clan Douglas upon his father’s untimely death on Flodden field. He was handsome, and Margaret had a penchant for handsome young men. Yes, she thought, young Archibald Douglas would do very well indeed. She married him secretly on a hot, sultry night in August. And when she slept with him for the first time, she truly believed that she had made the right decision.
It was impossible to keep such a thing secret for long, nor had she meant to. Marrying secretly simply made it a fait accompli, and once it was done it was done. Henry, the Council, the Scottish people would have to accept it. The common people approved, just as they had accepted her regency. A woman needed a protector after all, and they cared little about which of the bloody-minded clans was in power.
But the Council objected long and loudly. They claimed that by remarrying she had forfeited her right to the regency, which was nonsense; she was regent by right of King James’ will, and nothing in that will prevented her from remarrying. But she knew why the outcry was so vehement; they hated Angus as they hated all Douglases. Margaret gave a mental shrug as she reviewed the history of the Douglases in her mind. Most of the Scottish clans had grudges against all the others; it was this lack of unity that had kept Scotland from greatness in the past and probably always would. So they hated her husband. Were they not glad to have her married to a Scot, and not to some foreign prince who would rule them?
Henry was livid that she had done something so foolish as to choose her own husband, a man who was her own subject, and one not much liked by others. What else could one expect from headstrong Margaret? But how much better would it have been to have married her to King Louis, who would have promptly used his position as regent of Scotland to annoy Henry from the border? What was the matter with all these men? Why could they not see beyond the moment, to the future? Any foreign alliance she made would be good for neither Scotland nor England in the long run.
And yet it had not taken long for her to realize that by marrying for love, by marrying the man she wanted, she had effectively destroyed her power base. It was inconceivable. She still called herself, believed herself to be, regent of Scotland, by virtue of the fact that she had custody of the little king’s person. But she could almost see her power slipping through her fingers. The Scots Council was calling loudly for the Duke of Albany; it would not be long before he arrived to wrest from her what little power she had left.
And most puzzling of all was Angus’s attitude of late. Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, had enough to do to see to the welfare of his clan; and yet by virtue of his marriage to the Queen Mother, he now believed himself to be a potentate whom none dared to challenge. Had she been unwise, in her early besotted state, to declare him co-regent? Perhaps. But if Angus made her days trying, he made up for it at night…
When John Stuart, Duke of Albany arrived in Scotland on a fine spring day in 1514, Margaret, who had been dreading his arrival, was pleasantly surprised to find him charming, polite and cultured, almost benign. In short, all of the things that the men of her Scottish Council were not. He assured her that his heart was in France, that he had been forced to come to Scotland by his sovereign lord, the king of France; and that he wanted nothing more than to set things to rights in Scotland, appoint a suitable deputy, and go home to his ailing wife.
For a short time all seemed well. And then Albany had had two of Angus’ troublesome clan arrested, and had tried to take her children from her. In that he had finally succeeded, and she had been forced to flee Scotland without them, even while sick unto death and pregnant with her seventh child, Angus’ child... She had begged Henry to send an army to her aid; instead he had advised her to leave Scotland and come to England.
Things had reached a pretty pass, indeed. She could see now that marrying the Earl of Angus, her beloved Archibald, in the heat of the moment, had been a grave error. Except for that mistake, she could not see what she should have done differently. Marrying Angus might have been her only real mistake, but what a mistake it was!
The sound of trumpets brought her out of her reverie. She peered ahead and saw the dust rising. Henry and his escort were approaching. And then suddenly there he was, her big, bluff, larger-than-life brother, a boy no longer, but a man, a man so large and so commanding that somehow in that moment she knew that he would get it all back for her.
She was not helpless; she had proved that. But she had suffered. She had lost all but two of her children, a far worse showing for her efforts than the expected mortality rate for children; she had lost her husband in the prime of his life, to the army of her own brother and homeland; she had lost custody of her sons to Albany, who had betrayed her trust. And now one of them was dead, little Alexander having died at Christmas; she had been forced to flee her realm. But through it all she had never admitted defeat, she had never despaired, never for an instant had she become resigned or even submissive. She had remained resolute; she had fought. She had survived. She had Angus’ daughter, even if Albany had the little king.
She looked around her; here was England, here was London, here was her dear brother. Henry would soon set things to rights, she was sure of it. With his help, she would regain all that she had lost; her son, her regency, her rents and her jewels, her very life. And she had no intention of leaving England until she did.
A great, booming voice greeted her. “Well met, Sister!” cried Henry.
“Greetings, Dear Brother,” she replied. They sized each other up as their horses cavorted restively around each other. She held out her hand; Henry skillfully caught and kissed it from his saddle. She noticed that his hand was twice the size of hers, noticed the red and gold hairs curling on the back of it. What a man, what a king he had become!
