Learning they had eaten little since their departure from Edinburgh, Busby, the majordomo, saw that plates containing bread with cheese and meat were brought into the hall along with wine. Grizel and Archie had already disappeared, leaving Maggie in the hall with her husband and her grandfather. Dugald Kerr listened as Maggie recited the news of their adventures.
“Ye didn’t see the queen?” he asked.
Maggie shook her head. “Only King James, and he looks so sad.”
“Yer granddaughter touched the royal heart by weeping and declaring that the queen’s condition was not fair,” Fin told the laird. “I never knew James could be touched, but he was. I think she may have gained favor with him, which may be to our advantage one day.”
“I didn’t do it for that!” Maggie declared vehemently.
“I know, but I also know the king’s reputation. He doesn’t forget a fault or a slight, but he also remembers a kindness. I imagine all about him have been declaring their false sympathy while at the same time slyly seeking his opinion on the sort of new wife he would like. Courtiers say what they know is expected of them in order to gain grace and favor. Maggie, however, just ushered into the king’s presence for the first time, wept for a king she didn’t know, and a queen she will never know. Her sweetness reached out to him. When we departed the castle, he kissed her on both cheeks,” Fin told the laird. Then he turned to his young wife. “Someday ye may need a favor from the king, Maggie mine. I suspect he will remember ye and grant it.”
The laird nodded. “Aye, ’tis possible he will.”
“I want nothing from the king,” Maggie declared.
“Ye may one day, and if not for yerself, for one of yer bairns,” Dugald Kerr remarked sagely. “Having yer king’s favor is nae a bad thing, lass.” He looked to Fin. “Ye did well, my lord. I am now more convinced than ever that ye will be a good master for Brae Aisir, and our clan folk. Regaining our full rights when the king’s daughter marries one day was extremely clever. And now that all is settled, I should like ye both to work harder on giving me a great-grandson. I am not young and cannot live forever.” He sighed, and then seemed overcome by a bout of severe lassitude.
Fin wanted to laugh, especially as Maggie flew to her grandfather’s side. The laird was a sly old man determined to gain his way in this matter. Fingal Stewart suspected Dugald Kerr was going to live for many a long year. He kept his thoughts to himself, instead saying he thought it was time for them to retire for the night given the lack of sleep they had suffered over the past few days. The laird heartily agreed, and so Fin took his wife to bed in order that they might do their duty by Brae Aisir.
In mid-July, a royal messenger rode to the Borders announcing the death of Queen Madeleine on the seventh day of the month. She had died in the king’s arms, the messenger confided, on the night he spent in the hall at Brae Aisir. Madeleine de Valois had been a month shy of her seventeenth birthday. They had buried her at Holyrood Abbey next to the palace of the same name where James Stewart had so desperately wanted to bring his bride. The king was in deepest mourning now, and he would speak with no one other than his confessor. But the hunt had begun for a new queen. The king was twenty-five years old, and while he had no shortage of children—six sons and two daughters—he had no legitimate heirs. A new queen was needed as quickly as she could be found, and once again the hunt turned to France. It was important to maintain the French and Scots alliance against the English. There was only one woman whose birth and breeding made her suitable to be James Stewart’s queen. He had considered her previously. It was the beautiful widowed Duchess de Longueville, Marie de Guise, who had birthed two sons for her deceased husband. The Scots diplomatic mission set forth to France.
But Henry Tudor, having divorced one wife, and beheaded a second, had just lost his third queen, Jane Seymour, to a childbed fever. In the market for a fourth bride, he sought to block his nephew from obtaining an important French wife. The English ambassador set forth to press King Henry’s suit for Marie de Guise’s hand. Still in mourning for her husband, the lady was not pleased by either suit. England’s, however, she dismissed immediately.
“I may be a large woman,” she was overheard saying, “but I have a little neck.”
Similar reactions came from other noble ladies being considered by King Henry.
French king François I did approve of a union between the duchess and James Stewart. He sent to the duc de Guise saying he wanted a match between the Scots king and the duc’s widowed daughter. Marie de Guise was distressed by the news. She was not against remarrying, but the thought of leaving her country was not pleasing to her. And there was the matter of her sons, who would have to remain at Longueville as they were their father’s heirs.
Neither the duc de Guise nor his widowed daughter could refuse King François’s wishes. The duc, however, delayed giving the king the expected answer so his daughter might have time to accept what was inevitable. It was then that James Stewart came out of his mourning. His lovely Madeleine had been dead for six months. He had no choice but to take a new queen, to sire an heir for Scotland. He personally wrote to Marie de Guise in his own hand asking her for her advice concerning his dilemma, saying he hoped very much that she would become his queen. They knew and respected each other, which was as excellent a beginning as any for a good Christian marriage, his missive pointed out.
The correspondence was thoughtful and respectful, even tender. It was James Stewart at his most charming, which he could be when he chose to be. Marie was both pleased and touched by the king of Scotland’s letter, for she knew how much he had loved her cousin, Madeleine. His offer was an honorable one, and the fact he had come to her personally rather than leaving it all to the diplomats, King François, and her father, was pleasing to Marie de Guise. It showed a modicum of respect for her, for her position as one of France’s premier noblewomen. He made her feel as if the choice was really hers.
She acquiesced gracefully. She knew she would be remarried no matter her own wishes. She remembered James Stewart from their brief encounter the previous year. She realized that she actually liked him. He was quite handsome, educated enough, and from what she had heard and been told, he was a king who knew how to rule. Better his wife and his queen than she be wed at her own king’s command to some stranger. Scotland might be a rough, cold land, but she would be its queen, and being a queen was no small matter at all. And she would be helping her own native land by keeping the old alliance between Scotland and France a strong one. May 1538 was the date set.
By the time this news had trickled into the Borders, it was past Twelfth Night. Maggie had found herself pregnant late the previous summer, and she now awaited the birth of her first child, who would be born sometime at the end of March. She did not like being with child. She was not allowed to ride or to practice arms in the keep yard. Her grandfather and her husband treated her like some delicate creature. She found them both extremely annoying. The past few months had not been pleasant ones for the inhabitants of the keep as Maggie constantly made her displeasure with them all known.
“The bairn will be born colicky,” Grizel said. “Yer dissatisfaction will distress it.”
“At least ye don’t predict the creature’s sex like Grandsire and Fin,” Maggie said irritably. “It’s the lad this and the lad that. Did it ever occur to either of them that I might birth a daughter? And I suppose if I do, they will both be waiting to see how quickly Fin can get me with another bairn. I hate this! All of it!”
“It’s a wife’s duty to give her husband an heir,” Grizel said as she had said probably a hundred times before. Her mistress had not had an easy time of it, and she wasn’t in the least surprised that a girl used to being so active should object to being cocooned as Maggie was being cocooned. She had been horribly sick during the first months of her confinement. When she had felt better, they had attempted to stop her from walking out of doors for fear she would harm the child in her belly. It was ridiculous, and Grizel had said so very firmly. Then she had been allowed this small form of exercise daily, but it wasn’t enough for someone as active as Maggie had always been.
“See to yer duties in the hall,” her grandsire had advised her.
“The household is under control,” Maggie replied in a tight voice. “And if ye suggest that I sit at my loom one more time, there will be murder done in the hall this day!” Maggie said, glaring.
“I don’t remember yer mam being so difficult or yer grandmother,” the laird said.
Her belly was enormous to her eye. The little dent in her navel holding the remnants of the cord that attached her to her own mother in the womb was now thrusting forth. The only comfort she seemed to obtain came strangely from the wretched man who had put her in this untenable position. Fin did not sleep with her now, but he would come to her bedchamber each night, sit upon the bed, and rub her feet and ankles for a good hour. His actions were the only thing that kept Maggie from killing him so he could not put her in this position ever again.
One afternoon when Maggie had actually managed to walk as far as the village, Midwife Agnes came to her. She had heard of Maggie’s dissatisfaction. “There is something ye can ingest after ye give birth to prevent another bairn until yer ready for one,” she said in a low and confidential voice.
“Don’t let Father David hear ye,” Grizel cautioned. “And what do ye know about such things, Agnes Kerr?”
The midwife barked a short laugh. “I’ll keep to my business, Sister Grizel, and ye keep to yers,” she said.
“I want it!” Maggie said. “Oh dinna fret, Grizel, I’ll give Brae Aisir more bairns. But I don’t want to have a big belly every year. My lord is both a potent and an enthusiastic lover.” Hearing a creaking noise, she turned. “Jesu!” she swore, for someone at the keep had sent a pony cart to return her up the hill. “I can walk, damn it!”
