Chapter 3
Queen Anna of Denmark, wife of King James VI of Scotland
LADY MARGARET LIVINGSTON TAKES MY last rook with her pawn. ‘You are distracted today, Your Majesty.’
I stare at the board. How stupid of me not to have seen that coming. Margaret is a formidable player and almost always beats me. She’s the only person at court who doesn’t let me win, which is one of the things I like about her. But I usually put up a better fight than this.
My hand moves to my belly. You are the reason I can’t concentrate.
I know you’re in there. My breasts are heavy and my breath catches when I walk up the shortest staircase.
Even Martin Schoner, the foolish physician, has seen it.
The King was sceptical when I told him, of course.
He frowned and said, ‘Schoner will look at you.’ But he believed the news when his Habsburg physician confirmed it.
This morning, in the cold grey light of my chamber, during those precious few moments when I was the only one awake, I pulled up my nightdress and touched the skin of my stomach, white and blue-veined. It doesn’t swell yet, but I know you grow in there, my elskling. A child of my blood.
I drag my attention back to the game – my knights and rooks are all captured now, and I must concentrate if I’m to avoid humiliation. I move my bishop to take Margaret’s pawn, then immediately realise my mistake as she shakes her head.
It’s not surprising I can’t concentrate. My joy at the thought of you is mixed with pangs of fear. I see them carrying the bloodied linen from my chamber: the sheets, my underclothes, even the bed curtains stained with my blood mingled with that of the last child I carried.
I shift in my seat. Even with my eyes on the board, I feel the women staring at me, and the men too, from their seats around the hall at Holyrood – not sympathetic, not kind.
Word has spread that I’m with child but they think you’ll die, like the last one.
And they blame me. I’m a failure and a disappointment.
There’s no comfort in this dirty, barbaric land.
For a moment, I ache for my mother, your mormor, the Queen of Denmark, who would love you as much as I do. It was she who taught me to play chess, of the importance of strategy, planning ahead and deploying your resources wisely. A game for a princess. A game for a future Queen.
Not that I’m deploying my resources wisely today.
Margaret moves her knight to capture my bishop and I stifle a sigh.
Denmark is so far away. I long for the safety and security of Sjanderborg.
Wrapped in the love of my mother, I could mourn my dead babies and take proper care of you.
I think of her all the time – the quiet fury she would wreak on these nobles who disrespect me.
The Crown is cherished and revered in Denmark, and I never imagined it could be otherwise.
I ache for the calm and security of my homeland, the taste of dried flounders and smoked boar’s head.
I even find myself missing spoiled little Cristian, your uncle, the King.
Here, I am poked and prodded by the King’s physician and surgeon like a piece of meat, while the nobles plot and look for any opportunity to turn on my husband.
My failed womb gives them the perfect reason to whisper and conspire.
Barren. The word doesn’t escape my ears.
I might not understand everything of the Scottish tongue yet, but that is clear enough.
I scan the chess board ‘This is hopeless. I only have three pawns and a bishop left to defend my poor king.’ I can’t see a way to win. I move my bishop diagonally one square, a paltry move, achieving nothing.
‘Never underestimate a pawn,’ Margaret says. ‘The way you move them almost always decides the fate of the game.’
She moves one of hers to the last row on the board and gives a satisfied nod. ‘I promote my pawn to a queen. And that’s check.’
Again, how did I not see that coming? I’ve let her get all the way across the board, unchallenged.
And now she has two queens. I shouldn’t have played today.
Thoughts of you are all-consuming. My purpose is to birth an heir.
The King needs a son who will bolster his position among the feuding arls and get him closer to the throne of England – the only thing he really cares about.
If I can’t do this, what am I good for? I was ripped from my family, brought to this land of base manners where there’s no respect for royalty, for one task alone.
The stories of what happened to the wives of the English King who failed to bear a son echo around the palace, and around my ears.
I move my king out of danger, temporarily, hiding behind one of my last remaining pawns. But I know he won’t be safe for long.
What if they are right? What if I can’t keep you alive in this body? This is not just about my duty – I need someone of my own flesh here; I need you. Someone who is mine, a family of my own again.
And I don’t want to think of the horror to come, even if you are born safely.
My husband says he’ll take you from me. If I carry you to term and birth you, I will hold you in my arms for only a short moment, then you’ll be carried away to be raised in Stirling with the Earl of Mar and his mother, as the King was.
I know they do things differently here in Scotland – their children are often sent away to be raised away from home.
No Scottish noblewoman would nurse her own baby, let alone a Queen, I am told.
But I must nurse you, my elskling. The idea that I would carry you in this body until you are born, only for you to be taken from me is unthinkable.
Margaret moves her newly promoted queen. ‘Check.’
I’m running out of options. I move my king one more square backward, temporary reprieve once more.
I remember how my father worshipped my mother.
‘He that loveth his wife loveth himself,’ he would say.
But your father sees me only as a means to an heir, that much is clear now.
On the nights he would come to me, before I carried his child, his brow furrowed in concentration like a man leaning over his ledgers.
I had such high hopes when he came to Denmark to fetch me.
It was exciting when he strode in wearing dirty boots and kissed me in front of my mother, called me his Annie.
The thrill of being a married woman; a Queen in my own right.
My ladies said that godforsaken crossing over to Scotland, our ship tossed about on the water like a child’s toy, was a bad omen.
I refused to believe it, even when I spent three days vomiting into a chamber pot with seasickness like a drunkard.
They were right though, weren’t they? This land is brutal and my body is a duty to be fulfilled for my husband.
I get no comfort from the ladies I brought with me from Denmark. Those that could be spared from my mother’s court were those weak in character. They sense my disadvantage here at the Scottish court. There is no loyalty and they’re as clueless about the customs as I am.
Make allies among the Scottish women, my mother advised me, you’ll need their support – but choose wisely. Most of the nobles here make my skin crawl. They gossip like flaggermus.
Lady Margaret Livingston is different, though.
She sits upright and stiff, her arms at her sides.
Her husband is dead. He was the King’s Justice Clerk and left her a great fortune.
I know the other ladies think she’s haughty and hard.
They laugh about the men who court her for her dead husband’s fortune.
They say she’ll be forced to marry one of them, as what good is a woman without a husband?
That’s why I favour her. She doesn’t gossip, and she speaks the truth, even if it’s unpalatable.
She looks up at me now. She knows she’s beaten me. I see it too. She moves her bishop. ‘Check mate.’
‘Well played, Margaret,’ I say and rise. ‘I believe I’ll rest now.’
I wish I could retire alone, but Lady Mary Ruthven and her mother, Lady Dorothea Ruthven, stand from their embroidery to accompany me to my bedchamber.
The stairs are especially steep today and I have to stop several times to recover on the way.
Mary Ruthven smirks as I lose my breath.
She’s the worst of all the gossips, and that’s quite the accolade in this court.
I look out as I walk past the window of this poky tower bedchamber, out at the green parkland of Holyrood.
The Queen’s rooms here would serve as no more than a cupboard in Sjanderborg.
Dorothea helps me remove my brocade gown, and Mary pulls back the velvet blanket that covers my bed. I lie down and roll onto my side, where I can cradle you, hoping for sleep.
I’ve been dreaming every night of my father’s stories.
How he’d sit on the bed Elisabeth and I shared and tell us tales of his travels, snug hours in the warm sleepy time before the candles were blown out for the night, telling us about his visits to the islands – islands that should belong to Denmark but were stolen by the Scottish.
Tales of the trows and the hogboons, the selkies and the dancing giants.
And the spae-wives – the wise women of Orkney whose skills are so great they can bring a man back from the dead.
But sleep won’t come. My mind is full of bloody sheets, armfuls of death and humiliation carried by the ladies from my chamber. I touch you through my belly and my thin cotton undergarments – my elskling, my love.
Whatever it takes, I will not lose you.