His eyes, as they rested on her, were above all reassuring. And she thought: This is the happiest moment of my life. I am to be married to him in very truth at last, and I know this to be but the beginning of all my joy.

They stood together before the Archbishops of York and Glasgow, and the ceremony of marriage was performed. Then the bulls from the Pope, consenting to the union, were read aloud; and when this was done the trumpets blared forth in triumph.

Margaret and James were married.

They sat side by side at the banquet and the King commanded that the Queen should be served before he was.

In spite of her ecstasy Margaret could still feel hungry, and she tackled the boar’s head, brawn and ham and all the other delicacies with a zest which seemed to amuse her husband.

When the banquet was over the company left the dining hall for another room that was hung with tapestries and cloth of gold, and here the King and Queen led the company in the dance.

And so the evening passed until it was time for the King and Queen to retire together.

Margaret was happy; the King was well content.

She was young and beautiful and, as he had guessed, had been an apt pupil in those arts in which he had long excelled. It was pleasant to find a sensuality which matched his own, and if he had not continued secretly to mourn for Margaret Drummond he could have been a happy man.

Margaret with all her Tudor egoism, never doubted for one moment that the King was as delighted with her as she was with him. He had given her on the morning after the wedding night the domains of Kilmarnock as a morrowing gift.

During the weeks which followed she devoted herself to pleasure with an energy which those who had followed her from England had only seen surpassed by her royal brother. Each day she held a council of her ladies to discuss what she should wear; she danced and sang, she hunted, practiced archery; and always she was eager for those hours when she could be alone with her bridegroom.

After some weeks of this merrymaking James intimated that the celebrations should come to an end and it was time he showed the people of Scotland their Queen. Then began the royal tour. From Edinburgh to Linlithgow and from Linlithgow to Stirling, to Falkland, Perth, Aberdeen and Elgin. Each night they would come to rest in some mansion, convent or abbey where there would be dancing, music, card-playing or religious ceremonies.

One of the greatest difficulties was the transport of Margaret’s wardrobe, for the purpose of which special carters had to be employed.

“Do you need so much?” asked James gently.

“Indeed I do,” Margaret firmly told him.

Many would have been exasperated; not so James. He merely shrugged tolerant shoulders and the carters were engaged.

By Christmas they were back in Holyrood Palace where Margaret threw herself into arrangements for Christmas festivities with all her youthful enthusiasm. Holyrood should see festivities such as it had never seen before. There should be pageantry and dancing such as she and Henry had often longed for during the Christmas celebrations which had taken place in their father’s Court. It was wonderful to escape from that miserly caution which had been a part of her early life. Margaret was determined to have gaiety, no matter what the cost. Harpers and luters, fiddlers and pipers, trumpeters and dancers filled the state apartments with their music.

And when the Christmas feasting was over, there was the New Year.

James’s present to his wife on the first day of the New Year was a heavy ducat of gold weighing an ounce, with two sapphire rings; and the second day of the New Year he gave her two crosses studded with pearls.

To Margaret’s chagrin the New Year festivities were brought to an abrupt end by the death of James’s brother, the Duke of Ross; and when the burial ceremonies were over, James told his bride that he must leave her for a while. She must understand that as King he had certain duties to his country. He would write to her and she must write to him, but for a few weeks they must be parted.

Margaret embraced him tearfully and implored him not to stay long from her side. He assured her that he would return as soon as it was possible for him to do so. The first of the King’s absences had begun.

During the periods when he was absent from his Queen, James sent her letters and gifts. He deplored the fact that they could not be together, and Margaret occupied herself in hunting and archery and sometimes in the woods she would run races with her attendants. The days passed pleasantly enough but she yearned for James.

When he returned he was as affectionate and charming as ever, but during a visit to Stirling Castle, Margaret made a discovery.

James was always eager to go to Stirling, and she had said to him: “I believe this to be the favorite of all your palaces, and this surprises me since you spent so much of your childhood there. So your memories cannot be unhappy ones.”

“Do I love Stirling best?” he mused. “I wonder. At this time I do. Next week I may love Linlithgow or Holyrood House or the castle of Edinburgh. I fear I am a fickle man.”

“As long as your fickleness is only for your castles I care not,” laughed Margaret.

She did not notice that he looked momentarily melancholy.

The next day she saw a little girl in the hall of the castle. The child was beautiful and in the charge of a highborn lady. Margaret called the little girl to her and asked who she was.

Her lady guardian seemed confused and said that she was lodged in the castle temporarily.

“My name is Margaret,” the child told the Queen.

“Margaret! How strange. So is mine.”

“You are Margaret too! What else? I am the Lady Margaret Stuart.”

“That is a name which arouses my interest,” answered the Queen.

“She is such a prattler, I fear, Your Grace,” said her guardian. “And, I fear, a little spoiled.”

“I am not,” answered the child. “My father says I am not.”

“And who is your father, my child?”

“My father is the King,” was the disconcerting answer.

Margaret knitted her brows and looked at the woman, who lifted her shoulders and murmured: “She is but a child, Your Grace. You know how children prattle on… without sense.”

“Then if your father is the King, who is your mother?” asked Margaret suddenly, ignoring the woman and addressing the child.

“She was Margaret too,” the child told her. “I am named for her.”

“Is the child’s mother here?” asked Margaret.

“No, Your Grace. Her mother is dead.”

“She is not,” declared the child. “My father says she is not dead, and will never die.”

“Oh come… come… you weary Her Grace.”

Margaret did not seek to detain them; she watched the woman take the child’s hand and lead her away.

She went immediately to the King, who was in his own apartments playing his lute. Imperiously she said: “James, I wish to speak to you… privately.”

James regarded her somewhat lazily and, seeing that she was truly agitated, signed to his friends to leave him.

“Well?” he said when they were alone.

“There is a child here — Margaret — who says she is your daughter. I know that this is not so, but I like not that she should proclaim herself to be. I want you to stop this.”

James was silent for a while; then he strummed a few notes on his lute. The time had come. He would have to explain.

“The child speaks the truth,” he said. “She is my daughter.”

“Your daughter! But… ”

“I was to have married her mother, but she… died. She was poisoned with her two sisters when at breakfast.”

Margaret’s blue eyes opened wide and the color flamed into her cheeks. He noted that the fact that his mistress had been poisoned did not shock her so much as that she had existed.

“So… you had a mistress!”

“My dear Margaret! What do you expect? Not one… but many.”

“And… a child!”

“Children,” he corrected her.

She was angry. She had been hoping for signs of her own pregnancy and there had been none. And now he… her own husband… admitted not only to having had mistresses… but children.

“I am glad you know,” he said. “I visit them often. They are after all my own flesh and blood and I have always promised myself that my children should never be treated by their father as I was by mine — perhaps in the hope that they will never have to suffer the remorse I did for the part I played in my father’s end.”

Margaret stood up and went to the door. She was so angry that she knew she must escape because she had a great desire to fly at him and fight him with all her strength. She had been cheated. She saw that she had been young and foolish and that her naïveté must have been apparent to him. She felt insulted and her Tudor pride was in revolt. She had loved him too deeply, too trustingly.

He did not attempt to detain her. He shrugged his shoulders and turned idly to his lute. He strummed without hearing; the recent scene had made him think of that other Margaret and the longing for her was almost too great to be borne.

Margaret could not rest until she discovered more about her husband’s premarital love affairs. She insisted on her Scottish ladies’ telling her all they knew. So the King had been so enamored of Margaret Drummond that he had wanted to marry her against the advice of his ministers; and she had borne him a daughter, that child, Lady Margaret Stuart, who was so petted and pampered at the King’s command. And there were two children by a certain Marian Boyd: Catherine and Alexander; and the young Earl of Moray — who had been given this title when he was scarcely two — was the King’s son by Janet Kennedy.