‘I have urged his Holiness to consider that I was ignorant of that and that neither you nor I should suffer any loss or damage,’ she told me, greatly agitated.

‘What loss or damage?’ I asked, bewildered.

She put an arm around me, a rare gesture of affection. ‘Often, when a marriage is annulled, the children are declared bastards; but if it was made in good faith, its issue can be deemed legitimate. Margaret, I entered into this marriage in good faith. You are trueborn, never doubt it!’

I only hoped that the Pope would agree. I knew how shameful it was to be a bastard, and how the word could be used abusively.

I was eleven when the Pope granted Mother’s petition for an annulment. Heeding her wishes, he added a special declaration that I was legitimate and ought not to be disinherited. But still I became aware of gossip that told me I was openly reputed a bastard in Scotland; it was even said that King James spoke of me as his base sister, which I found, to my hurt, was the truth. As I never saw him, I could not take the insufferable little prig to task for it. So I held my head up. Such things were said covertly, never to my face. No one would have dared, for Father now enjoyed great power in Scotland; he even made himself Lord High Chancellor. Mother was lying low, muttering about how he was keeping my brother James a virtual prisoner, diverting him with women and dice from learning his kingly duties. But the Douglases were now supreme, and no one would say a word against them.

Then Mother revealed that she had secretly married Harry Stewart. No one was more furious than my uncle, King Henry, although I felt he was being somewhat hypocritical, given that he was then trying to divorce Queen Katherine so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. Yet I could not think too harshly of him since, at base, he was trying to protect my interests. I was, after all, still third in line to the English throne – second, if you counted the fact that no one in England would have wanted my tempestuous mother as queen. To my uncle, I was an innocent victim. He urged Mother to reconcile herself to Father, if she wanted to avoid eternal damnation as an adulterer. She should do this for my sake, he thundered, out of the natural love, tender pity and motherly kindness she should feel towards me. There was more in his letter about my beauty and my virtues mollifying a heart of steel, still less a maternal one, the implication being that Mother’s heart was forged in that fashion and was anything but maternal.