by G Lawrence
I looked at her with surprise and alarm and then looked around me. Her servants were some way away from us, as were mine, and she had not spoken loudly, but still…she was unguarded in her speech. It was not clever, or careful.
“Perhaps those things are better left to my father,” I said quietly, wondering slightly at her words. She had all she could ever want for here. I could not understand why she would want to return to a position fraught with so much uncertainty when she had all that she had as the sister of the King. She was the only one to have ever escaped with her life, and yet she might be willing to give that up, just to be the Queen again.
Power, it seemed, was worth risking all present happiness for, for just a chance to be the highest of the land.
“Perhaps…” she said and smiled again. “Come,” she said, “I would show you the rose gardens. They say that your grandmother was gifted with flowers and the gardens are most beautiful.”
I took her hand and let her walk me through the roses. Even if she had no guile and no idea that what she was saying might be dangerous, I did. Roses were a much safer topic of conversation than the next marriage of my illustrious father.
Chapter Nine
Hatfield House
1543
“I have news,” Kat said, throwing herself onto my bed one evening. Her face was alive with expectation, as it always was when she had discovered a new titbit of tasty talk.
“You always do,” I said smiling at her, and playfully slapped at her shoulder.
Kat was turning into an incorrigible gossip. Always ready to fill me with some dainty morsel of court life. I learnt almost all that was going on in the world through the ready lips of my governess.
“They say that your father will take a new wife soon,” she said. “Shortly enough, you are to have a new stepmother and England will have a new Queen.”
“They are always ready to talk aren’t they?” I said frowning at her. I did not like this news. I had heard it end too often with disgrace and sorrow and death.
“Are you not interested?” Kat said looking at me with feigned shock. “Then I shall go away and say no more!”
I caught her by the sleeve and yanked her back onto the bed; we both fell laughing in a jumble together.
“Fine,” I said, my curiosity giving in to paths my heart feared to tread. “Tell me what they say this time.”
Her face puckered a little. Whilst she was excited to tell me her news, she was also bringing further enjoyment to herself as she held back from the brink of telling me. It was in her nature to tease and to flirt with those she was friends with. It was not that her character or reputation was ever in doubt, but she enjoyed playing with people, enticing their expectations to increase her own enjoyment of each and every moment of life. Some people are like that; able to squeeze every last pleasure from each hour of their life. It is a good trait to have.
“They say,” she said laughing, teasing, “that your father is spending much time with the household of your sister Mary…They say that there is a certain woman amongst her ladies whom he is spending a lot of time with…They say that he has sent away a certain Thomas Seymour, brother to the late Queen Jane, who might have been a-courting this certain lady.”
“Who?” I said, slapping at her again in frustration; my hands hit her arm with greater strength this time. Although I loved her, I found her infuriating sometimes. I think that was what fuelled her to tease me, because to tease is no fun whatsoever, unless the person being teased is not riled by it.
She rubbed her arm. “My lady is too free with her hands against her loyal servants,” she said ruefully, pouting at me. “The lady is named Katherine Parr, widow to the late Lord Latimer. A good English woman.”
“A widow?” I said in some surprise. “Is she old?”
Kat laughed. “No my lady, she is young and comely. Just because a woman has the misfortune, or fortune, to lose a husband does not mean she has to been old and ugly to do so. The Lady Katherine has buried several husbands who were much older than her. She is a gentle and beautiful woman and it is said the King admires her greatly.”
I shivered a little. “He admired Catherine Howard too,” I said softly.
Kat crossed herself. “May her soul rest peacefully,” she said. “But this is different my lady. Catherine Howard deceived the King. She said she was a virgin come to his bed when she had in fact invited all and sundry to it before him. In this case, the lady is well-bred and raised, and the Lady Parr is a widow, so we know that she will not be pretending virginity to his majesty. At least he will have no surprises there.”
I shook myself, I felt cold. “Does he love her?” I asked.
Kat smiled, pressing her hands to mine. “It would seem that he does, and soon they will be married and you will have a new mother,” she said.
“Do I need another?” I said waspishly. “I just hope that this time my father finds happiness. He does not seem to have the best of luck with wives.”
Kat nodded at me. I could see that she was excited to think of a new queen. When there was a queen at court there were always more entertainments that we might be invited to. There was always more to talk of, to think about and to gossip about. But I was not so sure.
When Kat fell asleep at my side, I lay awake looking at the hangings over my bed in the darkness, wondering about the Lady Parr; another woman, another wife for my father. What was this lady thinking as she lay in bed this night? Was she feeling excitement and pride to marry a king and become a queen, to be raised up from her place as a noble woman of little importance, to be the most powerful woman in England? Or was she afraid? Did she feel the cut of the axe in the night breeze chilling her throat, or feel the cold walls of a prison at her back? Did she want to marry my father… or was she compelled to marry him because he was the King? Did she love him, or was she afraid of him?
I wondered on what kind of woman would want to marry our father. But it was likely that she would have little say in it; women did not have a say in who they married much, and if the King beckoned, she could hardly say no.
I loved my father. He was a great man and a great king. But it seemed to me that even though he was all these great things… it was a dangerous thing for a woman to become his wife.
Chapter Ten
Hampton Court
July 1543
I looked up from my curtsey into gentle, almond shaped grey eyes that shone with merriment and happiness.
My new stepmother, the Queen of England, was a beautiful woman. Her clear skin smelt of fresh milk and sweet herbs, her breath was like crushed mint leaves and her long fingers reached out to me with all the best appearance of friendship.
Her crimson gown set off beautiful auburn hair adorned with a stylish hood, her mouth was pink and pretty and there was all together an air about her of enjoyment of life. I was overcome with admiration for the woman who had captured my father’s heart.
She was lovely.
“Come,” she said, extending her hands to me and bidding me to rise. “You are my daughter now and the best of friends we should be. It will please your father, our dear King, and also me. I hope that you and I shall converse often and I shall hear everything about your life that I do not have the power to share in, when you write to me.”
“I would be honoured to, your majesty,” I said and went to bow again, but her tinkling laugh stopped me as I saw she was trying to hold me upright rather than bowing to her as I should.
My father stood behind us, looking at our interaction with pleasure. His eyes shone with delight as he looked at Katherine and me as we conversed. But I could not help remembering that same look had adorned his face when another Catherine stood in the same place as this one.
“Tell me of your studies,” she said. “I hear that you are a most gifted scholar and I am most pleased to hear of it.”
She paused and sighed. “My own education was not one benefiting the station that your father has raised me to, I fear,” she said. “
But I have tried hard in my adult life to learn what I should have done when I was a child. Your father…” she paused and looked at him affectionately, “has the great wisdom to educate his daughters as well as his son, for he knows that they will come to benefit the country and to aid the Prince Edward as he grows.”
My father laughed and reached out to kiss her.
“You heap praise on me, as ever Kate,” he said with warm affection in his voice.
My father had grown larger, so much larger than I had seen anyone grow. Although his body was covered in jewels and cloths of gold and purple that made his girth stunningly royal, there was also a paleness to his skin, and an air of illness about him that I had never seen before. It made me uneasy. I was so used to my father being all-powerful that I was unprepared for him to seem in any way fragile… or human.
But he looked happy at least. For some time now there had been a dark cloud cast over the country that spoke of the unhappiness of its King. My father could affect the feeling of the very land. He and it were linked so entirely that when he was unhappy, the very fibre and feeling of the grass and the trees, of the skies and the clouds felt sorrow too. That was what it meant to be the King, I thought to myself; to be connected as one with the land over which you rule.
That was why he was a great king. He was England, and England was he.
Katherine was kind, sweet and merry. She was beautiful and charmed Edward immediately. She was fastidious in her toilet, always smelling of musk and jasmine, and even concocted her own sweet lozenges to sweeten her breath. She loved books, and loved to read which endeared Edward and me to her from the start. There is nothing like sharing an obsession to bond people together.
More than anything, I hoped that this marriage would make my father happy. My feelings about the various awful fates of his frequent wives were complicated to say the least. I did not want to believe ill of my father; I admired him a great deal. But I could not help but think that either he was terribly unlucky when it came to choosing wives, or perhaps there was something at fault with him, as well as his wives.
I did not speak these words to anyone. To do so would have been foolish and reckless. But I could not stop thinking them.
I liked Katherine a great deal… and it made me afraid. Growing close to people was dangerous, I had learned. For in time you were sure to lose them. I liked Katherine. It made me afraid to lose her.
Chapter Eleven
Hatfield House
1543
Mary and I had fallen out…again. It was becoming a common occurrence.
Our tutors were educating Edward and me in the new religion and the new thought. Our father was the Head of the English Church and so it was fitting that we, as his children, followed his lead in matters religious. Mary, remaining true to her own religious education, clung to the ideals of the Church of Rome. Her mother had been a devout Catholic and Mary worshipped the memory of her. I think that her love and insistence on the righteousness of the Catholic idea of God was always influenced by her feelings for her mother. To her, her mother had been both right and righteous on all matters, so accepting the Catholic teaching as the only truth was merely another manner of showing her love for her mother.
Mary had accepted our father as Supreme Head of the English Church, but she still clung to all the old ideals in the nature of faith.
As I grew up and we came to discuss points on religion, Mary and I argued often. Although I had been taught to see argument not as a bad thing, but as a means to learn and hone one’s views into logical shape, Mary saw my arguments with her at best as the overzealous passion of the young, and at worst, as heresy. She liked not that Edward and I were being taught religion as we were.
Mary was often at Richmond Palace these days and we saw less and less of each other. She was so much older and had a household of her own to run. As I grew older, the bond that had seemed so close between us when I was little seemed to evaporate. We were growing less close and the more she pushed me on matters religious, the more I dug in my heels and raised an obstinate chin to her. When she did visit, we seemed to spend the first day smiling and all other days scowling. She did not like the fire in my temper.
Our relation, Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, a distant cousin of royal blood, came to stay with our household sometimes and often was thrust into the widening gulf between Mary and me. Poor Elizabeth was thrown at us by Lady Bryan and Kat whenever it looked as though we might implode. She was as in-between us in age as she was in arguments, but I liked my cousin and she was good company for me as I grew up.
Mary was concerned that Edward and I were surrounded by tutors that seemed only to be interested in teaching us the ways of heretics and dissenters. But Grindal, Asham and the others were great men, and the new Queen Katherine approved of each and every one of them. There were rumours that Queen Katherine was in fact much more interested in the new learning and in the religion of the Protestants than she allowed to be known publicly. That could become a dangerous interest.
My father was Head of the Church and had broken with the See of Rome, but our Church in England was still a Catholic one. Only the spiritual leader of the church had been altered. It gave the people of England a greater understanding of the word of God to have our father as their leader in spiritual matters, and under his mastery, the English Church allowed the people to hear the words of God in the vernacular. Our father was bringing his people closer to God by allowing them to hear the scriptures in their own tongue. The thought made me proud, more proud than I can say, to have such a man as my father.
But the break with Rome had also allowed new ideas to filter into the land. Even though our father punished Protestant heretics, he would also arrest and execute Catholics still loyal to the See of Rome.
Religion was a divisive force. I saw my father’s way, with himself as the Head of the Church as a way to bring greater good into the country, to allow people to grow closer to God, but still retain control over the flow of ideas so that heresy could not walk freely about us. For not everyone was as wise as our father, or as able to understand the word of God as he. All men require leadership after all. That was what my father offered his people, both as King and Head of the Church, he was their leader.
Queen Katherine leaned very much towards the new religion. Towards a personal and close relationship with God that was not defined or clouded by Latin texts or by priests that sought to control the people. Our tutors also leaned in the same direction, but no one who had sense within them spoke publicly on their beliefs.
It was not safe to be either a Catholic loyal to Rome, nor a Protestant loyal to God only.
Growing up in my father’s lands, we were loyal to him first, and to the will of God second.
Chapter Twelve
Richmond Palace
February 1603
To me, my faith has ever been a private matter between two souls; between God and me. Although I was raised in one faith and in that faith I chose to worship the Lord, to understand his meaning through those teachings, I have never thought that other ways of finding peace with God were necessarily wrong.
We all find our paths by different routes.
When I came to the throne as a young woman, I chose to unite the warring factions of the Christian faiths of England under one Church of which I was the Head. But I never sought to drill inside the minds of those I ruled. Should they be secret Catholics who could yet keep their manner of worship private enough to escape notice by the law of my lands, then I should have always allowed them to live in peace, even though their faith was different to mine.
But most men are not made of such acceptance. To me, the arguments over the manner of worship were insignificant compared to the glory of understanding God. To me, there is but one God; all else is merely the vanity of man arguing and dying… over trifles.
But my manner of thinking is clearly not as commonplace as one might have hoped. Men kill each other, and kill themselves to stand up for whichever method o
f worship they believe to be righteous.
No one likes to lose an argument, after all.
The stubborn manner of the spirit of man is such that countless thousands have sacrificed themselves for the honour of dying for their beliefs, and countless thousands have killed their fellow man, disobeying one of the first laws ever granted to us, in order to silence their different beliefs.
I too have killed, not by the act of my own hand; those deeds were done for me. But in all times when I took a life it was because I hoped for the greater security of my state and my people. It was not because I wished to alter the souls of the men who had disobeyed my rule and my will.
If men could only see that obeying the will of their country would have been enough for me, many less would have died for their faiths. I cared not for the manner in which a man chose to see God, as long as he obeyed me also.