by G Lawrence
She laughed and put her arms around me, shaking and crying into my crimson gown.
“I had been so afraid to tell you my lady,” she said. “I thought you would be angry with me.”
“Only angry that you did not tell me sooner to spare yourself all this pain and disquiet,” I said laughing. “There is always a solution which can be easier found when two minds search for it.” I wrapped my arms around her and held her close. “Always tell me all Kat… for that way we will always help each other to the best route to happiness.”
I held her until the merriment returned to her eyes. When we parted and she went to find her John to tell him of our conversation, her eyes were soft with tenderness and love for me. Although she was still rather sniffly and wet, I think I had convinced her that she would not have to leave me.
When I met John Astley I was won over from the first moment. He informed me in a humble manner that he was related to my mother’s family and was in fact a second or third cousin of my mother. He was handsome and straight-laced, quite serious and modest. I could see the devotion he had for Kat and I loved him for it.
Sometimes we fear having another person come close to the ones we love; we fear that their opening their hearts to another might make them love us less, as though love were something that was rationed.
But in truth, love is not in short supply; in fact it is one of few things to multiply the more it is used. And as Kat opened her heart to John, I found that her love for me did not diminish; it grew. And I had another heart who loved me for as John was able to take the hand of his pretty Kat, he was made ever-grateful to the mistress who had not only allowed it, but had ensured his marriage.
They were married and John was given a place in my household. It was the happiest I had seen Kat; her cheeks were flushed and she hummed merry tunes as she went about her business in the day. John and she read together with me in the evenings, we went out on picnics in the spring. He became a part of our lives at Hatfield.
Although Kat was not entirely mine anymore, she would never be lost to me. She cared enough for me to have thought about refusing the man she loved in order to stay with me. She had feared to lose me enough to give herself utmost pain in order to spare mine. I was not upset to learn of her devotion to me, just as I was not in the least displeased to welcome another loyal servant into my house.
Chapter Eighteen
Whitehall Palace
1545
My father wanted a portrait painted of all the royal family. It was to show us as the new and united family we were, at least on the surface. There were still undercurrents of trouble as Mary strained to obey our father’s dictates on her religion. I was sure in private she continued to worship as she always had, but in public she obeyed his word to the letter. Edward found Mary taxing even when we were young I think. Despite her outward obedience to our father’s wishes, she still continued to send us Catholic works which contrasted sharply with the mostly Protestant teachings we received. Our father may have remained a Catholic to the core, but Edward and I were leaning much more towards the reformed Protestant faith than to the traditional Catholic one. Our tutors instructed us as closely as they could to follow the Protestant religion, even though it was still officially banned in England... They knew, I think, that we were the future of the kingdom, and they wanted that future to be at the least kind to those of their faith, and at best, a future England that was entirely Protestant, and free of the taint of Catholicism. Our sister wanted entirely the opposite, and so spent time still trying to convince us subtly of the truth of the Catholic faith.
Our father was under the impression that all we learnt was of his doctrine and will. But there were competing forces vying for our attention in the days of our youth. Protestants and Catholics who kept their heads down kept their heads … and planned for the future.
“Our sister is blinded by her devotion to the old religion,” Edward said to me one day as we walked in the gardens together. He had been sent a new set of clothes by our father, of striking gold and crimson, a new hat with a great feather for it. I have to say, my brother cut a dashing figure even as a young boy. He was almost eight then, and I was eleven. His face was rounded as his mother’s had been, and like me, he had taken the eyes of his mother rather than those of our father. He was growing tall and liked to hold himself straight in order to appear even taller.
It frustrated him that our father would not allow him to take part in the more adventurous and dangerous pursuits that young men engaged in. Our father was too afraid that he would have an accident and die, leaving the country without a male heir again.
“Our sister is set in the ways in which she was educated and raised,” I said “You must not blame her too much for her attention in this matter. She thinks what she does is right.”
“Not all good deeds are sent from God,” said Edward harshly. “Some are sent from the devil and are well-disguised. Our sister does not see that she walks a path that will take her only to blindness to the light of God… and she seeks to take us with her. I will speak to our father. She requires further disciplining.”
It was not an idle threat. Our father would punish her most severely if he thought she was going against his will again.
“Please, do not, Edward,” I said touching his arm. “Although I am sure that Mary would deserve such a punishment, let her try to come to the truth of God on her own. She was misled as a child as so many were. She will come to see the truth through the will of our father.”
Edward smiled at me. “I will not report this to our father… to please you sister,” he said. “But Mary must realise that her behaviour even in private is not fitting to the honour of her station. I hope in time she will come to see the truth as you say, but I wonder if the devil is too tightly entrenched in her heart to allow her to see the light of God’s truth.”
“Remember that our father is not disposed to favour the Protestant faith in full either, brother,” I said. “We must ever walk the middle way with his governance.”
Edward nodded. I could see that he was thinking that when he came to his full position as King, the Protestant religion would come firmly to the country.
But that would not be for a long while, I hoped. He was still so young and our father seemed invincible to me.
And so, despite the strains of the family in matters of faith, or perhaps because of them, our father had decreed that we should have this united portrait of our family done. It would show Mary and me, and Edward at the side of our father. In all ways would it show the honour and standing of the royal family… but there would be one striking variation from the truth.
The Queen who was to sit by the side of our father in the family picture was not his present queen, my beloved Katherine Parr. Rather it would be the long-dead, pallid wife who had given him Edward. Jane Seymour was to be brought back from the dead to sit at the King’s side in his idealized family picture.
If the idea rankled with Katherine’s pride or honour as Queen, she did not show it.
If the morbid nature of resurrecting a wife, who died through lack of care as the common people said after the birth of the Prince, was difficult for my father, he said nothing.
If standing as equal with me, yet positioned outside of the royal family proper, made up of our father, Queen Jane and Edward, was difficult for Mary, she said nothing.
This was my father’s ideal family. If you knew nothing of our history, you might think that Jane Seymour was the mother of all of us. You might think that we reached this moment as one seamless unit. You might think that there had never been a disruption in our lives, nor believe that each of us had lost a mother to the whims of our father. You might never think that other queens had existed. When the sketches were put together, we would become the perfect, loyal family born from one great King and one great Queen, the richness and fruit of the dynasty of our father.
I stood for the sketches willingly enough. But the inclusion of Edward’s mother, and the excl
usion of mine or Mary’s, or indeed the lovely Katherine Parr, rankled with me. So I stood for the sketches. But around my neck I wore my mother’s pendant and pearls.
Rebellious and foolish I may have been, but I was wise enough to ask the artist, Hans Eworth, who was sketching me, to ensure that the pendant was not clearly visible on the finished picture. If my father saw it then I don’t quite know what he would have done to me. Hans smiled when I asked him to both include and exclude the pendant, and pressed a finger to his lips.
I had a way with people; I was friendly and that lacked that overbearing pride so common to nobility. I liked to know about people, and that ease of friendship was something that served me well. It brought affection, real affection for me, out of people’s hearts.
Hans Eworth promised to conceal the necklace in the finished portrait, but he gave me the sketches where my mother’s necklace was fully visible. Hans was the protégée of Holbein, and one of his greatest students. Holbein had been a favourite of my mother’s. Perhaps Eworth felt some loyalty to the woman who had helped his master’s career, and thusly, his own. There must have been some reason for him to take such a risk, and although I am sure he liked me well enough, it would not all have been done in the name of friendship for me.
Why did I wear it? I can hardly answer the question. It was lunacy really. But I felt something within me cry out at the portrait. My mother’s name was still banned at court. She was never mentioned. Mary’s mother too was not spoken of… and now our father wanted us to sit for this picture in which he was presenting Jane Seymour as the mother of all of us, the only rightful Queen.
It was another moment, another time where our father sought to exclude the past from his glorious present. Another occurrence where the mothers of Mary and I were cast aside in favour of the mother of Edward. The exclusion of Katherine Parr also hurt me… I could not bear that our father should value the pallid Jane over the beautiful Katherine as the wife that should be remembered for all time at his side.
Perhaps I just felt that something of my mother should be there, however quietly, however secretly concealed, to remind people that my father’s vision of our past was not the only one that existed.
I wondered whether Mary thought the same. Her devotion to her own mother was something that she carried in her with pride and with sorrow. In accepting our father as the Supreme Head of the Church she had gone against all that her mother had believed in and would have died for, given the chance. I wonder how often she talked to God trying to convince him that she had done the right thing? How often did she talk to her dead mother as I sometimes whispered to mine?
It was many months before the picture was finished. When it was done, there we were, looking down on the realm of our father, the perfect, finished family.
Edward, looking as pale as his ghostly mother; Mary and me to each side with our fools behind us; our father in the middle next to his son and heir… and his dead pale Queen. The only one who had given him all he wanted, the only one of our three mothers to die in glory, still a Queen. Perhaps she deserved her place next to him, re-writing the history of the Tudors. Perhaps not.
But when I looked up at the portrait I could see the tiny AB around my neck; Eworth had kept his word and it was not clear enough to see it if you did not know it was there. But I knew that it was. It made me glad to see some remembrance of the woman who had borne me into the world, on the fictionalised account my father had created.
Every time I looked at the portrait, I could almost hear the distant echo of a pretty, merry little laugh from an elegant throat.
My defiance of our father’s wishes would have made my mother laugh I think, and that thought made me smile.
Chapter Nineteen
Whitehall Palace
1545
A young boy entered service in my brother’s house at this time; a young boy who would one day become both my dearest and closest friend, and perhaps also the one great love of my life.
Boys were sent from every wealthy and noble house in the hope they would serve my brother, become his companions and one day therefore, the close friends of the future King. Much the same had been done when our father was young; the companions he had played with as a boy were those honoured when he came to his throne. Each family that was given a chance to place a child within Edward’s house tried to choose the most promising of their children. Edward grew up a precocious boy surrounded by precocious boys. Some were strong and fast, and Edward admired their skills at archery and running at the rings practising the skills required for jousting. Our father would not let Edward do this himself. It was too dangerous. But my brother had the utmost admiration, in a slightly jealous fashion, for any other boy skilled at this sport. Some of the boys were intelligent and ready to argue Thomas Aquinas from the break of dawn. With those boys Edward was entirely the King already… ready and able to exert his intellect over them and prove his worth.
It was a lively household, full of young boys as eager to impress each other as they were to impress my brother. When I first met Robert Dudley though, he seemed even then to stand apart from the other young boys chosen to accompany my brother.
Robert, or Robin as I came to call him, was dark as a Spaniard, with soft brown hair and sparkling black eyes, and he had a hint of mischief about him that I liked. When we were younger children we had danced together at court when his family had brought him to state occasions, but as he entered the service of my brother, I saw him more and more. One day as I walked the gardens with Kat, we came across this young Dudley sitting in a grove and sighing in frustration over a book. His hands were pressed to the sides of his head next to his eyes; it looked as though he endeavoured to force his eyes and mind to concentrate on the book in his lap.
“What causes you to sigh, so, master Dudley?” I asked as we approached, looking and seeing one of my favourite versions of Cicero in his lap.
He rose and bowed to me in a fluid and graceful motion; Robin always looked as though he were dancing, even in the mundane actions of everyday life. There are some people who are gifted with such grace naturally that it comes to them without effort. He held out the book to me and I took the volume in my hands. “You do not find interest in the works of the masters?” I said with a faint notion of reprove in my voice. I loved this book. I was very protective over things that I loved.
He smiled at me; he was quite charming even when in trouble. “My masters say I must read it in order to advance my mind,” he said. “But I must admit that I have little love for the work. There are other books I do love, but this is not one.”
“And what other books do you love Master Dudley, that could best Cicero in his knowledge and wisdom?”
He smiled again and those black eyes twinkled at me merrily. He seemed to take a little delight in my riled temper; oddly enough, I found that more exciting than I did infuriating. The sudden thought that he was a handsome boy entered my thoughts, above the irritation at his dismissal of Cicero and then I tried to stop thinking those thoughts in order to control the flush that rose to my cheeks. He was a servant of my brother. Even though he came from a family that was riding high in the esteem of my father, their lineage was not as noble as many at court. It was not seemly for me to think such things.
“I love the study of mathematics,” he said “Navigation, charts and geography. I would love to know the world. I love to see maps and see the different worlds and oceans.”
I smiled, for our tutors were rather divided on the value of mathematics and preferred us to understand the worth of the classics, but I too liked to see charts and images of distant lands that bold men were discovering; strange and distant lands, brave new worlds, captivating new creatures and treasures from far away territories.
.
“I too would love to know the world,” I said. “There is much to be said for the discovery of new lands, new riches and the expansion of the Christendom.”
He bowed to me “You are a wise princess, my lady,” h
e said. “Perhaps if your father marries you to a foreign prince, you will get to see many of the worlds that I dream of being allowed to see.”
He must have seen my face fall a little. I felt my heart slump in my chest. There had been much talk over the past year of marrying me to one prince or another, each of them so far from the lush green of merry England that I loved so much. I had no wish to leave these shores. At least, not to leave forever.
Such is the fate of a princess; she must be ready to give up her native land in order to advance the interests of its people. I would have to be sold off to the highest bidder, or the prince with the best ships or silk trade. I would be gifted to a man to secure the friendship between his country and that of my father. My marriage would secure a friend for my people, secure safety for their lands. But if I had the choice, if anyone would ever think of consulting me, I should have wished to always be a princess of England, in England.
His face turned gentle as he saw the expression on my face. I knew well that he had wished to pay me a compliment and express that my fortunes were on the rise; being used as a pawn in the international game of royal marriages was after all an indication that I was again valuable as a recognised and legal heir to my father’s throne. But he knew as he looked at me that I would not wish to leave here.