The Queen's Governess

by Karen Harper

  HATFIELD HOUSE

  October 13, 1537

  The king has a son! King Henry and Queen Jane have a son! Born yesterday at Hampton Court Palace, named Edward. Prince Edward, heir to the throne, born yester—”

  The messenger who had ridden in was evidently standing at the bottom of the main staircase to call out his glad tidings. His voice was distant to us upstairs in Elizabeth’s schoolroom, but Margaret—Lady Bryan and I called each other by our given names now—rose and hurried out. I was teaching our just-turned-four-year-old charge, who was already reading too, to write her name in script instead of block letters and was amazed that she insisted on elaborate flourishes for it. She did not budge from her fierce concentration at her task. No doubt she did not grasp what the news meant for her—for all of us.

  She was merely the Lady Elizabeth now, His Majesty’s bastard child, living in this very house where her half sister, Mary, had once suffered. As Mary had been, Elizabeth was in dire need of new clothes. Everything changes and there is nothing new under the sun, as King Solomon and Cromwell had said.

  When Lady Bryan had tried to explain her new title to Elizabeth, our pert little mistress, hands on hips, had demanded, “What means it that before I was Princess Elizabeth but now Lady Elizabeth?” Her backbone and wit for such a young child continually surprised me, but considering who her parents were, I should have expected such. She had a temper but managed patience and concentration when it suited her. Thank God, I was the only one to see she did not jump up and give thanks for the news about England’s prince.

  “Edward, Prince of Wales, born to King Henry and Queen Jane!” the muted messenger’s voice droned on. I have learned that what one is looking at when momentous news arrives is oft burned into one’s brain. So, yet to this day when I think of Prince Edward’s birth, I see Anne Boleyn’s girl bent over her work, laboriously, defiantly scribbling the word P-r-i-n-c-e-s-s in front of her name.

  I should have snatched the pen and paper, blotted out that word and scolded her, but I only folded it when Margaret ran back into the chamber, clapping and smiling. Of course, all subjects rejoiced at news of a prince, for that meant the fruition of our sovereign’s heartfelt desire and the future stability of the realm. But it shoved my sweet girl one more step down the ladder of possibilities, so I had to force myself to smile.

  Elizabeth, though, once she understood, was all excitement to have a brother. I was ecstatic, too, when I learned there was good news in the birth for me. The same messenger who later told us the rest—that Queen Jane had labored terribly three days to bear the king’s son and that Lady Bryan was summoned to court forthwith to take over the prince’s household and governance—finally informed me that I was the Lady Elizabeth’s new governess. So it was a great and grand day in my life after all.

  Besides, it pleased me to know that that Cromwell, who fancied himself a great religious reformer in his destruction of the Catholic Church, must be greatly distressed by Catholic-leaning Jane’s influence on the king. [He had wed her only eleven days after Anne’s death!] God’s truth, I too hated the rise of the Seymours and not only for their religious orthodoxy. It made Tom all the more dangerous. But to see Cromwell bested, ah, there was something in that!

  From that day forward, more than ever, I protected my royal charge with fierce devotion, ever praying I would be worthy of her care and tutelage.

  Elizabeth Tudor was a slim but sturdy child with an oval face and pointed chin, an inheritance from her mother, as were her gray-black eyes and olive-hued complexion. But her glowing red hair branded her a Tudor, make no mistake—a gift from God, I warrant—for parents with hair as dark as Anne’s oft passed that on. The child’s teeth had all come in with pain, but her thin-lipped smile displayed them prettily. She had beautiful hands and was already quite aware of her charms. How sad that her garments were oft made over and out of style, for she adored pretty things, including my ruby ring, which I dared not let off my finger for fear of losing it. How long, I thought, before the time would be right to give it to her.

  Despite her moodiness and occasional flares of the Tudor temper, I scolded Elizabeth when I needed to, but I encouraged and cuddled her, too, more than Margaret had, I admit that. Above all, I was ever newly astounded by her appetite for learning and sought to bring her along in her reading and writing skills as well as in the geography of England and Europe, and the names of kings and queens [which were about to become more confusing, as her father took three more wives in the next ten years]. Of course, she eventually also studied the seven liberal arts, including Latin grammar, rhetoric and logic as well as arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music, though she was never the musician her father was. She studied many languages and had a talent for them. In her later adolescent studies, she outstripped me in French and taught me Spanish and Italian when she mastered those tongues.

  As is suggested here, lest it slips past me later with all the upheaval and dangers we faced, I must admit that several years later my knowledge was not enough for her quick mind. I was grateful that she had a series of excellent male tutors and, blessedly, received a fine, if sporadic, education with her brother in his schoolroom, when her various stepmothers and the moods of the king allowed such.

  Though I mean not to be sacrilegious in saying this, when it came to Elizabeth’s sometimes obscure, mostly rural upbringing, I oft thought of the passage from the Bible which described the hidden years of our Savior’s rearing and education: “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” Of course, Elizabeth, poor girl, spent a great deal of time out of favor with the godlike Tudor men—and one woman—who ruled England before her. Yet as the Lord Jesus was Savior of all mankind, I saw Elizabeth Tudor as savior of all England, but that, indeed, comes later in this rendering of my life.

  After Elizabeth was finally asleep that night we heard of her brother’s birth, I saw Margaret was packing and went in to speak with her. “I dared not believe it could fall to me again,” she said, clasping her hands to her breasts and gazing toward the ceiling. “First to help rear Mary, then Elizabeth—but now the heir, though the king and his Seymour uncles will take him away from his women soon enough to turn him into a prince who will be our next king.”

  The idea of Tom Seymour having any say over the upbringing of an innocent child sickened me, but I only nodded as she placed garments in her traveling trunk and chattered on. “By the way, did you hear that Cromwell managed to have his heir Gregory wed another of the Seymour sisters, Elizabeth her name is too, not to mention ’tis said Cromwell’s to become a Knight of the Garter, no less. They call him the blacksmith’s son, you know, but I heard they also owned a fulling mill,” she added with a disdainful sniff.

  “Yes,” I said as my mind spun back through the years, “I heard that too.”

  “To think His Majesty has seen fit to raise him to the peerage as Baron Cromwell of Oakham—well, I never! What will it be next?”

  I could only shake my head at Cromwell’s daring. A letter from Princess Mary had told me that she had been given but a pittance from her mother’s estate and possessions, including a small gold cross and chain. My heart went out to her again as I recalled my mother’s garnet necklace Maud had taken from me. Mary claimed that things of value from her mother had gone to Cromwell. The one-time clerk to Cardinal Wolsey now stood at the pinnacle of the realm in service to the king. He could do what he willed and could hardly climb higher. But then, poor Anne had thought she was secure at her lofty height. I thanked God that Cromwell seemed content to leave me near Elizabeth and make no more demands on me as one of his spies.

  “Both Edward and Thomas Seymour are to be elevated, Tom to be knighted,” Margaret went on. “Will wonders never cease for those who began life as plain gentry and far from court?”

  We spoke late into the night, but my thoughts clung to her last question. The daughter of the beekeeper from the far fringe of Devon’s barren moors was now governess and—truth be to
ld—foster mother to the king’s daughter. Yet, since my parting with John Ashley so many months ago, I sometimes yearned to be just the country wife of a husband who bred and trained horses and had a child of her own. I had seen what power, pride and raw ambition could do to people, and it terrified me for myself and for the child for whom I kept the ruby ring.

  Cromwell was king! Well, not king, but he acted as such and no doubt thought so. He was caring for all the business of the kingdom while His Majesty was in seclusion and deepest mourning. For once, it was not a newborn infant he had lost but Queen Jane, dead of childbed fever twelve days after giving birth.

  We wore white, all but Elizabeth, who had nothing that would serve, because she was growing so fast and had been greatly ignored since Anne’s death. Though I wanted naught to do with Cromwell, I humbled myself to write him a letter, begging, as Margaret had done before me, for a better allowance to clothe the king’s daughter:

  To the Esteemed Baron Cromwell, G.K.:

  His Majesty and you, my lord, would indeed be proud of the Lady Elizabeth. Each day she more resembles her sire in appearance and learning. She is healthy and fast-growing, and so her wardrobe is in sore need of replenishment. I thank you for reporting well of her to the king. I am loath to beg for moneys from my own father, who has as much to do with the little living he has as any man.

  In your wisdom and wealth, I beseech you to send funds for her raiment, for she is in dire need of gowns, kirtles, bodices, sleeves, petticoats, linen smocks, nightgowns and nightcaps, slippers and boots.

  Your longtime servant and

  the Lady Elizabeth’s loving

  governess,

  Katherine Champernowne

  There! I thought. I had reminded him of my service and implied that I am so desperate for garments for the king’s girl that I had even considered asking my poor beekeeper father. [Only twice in the eleven years since I had left my father’s house had I received news of him, once through the Barlows before they left Dartington Hall and once through Sir Philip. I assumed I would have heard from someone if my father were not alive.]

  More than once over the next years, I wrote Cromwell such groveling letters; more than once he sent coin or bolts of cloth with a reminder that my present position was his doing and that he knew I would be willing to serve him in the future. Sometimes, I felt I had sold my soul to the very devil, but it was worth it to see Elizabeth had shoes and boots that fit and boned bodices that did not pinch her ribs.

  What pains of heart and soul the motherless, bastardized young girl suffered from being oft ignored by her father, and I wished I could soothe those as well.

  GREENWICH PALACE

  June 1540

  When Elizabeth was nearly seven, we were summoned to court. That had occurred before but not in such tenuous times. Elizabeth was ecstatic, but I was terrified. I was even sent for to face the king himself, when that had never happened. Wishing with all my heart it was John Ashley I was going to see, anyone but the king—or Tom Seymour, now Sir Thomas Seymour, yet unwed, but quite a favorite with the ladies, so I heard—I left Elizabeth with her other tenders and set off.

  Things were rocky at court and in the country now, for the religious schism had widened and several bad harvests had caused widespread discontent. Unrest in the north and tensions abroad kept courtiers on edge. At the center of our universe His Majesty detested his fourth wife, the German princess Anne of Cleves, chosen sight unseen for him except for a flattering Holbein portrait. Cromwell had arranged the painting and the match to secure a Protestant ally on the Continent.

  It was common rumor that the king would soon have the Cleves marriage—unconsummated, he swore—annulled. After his disposing of two other queens, I had merely nodded when I heard that news. It was said His Majesty had announced of the German Anne, “I like her not,” “She has the face of a horse and smells worse” and “I cannot abide her ugly breasts and belly.” As twice before, he had ordered Cromwell to amend the situation. But one thing I’d heard whispered shocked me: the king blamed Cromwell for the crude, plain wife he’d been maneuvered into wedding, and the man who had recently been given the title Earl of Essex was in deep trouble.

  However, the current royal marital woes did not discourage the king from courting a new lady, Catherine Howard, pretty, young and vivacious—and one who could speak the king’s English—a cousin to Anne Boleyn, no less. After my erroneously thinking that Jane Seymour would not keep the king’s attention enough for him to wed her, I predicted that the Howard girl would hold out for wife instead of mistress. It did seem to me that each time the king considered a new wife, he chose one quite the opposite from the one he was replacing, but they all had learned to use the same tactics.

  For this interview, I had dressed carefully but circumspectly in a simple dark-hued gown. My thick hair was pulled back under a borrowed gabled hood which His Majesty’s still-mourned Queen Jane had brought back into fashion. Trembling, I waited in the presence chamber until my name was announced; one of the yeomen guards at the withdrawing room door swept it open for me.

  “Your Majesty,” I said as I curtsied before him as deeply as I could manage and yet look graceful.

  I stayed down a moment because I feared my face would show shock or alarm. How greatly the red-haired Adonis, the once athletic, virile man, had changed. Henry Tudor, who would have his forty-ninth birthday later this month of June 1540, not only filled the chair upon which he sat but overspilled it. His eyes, now beady like a trapped animal’s, seemed to have sunk into his florid face. His auburn hair had grayed and thinned. And I could see from the vantage point of my curtsy, before he indicated I should rise, that his right leg was wrapped with a big, seeping bandage under his bulging silk stockings. And this was the man now courting a nineteen-year-old girl who loved to dance? At least, I prayed silently, let him be in a good humor.

  “Cromwell, Earl of Essex, brought you to court years ago,” he said without so much as inquiring about Elizabeth’s progress, though the child had spent some time with him the day before and was thrilled to have had even a few minutes of his attention.

  Dear Lord in heaven, I thought, he is going to dismiss me from my duties. Cromwell will pull me down with him.

  I struggled to strengthen my backbone and my voice. “That is correct, Your Grace. I must admit that Master Cromwell, as he was then called, was impressed with my diligent learning and my desire to serve Your Majesty, which I have done these years with great pride and purpose.”

  “Ah. Yes,” he said, stroking his salt-and-red-pepper beard and regarding me through narrowed eyes. “At any rate, the child cares deeply for you, and you seem to have done a good service to her, but for her misliking needlework, which all women should favor.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. But she rides beautifully, though she could never sit a horse as well as you.”

  He merely nodded. I recalled that no compliment could possibly overreach with this man who was so used to being praised. “Mistress Kat,” he said. “She calls you Kat.”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “And tells me you have a pet name for her: lovey.”

  “She is a lovely child, a great honor to Your Majesty in her learning and her looks.”

  “True. She has a sharp, busy little mind. Hair as crimson as my sister’s—the Tudor rose, they called her. But to business.”

  Cromwell’s chant, I thought: to business. Always to business. I had to force myself to breathe. What would happen to the man who had been for a time another Wolsey, as powerful in this realm as the king? What would become of me if this man sent me away from his daughter? What if he had learned that I had abetted his stubborn daughter Mary’s defiance years ago? Worse, what if Tom Seymour, who yet rode high in his regard as his heir’s uncle, had told him dreadful lies about my character?

  “I like someone solid and sober and staid around that child,” he said, tapping his beringed fingers on the carved arm of his chair. They had grown as puffy as sausages. �
�I know you have a rural upbringing and favor the new learning and reformed religion.”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “And have an impeccable reputation.”

  Thank God, neither Tom Seymour nor Cromwell had told him different. Or was he baiting me?

  “Yes, Sire, though to live at court off and on is to invite rumors, some of which are most unfair to reputations.”

  “Very true. But, mistress, my point is this, so heed me well. Because Elizabeth carries her wanton mother’s blood, she must be closely watched. She must not be encouraged to be frivolous or fanciful—or, later, flirty. She must be encouraged to follow my ruling and not to inquire of or romanticize her mother. Unlike the Boleyn, her cousin Catherine Howard is virtue personified. Elizabeth’s mother did not set a good example for the girl, and she must needs be reminded of that.”

  The ring I wore almost burned my finger, stoking anger in me. If I tried to fight him in any way, I knew I would lose Elizabeth, lose the opportunity to help her at least be near her brother’s throne someday.

  “I understand completely what you are saying, Your Majesty,” I managed, then actually bit my tongue to keep from declaring but I believe you are completely wrong.

  “Good. I like a reasonable woman. Then we are agreed.”

  I know not why, but a rebellious, rapturous thought rose within me, one I prayed would not cause harm if pursued.

  “Your Grace, I was hoping I could make a request—about the Lady Elizabeth’s riding. I can certainly work with her to develop her needlework, and I vow to have proof of that in your hands soon, but she could benefit from a riding instructor—to improve her already inherent talents that have come from you.”

  “Hm, yes, I suppose I can spare a man. Or was there someone in the countryside you recommend?”